Oedipus the King (also known as
Oedipus Rex) is a
Greek tragedy by
Sophocles about
Oedipus, a
mythical character who was exposed on a mountainside as an infant in an effort to avoid a prophecy that he would kill his father. However, having been spirited away to a far off land by a passing shephard and raised in the court of another king, he meets his father by chance on a road and, not recognizing him, gets into an argument with him and kills him. Later he meets and marries his mother; again, neither recognizes the other.
The play concerns Oedipus' discovery of what he has done and the consequences, which see him gouging out his eyes, and his mother and wife, Jocasta, hanging herself.
Oedipus the King is the first of Sophocles' three Theban plays.
See also: Oedipal