Sphinx
Links to all Creatures and Monsters
The Sphinx was the daughter of Typhon. As was her father, she too was a strange looking creature. She had the body of a lion, wings of a bird, and the face of a woman. Hera, or Hades, sent the Sphinx to plague the city of Thebes. She sat on a rock of Mt. Phicium, north of Thebes. The Sphinx was told to tell a riddle to every passerby and if they could not answer it correctly then she would eat them. The riddle was, "What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at midday, and three in the evening?" No one could answer this question except Oedipus. Oedipus answered, "a man because a man crawls as a baby, walks upright as an adult, and needs the aid of a cane in old age." This was the correct answer and the Sphinx was so distraught by the correct answer that she threw herself from the rock refusing to use her wings where she sat. Oedipus was proclaimed the king of Thebes.

ACTIVITIES:
ActivitySphinx activity

KEY TEST WORDS:
Sphinx was a female monster with the body of a lion, the head, and breast of a woman, and the wings of a bird. She had a riddle which was solved by Oedipus, whose name translates to mean "swollen foot."

RedïCreatures and Monsters Fables   Perge

Footnotes:
Oedipus received the prize offered to the man who should succeed in getting rid of the Sphinx which was the hand of Jocasta, the widow of Laios, along with the throne of Thebes. Oedipus fulfilled the oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Read about this terrible tragedy reproduced on the Athenian stage with all the poetic power of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

SOURCES:
Jane Smith
Edith Hamilton's Mythology
Bulfinch's Mythology
"Manual of Mythology" by Alexander S. Murray.

Copyright © 2008, KET Webmaster