OEDENBURG, a town of Hungary, on an extensive plain, 3 miles W. of the Neusiedler See and 48 miles S. by E. of Vienna. It is one of the most beautiful towns in Hungary, and has manufactures of candied fruits, sugar, soap, etc., and a large trade in wine, corn, and cattle, the neighborhood being rich and well culti vated. The Roman town of Scarabantia here was one of considerable importance. Pop. about 35,000.
cEDIPUS, in Greek legend the son of Laius, King of Thebes, who, after being married to Jocasta, consulted the oracle, which informed him that he was doomed to die by the hand of his own son. To prevent so fearful an accident, he ordered. his wife, as soon as CEdipus, the child was born to destroy him. She secretly sent the child away, by a confidential servant, with a command to expose it in some place where it would meet with a protector—instead he bored the feet of the child and hung him on a tree on Mount Cithxron. He was discovered by a shepherd, who carried him home and adopted him as his own son. As he grew up, the talent he displayed enabled him to outstrip all his companions who taunt ed him with the baseness of his birth. Doubting the truth of the information as to his being illegitimate, CEdipus, so called on account of the deformity of his feet, resolved to proceed to Delphi to con sult the oracle, and was told that if he returned to his home he would become his father's murderer. Knowing no father but the man who had adopted him, he turned from Corinth and, in a narrow pathway, he met his father Laius in his chariot. Being insolently ordered to
make way, and refusing, a contest en sued, in which the decree of the oracle was verified by CEdipus slaying both Laius and his attendant. Proceeding to Thebes, he was attracted by the enigma proposed by the Sphinx, and which he determined to solve—as Creon, who had succeeded Laius, promised any one who should succeed in doing so the crown of Thebes as a reward. The enigma was this: "What animal in the morning walks on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening on three?"—which CEdipus ex plained by saying it was man, who, in his infancy, or in the morning of his life, crawls on his hands and feet; in his man hood, or the noon of his age, he stands erect and goes on two feet; and in old age, or the evening of his days, he sup ports his trembling limbs with a staff. This being the true explanation resulted in the death of the Sphinx, and the ac cession of CEdipus to the throne of Thebes, he marrying Jocasta, his own mother. In his endeavors to find the murderer of Laius, he first became aware that the stranger he had encountered and killed was his father. His remorse was so great that he voluntarily deprived himself of sight and banished himself from his kingdom.