Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Thebes is under terror from the Sphinx—a monster with a woman’s head, a lion’s body, and wings (Hesiod makes her offspring of Orthrus and Chimaera, or of Typhon and Echidna in other lines). Sent by Hera (Apollodorus) in anger at the Cadmeians, or associated with divine punishment for Laius’s crimes, she perches on a height (the Phician hill or a Theban acropolis approach) and poses a riddle to all who pass. Those who fail, she devour. The city wastes; Creon, brother of Jocasta and regent after Laius’s death, offers the kingship and Jocasta’s hand to whoever ends the scourge. Oedipus, arriving as a stranger from the crossroads, faces the Sphinx. Her riddle asks what walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening. He answers: man—crawling as an infant, upright in prime, leaning on a staff in age. The Sphinx destroys herself (hurling herself from the rock) or is killed. Thebes hails Oedipus as savior and king. He marries the widowed queen Jocasta, his unrecognized mother, and begets children: in the standard tragic and Apollodorean line, Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone, and Ismene (some early epic strands vary the maternity or number). For years the city prospers under his rule. The second half of the oracle—marriage to the mother—is fulfilled in ignorance, exactly as the first half was at the crossroads. The Sphinx episode is both Oedipus’s greatest public triumph and the seal of his private catastrophe: the prize for solving the riddle is the polluted marriage that will later tear the house apart.