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Oedipus the king book6/19/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Now, when Oedipus had come to manhood, he went to consult the Oracle at Delphi, as all great people did, to learn what fortune had in store for him. ![]() They called him Oedipus (Swollen-Foot) because of the wounds they had found on him, and, knowing nothing of his origins, they raised him as their own son. The king and queen of Corinth were childless, and some power moved them to take this mysterious child as a gift. He found the baby dying in the tree, and, touched with pity, took him home to his master. Hardly daring to disobey the king’s command, yet shrinking from murder, he hung the little creature by his feet to the branches of a tree and left him there to die.īut there happened to come that way with his sheep, a man who served King Polybus of Corinth. The herdsman carried the child to a lonely mountain-side, but once there, his heart failed him. Thus, Laius gave his son, who was only a baby, to a certain shepherd, with instructions to put him to death. ![]() The king and queen decided to escape such a doom, even at a terrible cost. To them an Oracle had foretold that if a son of theirs lived to grow up, he would one day kill his father and marry his own mother. There was once a king named Laius (a grandson of Cadmus himself), who ruled over Thebes with Jocasta, his wife. Shepherd getting baby Oedipus out of a tree: photo by Sailko, Exhibition at Buonconsiglio Castle, 1663, $\ccby$ ![]()
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