One Voice and Many Legs: Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx

Abstract

Abstract In the third book of The Library, Apollodorus relates how, after the burial of Laius, Creon, his brother-in-law, took over the rule of Thebes. During his reign, however, a great calamity in the form of a Sphinx befell the city. This hybrid creature sent by Hera “had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird,” and “having learned a riddle from the Muses she sat on Mount Phicium, and propounded it to the Thebans.” The oracle declared that as long as they couldnot answer its riddle, the Sphinx would snatch away different individuals from the city and “gobble” them up.

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