The House of Laïus
In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, the royal house of Thebes descends from Cadmus, the founder of the city, through Polydorus, Labdacus and Laïus to Oedipus. The play names the four ancestors in Oedipus’s proclamation against the slayer of Laïus, and it names Creon as the son of Menoeceus. Other members of the family appear in the play unnamed or in stage directions only. Oedipus was reared at Corinth by Polybus and Merope. Iocasta, his mother and wife, was the sister of Creon. Hesiod, Homer, Apollodorus, Pausanias, the Oedipodeia, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles’ own Antigone add names and offer differing versions of the mother’s name, the mother of Oedipus’s children and the fate of the house.
The line of Cadmus
Oedipus names four forebears of Laïus in reverse order: Laïus is the son of Labdacus, and Labdacus’s line runs back through Polydorus and Cadmus to Agenor.
Agenor is the earliest ancestor named in the play, where Oedipus swears to act for the honour of Laïus, Labdacus, Polydorus, elder Cadmus and “Agenor who was of old” (267–268). The play does not state how Agenor is related to Cadmus. The Library attributed to Apollodorus makes Agenor a son of Libya and Poseidon, who settled in Phoenicia, married Telephassa and had a daughter Europa and three sons, Cadmus, Phoenix and Cilix. It says he sent his sons to search for Europa.
Oedipus opens the play by addressing the suppliants as “latest-born to Cadmus” (1), and the Thebans are called Cadmeans throughout. According to Apollodorus, Cadmus came to Delphi while searching for Europa and was told to follow a cow and found a city where she lay down. That city was Thebes, and he married Harmonia, daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. Pausanias says Cadmus built the Cadmeia, later the citadel of Thebes. Hesiod’s Theogony says Harmonia bore Cadmus four daughters, Ino, Semele, Agave and Autonoe, and a son Polydorus. Apollodorus and Pausanias agree that Cadmus later went to the Encheleans in Illyria.
Polydorus is named once in the play, as one of the forebears in Oedipus’s oath. Hesiod’s Theogony places his birth “in rich-crowned Thebes”. Apollodorus makes him the son of Cadmus, who married Nycteis, daughter of Nycteus, and fathered Labdacus. Pausanias says he received the kingdom when Cadmus left for Illyria and that he entrusted the child Labdacus and the government to Nycteus at his death.
The play calls Laïus “son of Labdacus” (224) and names the palace family “the house of Labdacus” (1223–1231). Apollodorus says Labdacus died after Pentheus, leaving a one-year-old son, Laïus, and that Lycus, brother of Nycteus, usurped the government. Pausanias gives a different account, in which Lycus handed the government to Labdacus when he grew up, but Labdacus died soon afterwards and Lycus again became guardian, this time of Laïus.
Laïus was lord of Thebes before Oedipus. Iocasta reports that an oracle told him he would die by the hand of a child born of himself and her, that the child was exposed on a trackless mountain with its ankles pinned together when three days old, and that Laïus was said to have been killed by foreign robbers where three roads meet. She places the spot in Phocis, on roads from Delphi and Daulia, and says his party numbered five, including a herald, with one carriage. Apollodorus says Laïus was driven from Thebes as a child by Amphion and Zethus and was received by Pelops, whose son Chrysippus he carried off. He later returned, married a daughter of Menoeceus, and disregarded an oracle not to beget a child. Pausanias also has Laïus removed in childhood and restored after the deaths of Amphion and Zethus. In Euripides’ Phoenissae the oracle warns that a son would kill him and that all the house would wade through blood. Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes says Apollo had told Laïus three times that he would save the city if he died childless.
The play presents Oedipus as king by reputation for having saved the city from the Sphinx. Laïus had died long before, and the years since are said to run “far into the past” (558–561). Oedipus holds the throne, the bed and the wife of Laïus. He tells Iocasta that he was reared in Corinth as the son of Polybus and Merope, fled after Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, and killed a man at the three roads. The Corinthian messenger says a herdsman of Laïus gave him the infant on Cithaeron and that the ankles bore the mark from which the name came. Teiresias foretells that Oedipus will be found “brother and father of the children with whom he consorts; son and husband of the woman who bore him” (447–462). After the discovery he blinds himself and asks to be cast out or left on Cithaeron. Apollodorus agrees that the name comes from his swollen feet and names his foster mother Periboea. He adds that Oedipus killed Laïus and the herald Polyphontes, and that Oedipus, blinded and driven out, came with Antigone to Colonus in Attica, where Theseus received him. The Iliad has Mecisteus come to Thebes for the funeral games after the fall of Oedipus, which places his death and burial at Thebes.
The play does not name Eteocles. Oedipus speaks of his sons only as men who need no care, and asks Creon to look after his daughters. Euripides’ Phoenissae names Eteocles and Polyneices as sons of Iocasta and Oedipus. Apollodorus reports that the brothers agreed to rule in alternate years and that accounts differ on which ruled first. Euripides’ Phoenissae has Eteocles refuse to give up the throne. Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and Apollodorus have the brothers kill each other. Pindar’s second Olympian ode says the Fury slew Oedipus’s sons, each by the other’s hand. Pausanias adds that Laodamas, son of Eteocles, became king, with Creon as regent.
Polyneices is likewise not named in the play. The Iliad refers to his expedition against Thebes. Hesiod’s Works and Days speaks of heroes who fell at seven-gated Thebes fighting for the flocks of Oedipus. In Pausanias, Polyneices left Thebes while Oedipus was still alive and reigning, in fear that his father’s curses would take effect, and married a daughter of Adrastus at Argos. Apollodorus gives his wife as Argia, and Euripides’ Phoenissae has him lead an Argive force against Thebes. Pausanias says Polyneices’s son Thersander was placed on the throne of Thebes by the Argives.
Antigone is named in the play only in the stage direction that brings her and Ismene on with Creon near the end of the play. Oedipus addresses them as his daughters and foresees that no man will marry them. In Euripides’ Phoenissae Jocasta names Antigone the elder of the two daughters. In Sophocles’ Antigone she speaks to Ismene of “the evils bequeathed by Oedipus”. Apollodorus has her accompany Oedipus to Colonus, and later bury Polyneices against Creon’s edict and be entombed alive.
Ismene is named only in the stage direction and appears with Antigone in the closing scene. In Sophocles’ Antigone her sister addresses her as “true child of my own mother”. Euripides’ Phoenissae and Apollodorus list her among the children of Oedipus.
The foster parents at Corinth
Polybus and Merope reared Oedipus as their son, and he believed himself their child until the Corinthian messenger’s disclosure.
Oedipus names Polybus of Corinth as his father. The Corinthian messenger reports that Polybus is dead and that he was “nothing to thee in blood”, having received the child as a gift because he was childless. Apollodorus and Euripides’ Phoenissae both have herdsmen of Polybus find the infant on Cithaeron. In the play a herdsman of Laïus hands him to the Corinthian.
Oedipus calls his mother “the Dorian Merope” (775). He fears the oracle about the marriage bed so long as she lives. Apollodorus gives the wife of Polybus as Periboea, and Euripides’ Phoenissae leaves her unnamed.
The line of Menoeceus
Menoeceus is named in the play only as the father of Creon, who is Iocasta’s brother.
The play calls Creon the “son of Menoeceus” (69, 85, 1503). Euripides’ Phoenissae makes Jocasta a daughter of Menoeceus and Creon her brother, and Apollodorus says Laïus married a daughter of Menoeceus. Menoeceus’s grandson of the same name, son of Creon, died for the city in the war of the Seven, as Apollodorus and Pausanias report.
Creon confirms that Oedipus married his sister, and the Chorus calls her “the mother of his children” (927–928). Iocasta recounts the oracle given to Laïus, urges Oedipus not to pursue his birth, and hangs herself. The Second Messenger reports her lament for a “twofold brood”, “husband by husband, children by her child”. In the Odyssey the mother of Oedipus is Epicaste, who hangs herself. Apollodorus says some call the wife of Laïus Jocasta and some Epicasta. Euripides’ Phoenissae gives the name Jocasta as her father’s choice.
Creon is Iocasta’s brother and Oedipus’s brother-in-law. Oedipus sends him to Delphi, and at the end he alone is left to guard the land. Apollodorus says Creon succeeded Laïus, proclaimed the kingdom and the wife of Laïus as the prize for solving the riddle, and lost his son Haemon to the Sphinx. Euripides’ Phoenissae also has Creon make the proclamation. Pausanias makes him regent for Laodamas. In Sophocles’ Antigone he rules after the war.
The play names none of Creon’s children. Haemon, betrothed to Antigone in Sophocles’ Antigone, is listed as Sphinx’s victim in Apollodorus and in the Oedipodeia, as a scholiast on Euripides’ Phoenissae quotes it. Sophocles’ Antigone also refers to a son Megareus who died earlier. The Odyssey names Creon’s daughter Megara as the wife of Heracles. Menoeceus, son of Creon, gives his life for Thebes in Euripides’ Phoenissae, Apollodorus and Pausanias.
Where the sources differ
The mother of Oedipus is Epicaste in the Odyssey, Jocasta or Epicasta in Apollodorus, and Jocasta in the play and in Euripides. The Odyssey says the gods made the marriage known soon after it took place, and Pausanias concludes from this that Epicaste bore Oedipus no children. He says the children’s mother was Euryganeia, daughter of Hyperphas, and names the Oedipodeia and a painting by Onasias at Plataea as evidence. The Oedipodeia, as Pausanias cites it, gives the same account. Apollodorus has Jocasta bear the four children but adds that “some say” Eurygania, daughter of Hyperphas, bore them. In the play Iocasta is their mother, as in Euripides’ Phoenissae.
Another ancient account has Iocasta bear two sons, who were killed by the Minyae, and Euryganeia bear the other four.
The sources also differ on where Oedipus died and on how the child was reared. The Iliad places his burial at Thebes, Apollodorus has him die at Colonus, and in the play he asks to live on Cithaeron. On rearing, Apollodorus and Euripides’ Phoenissae have Polybus’s herdsmen find the child, whereas the play has a herdsman of Laïus give him to the Corinthian. Apollodorus and Pausanias also disagree on whether Labdacus ever reigned.