ocaste

Ocaste, also rendered Iocaste or Jocasta, is a figure in Greek mythology best known as the queen of Thebes. She is the wife of Laius and the mother of Oedipus; after Laius’s death and Oedipus’s rise to kingship, she becomes his wife, making Oedipus both son and husband in many tellings.

Her story is central to the Oedipus myth cycle and the broader Theban legend. According to the most familiar version, a prophecy warned that Laius’s son would kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this, Laius abandons the newborn Oedipus. Oedipus is saved, fulfills the prophecy by killing Laius at a crossroads, and later unknowingly marries Jocasta. The couple’s children are often named Polynices, Eteocles, Antigone, and Ismene in later traditions, though not all sources agree on the details.

Upon discovering the truth of these relations, Jocasta is said to have died by suicide, and Oedipus blinds himself in remorse. The character’s arc explores themes of fate, culpa (personal responsibility), and the limits of prophecy within human affairs. The tale has been transmitted primarily through Greek tragedy, notably in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, and has influenced later literature, philosophy, and psychoanalytic interpretations.

Ocaste/Jocasta is sometimes cited in translations under variant spellings, reflecting the name’s transmission across languages. In modern adaptations, she remains a symbolically potent figure representing the collision of human action with inexorable fate.