Laius

King of Thebes, son of Labdacus, grandson of Polydorus, great-grandson of Cadmus — fourth in the royal line of the founding-house. His reign is defined entirely by the Delphic oracle that told him he must beget no son, for any son born to him would kill him; Aeschylus made the warning the pivot of the lost Laius-Oedipus trilogy that preceded *Seven Against Thebes*. He disobeyed the oracle in wine, fathered Oedipus by his wife Jocasta, pierced the child's ankles with a brooch-pin, and gave him to a herdsman to expose on Mount Cithaeron. Years later on the road from Delphi, at the triple-way junction called the Schiste Hodos, he struck a young traveller who refused to yield the way; the traveller struck back and killed him with all his company except one servant — the survivor whose later testimony, before Oedipus the king of Thebes, would close the investigation Sophocles dramatises.

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