Research Results For 'Oedipus'

PETER ELMSLEY

Peter Elmsley was an English scholar. He was born in 1773 and died in 1825. Educated at Oxford, he was one of the original contributors to the Edinburgh review, and wrote occasionally, at a subsequent period, in the Quarterly. He finally settled at Oxford, on obtaining the headship of St Alban Hall and the Camden professorship of ancient history in 1823. He published editions of the OEdipus Tyrannus (1811), Heraclidae (1815), Medea (1818), Bacchae (1821), and OEdipus Coloneus (1823).
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ANTIGONE

In Greek mythology Antigone was a daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. She was celebrated for her devotion to her father and her brother Polynices.
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ETEOCLES

In Greek mythology, Eteocles was a son of the incestuous union of Oedipus and Jocasta and brother of Polynices. He denied his brother a share in the kingship of Thebes, thus provoking the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, in which he and his brother died by each other's hands.
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ISMENE

In Greek mythology, Ismene was the youngest child of Oedipus and Jocasta, and the sister of Antigone, Eteocles and Polynices. When Antigone proposed to bury Polynices against King Creon of Thebes' orders, Ismene refused to help, but when Antigone was arrested and charged with the burial, she tried to share the blame, only to be rejected contemptuously by her sister.
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JOCASTA

In Greek mythology, Jocasta was the daughter of Menoeceus, sister of Creaon and the wife of Laius the king of Thebes by whom she bore Oedipis. After unwittingly murdering Laius she unwittingly married and had incest with her son Oedipus, bringing a plague on Thebes, and bearing him two sons: Eteocles and Polynices and two daughters: Antigone and Ismene. Her father sacrificed himself to rid Thebes of the plague. Jocasta hanged herself when she learned the truth of her marriage to Oedipus.
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LAIUS

Laius was the king of Thebes and father of Oedipus.
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OEDIPUS

Oedipus was the son of Laius. The Delphic oracle foretold that Laius would be killed by his son, so
Oedipus was abandoned on mount Cithaeron with a nail through his feet. However, he was found by a shepherd and raised by Polybus. Hearing that he would kill his father, Oedipus left Corinth and met Laius on his travel. He killed him in an argument not knowing who he was.
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POLYBUS

Polybus was king of Corinth. He raised Oedipus as his own son.
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POLYNICES

In Greek mythology, Polynices was a son of Oedipus. He and his brother Eteocles were supposed to rule Thebes in alternate years, but Eteocles refused to relinquish the throne, and Polynices sought the help of Adrastus.
Polynices and Eteocles killed each other in single combat.
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SPHINX

The Sphinx is a composite monster which appears in both Greek and Egyptian mythology. Both sphinx have the body of a lion and the head of a man - though the Egyptians had also two other sphinx with the head of a ram or a hawk. The Greek sphinx has wings, the Egyptian does not. In Greek mythology, the Sphinx posed a riddle to all who sought to pass. This riddle was at last explained by Oedipus, where upon the Sphinx destroyed itself. The Egyptian Sphinx was deemed to represent a real creature fabled to haunt the deserts, and was a god of wisdom and knowledge.

The oldest example of a statue of a sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Gizeh, in lower Egypt. This is a recumbent image of a man-headed lion, hewn out of a rocky knoll near the pyramid of Khafra. It is 57 meters long, the head nine meters long, the face four meters wide, and the height to the top of the head is 20 meters. The features were originally painted red, but were marred by mediaeval Mameluke vandals. Portions of the beard and uraeus are in the British Museum. In front of the breast Thothmes IV set up a granite slab, mentioning Khafra's name, to commemorate the digging of the image out of the drifted sand. Worshipped as Harmachis, there are the remains of an open-air temple between the paws, with an altar dating to Roman times.

The next oldest pair of sphinxes are a granite pair two meters long, bearing the name of Pepi I, of the Vith dynasty. Several examples from Tanis , once regarded as of Hyksos origin, are attributed to Amenemhat III. Under the New Empire avenues of sphinxes, mostly recumbent rams or ram-headed lions (crio-sphinx), were erected at Thebes from temple to temple. An unfinished Sphinx of that period was found in the Gebel Silsila quarries.
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