Charles Jalabert Charles Jalabert Charles François Jalabert (1819–1901) was a French painter in the academic style. He rapidly gained renown as an artist among Parisian high society in the second half of the 19th century and attended the salon of Madame Sabatier. Some of his works are now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes. Jalabert was born in Nîmes. One of his most famous works was the oil on canvas painting called "The Plague of Thebes". The painting referred to the Athenian tragedy 'Oedipus Rex' by Sophocles. Thebes is ravaged by plague as a result of the corruption in the place
Oedipus Rex and Thebes were the major focus of Greek epic poetry. The events surrounding the Trojan War were chronicled in the Epic Cycle, of which much remains, and those about Thebes in the Theban Cycle, which have been lost. The Theban Cycle recounted the sequence of tragedies that befell the house of Laius, of which the story of Oedipus is a part. Homer's "Odyssey" (XI.271ff.) contains the earliest account of the Oedipus myth when Odysseus encounters Jocasta (named Epicaste) in the underworld. Homer briefly summarises the story of Oedipus, including the incest, patricide, and Jocasta's subsequent suicide. However, in the Homeric