Suicide of the Sphinx
“… a heavy calamity befell Thebes. For Hera sent the Sphinx…. She had the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion, and the wings of a bird. And having learned a riddle from the Muses, she sat on Mount Phicium, and propounded it to the Thebans.
“And the riddle was this:— What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?
“Now the Thebans … often met and discussed the answer, and when they could not find it the Sphinx used to snatch away one of them and gobble him up. When many had perished … Oedipus found the solution, declaring that the riddle of the Sphinx referred to man; for as a babe he is four-footed, going on four limbs, as an adult he is two-footed, and as an old man he gets besides a third support in a staff.
“So the Sphinx threw herself from the citadel.”
