This way came Oedipus towards the city Thebes, and the Sphinx crouched,
face to face with him, and spoke the riddle that none had been able to
guess.

"_What animal is that which in the morning goes on four feet, at noon
on two, and in the evening upon three?_"

Oedipus, hiding his dread of the terrible creature, took thought, and
answered "Man. In childhood he creeps on hands and knees, in manhood he
walks erect, but in old age he has need of a staff."

At this reply the Sphinx uttered a cry, sprang headlong from the rock
into the valley below, and perished. Oedipus had guessed the answer.
When he came to the city and told the Thebans that their torment was
gone, they hailed him as a deliverer. Not long after, they married him
with great honor to their widowed queen, Jocasta, his own mother. The
destiny was fulfilled.

For years Oedipus lived in peace, unwitting; but at length upon that
unhappy city there fell a great pestilence and famine. In his distress
the king sent to the Oracle at Delphi, to know what he or the Thebans
had done, that they should be so sorely punished. Then for the third
time the Oracle spoke his own fateful sentence; and he learned all.

Jocasta died, and Oedipus took the doom upon himself, and left Thebes.
Blinded by his own hand, he wandered away into the wilderness. Never
again did he rule over men; and he had one only comrade, his faithful
daughter Antigone. She was the truest happiness in his life of sorrow,
and she never left him till he died.