As many Greek tragedies do, the story begins with a curse. Prince Laius of Thebes was only a young boy when his father, Labdacus, was killed. A man named Lycus became King Regent, and would have ruled Thebes until Laius was old enough to take control. However, he was overthrown by two twins, Amphion and Zethus. Laius was smuggled out of Thebes by his supporters and sent to Pisa, ruled by King Pelops. Pelops welcomed Laius as a guest and treated him well. However, Laius soon became obsessed with Pelops’s son, Chrysippus, and abducted and raped him. Chrysippus then killed himself out of shame. This was a particularly serious crime because Laius had broken the laws of hospitality that both hosts and guests had to adhere to. His actions couldn’t go unpunished, so a grieving Pelops invoked a curse on Laius – he would be killed by his own son’s hands.
Laius paid no attention to the old man’s threats. The twins Amphion and Zethus died shortly after they had achieved power, and Laius returned to Thebes to become King. He married a noblewoman named Jocasta, however early on in their marriage the couple received an ominous prophecy. The Oracle at Delphi, the most trusted source of future predictions, told Laius that if he ever had a son, this son would kill his father and marry his mother.
However, Laius wasn’t as careful as he should have been, and his wife, Jocasta, soon became pregnant with his child. Laius couldn’t kill his own child, because that was a blood crime which would be punished by the gods. In order to solve this issue, many Greeks resorted to exposing their children. This meant leaving the baby out on a hill by itself – eventually nature would take its course and the child would die without the parents directly killing it, meaning no blood crime would have been committed. This was exactly what Laius did: he gave his child to one of his servants, who nailed the baby's feet together and abandoned him on a hillside. Here, the child would have died, if a shepherd hadn’t found the baby and, pitying him, took him to the King and Queen of the neighbouring city of Corinth. As it happened, the King and Queen were desperate to have a child but unable to conceive one, so when the shepherd presented them with the child they decided to raise him as their own. The feet that had been nailed together were now swollen, and so the baby’s new parents named him Oedipus, meaning swollen foot.
Oedipus grew up well, his new parents raising him as if he were their own son. Indeed, this was what Oedipus himself believed, as the King and Queen of Corinth were reluctant to tell Oedipus the sad story of how they found him. However, as a teenager he began to hear rumours that the King and Queen were not his real parents. Rather than ask his parents whether this was true, he, like any sensible person, decided to consult the Oracle at Delphi about the matter. The Oracle didn’t answer his question, but instead told him he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Understandably shocked and horrified, Oedipus was determined, like Laius was, to defy his fate. He saw that the best way to do this was to leave Corinth, and his parents, so that there was no way he could do either of them any harm. He decided to go to the neighbouring town of Thebes, where he would start a new life.
On his way to Thebes at a three-way crossroad, Oedipus came across a group of men and was told to stand aside. Oedipus, full of pride, refused and some of the men attacked him. Enraged, Oedipus slaughtered all of them except for one survivor, and continued on his journey.
As Oedipus travelled closer to Thebes, he began to hear tales of a horrific creature blocking all entry and exit to the city. The beast was named the Sphinx, and had the body of a lion, wings of an eagle, tail of a snake and head of a woman. It asked anyone trying to get in or out of Thebes a riddle, and if they didn’t answer correctly it would brutally slaughter them. No one had managed to crack the riddle, and everyone who tried had died in the process. With no one being able to enter the city, Thebes began to lack food and water supplies, and it was unknown how long the inhabitants would be able to survive. Despite being told by everyone he met along his journey to turn back, Oedipus was confident in his intelligence and was determined to prove it. He continued on the path to Thebes until the Sphinx appeared in all its terrifying glory. When it saw Oedipus, it asked him the same question it had asked all of the unlucky others it had crossed paths with: “What goes on four legs in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” Oedipus didn’t even falter: “A man,” he replied. “As a baby, in the morning of his life, he crawls on hands and feet: four legs. In the noon of his life, as an adult, he walks on two feet. Then, in the evening of his life, he has three legs: his own two feet, and a walking stick to help him move.”
Distraught that its precious riddle had been broken, the Sphinx killed itself, and Oedipus continued into Thebes. Word soon spread that the monster that had been ruining their lives was dead, and that it was Oedipus who killed it. As it happened, their previous King, Laius, had suspiciously gone missing on the road to Thebes and they were in need of a new ruler. The people were more than happy to accept Oedipus, their hero, as their King, and as an added bonus Oedipus was able to marry the previous King’s wife, Jocasta. They had four children together: two daughters – Antigone and Ismene – and two sons – Polyneices and Eteocles.
Thebes’ good fortune doesn’t last long, however. An awful plague begins to devour the city, and the people come to their King, Oedipus, for help. And so the play begins…
