Oedipus

Oedipus Europe
Literal meaning: ‘swollen-foot’. Son of Laius, King of Thebes, and Queen Jocasta. His father, having learnt from an oracle that he was doomed to perish by the hands of his own son, exposed Oedipus on a mountainside, immediately after his birth, with his feet pierced and tied together. The child was found by a shepherd who took him to the childless King and Queen of Corinth; they brought Oedipus up as their own son.

In his youth Oedipus was told by the Oracle at Delphi that he would kill his father and marry his mother and, horrified, he resolved never to return to Corinth. Ignorant of his true ancestry, he set out for Thebes and on the road encountered King Laius, whom he slew in a quarrel over the right-of-way. Near the city he answered the riddle of the Sphinx, then a plague to all travellers, and for defeating this monstrous female wingedlion, the Thebans made him their king. He married the widowed Jocasta and so, unwittingly,...

[The entire page is 220 words long]

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