The Story Archive

Oedipus at Colonus

Sophocles · 401 BCE · Play · Greek · Classical

Blind and years on the road, Oedipus is led by his daughter into a grove outside Athens and told that the ground belongs to the Furies. Word follows that Thebes wants him back on its border, since an oracle has made the place of his burial a protection to whoever holds it, and Creon and then his son Polynices arrive to bargain for the old man. Written in Sophocles' last years and staged after his death, it takes the polluted figure of the earlier play and makes him something two cities compete to own.

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