The Attic cup, Oedipus and the Sphinx

Description

Interior of an Attic red-figure kylix (cup or drinking vessel), c. 470 BCE; in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, the Vatican Museums, Rome. The Sphinx was a Greek creature that had the body of a winged lion, and the face of a woman. She terrorized the city of Thebes like this: she would ask anybody traveling on the road to Thebes a riddle. If they answered it, she would let them go. However, if they didn't say the right answer, she would kill them. This continued for a long time, until one day, a stranger by the name of Oedipus encountered the Sphinx on the way to Thebes. The sphinx asked him this riddle: What creature goes on four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening? Oedipus correctly answered man. The answer to the riddle is man, since a man crawls on four feet when he is very young, walks on two feet in the middle of his life, and walks with the help of a cane near the end of his life.