The Oedipodea is a lost poem of the Theban cycle

Theban Cycle

The Theban Cycle is a collection of four lost epics of ancient Greek literature which related the mythical history of the Boeotian city of Thebes...

, a part of the Epic Cycle  . The poem was about 6,600 verses long and the authorship was credited by ancient authorities to Cinaethon , a barely known poet who lived probably in Sparta. Only three short fragments and one testimonium survived.

It told the story of the Sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

 and Oedipus

Oedipus

Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

 and presented an alternative view of the Oedipus

Oedipus

Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

 myth. According to Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

, Cinaethon states that the marriage between Oedipus

Oedipus

Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

 and his own mother, Jocasta

Jocasta

In Greek mythology, Jocasta, also known as Jocaste , Epikastê, or Iokastê was a daughter of Menoeceus and Queen consort of Thebes, Greece. She was the wife of Laius. Wife and mother of Oedipus by Laius, and both mother and grandmother of Antigone, Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene by Oedipus...

 (= Epicasta) was childless; his children had been born from another engagement with Euryganea , daughter of Hyperphas . That is all we know about these two characters.

A small glimpse of Cinaethon's style survives in Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

's On the Pythia's Oracles 407b: "he added unnecessary pomp and drama to the oracles".

Sources

• West, Martin L. Greek Epic Fragments. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press
  Harvard University Press
  Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
  
  , 2003, pp. 4–6, 38–42 and 250–251.