LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Oedipus: Sons
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O[E]dipus had nasty parents who believed their local guru's prophesy that their son would cause their downfall. On the basis of that prediction, they decided that their son should die. They didn't have the gumption to do it themselves. They turned that nasty job over to the maid. Before that tho, probably out of sadism or temper tantrum, they nailed his ankles together. (Might as well have a little fun torturing a baby before getting rid of him.)
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In Oedipus at Colonus (Greek Oidipous epi Koloo) the old, blind Oedipus has spent many years wandering in exile after being rejected by his sons and the city of Thebes. Oedipus has been cared for only by his daughters Antigone and Ismene. He arrives at a sacred grove at Colonus, a village close by Athens (and the home of Sophocles himself).
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Oedipus was raised as a son by Polibus and Merope and grew to be a handsome, clever and brave young man, even though he walked with a slight limp from the wounds he suffered when his real parents pierced his feet. One day, while playing with his adolescent friends, he got into an argument with them. They insisted, as mean children sometimes do, that he was a fake son, and not the real child of Polibus and Merope.
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Euripides wrote ... an "Oedipus", of which only a few fragments survive.[17] The first line of the prologue recalled Laius' hybristic action of conceiving a son against Apollo's command. At some point in the action of the play, a character engaged in a lengthy and detailed description of the Sphinx and her riddle - preserved in five fragments from Oxyrhynchus, P.Oxy. 2459 (published by Eric Gardner Turner in 1962)[18]. The tragedy featured also many moral maxims on the theme of marriage, preserved in the Anthologion of Stobaeus. The most striking lines, however, state that in this play Oedipus was blinded by Laius' attendants, and that this happened before his identity as Laius' son had been discovered, therefore marking important differences with the Sophoclean treatment of the myth, which is now regarded as the 'standard' version. Many attempts have been made to reconstruct the plot of the play, but none of them is more than hypothetical, because of the scanty remains that survive from its text and of the total absence of ancient descriptions or resumés - though it has been suggested that a part of Hyginus' narration of the Oedipus myth might in fact derive from Euripides' play.
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Sophocles wrote Oedipus at Colonus when he was ninety and died before it was produced. While he was writing it, his sons tried to have him pronounced mentally unsound, so they could gain control of his financial affairs. In his defense, Sophocles read the choral ode in Scene III, which he’d just written. This ode is Sophocles’ final tribute to the hamlet he considered home. Needless to say, he proved himself innocent of the incompetence charge, and this confrontation with his sons may have left a bad taste in his mouth and colored his presentation of Oedipus’ retaliation against his own sons in the play. When Sophocles died in 406 BC, Dionysus himself was said to have guarded his funeral train along the road to Decelea north of Colonus.
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[T]he hell-born hero, golden-haired Polyneices, first played beside Oedipus a rich table of silver which once belonged to Cadmus the divinely wise: next he filled a fine golden cup with sweet wine. But when Oedipus perceived these treasures of his father, great misery fell on his heart, and he straight-way called down bitter curses there in the presence of both his sons. And the avenging Fury of the gods failed not to hear him as he prayed that they might never divide their father's goods in loving brotherhood, but that war and fighting might be ever the portion of them both.[7]
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