The Oedipus Legend

[Everyman]

This post has major spoilers, but really, that's okay. Sophocles expected that his audience would be very familiar with the Oedipus legend. It would like a modern playwright writing a play about Little Red Riding Hood. The audience would know the story perfectly well; the point of the play would not be the events themselves, but the way the story was told, the emphases and interpretations put on it.

This is a very different approach to theater than most contemporary theater, but it's the nature of Greek theater.

So it is not only reasonable but entirely traditional to know the legend of Oedipus before you read the play. Still, if you want to be surprised by the events, don't read on.

Here's how infoplease presents the legend:

Oedipus (ed'ipus, ē'di–) [key:], in Greek legend, son of Laius, king of Thebes, and his wife, Jocasta. Laius had been warned by an oracle that he was fated to be killed by his own son; he therefore abandoned Oedipus on a mountainside. The baby was rescued, however, by a shepherd and brought to the king of Corinth, who adopted him. When Oedipus was grown, he learned from the Delphic oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He fled Corinth to escape this fate, believing his foster parents to be his real parents. At a crossroad he encountered Laius, quarreled with him, and killed him. He continued on to Thebes, where the sphinx was killing all who could not solve her riddle. Oedipus answered it correctly and so won the widowed queen's hand. The prophecy was thus fulfilled. Two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, were born to the unwittingly incestuous pair. When a plague descended on Thebes, an oracle declared that the only way to rid the land of its pollution was to expel the murderer of Laius. Through a series of painful revelations, brilliantly dramatized by Sophocles in Oedipus Rex, the king learned the truth and in an agony of horror blinded himself. According to Homer, Oedipus continued to reign over Thebes until he was killed in battle; but the more common version is that he was exiled by Creon, Jocasta's brother, and his sons battled for the throne (see Seven against Thebes). In Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus is guided in his later wanderings by his faithful daughter, Antigone.

A somewhat fuller version is told in Wikipedia, here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus

[Everyman]

here's a site which expands on the element of the infant cast out by its parents and adopted by others. This is, of course, a central element of the Oedipus myth. I don't know why the site leaves out the story of Moses, which is very much the same myth.

And isn't a common fear of some (many?) children at times even today, that they can't be the offspring of these parents but must have been adopted?

[[deleted user]]

Sometimes it's a fear & sometimes it's a hope! I'm sure my 16-year-old sometimes wonders how he could possibly be related to me.

As you say, one version of the Oedipus myth discussed in the site is pretty much the Moses story except the vehicle is a box instead of a basket of bulrushes. Odd that the authors of the site would not draw that comparison.

[thewanderingjew]

I am not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but here goes....

It seems to me there is a moral here...be careful what you wish for! A person's background is the taproot of his/her identity. The discovery of one's ancestors has become an increasingly common endeavor and the tools of modern technology have aided in the search, enormously.

Forever, men/women have wanted to see their line/name continued with the birth of a son. Tragically, because of the prophecy, Laius and Jocasta felt forced to abandon theirs.

Oedipus' true lineage was a cruel irony. His efforts to avoid fulfilling the prophecy totally failed and backfired. His life was a sham, all for naught. Shame would always be attached to his ancestry.

The saddest thing is that, on the surface, he unknowingly committed this horrific crime, for which he exacted an enormous price from himself. Perhaps the emphasis should be placed on what we have accomplished rather than from whence we came.

Did arrogance bring Oedipus down or the eventuality of the prophecy?

There are many moral dilemmas exposed here.
Today, their may be many “Oedipus” variations taking place because of genetically engineered births. There could be unintended incest in our future.