Laius
mythological figure · 8 works · 10 mentions · 18 anchored passages
father · Laius the son of Labdacus · king · king who ruled this country long ago · leader of our land · old man · son of Labdacus · that Laius, the lover of Chrysippus · the slain man · this prince
in the texts
Phoenissae
King of Thebes, husband of Jocasta and father of Oedipus, killed by his own son at a crossroads.
They call me Jocasta, for so my father named me, and I am married to Laius.
and so did Laius, my husband, seeking to learn if the child he had exposed was dead.
It happened somehow that my son, Oedipus, guessed the Sphinx’s song;
Oedipus Tyrannus
The former Theban king, son of Labdacus and husband of Jocasta, whose unsolved murder and earlier oracle become the focus of Oedipus' investigation.
An oracle came to Laius once—I will not say from Phoebus himself, but from his ministers—saying that he would suffer his doom at the hands of the child to be born to him and me.
Laius, my lord, was the leader of our land before you assumed control of this state.
And Laius—as, at least, the rumor goes—was murdered one day by foreign robbers at a place where the three highways meet.
On Fate
Mythological king, father of Oedipus, whose union with his wife is cited as an example of a cofated event.
for the matter is combined and “cofated”—so he calls it, because it is so fated both that Laius will lie with his wife and that he will beget Oedipus by her—' just as, if it had been said, “Milo will wrestle at Olympia,” and someone should rejoin, “Therefore, whether he has an adversary or has not, he will wrestle,” he would be in error;
Tusculan Disputations
Mythological king whose desire is depicted in Euripides
And, to omit the loves of women, to whom nature has granted greater license, who either doubts about the rape of Ganymede what the poets mean, or does not understand what Laius in Euripides both says and desires?
Stromata
Tragic figure quoted from a play admitting that nature overpowers his own judgment.
yet, though I have judgment, nature forces me" — that is, his having become given over to the passion.
Orations
Mythical king of Thebes, father of Oedipus, who disregarded Apollo's oracular warning.
Just as they say of that Laius, the lover of Chrysippus, who, having come to Delphi, asked the god how children might be born to him.
and Oedipus, reared at home, would not have killed Laius, knowing that he was his own son.
The Histories
Legendary king of Thebes, grandson of Polydorus and great-grandson of Cadmus, used by Herodotus as a chronological marker.
This would date from about the time of Laius the son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus and great-grandson of Cadmus.
Oedipus at Colonus
Oedipus' father, whose death at Oedipus' hands underlies the pollution and exile discussed in the passage.
Through hearing from many in the past about the bloody marring of your sight, I recognized it was you, son of Laius;
and I may not return, since I am guilty of a father’s blood.
—Of your father?