The Nexus Archive
Greek Tragedy · Play
Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles · The Judge of Fate · Classical Athens, 496-406 BCE
Sophocles' concentrated tragedy of plague, investigation, prophecy, recognition, and the truth that turns against the seeker.
- Intermediate
- c. 429 BCE
- ~1 hr read
- 2 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Plague, Oracle, and Accusation guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Truth That Hunts the King
Oedipus Rex begins with a city at the edge of collapse. Thebes is sick, its people gather at the altars, and the king who once saved them from the Sphinx is asked to save them again. Oedipus came to Thebes as a stranger, solved the creature’s riddle, and received the throne and the widowed Queen Jocasta as his wife. That remembered success gives the present appeal its urgency.
Sophocles wrote for fifth-century Athens, where tragedy brought stories of legendary families into a public religious festival. Thebes belongs to that legendary world. Within the play, sickness afflicts crops, childbirth, and households together; the city’s need for relief is also a question about its relation to the gods. Oedipus has already sent Jocasta’s brother Creon to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi for an answer.
The inquiry takes place through speech: a returned messenger, a seer’s knowledge, old reports, and questions asked before witnesses. Oedipus possesses the authority to summon people and demand answers, but authority cannot establish whether an answer is true. The citizens’ trust in their rescuer and his own confidence in solving difficult questions make the search a public test of the king.
The opening pages
Plague, Oracle, and Accusation
OEDIPUS REX
Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.
OEDIPUS.
My children, latest born to Cadmus old,
Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands
Branches of olive filleted with wool?
What means this reek of incense everywhere,
And everywhere laments and litanies?
Children, it were not meet that I should learn
From others, and am hither come, myself,
I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.
Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks
Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,
Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread
Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?
My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;
Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate
If such petitioners as you I spurned.
PRIEST.
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Thy palace altars—fledglings hardly winged,
and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I
of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.
Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs
Crowd our two market-places, or before
Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where
Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.
For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,
Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,
Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.
A blight is on our harvest in the ear,
A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,
A blight on wives in travail; and withal
Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague
Hath swooped upon our city emptying
The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm
Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.
Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,
I and these children; not as deeming thee
A new divinity, but the first of men;
First in the common accidents of life,
And first in visitations of the Gods.
Art thou not he who coming to the town
of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid
To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received
Prompting from us or been by others schooled;
No, by a god inspired (so all men deem,
And testify) didst thou renew our life.
And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,
All we thy votaries beseech thee, find
Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven
Whispered, or haply known by human wit.
Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found
To furnish for the future pregnant rede.
Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our State!
Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore
Our country’s savior thou art justly hailed:
O never may we thus record thy reign:—
“He raised us up only to cast us down.”
Uplift us, build our city on a rock.
Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck,
O let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule
This land, as now thou reignest, better sure
To rule a peopled than a desert realm.
Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail,
If men to man and guards to guard them fail.
Read it in a Quest
A descent into houses where law, blood, and vengeance turn private grief public.
Chapter guides · 2
Plague, Oracle, and Accusation
The Cure Becomes an Accusation
A public search for Laius’ murderer turns into a contest over knowledge, loyalty, and the king’s right to judge.
The city’s need becomes a command
Creon returns from Delphi with the answer that the killing of the former king, Laius, must be punished. Oedipus undertakes the search as a duty to the city and as protection against someone who might threaten him too. He calls for information, offers safety to a confessing culprit, and places the unknown murderer under a curse. The proclamation commits him publicly before he knows whom it will reach.
The seer refuses, then accuses
Teiresias first resists speaking, insisting that knowledge will bring no benefit. Oedipus interprets this silence as betrayal and accuses him of complicity. Under pressure, the seer names Oedipus as the man sought and speaks of hidden kinship and coming blindness. Oedipus answers by proposing a plot between Teiresias and Creon.
Trust is not proof
The chorus is shaken by the seer’s words but remembers the king’s victory over the Sphinx and refuses to condemn him without evidence. Creon likewise asks to be heard before judgment. He argues that his present influence brings the advantages of power without a ruler’s burdens and offers his death if collusion is proved. Oedipus presses for punishment instead. The passage ends with Creon asserting that he, too, belongs to Thebes: the city cannot simply be identified with its king.
Recognition and Ruin
The King Hunts Himself
Accounts offered to reassure Oedipus instead connect the murder he is investigating with his own origins.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Oedipus Rex?
- About 1 hr in total.
- How difficult is Oedipus Rex?
- Intermediate. A mid-length play; about an hour of reading.
- Can I read Oedipus Rex for free?
- Oedipus Rex is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription, and completing an earlier Quest's Mastery. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 2 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. One opens in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Sophocles
Sophocles was one of classical Athens' great tragedians. His surviving plays include Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, works that shaped dramatic structure, moral conflict, and the language of tragic recognition.
“What law must a person obey when every choice destroys something sacred?”
Sophocles gives Nexus tragedy at full force: compressed action, terrible knowledge, public conflict, and characters who discover too late what their choices mean.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Oedipus Rex is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.