Sphinx
The Riddler of Thebes
SFINKS
A lion with a woman's face who sat on the road to Thebes asking one question and killing everyone who missed it.
The Story
Lion-bodied, eagle-winged, and pitiless, she held the road into Thebes and put the same riddle to every traveller: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening. Wrong answers were strangled and eaten, her Greek name means the strangler.
Oedipus answered 'man', and she threw herself from the rock. Which solves Thebes's problem and starts his: the reward for the answer is the crown and the widowed queen, and the queen is his mother.
Did You Know?
- The Greek sphinx is female, winged, and murderous. The Egyptian one is male, wingless, and stationary. The Greeks borrowed the shape and changed everything else.
- Sophocles never states the riddle in Oedipus the King. Every audience already knew it, so the play only refers to it.
- Later sources give her a second riddle for anyone who solved the first: two sisters, each giving birth to the other. The answer is day and night.