As with many Greek tragedies, the action of the play is
determined by a curse handed down across generations after an important founder of the
family has offended the gods. In the case of the Theban plays, Lauis raped a young man,
violating the laws of hospitality, which began the curse (Zeus, god of strangers, is
responsible in Greek myth for hospitality). Lauis' own son was prophesied to murder his
father, and thuis Lauis gave his son Oedipus over to be exposed on the mountainside.
Instead, Oedipus was brought to Corinth and raised as the child of its rulers.
Suspecting he was adopted, Oedipus inquires of his parentage from the DElphic oracle and
is told that he is destined to kill his father and murder his mother. He leaves Corinth
to avopid this fate and on the road to Thebes accidentally kills his father. He next
solves the riddle of the Sphynx and is given his mother in marriage as a
reward.
At the opening of the play no one knows that
Jocasta and Laius were Oedipus' parents. IOnstead, they know only that the gods have
punished the city with a plague because the killer of Laius caused the city to become
ritually polluted. Oedipus, who does not know tht Laius was the old man he killed.
summons Tiresias to help him find the murderer of Laius and end the ritual
pollution.
Some of the better discussions of this work are
to be found in Aristotle's Poetics and Kitto.
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