ABSTRACT
Introducing Oedipus meant giving an abbreviated history of the Oedipus myth which jumped from Sophocles to Freud. This book aims to fill in the blanks in this history, starting with the pre-tragic Oedipus. Whereas the Oedipus myth is two-generational in Freud and almost two-generational in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (some scholars believe that the brief appearance of Oedipus’ daughter at the end was added in some later production), it is four-generational in the earliest sources. This chapter first discusses these sources, and then turns from Oedipus in poetry to Oedipus as a cult-hero, one of the “mighty dead,” a class of beings intermediate between gods and men, who have the power to harm or to help and who must be placated with offerings at their graves. In the sources for his cult, one has the spectacle of a multigenerational genealogy which reaches down to historical persons in the fifth century BC. Oedipus is in fact one of the few Greek heroes who has such a genealogy.
