Oedipus Rex Story Animated

Once upon a time, there was a young man named Oedipus, who believed that he was the only and well-beloved son of his parents, King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth. He loved them as they loved him. When a young drunkard taunted him, saying that he was not the true son of King Polybus, he was both furious and hurt. Likely, he put the most obvious interpretation on the talk, and thought the drunk was calling Merope an adulteress and Oedipus a bastard. He told the king and queen what he had heard. They expressed outrage, said it was a lie, and told him not to worry. But something in their faces, in their voices, troubled Oedipus. He believed that there was something they weren't telling him. He didn't press them. Perhaps he didn't want to hurt their feelings any further. Perhaps he was simply convinced that they wouldn't tell him the truth. Instead, he went on a solitary and secret journey to Apollo's Oracle in Delphi. And there, he asked about his parenting. The Oracle never lied, but it was often cryptic enough to be a dangerous guide of conduct. So it proved for Oedipus. The Oracle did not reassure him that he was Polybus' son, nor did it confirm his suspicions that he was not. Instead, it told him that he was due to a dreadful fate. He would kill his father, marry his mother, and produce children of incest. Children terrible to behold. The prophecy dismayed Oedipus, and he resolved to escape it at all costs. He left Polybus and Merope, left the kingdom that was to have been his. The kingdom that he loved, and resolved to live in perpetual exile rather than returning evil to the parents who had given him so much good. Despite these noble intentions, or maybe because of them, resentment burned in him. When he came to a crossroads not far from Delphi and found a chariot surrounded by attendants coming the other way, he didn't yield the road. The chariot driver shoved Oedipus, and Oedipus shoved back. Seeing that, the old man who rode in the carriage struck out hard with a goad, catching Oedipus a painful blow on the head. Oedipus was furious, and returned the blow with interest. The old man fell sprawling from his seat, clearly dead. At this, the driver and the attendants set on Oedipus, and he struck back to keep himself from being killed in revenge for the old man's death. He was angry, and he was young and strong, and maybe the God's hand was on him. He killed them all. He went on his way. That way took him to the city of Thebes, a proud and long-prosperous city which was then in a state of grief and fear. Their king, Laius, was newly dead, leaving no son to inherit his kingdom. And worse than that, as it seemed then, they were besieged by a man-eating monster whom no one had been able to kill or drive away. The Sphinx had the face of a woman, the wings of a great bird, and the body and claws of a lion, but she was larger and stronger than any mortal lion. Her voice, like her face, was human, or nearly so. This allowed her to play catlike with her victims. Rather than killing them at once, she would hold them almost gently in her great paws and promise to let them go if they could answer her riddle. No one had succeeded in guessing the right answer. They may have been somewhat distracted by the bloodstains on her shining fur and the human bones strewn outside the city gates. The remains of others would try it and fail to answer. The monster had not come within the city gates, but she prowled outside them, swift and silent, so that no one dared to come or go. The city was in danger of starving. Their regent, Priam, the brother of widowed Queen Jocasta, had promised the throne of Thebes to anyone who could rid the city of the Sphinx. Oedipus undertook the challenge. He had been trained to rule, but had lost the kingdom that should have been his because of his love and fear for his parents. And where else would the chance to rule present itself to a solitary wanderer? And he feared dying less than he feared living to fulfill the terrible prophecy. He went out to seek the Sphinx, and she found him and crooned her riddle to him as she had to many dead men. Could he tell her, she asked, the name of the animal that went on four legs at morning, two legs at midday, and on three in the evening? Oedipus was quick-minded as well as strong, and maybe the God's hand was on him again. He answered that the animal was man, who crawls in infancy, walks in the prime of life, and leans on a staff in old age. That was the right answer to the riddle. The Sphinx's great claws flashed, but this time they were turned, not on Oedipus, but on herself. Oedipus watched until her body lay still in the dust, and then he walked back to tell the people of Thebes that they were safe. They cheered him, they thanked the gods for him, and they rejoiced greatly as they took him for their king. The widowed queen Jocasta, who was still beautiful, though no longer young, welcomed him as her lord and husband. She also proved to be still fertile. She bore him two sons, Polyneices and Atiocles, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. The children grew strong and fair, and the city loved their lord, and it seemed to Oedipus that he had overcome his fate by his devotion, courage, and skill, turning the curse into a blessing. But when Polyneices and Atiocles were on the brink of manhood, another terror paralyzed the city, one that could not be destroyed by sword skill or word skill. The growing crops in the fields were struck with mildew, yielding no food to the farmers. Pregnant women miscarried or gave birth to dead children. Then death began to stalk the living as well. Overnight, healthy men and women developed high fevers and burned their lives away in incurable pain. The city mourned. Sacrifices were offered at all the altars of the gods, and fervent prayers were raised, and the people also sent a delegation to their king and savior to beg that he might save them again. Oedipus told them that he would do all he could, but the first need was for knowledge, and to that end he sent his brother-in-law Creon to seek help from Apollo's oracle. While he was still speaking to them, Creon returned, and there was light in his eyes and hope in his face. Apollo had told him that the plague on Thebes could indeed be cured and the Thebes would purge itself of blood guilt. What blood guilt? Oedipus asked. The guilt of the murder of their old king Laius, which had never been avenged, Creon said. Oedipus said vehemently that Regicide was hateful to all the gods and surely must be punished. Furthermore, he added, the man who had killed one king might kill another, and in simple self-preservation he was bound to seek out and punish a king-killer. But why hadn't someone done that long ago? Creon observed that they had been distracted, first by the terror of the Sphinx and then by joy at their deliverance. Oedipus summoned all the people to the palace. When they had assembled, he called down horrible curses on the murderer of Laius, and on anyone who concealed knowledge of that murderer or gave him shelter or any kind of comfort. Then he asked Creon if Apollo had told them anything about where to look for the murderer. Yes, Creon said, the Oracle declared the murderer to be within the city. Oedipus then asked what was known of Laius's death, where it had happened, and how. He was told that Laius died when he was on a journey with only a few attendants, one of whom who had escaped the robbers and brought word back to the city. Oedipus observed that it seemed a cold trail and hard to follow, but there was still hope. As well as dispatching Creon to the Oracle, he had sent to the prophet Tiresias, who might be able to tell them where to look. Tiresias came, a blind old man leading heavily on a staff. But when he heard Oedipus's voice and Oedipus's question, he shuddered and said that he should not have come. What was the good of knowing when the knowledge could be of no help? He would say nothing. Oedipus rebuked him for faint-heartedness and pointed out that they stood in desperate need of wisdom. Tiresias replied that speaking his wisdom could only do harm both to him and to the one who urged him to answer, so he would go home without further explanations. Maturity and long years of good fortune had not altogether assuaged Oedipus's fierce temper. He reviled Tiresias as a coward, as a traitor, as a heartless man, and finally said that Tiresias had probably instigated Laius's death himself, though as a blind man he probably wasn't capable of actually striking a death blow. Tiresias, old and wise as he was, had a temper of his own. He spat back that it was Oedipus himself who had defiled the land and brought the plague. This answer pleased Oedipus even less than Tiresias's silence had done. He accused Tiresias of plotting with Creon to overthrow him and give the throne back to Creon, and he threatened vague but dire punishments. He added more mocky words about Tiresias's blindness. Tiresias retorted that Oedipus had eyes but could not see himself or anything else clearly, that the threat to Oedipus and to the kingdom came not from Creon but from Oedipus himself, and that soon enough Oedipus himself would be poor and blind. Oedipus still spoke scornfully, but perhaps doubt touched his heart. He let the old man go home unharmed. But when Creon heard what he was accused of, he lost his temper, began by protesting his innocence and loyalty, and ended by telling Oedipus that he was a fool and no good ruler and that the city was Creon's as well as Oedipus's. These words were not calculated to allay Oedipus's suspicions. The two men were shouting at each other, and some feared that the words would pass to blows when Queen Jocasta hurried out from the palace to see what her husband and her brother were quarreling about. When she heard that the dispute had arisen from a prophecy, she chided them both for foolishness. Prophecies, she said, were meaningless. She thought so because her own first husband, Laius, had heard a prophecy that terrified him, and it had come to nothing. The prophecy said that his own son would kill him. He couldn't bring himself to stay out of her bed even for fear of that. But when their son was born, he took the infant, pierced his ankles, and tied them together with a leather cord, and gave him to a shepherd who was instructed to leave him in some wild and desolate place where the child would die of hunger or cold or be eaten by wild beasts and never return to do his father harm. Plainly it worked. The child naturally was never seen or heard of again, and Laius lived to be old and then got himself killed by strangers at a place where three roads met. Oedipus started at that, and Jocasta looked at him in puzzlement. A place where three roads met? he asked. Was she sure of that? What place might that be? It was near Delphi, she said. Oedipus's face grew paler. When? he asked. When did it happen? Not long, Jocasta said, before Oedipus arrived to save them from the Sphinx. How did she know where it had happened? he pressed. The servant who had survived the attack told her all about it, she said. He was a trustworthy man, though no longer a servant. Very early in Oedipus's reign, he had begged her permission to leave the city and become a shepherd in a remote area, and she had granted it. Oedipus, tense and sweating, urged that the man be called promptly, and he told Jocasta and the listening people about the old man in the chariot whom he had killed in a dispute over the right-of-way. She shook her head. No, it couldn't be the same man, she said. The servant said Laius was killed by strangers, plural. While they waited for the servant's return, another messenger, tired and travel-stained, hurried to the palace and sought audience with the king. He bore urgent news, he said, from Corinth. King Polybus had died, and the widow queen Merope implored her dear son to come home and to reign. Oedipus wept for Polybus's death, but he said also that at least he was glad to have escaped the prophecy which said he would destroy his body. Still, while Merope lived, there must be some danger of that other shameful prophecy coming true. What other prophecy? the messenger asked. Oedipus explained. He was offended at first when the messenger laughed. Had Oedipus really exiled himself from home all these years in fear of that? the messenger asked. It had been quite unnecessary, for Oedipus was no blood kin to either Polybus or Merope being a foundling. The messenger himself had received the child, who was later named Oedipus, in trust from another servant, and had taken him to the childless royal couple, who pitied him for his abandonment and his injured feet, and who vowed to raise him as their own son. Who was that other servant? Oedipus asked. The messenger described it, and someone in the watching crowd said that sounded like the same man who had brought word of Laius's death. Jocasta interrupted, telling Oedipus to inquire no further. Her words were calm, but her looks were wild and her voice unsteady. Oedipus thought she was afraid that he was lowborn and she'd feel ashamed by being his consort. He reproached her for her finicky pride. She hissed that he didn't understand anything, and she hoped he never would, and she ran into the house. The messenger, probably meaning to be reassuring, said there was no need to search for the servant who'd brought him the child. There the man was now, that shepherd who was coming toward them, led by one of the king's own servants. The messenger smiled, but the shepherd looked wary, and when the messenger started to ask him about the foundling child, the shepherd shouted at him to be quiet. Oedipus was angry now with the cold anger of fear. He told the shepherd that he intended to have the whole story. When the shepherd tried to refuse, Oedipus threatened him with torture. When he pleaded his old age, Oedipus called servants to twist his arms behind his back and hold him steady in case more forceful means of persuasion were required. The shepherd spoke then, bitterly but truthfully, telling Oedipus that he had the child from Jocasta's own hands, saying that he should be left to die rather than living to endanger his father. But the shepherd pitied the child and thought it best to take him far away and put him with kind working people, where he'd have a chance to live but would never bring danger to his father's house. And the kind working person he selected was the messenger, who, he had just learned, had brought the child to Polybus and Merope for fostering. Oedipus stared at the old man in horror, finally understanding. All things come true, he said hollowly. I married the woman I should not have married. I killed the man I should not have killed. He ran into the palace then to confront Jocasta, his mother and his wife, with his new knowledge. He found her dead. She had understood the truth earlier than he and had hanged herself. He stared bleakly at that sight, and then before the servants could restrain him, he blinded himself. When he stumbled back outside, his people shuddered at sight of him. He begged them to take care of his daughters, and for his own part either to kill him or to drive him out of the city. Like Orestes, he felt the curse closing in on himself, but hoped still to lift it from his native land. But Creon led him back into the palace, still wailing bitterly for his parents and his children and himself. So it was when Oedipus' grief and guilt were fresh. But as he stayed in the palace where Creon ruled and the plague abated, Oedipus consoled himself with the thought that none of his actions were really his fault. The god had foretold them all, and doubtless he'd had no chance of escaping his fate. Besides, he hadn't understood that the man he was killing was his father, or that the woman he was marrying was his mother. He began to think that he still did deserve room, honor, and gratitude in Thebes. Creon, seeing this, decided that Oedipus was no longer a useful object lesson in showing Oedipus' sons' unfitness to rule, and Creon ordered that the blind man should be driven out of the city. Oedipus' sons didn't protest, fearing to be banished with him. Oedipus' former subjects might pity him, but none of them were willing to share his exile or his curse. He would have stumbled in strange places, blind and alone, until he starved if his daughters had not come to his aid. Antigone, the elder, just come to the age when she might be called a woman, not a child, left Thebes with him, led him, supported him, begged for him, fed and tended him. His meanie, the younger girl, went to Delphi at her father's bidding to ask Apollo if there was any way for him to find mercy. The god's answer was riddling and strange, but it gave Oedipus some hope. His meanie went back to Thebes to pray for her father and sister, attend to any new developments that might make their homecoming possible, and send them word of what she heard. Oedipus and Antigone wandered for a long time, asking for little and generally getting less. Some people scorned their poverty and his blindness, and some held that any unfortunate man must be accursed, and the curse might infect anyone foolish enough to offer help. But others remembered that Zeus was said to protect suppliants who asked help in his name, and between one thing and another, Antigone was able to secure enough food to keep them both alive. Still, after years of wandering, no one would have taken her for a nobly-born woman of marriageable age, or seen in him the strong hero of Thebes. Their bodies were lean and hard, their clothes rags, their faces haggard. So matters stood when they approached Athens, which Oedipus began to believe was the place where Apollo had hinted he might find rest at last. Oedipus was exhausted before they reached the city gates. Antigone settled them on a convenient rock by the road and started off to ask if anyone would take in a blind beggar. But before she was out of hearing, a passerby called to her father that he was sitting in a dangerous and holy place and ought to get out of there at once. Oedipus had other ideas. If he was on holy ground, he said, he was clearly a suppliant under the protection of the gods of that place. Which gods were those, anyway? They were the Eumenides, the stranger told him, the Mercies, though in other places they might have other names. Perhaps Oedipus had heard the tale of Aristes. At any rate, it seemed he knew something of the Furies, and of the unwisdom of speaking of them by that name. He said that Apollo's oracle had told him to seek those goddesses out and promised he would find protection at their shrine. The stranger hurried back to the city bearing news of Oedipus, and the elders of Calamus, the settlement nearest the shrine, came out to meet him. They were firmer than the stranger had been in telling him to remove himself from hallowed ground at once, but they promised him that they would not then drive him away from their gates. So Oedipus came out and sat in a place that was not god-mine, and the elders asked him politely but firmly to explain who he was and where he had come from. He tried to decline answering, and for cause. When they insisted and he answered, they told him to leave at once and take his curse with him. Antigone pleaded with them, for her sake and for his, and for the love of the gods. The elders tried to argue that the love of the gods prompted them to drive notorious sinners away, but both Antigone and Oedipus answered firmly that the gods enjoined the protection of suppliants, and told the elders to call Theseus, the king of Athens under whose sway colonists came, to judge their case. The elders spoke doubtfully, and then agreed to send a messenger to Theseus. While they waited for him, someone else arrived unlooked for, Yzmini, Antigone's younger sister, travel-stained and on a sweating horse. She wept on seeing them, and said that it had been hard to track them. Why hadn't her brothers helped her, Oedipus asked. Yzmini said sadly that they were preoccupied with their own affairs. Polyneices and Aetiocles were men, not boys now, and each had decided that he had the right and the need to rule Thebes as their father had done. Aetiocles was willing to ally himself with Creon. The two of them together had prevailed, and Polyneices had been driven out of the city in disgrace. Polyneices hadn't wasted time in lamenting, going to Argos. He had married the Argive chieftain's daughter, and then encouraged the young men of the city to attack Thebes with him at their head, and he had found sympathetic hearing. War was brewing, and Yzmini didn't know what course the pity of the gods might take. What pity? Oedipus asked. Yzmini said that Apollo had spoken again, saying that Oedipus, in his helpless old age, would confer safety, success, and victory in war to those who took him in. This word had not come to Yzmini in private. All Thebes knew of it, and she expected a delegation was already on its way to bring him back. They would take him home? Oedipus asked. They would bury him in his native ground? Well, no, not that, she said. They meant to keep him somewhere outside the city, as he was still in exile and a man disgraced. But they meant to keep him close enough to keep them safe and bless them if the second oracle proved right, and to ward off the curse which it was said Oedipus's death would bring on Thebes if he died far off in exile. Oedipus's anger had not burnt out in his long years of wandering. He said he hoped that curse would strike both his sons, who had not helped or pitied him in his suffering. The elders of Colonus had heard Yzmini's tale, and they began to look more favorably on their guest. They sent Yzmini to make offerings to the Eumenides in atonement for her father's involuntary trespass, while Antigone and Oedipus waited for Theseus. Theseus came promptly and spoke kindly. He too, he told Oedipus, had been a homeless stranger, and while he was king today, he was still a mortal and knew he could count on the morrow no more than Oedipus. Therefore, he wished to be kind to other mortal exiles. Oedipus thanked him and asked Theseus to let him stay and rest at Colonus until he died, and to bury him there, and also to stop any Thebans from carrying him off unwillingly. Theseus agreed to all this, and set off for Athens to bring a guard of able-bodied men to help with the last part of the request. But other armed men came before the Athenian guard could return. Creon was at their head. Creon spoke softly, saying how he pitied Oedipus' wretchedness, and Antigone's singleness and vulnerability to predatory men, and promising to take them back with him. Oedipus said Creon had showed no care for his sufferings and dangers when he exiled him, and told Creon all Yzmini's message. Being blind, he didn't see some of Creon's guard departing at that word. Oedipus refused flatly to be taken back to him, but not into Thebes. Creon scolded him, and when that failed, he told him he was not really offering Oedipus a choice. Oedipus observed that it was hardly wise to forcibly carry off an old man under heaven's protection. Creon said that would hardly be necessary. His guards had already taken Yzmini, and would forthwith take Antigone, and Oedipus could wander without a guide or prop and die alone, or he could come with Creon like a good old beggar. The elders tried to intervene them, but Creon's men were young and full-armed, and they took Antigone away struggling and crying out for help. But Creon made the mistake of lingering a little way behind them to gloat, which allowed the old men to hinder his going until Theseus returned. Theseus was furious when he learned of Creon's deeds. Creon tried to explain that he was merely trying to take a wretch and curse-bringer off the hands of the virtuous Athenians, but Theseus was not impressed. He sent his soldiers galloping after Yzmini and Antigone, and followed more slowly with Creon in an armed guard, leaving Oedipus and the old men, who were his new hosts, to worry together. Theseus and the soldiers returned, bringing the girls with them unharmed, and also bringing a visitor far less welcome to Oedipus, his son Polyneices, the eldest, the exiled, whom they had found kneeling as a suppliant in Poseidon's temple, asking in the god's name for an audience with his father. Polyneices, like Creon before him, spoke of his compassion for his father and sisters, and then spoke feelingly of his own exile and the wrongs he bore. He urged that if only Oedipus would come with him, he would surely take a successful revenge for all their sakes, against Creon and the Thebans. Oedipus turned his head away and would not answer until Polyneices and Tigini and his hosts urged him to give an answer to the son who was begging now, as he himself had begged not long ago, and to have pity on a son who might appear on Phileo, remembering Oedipus and his own father. Thus urged, Oedipus gave an answer worse than silence would have been. Oedipus said bitterly that Polyneices, like Creon, had no sense of justice or mercy, but only of self-interest, that he had first abandoned his father, then sought to use him, and Oedipus cursed Polyneices to his face, wishing shameful death on him and Atiocles alike. Polyneices might have been as selfish as Creon, but he was somewhat less arrogant. He took his father's word as final, and as a sign of his doom. Turning to go, he asked Antigone to see that he was honorably buried after his father's curse killed him. Antigone went, and told him to avoid the need for burial by calling off his war against his own brother and his own people. But Polyneices refused, saying that if he did that, he'd be called a coward. But if they knew about the curse, Antigone urged, they weren't going to hear about it, Polyneices said, walking away. As he went, the sky darkened and the thunder rolled out overhead. Oedipus felt his death coming on him. He embraced his daughters for the last time and blessed them. Then he asked Theseus to take him away, and to bury him in a secret place which the gods would reveal. While his grave was kept secret, he said, the gods' protection would rest on Athens for his sake. Theseus went with him, and came back grave and wandering. He said that Oedipus, though blind, had led him unerringly to a place that was holy and deep, and had died there, suddenly and painlessly. He was buried in sacred ground, and the city would mourn for his sake. And his daughters, of course, would receive welcome and every care. Antigone stopped weeping long enough to thank him, and to refuse a resting place. She had work to do, she said. She had to return to Thebes and do what could be done to stop her brothers from killing each other. She went away still weeping, and Asmini followed her. But the elders of Colonus praised the gods who had led Oedipus to them and blessed them for his sake. If you want to learn more about what happened to Oedipus' children, check out our book, Greek Mythology, a captivating introduction to Greek myths of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters. It's available as an e-book, paperback, and audiobook. Also, make sure to grab your free mythology bundle e-book for free while it's still available. All links are in the description. As always, if you enjoyed the video, please hit the like button and subscribe for more videos like this.