Epicaste

Epicaste is mother of Œdipus, who marries her after slaying his own father who is her husband, both deeds being done in ignorance; thus the closest domestic ties are whelmed into guilt and tragedy, whereof Sophocles has made a world-famous use, in his two dramas on the subject of Œdipus.

The two chief women of the group are Epicaste and Chloris, the one supremely tragic in her motherhood, the other reasonably happy.

Thus the two women, Epicaste and Chloris, have opposite destinies, and show the sharp contrasts of life.

I also saw fair Epicaste mother of king Oedipodes whose awful lot it was to marry her own son without suspecting it.

He married her after having killed his father, but the gods proclaimed the whole story to the world; whereon he remained king of Thebes, in great grief for the spite the gods had borne him; but Epicaste went to the house of the mighty jailor Hades, having hanged herself for grief, and the avenging spirits haunted him as for an outraged mother—to his ruing bitterly thereafter.