Oedipus at Colonus sons, in the end Oedipus is accepted and absolved by Zeus. In the years between the play's composition and its first performance, Athens underwent many changes. Defeated by the Spartans, the city was placed under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, and the citizens who opposed their rule were exiled or executed. This certainly affected the way that early audiences reacted to the play, just as the invasion of Athens and its diminished power surely affected Sophocles as he wrote it. The play contrasts the cities of Athens and Thebes quite sharply. Thebes is often used in Athenian dramas as
Oedipus Rex drunken guest on the other hand: you are not your father's son defines Polybus as only a foster father to Oedipus. The two wordings support each other and point to the "two set of parents" alternative. Thus the question of two set of parents, biological and foster, is raised. Oedipus's reaction to the Oracle is irrational: he states he did not get any answer and he flees in a direction away from Corinth, showing that he firmly believed at the time that Polybus and Merope are his real parents. "The scene with the drunken guest constitutes the end of Oedipus'