The King Who Solved the Riddle but Not His Fate
Prophesied at birth to "kill his father and marry his mother," abandoned in the wild by his parents and raised in a neighboring kingdom. Grown, he left home to escape the prophecy — and walked straight into it. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex was Aristotle’s model of tragedy; Freud’s "Oedipus complex" carried his name into psychology.
The lion-bodied Sphinx guarded Thebes, killing all who failed her riddle: "What goes on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" Oedipus answered, "Man." The monster killed itself in shame, he was made king and married the newly widowed queen — not knowing the old man he had killed on the road was the king, and the queen before him his own mother.
Years later plague ravaged Thebes, and the oracle demanded the killer of the old king be found. Oedipus swore to see it through, and as the testimony peeled back layer by layer, the killer was himself and the wife his mother. The queen hanged herself; he blinded himself with her brooch-pin and exiled himself. He made not one wrong move in the whole play — which is the deepest horror of all.
The Odyssey (Book 11) gives the story in just a few lines: after the queen hangs herself, Oedipus stays on to rule Thebes and does not blind or exile himself. It was Sophocles, centuries later in Oedipus Rex, who made "self-blinding and self-exile" the best-known ending — the version we know today is a later dramatic reworking.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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