Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Labdacus, son of Polydorus and grandson of Cadmus (and of Harmonia), inherits Thebes in the Cadmid line. His reign is brief and ill-starred in the handbooks: he dies while Laius is still an infant—Pausanias links Cadmid misfortune to the family’s later impieties; some strands give Labdacus a war or a Dionysiac offense. Regency falls to Nycteus and then Lycus (03/120). Laius, the legitimate heir, cannot hold the city; he is smuggled or flees to the Peloponnesus and is reared at the court of Pelops. There Laius’s crime against Chrysippus, Pelops’s bastard son—abduction and rape (or love and death)—draws Pelops’s curse upon him and his house (03/092). After Amphion and Zethus overthrow Lycus, build the walls, and eventually perish or leave the throne empty (Niobe’s disaster ruins Amphion’s line: 03/087), Thebans restore Laius as king. He marries Jocasta (Epicaste), daughter of Menoeceus; the Delphic oracle warns him he will die by his son’s hand. The exposure of Oedipus follows (03/093). Labdacus himself is little more than a genealogical link—yet the link matters: it carries Cadmus’s blood across the Amphionid interruption, explains Laius’s Pelopid connections and the Chrysippus curse, and seats the Oedipus saga on a restored Cadmid throne inside Amphion’s walls. Without Labdacus named and Laius’s exile–return sketched, the Theban cycle’s dynastic logic collapses into disconnected episodes.