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Sphinx. 8802: Siddende Sfinx fra Aigina, graesk ca 470 f.Kr. Athen Nationalmuseet (Royal Cast Collection, Copenhagen).
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The Sphinx is the monster with a riddle.
The Sphinx comes to Thebes
When King Laius 1 of Thebes was murdered,
along with his herald, by an unknown in a Phocian
road, the king's brother-in-law Creon 2 came to power. It
is during this first regency of Creon 2 that the Sphinx
came to Boeotia and Thebes, some say sent by Hera, others by Hades, and systematically started ravaging the fields and gobbling up people. The Sphinx (who some call Phix) had the face of
a woman, the breast, feet and tail of a lion, and
the wings of a bird. She had learned a riddle from
the MUSES, which she
chanted in inharmonious songs, and sitting on Mount
Phicium, propounded it to any Theban willing to
take the risk of solving it. As she declared that
she would not depart unless anyone interpreted her
riddle, Creon 2, in
accordance with an oracle, issued a proclamation
promising that he would give the kingdom of Thebes and his sister
Jocasta in marriage to the person solving the
riddle of the Sphinx.
The riddle
The chance to get both kingdom and queen tempted
many. But the Sphinx had also declared that she
would destroy whoever failed to give the correct
answer. And while nobody was able to give the
correct answer, she devoured the candidates one by
one. This was the riddle of the Sphinx (very easy
for those who already know it):
"What is that
which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and
two-footed and three-footed?" (Apollodorus, Library 3.5.7).
When many had already perished, Oedipus, having heard
the proclamation, came to Thebes, and meeting the
Sphinx, gave the right answer, declaring that the
riddle referred to man; for as a little child he is
four-footed, as an adult two-footed, and as an old
man he uses a staff as a third limb. The Sphinx kept her promise, for on hearing the
solution to her riddle, she threw herself from the
citadel and died. In this way Oedipus became king of Thebes, and by marrying
his own mother Queen Jocasta, he unwittingly
fulfilled the oracles that had declared that he
would kill his father and lie with his mother.
Another story
Some are not satisfied with this account, which they find to be a product of wild imagination. For who has seen sphinxes ravishing citizens and eating them raw, destroying fields, and chanting childish riddles on the top of a mountain or from a citadel? So, believing the Sphinx can be easily
explained, they, much like Oedipus, answer this
riddle by making up their own mature stories, which
they find so perfectly rational, that even a child
could inmediately grasp it. So for example, some have affirmed that the
Sphinx came with a fleet on a piratical expedition,
and having put in at Anthedon, she seized a
mountain, and used it for plundering raids. Oedipus then came with a
Corinthian army, and put an end to this
unconfortable guerrilla warfare. Others assert that the Sphinx was just a woman.
According to them, she was the lovely daughter of
King Laius 1. He was so
fond of her that he told her the secret
oracleonly known to kingsthat Delphi had delivered to Cadmus, the founder of Thebes. Laius 1 had many sons by
concubines, they say, but the oracle applied only
to Jocasta and her sons. So when any of her
brothers came in order to claim the throne, she
would say that if they really were sons of Laius 1 they should be
acquainted with the oracle. So they were asked, and
when they could not answer she put them to death as
potential usurpers on the ground that they had no
valid claim to the kingdom, or to relationship. Oedipus, they affirm,
was able to give the right answer because he had
been told the oracle in a dream.
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