An oracle warned the King of Thebes named Laius.  The oracle told him that his newborn son would take his throne.  So he tied rope on the infant’s feet and hung him on a tree branch.  Luckily a shepherd found him and the shepherd cared for him.  Soon he became Oedipus or” swollen-foot."   Many years later, Laius and an attendant came upon a narrow road.  When a young man refused to move, the attendant was ordered to kill one of the young mans horses.   The young man was furious so he killed the attendant and Laius.  The young man was Oedipus. He  had just killed his own father.  Shortly after that incident in the city of Thebes there became a monster that infested the highroad.  The monster was called the sphinx.  It had the body of a lion, tail of a serpent, and head of a young maiden.  It would sit on a rock and when travelers came upon it the spinx would ask them a riddle.  The riddle was "What animal is that which in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening on three feet?   When someone did not answer correctly they would be killed.  No one had ever succeeded in answering the riddle correctly.  But one day Oedipus came.  He was not daunted by the alarming accounts.  When he reached the sphinx, the sphinx asked him the riddle.  Oedipus replied,  "Man, who in childhood creeps on hands and knees, in manhood walks erect, and in old age with the aid of a staff."  The sphinx was so mortified that she had been conquered, that she fell of the rock and perished.