Oedipus Rex

Sophocles's Athenian tragedy of King Oedipus of Thebes, whose inquiry into Laius's murder exposes his own patricide and incest.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Sophocles

type

Tragedy

era

Classical Athens (c. 429 BC)

language

Classical Greek

setting

Thebes

source text

Theban Cycle and Greek heroic myth

acts

1 continuous dramatic action

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• First performed around 429 BC at the City Dionysia in Athens, where it took second prize behind Aeschylus's nephew Philocles.
• Second of Sophocles's three surviving Theban plays by composition (written after Antigone and before Oedipus at Colonus), though first in narrative chronology.
• Repeatedly cited by Aristotle in the Poetics as the exemplar of tragedy, tracing Oedipus's search for King Laius's killer to Jocasta's suicide and his own self-blinding.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Oedipus Rex