| abstract | - There are many different versions of the legend of Oedipus due to its oral tradition. Significant 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 the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes. After having been married some time without children, 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 ankles pinned 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 sympathetic servant passed the baby onto a shepherd from Corinth and then to another shepherd. Oedipus the infant eventually came to the house of Polybus, king of Corinth and his queen, Merope, who adopted him as they were without children of their own. Little Oedipus/Oidipous was named after the swelling from the injuries to his feet and ankles. The word "oedema" (British English) or "edema" (American English) is from this same Greek word for swelling: οἴδημα, or oedēma. After many years of being son of the king and queen of Corinth, Oedipus was told by a drunk that he had in fact been adopted by them. Oedipus confronted his parents with the news, but they denied every word. Oedipus sent word for the same Oracle in Delphi his birth parents consulted. The Oracle did not tell him he was son of the king and queen of Thebes, but instead informed him he was destined to murder his father and marry his mother. In his attempt to avoid the fate predicted by the Oracle, he decided to not return home to Corinth. Oedipus decided to travel all the way to Thebes, as it was near Delphi. As Oedipus traveled, he came to Davlia, where three roads crossed each other. 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 in self defense, unwittingly fulfilling part of the prophecy. The only witness of the King's death was a slave who fled from a caravan of slaves also traveling on the road at the time. Continuing his journey to Thebes, Oedipus encountered a Sphinx, who would stop all travelers 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?". 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 and, having heard Oedipus' answer, the Sphinx was astounded and inexplicably killed herself by throwing herself into the sea, freeing Thebes from her harsh rule. The people of Thebes gratefully appointed Oedipus as their king and gave him the recently widowed Queen Jocasta's hand in marriage. The marriage of Oedipus to Jocasta fulfilled the rest of the prophecy. Oedipus and Jocasta had four children: two sons, Eteocles and Polynices (see Seven Against Thebes), and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Many years after the marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta, a plague of infertility struck the city of Thebes; crops no longer grew on the fields and women did not bear children. Oedipus, in his hubris, asserted that he would end the pestilence. He sent Creon, Jocasta's brother, to the Oracle at Delphi, seeking guidance. When Creon returned, Oedipus heard that the murderer of the former King Laius must be found and either be killed or exiled. Creon also suggested that they try to find the blind prophet, Tiresias. In a search for the identity of the killer, Oedipus followed Creon's suggestion and sent for Tiresias, who warned him not to seek Laius' killer. In a heated exchange, Tiresias was provoked into exposing Oedipus himself as the killer, and the fact that Oedipus was living in shame because he did not know who his true parents were. Oedipus angrily blamed Creon for the false accusations, and the two proceeded to argue fervently. Jocasta entered and tried to calm Oedipus by telling him the story of her first-born son and his supposed death. Oedipus became nervous as he realized that he may have murdered Laius and so brought about the plague. Suddenly, a messenger arrived from Corinth with the news that King Polybus had died. Oedipus was relieved concerning the prophecy for it could no longer be fulfilled if Polybus, whom he considered his birth father, was now dead. Still, he knew that his mother was still alive and refused to attend the funeral at Corinth. To ease the tension, the messenger then said that Oedipus was, in fact, adopted. Jocasta, finally realizing that he was her son, begged him to stop his search for Laius' murderer. Oedipus misunderstood the motivation of her pleas, thinking that she was ashamed of him because he might have been born of a slave. Jocasta then went into the palace where she hanged herself. Oedipus sought verification of the messenger's story from the very same herdsman who was supposed to have left Oedipus to die as a baby. From the herdsman, Oedipus learned that the infant raised as the adopted son of Polybus and Merope was the son of Laius and Jocasta. Thus, Oedipus finally realized in great agony that so many years ago, at the place where the three roads met, he had killed his own father, King Laius, and subsequently married his mother, Jocasta. Events after the revelation depend on the source. In Sophocles' plays, Oedipus went in search of Jocasta and found she had killed herself. Using the pin from a brooch he took off Jocasta's gown, Oedipus stabbed his own eyes out, and was then exiled. His daughter Antigone acted as his guide as he wandered blindly through the country, finally perishing at Colonus after being placed under the protection of Athens by King Theseus. However, in Euripides' plays on the subject, Jocasta did not kill herself upon learning of Oedipus' birth, and Oedipus was blinded by a servant of Laius.The blinding of Oedipus does not appear in sources earlier than Aeschylus. Some older sources of the myth, including Homer, state that Oedipus continued to rule Thebes after the revelations and after Jocasta's death. Oedipus' two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, arranged to share the kingdom, each taking an alternating one-year reign. However, Eteocles refused to cede his throne after his year as king. Polynices brought in an army to oust Eteocles from his position and a battle ensued. At the end of the battle the brothers killed each other after which Jocasta's brother, Creon, took the throne. He decided that Polynices was a "traitor," and should not be given burial rites. Defying this edict, Antigone attempted to bury her brother. In Sophocles' Antigone, Creon had her buried in a rock cavern for defying him, whereupon she hanged herself. However, in Euripides' lost version of the story, it appears that Antigone survives.
- The baby was found by shepherds and raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope in the city of Corinth. They named him Oedipus, meaning "swollen foot". Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi of the prophecy, but believing he was fated to murder Polybus and marry Merope, he left Corinth. Heading to Thebes, Oedipus met an older man in a chariot coming the other way on a narrow road. The two quarreled over who should give way, which resulted in Oedipus killing the stranger and continuing on to Thebes. He then found that the king of the city had been recently killed and that the city was at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus answered the monster's riddle correctly, defeating it and winning the throne of the dead king and the hand in marriage of the king's widow, his mother, Jocasta. Oedipus and Jocasta had four children; two sons (Eteocles and Polynices) and two daughters (Antigone and Ismene). In his search to determine who killed Laius (and thus end a plague on Thebes), Oedipus discovered it was he who had killed the late king: his father. Jocasta also soon realized that she had married her own son and Laius's murderer, and she hanged herself. Oedipus seized two pins from her dress and blinded himself with them. Oedipus was driven into exile, accompanied by Antigone and Ismene. After years of wandering, he arrived in Athens, where he found refuge in a grove of trees called Colonus. Oedipus died at Colonus, and the presence of his grave there was said to bring good fortune to Athens. The legend of Oedipus has been retold in many versions, and was used by Sigmund Freud as the basis of his eponymous Oedipus complex.
- Oedipus was the world's first motherfucker, and is considered by some to have been the most badass motherfucker of all time. The works of Oedipus had profound influence on Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Freud, moonlighting as an architect in masochistic submission to Frank Lloyd Wright, designed and built the Oedipus complex in honor of his hero. The complex, the world's first religious edifice devoted solely to the art of badass motherfuckery, stands sixty-nine feet higher than the neighboring casino of Little Thebes, Las Vegas. Oedipus was known for his wit, both on and off the porn stage. When challenged by Mae West to "come up and see [her] sometime," Oedipus is reported to have retorted, "Duh ... and you'll, um, get down and, uh, do me sometime?" Despite his flirtatious and frequently seductive suggestions -- made famous by his work with the ladies of Monty Python -- Oedipus was in his personal life a one-woman man, forever devoted to his mother wife Jocasta, with whom he had two sons, two daughters, and two eyeballs. A superstitious sort, Oedipus was known for his faith in anagrams. When it was pointed out that his own epithet -- "motherfucker Oed" -- was an anagram for "more heck to Freud", he deeded his entire estate to the psychoanalyst. Dr. Freud, having little use for the ostensible princedom of Thebes, consigned the property to his then-assistant Wilhelm Reich, who transformed the Greco-Egyptian city-state into the sexually experimental research orgy of Orgonon.
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