Amphion and Zethos being dead—their whole story is a sort of parenthesis in the saga of the last Labdakids—Laios regained his kingdom at Thebes, and brought with him the burden of his sin against Pelops. He married Iokaste (Homer calls her Epikaste) daughter of Menoikeus and sister of Kreon, but he was warned by Apollo that if she bore him a son, that son should slay him. So when a son was born, he thrust a spike through the baby’s feet and gave him to a shepherd to expose (thus evading a personal sin of outright infanticide). The place of exposure, Kithairon, was the hill-pasture or summer grazing grounds alike of Thebes and of Corinth, and a shepherd of Polybos, king of the latter state, who was childess, found the baby and took it to the queen, Polyboia or Merope. The infant was named Oidipus (Swell-foot) from his swollen feet, and the royal couple of Corinth reared him as their own son.
On reaching manhood, Oidipus was taunted with being a suppositious child, and went to Delphoi to learn who his real parents were. The oracle told him that he was destined to kill his father and wed his mother. Knowing no other parents than Polybos and Merope, he left the shrine resolved never to return to Corinth. Journeying on therefore to the place called the Schiste Hodos (the Divided Way) on the road from Phokis to Boiotia, he met Laios, whose attendants bade him clear the road. A fierce quarrel ensued, in which he killed Laios, whom of course he did not recognize. He then arrived at Thebes, which he found in turmoil and distress. The king was missing, and the city was tormented with a monster, the Sphinx (Hesiod calls her Phix; the former name at least is intelligible, meaning the Strangler), which asked all and sundry a riddle, and killed those who could not answer, quite in the style of tyrants and monsters of folktale. She is described as a winged creature, with a woman’s face and a lion’s body, a type familiar enough in oriental art. Kreon, acting as regent, offered the kingdom and the hand of his sister, the widowed queen, to anyone who would rid them of the pest. Oidipus undertook to do so; he solved the riddle, the Sphinx killed herself in disgust, and he married Iokaste.
Naturally, the question was asked and answered what the Sphinx’ riddle was. The traditional one is this: ‘There is on earth a two- footed creature and a four-footed one with the same name, and also a three-footed, for it changes its form alone of all that move on the ground or through the air or in the sea. But when it walks supported on the most feet, then is the swiftness of its limbs the weakest.’ Oidipus answered, ‘Thou hast spoken of man, who when he goeth on ground is at first four-footed from his mother’s womb; but in eld he leaneth on a staff as a third foot.’
Homer now takes up the tale. ‘I saw,’ says Odysseus, describing his adventures in the house of Hades, ‘the mother of Oidipodes, fair Epikaste, who wrought a dread deed in the ignorance of her heart, marrying her own dear son, that wedded her after he had slain his father; and the gods speedily made it known to men. But he, by the cruel counsel of the gods, reigned on in woe over the Kadmeians at lovely Thebe, but she went to the house of Hades, strong keeper of the gate, fastening a swift noose to the roof of the lofty hall, in the grip of her grief, but to him she left sorrows very many, even all that the Erinyes of a mother accomplish.’ Elsewhere Homer speaks of Oidipus as having ‘fallen’ (this by all analogy should mean that he died by violence, perhaps in battle) and being buried with the usual funeral games. Here is a much simpler story than that in the later authors. ‘I hold,’ says Pausanias very reasonably, quoting the first of the above passages, ‘that Oidipus had no children by her...for how did they “speedily make it known,” if Epikaste really bore Oidipus four children? On the contrary, the mother of his children was Euryganeia daughter of Hyperphas, as is clear from the poet of the epic known as the Oidipodia.’
In the ordinary tale, then, Oidipus and Iokaste lived together for many years, and had two sons, Eteokles and Polyneikes, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. But at last the truth became known. According to Sophokles, Polybos died and the Corinthians sent a messenger to invite Oidipus to be their king. He refused, saying that he dared not go near his mother. The messenger, who was none other than the shepherd who had found him when exposed, told him that he was no child of Merope. Determining to find out his real parentage, and also to discover the murderer of Laios—for a plague had fallen on the city and Apollo had revealed that it could not be stayed until the slayer was driven out—he found the thrall who had exposed him, and who had also been in attendance on Laios at the Schiste Hodos. From him he forced the truth, and in utter despair put out his own eyes. Iokaste hanged herself, and in accordance with the oracle, Kreon banished Oidipus, becoming regent in the minority of his sons. Years afterwards, on the eve of the outbreak of war between Eteokles and Polyneikes, Oidipus wandered to Kolonos in Attica, attended by Antigone, and there died, or rather was transported to the next world, leaving his grave (whose exact place no one knew save Theseus) as a protection for the country.
But this is apparently the Attic story, the fruits of a very natural desire to claim as their own the bones of this great, if unfortunate hero. The normal tale says nothing of banishment; Oidipus shut himself up in an inner room of the palace at Thebes, and lived there while his sons came to manhood, presumably under the regency of Kreon. One day, however, when serving him at table, they set before him certain ancestral vessels which Laios had used, and which he had forbidden them to serve him in. On discovering what they had done, he invoked a curse of disunion upon them. To make matters worse, on another occasion, by accident or design, they set the loin of the meat before him, instead of the more honourable shoulder-piece; whereat he prayed that they might die by each other’s hands. This paternal curse by Oidipous upon his royal sons became the starting-point for the story of the Theban War.