Boeotian riddles

Explanation

of the witless, from the metaphor of the Sphinx. Inasmuch as the Sphinx set the Thebans her riddle: "Four-footed, two-footed, and again three-footed." Oedipus solved it, took his father's kingdom, and unwittingly married his own mother. For when Laius king of Thebes consulted the oracle about male offspring, the god replied: "Laius son of Labdacus, sow not the furrow of children against the gods' will; for the son begotten will slay you." Forgetting the oracle, Laius lay with his wife Iocasta. When he perceived a male child had been born of her, remembering the oracle, he pierced the child's ankles and exposed him on a mountain. A herdsman passing by took up the babe and brought him to his own wife. She tended the boy's ankles and called him Oedipus, giving him this name because of the swelling of his feet. Grown up and outdoing his fellows in strength, Oedipus was reproached out of envy with being a foundling. Coming to Delphi he inquired about his parentage, and the god having told him not to journey to his fatherland — for he would slay his father and lie with his mother — he, supposing himself born of those who reared him, hastened to Thebes; meeting Laius riding in a chariot, when the herald bade him give way to princes, he refused, and was struck by the charioteer for his father; in anger he killed both the charioteer and Laius who fought for him. Coming to Thebes, he found Laius' kingdom, together with his wife Iocasta, set as the prize for whoever should solve the Sphinx's riddle. Solving it, he took his father's kingdom and unwittingly lay with his mother, by whom he begot Eteocles and Polynices. Later, recognised by his mother, he blinded himself; Iocasta hanged herself from the city walls.