Myth · Greek

Sphinx

Greek mythology — monster of Thebes

In Greek myth the sphinx is a single female monster with a woman's head, a lion's body and an eagle's wings, sent to sit on a rock outside Thebes and put a riddle to every traveller, devouring those who failed. Oedipus answered it, the creature destroyed itself, and he was given the kingdom and the widowed queen — his own mother — as his reward. The Egyptian sphinx, by contrast, is male, wingless and benign.

How to spot them

▸A winged lioness with a woman's face, perched on a crag by the road
▸Quiz clue: 'Thebes', 'a riddle', 'four legs, two legs, three legs', 'Oedipus'
▸Female and winged, unlike the Egyptian kind
▸Killed herself the moment someone got the answer right

Stories & episodes

Put a riddle to travellers outside Thebes and ate everyone who failed

Sent by Hera, or by Ares, to punish the city

Four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening

The answer is man: crawling, walking, then leaning on a stick

Threw herself from her rock when a stranger finally answered correctly

In other versions Oedipus killed her outright

Solving her puzzle won a man a throne and, unknowingly, his own mother

Oedipus married Jocasta, the widow of the father he had killed at the crossroads

A second riddle about two sisters, each giving birth to the other

Day and night — hemera and nyx are both feminine in Greek

Ingres and Moreau both painted her interrogating a naked traveller

Ingres's Oedipus and the Sphinx (1808, Louvre) and Moreau's of 1864 (Metropolitan Museum)

Her name comes from a Greek verb meaning to squeeze or strangle

Sphingein — though the word may in fact be borrowed from Egyptian

Quick-fire facts

•The Greek sphinx is female and winged; the Egyptian sphinx is male, wingless and protective
•She is usually made a daughter of Orthrus and Echidna, or of Typhon
•The riddle is not in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, which assumes the audience knows it; it is given in full by Apollodorus and later writers
•The answer is 'man'
•Solving it made Oedipus king of Thebes and husband of Jocasta, setting up the tragedy
•Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BC) is the play Aristotle uses as his model tragedy in the Poetics
•The Naxian Sphinx, a marble column-top monument of about 560 BC, stands in the museum at Delphi
•The Great Sphinx of Giza — Egyptian, about 2500 BC — is a different creature altogether

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources

Aaron J. Atsma, the Theoi Project — The Sphinx
Apollodorus — The Library (Bibliotheca) Book 3.5 gives the riddle and the creature's parentage