The Tragedy of Oedipus
Oedipus investigates the cause of a plague at Thebes and discovers that he himself has fulfilled the prophecy he spent his life trying to escape.
The Story
Years after Oedipus became king, Thebes was struck by a terrible plague.
The city turned to its ruler for help.
An oracle revealed that the pollution affecting Thebes would not end until the murderer of the former king Laius was identified and punished.
Oedipus committed himself to finding the killer.
The investigation gradually turned inward.
Witnesses remembered the circumstances of Laius' death.
Old servants were questioned.
Information about Oedipus' own infancy began to surface.
Piece by piece, the truth became unavoidable.
Oedipus was the child of Laius and Jocasta.
As an infant he had been exposed because of the prophecy that he would kill his father.
But he had survived and been raised elsewhere.
The stranger Oedipus killed at the crossroads had been Laius.
After solving the riddle of the Sphinx, Oedipus had married Jocasta.
The prophecy had therefore been fulfilled completely.
Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother without knowing either person's true identity.
Jocasta understood the truth before Oedipus fully accepted it.
In the most famous tragic version, she took her own life.
Oedipus then blinded himself.
The man who had once solved the riddle no one else could answer had failed to understand the truth of his own life until it was too late.
The tragedy does not present Oedipus as a simple criminal.
He does not deliberately choose incest or patricide.
Instead, his determination to avoid prophecy becomes part of the chain of events that brings it about.
Key Figures
Why It Matters
The tragedy of Oedipus became one of the defining Greek explorations of fate, knowledge and human limitation. Oedipus seeks truth relentlessly, even when that truth destroys his identity and kingship.
Traditions & Variations
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus is the most influential surviving treatment, but Oedipus traditions existed in many forms. Accounts differ about Jocasta's fate, Oedipus' exile and the sequence of later Theban events.