ABSTRACT
Oedipus has good reason to suspect that the man in the carriage was Laius, the hereditary king of Thebes, and the chorus is afraid that he is right. The resemblances between the Athenian supremacy in Greece and Oedipus’ peculiar power in Thebes are enough to suggest that the word tyrannos, applied to Oedipus, is part of a larger pattern of image and emphasis which compares Oedipus with Athens itself. Oedipus tyrannos, then, is more than an individual tragic hero. Oedipus, speaking of the riddle of the Sphinx, boasts that he was the amateur who put the professional to shame. Oedipus’ magnificent vigor and his faith in action are markedly Athenian characteristics. Oedipus came to Thebes with blood on his hands, and one of the men he had just killed was a person of some importance, for he rode in a carriage and was accompanied by a herald.
