Jocasta

Given in marriage to the savior of Thebes after the Sphinx’s defeat, Jocasta bore four children to Oedipus before the truth surfaced. Sophocles gives her the tragedy’s swiftest arc: from soothing skepticism about oracles, through dawning certainty, to the plea — “seek no further, I beg you” — and the noose. Homer’s Odysseus meets her shade, under the older name Epicaste, in the underworld.