Scene-by-Scene Synopsis

Oedipus the King (Greek title Oedipus Tyrannus) is a tragedy by Sophocles, the Athenian dramatist of the fifth century B.C. The play is set in Thebes, where the king, Oedipus, seeks to end a plague by discovering the murderer of Laïus, the city’s earlier king.

A prologue is the opening scene, and a parodos is the entrance song of the Chorus. An episode is a spoken scene between choral songs. A stasimon is a choral ode sung between episodes, and a kommos is a lyric lament shared between the Chorus and one or more actors. The exodos is the final scene. The Chorus consists of Theban elders.

Prologue (1–150)

Oedipus, king of Thebes, comes out to find a crowd of suppliants holding wreathed branches, and asks why they have come. The Priest of Zeus speaks for them. He describes a plague in which the crops, the herds and the births of women are blighted, and a fiery pestilence ravages the town. He recalls that Oedipus once freed the city from the tribute it paid to the “hard songstress,” the Sphinx, and asks him to find relief again. Oedipus answers that he grieves for the city as well as for himself. He has already sent Creon, son of Menoeceus and brother of Oedipus’s wife, to the Pythian house of Phoebus, the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, to learn how the town may be delivered.

Creon arrives crowned with bay and reports the god’s reply. The land is harbouring a defiling thing, and Laïus’s murderers must be banished or punished with bloodshed. Laïus was king before Oedipus, and Oedipus knows of him only by hearsay. In answer to Oedipus’s questions, Creon says that Laïus left Thebes on a visit to Delphi and never returned. All his companions died except one, who fled and reported that robbers attacked in force. No avenger arose at the time, because the riddling Sphinx occupied the city’s attention. Oedipus declares that he will begin the inquiry afresh and that in avenging Laïus he serves himself, since the murderer might turn on him too. He tells the suppliants to rise and orders the people of Thebes to be summoned. The Priest and the suppliants rise, and the Priest prays that Phoebus will come as their saviour.

Parodos (151–215)

The Chorus, the elders of Thebes, sings the entrance song. It asks in fear what the oracle from Pytho (Delphi) will bring. It then calls on Athena, on Artemis, who sits enthroned above the Agora, and on Phoebus to help the city. It describes the plague: the earth bears no fruit, women do not come through the pangs of childbirth, and the dead lie on the ground unpitied, with none to mourn, while women lament at the altars. The Chorus prays that the god of death may be driven from the land, and it calls on Zeus to strike him with his thunderbolt. It also invokes Lycean Apollo, Artemis, and Bacchus, whom it names as the god of the land, as allies against him.

First Episode (216–462)

Oedipus proclaims to the Thebans that anyone who knows who killed Laïus, son of Labdacus, must declare it. A self-accuser is promised exile without other punishment, and an informant is promised a reward. He forbids anyone in the land to shelter the murderer or share prayer or sacrifice with him, and he pronounces a curse on the slayer and on himself should the slayer be admitted to his house. He adds that he holds the throne and the wife once Laïus’s. The Chorus answers that it neither killed Laïus nor can name the killer, and it suggests the seer Teiresias. Oedipus says he has twice sent for him at Creon’s suggestion. Teiresias, blind, is led in by a Boy.

Teiresias at first refuses to speak and asks to go home. Provoked by Oedipus’s anger and by his charge that the seer helped plot the deed, he says that Oedipus is the slayer and that he is living in unguessed shame with his nearest kin. Oedipus suspects that Creon has suborned him, and he taunts the seer with his blindness and with his failure to answer the Sphinx’s riddle. Teiresias replies that Oedipus sees yet does not see his misery. He foretells that the curse of his mother and father will drive him from the land, that he will be found to be a native Theban, and that he will be revealed as brother and father of his children and as son and husband of the woman who bore him. Teiresias is led out by the Boy, and Oedipus enters the palace.

First Stasimon (463–512)

The Chorus sings of the unknown man whom the Delphic oracle has marked as the doer of unspeakable deeds. It says that he must flee, pursued by Apollo and the Fates, and that he wanders in the wilds, unable to escape the doom spoken at the earth’s central shrine. The Chorus is troubled by the seer’s words. It can neither approve nor deny them and does not know what to say. It has never heard of any quarrel between the house of Labdacus and Oedipus, son of Polybus, that could serve as proof against Oedipus. It says that it will not assent to blame of Oedipus until the charge is proved, recalling that he was tested by the winged maiden, the Sphinx, and served the city well.

Second Episode (513–862)

Creon comes indignant at the rumour that he has brought false charges against Oedipus. Oedipus returns from the palace and accuses him of plotting to take the throne, and of suborning the seer. Creon argues that he has no wish to be king, since he already has the benefits of power without its burdens, and he offers to be tested by an inquiry at Pytho. Oedipus answers that he must act quickly against a plotter, and he says he desires Creon’s death, not his banishment. Iocasta, the wife of Oedipus and the widow of Laïus, comes from the palace and rebukes both men for quarrelling while the land is sick. In the First Kommos (649–697) the Chorus urges Oedipus to spare Creon, who has bound himself with an oath. Oedipus yields, saying that he does so for the Chorus’s sake and Iocasta’s, and Creon departs.

Iocasta asks what has happened, and Oedipus says that Creon, through Teiresias, charges him with the blood of Laïus. She tells him that seers cannot foresee. An oracle told Laïus that he would die at the hand of his child by her, but the child was exposed on a mountain when only days old, and Laïus was killed by robbers at a place where three roads meet. Oedipus, disturbed, questions her about the place, the time, and Laïus’s appearance and following. She replies that it was in Phocis, where roads lead from Delphi and Daulia, and that it happened shortly before he took power in Thebes. Laïus was tall and grey-haired, and five men were with him, including a herald, with one carriage. A servant, the sole survivor, asked to be sent to the pastures when he found Oedipus reigning. Oedipus then tells her that his father is Polybus of Corinth and his mother Merope, a Dorian. A drunken man at a banquet said he was not his father’s true son. His parents were angry at the taunt, but he went to Delphi and was told that he would defile his mother’s bed and kill his father. He fled from Corinth. At a place where three roads meet he was pushed aside by a herald and an old man in a carriage, and he killed the old man and his company. His one hope is that the survivor will say that robbers, not one man, killed Laïus. Iocasta says the survivor cannot retract what the city heard, and she agrees to send for him.

Second Stasimon (863–910)

The Chorus prays to keep a reverent purity in word and deed, in obedience to the laws that Olympus fathered. It says that insolence breeds the tyrant and that the proud man who does not fear Justice or revere the images of the gods deserves an evil doom. It says that it will no longer visit the sacred shrines, at Delphi, Abae and Olympia, if the oracles do not come true. It appeals to Zeus, observing that the old prophecies about Laïus are fading, that men are setting them at nought, and that worship of the gods is perishing.

Third Episode (911–1085)

Iocasta comes with a wreathed branch and incense to pray to Lycean Apollo, because Oedipus is overwrought with fears. A messenger from Corinth arrives and asks for the house of Oedipus. He reports that Polybus is dead and that the Corinthians will make Oedipus their king. Iocasta sends for Oedipus, who comes out and hears the news. He is relieved that the oracle has not been fulfilled, since Polybus has died a natural death, but he still fears the prophecy of marriage with his mother while Merope lives. To ease this fear the messenger tells him that Polybus was not his father. He himself had received the infant from a shepherd of the household of Laïus, and he had found the child’s ankles pinned together, which is the origin of Oedipus’s name.

Oedipus asks who the shepherd was, and the Chorus says that he is the peasant whom Oedipus had already sent for. Iocasta, who has understood, implores Oedipus to give up the search, and then leaves with the cry that this is the only word she can say to him. Oedipus, undeterred, says that he must learn his origin, however humble it may prove.

Third Stasimon (1086–1109)

The Chorus sings that, if it is a seer, Mount Cithaeron will be honoured at the next full moon as Oedipus’s native place, nurse and mother. It asks who bore Oedipus: it names the mountain-roaming Pan, Loxias (Apollo), Cyllene’s lord, and the god of the Bacchants as possible fathers, each with one of the nymphs of the mountains.

Fourth Episode (1110–1185)

The herdsman is brought in. The Chorus confirms that he was a servant of Laïus, and the Corinthian identifies him as the man he means. The herdsman says he was born in Laïus’s house and tended flocks around Cithaeron. The Corinthian reminds him that they pastured their flocks together there for three half-years and asks whether he once gave him a boy to rear. The herdsman tells him to be silent, but Oedipus orders him bound, and he admits that he gave the child away.

Pressed further, the herdsman says that the child was said to be the son of Laïus and that Iocasta could best explain it. She gave the child to him to make away with it, out of fear of prophecies that he would kill his father. He gave the child to the Corinthian out of pity. Oedipus cries out that everything has come true, that he is accursed in birth, in wedlock and in bloodshed, and he rushes into the palace.

Fourth Stasimon (1186–1222)

The Chorus laments the brevity of human happiness and takes Oedipus’s fate as a warning to call no mortal blessed. It recalls that Oedipus slew the crooked-taloned maiden of the riddle, became a tower of defense for the land and was honored as king. It now asks whose story is more grievous. Time has found him out, and the same place sufficed for father and child. The Chorus wishes that it had never seen him, and says that he once gave it new life.

Exodos (1223–1530)

A Second Messenger announces that Iocasta is dead by her own hand. She rushed to her chamber, called on Laïus, and lamented her marriage. Oedipus burst in, asking for a sword and for the wife who was no wife, and he forced the doors. Iocasta was hanging by the neck. Oedipus loosed the cord, took the golden brooches from her dress, and struck his own eyeballs with them, saying that they would no longer see what he suffered and did. The messenger adds that Oedipus asks that the gates be opened so that he may show the Cadmeans his father’s slayer, and that he intends to cast himself out of the land. Oedipus is then led in.

The Second Kommos (1297–1368) follows. The Chorus is horrified, and Oedipus laments and says that Apollo brought his woes to pass but that his own hand struck the eyes. He asks to be led from the land, and he curses the man who freed him from the shackles on his feet in the pastures. The Chorus says it would be better for him to be dead than living and blind. Oedipus defends the deed. He says he could not have faced his father and mother among the dead or looked upon his children, the city, or the statues of the gods, and he apostrophizes Cithaeron, Corinth and the three roads. He asks to be hidden away, killed, or thrown into the sea.

Creon enters and tells his attendants to take Oedipus into the house, so that only kinsmen see a kinsman’s woes. Oedipus asks to be cast out of the land, but Creon says he first wishes to learn the god’s will. Oedipus asks that Iocasta receive burial and that he himself may live on Cithaeron. He commends his daughters to Creon and says his sons can look after themselves. Creon has the daughters, Antigone and Ismene, led in. Oedipus weeps for them, thinks of the life they face, and asks Creon to promise by the touch of his hand that he will protect them. Creon tells him to go into the house, and Oedipus obeys, asking to be sent beyond the land; Creon says this is for the god to give. When Oedipus asks not to have his children taken from him, Creon tells him not to try to be master in all things, since the mastery he won has not followed him through life. In the closing lines the Chorus tells the Thebans to look at Oedipus, who solved the famed riddle and was once envied, and says that no mortal should be called happy until he has crossed the border of life free from pain.