Self-love meets pride

The death of the sphinx was depending in the resolution of a crux that had appeared in these terms: which is the animal that in the morning has four feet, two in the midday and three in the evening?

Oedipus answered without hesitating: 'That animal is the man, who in his infancy walks on his hands and feet, in the virile age only on his feet and in his oldness helping himself with a cane as if it was the third foot". The sphinx, furious on having seen her enigma deciphered, was thrown herself from the crag where she was situated and had her head broken against the bottom of the precipice.