Our citation row lands one chapter east of the monster; the Sphinx herself sits, complete, in the Oedipus chapter. Hera sent her against Thebes: she had "the face of a woman, the breast and feet and tail of a lion", and a bird's wings [The Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. V]. "having learned a riddle from the Muses", she sat on Mount Phicium and asked: "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed" — and two-footed and three-footed, the text finishes across a page-seam [ibid.]. Every failed answer fed her: "the Sphinx used to snatch away one of them and gobble him up", Creon's own son last of all [ibid.]. When Oedipus answered — man, who crawls, then walks, then leans on a staff — "So the Sphinx threw herself from the citadel" [ibid.]. The chapter the row actually points at holds only her afterimage: Frazer's note there reads the lion on Polynices' shield as having "referred to the lion-faced sphinx" [The Library (Bibliotheca), BOOK III, ch. VI, editor's note]. A monster whose whole power is a question: she cannot survive being answered, and no sword is drawn anywhere in the episode.