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Is Oedipus The True Tragic Hero? Aristotle described tragedy in his poetics as "a man not preeminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice or depravity, but by some error in judgment... the change in the hero's fortune must not be from misery to happiness, but on the contrary, from happiness to misery". He went on further to describe Sophocles's Oedipus Rex as the best tragedy ever written, as …

…change of Oedipus! I who saw your days call no man blest- your great days like ghosts gone." (pg 1414-5 lines 10-14). So quickly his life begins to slip out from underneath his feet. He was a king, a good husband and father, a man contented with his lot in life who eventually lost his status, wife, children and home. He evokes sympathy simply because he was not evil or foolish, just human and fallible.