Family Tree

Ancient plays can be confusing.  Especially when you add all sorts of crazy incest in the play.  So I figured it might be helpful to clarify who's who in this play.  Oedipus is a decendant of Zeus on both sides of the family.  He's 9 generations down on his dad's (Laius') side and 7 generations down on his mom's (Jocasta's) side.  He married his mother and killed his father, which means that on top of all of the other messed up stuff going on, he has to reconcile the fact that he's his own stepfather.  Pretty heavy stuff.