spiritual benefits, and his dead body will confer benefits on the land in which it lies.

4.  The seer played an important role in the life of the Greeks.  Many seers were highly paid, educated members of the elite who were consulted in the areas of daily life, political decisions, and military campaigns since the Greeks wished to maintain a positive relationship with the gods and not tempt the fates.  Their belief in an afterlife also encouraged their reliance upon the seers.

Certainly, we see the ancient Greeks's belief in the existence of mythical monsters with the treatment of the sphinx, whose riddle Oedipus solved prior to the beginning of Oedipus Rex. When he answered the sphinx's riddle—"what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?"—he freed Thebes from the "fell songstress," who killed herself. The answer is "a man": he walks on all four as a baby, two legs as a grown man, and two legs plus a can as an old man. Knowledge of such creatures was a part of Greek culture.

We also see the ancient Greeks believe in prophecy and fate. Oedipus tries not to fulfill his fate, as decreed by Apollo's oracle, and the action he takes to avoid it actually permits it to come to fruition. He decides not to return to his home in Corinth because he does not want the prophecy to come true, but his pride in believing that he can avoid fate leads him to Thebes, where his natural parents reside(d). This kind of pride, hubris, was sure to bring the gods's wrath. In addition to soliciting information from the Delphic oracle, Oedipus also sends for Teiresias, a blind prophet with the gift from Apollo, to contribute information on his quest for the truth.

One example of Greek culture seen in Sophocles' Oedipus the King is the consultation of oracles. Delphi was a very real place and real Greeks went there in the hopes of consulting Apollo's oracle. A response from the Delphic oracle started the famous Socrates on his quest to discover what it meant to be truly wise.

Another example of Greek culture seen in Sophocles' play is connected with the plague that affects the Thebans. Many Greeks believed that a person who had committed a crime such as murder was "polluted" in a religious/ritual sense. This ritual pollution was known as miasma. Therefore, the notion that the mere presence of Laius' killer within Thebes could cause disfavor from the gods was a very real fear in ancient Greece. As in the case of Oedipus at the end of the play, a person who was determined to be polluted in a religious sense could be exiled from a city-state. We even hear of instances in ancient Greece where objects such as statues were regarded as polluted and therefore were cast outside the boundaries of a particular city or island.

Finally, Sophocles' play appears to have been first put on in Athens around the time when the Athenians themselves were reeling from the ravages of a terrible plague that may have wiped out as much as a third of their population. Thus, Sophocles' audience may have identified closely with the mythical Thebans' situation:

For our city, as you yourself can see,
is badly shaken—she cannot raise her head
above the depths of so much surging death.
Disease infects fruit blossoms in our land,
disease infects our herds of grazing cattle,
makes women in labour lose their children.
And deadly pestilence, that fiery god,
swoops down to blast the city, emptying
the House of Cadmus, and fills black Hades
with groans and howls. (Ian Johnston translation)