Œdipus, on hearing accidentally that he is a foundling, asks the Delphian oracle for his own parents, but receives the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. In the belief that this prophecy refers to his foster parents, he flees from Corinth to Thebes, but on the way unwittingly kills his father Laios. By solving a riddle, he frees the City from the plague of the Sphinx, a man-devouring monster, and in reward is given the hand of Jocaste, his mother, as well as the throne of his father. The revelation of these horrors, and the subsequent misfortune of Œdipus, were a favorite subject for spectacular display among the Greek tragedians. An entire series of Christian legends have been elaborated on the pattern of the Œdipus myth,[37] and the summarized contents of the Judas legend may serve as a paradigm of this group. Before his birth, his mother Cyboread, is warned by a dream that she will bear a wicked son, to the ruin of all his people. The parents expose the boy in a box on the sea. The waves cast the child ashore on the Isle of Scariot, where the childless queen finds him, and brings him up as her son. Later on, the royal couple have a son of their own, and the foundling, who feels himself slighted, kills his foster brother. As a fugitive from the country, he takes service at the court of Pilate, who made a confidant of him and placed him above his entire household. In a fight, Judas kills a neighbor, without knowing that he is his father. The widow of the murdered man, namely his own mother, then becomes his wife. After the revelation of these horrors, he repents and seeks the Saviour, who receives him among his apostles. His betrayal of Jesus is known from the Gospel. The legend of St. Gregory on the Stone—the subject of the narrative of Hartmann von Aue—represents a more complicated type of this mythical cycle. Gregory, the child of the incestuous union of royal lovers, is exposed by his mother in a box on the sea, saved and raised by fishermen, and is then educated in a convent for the church. But he prefers the life of a knight, is victorious in combats, and in reward is given the hand of the princess, his mother. After the discovery of the incest, Gregory does penance for seventeen years, on a rock in the midst of the sea, and he is finally made the Pope, at the command of God. (Compare Cholevicas, “History of German Poetry, According to the Antique Elements.”)