Introduction

Most of ustunderstand that diseases are not caused by unsolved murders in the distant past and cured by verbal magic or acts of contrition. So did the ancient Athenians, as Thucydides makes clear in his History (2.47). But there are always those, in the modern as well as in the ancient world, who are ready toibelieve that God or the gods punish communities for the crime of an individual. Many readers suppose that Sophocles was such a believer himself and interpret the play on the basis of this supposition. 3

The academic woild treats translation with a certain disdain, as if it were distinct from "real" scholarship, an improvised vehicle for conveying to those who cannot read the original languages a general sense of what the original says or ought to be saying. As a result, translations tend to be either byproducts (rather than primary products) of scholarly activity or products of a specialized craft whose practitioners are not necessarily otherwise involved in the critical investigation of the authors they translate. The result is that translations of the two Oedipus tragedies are often fuzzy, where Sophocles is precise, or prosaic, where Seneca is poetic, but in either case simplified versions of their originals. 3

What we call "democracy," Athenians would have regarded as a mixed system of oligarchy, plutocracy, and limited term monarchy in which the people speak and vote on national issues in the Assembly, through the intermediacy of prostatai, "champions" or "spokesmen," elected from among candidates chosen by oligarchic clubs. The people itself has no direct political control between elections. Among the male population of Athens only foreigners or slaves needed to speak through a prostátes. All Athenian women, however, needed prostátai. 6

tragic poets, part of his function is to educate 6 adults 7 6-7

Sophocles wrote at least a hundred and twenty-three plays (more than three times as many as Shakespeare), of which only seven survive. Their dates of production are not at all sure: Ajax (early, perhaps around 455), Women of Trachis (early, perhaps around 450), Antigone (between 444 and 441), Oedtpus (probably between 429 and 425); Electra (around 420); Philoctetes (409), and#Oedipuseat Colonus (after 409; produced posthumously in 401). 9

Some scholars, particularly those who want to see tragedy in isolation from contemporary events, or to bring Sophock three House of Oedipus tragedies closer together in time and construe ther as if they were a trilogy, which they are not, 10

12-13

Do you Athenian public learned about its culture through poetic math and local folklore, 18

23-24

Indeed, many of Oedipus’ problems stem from his failure to pay attention to small, conflicting details in testimony.
There are over a dozen critical moments in the play when the characters or chorus don’t say quite what they ought to be saying, if the canonical reading is correct, and which scholars therefore prefer to see as trivial details or "inconsistencies" —"flaws" in Sophocles’ presentation as opposed to problems resulting from the critics’ own presuppositions. 33

M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, though seeing the problems in making "fate" the force governing Sophocles’ Oedipus, nonetheless assume that what Oedipus seeks and finds is "the truth." "Truth" is a very positive concept in English, related by origin and semantics to "trust," and attainable in Christian culture by faith: by belief, rather than by knowledge. To many ancient Greek philosophers, however, déxa, "belief," "the way things are assumed to be, was, along with pseudés, "false"? an antonym of alétheia, the Greek word we translate as "truth." Alétheia, for the fifth-century writer, falls within the compass of knowledge rather than of belief. It was seen as the negation of an already negative term léthe, "elusiveness, forgetfulness"’: it is that which does not elude us, that which is not forgotten. 33 The Greeks assumed that we live in a world that normally does elude y and trip us. They talk of "non-elusiveness,’ alétheta, and asphaleia, "a state of not being tripped up,’ where we and, to some extent, the Romans, tak of truth and safety. But even a Roman, when feeling securus, was "nonanxious." rather than "secure" in our more comfortable sense. The Latin prefix se-, like the Greek prefix a-, is separative.
It is, admittedly, hard to think one’s way out of a Judaeo-Christian reading of pre-Christian texts, especially in English, which has been, ever since : its birth from Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, a Christian language and lacking in the pre-Christian undertones of other European languages. And polytheism is hard for almost: all those acculturated in European societies to grasp. Late-night discussions about religion are framed in binary terms: of god or no-god, rather than of gods or no gods, even though Christianity was grafted onto Greek polytheism in eastern Europe and Roman polytheism in the West. 34 33-34

36-37 1984 Ministry-of-Truth-style propaganda in 560 to 527 BC

Writing, Socrates observes in an important passage in Plato's Phaedrus (274A—277), obliterates memory; and Peisistratus had "written Homer. 38

Not everyone in ancient Athens was happy either about this secular-, ization and democratization of the gods or about democracy itself. Socrates, in fact, suggests that poets should be banned from his ideal state. until they agree to portray the gods as good. 40

Even when, in his own account, Polybus and Merope, his Corinthian parents, reassure him that he is not illegitimate, he nonetheless visits Delphi to ask who his parents are. There he is told by the oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother. The answer does not fit the question. But he decides not to return home; he acts, that is, as if the oracle had answered his question by saying "Polybus and Merope; and you will kill him and marry her."
His fears about his own legitimacy have not been dispelled, but, rather, overlaid with and augmented by new fears that he will kill Polybus and marry Merope. Indeed, the turning point in the play comes when a remark by Teiresias revitalizes the older fears. Oedipus’ mind operates mythically rather than logically. The Neoplatonist Sallustius, talking of myth, stated the matter this way over a thousand years after Sophocles; "These things never a were but always are. For the mind [nots] sees everything at the same time, but reason [légos] reasons as it speaks [légei] that some things are first, others second."40
Yet it is not only the formidable voices of Delphi, Creon, and Teiresias that prompt Oedipus to the devastating conclusion that he is the child of Laius and Jocasta. He is not robbed of his wits by a god, as is Ajax in Sophocles’ Ajax. It is first an anonymous Corinthian and then later an anonymous slave whose words drive him to that conclusion. And what empowers them is precisely what empowers the anonymous drunk and whoever it was first teased him about his name: Oedipus’ own fears. And fear, the ancient proverb runs, first created the gods, not vice versa. 41

Self-destruction is not limited to acts of suicide. The science of rhetori, is based on the understanding that human beings can be manipulated if one channels their perceptions, if one understands what they are likely to believe and do. In that sense, it can operate, in literate societies, much as voodoo operates in nonliterate societies. Sophocles’ Jocasta declares Oedipus is controlled by anyone who speaks to his fears—and is immediately proven right. Once Oedipus is convinced he has actually killed his father and married his mother, his self-blinding is a conscious act of self-punishment, suitably enacted to bring to fulfillment the most recent prophecy he has heard: the prediction of a seer whose own blindness Oedipus has insulted. 42

9. Questions and Answers 42

The influence of Socratic dialectic and its terminology js evident throughout Sophocles’ Oedipus, not least in Oedipus himself, who, like Socrates, is reported to have been prompted to his most intensive interrogations by a response from the Delphic oracle to a close associate. Athens had become a city of law courts, to which poor or aged citizens flocked to serve as paid members of juries. Rhetoric, the mastery of language and intricately subtle argument, was developed to a level of sophistication that was hardly surpassed even by the Romans, and which has never, since antiquity, reached comparable heights, despite the best efforts of Erasmus. And Oedipus is a masterpiece of rhetoric presented to an audience very familiar with the rhetoric and argumentation of the courts. 42

If, in a play of many questions and answers, we make answers fit questions, or vice versa, when they really do not, we are doing what Oedipus does when he decides not to go home. after asking the oracle who his parents are and receiving the answer that he will kill his father and marry his mother. We are imposing a set of unproven assumptions 43 on a text who’s complexity we have underestimated, and, of course, we are forcing our readers to do the same. 44 43-44

in line 936 44

Question: Para tinos d’ (from the presence of whom) aphigménos (having arrived)? Answer: ek tés Korinthou (out of Corinth).
Sophocles’ questioner is asking a stranger who he’s come from; the stranger replies with an answer that says where he’s (come) from. 45

the Corinthian is a feeding the question. 45

A translation that identifies the stranger as a messenger at this point Rob‘s readers of all awareness that he is passing on hearsay, not an official decision. An official messenger needs no motive or reward for bringing news. That is his job. But if the stranger is not an official messenger, what motivates him to travel to Thebes to report a rumor to Oedipus? 46

The Corinthian’s rush to Thebes gives Oedipus a chance to move quickly if he wants to win power at home. 46

"Who is this woman that you both so greatly fear?" the stranger asks. I have introduced "both" to underscore the stranger’s perceptive use of the plural "you" form, which we cannot distinguish from the singular in English: he has concluded that Jocasta is also afraid (hence her suppression of the first part of his report). For most messengers in Greek tragedy, the grand moment is their "messenger speech." Sophocles’ Corinthian has no "messenger speech" at all. His grand moment comes as an interrogator. And his first question, though including Jocasta, in effect silences her. She cannot answer without revealing in public the nature of Oedipus’ fears. But the audience will also recall that she has told the chorus immediately before the stranger’s entrance that Oedipus is "always owned by anyone who spells things out for him—provided that man spells out things he fears." ‘This man, if Jocasta’s assessment of Oedipus is correct, has just begun a process of interrogation that will establish what Oedipus fears and thus empower him to "own" Oedipus by spelling out the "things he fears,’ much as Teiresias does earlier in the play. 48

The Corinthian is not merely a purveyor of information in a play with just one. character, Oedipus, surrounded by unfailingly truthful informants any more than is Aeschylus’ Agamemnon or Shakespeare’s Othello. Creon, Teiresias, Jocasta, the Corinthian, the Courtier, the Priest, are all carefully crafted personages in their own right in a play written by a great master of rhetoric. 49

My last example is the exchange between Oedipus and the Corinthian, which follows the Corinthian's later claims (a) that he used to be a shepherd who grazed his flocks on Mount Cithaeron near Thebes (some hundred miles from Corinth and across the administrative boundaries of other Greek city-states) and (b) that, while there, he found Oedipus, who was then a baby, brought him back to Corinth and gave him to Polybus, tyrant of Corinth. Even characters in "foundling’" comedies react more skeptically to such claims than Oedipus does here. The credibility of these claims rests on the accuracy of proof adduced and on the reliability of the reporter, who, in this case is a total stranger. But Oedipus, with all his fears about his legitimacy, accepts these claims without question. He simply asks how this hitherto unknown and forever anonymous Corinthian obtained the child. 49

Sophocles’ Oedipus is absolutely not asking whether the stranger found the child himself, but 50 whether the child came into the stranger’s possession accidentally (by chance) or deliberately (by purchase). It’s important to keep "chance," since Oedipus will conclude at the end of the scene that he is the child of chance (tyche). And tyche is the most often cited causal force in the play.
The displacement of the verb "find" from the stranger's answer to Oedipus’ question lessens our alertness to a crucial change in the stranger’ testimony a few lines later. When questioned about whom the child belonged to, the Corinthian says he does not know, but that the person who gave him the child will know. So he did not, by his own later admission, find the child at all. If he was not lying then, he’s lying now, or vice-versa, and possibly lying on both occasions, as Jocasta later attempts to suggest. At line 1057 she declares that the stranger has spoken mdten, "falsely," "nonsensically," 51 50-51

The scholarly tradition subtending this manipulation of the Corinthian can be traced back to a mistake by Aristotle. In Poetics 14524, to illustrate his notion of tragic reversal (peripeteia), Aristotle cites the arrival of the Corinthian whom he designates a "messenger" in Sophocles’ Oedipus. He comes "to cheer Oedipus up and release him from his fear about his mother.’ ‘Two centuries ago, before there was a canonical interpretation, Thomas Tyrwhitt summed matters up: "It is just as well we have the tragedy still surviving, for otherwise we would be bound to believe on the basis of Aristotle’s statement that the messenger came for the express purpose of releasing Oedipus from fear about his mother."56 52

Problems of adjusted translations are not restricted to this character and (his passage, much less to these particular exchanges within the passage. The evidence upon which Oedipus bases his judgment against himself in this play is his own testimony for or against himself and unsupported, often conHicting, hearsay. So the reader needs to be alert for any details, however small, of confict in testimony. Indeed, one would surely expect there to be conflict of testimony in any investigation.
Athenians were more familiar with legal procedures than most of us are, not only because their laws were less complex than ours, but also because many of them served regularly on juries. On the matter of testimony apainst oneself, Athenian law was clear: "a litigant could not be his own 52 witness."58 Further, hearsay was inadmissible as evidence in Athenian courts (in contrast with Roman courts where it was sometimes admissible). The only exception allowed was in the case of "what a dead man was alleged to have said."59 [. . .] neither here say nor oracles.61 53 52-53

The "inconsistencies in testimony, then, should be allowed to remain so readers can make up their own minds why they are there and what the results of their presence are. They should be not brushed away like troublesome wrinkles on the model in a fashion photo. The canonical "reading" must be able to withstand comparison with the text itself, not with the text as pre-adjusted to fit the interpretation. And the more recent the translation, the more likely it is to be pre-adjusted. 54

Has Seneca lost control of his narrative? Or are we facing the same sort of dilemma we face in Sophocles’ Oedipus, that of a mythic character trying to do when Seneca’s characters contradict themselves or others, we are more often left to notice the contradictions for ourselves. Perhaps it is an essential element of the myth of Oedipus that he is in quest of the unknowable, and that there is no single definitive answer. Myth is like the sea-god Proteus in Menelaus’ account in Odyssey 4: the more you wrestle with it, the more it changes shape. When we think our Protean myth has ceased to move, it is really our own struggle, not the myth, that stops and yields the definition we choose to accept. In the quest for knowledge, when doubt ceases, it gives way to the certainty of belief. And with the certainty of belief comes blindness to other possibilities. That is why it is important not to approach either Sophocles’ or Seneca’s tragedy on the assumption that we already know the answers; for if we do, we begin where Oedipus ends, not where even he begins.

Peisistratus Homer did not immediately sweep all rival versions away. But the authorized version 59 triumphed over the centuries, as little by little, memory of, and interest in, the alternative versions faded away. 60 59-60

In this version, one brother, Polyneices (whose name means "Quarrelsome"), assisted by six famous warriors from other cities who, together, make up the famous "Seven. against Thebes, attacks Thebes; the other, Eteocles ("Just Glory"), defends the city as these siblings compete for the throne after Oedipus is banished in disgrace. The brothers kill each other in a climactic duel, and their mother kills herself either just before the duel or over her sons’ bodies.
After the deaths of Oedipus’ sons, Oedipus" brother-in-law Creon takes control of the city. Creon is, in turn, driven from power and killed by the king of Athens, Theseus, as Euripides tells the tale in his Suppliants. The only surviving ancient epic on the subject is by the Roman poet Statius, who wrote his. Latin Thebaid in the late first century AD. Wherever there is a conflict between the Greek epic and tragic traditions of Oedipus, Statius seems to give precedence to the versions found in Greek tragedy.
Our earliest references to Oedipus in texts that survive from antiquity are in the Iliad and Odyssey. In Iliad-23:679—80, there is a passing reference to someone who won a contest in Thebes at the funeral games for Oedipus; and in Odyssey. 11.271—80, if the lines are not an interpolation, Odysseus claims he saw the ghost of Oedipus’ mother among the dead: 62

Aeschylus wrote a Theban trilogy as well as an Oresteia trilogy: Laius, Oedipus, The Seven against Thebes, and added the mandatory satyr play, The Sphinx, to round out the tetralogy. Only The Seven against Thebes has survived. We know of only one other full Theban tetralogy, written by, of all people, Meletus, 63

So it is worth noting that, in the old Greek alphabet, which did not distinguish omicron from omega, Kithairon is an exact anagram of Korinthia; and Sophocles’ Corinthian has, as we'll see later, a penchant for wordplay. 65

Throughout this tragedy oneidos and its companion verb oneidizein are used to indicate verbal abuse. As noted earlier, they never indicate physical abuse anywhere in Greek, much less "disfisurement" as Dawe (on 1035) translates dneidos in his commentary. He 1s adjusting the meaning to fit the canonical interpretation. 67

A final detail is worth noting. When Aeschylus cites Euripides opening line back at him. he substitutes "chance" for "blessed by the gods." And "chance," tyche, is a word much used by Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus. To help readers locate it in the text, I have translated tyche by "chance," 67 "mischance," or "luck," everywhere it occurs, and have not used these English words to render any Greek word not derived from the root tych. 68 67-68

I have set out this portion of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes in detail for several reasons. First, it shows Oedipus’ son explaining his forthcoming and self-destructive duel with his brother as the fulfillment of a curse his father placed upon him, when it is quite clearly the result of choices made by the messenger and by himself. Just because a character in a tragedy sees a given outcome as the product of a curse or divine action does not mean that the author does too. Second, it shows the disastrous consequences of Oedipus’ self-punishment. His sons have taken Thebes into that most destructive of all plagues, war, and a war with many features of civil war. Worse 1s to follow. Though Thebes survives the attack of "The Seven, "it does not survive the attack of their sons, known to mythographers as the Epigonoi, "The Successors." Oedipus’ self-destruction sets Thebes on a path toward civic self-destruction. What Pietro Pucci observes of Homer’s gods might equally well be applied to any gods in literary texts:
The gods therefore are not the masters of the heroes’ destinies, but the servants of the heroes’ poetic destiny. "’ 69 #howtoreadscripture

My third reason is the most troublesome: if you read Sophocles’ Oedipus in isolation, you would never guess that Oedipus’ sons would have (or cause) problems, much less that Oedipus had cursed them. On the contrary, Sophocles’ Oedipus declares he 1s satisfied that his sons can manage for themselves and worries, rather, about his two daughters, whom Creon allows him to approach and touch. Oedipus does not distinguish the girls trom each other, but collectivizes them by using not the plural number, but the much less common dual, whose distinctive forms emphasize that things referred to are to be thought of as a pair. In this context of blindness, the dual generates an implicit play on the double sense of the Greek kére as "eye" and "girl." No other passage in any extant Greek text uses the dual so frequently and insistently as this, and I cannot re-create the force of this usage in English. When Creon quickly separates the two girls from Oedipus, he symbolically blinds Oedipus all over again. 69

Eteocles who utters the memorable final line: "Power is a bargain whatever price you pay" (Phoenician Women 664). The Oedipus tradition that Seneca is building on in Phoenician Women is that of Euripides, not that of either Sophocles of Aeschylus. 72

73 On the psychological implications of Oedipus’ self-blinding, see Richard Caldwell, "The Blindness of Oedipus," International Review of Psycho-Analysis 1 (1974): 207-18. 73

82

What he [Pesistratus] may not have foreseen is that the poets would soon break the tyrant’s hold on the people. For the dialectical polytheism of tragedy is the religion of democracy. 83

the Roman elite had taken legal action to suppress the cult of this god of the vine, Dionysus (also called Bacchus), because it was linked with unruly behavior by ordinary citizens, and by women in particular. The Romans wanted their state cults to be austere and controllable, not orgiastic and wild. Dionysus is a kind of Lord of Misrule, an agent of civic chaos.
The Athenian dramatic competitions devised by Peisistratus had offered an alternative to Roman "Prohibition." The original attraction to the tyrants of tragic performance may well have had something to do with the manipulation and control of popular religious beliefs and hero cults. And their approach was much more effective than banning (and thus privileging) relias Lenin did. Indeed, it may have been because of Peisistratus influence that the myths which form the texts for Attic tragedy most often pertain to cities other than Athens and would therefore not excite local religious passions.
The competitions were also a means of harnessing and controlling, as well as encouraging, the energy of poets. They served as a brilliant means of channeling much of the energy unleashed by the cult of the wine-god into something creative and educational, not disruptive. And perhaps that 1s what subtends the vexing term katharsis, "purgation" or "cleansing" that Aristotle talks about. The Dionysiac energy which could have turned into riots was directed to the theater where it was refined and absorbed by the music, words, sights, and competitive nature of tragedy and (though this is not our topic) comedy. It became a tool of education, a means of de-programmung the population and making it more enquiring and sophisticated.
The Roman Seneca certainly did not want Bacchus left out of his Oedipus. In the choruses of his Oedipus, he offers a substantial tribute to Bacchus (Dionysus), which has no counterpart in Sophocles’ Oedipus, as if to compensate for the lack of a festival to honor the god properly at Rome. But the Roman emperors made the same fatal political mistake governments continue to make nowadays: they did not use their resources to sponsor entertainments that would sharpen the intellects of the population and educate citizens. They directed popular energy toward nonintellectual and often cruel and bloody public contests in their theaters, training people to be not citizens but passive consumers of spectacular violence. 84

86

tyrannos must be translated in Sophocles’ Oedipus and elsewhere in Attic tragedy as "tyrant, not "king’’—as is the eneral practice. For here is a tyrant afraid of his own tyrannical soul. He holds high office but has lost all capacity to be a leader; he does not control others"*by inspiring fear or admiration in them, but is controlled by those who can manipulate his fears. He epitomizes the demos, the people, rather than their ruler. 89

In Sophocles’ Oedipus, it is generally held that the lead actor (the protagonist) plays Oedipus, the second actor (the deuteragonist) plays the Priest, Jocasta, the Courtier, and the Slave, and the third (the tritagonist) plays Creon, Teiresias, and the Corinthian. Although this is the traditional view, I have always used (when following the three-actor rule) my best actor to play the most demanding combination of roles. The division of roles am ong actors means that Creon cannot be on stage with Teiresias in Sophocles Oedipus, since the same actor cannot play both roles at the same time. Perceptive audiences would recognize the same voice behind the masks of Creon, Teiresias, and the Corinthian; and Sophocles probably arranged Oedipus so that the characters who most obviously threaten Oedipus’ position are by the same actor. 91

Victor Ehrenberg observed that the Greek tragedian was not "a private person writing beautiful poetry in an ivory tower,’ and that tragedy itself was "an event of public life in which the trends of people’s minds were reflected discussed, and displayed.’®’ A tragedian’s voice was a powerful influence on politics and could be problematic if, like Sophocles, he were himself a major (and perhaps controversial) political figure. But the raw and democratic audience could be unruly and might laugh, applaud, or otherwise interrupt the performance (so you had to allow for this in your writing). Socrates himself is reported to have applauded the opening lines of Euripides’ Orestes Whether they liked it or not, Greek tragedians were faced with an audience ready to interact: thousands of craftsmen, laborers, and peasants attending educational" competition for literary honors during a wine festival: an audience that was about to see, in succession, nine tragedies and three satyr plays, not to mention the comedies. A tragedian had to keep all segments of that audience under his spell and sometimes wrote as if inviting a reaction from the audience—unlike directors of modern "‘serious’"’ dramas, who usually expect their much smaller and more disciplined, bourgeois audiences to remain silent and seated. 92

93-94

There was no such thing then as Greek "nationality." Citizenship was based on one’s ancestral city of birth and one’s legitimacy, not on ones Greek ethnicity. Indeed, Pericles became a victim of his own law: his only son who survived the plague was considered a non-citizen, since the junior Pericles was the son of a courtesan, Aspasia. Similarly, in Sophocles’ Oedipus, Oedipus is not a citizen of ‘Thebes, even though he 1s the citys tyrant. He is a citizen of Corinth. That is why the Corinthian is so amazed at Oedipus’ fear of returning to the town where he is not an outsider. At Thebes he is—as his first interlocutor, the Priest of Zeus, reminds him in his very first words—a resident alien, a non-citizen ruling Theban citizens: "It’s my land that you ruleThough the chorus admits that it has treated Oedipus as if he were their ritual king, basilevis, he cannot claim that title because only a citizen could be elected "‘king." 95

the plague at Athens, due primarily to overcrowding, was obviously regarded by some as a special dispensation from Apollo."90Similarly, some. Athenians regarded the end of the plague as a blessing from Apollo. Pausanias (1.3.4) says that the Athenians dedicated a statue to Apollo "Averter of Evil," because he had stopped it.91 But there was not universal agreement, Greek understanding of medicine had progressed sufficiently that the educated understood, as Thucydides does, that plagues have physical and biological causes and are not visitations of divine anger that can be dispelled by verbal acts of contrition. 98

Perhaps because of the epidemic at Athens, nosos ("plague," "sickness’’) becomes, in Sophocles and other Greek writers, a vivid metaphor for any debilitating and fatal malaise of the individual soul and of the body politic, much as the word "cancer" does in contemporary usage. Plato in Republic ¢ (470c) describes the conflicts among the Greek states as not just civil wars, but a kind of "sickness"? Many in Sophocles’ audience may have shared Plato’s view that the wars among Greeks are "the ultimate sickness of the city" (Republic 544c)—a point Plato makes several times elsewhere in the Republic, especially in book 8 (563E; 564B). As we see from a statement attributed to Alcmaeon, disease arises from the sole rule, the monarchia, of one of the bodies’ powers. Health lies in the balance, isonomia, of the bodies’ powers; 99 and isonomía is also one of the original words used to describe what we call democracy."
Oedipus is himself described as (foreign) tyrant of his city. Despite the occasional argument by modern scholars that "tyrant" and "tyranny" are not necessarily bad words for a fifth-century Athenian, the majority of ancient Greek writers disagree. Athenian democracy had features of tyranny about it. Statements to the effect that Pericles was a tyrant were common enough, as Plutarch shows in his Pericles, and as Victor Ehrenberg has discussed to great effect. One man’s great popular leader is another man’s tyrant. 100 99-100

The names "Cleon" and "Creon" are not far apart on the Athenian aristocratic tongue. There was a common aristocratic affectation of speech, specially made fun of in Alcibiades, an opponent of Cleon, and famous as friend and lover of Socrates. It was called labdacism by the rhetorician Quintilian: the substitution of "l" for "r’—a speech affectation or impediment most suitable to the tale of Thebes and the royal house of 101 Labdacus. 102 101-102

Traditional ideas about religion, the material world, science, politics, history, and the contemporary human condition came under intense scrutiny in the works of the Athenian tragedians. 103

As Sophocles wrote his Oedipus, Socrates was at the height of his career. And the formula "fearsome in speech (or thought)" (deinos legein) occurs frequently in Sophocles’ play. Oedipus greatly fears those, such as Teiresias or Creon, whom both he and the chorus characterize as fearsome speakers or thinkers and who get the better of Oedipus in argument. And he, like most readers, finally accepts what they say as true.
The extent to which Sophocles’ Oedipus refracts events of his own day is a complex issue. I have offered only a hint or two here. Those interested in a fuller discussion should turn to Victor Ehrenberg’s classic Sophocles and Pericles and Michael Vickers’ brilliant Pericles on Stage. I mention these few points to remind those preoccupied with eternal mythic "truths" that Greek tragedy routinely uses myth as a vehicle for contemporary comment. If we lose a sense of Oedipus’ timeliness in our obsession with its timelessness, we reduce the full, original force of Sophocles’ play. Sophocles’ audience, mostly ordinary citizens, understood the politicized myths of tragedy most readily in terms of their own immediate experience of life and of government. 104

Oedipus first mention of Polybus is the very Freudian statement, "Polybus was my father"—since he makes this statement while he thinks Polybus is still alive, thus showing he has already at least partially disposed of his father. He does something of the same when he follows this up by saying that he, Oedipus, was thought "the most important man in town." When informed that Polybus is dead, he is delighted by the news, since this means he did not kill his father, as the oracle had forecast. Then it occurs to him that his father might have died of péthos, of longing for him: he might have killed him indirectly. There is a solid literary precedent. In Odyssey 11, the ghost of Odysseus’ mother Anticleia says she died of longing for her son. 105

If we translate alétheia as "truth"’ however, we see no connection at all among. these various observations. Greek writers not only explain alétheia as a-léthe-ia, ""non-elusiveness," as if it were the negation of léthe, "forgetfulness" "oblivion," but link it semantically. with a number of similar sounding words including aletheis, "having wandered." Homer’s Odysseus and Eumaeus, along with Plato’s Socrates, also define alétheia as "divine wandering" on the basis of a different division of alétheia into two words theia, "divine,’ and ale ‘"wandering."" And Plato merges both explanations of alétheia in his myth of Er at the end of the Republic, where the wandering Er does not lose memory of the world of souls, as others do, when they cross over the River or Indifference and leave the underworld: knowledge is recollection, it 1s memory, it is that which is not forgotten from one’s pre-corporeal existence. Similarly, the paradox that a blind seer has access to that which does not elude one’s notice is aided by the similarity between alétheia and alotin, "to be blind." 106

108-111

Seneca’s main characters are more overtly introspective and self-analyzing than Sophocles’ Oedipus. Their most critical battles on stage, like the critical battles of many a Shakespearian character, are often those they are represented as fighting within themselves. Senecan drama constantly takes us beyond a character’s publicly spoken words into his or her thoughts, which are dramatically verbalized for us in "asides" and soliloquies. These features of Senecan (and Shakespearian) tragedy keep us aware of the tension between what someone does and says to others, and what that same person sees as the reason for what is said and done. We see characters’ hopes, illusions, and delusions played out in the personal worlds that they create and within which they so imprison themselves that they find it difficult to grasp that others are not 112 somehow extensions of themselves. The psychology of the characters is thus quite frequently made explicit, as in a novel, but as it rarely is in "real life." In Sophocles’ Oedipus, in contrast, we—the audience, the readers—are more often left to decode a character's inner thoughts, as we are in "real life." Sophocles restricts our knowledge of Oedipus, Jocasta, and Creon to what they are prepared to say publicly to others on stage. He keeps us on the outside, much as we would be at a trial. The inconsistencies and contradictions in a character’s utterances are what provide the clues as to the inner thought processes. Unfortunately such inconsistencies are often mistaken by critics for compositional errors on the poet's part and are routinely "corrected" or otherwise disposed of in translations. 113 112-113

Senecan tragedy, like the Aeneid, is notable for its very Roman preoccupation with ritual and sacrifice—a feature prominent in Oedipus, Medes Thyestes, and Trojan Women. Whereas Sophocles lived in a society where tiy ritual killing of humans was more a feature of the world of Homer and myth than of contemporary reality, and the large-scale ritual killing of animals more or less limited to special feast days, in imperial Rome ritual death was a more common spectacle, chiefly at the gladiatorial games. Although Cicero decries human sacrifice as ""a monstrous and barbarous custom"’ (Pro Font. 31), and Julius Caesar says much the same (BG 6.16), Octavian is said to have sacrificed humans on the anniversary of Julius Caesar’s death (Suetonius, Divus Augustus 15; Dio 48.14.4). So when in Aeneid 10.520 and 558 Aeneas is represented as taking prisoners for human sacrifice he may have had a contemporary, not simply a Homeric, precedent. The closeness of the Latin words for "enemy" and "sacrificial victim," hostis and hostia respectively, built the idea into the language. 120

Necromancy and other conjurings of the dead are at least as old as Odyssey 11 in the Greco-Roman world. They also find their way into the New ‘lestament and are-alluded to in various forms by most Latin epic poets. Most famously, Aeneas visits the dead in Aeneid 6; Scipio Africanus consults the dead in Silius Italicus’ Punica 13; the witch Erictho reanimates a corpse in Lucan’s Pharsalia 6; and in Apuleius’ Golden Ass,a murdered man 1s brought back to life by an Egyptian priest to denounce his murderer. So the conjuring of Laius’ ghost in Seneca’s Oedipus is very much within a continuing Roman tradition. Closest of all to Seneca’s is that done by Teiresias in Statius’ Thebaid 2 on behalf of Oedipus’ son Eteocles. 121

Modern readers are prepared to countenance prophecy and often trea the prophets and prophecy of tragedy with more respect than did the Greeks themselves. Prophets and prophecy are so much a part of Christian tradition that we sometimes assume, quite wrongly, that all ancient Greek believed in them, despite the often scathing-comments about them in Greek tragedy and comedy, even by Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus. We are also prepared to countenance ghosts and necromancy. But animal sacrifice and haruspicina are too much for us. Although we slaughter many more food — animals than the Romans did, the idéa of animal sacrifice offends our sense of piety, thereby causing us to condemn rather than figure out the rationale } for Seneca’s use of it. 122

The Etruscan nature of the ritual Livy describes is itself of at least passing ‘nterest, since one of the Latin terms for an actor is histrio, which was thought by the Romans to be an Etruscan word. Histrio also bears a striking resemblance to two Greek words of uncertain origin: historein, "‘to tell a story,’ and historla, "(hi)story,’ first used in a technically precise sense by Herodotus, whose home was in Caria in Asia Minor, not far from Lydia, the supposed place of origin for the Etruscans. If this is so, then there is a sense in which Herodotus’ Histories can be viewed as "‘re-enactments" of the past. And some theatrical re-enactment of a human sacrifice could quite possibly serve as a substitute for a real human sacrifice as was the case in certain Roman rituals where figures representing humans were destroyed in place of living people.’ 127

One of the most curious facts about Roman poetry is that Augustan poet avoid references to either Oedipus or the Sphinx (who is not among the mon. sters under the leaves of Virgil’s underworld elm). Virgil never names her even though he does, of course, refer to.Cleopatra and Egypt. Neither, more curiously, does Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Ovid bypasses the story of Oedi pus in favor of a series of tales about. Teiresias in book 3 and has Cephalu make a brief mention of her where he refers. to Oedipus not by name but as "son of Laius" and calls the Sphinx simply a bard, vates (Metamorphoses 7.759-61). And even then;: Cephalus claims that the Sphinx was instantly replaced by another monster of-unspecified nature who was pursued by hi dog; and both monster and’ dog were transformed into statues, conferring victory on neither The Sphinx is no less conspicuously absent from Augustan art.116 130

readers to see how universal mythic archetypes are by comparing them to events within their own experience. One does not have to look far nowadays for a Sophoclean Oedipus. But a Senecan Oedipus is harder to find. 132

Sophocles: Oedipus Rex



Seneca: Oedipus

Jocasta: What use is it, my husband, to complain
about evil? Complaining makes things worse.
Being king, I think, means this: coming to grips
with what confronts you. The harder it is
to stand, the more power’s burden slips and slides,
the more determinedly you must take 202
your stand. Be brave! Step confidently now!
A man does not retreat from Fortune’s blows! 203 202-203