The story of Oedipus is perhaps the best known of all the Greek legends. Not only has it been immortalized in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus—but thanks to Sigmund Freud, the name Oedipus has also acquired a significance far beyond that associated with it in antiquity. Oedipus is probably not someone whom you would identify as a “hero.” But he is.

Let’s consider the ways in which Oedipus fulfills the hero criteria. While his actual birth might not be so remarkable, the circumstances surrounding it are. The oracle tells Oedipus’ father Laius, the King of Thebes, that his son will kill him. When Oedipus is born, Laius ties his hands and feet and leaves him on a mountainside to die. A shepherd rescues Oedipus and brings him to the king of Corinth, who raises Oedipus. After reaching manhood, Oedipus sets out on a journey. He meets an old man at a crossroads who is attended by five servants. He gets into an argument with the old man, and kills him along with four of his servants. The old man, however, is his father Laius, but Oedipus does not learn this for many years.

Oedipus wanders to Thebes, where he meets the Sphinx, a terrible creature who guards the gates of the city. The Sphinx devours all those who pass by and cannot answer the riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night? Oedipus gives the correct answer—a human being, who crawls on all fours when young, then walks upright as a youth, then in old age uses a cane. The Sphinx is so distraught and angry when Oedipus answers the riddle that she kills herself. The Thebans, not knowing it is Oedipus who has killed Laius their king, reward him with an offer of marriage to Jocasta the Queen. Oedipus, unaware that Jocasta is his mother, marries her, and they have four children. After many years, a plague strikes the city, and the oracle proclaims that it will last until the murderer of Laius is discovered. Oedipus diligently begins the search. He finds that not only has he killed Laius, but also that he has married his mother. Jocasta kills herself when she learns these truths, and Oedipus puts his eyes out.

We see, then, that Oedipus fulfills the hero requirements because he overcomes obstacles, first at the hands of his own father, and then in the form of the Sphinx. Of the other hardships he faces, none is more painful than the discovery that he has killed his father, married his own mother, and fathered children by her.

The play concludes with the death of Oedipus in a suburb of Athens, to which he had wandered. His passing occurs “without pain”—it was “more than mortal, a miracle” (Classical Mythology by Mark P. O. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon. 6th ed. White Plains, NY: Longman Publishers, 1998. p. 307). With those words Sophocles clearly marks Oedipus as a hero, a mortal singled out by the gods and who, as an object of worship, achieved no small measure of immortality.