Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When Jocasta bore Laius a son, the parents—terrified by Apollo’s oracle that the child would kill his father—resolved to destroy him. Laius pierced the infant’s ankles (or had them pierced) and gave him to a shepherd to expose on Mount Cithaeron, the wild ridge between Thebes and the Corinthian territories. In Sophocles’ telling, the Theban herdsman cannot bring himself to leave the baby to die; he passes the child to a Corinthian herdsman of King Polybus. Apollodorus likewise has the infant rescued and brought to Polybus, king of Corinth (or Sicyon in some variants), and his wife Merope (or Periboea). The Corinthian couple, childless, rear the boy as their own and name him Oedipus—“Swollen-Foot”—from the injury to his ankles. He grows up believing himself the legitimate son of Polybus and Merope, a prince of Corinth, ignorant of Thebes, of Laius, and of the oracle that already shapes his life. The tokens of his exposure—the pierced feet, the herdsmen’s knowledge—lie dormant until a later insult and a second Delphic consultation drive him toward the truth. Thus the attempt to cancel fate by exposure fails at the first step: the child lives, is given a royal home elsewhere, and will return to Thebes as a stranger. The mountain that was meant to be his grave becomes the hinge between two families—the Labdacids who cast him out and the Corinthians who take him in.