Oedipus

from which Hellas named him Oedipus.

It happened somehow that my son, Oedipus, guessed the Sphinx’s song;

and so did Laius, my husband, seeking to learn if the child he had exposed was dead.

Oedipus:

Oedipus:

Oedipus:

Have you not heard that the Sphinx bade him know himself, that he is a man?

and Oedipus, reared at home, would not have killed Laius, knowing that he was his own son.

" And the man, hearing this, said, "You, Diogenes, declare Oedipus the most senseless of all men;

By reason of his father’s curse, not to spill his brother’s blood.

for around the gates of Cadmus have they lost their seven noble sons, whom on a day Adrastus, king of Argos, led thither, eager to secure for exiled Polynices, his son-in-law, a share in the heritage of Oedipus;

The curse of Oedipus, fraught with sorrow, after desolating his house, is come on thee.

O unhappy child of your unhappy father, of Oedipus!

how, again, you were reverent, when Oedipus was guiding our city;

Think, sister, how our father perished in hatred and infamy, when, because of the crimes that he himself detected, he smashed both his eyes with self-blinding hand;

Creon:

Creon:

Creon:

They keep silence, then, and accept it, and break out in no Thyestean or Oedipal tragedy, and do not drag it forth before the people.

But the Macedonians too — this is what they made plain — openly do it, since, when first the Oedipus of theirs came on the stage, slaughtered as to his eyes, they received him with laughter and derision.

Oedipus, Aegisthus, or what?

Parricide:

Parricide:

Parricide:

Therefore Apollo could not have predicted concerning Oedipus, since there were no causes laid down in the nature of things why his father must necessarily be killed by him, nor anything of that sort.

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;

Indeed a certain vision moved me toward the deeper memory of Oedipus coming hither, and asking in that most tender song what these very places were — vainly, of course, but yet it moved me.

and we harbored Oedipus and his family when they were banished;

Scaeus the son of Hippocoon, if he is indeed the dedicator and not another of the same name, would have lived at the time of Oedipus son of Laius.

Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebes when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake:

Mekisteus went once to Thebes after the fall of Oedipus, to attend his funeral, and he beat all the people of Cadmus.

"I also saw fair Epikaste mother of king Oedipus whose awful lot it was to marry her own son without suspecting it in her noos.

But the sharp-eyed Erinys saw it, and destroyed his warlike sons through mutual slaughter.

In such a way does Fate, who keeps their pleasant fortune to be handed from father to son, bring at another time some painful reversal together with god-sent prosperity, since the destined son met and killed Laius, and fulfilled the oracle of Pytho, spoken long before.

Well, just such a person, as I was saying, Alcibiades, was Oedipus;

Just as Oedipus, they say, suddenly prayed that his sons might divide their patrimony with the sword:

and the story of Oedipus, and the madness of Heracles, and the story of Theseus and Ariadne.

And the Macedonians too were suspected, because, when first they heard the tragedy of Oedipus, mocking the incestuous man's grief, they would say, "Drive on against the mother.