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Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrranus [Oedipus the King or Oedipus Rex]

(430 B.C.E.) Bernhard Zimmermann (Freiburg University) Genre: Play, Tragedy. Country: Ancient Greece. The subject matter that lies at the heart of this Sophoclean tragedy was narrated in three epics on Theban myth that today survive only in fragments or later descriptions thereof: the Oidipodeia, the Thebaid (the curse of Oedipus, the fraternal feud, the march of the Seven against Thebes) and the Epigonoi (the sons of the Sevens revenge campaign and the destruction of Thebes). Important and sometimes pre-Sophoclean elements of the myth include: 1. the exposure of the young Oedipus with pierced ankles (whence his name Swell-footed); 2. the patricide and incest with his mother (already appearing in Homers Odyssey 11.217ff.); 3. the blinding of Oedipus and the curse on his sons Eteocles and Polyneices, and 4. these brothers battle against each other which ends in their mutual deaths. Prior to Sophocles, the material was also treated by Aeschylus in his Theban trilogy, which consisted of the plays Laios, Oedipus and Seven Against Thebes. Only the last of these is extant. In the form of an oracle from Apollo, the Theban king Laios receives a warning to remain childless; otherwise he is destined to die at the hands of his own son. When he nevertheless begets a child, he has the boy exposed in the mountains with his ankles pierced and tied together. In this way he mistakenly believes that he can escape fate. However, the shepherd who is charged with the exposure entrusts the child to a Corinthian, who in turn gives it to the childless royal couple in Corinth, Polybus and Merope. Years later the now grown-up Oedipus, who believes himself the son of the Corinthian king and queen, is taunted by his peers on account of his dubious paternity. Affronted and confused he makes his way to Delphi in order to consult Apollos oracle. However, the only reply the god gives is that Oedipus will kill his own father and bear a child with his mother. The consternated Oedipus resolves never to return to Corinth. At a place where three ways meet he encounters the Theban king Laios (his father) and several attendants. When the king brusquely commands him to move out of the way Oedipus slays him in a fit of rage together with all of the kings attendants, except one who is able to escape. Further along on his journey he arrives at Thebes and by means of his intelligence is able to solve the riddle of the Sphinx and rescue the city from the monster. As a reward he receives the throne of Thebes and the hand of the queen Jocasta; neither the bride nor the groom are aware that they are mother and son. After several years the city is stricken by a devastating plague. In order to relieve the suffering population, Oedipus sends his brother-in-law Creon to Delphi to obtain an oracle as

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to how the city might be saved from the pestilence. It is under these circumstances that the play begins, a play in which Sophocles traces Oedipus path to recognition and simultaneously offers up a dramatically framed philosophical analysis of the human capacity for insight. Creon reports Apollos Delphic oracle. It states that the murderer of the previous king Laios must be killed or driven from the country because this person represents an unbearable pollution (miasma) on Thebes (95-101). Following this, Sophocles pursues a brilliant game in which he exploits tragic irony, which results from the advantageous viewpoint of the audience members already familiar with the myth in its interplay with the limited, shortsighted knowledge of the plays protagonist. This is particularly evident, for example, in lines 103-105: Creon speaks of Laios here, who earlier had ruled the land, and Oedipus replies: I know this from hearsay; I have never seen him! The search for Laios killer is steered in another direction by the deliberately false information regarding the only survivor of the massacre. (Not a word is said about the identity of this witness it is only later revealed, at the plays climax nor does Oedipus at this point think to question him.) Creon explains that following Laios murder, the survivor reported that not just one but several bandits had slain the king (122ff.). In his response, however, Oedipus switches to the singular (the bandit) and for the first time he unknowingly draws near the truth (124f.). What begins as an incidental remark that a lone offender had been bribed by influential men in Thebes, for example by his brother-in-law Creon or the prophet Tiresias grabs hold of Oedipus like a delusional idea. It then leads him, as it similarly does Creon in Antigone, to imagine plots and coups directed against him from all directions. Also Oedipus declaration in lines 120f., to the effect that one should never give up hope, is given an ironic tint. Ultimately hope, which blocks rationality, prevents humans from recognizing evident truths. The systematic homing in on the truth is continued in the first episode of the play with tragic irony. In his official proclamation (216ff.), in which Oedipus requests a search for Laios murderer, he continues to use the singular with regard to Laios murderer and demands that the offender, even if he is a foreigner, be brought immediately before him (230f.). However, the chorus leader then adds a new variant to the mix (292f.), which unbeknownst to the protagonist will bring him yet another step closer to the truth. The chorus leader suggests consulting the prophet Tiresias; only from him can one obtain reliable information. Everything else is but vague speculation when it comes to Laios murder. When Oedipus insists on knowing what these speculations are, the chorus leader remarks casually that at the time the prevailing opinion was that King Laios was murdered by some wayfarers. In comparison with Antigone, probably produced several years earlier, we meet at this point a revolutionary dramatic innovation. In Antigone, Creon is trapped in a disastrous fallacy by his inability to think rationally. Only after it is too late is he forced to see the truth by the prophet Tiresias. In Oedipus Rex Tiresias already reveals the terrible truth in the first episode. Called upon by Oedipus as an advisor, Tiresias is at first hesitant because as a prophet he naturally knows the identity of the offender. Only when the king inculpates the seer himself, as part of his delusional idea that the offender was bribed by Theban opponents, does Tiresias break his silence. He flings all of his knowledge, all of the terrible truth in Oedipus face: Oedipus himself, the ostensible savior of the city, is alone responsible for all of its suffering. He slew King Laios, his own father, and has begotten children with his mother Jocasta who is also

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his wife; he alone is the unbearable pollution (miasma) that weighs upon Thebes (345-353). In the consequent encounter with his brother-in-law Creon, Oedipus slides further into his delusion and false thinking (532ff.). He threatens Creon not with exile, but with death for Oedipus it is Creon who is behind the plot to dethrone him (623). Hoping to mediate the conflict between her husband and her brother (634), Jocasta emerges from the palace at the high point of this confrontation. Oedipus repeats once more his idea of a conspiracy against him, one backed by Tiresias allegedly false prophecies (705-706). Jocasta is relieved and answers that this is further proof of the oracles unreliability. Many years ago, the god Apollo had also prophesied that Laios would die at his sons hands. But three days after his birth, she goes on, his son was abandoned in the mountains with his ankles pierced and tied together. The boy died and Laios, as they say, was killed by unknown robbers at a place where three roads meet (715f.). This passing mention of a place where three roads meet throws Oedipus into a state of extreme disquiet. Just as Heracles in Trachiniae is alerted to the truth via the incidental mention of the Centaur Nessos (1141), so here do the three roads rip apart the veil of illusion that hitherto had been veiling Oedipus thinking. In the style of an investigating magistrate, Oedipus focuses on the clue provided by the three roads detail (726ff.) and once again draws closer to the truth. When he finally hears that Laios had been accompanied by five men (752f.), he cries out: Woe is me, all is now clear! (754). The surviving witness, who currently lives in the country, shall provide the last piece to the jigsaw puzzle. Oedipus explains the reason for his alarm to the worried Jocasta. He relates the story of Corinth and the Delphic oracle that he received. Only if the eyewitness sticks to his earlier testimony, that Laios was killed by a group of robbers, will Oedipus be exonerated (842ff.). However, Jocasta points out that even if the herdsman does not confirm this, Laios will still not have been killed by his own son, who had died long before his father. The dialogue between Jocasta and Oedipus explores to the full the theme of the human capacity for (self-)knowledge. Little by little, all of Oedipus supposedly secure footholds crumble away. On the basis of the description of Laios given to him by Jocasta and of the number of attendants that were reportedly with the old king, Oedipus had already declared himself to be the guilty man in line 754, but only for a short moment. Now he clings to one last glimmer of hope to the upcoming testimony of the survivor and to the plural robbers. Jocasta, for her part, performs an act of argumentative acrobatics in order to avoid accepting the horrible truth. First she tries to invalidate Tiresias prophecy on the grounds of the oracles proven unreliability. She tries to allay Oedipus fears by claiming that all of the facts speak against the oracle. At the end of the dialogue, however, she suddenly uses the oracle as an argument to rebut the cogency of the facts: she claims, as we have seen, that even if Laios was killed by a multitude of highwaymen, Oedipus cannot be guilty of regicide, since the oracle predicted that the king would be killed by his own son, which Oedipus evidently is not. The following, short scene (911ff.) marks a slight reprieve before the catastrophe. A messenger from Corinth arrives reporting the death of the king Polybus. Albeit relieved, since the oracles prediction of patricide has been evidently proved wrong, Oedipus skeptically objects that the second part of the oracle, the predicted marriage with his mother, could still come true. But the

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messenger dismisses this objection with the information that Oedipus is not even the son of the Corinthian royal pair: rather, he is a foundling. The shepherd who had given Oedipus to the Corinthian herdsman can confirm this. As it happens, it turns out that the shepherd in question is also the surviving witness to Laios murder. Jocasta grasps the truth at this point, but she cannot hold Oedipus back from the search for his origins that now completely dominates his thinking (1076f.). She leaves in silence to commit suicide (1075). The tragedys climax occupies a single short scene (1110-1185). Oedipus begins the interrogation of the eyewitness by pitting the shepherd against the Corinthian messenger. Sophocles employs here the same type of scene as he had previously used in the stand-off between Lichas and the messenger in Trachiniae. The Theban shepherd is aware of the terrible truth, but he is determined to conceal it; the Corinthian, who suspects nothing, is bent on uncovering the truth, which he eventually does (1182). At this point Oedipus breaks down in a despairing lament (1182ff.), echoing the words he had previously uttered at the sudden recognition of his own guilt (754). The search for the murderer and the search for his own origins have run together into a single, horrific truth. The central theme of Oedipus Rex, which is the potential as well as the limits of human knowledge, also occupied philosophical thinkers in the second half of the fifth century in Athens. One needs only to think of the sophist Gorgias. In his text On the Non-Existent, he playfully takes the problem of human knowledge and interpersonal communication to the extreme. Sophocles contemporary Euripides, who was more heavily influenced by the rhetorical and philosophical arguments of the day, notably brings problems of knowledge and communication on to the stage in his later works during the last two decades of the fifth century. In the tragedies that we can call anagnorisis-plays that is, plays whose structure relies on the recognition of characters after years of separation with the help of unchanging tokens or signs (sumbola or gnorismata) Euripides explores the possibilities and limits of human knowledge. Examples include Orestes and Electra in his Electra or Iphigenia and Orestes in Iphigenia among the Taurians. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles develops the problem of knowledge on two planes: on the one hand, there is the discrepancy between the absolute, divine knowledge that is represented by the oracle and Tiresias prophecy; on the other, there is the factual evidence and hope, the escape into illusion. The tragedys plot makes it clear that hope (elpis) is disastrous for human thinking. From the very beginning, Oedipus search for Laios murderer exemplifies this maxim. This becomes even clearer when, in their entry song, the chorus elevates Hope to the ranks of the gods and places it on a par with Zeus and the other Olympian deities (158). It was hope that provoked Laios to abandon his newborn son in the mountains, the aim being to avoid the inescapable death at his childs hands that Apollo had foretold. It was hope that encouraged Oedipus to believe he could escape his prophesied fate of patricide and incest. The third oracle, which is given to Creon and with which the tragedy opens is, so to speak, the catalyst that sets in motion the fateful search for Laios killer and with it for Oedipus origins. Just as the two plot motifs the search for the murderer of king Laios and for Oedipus paternity finally intertwine into one, so also do the oracles contain a single terrible truth. The further Oedipus progresses in his search for Laios murderer at the behest of the third oracle, the further he delves into the past and the closer he

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comes to the truth that the first two oracles had pronounced. And the closer he gets to the alleged salvation and to what he believes to be the truth, the closer he comes to the verge of self-recognition. The central problem of the human capacity for knowledge also leads to a distinctive feature of Sophocles theological thinking. In response to the chorus question in lines 1327ff. as to how Oedipus was able to blind himself, he answers (1329-1335): Apollo it was, Apollo my friends, bringing these my terrible, terrible sufferings to pass. But none other than my wretched self struck them [my eyes] with my own hand. For why should I see, when with sight there was nothing sweet for me to see? (Translated by the author) The pathetic charge against the god is not intended to shift the blame for Oedipus misdoings on to Apollo. Rather it points to the fact that through his oracle the god totally in accordance with the Delphic dictum Know Thyself was the one who initiated the drive for knowledge and Oedipus quest for self-recognition. However, the responsibility for the actions lies entirely with the man. In Oedipus lament the proximity to Aeschylean theology becomes clear. Behind the despondent words sounds the Aeschylean maxim pathei mathos, learning through suffering. One could perhaps go a step further and claim that Sophocles offers an answer to the question of who exactly it is that should learn through suffering (a question that remains unanswered in Aeschylus), although they learn too late. The element of divine favor and grace (charis) that is a fundamental part of Aeschylus thinking is significant in Sophocles late play, the posthumously produced Oedipus at Colonus. Here we find reconciliation between man and god. Arguably no other Greek tragedy since antiquity has received as much attention as the Sophoclean Oedipus Rex. For Aristotle in his Poetics the play best represented the philosophers tragic ideal. Over and over, the play has not only received new interpretations at the hands of playwrights, but has also attracted the attention of other disciplines, such as psychoanalysis (S. Freuds Oedipus Complex in The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900). Time and again it is presented as a paradigm in theories of tragedy. For German classicism (Schelling, Schiller), Oedipus Rex represented a paragon for tragic analysis. This tragic paradigm is characterized by a dialectic tension, the unity of polarities, and especially by the transformation of things into their opposite. Bernhard Zimmermann (Freiburg University) First published 27 October 2011 Citation: Zimmermann, Bernhard. "Oedipus Tyrranus [Oedipus the King or Oedipus Rex]". The Literary Encyclopedia. 27 October 2011. [http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3153, accessed 5 November 2011.]

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