Plan of ancient Thebes.

The historical city:

Oxford Classical Dictionary entry on the historical Thebes gives you a very compressed history – one paragraph (requires you to be at UBC or know your CWL and password).

Some other bad things that happened in Thebes or to Thebans, who were not Oedipus or his parents. Or children. They’re a whole different subset of misery:

Cadmus. A lot of bad things happen to him before Thebes, though, like his sister being carried off by Zeus. Then he offends Ares…

Harmonia, his wife, and the daughter of the god Ares.

Ino, their daughter.

Death of Pentheus. (Link is to Theoi page containing myths relating to the wrath of Dionysus/Bacchus). Scroll down for the Acteon story)

Death of Acteon. (Link is to Theoi page containing myths relating to the wrath of Artemis/Diana). Scroll down for the Acteon story)

There is a paper addressing the science/historical nature of Sophocles plague. The abstract:

Sophocles, one of the most noted playwrights of the ancient world, wrote the tragedy Oedipus Rex in the first half of the decade 430–420 bc. A lethal plague is described in this drama. We adopted a critical approach to Oedipus Rex in analyzing the literary description of the disease, unraveling its clinical features, and defining a possible underlying cause. Our goals were to clarify whether the plague described in Oedipus Rex reflects an actual historical event; to compare it with the plague of Athens, which was described by Thucydides as occurring around the same time Sophocles wrote; and to propose a likely causative pathogen. A critical reading of Oedipus Rex and a comparison with Thucydides’ history, as well as a systematic review of historical data, strongly suggests that this epidemic was an actual event, possibly caused by Brucella abortus.