Oedipus and the myths of Thebes

Thebes, in Boeotia, north of Athens, is the city of many of Greece's most tragic myths. Its stories reach us mostly through the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus, staged in the theatre of Athens in the 5th century BC.

Cadmus and the founding

The Phoenician prince Cadmus was searching for his sister Europa, carried off by Zeus. The oracle at Delphi told him to follow a cow and found a city where it lay down. Cadmus killed the dragon guarding the spring and, on Athena's advice, sowed its teeth: armed warriors sprang from the earth, the Spartoi ("sown men"), and fought each other until five were left, ancestors of the noble families of Thebes. Tradition also says Cadmus brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece.

The oracle

King Laius and Queen Jocasta received a terrible oracle: their son would kill his father and marry his mother. As soon as he was born, the baby was given to a shepherd to be left on Mount Cithaeron with his feet bound. The shepherd took pity and handed him to a shepherd from Corinth; the child was adopted by the king of Corinth and named Oedipus, "swollen feet".

The Sphinx

As a young man Oedipus heard that he was not the son of the Corinthian rulers. He asked Delphi and received the same prophecy. To escape it he did not return to Corinth. At a crossroads he quarrelled with an old man in a chariot and killed him: it was Laius, though Oedipus did not know it. Reaching Thebes, he found the city plagued by the Sphinx, a monster with a lion's body, wings and a woman's face, who devoured anyone who could not answer her riddle:

What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening?

Oedipus answered: man, who crawls as a baby, walks upright as an adult and leans on a stick in old age. The Sphinx threw herself from a cliff. Oedipus was hailed as king and married the widowed queen, Jocasta.

The truth

Years later a plague struck Thebes. The oracle said the killer of Laius must be driven out. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Oedipus leads the investigation like a detective and discovers, witness by witness, that he is the culprit and has married his own mother. Jocasta takes her life; Oedipus blinds himself and goes into exile, guided by his daughter Antigone. He dies at Colonus, near Athens, welcomed by Theseus.

The Seven against Thebes and Antigone

Oedipus's sons, Eteocles and Polynices, were meant to rule a year each, but Eteocles refused to give up the throne. Polynices returned with seven champions, one for each gate of the city: the Seven against Thebes. The brothers killed each other in single combat. The new king Creon forbade the burial of Polynices as a traitor. Antigone disobeyed, because the unwritten laws of the gods demanded burial for the dead, and was condemned to death. Her choice between the law of the state and conscience is still debated in schools and courts.

See also monsters of myth and Greek theatre.