Oedipus

Basics of the myth

Variations on the legend of Oedipus are mentioned in fragments by several ancient Greek poets including Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, and Euripides. However, the most popular version of the legend comes from the set of Theban plays by Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes. Having been childless for some time, Laius consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The Oracle prophesied that any son born to Laius would kill him. In an attempt to prevent this prophecy's fulfillment, when Jocasta indeed bore a son, Laius had his son's ankles pierced and tethered together so that he could not crawl; Jocasta then gave the boy to a servant to abandon ("expose") on the nearby mountain. However, rather than leave the child to die of exposure, as Laius intended, the servant passed the baby on to a shepherd from Corinth, who then gave the child to another shepherd.

The infant Oedipus was eventually adopted by Polybus and Merope, the king and queen of Corinth, as they were without children of their own. Little Oedipus was named after the swelling from the injuries to his feet and ankles ("swollen foot"). After many years, Oedipus was told by a drunk that he was a "bastard", which meant that he was an illegitimate child. Oedipus confronted his foster parents with the news, but they denied this. Oedipus then went to the same oracle in Delphi that his birth parents had consulted. The oracle informed him that he was destined to murder his father and marry his mother. In an attempt to avoid such a fate, he decided not to return home to Corinth, but to travel to Thebes, which was closer to Delphi.

On the way, Oedipus came to Daulia, where three roads crossed. There he encountered a chariot driven by his birth-father, King Laius. They fought over who had the right to go first and Oedipus killed Laius when the charioteer tried to run him over. The only witness of the king's death was a slave who fled from a caravan of slaves which was also travelling on the road at the time.

Continuing his journey to Thebes, Oedipus encountered a Sphinx, who would stop all travellers to Thebes and ask them a riddle. If the travelers were unable to answer her correctly, they would be killed and eaten; if they were successful, they would be free to continue on their journey. The riddle was "What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?" and Oedipus answered: "Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a 'walking' stick." Oedipus was the first to answer the riddle correctly; the Sphinx would then commit suicide out of embarrassment (in some versions however, Oedipus kills her).

Ancient sources

Oedipus's legend was first transmitted orally, with Homer being the earliest individual credited for relaying it. Written mention of Oedipus begins in the 5th century BC. According to later source, Oedipus died fighting in a cattle raid against Argos whilst king of Thebes. Though these stories principally deal with his downfall, various details still appear on how Oedipus rose to power.

King Laius of Thebes hears of a prophecy that his infant son will one day kill him. He pierces Oedipus's feet and leaves him out to die, but a shepherd finds him and carries him away. Years later, Oedipus, not knowing he was adopted, leaves home in fear of the same prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Laius journeys out to seek a solution to the Sphinx's mysterious riddle. As prophesied, Oedipus and Laius cross paths, but they do not recognize each other. A fight ensues, and Oedipus kills Laius and most of his guards. Oedipus goes on to defeat the Sphinx by solving a riddle to become king. He marries the widowed Queen Jocasta, unaware that she is his mother. A plague falls on the people of Thebes. Upon discovering the truth, Oedipus blinds himself, and Jocasta hangs herself. After Oedipus is no longer king, Oedipus's brother-sons kill each other.

Some differences with older stories emerge. The curse of Oedipus's sons was elaborated on retroactively to include Oedipus and his father, Laius. Oedipus now steps down from the throne instead of dying in battle. Additionally, rather than his children being by a second wife, Oedipus's children are now by Jocasta (hence, they are his brothers as well).

Pindar's second Olympian Ode

In his second Olympian Ode (476 BC), Pindar writes:

Laius' tragic son, crossing his father's path, killed him and fulfilled the oracle spoken of old at Pytho. And sharp-eyed Erinys saw and slew his warlike children at each other's hands. Yet Thersandros survived fallen Polyneikes and won the honor in youthful contests and the brunt of war, a scion of aid to the house of Adrastos.

Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes trilogy (467 BC)

In 467 BC, the Athenian playwright, Aeschylus, most notably wrote a trilogy based on the myth of Oedipus, winning him the first prize at the City Dionysia. Of the plays, Laius was the first, Oedipus was second, and Seven Against Thebes was the third play and the only one to have survived.

In Seven Against Thebes, Oedipus's sons Eteocles and Polynices kill each other warring over the throne. Much like his Oresteia, the trilogy would have detailed the tribulations of a House over three successive generations. The satyr play that followed the trilogy was called The Sphinx.

Sophocles's Theban plays

The three surviving works of Sophocles's "Theban plays" consist of: Oedipus Rex (also called Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus the King), Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. All three plays concern the fate of the City of Thebes, during and after the reign of King Oedipus, and have often been published under a single cover. Originally, Sophocles had written the plays for three separate festival competitions, many years apart. Not only are the Theban plays not a true trilogy (three plays presented as a continuous narrative), they are not even an intentional series and contain some inconsistencies among them. Sophocles also wrote other plays focused on Thebes, most notably the Epigoni, of which only fragments have survived.

As Sophocles's Oedipus Rex begins, the people of Thebes are begging the king for help, begging him to discover the cause of the plague. Oedipus stands before them and swears to find the root of their suffering and to end it. Just then, Creon returns to Thebes from a visit to the oracle. Apollo has made it known that Thebes is harboring a terrible abomination and that the plague will only be lifted when the true murderer of old King Laius is discovered and punished for his crime. Oedipus swears to do this, not realizing that he is himself the culprit. The stark truth emerges slowly over the course of the play, as Oedipus clashes with the blind seer Tiresias, who senses the truth. Oedipus remains in strict denial, though, becoming convinced that Tiresias is somehow plotting with Creon to usurp the throne.

Realization begins to slowly dawn in Scene II of the play when Jocasta mentions out of hand that Laius was slain at a place where three roads meet. This stirs something in Oedipus's memory and he suddenly remembers the men he fought and killed one day long ago at a place where three roads met. He realizes, horrified, that he might be the man he's seeking. One household servant survived the attack and now lives out his old age in a frontier district of Thebes. Oedipus sends immediately for the man to either confirm or deny his guilt. At the very worst, though, he expects to find himself to be the unsuspecting murderer of a man unknown to him. The truth has not yet been made clear.

The moment of epiphany comes late in the play. At the beginning of Scene III, Oedipus is still waiting for the servant to be brought into the city, when a messenger arrives from Corinth to declare that King Polybus of Corinth is dead. Oedipus, when he hears this news, feels much relieved, because he believed that Polybus was the father whom the oracle had destined him to murder, and he momentarily believes himself to have escaped fate. He tells this all to the present company, including the messenger, but the messenger knows that it is not true. He is the man who found Oedipus as a baby in the pass of Cithaeron and gave him to King Polybus to raise. He reveals, furthermore that the servant who is being brought to the city as they speak is the very same man who took Oedipus up into the mountains as a baby. Jocasta realizes now all that has happened. She begs Oedipus not to pursue the matter further. He refuses, and she withdraws into the palace as the servant is arriving. The old man arrives, and it is clear at once that he knows everything. At the behest of Oedipus, he tells it all.

Euripides's Phoenissae, Chrysippus, and Oedipus

At the beginning of Euripides's Phoenissae, Jocasta recalls the story of Oedipus. Generally, the play weaves together the plots of the Seven Against Thebes and Antigone. The play differs from the other tales in two major respects. First, it describes in detail why Laius and Oedipus had a feud: Laius ordered Oedipus out of the road so his chariot could pass, but proud Oedipus refused to move. Second, in the play Jocasta has not killed herself at the discovery of her incest – otherwise, she could not play the prologue, for fathomable reasons – nor has Oedipus fled into exile, but they have stayed in Thebes only to delay their doom until the fatal duel of their sons/brothers/nephews Eteocles and Polynices: Jocasta commits suicide over the two men's dead bodies, and Antigone follows Oedipus into exile.

In Chrysippus, Euripides develops backstory on the curse: Laius's sin was to have kidnapped Chrysippus, Pelops's son, in order to violate him, and this caused the gods' revenge on all his family. Laius was the tutor of Chrysippus, and raping his student was a severe violation of his position as both guest and tutor in the house of the royal family hosting him at the time. Extant vases show a fury hovering over the lecherous Laius as he abducts the rape victim. Furies avenged violations of good order in households, as can be seen most clearly in such texts as The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus.

Euripides wrote also an Oedipus, of which only a few fragments survive. The first line of the prologue recalled Laius's hubristic action of conceiving a son against Apollo's command. At some point in the action of the play, a character engaged in a lengthy and detailed description of the Sphinx and her riddle – preserved in five fragments from Oxyrhynchus, P.Oxy. 2459 (published by Eric Gardner Turner in 1962). The tragedy also featured many moral maxims on the theme of marriage, preserved in the Anthologion of Stobaeus. The most striking lines, however, state that in this play Oedipus was blinded by Laius's attendants and that this happened before his identity as Laius's son had been discovered, therefore marking important differences with the Sophoclean treatment of the myth, which is now regarded as the 'standard' version. Many attempts have been made to reconstruct the plot of the play, but none of them is more than hypothetical, because of the scanty remains that survive from its text and of the total absence of ancient descriptions or résumés – though it has been suggested that a part of Hyginus's narration of the Oedipus myth might in fact derive from Euripides's play. Some echoes of the Euripidean Oedipus have been traced also in a scene of Seneca's Oedipus in which Oedipus himself describes to Jocasta his adventure with the Sphinx.

Other playwrights

At least three other 5th-century BC authors who were younger than Sophocles wrote plays about Oedipus. These include Achaeus of Eretria, Nichomachus and the elder Xenocles.

Later additions

The Bibliotheca, a Roman-era mythological handbook, includes a riddle for the Sphinx, borrowing the poetry of Hesiod: "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?"

Later addition to Aeschylus's Seven against Thebes

Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone (c. 442 BC), the ending (lines 1005–78) of Seven against Thebes was added some fifty years after Aeschylus's death. Whereas the play (and the trilogy of which it is the last play) was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, the spurious ending features a herald announcing the prohibition against burying Polynices, and Antigone's declaration that she will defy that edict.

Post-Classical literature

Oedipus was a figure who was also used in the Latin literature of ancient Rome. Julius Caesar wrote a play on Oedipus, but it has not survived into modern times. Ovid included Oedipus in Metamorphoses, but only as the person who defeated the Sphinx. He makes no mention of Oedipus's troubled experiences with his father and mother. Seneca the Younger wrote his own play on the story of Oedipus in the first century AD. It differs in significant ways from the work of Sophocles.

Some scholars have argued that Seneca's play on the myth was intended to be recited at private gatherings and not actually performed. It has been successfully staged since the Renaissance. It was adapted by John Dryden in his very successful heroic drama Oedipus, licensed in 1678. The 1718 Oedipus was also the first play written by Voltaire. A version of Oedipus by Frank McGuinness was performed at the National Theatre in late 2008, starring Ralph Fiennes and Claire Higgins.

In the late 1960s Ola Rotimi published a novel and play, The Gods Are Not to Blame, which retells the Oedipus myth happening in the Yoruba kingdom. In 2011, U.S. writer David Guterson published his Oedipus-inspired novel Ed King. In folkloristics, the myth of Oedipus is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 931, "Oedipus".

Oedipus complex

Sigmund Freud used the name "the Oedipus complex" to explain the origin of certain neuroses in childhood. It is defined as a male child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother. This desire includes jealousy towards the father and the unconscious wish for that parent's death, as well as the unconscious desire for sexual intercourse with the mother. Oedipus himself, as portrayed in the myth, did not have this neurosis – at least, not towards Jocasta, whom he only met as an adult (if anything, such feelings would have been directed at Merope – but there is no hint of that). Freud reasoned that the ancient Greek audience, which heard the story told or saw the plays based on it, did know that Oedipus was actually killing his father and marrying his mother; the story being continually told and played therefore reflected a preoccupation with the theme.