A single slave witnessed the event and escaped. But Oedipus blocked the blow and threw the man out of his chariot, killing him and subsequently fighting all of the old man’s retinue as well. The argument turned violent, and the old man went to hit Oedipus with his scepter. He and the man began to argue as to whose chariot should have the right of way on the road. On the road, Oedipus encountered an aristocratic old man in a chariot. 1600-1799, Bolton Library and Museum Services The Finding of Oedipus, artist unknown, c.
Assuming this to mean his adopted parents, Oedipus immediately fled from Corinth, desperate to escape this fate. He went to consult the Oracle of Delphi, who told him he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. As a young man, he began to hear rumors that he was not their child. Polybus and Merope never told Oedipus of his origins. The medical term oedema, also written as edema, referring to swelling from fluid retention, derives from the same root as the name Oedipus. They gave him the name Oedipus as a reference to his swollen ankles. King Polybus and Queen Merope joyfully adopted the boy and raised him as their own.
Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree, by Jean-François Millet, 1847, National Gallery of Canada However, later in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, it is revealed that the servant passed the baby to a shepherd, who presented him to Polybus and Merope, the childless King and Queen of Corinth. A mountain shepherd then found him there and cut him down, a moment that is depicted in several works of art. In certain versions of the tale, the servant followed through on the command and left the infant hanging by his ankles from a tree. Also unable to follow through with infanticide, the servant took him out to a mountain on the pretense of exposing him and leaving him there to die.
She commanded a servant of the palace to kill the baby instead. The Rescue of the Infant Oedipus, by Salvator Rosa, 1663, The Royal Academy of Arts Jocasta could not bring herself to commit the murder and instead passed on the grisly duty. He pierced the baby’s ankles, riveted them together with a pin, and ordered his wife to kill her son. When Jocasta bore a son, the future Oedipus Rex, Laius panicked. The Oracle told Laius that any son he produced was destined to kill him. Unable to conceive a child, Laius went to Delphi to speak to the Oracle of Apollo. Oedipus Rex The Infant The Infant Oedipus Revived by the Shepherd Phorbas, by Antoine Denis Chaudet, 1810-1818, The Louvre
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