Merope of Corinth

Adoptive mother of Oedipus at Corinth, named variously in the sources: **Merope** in the canonical Sophoclean tradition (*Oedipus Tyrannus* 775 'my mother the Dorian Merope' + 990 'Merope, the consort of Polybus' — two secure references in the Attic stage text); **Periboea** in Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 3.5.7 ('the neatherds of Polybus, king of Corinth, found the infant and brought it to his wife Periboea'); **Medusa daughter of Orsilochus** in Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 95, preserved in the Scholiast on Soph. *OT* 775 — three independent post-archaic sources, three independent names. Distinct from the Pleiad Merope (daughter of Atlas, wife of Sisyphus and mother of Glaucus) with whom the Corinthian queen is sometimes conflated by modern retellings but never by the ancient sources themselves. She is present in Sophocles only at a distance — Oedipus speaks of her affectionately as the mother he will not return to Corinth to risk marrying — and dies offstage, unseen, before the revelation.

Associated Places