A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family.

Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual's role in the course of destiny in a harsh universe.

Years later, to end a plague on Thebes, Oedipus searched to find who had killed Laius and discovered that he himself was responsible.

Variations on the legend of Oedipus are mentioned in fragments by several ancient Greek poets including Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus and Euripides.

In an attempt to avoid such a fate, he decided not to return home to Corinth, but to travel to Thebes, which was closer to Delphi.

Oedipus answered: "Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a 'walking' stick".

Oedipus and Jocasta had four children: sons Eteocles and Polynices (see Seven Against Thebes) and daughters Antigone and Ismene.

His daughter Antigone acted as his guide as he wandered through the country, finally dying at Colonus where they had been welcomed by King Theseus of Athens.

Some older sources of the myth, including Homer, state that Oedipus continued to rule Thebes after the revelations and after Jocasta's death.

[1] Oedipus's two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, arranged to share the kingdom, each taking an alternating one-year reign.

[3] Years later, Oedipus, not knowing he was adopted, leaves home in fear of the same prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother.

In his second Olympian Ode, Pindar writes:[9] Laius' tragic son, crossing his father's path, killed him and fulfilled the oracle spoken of old at Pytho.

Yet Thersandros survived fallen Polyneikes and won the honor in youthful contests and the brunt of war, a scion of aid to the house of Adrastos.In 467 BC, the Athenian playwright, Aeschylus, most notably wrote a trilogy based on the myth of Oedipus, winning him the first prize at the City Dionysia.

All three plays concern the fate of the City of Thebes, during and after the reign of King Oedipus,[10] and have often been published under a single cover.

Apollo has made it known that Thebes is harboring a terrible abomination and that the plague will only be lifted when the true murderer of old King Laius is discovered and punished for his crime.

Realization begins to slowly dawn in Scene II of the play when Jocasta mentions out of hand that Laius was slain at a place where three roads meet.

This stirs something in Oedipus's memory and he suddenly remembers the men he fought and killed one day long ago at a place where three roads met.

Bleeding from the eyes, he begs his uncle and brother-in-law Creon, who has just arrived on the scene, to exile him forever from Thebes.

He finally finds refuge in the holy wilderness right outside Athens, where it is said that Theseus took care of Oedipus and his daughter, Antigone.

Angry that his son did not love him enough to take care of him, he curses both Eteocles and his brother, condemning them both to kill each other in battle.

In Sophocles' Antigone, when Oedipus stepped down as king of Thebes, he gave the kingdom to his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, both of whom agreed to alternate the throne every year.

The gods, through the blind prophet Tiresias, expressed their disapproval of Creon's decision, which convinced him to rescind his order, and he went to bury Polynices himself.

Second, in the play Jocasta has not killed herself at the discovery of her incest – otherwise, she could not play the prologue, for fathomable reasons – nor has Oedipus fled into exile, but they have stayed in Thebes only to delay their doom until the fatal duel of their sons/brothers/nephews Eteocles and Polynices: Jocasta commits suicide over the two men's dead bodies, and Antigone follows Oedipus into exile.

[13] Furies avenged violations of good order in households, as can be seen most clearly in such texts as The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus.

At some point in the action of the play, a character engaged in a lengthy and detailed description of the Sphinx and her riddle – preserved in five fragments from Oxyrhynchus, P.Oxy.

[17] The Bibliotheca, a Roman-era mythological handbook, includes a riddle for the Sphinx, borrowing the poetry of Hesiod: What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?

[18] Due to the popularity of Sophocles's Antigone (c. 442 BC), the ending (lines 1005–78) of Seven against Thebes was added some fifty years after Aeschylus' death.

A version of Oedipus by Frank McGuinness was performed at the National Theatre in late 2008, starring Ralph Fiennes and Claire Higgins.

In the late 1960s Ola Rotimi published a novel and play, The Gods Are Not to Blame, which retell the Oedipus myth happening in the Yoruba kingdom.

Oedipus himself, as portrayed in the myth, did not have this neurosis – at least, not towards Jocasta, whom he only met as an adult (if anything, such feelings would have been directed at Merope – but there is no hint of that).