Oedipus Rex

Many years after Oedipus famously solved the riddle of the Sphinx and ascended to the throne, a curse descends upon Thebes in the form of a terrible plague. This persistent blight ravages the land: crops wither in the fields, livestock succumbs to sickness, and families lose women and children. In this dire time, Creon, Oedipus's brother, returns from the Oracle of Delphi. He brings news of a cure: the plague will lift once the murderer of the late King Laius is identified and banished from the city. To save his people, Oedipus embarks on a quest to uncover the killer's identity. However, as he delves deeper into his investigation, he begins to unearth shocking revelations about his own origins, and of the prophetic actions that brought the curse. Oedipus Rex was written for a festival competition, and is thought to have been first performed around 467 BC. While it didn't win the competition, Aristotle considered it to be the play that best followed his outline for how drama should be composed. Today, it is widely regarded as one of the greatest plays-and perhaps stories-ever written. A chilling investigation into guilt and fate, Oedipus Rex remains one of the most devastating tragedies ever staged. The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)