Laius

The reign of Laius was, by all accounts, relatively peaceful. He married Jocasta, daughter of Menoeceus (who was himself perhaps a child of Pentheus, the dismembered former king of Thebes and Laius’ distant relative) and for the moment, Thebes prospered. Perhaps the citizens breathed a sigh of relief; after so many years of the throne changing hands, so many years of the crown on an uncertain head, maybe there would be some stability at long last.

But, as one might come to expect, this is Thebes and there is no ending to the change.

By some accounts, Laius received an oracle prior to the one mentioned in Oedipus Rex; Apollo informed the king that he must not beget a child, a hard request for a ruler in search of an heir and a line that, despite all the violence and death that had plagued it, had thus far gone on unbroken. Laius was all that was left of the Cadmean royal family and now Apollo had refused him the right to sire an heir. Drunk and enraged, the story goes, he got a child upon Jocasta in defiance of the oracle.

The text of Oedipus Rex makes no mention of this particular version of the story, but tellings of it were present in Sophocles’ lifetime. An Athenian audience would have possessed that knowledge, heard it echoing around in Jocasta’s language about Laius.

In Rex, the first and only prophecy Laius receives from the oracle is that he will die at the hands of his child. The timing is unclear; did Laius hear this prophecy when Jocasta was already pregnant? When the child was born? Or had he known for years and, attempting to push it from his mind, allowed the child to be born?

We have no way of knowing.

What we do know is this: a child was born. A son, in fact, more to Laius’ doom. And Laius, in his terror, made a choice.

Laius drove a metal rod through the ankles of his three-day-old son and bound his feet together, ensuring that no matter what, the child would be unable to escape his fate. The King of Thebes decreed to his wife that the child was to be exposed on the slopes of Mount Cithaeron, the same mountain that had claimed the lives of so many Theban kings of the past. It could handle one more, Laius thought.

We know little of what Jocasta must have felt, holding her son, so new into the world and with so little time left in it. Did she weep as she handed him over to the herdsman? Did she try and staunch the bleeding from the wound at his ankles? We only know she followed through as best she could, giving the child over to a servant to leave on the mountain to starve, to be eaten, or to freeze, whichever of the three came for him first.

But none did. The herdsman who held the child looked down and did not see a prophecy lying in wait, only a hurting, abandoned baby. And he made his own choice. The Theban herdsman passed the child over to his Corinthian counterpart and reported the boy dead back in Thebes, and so the baby who would come to be known as Oedipus (lit. ‘swollen-foot’ for the wounds he had received from Laius) came into the hands of the childless King and Queen of Corinth, Polybus and Merope.

But there was an oracle hanging over Thebes that had yet to be resolved and too much had happened in that city for trouble to subside now. The city founded on a dragon’s corpse, where gods had been born and so many men had died, found itself besieged by a new terror: the Sphinx. Years after Laius had abandoned his son upon the mountainside, a creature with the face of a woman, the body of a lion and great eagle’s wings swept down upon Thebes, seating herself in the cliffs and crags and posing a terrible riddle. Her challenge was simple: solve her riddle, and she would depart. Fail, and she would rend the querent limb from limb. Many Thebans tried and many were devoured and the Sphinx stayed right where she had placed herself.

In a show of piety that may have been more useful a few years prior, Laius decided to seek the counsel of Delphi in person, setting out on the road with a few attendants to consult the oracle in person—

And never came home.

Some time after news of Laius’ death had reached Thebes, so did a wandering Corinthian man. Hearing of the Sphinx and her dreadful riddle, he ascended the cliff she had made her nest and confronted the monster face to face. The Sphinx eyed him up and down (did she sense what he really was? Did she care?) and spoke her riddle:

“What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night? Think carefully before you answer, stranger. It may be the last words you ever speak.”

The Corinthian was not a foolish man, and he took his time in answering.

“Man.”

And so the Sphinx shrieked in rage, her great eagle wings unfolding with a snap, and cast herself from the cliffs above Thebes. Whether she died or simply flew away, none can say.

The Thebans welcomed their savior down from the crags, showering him with praise, with thanks, and eventually with the throne and Laius’ widowed queen.

“What is your name, stranger?” they asked.

“I am called Oedipus,” he replied.

And so for the second time in his life (unbeknownst to him), Oedipus of Corinth put down roots in Thebes. For the second time in his life, he was held in the arms of Jocasta, Queen of Thebes. They bore children together (Eteocles, Polynices, Antigone and Ismene), lived happily together, and brought Thebes into a new era of prosperity and joy together.

The soil upon which Thebes is built is soaked in blood, scorched by lightning, enriched and corrupted by divinity, horror, pain and transcendence.

And nothing sleeps for long in Thebes. As Oedipus and Jocasta reign in Thebes, an evil festers within them and within the city which their family has built, destroyed, and built again.

Curtain up on Oedipus Rex.

-Emma