 The messenger, eager to ease Oedipus's mind, tells him not to worry, because Merope was not in fact his real mother.It emerges that this messenger was formerly a shepherd on Mount Cithaeron, and that he was given a baby, which the childless Polybus then adopted.The baby, he says, was given to him by another shepherd from the Laius household, who had been told to get rid of the child.