Oedipus

A character in two tragdies by Sophocles, "Oedipus Rex" and "Oedipus at Colonus." When he was born it was prophesized that Oedipus would grow to murder his father, and marry his mother. His father, King Laios of Thebes, ordered his shepard to kill him, but instead he gave him to the king of Corinth. When he grew up, he learned about his destiny, but belived that his Corintian parrents were his biological parrents, he fled to Tebes. There he ran into his real fother on the road, and after a dispute killed him. However, Oedipus was able to save the city of Tebes from sphynx and was offered his mother's hand in marrige. The play "Oedipus Rex" takes place a number of years after that incodent. Thebes is undergoing a plague Oedipus learns the truth about his heritige, and so his mother/wife kills herself, and he blinds himself, and is baneshed from Thebes. In "Oedipus at Colonus" he is about to die, and is purifing himself, to be buried as a Greek hero. However, civil war has broken out in Thebes between is two sons, and they want to try and get Oedipus' body back to Thebes, so that one of the sons might win.