In Oedipus, Sophocles created a character who was the essence of his age, a figure of such symbolic potency that he appears to later centuries not only as a historical but as a contemporary phenomenon. This book is a study of the play, Oedipus Tyrannos, in terms of both the age which produced it and the double existence of the hero in his time and out of it. It attempts to answer the question of what Oedipus Tyrannos meant to the Greeks, and it examines its meaning for the reader of today. The author bases his study on a careful analysis of the play's vocabulary and imagery, and seeks to make clear for the reader who does not know Greek may minute and technical point of interpretation. His book is a key to the understanding of Oedipus, the man and the play. Bernard M. W. Knox is associate professor of classics at Yale. "A superb critical and textual investigation."-New York Times.