Iokaste's father Menoikeus is the grandson of Pentheus and the grandfather of another Menoikeus who will sacrifice himself for the sake of Thebes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

   Many variants are found in the scholia to Euripides' Phoinissai:  (13) Eurykleia, daughter of Ekphas, was the wife of Laios and mother of Oidipous.  Some say that Laios had two wives, Eurykleia and Iokaste; Iokaste was Oidipous' mother, and he married both Iokaste and Euryganeia.  (21) Iokaste knew about the oracle that her son would kill Laios, but she thought Laios was lying because he was in love with Chrysippos.  (26) Hippodameia, the wife of Pelops, raised Oidipious; he killed Laios in defense of Chrysippos, his foster brother.  (60) Oidipous killed Laios  in a fight over Chrysippos, with whom they both were in love.  ((1760) Hera was angered by Laios' homosexual affair with Chrysippos; the prophet Teiresias advised Laios to sacrifice to Hera, not Apollo, but Laios scorned Hera; Hera retaliated by having Oidipous kill Laios and his charioteer. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

   Although the name Sphinx is a Greek word that means "Choker," the Greeks did not invent the Sphinx.   Similar hybrid monsters (with a lion's body, wings, and the head of a man or woman) are very common in the mythic art of the ancient Near East (especially the Babylonians, Hittites, and Egyptians).  The Greek Sphinx was the daughter of the viper-woman Echidna and the monster Typhoeus, or of Echidna and her son, the two-headed red-haired dog Orthos.  Some said that Hera sent the Sphinx because she was angry at the Thebans for not punishing Laios for his rape of Chrysippos, and that the Sphinx ate Haimon, son of Kreon (who was ruling Thebes during Laios' absence). 

    There are many variants concerning the identity of the Sphinx.  Sometimes she is called one of the Theban women who were driven mad by Dionysos along with the daughters of Kadmos.  Or she was a female pirate whose navy was finally defeated by an army Oidipous brought from Corinth.  The best is Pausanias' report that she was Laios' illegitimate daughter, who had learned from her father of an oracle given to Kadmos, a secret known only to the kings of Thebes.  When her brothers (other illegitimate children of Laios) tried to claim the throne, she refused them on the grounds that they did not know the royal oracle, but when Oidipous came, he had learned the oracle "from a dream."

    From a psychological point of view, the Sphinx, like Medousa, is a hostile and dangerous female who represents the problems presented by female sexuality.  Like other mythic monster-slayers, Oidipous vanquishes the monster and is given as a reward the woman he loves; what is unique about this particular version is the undistorted representation of the reward, since Oidipous marries his mother herself instead of a symbolic substitute.  By conquering the Sphinx, Oidipous masters the feared aspect of maternal sexuality, and is enabled to marry his mother; ambivalence is dealt with by spplitting the ambivalently-regarded object into bad (Sphinx) and good (Iokaste) objects (just as a fairy tale deals with the child's problem of whether his mother is good or bad — will she give him what he wants, or not? — by splitting her into good (the fairy godmother) and bad (the evil stepmother).  Thus in effect Oidipous dematrifies Iokaste, an end achieved also by his ignorance of her identity.

    The ultimate sameness of the Sphinx and Iokaste (representing opposite qualities of the same person) is indicated also by their deaths.  Whereas heroes who fight monsters usually kill the monster, the Sphinx commits suicide after Oidipous has solved her riddle; Iokaste also commits suicide after Oidipous has solved a second problem of identity, the question of her (and his) identity.  The illogicality of the Sphinx' death (why would a winged creature jump from a height to its death?) tells us that the chief motive for the suicide is the correlation of the Sphinx and Iokaste.

   Others said the Iokaste stabbed herself to death, either when Oidipous discovered her identity or much later, when her sons Eteokles and Polyneikes killed one another.

    Oidipous blinded himself with the brooches (peronai) of Iokaste; the same word is used by Euripides to describe the pins used to pierce the infant Oidipous' ankles.  Others said that he was blinded by his foster-father Polybos, who had learned of the oracle that Oidipous would kill his father, or by the servants of Laios; that he was successful in his attempt to kill Iokaste; that once Oidipous and Iokaste came to Kithairon and he remembered that he had killed a man there; when he told Iokaste what had happened and showed her the man's belt, she realized that Oidipous was her son and that he had killed Laios, but she was silent.
 

   In other versions Iokaste had no children by Oidipous (or she had two, Phrastor and Laonytos, who were killed by Erginos and the Minyans); after Iokaste's death Oidipous married Hyperphas' daughter Euryganeia and she was the mother of Antigone, Ismene, Eteokles, and Polyneikes.  When Euryganeia died, Oidipous married Astymedousa, daughter of Sthenelos and sister of Herakles' enemy Eurystheus.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

    In those variants where Oidipous is kept prisoner in Thebes by his sons, several other versions of why he cursed them appear.  He was angered because they set before him a bowl which Laios had owned (May you die in trying to settle your inheritance from me, since you cannot handle the inheritance from Laios rightly), or because they brought him the wrong part of a sacrificed animal (May you die in trying to divide your inheritance, since you cannot divide the meat rightly). 

    In a truly bizarre version Oidipous cursed his sons because he thought they wanted to do what he had done: he divorced Iokaste and married Astymedousa, who falsely accused her stepsons of trying to rape her (a "Potifar's Wife motif); he believed her, and cursed his sons.  In Euripides' Phoinissai Oidipous himself says that he passed on to his sons the curse he had received from Laios.
 
 
 
 

    After Laios became king, he married Menoikeus' daughter, called Epikaste by Homer and Iokaste by later writers.  Since an oracle had warned him not to have a son, he refused to have a sexual relationship with his wife.  A version of the oracle appears in the ancient Hypothesis (Introduction) to Sophocles' play Oidipous Tyrannos:  "Laios, son of Labdakos, you seek the gift of progeny:  I will give you a son:  but it is fated that you leave the sunlight by the hands of your son:  for thus Zeus, son of Kronos, has decreed, moved by the hateful curse of Pelops, whose son you raped:  all this he prayed for you."

    For both Aeschylus and Euripides, the oracle is (as often) clearly conditional; if Laios should have a son, that son will kill him.  In order to avoid this fate, Laios refrained from sex with Iokaste until, overcome by madness or drunkenness, he went to bed with her and fathered Oidipous.  Laios then tried a second time to avert the curse of Pelops, by piercing his infant son's ankles with brooch-pins or ox-goads and giving him to a herdsman to expose in the mountains.  But the herdsman to whom Iokaste gave the baby gave him in turn to a shepherd of king Polybos of Corinth, and the king and his wife Merope (or Periboia) raised the baby, named him Oidipous ("Swollen-Foot"), and pretended he was their own child. 

    In another version Oidipous was put into a chest and thrown into the sea; the chest washed ashore at Sikyon, where Polybos' wife Periboia, who was washing clothes on the shore, found Oidipous and raised him as her own.

    When Oidipous ws a young man, his friends resented his great strength, and told him he was not the son of Polybos.  Or a drunk told him he was not Polybos' son, although Polybos denied this accusation.  Or Oidipous guessed from the redness of his beard that he was someone else's son.  In every case Oidipous left Corinth and set out for Delphi to ask the oracle about his parentage.

    In one version Oidipous never made it to Delphi.  While on the way he met Laios, who was also going to Delphi to find out if the child he had exposed was still alive, at the famous Triple Crossroad (where three roads led to Thebes, Corinth, and Delphi).  Usually Oidipous goes to the oracle and learns, sometimes without asking, that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother.  Oidipous, still believing that the king and queen of Corinth were his parents, resolved never to return to them.  When he came to the Triple Crossroad he was about to take the road east toward Thebes, instead of south to Corinth, when he met Laios.

    Laios was accompanied by a charioteer and several attendants.  When Laios or his charioteer ordered Oidipous to get out of the way, Oidiipous refused.  Laios then ordered his charioteer to strike Oidipous with his goad, or to drive the chariot wheels across Oidipous' feet (which were especially sensitive).  In a rage, Oidipous pulled Laios from the chariot and killed him, as well as all but one of his companions.  He then continued on to Thebes, leaving the bodies lie where they were.

    At Thebes Oidipous found the city in a state of crisis.  A terrible female monster called the Sphinx (with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings and claws of a bird of prey) was sitting on nearby Mount Phikion, or on the walls of the citadel itself, and was asking any citizen who approached her this riddle:  What is it that has one voice and goes on four legs in the morning, two at noonday, and three in the evening?  The Thebans had learned from an oracle that they would be free of the Sphinx if someone could answer this question, but everyone who had tried so far had failed and had been eaten by the Sphinx. 

    The Thebans now learned from king Damasistratos of Plataia that he had found and buried the bodies of Laius and his companions.  Kreon therefore offered both thekingship and the hand of the widow Iokaste to whoever could solve the riddle of the Sphinx.  Oidipous volunteered, and told the Sphinx the answer was "Man, who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a staff in old age."  This answer was sufficient for the Sphinx, who jumped to her death from the citadel or from Mount Phikion (a strange means of suicide for a creature who could fly).

    Oidipous now became king of Thebes and married his mother Iokaste; to the Thebans he was the smartest man in the world, since only he had known the answer to the riddle.  Oidipous and Iokaste had four children, the daughters Antigone and Ismene and the sons Eteokles and Polyneikes. 

    The happy life of Oidipous and Iokaste was interrupted by a plague of barrenness which afflicted Thebes.  Oidipous sent Kreon to Delphi to ask what they should do, and he came back with the answer that Thebes was being punished because they had not found and punished the murderer of the late king Laios. 

    What happened then is the subject of the world's first detective story, Sophocles' Oidipous Tyrannos.  Although the prophet Teiresias urged Oidipous to drop the investigation, Oidipous finally discovered that it was he who had killed Laios and furthermore that Laios was his father and Iokaste was his mother.  Oidipous drew his sword and rushed to Iokaste's chamber, but when he opened the door he found that she had hanged herself.  He took the brooches from her robe and stabbed them into his eyes, blinding himself. 

    Oidipous now went into exile, either self-imposed or ordered by Kreon in accordance with the punishment Oidipous himself had ordained for Laios' murderer.  Before he left Thebes he cursed his sons for having said not a word against his banishment.  He spent the rest of his life wandering through Greece as a blind beggar (since no city would allow him to stay), accompanied only by his faithful daughter Antigone.  Finally he came to Kolonos (Sophocles' birthplace) in Athens, where an oracle had told Oidipous he would die and where king Theseus welcomed him and promised him refuge.  Ismene came from Thebes and told Oidipous that Eteokles had driven out his brother Polyneikes, that war between the brothers was imminent, and that Kreon was coming to take Oidipous back to Thebes, since an oracle had declared that the land of Oidipous' death would be blessed by the gods.  Kreon arrived and tried to kidnap Oidipous and his daughters, but was prevented by Theseus, who had made Oidipous a citizen of Athens. Polyneikes then came and asked for Oidipous' help, but Kreon protected Oidipous from his family, and again Oidipous cursed his sons, then walked (without his staff or the help of his daughter Antigone) into the sacred grove of Kolonos.  Theseus heard the crash of thunder and a voice from the sky saying "Oidipous, why have you kept us waiting so long?", but when the Athenians searched they could find no trace of him.

    This is what happens to Oidipous in Sophocles' Oidipous Tyrannos and Oidipous at Kolonos.  In the very different version of Euripides' Phoinissai, Oidipous is not exiled but is kept as a blind prisoner in the palace by his sons, whom he curses for mistreating him.  Iokaste does not commit suicide until after the mutual fratricide of her sons, when she stabs herself and falls on their dead bodies; only then are Oidipous and Antigone sent into exile.  According to Homer, Oidipous continued to rule in Thebes after the death of his wife, although he was constantly troubled by her Furies.