Jocasta
mythological figure · 4 works · 6 mentions · 20 anchored passages
Iocasta · lady · Icasta · mother · mother of his children · mother-wife · my sister · queen · royal lady · wife
in the texts
Phoenissae
Queen of Thebes, wife and mother of Oedipus, mother of Eteocles and Polyneices, who narrates the family history and tries to reconcile her feuding sons.
They call me Jocasta, for so my father named me, and I am married to Laius.
Polyneices after giving Thebes to the flames dedicated these shields to the gods?
Why do you honor to excess tyranny, a prosperous injustice, why do you think so much of it?
Oedipus Tyrannus
The queen of Thebes, Creon's sister and Oedipus' wife, who tries to resolve the feud and then supplies information about Laius' oracle, child, and death.
Kinswoman, Oedipus, your husband, wants to do one of two terrible things to me, either to thrust me from the land of my fathers or to arrest and slay me.
Are you not ashamed, while the land is so sick, to stir up troubles of your own?
In the name of the gods, believe it, Oedipus, first for the sake of this awful oath to the gods, then for my sake and for the sake of those who stand before you.
Orations
Mythological queen of Thebes, mother of Eteocles and Polynices, quoted urging her son to abandon ambition.
And indeed Euripides, no less famous than any of the poets, brings Jocasta in, speaking to Eteocles, urging him to desist from overreaching his brother, somewhat thus:
Take, for instance, the sons of Jocasta:
"Why, my son, art thou set upon Ambition, basest of divinities?
Antigone
Oedipus' mother and wife, remembered through her self-destruction as part of the family's inherited ruin.
then his mother-wife, two names in one, with a twisted noose destroyed her life;