Cinyras And Oedipus Comparison

Oedipus the King by is a tragedy written in Ancient Greece by Sophocles in the 5th century BC and “Myrrha and Cinyras” is an excerpt from Metamorphoses written in Ancient Rome by Ovid. This essay will analyze the complexities of two different characters, Oedipus and Cinyras, who are in a similar situation. Oedipus is the titular character in Oedipus the King by Sophocles, a tragedy about a man who unintentionally kills his father and marries his mother, just as his fate dictates. Cinyras is a character from “Myrrha and Cinyras,” an excerpt about a young girl named Myrrha and her father, Cinyras. Myrrha knows that she is sleeping with her father, but Cinyras is unaware. Both Oedipus and Cinyras are kings who inadvertently commit incest; however,

Oedipus goes to a prophet to find out if he is adopted and who his real parents are, but learns about his curse that he is destined to marry his mother. Frustrated and devastated, he leaves his adoptive parents whom he thinks are his real parents. He leaves Korinth and live as far away from it as possible. This shows Oedipus’ attempt to prevent committing incest. He sacrifices being away from the people who he thinks are his biological parents to avoid his fate. He arrives in Thebes where he is seen as a hero for famously solving the riddle of Sphinx and becomes the King by marrying a widow Queen. “He’ll be shown father and brother to his own children, son and husband to the mother who bore him” (554-556). Many years after becoming the king, he starts to discover the truth just exactly what the Chorus reveals to its readers. The Queen he marries is actually his real biological mother and therefore, he commits suicide. He himself is not aware of what he has done, thus, he commits his sin

Cinyras indirectly receives a confession of admiration from a young woman at a time of loneliness and drunkenness. Having his guard down, he immediately asks the girl’s age to see if she is the same age as his Myrrha. This reveals that he desires to sleep with someone who reminds him of his own daughter. To make things more obvious, during their intercourse, “he called her ‘daughter’ while she called him ‘father,’ so the right names were attached to their impious actions” (562-563). Even though Cinyras is unaware that the girl is indeed his daughter, having a father-daughter scenario while having coitus shows an unacceptable repressed desire that he is trying fill in by sleeping with someone like his daughter. In addition, the ordering of who called who first depicts that it is actually Cinyras who initiates calling his partner as his daughter, an act that he would be disgusted to even think about had he not lust for his