The Greek Plays

by The Greek Plays- Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles

  A man of sense won’t make a bad choice.

  *61 The next 2 lines (611–12) are interpolated:

  And a good friend, the man whom one loves most,

  just like one’s life, must not be thrown away.

  *62 I follow Jebb here, assigning this line, as slightly emended by Jebb, to Oedipus.

  *63 Something has dropped out between lines 625 and 626. I translate Jebb’s supplement, which bridges the gap.

  *64 A lyrical passage shared between actor and Chorus is called a kommos (literally, “a striking, beating of the head and breast in lamentation”; hence, “a dirge, a lament”). This is the first such passage in the play (lines 649–97); another occurs later (1313–66). Here Sophocles varies the kommos in several ways, first by having different voices in the strophe (Oedipus and Chorus) and antistrophe (Jocasta joins in), then by inserting spoken dialogue (Oedipus and Creon) between the two sung portions (669–77).

  *65 This one line, broken into three parts, is in iambic trimeter, the regular meter of spoken verse, suggesting that it was either spoken rather than sung, or delivered in a kind of recitative. The same thing happens in the corresponding line of the antistrophe (683).

  *66 See note to line 37.

  *67 See note to line 515.

  *68 Oedipus is speaking euphemistically: “some connection between” means “identical with.”

  *69 An apparent allusion to the augural practice of judging the meaning of a bird’s appearance—propitious, if on the right; unpropitious, if on the left. Jocasta is saying she will not pay any attention to such omens.

  *70 The Greek here is hybris (in English, “hubris”), a word notoriously difficult to translate. “Arrogance” is but one of its several meanings. “Violence,” “insolence,” “outrage,” even “rape” are others. The Chorus itself, not yet knowing who killed Laius, would not have “violence” in mind at this point, but it is in fact through an act of violence that “Oedipus the tyrant” has made his way to the throne. The audience, along with Sophocles, knows that, and they might take the word in that sense as well as the one meant by the Chorus, for whom the hybris or “arrogance” of Oedipus has shown itself so far in his attacks on Tiresias and Creon.

  *71 I translate line 892 as emended by Hermann (“gods”) and 893 as emended by Enger (“find strength”).

  *72 Almost all Greek choruses, dramatic and otherwise, sang and danced in honor of the gods. The literal Greek here (“Why should I dance?”) implies “Why should I worship the gods?” The antistrophe ends on a similar note of religious uneasiness.

  *73 The oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

  *74 A town in Phocis, where there was another oracle of Apollo, less famous than the one at Delphi.

  *75 Site of the ancient Olympic Games, held in honor of Zeus, who had an oracle there.

  *76 Apollo’s altar is situated in front of the royal palace.

  *77 According to Dawe, with “the possible exception of some scenes from Homer, the next three hundred lines constitute the finest achievement in Greek poetic technique to have survived to our era.”

  *78 See note to line 515.

  *79 The first three lines spoken by the Messenger all end with the same syllable, -pou, bringing into play again (as at 43 and 397) the untranslatable pun on the name of Oedipus. The first and third line endings contain forms of the Greek verb meaning “to know,” the root of which is embedded in the name at the end of the second line: mathoim’ hopou…Oidipou…katoisth’ hopou (“may I learn where…Oedipus…do you know where?”). The triple repetition of -pou would also have brought to mind the Greek word for “foot” (pous), preparing the way for the introduction of a different popular etymology of the hero’s name, which comes in the course of the ensuing dialogue (lines 1032–36).

  *80 The marriage is complete, or perfect, when the wife bears children to the husband.

  *81 I.e. Corinth, located on the Isthmus, a narrow neck of land connecting the Peloponnese with the rest of Greece.

  *82 Two interpretations are possible. One, that the Messenger uses the word “tyrant” as if it were the equivalent of “king” or “ruler.” The other, that he uses it more precisely. He knows that Oedipus was not the son of the late king of Corinth (1016–18) and so would not be called “king” there. He would be “tyrant” instead, as he has been at Thebes until now. In the latter case, the implication—that “the people” of Corinth know more about Oedipus’ paternity than he does—would be an example of Sophoclean irony.

  *83 Jocasta means “in dreams as well as in such prophecies as the ones given to you.”

  *84 Literally, “that you’d acquire miasma”—the taint of guilt, often of homicide but here for the commission of unnatural crimes, parricide and incest.

  *85 See note to line 421.

  *86 A second popular etymology (for the first, see note to line 43) of the name Oidipous derived it from oidos, “swelling,” and pous, “foot.” Hence Shelley’s coinage, Swellfoot the Tyrant.

  *87 As in lines 1062–63, Oedipus assumes Jocasta is troubled only because she fears he will discover that he came from humble roots.

  *88 The Chorus address him at line 1098, which suggests he’s still onstage. While the Chorus in a Greek tragedy may address an absent person, that is not likely to be the case here. Until now, Oedipus has been either onstage or in the palace. If he exits now, it can only be into the palace, and he is unlikely to go in so soon after Jocasta, whose actions, described by the Messenger at 1241–50, occur immediately after she leaves the stage. She could hardly do what the Messenger says she does with Oedipus only a few steps behind her.

  *89 The meaning is “the next full moon.” The Athenian festival of the Pandia, celebrated at full moon in April, followed immediately upon the Great Dionysia, at which the tragedies were produced. According to Jebb, the Chorus are saying that they will visit the temples at the next full moon in an all-night festival celebrating the discovery that Oedipus is of Theban birth, and that Mount Cithaeron will be a theme of their song.

  *90 Oedipus, still onstage; “child,” again (as in line 1), is a term of endearment.

  *91 Hermes, born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia.

  *92 Dionysus.

  *93 Lloyd-Jones and others notice that a line is missing between 1135 and 1136. The words between angle brackets translate Lloyd-Jones’s Greek, offered as an example of what Sophocles may have written here.

  *94 Arcturus rises in the autumn.

  *95 The three occurrences of “those” in as many lines are meant to evoke the horror of the situation. The first one refers to Laius and Jocasta, the second to Jocasta alone, the third to Laius alone. In the second one, the phrase “living with” recalls 366–67. See note on this page.

  *96 The Sphinx. The conflation of her riddle with an oracle is due to its being posed in dactylic hexameter, as were the oracles of Apollo, and to its enigmatic character: Apollo’s oracles were also enigmatic and hard to interpret.

  *97 The Chorus speak as if Oedipus has been called king all along, but in fact this is the first and only time in the play that the actual word is used of him. Until this moment he has been “tyrant,” “lord,” or “master,” never “king.” Whatever the Chorus mean, Sophocles himself has delayed the bestowal of the title “king” upon him until now, timing it to coincide with his fall and not reverting to it later.

  *98 A man’s wife is, metaphorically, the furrow he sows; later, at lines 1256–57, the field he plows.

  *99 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson interpret this as a vague reference to “evil things, disasters” (Sophoclea, 108).

  *100 Now called the Danube.

  *101 Now called the Rioni, a river in Colchis, east of the Black Sea, into which it empties.

  *102 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, following West, bracket lines 1278–79 as an interpolation.

  *103 I render the text as emended by Wilamowitz and printed by Dawe.

  *104 The Chorus now speak in regular anapestic measures for ten lines, answered by Oedipus
in lyric anapests for four more.

  *105 The Greek word here is daimon, repeated by Oedipus himself in line 1311. It can also mean “god” or “fate.”

  *106 This line is in iambic trimeter, the regular meter for spoken verse, suggesting it was spoken not by the whole Chorus but by its leader alone.

  *107 The plural, again, is allusive. Jocasta is meant.

  *108 Jocasta, defiled by her incestuous union with him.

  *109 Laius, whom he joins as the father of children by the same woman.

  *110 The kommos ends here. Dialogue resumes.

  *111 In the fifth-century imagination, the dead in Hades remained as they were when last alive. Oedipus will take his blindness with him into the Underworld.

  *112 By sending him there as an infant to be exposed to the elements to die.

  *113 Namely, to grow up and become his father’s killer, his mother’s husband.

  *114 Oedipus and Jocasta had four children, two sons (Eteocles and Polynices) and two daughters (Antigone and Ismene). The two daughters are still children in this play; the two sons, though Oedipus here calls them “men,” are evidently not yet of age, as neither lays claim to the throne of Thebes. Instead, Creon seems to have become the ruler, at least for the time being (lines 1417–18 suggest a kind of regency). Later, the sons will attempt to share sovereignty and end by killing each other in the struggle for power. Sophocles had dealt with these developments in the earlier play Antigone and will deal with them again in his final work, Oedipus at Colonus.

  *115 The phrasing in lines 1463–64 is strange, and the emphasis on eating at the same table with his daughters is puzzling at this point. There may be an allusion, by contrast, to the epic tradition, according to which he had cursed his sons because they had placed before him, at table, the wine cups used by Laius.

  *116 A single bacchiac metron, here and again at lines 1471 and 1475, interrupts the iambic trimeters of spoken verse, a sign of intense emotion.

  *117 Daimōn here has the sense of a divine power that oversees a man’s life, for good or ill.

  *118 See note to line 1213.

  *119 The transmitted text (“for my parents and for you”) makes no sense here. I render Herwerden’s conjecture, said by Dawe to give “the expected sense” (199) and described in Sophoclea as “the most plausible suggestion so far” (113).

  *120 I render the text as emended by Dawes in 1781.

  *121 Unable to see a nod of assent to his appeal, Oedipus asks Creon to touch his hand instead.

  *122 Creon switches from iambic trimeter to trochaic tetrameter, in which the dialogue continues to the end. The switch is indicative, perhaps, of a quickening in pace.

  INTRODUCTION TO SOPHOCLES’ ANTIGONE

  The issue that propels this drama toward its violent end is the obligation of the living to bury the dead. The ancient Greeks believed that everyone, friend or foe, free or slave, was entitled to funeral rites and burial. In the course of this drama, Sophocles shows how in antiquity this obligation had deep moral and religious significance, pitting individual against state, natural law against political decree, women against men, piety against impiety. No wonder, then, that the play has been frequently performed in modern times, particularly in times of war; a famous production by Jean Anouilh, in 1944, covertly rallied French resistance to the Nazis.

  The drama takes place on the day after the Thebans had defended their city from an attack by an army of Argives, led by seven captains (one for each gate of Thebes). The Argives were led by Oedipus’ son Polynices, who sought to regain the throne he shared with his brother, Eteocles. But after Polynices and Eteocles killed each other in the course of the battle, their uncle Creon (formerly chief minister to their father, Oedipus) assumed the throne. Normally the victors would allow a defeated army to bury its dead, but in the traditional myth (as depicted in Euripides’ Suppliants, not in this volume) the Thebans refused to do so. Sophocles appears to have departed from tradition by having Polynices be the focus of the drama; Creon’s ban on burial, with a penalty of stoning to death for any who violate it, affects only him.

  Antigone, as the elder of Oedipus and Jocasta’s two daughters, commits herself to seeing that her brother receives burial, following the Greek pattern in which women were responsible for burial and for mourning rites. Her sister, Ismene, tries to stop her, arguing that women should not oppose what men have decided. But Antigone insists that Eteocles and Polynices were both her brothers, and as she explains later in the drama, after she dies she will join the rest of her family in the Underworld, where they will be together for all eternity. She resembles other Sophoclean heroes in her determination to do what she thinks right, no matter the cost to herself or others.

  Creon’s determination to leave Polynices’ body to rot in the sun derives from his political insecurity: he has no royal lineage and no natural authority (as is seen also in Oedipus), yet circumstances have thrust him into power, and he fears opposition. He is so bent on his course that he does not perceive that the Chorus, Theban elders, hesitate to support him, and that his own guards—represented by the comically timid soldier who is sent to report to him—follow him out of fear more than loyalty. He is furious when the guard tells him that Polynices’ body has been buried, and supposes that the guards had been bribed. His quickness to see conspiracies against him is the hallmark of the Sophoclean tyrant, a figure explored also (in a different register) in the Oedipus.

  When the guard returns with Antigone, who had tried to bury the body again after the guards had uncovered it, Antigone claims that she would rather die than leave her brother unburied. In her view, the laws of Zeus and Justice are eternal and take precedence over any mortal decree. In fact, the gods seem to be on Antigone’s side: a sudden whirlwind, as described by the guard, covered with dust everything on the field where the corpse was lying after the guards had exhumed Polynices’ decaying body.

  Creon is angry not only because Antigone did not abide by the “laws that were laid down,” but also because he cannot stand being disobeyed by a woman. He condemns both sisters to death, even though Ismene took no part in the plot and Antigone, as Ismene reminds him, is engaged to marry his son, Haemon. But family relationships are less important to Creon than preserving civic order. His son can marry someone else: “He’ll find other women, other fields to plow,” he says, revealing again his misogynistic streak. When Haemon tries to persuade his father to relent, suggesting that order is best preserved by compromise and that the people of Thebes feel Antigone deserves to be honored, Creon refuses to listen to a person younger than himself and lets Haemon depart in anger. He does, however, back down to some extent. He allows the Chorus to persuade him not to execute Ismene, and he spares Antigone the penalty of stoning to death; instead, she will be placed in a cave and allowed to starve, so that the city will not be directly guilty of her death.

  As she is being led off to the cave, Antigone, no model of emotional fortitude, laments her fate and complains that no one, not even the Chorus, seems prepared to weep for her. But she draws strength from the idea of being able to join her family in the Underworld. In her view—an argument based on the primacy of blood ties—a brother must be honored because, unlike a husband, she cannot get another, now that her parents are dead.

  No one in the audience could have known what would happen next. No sooner has Antigone left the stage than the blind seer Tiresias, also seen in the Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonus, is led in. He knows from the terrible omens reported to him that the city is in danger because Polynices’ body is unburied, and he predicts that the Erinyes and the gods will cause lamentations in Creon’s household. Creon at first refuses to believe Tiresias, but then—remarkably for a ruler in a tragedy—vacillates and changes his mind. But his reversal comes too late.

  No god has intervened to save Antigone, even though she clearly did what was right. Is Sophocles suggesting that, as the Greeks sometimes claimed, an early death, at a moment of heroic action, is a kind of reward? N
o answer is given to the problem of Antigone’s fate, but Creon’s is clear enough. The play’s devastating ending makes clear that disobeying the laws of the gods brings suffering even worse than death.

  The choral odes of this play deserve special comment because they are among the most beautiful and far-reaching of any in extant tragedy. After Creon makes his proclamation, the Chorus—departing entirely from onstage action to survey all of mortal existence—celebrate the great accomplishments of humankind, the race that has overcome all difficulties except death. This hymn to human intellect forms a strange counterpoint to Creon’s increasing folly, but it is beautifully expressed, in Sophocles’ most sublime verses. After Creon condemns Antigone and Ismene to death, by contrast, the Chorus take a darker tone, singing about the destruction of Thebes’s ruling family (of which Creon himself is a part). As the old men of Thebes see it, the gods are slowly destroying the house of Laius, Oedipus’ father, much as the sea’s waves erode the shore; Zeus’ power cannot be restricted. Wealth and power lead men to disaster, but it is the fate of humankind to be deluded, and no one sees what is coming until it is too late.

  In its final ode, sung after Creon rushes off to save Antigone, the old men call on Dionysus, the powerful god who was engendered in Thebes. Like Creon, they seem to have only a partial understanding of the great moral issues that have been raised by Antigone, Haemon, and Tiresias. All they can convey is a sense of powerlessness, never more so than when they address the last lines of the play to Creon: “Have done with prayers. Mortals can have no release from ruin sent by fate”—a grim assessment indeed. But as Sophocles has suggested in his portrait of Antigone’s courage, there were other, and much better, possibilities.

  We cannot be certain when the Antigone was first performed. One of Sophocles’ ancient biographers supposed that he wrote it after he served as general in the Athenian war against Samos in 441/0 B.C., and this date is accepted by many; but another source said that he died after straining his voice reciting the part of Antigone, which suggests that he wrote the drama toward the end of his life (406/5 B.C.). In either case, Antigone was not staged in conjunction with either Oedipus or Oedipus at Colonus, though the three plays are sometimes arranged as a trilogy in modern published editions. The action of Antigone comes last in that sequence, but the play may have been written well before the other two.