Creon was son of Menoeceus and a descendant of Cadmus and the Spartoi; his sister was Jocasta. By his wife Eurydice (sometimes Henioche) tradition gives him children including Haemon, Megareus, Lycomedes, and daughters such as Megara. He is often treated as the same Creon who purified Amphitryon of Electryon's death, hosted him at Thebes, and later rewarded Heracles with Megara after the war on the Minyans.

After Laius died, Creon ruled Thebes as regent. Facing the Sphinx, he promised the throne and Jocasta's hand to whoever solved her riddle; Oedipus succeeded, married Jocasta unaware she was his mother, and took the crown.

In Oedipus Rex Creon is Oedipus's brother-in-law and suspected conspirator when Tiresias names Oedipus as the city's pollution; he denies wanting the throne. When the truth emerges, Creon assumes power and grants Oedipus's wish for exile once divine approval is clear. In Oedipus at Colonus he appears as a hard political agent seeking to control Oedipus's tomb.

In Antigone, after Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, Creon rules again (as regent for Eteocles's son Laodamas in some accounts). He buries Eteocles honorably but leaves Polynices unburied as a traitor. Antigone's defiance, Haemon's suicide, and Eurydice's death destroy his house even as he finally relents too late.

Sophocles's Creon shifts between pious counselor, inflexible statesman, and stricken father; poets treat him as a flexible figure. Euripides's Phoenissae features him; Euripides's Heracles has a later Lycus kill Creon in old age. Chaucer and Shakespeare/Fletcher reuse him as a tyrant who denies burial to enemies.

Euripides's Medea concerns a different Creon — king of Corinth — who must not be merged with this Theban ruler.