Fated to kill his father and wed his mother, Oedipus solved the Sphinx's riddle and became king — until plague revealed the pollution, Jocasta hanged herself, and the blinded king cursed the sons who would destroy each other at the seven gates.1
The oracle of Laius
Laius son of Labdacus learned at Delphi that he would die by his son's hand. When a child was born, he pierced the infant's ankles and gave him to a herdsman to expose on Mount Cithaeron — but the boy was saved and grew up at Corinth as the son of Polybus and Periboea, named Oedipus for his swollen feet.2
Patricide on the road
Taunted about his parentage, Oedipus consulted Delphi and heard he would kill his father and wed his mother. Fleeing Corinth, he met Laius at the narrow road called Schiste; an argument over right of way ended when Oedipus struck down the stranger in his chariot — not knowing he had slain the king of Thebes.3
The Sphinx⚖
Thebes was besieged by the Sphinx — in Hesiod daughter of Echidna and Orthrus, in Apollodorus daughter of Echidna and Typhon — who devoured those who could not answer her riddle. Oedipus solved it: the creature that goes on four feet, two feet, and three is Man. The monster destroyed herself, and the Thebans gave Oedipus the kingdom and the hand of the widowed queen.4
Jocasta or Euryganeia⚖
Apollodorus and Hyginus make Jocasta mother of Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene — children of the unwitting incest. Pausanias, following Homer and the lost Oedipodia, names Euryganeia daughter of Hyperphas as their mother, arguing the incest was discovered too quickly for four children to be born of the queen who was also Oedipus' mother.5
The revelation
When plague and barrenness struck Thebes, Tiresias revealed that the pollution was Oedipus himself. Jocasta hanged herself; Oedipus put out his own eyes with her brooch-pins and was driven into exile, escorted by Antigone. Homer remembers him in the underworld, still bearing his woes, and Apollodorus tells how he cursed his sons to divide the kingdom with iron, not lot.6
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
Oedipus and the Sphinx
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808–1827
Ingres' Louvre masterpiece freezes the Theban roadside encounter: Oedipus stands naked before the winged Sphinx, answering the riddle of the creature that has been devouring travellers. Bones litter the rock while the hero's calm profile already carries the irony of a man who will solve every puzzle except his own birth. The canvas fixed the modern West's image of Oedipus as intellect facing monster.
Oedipus and the Sphinx
Gustave Moreau, 1864
Moreau's Symbolist confrontation turns the riddle into erotic menace: the Sphinx clings to Oedipus' breast like a living puzzle, her feline body pressing against the hero who meets her gaze without flinching. Painted for the Salon of 1864 and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it made Oedipus a fin-de-siècle emblem of knowledge bought at a terrible price.
The Blind Oedipus Commending his Children to the Gods
Bénigne Gagneraux, 1784
Gagneraux's neoclassical canvas shows the aftermath of recognition: the blind king, eyes gouged, gathers Antigone and her siblings as he entrusts them to the gods before exile. The painting stages Sophocles' ruined Oedipus not as monster but as father — the curse made intimate. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
In music & on stage
In play
Oedipus Rex
Sophocles
Sophocles' Theban king who hunts a murderer and finds himself — the plague, the recognition, and the blindfold that still define the West's masterplot of knowledge that destroys.
Oedipus
The Theban who killed his father and married his mother — a name Freud made inescapable in modern culture.
Oedipus complex
Sigmund Freud
Freud's name for the child's desire for the opposite-sex parent — the Theban king remade as the West's shorthand for unconscious family desire.