Sphinx
The Sphinx's riddle — "What walks on four legs, two legs, then three?" — is the most famous riddle in Western civilisation, a question about human nature itself.
The Myth of Sphinx
The Sphinx's riddle — "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" — seems deceptively simple. The answer is Man: crawling as infant, walking upright in prime, and using a cane in old age. But the riddle is a meditation on human frailty that the Greeks considered profound. Oedipus, who solved it, understood humanity in the abstract but failed to know himself — the supreme Greek failure. Apollo's oracle at Delphi had warned him he would kill his father and marry his mother. The riddle the Sphinx posed was answered; the riddle of Oedipus's identity was not. This is why the myth resonated from Athens to Thebes to Corinth: knowledge without self-knowledge destroys.
Symbols
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth. See our full guide to English words from Greek mythology.
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Sphinx
🐉 creatureRiddler and strangler of Thebes
The Greek Sphinx was a winged monster with the head of a woman and the body of a lion who posed a deadly riddle to all who approached Thebes.
Sphinx
🐉 creatureRiddling monster with a lion body and human head
A creature with the body of a lion, wings of an eagle, and head of a woman. The Sphinx terrorized Thebes with her deadly riddle until Oedipus solved it.
Sphinx
🐉 creatureGuardian riddle-asker
The Sphinx combined Egyptian monumental sculpture with Greek narrative — in Egypt a guardian, in Greece a deadly riddler whose defeat by Oedipus unlocked Thebes' greatest tragedy.
Oedipus Cycle
💭 conceptNarrative
The interconnected myths tracing the cursed lineage of Oedipus from prophecy to tragic fulfilment
Centaurs
🐉 creatureHalf-human, half-horse beings
A race of beings with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse. Most were wild and unruly, but the wise Chiron was the exception — teacher of heroes.
Cadmean Vixen
🐉 creaturecurses,beasts
A supernatural vixen cursed to never be caught, sent to terrorise the people of Thebes as divine punishment — an uncatchable fox that had to be fed a child each month.
Graeae
🐉 creaturesharing
Three ancient sisters who shared one eye and one tooth among them, coerced by Perseus into revealing the location of the Gorgons.
Perseus and Medusa
💭 conceptNarrative
The hero's quest to slay the mortal Gorgon and his ingenious use of divine gifts to accomplish the impossible
God of Messengers
💭 conceptMessages, travel, boundaries, commerce, thieves
Hermes serves as divine messenger and psychopomp, escorting both words and souls between worlds.
Teumessian Fox
🐉 creatureparadox, fate
A giant fox destined never to be caught, sent to ravage Thebes, creating an impossible paradox when pitted against Laelaps, the hound fated never to miss its prey.
Stheno
🐉 creatureimmortality
Eldest and most ferocious of the three Gorgon sisters, immortal unlike Medusa, who pursued Perseus after he beheaded her sister.
Creation of Man
💭 conceptNarrative
The mythological accounts of how humanity was fashioned from clay and endowed with life by the gods