Jocasta
Iokaste
Queen of Thebes, sister of Creon, wife first of Laius and then — in disastrous ignorance — of her own son Oedipus. Homer *Odyssey* 11.271–280 calls her Epicaste, the older name preserved in epic; the Attic tragedians standardise the name as Jocasta (Sophocles *Oedipus Tyrannus* throughout). In Homer she hanged herself when the truth came out but Oedipus continued to rule Thebes afterward without self-blinding. In Sophocles she hanged herself in the palace bed-chamber from a twisted noose of swinging cords (πλεκταῖσιν αἰώραισιν, *OT* 1264); her son and husband, finding her, took the golden brooches from her robes and stabbed out his own eyes (*OT* 1237–1285). In Euripides *Phoenissae* 1–87 + 1455–1472 she survives the revelation into a later generation, keeping the city intact through the quarrel of her two sons Polynices and Eteocles and at last killing herself over their bodies when the brothers kill each other at the seventh gate.
Origin
Daughter of Menoeceus of Thebes, sister of Creon (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 3.5.7); first wife of Laius, later — in ignorance — wife of her own son Oedipus.
