EDIPPE, EDIPPUS. Oedipus, son of Laius, king of Thebes, was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Warned by the Oracle at Delphi that his son would kill him, Laius had the infant Oedipus exposed on Mount Cithaeron, a spike driven through his ankles. A shepherd herding the flocks of King Polybus of Corinth found him and took him to the king, and the queen reared him as her son. When Oedipus became a young man, he consulted the Oracle, which told him he would kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified at such a fate, Oedipus ran away from home, thinking that Polybus and his wife were his parents. On the way to Thebes, he killed Laius in a chance encounter, not knowing who he was; after solving the riddle of the Sphinx, he was rewarded with the hand of the queen in marriage. In time, another plague ravaged Thebes, and Oedipus learned that the cause was to be found in the royal house. Then it was revealed that Oedipus had indeed killed his father and married his mother. His mother Iocasta, learning that Oedipus was her son and husband, hanged herself, and Oedipus blinded himself. The medieval sources are Statius's Thebaid, I.44-87, and the twelfth-century Roman de Thèbes, 1-518.

Criseyde and her friends read the story of Edippus, Tr II.99-102, in a volume with twelve "books," the number of books in Statius's Thebaid; Chaucer invented the scene, which does not appear in Boccaccio's Il Filostrato (1333-1339). Troilus complains that if Criseyde is taken from him he will see neither rain nor sunshine, but will live his sorrowful life in darkness, like Edippe, and die in distress, Tr IV.295-301. [Ethiocles: Layus: Polymyte]

Edippus, the French form in Roman de Thèbes 225, occurs medially, Tr II.102; Edippe, with elided final -e, occurs medially, Tr IV.300.