Jocasta

Jocasta, also known as Jocaste or Epikasté, is a character in Greek mythology. Daughter of Menoeceus of Thebes and sister of Creon and Hipponome, she marries King Laius and becomes the Queen of Thebes, Greece. Before their first child is born, her husband consults an oracle, which divines that their son is destined to kill his father. Hence, when they have their first child, a boy, Laius pierces the feet of the baby and gives him to a herdsman to kill him outside of the city. (In some versions of the myth, Laius abandons the baby outside the city, and the herdsman finds him by chance.)

The herdsman takes him to King Polybus of Corinth, and the childless couple names the boy Oedipus and raises him as their own child. After he grows up, Oedipus is also told of the prophecy that he is going to kill his father and sleep with his mother. He then leaves Corinth for Thebes in the hope that he can avoid the prophecy. However, he gets involved in a dispute with King Laius as he is traveling, and kills him without realizing that Laius is his true father. The widowed Jocasta then marries Oedipus, not recognizing him as her own son. From her son Oedipus, she gives birth to Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices, and Ismene.

In the Sophocles version of the story, when Jocasta discovers that she married her own son and bore children from him, she commits suicide by hanging herself, and Oedipus pierces his eyeballs with her brooches. In the Euripides version in Phoenician Women, Jocasta commits suicide by stabbing herself in the throat with a sword upon witnessing the death of her sons (and grandsons) Eteocles and Polynices, who slay each other in a battle for Thebes. In this version, Jocasta is described as an optimistic rationalist. She appeals to traditional wisdom and sophisticated theorizing about the order of things in her vain attempt at reconciliation between her two sons to avoid the approaching calamity.