The Oedipus Cycle: Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus/Antigone

by Sophocles

  1055 Don’t scream at Them! The Olympian gods, whom Elektra accuses of failing to punish the guilty.

  1062–1063 Amphiaraos—whose wife, / bribed with a golden necklace Elektra will react hostilely to this invocation of Amphiaraos’ fate. He was a seer whose wife contrived to get him killed during the attack on Thebes by the armies of seven cities, as described in Antigone. Polyneikes had given Amphiaraos’ wife Eriphyle a golden necklace in exchange for shaming her husband into joining the ill-fated expedition. The gods spared him (as a good man betrayed) death by slaughter and instead had him swallowed by the Earth in a manner similar to Oedipus’ entry into the afterlife. After death, Amphiaraos’ seer-craft did not desert him; he ended up as a ruler of the dead. The implication is that the gods and the dead will treat Orestes with similar respect.

  1071 Aaagggh indeed As Jebb (1894, 121) interprets this cryptic exchange, Elektra’s scream arises from the fact that Amphiaraos’ wife was punished for killing him, but her father, Agamemnon, remains unavenged. The Leader takes Elektra’s cry to mean, “So much for Eriphyle’s treachery,” and responds, in effect, “Yes, yes!” The chorus starts to say, “for the murderess,” intending to continue, “who killed her husband!” Elektra, however, can think only of the difference between the two outcomes, interjecting, “was brought down.” I have adjusted the translation to maintain the rapid-fire quality of the exchange.

  1299–1300 airborne birds / instinctively cherish the parents The bird referred to here is probably the stork, whose example of parent-child reciprocity was noted by Aristotle Av. 1355. (Jebb, Elektra, 145)

  1306 Themis The goddess of justice, religious observance, and right action.

  1321 tirelessly, like a nightingale The nightingale of the Prokne myth. This species became an apt choice to represent ceaseless mourning because it sings all night long.

  1324–1325 twin / Furies Aegisthus and Klytemnestra.

  Aide carrying . . . urn It may be without a lid, but could contain real ashes to allow the actress to show her tenderness toward Orestes’ remains.

  1420 When you raced on that terrible circuit Many scholars interpret this line to refer to Orestes’ outward journey into exile in Attica, only to return as ashes. The lines seem also, perhaps even more appropriately, to refer to his fatal circuit of the racecourse at Delphi.

  1432 What should I say? Orestes is conflicted here. Should he reveal who he is and thus risk that his reckless sister will give him away? Or should he respond to her by relieving her of her misery?

  1629 Even things that might not seem fine at all The Elder might mean that Klytemnestra has resumed grieving for Orestes, now that she’s holding his ashes, and therefore is distracted and not on her guard. (See Kells, 213.)

  kneeling at the ELDER’s feet The gesture emphasizes Elektra’s delusional confusion of the Elder with her dead father.

  1681 relentless hounds tracking evil A phrase that fuses Orestes and Pylades with the invisible Furies who inhabit them as they kill Klytemnestra.

  1688–1690 the edge of his vengeance / newly-honed ahead of him, / while Hermes Hermes, earlier invoked by Elektra, and whose function is to usher the doomed into death, arrives to encourage the pair on their deadly mission.

  1710–1711 The destiny that shadowed you . . . done now The Chorus believes the curse on the House of Atreus has run its course. Though this chorus is more perceptive than many in Sophocles’ plays, the unresolved exchange at play’s end suggest they might be mistaken here.

  1713–1714 Stab her again— / if you have the strength Elektra’s great moment. Why she thinks Orestes might be incapable of stabbing Klytemnestra again is puzzling. Perhaps her chilling encouragement is meant to discourage any revulsion or second thoughts on her brother’s part.

  1717 The Curses work! See earlier comment about Curses as viable weapons for line 143.

  1728–1729 It went well. If / Apollo oracled well The line suggests a certain detachment on Orestes’ part. He carried out the killings according to Apollo’s instructions. If Apollo supplied them sincerely, then everything did go well. If Apollo’s terse words concealed a hidden danger, further trouble may be in the wings. Or Orestes may simply refer here to the unfinished business of killing Aegisthus.

  1770–1771 Time has taught / me to join . . . those stronger than me Elektra’s capacity for irony is fully exercised throughout her exchange with Aegisthus. Here she implies for Aegisthus’ benefit that she’s yielding to his dominance, but by “those stronger” she clearly means Orestes and Pylades.

  1790–1791 Haven’t you realized by now “the dead” . . . are alive? Orestes’ taunt ties in with the Chorus’s apprehension that Orestes and Pylades pursue Klytemnestra and Aegisthus into the palace as if they were ancient “Furies” and in doing so act on behalf of the “dead” Agamemnon.

  1817–1818 Must this house witness all the murders / our family’s suffered—and those still to come? Aegisthus’ response to Orestes’ declaration of finality is to predict (twice) that the curse on the House of Atreus has yet to run its course.

  1831–1832 Justice dealt by the sword / will keep evil in check Orestes implicitly claims that justice, achieved by his punishing the latest kin murderers, will put an end to intrafamilial feuds.

  1833–1835 House of Atreus . . . what’s been / accomplished today sets you free The Chorus takes Orestes at his word. Does Sophocles?

  OEDIPUS THE KING

  1–7 My children . . . Healing God? These first lines in the Greek are compressed—dense with mythic, dramatic, and ironic significance. Oedipus emerges from the palace to confront a sea of green branches—the olive boughs his agitated Theban subjects have brought to him in supplication (see note to 4). He plays on that image—“fresh green life / old Kadmos nurtures and protects”—to acknowledge the citizens’ ancestry: they are the latest crop, the newest descendants of Kadmos, Thebes’ legendary founder and its first king, who seeded the ground with dragon’s teeth from which sprang fully armed soldiers. That Oedipus invokes Kadmos as the still-fathering source of Thebes’ newest generation registers the power enduring paternal bloodlines held for fifth-century Greeks. By referring to the delegation as trophê—an abstract noun used here to mean “those cared for” or “those protected” by Kadmos—Oedipus seems briefly to be puzzled as to why the delegation appeals to him for help, rather than to the city’s divinities. He tries to shift responsibility for their welfare away from himself to Kadmos. But the compassion he extends to them in his first words—by calling them his “children,” as though he were related by blood—turns out to be more than a metaphoric gesture when Oedipus discovers that Kadmos is his ancestor as well.

  4 with your wool-strung boughs Supplicants left branches of laurel or olive, with tufts of wool tied on to them, at the altars of gods to whom they appealed for help. But here the use of suppliant boughs to seek help from a mortal man is highly unusual. Oedipus’ initial puzzlement as to why he is being petitioned with ritual emblems of supplication also suggests his reluctance to get involved, perhaps his sense of inadequacy. This momentary doubt vanishes as he feels his subjects’ need and as his strength and competence recover. He has indeed, we soon learn, been totally aware of Thebes’ widespread devastation.

  6–7 prayers . . . Healing God Literally, “paeans.” A paean was a hymn to Apollo as a healer of disease, one of the god’s many roles. Although the oracle that predicted the plague was given by Apollo—and Homer’s Iliad tells us he could send a plague as well as cure one—nothing in the text implicates him as the cause of the plague now inflicting Thebes.

  26–27 river shrine . . . ashes . . . prophecy Literally, “prophetic embers of Ismenos.” A temple on the shores of the Ismenos, one of the two Theban rivers, was dedicated to Apollo. Embers in the temple smoldered under a sacrificed animal whose burnt remains could be read to interpret the will of a god, in this case Apollo’s.

  31 Plague The plague that had struck Thebes was general, destroying crops, animals, and people. T
he fiery heat characteristic of the fever is referred to again at 227–228 (see note to 224–239). The resemblance between the plague in this play and the Athenian plague of 430 BCE as described by Thucydides has led some scholars to date the play shortly after 429. See especially Bernard Knox, “The Date of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles,” in American Journal of Philology 77, no. 2 (1956).

  34 A burning god The Greeks assumed a god to be responsible for a general and devastating plague. At 224 the Chorus names Ares, symbol of violence or destructiveness, as the responsible divinity.

  37 Hades The god who presides over the underworld.

  38–41 We haven’t come . . . confronting gods The Priest explains why he, a man who himself has access to the gods, comes to Oedipus, a political leader, for help in this crisis; Oedipus has proven his ability to act effectively in situations requiring direct contact with a divinity.

  42–44 freed us . . . rasping Singer The “rasping Singer” is the Sphinx, pictured by Greek artists of Sophocles’ time with a lion’s body, a woman’s head and breasts, and wings. She arrived in Thebes shortly after Laios’ departure and destroyed young Thebans (“the tax we paid with our lives”) by posing a riddle that resulted in the death of those who answered incorrectly. (In some versions of the myth, the victims were thrown from a cliff, and in others they were strangled, perhaps in some sexual embrace; the word “Sphinx” is related to the Greek verb meaning “to strangle.”) Oedipus triumphed by solving the riddle and killing the Sphinx, thus liberating Thebes from a reign of terror. One version of the riddle follows; it appears in myth in slightly different formulations: “There exists on land a thing with two feet and four feet, with a single voice, that has three feet as well. It changes shape alone among the things that move on land or in the air or down through the sea. Yet during periods when it is supported by the largest number of feet, then is the speed in its limbs the feeblest of all” (Gould 1970, 19). By answering “man,” Oedipus demonstrated his lifelong attribute, intellectual resourcefulness in harrowing circumstances. Sophocles refrains from presenting the riddle itself, perhaps because its folk-tale cleverness seemed too insufficient a proof of real intelligence.

  51 god’s intimation A prophetic voice, an oracle or augury, or a divine signal of some kind.

  62 a bird from god Birdlife was a major medium of communication between gods and mortals. Prophets and seers divined messages from birds’ songs and flight patterns. Oedipus himself is ironically seen here as a favorable birdlike omen. See Antigone, note to 463–464.

  62 good luck The first of many invocations of the Greek concept of tyche, which can mean “luck,” “chance,” or “fate.” I generally translate “luck” when the speaker is gratified, “chance” when the outcome seems uncertain or unfortunate, and “fate” when a divinity seems involved.

  69 I know what need Oedipus’ grasp of the situation might seem contradictory to his initial professed ignorance of the suppliants’ appeal. In his first speech, he was simply searching for new developments and urging his people to voice fears and needs. Here he reveals his continued concern and reports specific actions he has taken.

  69 this sickness Oedipus refers both to the literal “sickness” of the suppliants, all victims in some respect of the plague, and to his own metaphoric sickness—his mental suffering for his fellow Thebans. But the Greek audience understood that the “sickness” that affects Oedipus, of which he is unaware, is not metaphoric at all but a literal pollution of his entire being. Sophocles will continue to reveal how characters’ metaphoric speech turns out to be unexpectedly and horrifyingly literal.

  81 Phoibos Apollo.

  85 He takes too long The Pythoness at Delphi delivered answers to questioners only once a month, and the shortest possible elapsed time for a trip from Thebes to Delphi and back would be about four or five days.

  90 Lord Apollo This exclamation could be as much an impromptu prayer as an oath. The stage might contain a statue of Apollo to which Oedipus turns or nods as he speaks these lines.

  91–92 Luck so bright . . . see it I follow the interpretation of these lines given by Lowell Edmunds in “Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus,” in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80–81 (1976): 41–44, who disputes the traditional interpretation: “May his radiant look prove the herald of good news.” Arguing that Sophocles uses an idiom dependent on a suppressed preposition, Edmunds believes eu should be understood before ommati and the lines literally be translated as “May he come bright with saving fortune as he is bright to view.”

  laurel crown A laurel crown customarily signified that a pilgrimage to a shrine or an oracle had been a success.

  96 Menoikeos One of the “Sown Men” who grew up instantly and fully armed in Thebes when Kadmos seeded the earth with dragon’s teeth. Pronounced “Me-NEE-kius.”

  98–99 A good one . . . will be fine A deliberately obscure answer. Kreon here resists revealing, until directed by Oedipus, the shocking nature of the oracle he has received. The lines also suggest Kreon’s annoying use of a Sophist’s quibbling idiom.

  102–103 in front . . . go inside Kreon gives Oedipus the option of keeping Thebes in the dark about the oracle’s disturbing accusations.

  107 very clear Kreon remarks on the lack of evasion or surface difficulty in this new oracle. Oracles (frequently delivered in lines of hexameter verse) were sometimes cryptic and demanded interpretation. The oracles to Oedipus are among the rare ones in Greek myth that mean exactly what they literally say.

  113 banishing . . . killing Apollo offers Thebes two choices for purging itself of Laios’ murderer: death or exile. This choice comes up again when Oedipus charges Kreon with the crime and when Oedipus and Kreon debate Oedipus’ ultimate fate.

  113–114 blood— / kin murder The presence in a city of a person who had shed the blood of someone in his own family was absolutely horrifying and unacceptable to a Greek. Even in the late fifth century, lawyers made dramatic use of this horror when prosecuting murderers.

  120 own hands The first of many references to hands, especially hands that shed blood. In Greek law the hands of a person who committed a crime retained the pollution inherent in that crime, regardless of motive or intent. Here Oedipus’ avenging hands are paired rhetorically with the hands that murdered Laios. The two pairs of hands will be shown to be only one pair, Oedipus’ own.

  129–130 journey . . . god’s presence The Greek word so translated is theoros, literally, a spectator of (or witness to) a divine rite or event. We know from Euripides’ Phoenician Women (Grene and Lattimore, vol. IV, 1959, 462) that Laios was on his way to Delphi to ask the Pythoness whether or not the son he had exposed was really dead. But by not specifically naming Laios’ destination, Sophocles permits Oedipus to postpone facing the possibility that Laios and he were traveling on the same road at the same time.

  141 bandit Though Kreon clearly used the plural in 138, Oedipus speaks of a single bandit with chilling, unconscious accuracy. But because his sentence is a hypothetical question, it is logically proper.

  144–145 new troubles . . . no avenger Kreon evokes a rapid sequence of events: Laios’ departure; news of his death; attack by the Sphinx; arrival of Oedipus; death of the Sphinx. The elapsed time might have been only a few days, or at most a week or two.

  147 blocked The Greek word so translated, empodon, refers to stumbling, tripping, or impeding the legs.

  150 at our feet Kreon continues the foot imagery, which may carry a reference to Oedipus’ own swollen feet.

  160 exacting vengeance Oedipus strangely imagines himself the victim of a second crime by Laios’ original murderer. That this should be an act of “vengeance” is hard to explain given the state of Oedipus’ knowledge, but it will indeed be an act of vengeance when the same hands that killed Laios blind Oedipus.

  164 people of Kadmos Theban citizens. When they arrive, the Chorus will represent the “people of Kadmos.”

  173 Voice from Zeus Though Apollo was the resident deity who iss
ued his prophecies through the Pythoness at Delphi, the Chorus here attributes the commands to Zeus, the ultimate source of knowledge and power.

  179 Delos The island at the center of the Cyclades, birthplace of Apollo, was said to be the navel of the sea, as Delphi was the navel of the Earth. Gods communicated with mortals through both connections.

  181 new threat . . . old doom The Chorus distinguishes between a curse that has been known for some years and one that has newly emerged. The Voice of Zeus will invoke an old curse against the murderer of Laios.

  186–191 Athena . . . Artemis . . . Apollo The Chorus, not knowing which god will be the truly relevant one, prays to three divinities to focus their powers on rescuing Thebes.

  208 Deathgod Hades.

  224–239 Ares . . . who kills us The war god Ares is not associated with the plague in myth, but Sophocles probably alludes to the plague’s spread in Athens during the Spartan attacks of 430–425. The image of Ares as a murderer “without armor now” reflects the fifth-century Greeks’ lack of knowledge about infectious diseases. Throngs of rural Greeks, assuming Athens a safe haven from the Spartans, flocked to the city; there the overcrowded conditions facilitated the plague’s swift and deadly spread. In Aeschylus’ Suppliants (Grene and Lattimore, vol. I, 1959, 201), Ares personifies the plague or destruction itself.

  229–230 vast sea-room / of Amphitritê Literally, “great hall of Amphitritê.” Amphitritê was a sea nymph whose home was the Atlantic Ocean, hence her name became synonymous with that body of water.

  232 jagged harbors Literally, “welcomeless anchorage.”

  233 seas off Thrace The Black Sea. The Thracians, who lived on its shores, were warlike; Ares was their primary god.

  233–235 If night . . . finish it The meaning is obscure, but Gould (1970, 39) suggests “if the night lets anything survive, the day moves in to finish it.”

  240 lord of the morning light Literally, “Lycean Lord.” Lycean was one of Apollo’s epithets and could suggest either “light” or “wolf.” The Chorus surely calls on him here in his protective, light-bringing aspect.