ABSTRACT
Starting with an oracle given to Laius at Delphi at a time which must be decades before the action of the first play, Laius, the threat of destruction hangs over Thebes and its people until the city is saved by a victorious battle in which, however, the two sons of Oedipus die at each other's hands. Like Aeschylus, Sophocles wants to have the house of Laius destroyed, but like Aeschylus, he also wants it not to be completely forgotten that Thebes, having survived one perilous attack, will fall to another before very long. Only, where Aeschylus traced Thebes' doom to Laius' decision to defy an oracle, Sophocles traced it to Creon's decision to defy the unwritten laws. Terrible things happened in Thebes thereafter, but they did not threaten to destroy the city until after Oedipus' death, when Adrastus' army, with Polynices as one of its leading members, marched on Thebes.
