*20 The blood on the knife used to kill a sacrificial victim was wiped back onto the victim as if to indicate the victim’s consent. Ordinarily water would be used to wash a corpse.
*21 The Erinyes were sometimes portrayed with multiple feet. The phrase may also suggest how, later in the drama, Orestes and Pylades together ambush first Clytemnestra and then Aegisthus.
*22 Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.
*23 In order to win Hippodamia as his bride, Pelops, Agamemnon’s grandfather, needed to beat her father, Oenomaus, in a chariot race; if Pelops lost, Oenomaus would kill him. Pelops bribed Oenomaus’ charioteer to tamper with the wheel of Oenomaus’ chariot, won the race, and threw Myrsilus into the sea.
*24 In fifth-century Athens, unmarried women from propertied families did not leave the house unescorted.
*25 The goddess Artemis demanded that Iphigenia be sacrificed, because she was angry about the deaths that would result from the expedition to Troy. For a vivid description of the sacrifice, see Aeschylus, Agamemnon 205–46.
*26 The Greek fleet was sent to Troy to bring their mother, Helen, back to their father, Menelaus. Menelaus and Helen had two children, a daughter, Hermione, and a son, Pleisthenes (Homer also mentions Megapenthes, Menelaus’ son by a slave woman).
*27 The gods participated in sacrifices offered to them by mortals, if only by smelling the smoke of the bones and skin offered to them.
*28 Artemis kept the Greek fleet from sailing out of the harbor at Aulis until Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia.
*29 The context indicates that a line is missing here in which the Chorus would have addressed Clytemnestra.
*30 Sacrifices needed to be conducted in an atmosphere of peace and decorum.
*31 Clytemnestra describes her message as if it were written in a book roll that she was not prepared to open.
*32 Atreus was Agamemnon’s father.
*33 The wealth of detail in this narrative makes it credible, even though it is a complete fabrication.
*34 The Pythian Games, held every two years in honor of Apollo.
*35 This line was probably not in Sophocles’ original text.
*36 The language here echoes the opening line of the drama.
*37 Antilochus wins the race in Iliad 23 by using the same tactic.
*38 Chariot races were held on the flat plain of Crisa below the hills where the sanctuary of Delphi is located.
*39 Delphi was in the district of Phocis and was managed by its residents.
*40 Electra invokes the goddess Nemesis because she was believed to punish people who had no aidōs, or respect for righteous behavior.
*41 Amphiaraus was betrayed by his wife, Eriphyle, who was bribed with the gift of a golden necklace.
*42 Like Tiresias, Amphiaraus retained his mental powers after death.
*43 Amphiaraus’ son Alcmeon avenged his father by killing his mother.
*44 It was customary for female family members to prepare the bodies of their relatives for burial and to take part in formal lamentation; in Sophocles’ drama, Antigone defies the king’s orders in order to bury her brother Polynices.
*45 These are traditional gifts to the dead, here offered in unusual abundance.
*46 As head of the family, Aegisthus would pick husbands for his stepdaughters.
*47 These lines do not seem to fit the context and were probably added by an ancient actor or editor.
*48 These repetitious lines appear to have been added to Sophocles’ original text by a later actor or editor.
*49 The stork and other species were believed to look after older birds.
*50 Zeus’ second wife, the goddess of justice among the gods.
*51 Descendants of Atreus, Agamemnon’s father.
*52 Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, acting as avengers (see note to line 112) for the murders of Aegisthus’ siblings and of Iphigenia.
*53 The meaning of the transmitted text is unclear.
*54 This unusual phrasing echoes the dramatic prediction given by the Chorus in lines 489–91: “She is coming, with many feet, many hands, hidden in a cruel ambush, the Erinys with feet of bronze.”
*55 Electra had the Old Slave take the child Orestes to Strophius to protect him from Aegisthus.
*56 A suppliant asking for mercy touched the chin of the person who could help him or her.
*57 A line appears to be missing here.
*58 Clytemnestra here repeats the words spoken by Agamemnon when Clytemnestra murders him in Aeschylus Agamemnon 1343–45.
*59 The rest of the line is missing.
*60 Thrasymachus uses the same phrasing to define justice in Plato’s Republic 338b.
*61 Envy from the gods was thought to follow such great success, such as Orestes’ supposed string of victories in the Pythian Games.
*62 Without saying so directly, Electra suggests that Aegisthus’ body should be left for birds and animals of prey to dispose of.
*63 It is possible that the rather trite generalizations in these anapestic were added to the text by a later writer.
INTRODUCTION TO SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
Only two plays in this volume, Aeschylus’ Eumenides (the third play of the Oresteia trilogy) and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, are set in the city of Athens, and they configure that setting in similar ways. In both, Athens represents a humane place of refuge, where those shunned by other cities—Orestes in the former play, Oedipus here, men contaminated by violations of primal law—can find sanctuary. The arrival of these wanderers, in both cases, forces Athens to choose: Will it lend support to the exile and uphold its traditions of liberality and rule of law, even at the risk of offending great powers? Their decision to do so, both times, brings the blessing of divine protection. For the Athenians who watched these dramas, the exaltation of their city, and the promise that the gods themselves would preserve it, must have been exhilarating.
Yet much had changed for Athens between the productions of the Oresteia and Oedipus at Colonus. In 458 B.C. the city had been riding high on a wave of imperial expansion, mercantile wealth, and populist political reform. By 401 B.C., the date at which Oedipus at Colonus was staged by Sophocles’ grandson—the playwright himself had died five years earlier at the age of (perhaps) ninety, leaving this play behind among his last compositions—Athens had undergone plague, revolution, and a humiliating defeat at the hands of Sparta in a war that had drained its treasury. Sophocles wrote the play before that defeat became certain, but he must have guessed it was coming, and in any case he knew that no matter what the war’s outcome, Athens had suffered mightily. The blessings showered on the city in Oedipus at Colonus were not, in the end, enough to save it.
Oedipus at Colonus shares with the Oresteia a special interest in the ancient goddesses who guard oaths and punish those polluted by blood-guilt, whose dual nature is attested by dual names—Erinyes, often translated as “Furies,” and Eumenides, “Kindly Ones.” Aeschylus’ trilogy ended with the founding at Athens of a shrine, a kind of home, for these creatures, part of a pact by which the city gained their benevolence. Oedipus at Colonus opens when Oedipus, blind after his self-mutilation (depicted at the end of Oedipus the King) and weary from years of wandering, arrives at a similar shrine, a grove sacred to the Erinyes in the Attic district of Colonus. His feet have been directed by destiny to this grove—the place where he is fated to die—and he seats himself inside it, much to the horror of the inhabitants. He will remain on this forbidden ground, defying its taboos, during most of what follows. It represents the nodal point linking the earth, the gods, and the city of Athens, and Oedipus needs to stay connected to all three.
Oedipus has a dual nature, too, the legacy of his incestuous and parricidal past. His violation of the most fundamental human codes have made him a miasma, a danger to anyone who comes in contact with him. But his polluted body also has a benign power, as we learn from reports of oracles and prophecies throughout the play. Oedipus can confer victory to any army he accompanies in
life (lines 1331–32), or to any city that buries him after death (lines 411–15). In Greek terms he has become hagios, a word that—illogically from a modern Judeo-Christian perspective—can translate both as “holy” and as “accursed.” His crimes have put him beyond the human condition; transcending that condition does not render him simply good or evil, but numinous, awesome, unapproachable.
But merely to call his deeds “crimes” is misleading, for the play rejects that characterization. Oedipus has already claimed, at the end of Oedipus the King, that Apollo, overseer of fate and prophecy, had brought his sufferings to pass (lines 1329–31), not he himself. In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles develops this idea, especially in the play’s great central scene, a confrontation between Oedipus and his former chief minister, Creon. Oedipus here speaks like a defendant at the bar, arguing that ignorance acquits him of the charges both of incest and parricide, while self-defense acquits him of murder. Nothing he did was intentional, and nothing could have been avoided; all was predestined, as proved by the foreknowledge of the oracles. The larger question, of why Oedipus was thus singled out, goes unanswered; “so it pleased the gods, who held, / it seems, some ancient grudge against my family,” is all the explanation we are offered (lines 963–64). A profound mystery lies at the core of Oedipus’ life, but not a profound guilt. His self-blinding was too great a punishment, he now realizes (line 439), as were his exile from Thebes and his loss of rule, both forced on him by his power-hungry sons.
Those sons are now at war with each other, and civic order at Thebes is teetering. Creon, who attempted to take control at the end of Oedipus the King, is now serving as aide to Oedipus’ younger son, Eteocles; together they are preparing for an invasion by the older son, Polynices, who has recruited an army (the “Seven against Thebes” dramatized by Aeschylus, in a play not in this volume) in Argos. Both sides in the conflict see Oedipus as the safeguard of victory, and so Creon and Polynices both arrive in Colonus, separately, in an effort to get hold of him. Caught in the middle is Theseus, the famously just and moderate king of Athens, who stands with Oedipus against these onslaughts, especially against the violent coercions of Creon. (Creon’s violent methods will, in a later stage of the “Theban cycle,” lead to the central crisis of Antigone, a play that takes place after this one though it was written long before. Between the two plays, Polynices and Eteocles are both killed in the Argive attack on Thebes, leaving Creon in control of the city; to intimidate his opponents, he decrees that Polynices must lie unburied for all to see.)
By taking up arms to stop Creon, Theseus risks provoking war with Thebes, but, Oedipus promises, Athens is bound to win such a war—thanks to his presence on Attic soil. There was important resonance here with the political backdrop against which the play was composed. Thebes had allied with Sparta during the long war between Sparta and Athens, known today as the Peloponnesian War. Athenian prospects in that war had sunk to a very low ebb by 406 B.C., and a Spartan fortress stood on Attic soil, practically putting Athens under a state of siege. Yet Athens could hold out as long as its ships controlled the Aegean, as they did until 405, just after Sophocles’ death. In Theseus’ defiant stand against Creon, and Oedipus’ promise that “your city shall not be destroyed / by men sprung from the dragon’s teeth,” that is, by Thebans (lines 1533–34), we hear the expression of a hope that was fading even as Sophocles set it down and would soon disappear altogether.
The play’s final sequence deals with the solemn mystery of Oedipus’ death and burial. Oedipus knows his time has come, and the thunder of Zeus confirms it. Attended by his daughters and Theseus, Oedipus bathes and says his farewells, then, with Theseus alone, he makes his way to a predestined place. There, the gods themselves seem to call him to join their company: “You there, Oedipus! Why are we not yet / on our way?” calls a disembodied voice (lines 1637–38). That plural speaks volumes. Having endured more than a mere mortal could, Oedipus has finally become a kind of god, or at least what the Greeks called a hero, an immortal being whose tomb becomes a focal point of divine power. Usually a hero’s tomb receives cult worship, but in this case it must be kept hidden; only Theseus is allowed to know where it lies, lest some enemy of Athens steal the remains. Antigone and Ismene, in the play’s beautiful closing lyrics, mourn a crypt they cannot ever visit, and make their uncertain way into a world rendered bleak by their brothers’ looming war.
The miraculous disappearance of Oedipus, and the awestruck reaction of Theseus, might for modern readers evoke the story pattern of the Christian ascension; indeed, an acclaimed 1980s musical, The Gospel at Colonus, played on those associations, using gospel hymns to turn this play into a parable of sin and salvation. The Greeks did not have a doctrine of redemption from sin, nor does Oedipus regard his transgressions as sins, but the musical at least helped modern audiences to experience Greek tragedy as religious drama. Oedipus at Colonus is indeed a profoundly religious play, written by a man nearing the end of a long and pious life. If Sophocles meant it to be his farewell to Athens, after nearly sixty-five years of writing for its stage, he could hardly have composed a more meaningful one.
OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
Translated by Frank Nisetich
This is a translation of the Greek text of the play edited by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson, Sophoclis Fabulae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, 1992). Passages considered as interpolations by Lloyd-Jones and Wilson are omitted from the text of this translation but included in the notes.
CAST OF CHARACTERS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
OEDIPUS, son of Laius and Jocasta; formerly king of Thebes
ANTIGONE, daughter of Oedipus by his mother, Jocasta
STRANGER, from Colonus
CHORUS of elderly men of Colonus, with their Leader
ISMENE, daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta; sister of Antigone
THESEUS, king of Athens
CREON, brother of Jocasta, Oedipus’ wife and mother
POLYNICES, son of Oedipus and Jocasta
MESSENGER
GUARDS and ATTENDANTS of Theseus and Creon (nonspeaking parts)
Setting: The play takes place at Colonus, a rural village about a mile and a half northwest of the Acropolis of Athens. In the background is a grove, sacred to the Furies (also called the Eumenides, or Kindly Ones). Just inside the sacred area but not within the grove itself is a rock large enough to sit on. To the right and outside the sacred area is an equestrian statue of the hero Colonus. The entry on the spectators’ left is for characters arriving from the direction of Thebes; that on the right, for those arriving from the direction of Athens.
(Oedipus enters on the left. He is old, blind, dressed in rags, holding a staff and a beggar’s pouch. His daughter Antigone guides his steps.)
OEDIPUS: Antigone, daughter of the blind old man,
what country have we come to, or whose city?
Who will receive the wanderer, Oedipus,
with a meager offering today? I ask
for little, receive still less than a little,
and make do with that. Suffering,
and the company of long years,
and nobility, third in line, teach me patience.
But, child, if you see a place to sit,
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on common ground or near a temple grove,
put me there, sit me down, so we may learn
where we are. As strangers here, we need
to inquire, and do what the locals tell us.
ANTIGONE: Father, unhappy Oedipus, to my eyes
those are towers in the distance, crowning a city;
and this place, it’s easy to guess, is sacred, thick
with laurel, olive, vine, and deep inside
fluttering nightingales fill it with song.
Here, sit on this rough stone, sit, relax, since you
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have walked a long way, for an old man.
(She leads him to the stone.)
OEDIPUS: Help me sit, then, and stay by me,
blind as I am.
ANTIGONE: As if, at this late stage, I need instructing!
(She helps him sit.)
OEDIPUS: Can you tell me, now, where we’ve come?
ANTIGONE: I know it’s Athens, but I don’t know this place.
OEDIPUS: Athens, yes—every traveler told us that.
ANTIGONE: Should I go find out where we are now?
OEDIPUS: Yes, child, if in fact people live here.
(Enter Stranger, on the right.)
ANTIGONE: Well, there are people here! No need
to ask about that. I see a man nearby.
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OEDIPUS: On his way here—is this his destination?
(The Stranger arrives at center stage.)
ANTIGONE: Actually, he is here. Whatever you think
it’s right to say, say it now. Here he is.
OEDIPUS: Stranger, hearing from this girl, who sees
for the two of us, that you’ve come looking,
just in time to tell us what we need to know, I—
STRANGER: (interrupting) Before you say anything more, leave that seat!
The place you’re in is holy, not to be trodden.
OEDIPUS: What place is it? Which god does it belong to?
STRANGER: No one may enter or live there. The dread goddesses,*1
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daughters of Earth and Darkness, possess it.
OEDIPUS: What sacred name would I use to pray to them?
STRANGER: The people here call them Eumenides,*2
who see all things—but others use other names.
OEDIPUS: Well, may they be kind, and may they welcome
their suppliant, for I will never leave this place.
STRANGER: What does that mean?
OED.: My destiny. The signs are clear.
STRANGER: Well, I dare not move you, without approval
from the city, not before I report your actions.
The Greek Plays Page 46
