Oedipus

When Oedipus was born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes, an oracle predicted he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, Laius ordered the infant exposed on a mountainside. But the shepherd tasked with the deed took pity on the baby and gave him to a childless couple in Corinth, who raised him as their own.

As a young man, Oedipus learned of the prophecy and fled Corinth, believing his adoptive parents were his birth parents. On the road, he quarreled with a stranger at a crossroads and killed him — not knowing the man was his true father, Laius. Arriving at Thebes, he solved the riddle of the Sphinx, saving the city. As reward, he was made king and married the widowed queen — his own mother, Jocasta.

Years of prosperity followed before a plague struck Thebes. Oedipus investigated and gradually uncovered the horrifying truth. Jocasta hanged herself. Oedipus, unable to bear looking upon the world he had unknowingly defiled, gouged out his own eyes and wandered Greece as a blind exile.