ABSTRACT
While traveling toward Thebes, Oedipus encounters Laius, who provokes a fight with him. Oedipus defends himself and kills his assailant. Upon arriving in Thebes, Oedipus finds the city besieged by a plague, caused by the Sphinx, who put a riddle to each passerby, destroying those who are unable to answer it. Oedipus solved the riddle and thereby ended the plague. As a reward he is made king of Thebes and is joined in wedlock to the widowed Queen, Jocasta. Alas, unbeknownst to Oedipus, Laius, whom he had slain, was his biological father, and Jocasta, whom he has married, is his mother. Oedipus is condemned for his patricide and incest, forced to relinquish his throne, pluck out his eyes, and go into exile.
