Merope (Oedipus) eventually finds out that the old man whom he killed on his way to Thebes was his own biological father, King Laius, husband of Jocasta, and that he fulfilled the prophecy. Merope (Oedipus) In Greek mythology, Merope (; ) was Queen of Corinth, and wife of King Polybus. The royal couple adopted a baby found by shepherds and named him Oedipus. To avoid the prediction of an oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus goes in voluntary exile to Thebes. On his way he has a quarrel with an old man, and kills him, and
Greek mythology existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using Animism, assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the