Oedipus

Introduction

King Oedipus, who inadvertently killed his father and unwittingly fathered children with his mother, is mentioned by Homer about 800 BC, as already well known. Well hung, like the story, then, was already in classical antiquity, the Oedipus story has already experienced several dramatic adaptations that time (Burian, pp 100). The Oedipus plays of Euripides and Aischylos are lost, have been preserved to us the Oidipous Tyrannus of Sophocles, who nailed down the story as an unrivaled monopoly for all later times. In his version of the myth of the artist and retellers has reached over Seneca Voltaire to Andre Gide (Sophocles, pp 230 - 237).

Discussion

The marriage of Laius, king of Thebes, with Jocasta is childless, a disaster for a monarch who must carry on the dynasty. This keeps the reasons for his oracle at Delphi before childlessness interviewed Laius, he had once gone to a boy and thus sparked the wrath of the gods. Laius would be slain by his own son, he was ever such a witness (Burian, pp 100). Despite the threat of sleeping with Jocasta Laius continues, this time Jocasta is pregnant and gives birth to a son. In order to avoid the threatened fate, Jocasta is her baby to a shepherd, so he can expose in the wild. The shepherd, however, gives the infant foreign colleagues, who in turn forward them to the childless King Polybus and Merope of Corinth pair (Sophocles, pp 230 - 237).

Grown up, Oedipus hears rumors that he was not the biological son of the king and queen, but an adopted foundling. The parents are able to dispel his doubts not, so that even Oedipus goes to Delphi. On the specific question about his background, he gets no answer, instead, the disquieting information, whether he intended to kill his father and his ...