Introduction
Reading Sophocles
Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) wrote Oedipus the King for the Athenian dramatic festival, probably in the 430s or 420s BC. It tells how Oedipus, king of Thebes, sets out to find the killer of his predecessor Laïus in order to lift a plague from the city, and discovers that he is himself the killer, and the son of Laïus and of his own wife, Iocasta. Aristotle’s Poetics treats it as the model of tragic plot.
Choosing a Translation
The English translations compared, prose and verse, with the free Jebb translation on this site.
Books on Oedipus
Translations, Greek editions, criticism, myth and adaptations, by kind.
The Play
Jebb’s translation in its eleven parts, from the plague at Thebes to the exile of Oedipus, with the Greek line numbers.
Scene-by-Scene Synopsis
What happens in each part of the play.
Characters and Names
Oedipus, Iocasta, Creon, Teiresias, and everyone named in the play.
The House of Laïus
From Cadmus, founder of Thebes, to Oedipus and his children.
The Theban Myths
The story before and after the play: the oracle to Laïus, the Sphinx, the wars of Oedipus’s sons.
Athens and the Theater
Thebes, Delphi and Corinth, and the Athenian festival where the play was first performed.
Key Terms Glossary
Prologue, stasimon, kommos, pollution, supplication: the terms of Greek tragedy and of the play.
Aristotle to the Modern Stage
How the play has been read and rewritten, from Aristotle and Seneca to Freud and the modern theater.
Jebb’s Introduction
The legend and its sources, the plot, and the play’s later versions, by the translator.