Search Results: Oedipus rex

A red-figure tondo showing Oedipus and the sphinx of Thebes, from Vulci, 470 BCE. Vatican Museums, Rome.

Bell-Krater (mixing bowl) depicting the Theban Sphinx and Oedipus in the guise of a satyr. Greek, South Italian, Paestan, red-figure, 3rd quarter of the 4th century BCE. Attributed to Python. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Ajax is a play written by the 5th-century BCE Greek poet and dramatist Sophocles. Although Sophocles wrote at least 120 plays, only seven have survived. Of his surviving plays, the best-known is Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) - part of a...

Thebes is a town in central Greece which has been continuously inhabited for five millennia. It was an important Mycenaean centre in the middle to late Bronze Age and was a powerful city-state in the Classical period, participating in both...

A sphinx is a mythical creature with the body of a lion, most often with a human head and sometimes with wings. The creature was an Egyptian invention and had a male head - human or animal; however, in Greek mythology, the creature had the...

Electra is a play written by the 5th-century BCE Greek tragedian Sophocles. Similar to Aeschylus' Libation Bearers, Electra focuses on the return of Electra's brother Orestes from exile and the plot to murder their mother. Years earlier...

Greek tragedy was a popular and influential form of drama performed in theatres across ancient Greece from the late 6th century BCE. The most famous playwrights of the genre were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and many of their works...

Myths are a part of every culture in the world and are used to explain natural phenomena, where a people came from and how their civilization developed, and why things happen as they do. At their most basic level, myths comfort by giving...

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer best known for his works for the stage, such as the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and the groundbreaking The Rite of Spring. The modernist composer lived in Switzerland, France, and then...

The Cathars (also known as Cathari from the Greek Katharoi for “pure ones”) were a dualist medieval religious sect of Southern France which flourished in the 12th century and challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. They were also...