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Oedipus Rex is widely regarded as one of the greatest plays, stories, and tragedies ever written. [21] [22] In 2015, when The Guardian ' s theatre critic Michael Billington, selected what he thinks are the 101 greatest plays ever written, Oedipus Rex was placed second, just after The Persians. [23]
Patricide (or paternal homicide) is the act of killing one's own father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater (father) and the suffix -cida (cutter or killer). Patricide is a sub-form of parricide, which is defined as an act of killing a close relative. [1] In many cultures and religions, patricide was considered one of the ...
Oedipus then became king of Thebes, as husband of the widowed Jocasta. The couple had four children, including two sons, Polynices and Eteocles. When the seer Teiresias revealed Oedipus' horrible crimes - patricide, regicide and incest, no less - Oedipus was forced to abdicate. Jocasta killed herself, and Oedipus was shunned by his own children.
Oedipus (UK: / ˈ iː d ɪ p ə s /, also US: / ˈ ɛ d ə-/; Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes.A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family.
Many years later, after Oedipus won the kingship of Thebes by defeating the Sphinx, a plague attacked Thebes. King Oedipus, in his effort to find the cause of plague due to a patricide, revealed that he was told in his teen years that he was destined to murder his father, and sent a spy to Corinth to see who was currently on the throne.
Oedipus describes the riddle of the Sphinx by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, c. 1805. In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development.
Because ancient Greek drama involved only three actors (the protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist) plus the chorus, each actor often played several parts.For instance, in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, the protagonist would be Oedipus, who is on stage in most acts, the deuteragonist would be Jocasta (Oedipus' mother and wife), and the tritagonist would play the Shepherd and Messenger.
The play opens with a summary of the story of Oedipus and its aftermath told by Jocasta, who in this version has not committed suicide.She explains that after her husband blinded himself upon discovering that he was her son, his sons Eteocles and Polynices locked him away in hopes that the people might forget what had happened.