The Theban Myths
The Theban myths are the Greek stories of the royal house of Thebes, a city in Boeotia. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King dramatizes only the last day of one part of that history. The story extends back to the founding of the city by Cadmus and forward through the exile of Oedipus, the war of his sons and the burial of Polyneices.
The ancient sources agree on the main line: an oracle, an exposed child, a killing on a road, a riddle-monster, a marriage with a mother, and a later curse on the sons. They differ on the details. Those include who bore the children of Oedipus, where the child was found, how the discovery came, and how Oedipus died.
Cadmus and the Founding of Thebes
Cadmus, a Phoenician prince, is the founder in Greek tradition. Pausanias reports that his Phoenician army defeated the earlier Hyantes and Aones in Boeotia. He built the city later called the Cadmeia, which became the citadel of the lower city of Thebes. Apollodorus’ Library, a mythographic handbook, adds that Cadmus went to Delphi to ask about his sister Europa. The god told him to follow a cow and found a city where she lay down. Cadmus killed a dragon that guarded the spring of Ares and sowed its teeth on Athena’s advice. The armed men who sprang up, the Sparti (“sown men”), fought one another until five were left: Echion, Udaeus, Chthonius, Hyperenor and Pelorus. Apollodorus has Cadmus marry Harmonia, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, and name a son Polydorus among his children.
The play preserves this ancestry. Oedipus opens by addressing the Thebans as the “latest-born to Cadmus who was of old” (1–13), and the Priest of Zeus calls Thebes “the town of Cadmus” (14–57). In his proclamation Oedipus names the line of the murdered king as the son of Labdacus, of Polydorus, of Cadmus and of Agenor. Pausanias gives the succession from Cadmus to Polydorus and then Labdacus. Labdacus died leaving Laïus a child, and the regency passed to Nycteus and then to Lycus. According to Apollodorus, Amphion and Zethus, sons of Antiope, killed Lycus, fortified the city and drove out the young Laïus. Laïus was received by Pelops in the Peloponnese, where he taught Pelops’ son Chrysippus to drive a chariot and carried him off. Pausanias says instead that Laïus was restored by the Thebans after the deaths of Zethus and Amphion’s house.
Laïus, the Oracle and the Exposure of the Child
Every ancient source that tells the story has an oracle warning Laïus that a son would kill him. In the play Iocasta reports that it came “not from Phoebus himself, but from his ministers” (707–725). She says it declared that Laïus would die by the hand of his child, and that the child’s ankles were pinned together and the child thrown on a trackless mountain when it was not three days old. The Corinthian messenger names the place as Cithaeron. The Theban herdsman says Iocasta herself gave him the child to destroy, from fear of the prophecy, and that he handed it over through pity. Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes has Apollo tell Laïus three times that he would save the city if he died childless. Euripides’ Phoenissae has the god tell Laïus not to sow a furrow of children, and has Laïus beget the child in a drunken fit. Apollodorus also has Laïus disobey the oracle while flushed with wine. He pierces the child’s ankles with brooches and gives it to a herdsman.
The sources differ on who reared the child. In the play a Theban shepherd gave the infant to a Corinthian shepherd, who gave him to Polybus, and Polybus and Merope reared him. In the Phoenissae the horsemen of Polybus themselves find the child and bring it to their mistress. In Apollodorus the neatherds of Polybus find him and bring him to Periboea, who passes him off as her own. Merope in the play corresponds to this Periboea. All three account for the name from the swollen feet. In the play the Corinthian ties the name to the pinned ankles, and Apollodorus derives it from the swelling. Pausanias lists Oedipus’ misfortunes by place. The ankles were pierced at his birth and he was exposed on Cithaeron, in Plataean territory. Corinth and the Isthmus were the scene of his upbringing, and Phocis received the blood of his father.
The killing of Laïus is told in the play by Oedipus himself. A man at a Corinthian banquet said he was not his father’s true son. He went to Delphi and was told that he would defile his mother’s bed and kill his father. He then left Corinth, and at the meeting of three roads a herald and an old man in a carriage tried to thrust him aside. He struck the driver, the old man struck him on the head with a goad, and Oedipus threw the old man from the carriage. He says he slew every man of them. Iocasta adds that the place is in Phocis, where roads lead from Delphi and from Daulia, and that there were five in Laïus’ party. In the play Creon says only that Laïus went to Delphi “as he said” (114–115). In the Phoenissae Laïus is seeking to learn whether the exposed child is dead, and Oedipus is going to Delphi to learn who his parents are. Apollodorus names the herald Polyphontes and has Oedipus kill him and Laïus. Pausanias describes the Cleft Road and says the graves of Laïus and his servant lay at the meeting of the three roads. In his account Damasistratus, king of Plataea, found the bodies and buried them.
The Sphinx and Her Riddle
The Sphinx is a monster who plagued Thebes after the death of Laïus. Hesiod’s Theogony says Echidna bore “the deadly Sphinx which destroyed the Cadmeans.” Apollodorus makes Echidna and Typhon her parents, and gives her a woman’s face, a lion’s breast, feet and tail, and a bird’s wings. He adds that she learned her riddle from the Muses and sat on Mount Phicium. A prophecy said the Thebans would be rid of her when they solved it, and she carried off one of them each time they failed. When Creon’s son Haemon was among the dead, Creon offered the kingdom and the wife of Laïus to whoever solved it. Oedipus answered that it was man, and the Sphinx threw herself from the citadel.
Pausanias records two other accounts. In one she was a pirate who seized the mountain from Anthedon. In the other she was a natural daughter of Laïus who knew an oracle given to Cadmus and killed any claimant who could not repeat it. Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists gives the riddle as quoted from Asclepiades in the wording of an animal with two feet, four feet and three, and a single voice. It is weakest when it has the most feet. Apollodorus words it as one voice and four, two and three feet.
The play refers to the Sphinx repeatedly but never gives the riddle. She is “the hard songstress” (14–57), “the riddling Sphinx” who diverted the Thebans from the murder, “the Watcher” who “wove dark song” (380–403), and the “maiden with crooked talons who sang darkly” (1186–1222). Oedipus claims to have answered her by his own wit, “untaught of birds” (380–403). In the play the city gives him the throne as “a gift unsought” (380–403), and the play does not say how the marriage was arranged. In the Phoenissae Creon proclaims that whoever solves the riddle will marry Iocasta.
The Events of the Play
The play opens with a plague on Thebes. Creon returns from Delphi with the god’s command to drive out or avenge the blood of Laïus. Oedipus curses the unknown killer. Teiresias, the blind seer, at first refuses to speak, then names Oedipus as the killer and says he lives in unguessed shame with his nearest kin. Oedipus accuses Creon of a plot, and Iocasta stops the quarrel. In telling of the oracle to Laïus she mentions the crossroads, and this alarms Oedipus, who sends for the surviving servant. A messenger from Corinth reports the death of Polybus and then says that Polybus was not Oedipus’ father. Iocasta begs Oedipus to stop, and goes into the palace. The Theban herdsman is forced to say that the child came from the house of Laïus, and Oedipus cries out that all is true. A second messenger reports that Iocasta has hanged herself and that Oedipus has struck his own eyes with the golden brooches from her dress. Oedipus, blind, asks to be sent out of the land. Creon replies that the god must first be consulted, and lets him take leave of his daughters. The Chorus ends by saying that no mortal should be called happy before he has crossed life’s border free from pain.
Oedipus Afterwards: Oedipus at Colonus
The play ends with Oedipus’ fate undecided. He asks to live on Cithaeron, the mountain his parents had set for his tomb, and says his sons can look after themselves. Creon says the god must decide. Apollodorus has Iocasta hang herself and Oedipus, after blinding himself and cursing his sons, be driven out. His sons watched him go without helping him. He came with Antigone to Colonus in Attica, where the precinct of the Eumenides stands. He was received by Theseus and died soon after. In the Phoenissae Creon expels him from Thebes after the brothers’ deaths, citing Teiresias’ statement that the city would not prosper while he lived there.
Sophocles’ own later treatment, Oedipus at Colonus, was produced after his death, in 401 B.C. The tradition of his death in Attica is not the only one. Homer’s Iliad has Mecisteus come to Thebes for Oedipus’ funeral games “when he had fallen,” and Pausanias rejects the account in Sophocles’ play on that ground. He reports a monument to Oedipus at Athens, whose bones he says were brought from Thebes.
The War of the Sons and Antigone
The ancient sources agree that the sons of Oedipus quarrelled over the kingdom, and Homer already knows a war of Polyneices and his allies against Thebes in the Iliad. Hesiod’s Works and Days has heroes fall at seven-gated Thebes “when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus.” Apollodorus and Euripides’ Phoenissae agree that the brothers agreed to rule in turn. The two accounts differ on what followed. Apollodorus says some report that Polyneices ruled first, others that Eteocles did. In the Phoenissae Polyneices leaves first and Eteocles then refuses to yield. Polyneices went to Argos, married a daughter of Adrastus, and gathered an army led by seven champions, as Apollodorus tells it. Pausanias has Polyneices leave Thebes while Oedipus still lived, fearing his father’s curses, and return after Oedipus’ death.
In Apollodorus and Pausanias the brothers kill each other in single combat, and the attackers are defeated. Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes attributes their end to the Erinys and the curses Oedipus spoke in madness. In Pindar’s second Olympian ode the Erinys kills them in retribution for the parricide. The Cyclic Thebaid, in a fragment quoted by Athenaeus, makes the curse follow a slight at table, and the Phoenissae says the sons shut their father away and he cursed them. The play itself does not mention such a curse. Oedipus there says only that his sons are men and can provide for themselves.
Creon then ruled Thebes. In Apollodorus he forbade burial of the Argive dead. Antigone buried Polyneices, was discovered by Creon and was shut alive in a grave, and the Athenians under Theseus later took Thebes to recover the dead. Sophocles’ Antigone, produced before Oedipus the King, is the best-known dramatization of this episode.
Earlier Versions of the Story
The earliest sources for Oedipus are the Homeric poems, and the tragedians drew on lost epics and on early prose writers as well.
In the Iliad Euryalus’ father Mecisteus went to Thebes “for the burial of Oedipus, when he had fallen.” The poem does not say how Oedipus died, and it is the earliest reference to his death. The Odyssey gives the earliest outline of the story. Odysseus sees “the mother of Oedipodes, fair Epicaste,” who “wrought a dreadful deed unwittingly” by marrying her son after he had killed his father. The gods soon made the matter known, but Oedipus went on ruling the Cadmeans in Thebes “suffering woes,” while she hanged herself. The passage says nothing of the Sphinx, of the self-blinding or of exile. It also leaves out children born of the marriage, and Pausanias argues from “forthwith” that Epicaste bore Oedipus none. The name Epicaste differs from Sophocles’ Iocasta, though Apollodorus says some give Epicasta.
Hesiod’s Works and Days refers to the war at Thebes, in which heroes died “fighting for the flocks of Oedipus.” The Theogony makes the Sphinx the offspring of Echidna. The surviving poems do not tell the story of Oedipus.
This lost epic, the Oedipodeia or “Story of Oedipus,” is cited by Pausanias for the statement that the children of Oedipus were borne by Euryganeia, daughter of Hyperphas, and not by Iocasta. Pausanias adds that Onasias painted Euryganeia grieving for the fight between her sons at Plataea. An inscription ascribes the poem to Cinaethon in 6,600 verses. Pausanias does not name an author. A scholiast on Euripides quotes the poem for the Sphinx killing Haemon, son of Creon. Apollodorus records the same variant of Euryganeia as mother, in agreement with this tradition and against Sophocles.
The Cyclic Thebaid, an epic on the war of the seven, survives in fragments. In the longest, quoted by Athenaeus, Polyneices sets before Oedipus the silver table and golden cup of Cadmus. Oedipus is grieved by “these treasures of his father” and calls down curses that his sons never divide their inheritance in brotherhood, but have war and fighting. In another, quoted by a scholiast on Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, he curses them for sending him a haunch of meat, and prays that each fall by his brother’s hand. In both the curse rests on a slight at table and not on the parricide. The Loeb translator lists further fragments on Adrastus and on the death of Parthenopaeus.
Proclus’ summary of the Cypria, another poem of the Epic Cycle, says that in a digression Nestor told Menelaus the story of Oedipus, the madness of Heracles and the story of Theseus and Ariadne. The summary gives nothing further of the version told.
In Olympian 2 Pindar says that the “destined son met and killed Laius, and fulfilled the oracle of Pytho, spoken long before.” The sharp-eyed Erinys saw it and destroyed his warlike sons through mutual slaughter. Polyneices left a son, Thersander, from whom the ode’s honorand Theron of Acragas claimed descent by way of the house of Adrastus. The ode connects the fate of the sons directly with the parricide and does not mention a curse spoken by Oedipus.
Pherecydes of Athens, writing in the fifth century B.C., is cited by Apollodorus for details of the Theban story: the stones Cadmus threw among the Sparti, the necklace of Harmonia and the blinding of Teiresias by Athena. Another ancient account has Iocasta’s two sons by Oedipus killed by the Minyae, and a second wife, Euryganeia, bear the four other children. The reference is second-hand. Apollodorus (Library, probably of the first or second century A.D.) collects the Theban story in a single continuous account and notes variants such as Euryganeia.
Aeschylus’ Theban trilogy, of which only the Seven against Thebes survives, treated the story as an inherited curse. In the Seven the Chorus traces the trouble to Laïus, who fathered a child against Apollo’s warning given three times. It tells of Oedipus honoured after removing the “man-seizing plague” (772–777). It then tells how he grew miserable on learning of his marriage, struck out his eyes with the hand that killed his father, and cursed his sons. The Seven also has Oedipus blind himself once he learns the truth.
Euripides’ Oedipus is lost, but the prologue of the Phoenissae gives his version of the past. Iocasta speaks it and is alive at the time of the play. The child is found by the horsemen of Polybus. The charioteer of Laïus orders the young man aside, and the horses’ hooves draw blood from his feet. Creon proclaims the marriage as the prize for solving the riddle. After the blinding the sons shut Oedipus away so that his misfortune might be forgotten, and he curses them. At the end, Creon banishes him. Oedipus there complains of a fate that began before his birth. In these points Euripides differs from Sophocles, whose Oedipus rules Thebes on his own decision, blinds himself and awaits his exile.