In Chapter 1 of Pandora’s Jar I explored the problem of conflicting images of Pandora. When we come to Jocasta the problem is that we have virtually no images at all. She has a pivotal role in the story of Oedipus, the man who unwittingly murdered his father and then married his mother (Jocasta), which was the subject of Sophocles’ famous play, still performed today, Oedipus Rex. You would think there would be a few pots around with her picture on them. But Natalie Haynes could only find one and expert pot readers (Who knew that was a career?) think it may be from another play, though they cannot decide which one.

There is even argument over the sex of the children. Are these sons or daughters?

All these pictures are taken from Edithorial, a blog by classicist Edith Hall, who gives us an image of a boy and a girl from another Greek play, Alcestis by Euripides, helpfully captioned to tell us the boy is the one in a dress and the girl is semi-nude.

And who is this women, just out of shot on the other side of the jar?

The problem, as Haynes points out, is that Oedipus is such a central character to Sophocles that he gives Jocasta only 120 lines out of 1530 in the whole play and Oedipus has five times as many lines as anybody else. She gets more equal billing from other writers. But as we saw with Pandora most of the variations tend to be ignored and one story enters the modern consciousness. And this is Oedipus’ story, fixed forever by Freud and his Oedipal complex, making it all about the man.

But this had been going on for centuries, culminating in this painting, in 1871 in which Jocasta is not even named. She is just ‘the dead wife.’

Poor Oedipus. He may have solved the riddle of the Sphinx. But he really messed up in life and everybody else died.