Oedipus is one the most famous figures of the Greek
Mythology. His mother Iokastes is a descendant of the sown men that Kadmos
grew out of the floor with the teeth of Ares' dragon. The brother of
Iokastes was Kreon and her husband was Laios. Laios should have
inherited the throne of Thebe, but he got expelled from his land and
went to seek shelter at Pelops house, where he was
treated like a brother. However, he fall in love
with Chrysippos, the most beautiful son of Pelops, and
when the situation in Thebe got better, he took the boy with him to his
kingdom.
The Gods did
not like this and punished Laios by placing a Sphinx at the doors of his
home city. Every time that somebody wanted to go through the door the
Sphinx asked a question, and those who could not answer were immediately
eaten. To stop this, Laios sent Chrysippos back to his father, but the
Sphinx did not disappear and he was not being able to have children with
his wife Iokaste. So he left to Delphi to find an answer.
But there he did not get any wise advice, since the
Oracle just told him that he should be grateful not to have any children
because he would die in their hands. More unmotivated as before, he came
back to Theben and did not want to hear anything else about children . But
Iokaste could not stand being alone in bed any more and one night she made
him drunk and they conceived their first son: Oedipus. When Laios found
out what his wife had done he went crazy. As the child was born, he
pierced through his little feet and gave
the order to a servant to abandon him in the mountain. But the servant
could not do it and, instead, he gave the baby to a shepherd. Then the
shepherd brought Oedipus to the king Polybos of Kornith, who took him as
an own son.
When
Oedipus grew up, he saw that he did not look at all like his parents, so
he went to see the Oracle of Delphi. This was the only time in all the
Greek mythology that Pythia refused to give somebody an advise. With the
words "you, miserable, you will kill your father and marry your mother",
she expelled him from Delphi. Of course, he did not want to harm his
parents and, still believing that his family was the one in Corinth, he
abandoned the city.
One day he met a
member of a royal escort who treated him in a very unfriendly way. He was
a strong but simple man, so he did not like this at all. As a result, they
started a fight in which Oedipus ended up killing the king. Without
knowing it, he had already fulfilled the first part of the prophecy: this
king was his father Laios.
His next
stop was Thebe. There he found the Sphinx that set him the following
enigma: which is the creature that, having just one voice, sometimes
it has two legs, sometimes three, sometimes four, and it is weaker when it
has more legs, and stronger when it has the fewest. Oedipus answered
straight away: Men. And after this the Sphinx jumped down the cliffs and
the city got liberated. As a reward, Oedipus became the king of the city
and married the Queen, his widow mother Iokaste, fulfilling then the
second part of the prophecy.
Some
time later a plague infected the city and he went to see the Oracle of
Delphi again. This time he did get an answer, but this answer was that the
murderer of Laios had to be punished. So they tried to find the murderer,
but they couldn't. To get a hint they asked the famous seer Teiresias for
advice, and this told them that
one member of the third generation of the sew men had to leave the town...
Oedipuis. This meant that Oedipus had killed his
father and was now living in sinful marriage with his mother... They asked
then the old shepherd who took him as a baby in the forest, who confirmed
all the story. When Iokaste found out, she could not believe it and she
hang herself unable to bear this burden.
Oedipus made holes in his eyes not to see his humiliation and left with
his daughter Antigone to Kolono, nearby Athens.
On the other side, it was said that he would bring
good luck to the city where he would die. For this reason, his sons
Polyneikes and Eteokles stopped fighting for the power and started to
search for him. When they could finally found him, he refused both
of them.
After them it was Kreon,
the brother of Iokaste, who tried to force him to come back to Theben
supported by an army. Oedipus asked the king of Athens Theseus for help,
and ended up dying there -reason why the city got to be so important in
the world history. Polyneikes and Eteokles
continued their power struggle up to a point where they both
encountered dead.
Finally the way was
free for Kreon...
Theban Saga / Cretan Saga
