Oedipus solves the Sphinx’s riddle as she bars his way to Thebes. His success earns the Thebans’ gratitude, the kingship, and marriage to Jocasta; in the larger legend as presented by Sigmund Freud, that reward is bound to the identity and family history Oedipus does not know.

The Riddle and the Reward

After killing Laius in a sudden quarrel on the road, Oedipus reaches Thebes, where the Sphinx blocks his passage with a riddle. He solves it, and the Thebans choose him as their king in gratitude. They also present him with Jocasta’s hand in marriage, bringing the episode’s immediate sequence from a perilous encounter to civic recognition and authority.

What Oedipus Does Not Know

The account places this success within a history of mistaken identity. Oedipus has been abandoned as an infant because an oracle predicted that he would kill his father; rescued and raised as a king’s son at a foreign court, he later consults the oracle about his origins. Its warning leads him to flee the city he supposes to be his home, but he does not know that Laius, whom he kills on the road, is his father. Nor does he know that Jocasta, whose hand the Thebans give him, is his mother.

Place in the Tragic Sequence

The riddle’s solution brings Oedipus to the throne and into a marriage that the legend identifies as unwittingly with his mother. He rules for years in peace and dignity and has two sons and two daughters with Jocasta. The later outbreak of plague prompts renewed questioning of the oracle and begins the crisis at the opening of Sophocles’ tragedy: the Thebans learn that the plague will end when Laius’s murderer is driven from the land. The episode thus stands between the unrecognized acts that fulfill the oracle and the public inquiry that will expose them.

Significance in Freud’s Account

Sigmund Freud invokes the legend of Oedipus to argue that loving one parent and hostile wishes toward the other are not exclusive to psychoneurotics. He presents such impulses as part of childhood life more generally, which neurotic symptoms may reveal with greater intensity. The riddle episode belongs to the legend’s wider structure of knowledge and ignorance: Oedipus can solve the Sphinx’s challenge, yet remains unaware of his own origins and of what his victory has brought him.