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149.

But as Theras' son would not sail with him, his father said that he would leave him behind as a sheep among wolves; after which saying the boy got the nickname of Oeolycus,1 and it so happened that this became his customary name. He had a son, Aegeus, from whom the Aegidae, a great Spartan clan, take their name. [2] The men of this clan, finding that none of their children lived, set up a temple of the avenging spirits of Laïus and Oedipus, by the instruction of an oracle,2 after which their children lived. It fared thus, too, with the children of the Aegidae at Thera.

1 Literally “sheep-wolf.”

2 Oedipus, son of Laius king of Thebes and his wife Iocasta, was exposed in infancy, but rescued and carried away to a far country. Returning in manhood, ignorant of his lineage, he killed his father and married his mother; after which the truth was revealed to him, too late. The story is first told by Homer, and is the subject of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles.

Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.

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