[1] Polybus reigned over the city like a gentle man and loved his wife, but unfortunately their marriage remained childless for many years.
When Oedipus was abandoned as an infant by his parents Laius and Jocasta, the rulers of Thebes, Periboea, who was washing garments at the shore, found and rescued him.
[2] In other accounts, either shepherds or keepers of horses of Polybus found the small child in Mount Cithaeron and brought him to Periboea;[3] in other versions, Laius' household slaves, who were unwilling to expose the child, gave him as a present to the wife of Polybus, since she could bear no children.
King Oedipus, in his effort to find the cause of plague due to a patricide, revealed that he was told in his teen years that he was destined to murder his father, and sent a spy to Corinth to see who was currently on the throne.
The news of Polybus' death by natural causes was announced by the messenger to Jocasta in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.