Short answer: the house of Thebes does not fall to a monster or an invading army. It falls because every generation tries to dodge a prophecy and, in dodging it, fulfils it. It starts with Laius, runs through Oedipus and Jocasta, and ends with four siblings killing each other while Creon collects what is left.
Everyone knows Oedipus. Almost nobody knows Oedipus is chapter two.
Hear these myths narrated
As a young man Laius, king of Thebes, took shelter at the court of Pelops. He repaid that hospitality by abducting his host's son. The boy died, and Pelops cursed Laius with the one thing that destroys a king: that his own son would kill him.
This is the part that usually gets cut. Without it, Oedipus looks like a man who drew the worst lottery ticket in history. With it, he is a debt being collected.
When the oracle repeated the warning, Laius did what everyone does in these myths: he tried to outrun fate. He pierced the newborn's feet and ordered him left on the mountain.
Jocasta agreed to it. That detail matters, because it frames everything after: she is not a passive victim of the story, she is one of the people who starts it.
The baby lived. One shepherd saved him, another kingdom raised him, and the boy grew up not knowing where he came from. The swollen feet gave him his name: Oedipus.
As an adult he was told the same thing: you will kill your father and marry your mother. So he left home to protect the parents he believed were his.
At a crossroads he argued with an old man over who had right of way, and killed him. It was Laius.
He reached Thebes, solved the Sphinx's riddle, and the grateful city gave him the throne and the widowed queen's hand. It was Jocasta.
Every step he takes to escape is a step further in. That is what makes this more than a misfortune: fate does not ruin him, trying to dodge it does.
Plague falls on Thebes and the oracle demands the killer of Laius be driven out. Oedipus, being king, swears to find him. He investigates for the whole play until he discovers the criminal he is hunting is himself.
Tiresias, the blind seer, knew from the start and refused to say it. When he finally does, nobody believes him. Jocasta hangs herself. Oedipus blinds himself with the pins of her dress: he becomes able to see what Tiresias saw without eyes.
Oedipus had four children by his mother: Antigone, Ismene, Polynices and Eteocles.
The brothers agreed to rule in turns, a year each. Eteocles took his and then refused to hand the throne over. Polynices raised an army and came back for it, in the war known as the Seven against Thebes.
They killed each other in single combat on the same day. Laius' curse took three generations, but it collected.
Creon, Jocasta's brother and now king, ruled that Eteocles would get a funeral and Polynices would rot in the open. Antigone buried him anyway, and he sentenced her to be walled up alive.
Ismene had told her no. That they were two women alone against a king, and they could not.
It is usually read as cowardice. But there is a more uncomfortable reading: Ismene is the only one of the four siblings still alive at the end. The myth does not reward her for it, but it does not punish her either.
| Character | Whose what | How it ends |
|---|---|---|
| Laius | Oedipus' father | Killed by his son at a crossroads |
| Jocasta | Oedipus' mother and wife | Hangs herself when she learns |
| Oedipus | Jocasta's son and husband | Blinded and exiled |
| Antigone | Oedipus' daughter | Walled up for burying her brother |
| Ismene | Oedipus' daughter | Survives |
| Polynices | Oedipus' son | Killed by his brother |
| Eteocles | Oedipus' son | Killed by his brother |
| Creon | Jocasta's brother | King at the end, and alone |
Because of Laius, not Oedipus. Laius abused Pelops' hospitality and abducted his son, and Pelops cursed him to be killed by his own child. Everything else is that curse collecting across three generations.
Jocasta, who would later become, without knowing it, the wife of her own son Oedipus. She is the same character in both roles, and that is the knot the whole story is tied around.
Nothing, and that is the striking part. She is the only one of Oedipus' four children still alive when the curtain falls. She refused to help Antigone, and the tragedy neither rewards nor punishes her for it.
Hear these myths narrated
MythologyNow is out. Download it and get the Zeus founder card.
