s beset by a monster, the Sphinx, and the city was stricken with famine because no one could get past the monster. Oedipus, Laius' son, was not dead, and when grown to manhood he came to Thebes and answered the riddle of the Sphinx, thus destroying its power. He then slew his father and married his mother without knowing that this was what he was doing, though he, like his father, had been warned that this would happen (Hamilton 254-257).
After the revelation of the truth in the first play, Oedipus, blinded by his own hand, is left without a home, left to wander as part of his punishment. By the beginning of Oedipus at Colonus, considerable time has passed since the events in the first play. The action of this play centers not on continuing the wanderings of Oedipus but on ending them, and this is related to the affirmation of certain social institutions because whichever city--Thebes or Athens--that becomes the final resting place of Oedipus will gain power from his presence. Oedipus wants to be given asylum by Athens so he can fulfill a prophecy and rest at Colonus, but Creon, now the king of Thebes, wants to bring Oedipus back to the city he once ruled.
As the play opens, oedipus is still wandering, now a very old man led by his daughter, Antigone. Arriving at Colonus, in the sacred grove, Oedipus immediately expresses his desire to remain there and begs the stranger who arrives not to drive him out. Oedipus calls on the gods to fulfill the prophecy:
For Phoebus when he prophesied these horrors,
those many horrors for me, yet said at the last
I should find rest here, in this final country,
when I should gain the haunt of the dread Goddesses,
a place of hospitality for strangers (lines 99-103).
The wanderer in this play begins as a suppliant begging to be allowed to remain at Colonus, but during the course of the play the political importance of Oedipus is made clear so that he becomes a savi...