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

by Sophocles

  926 man out front Presumably the herald.

  929–936 I smash . . . kill them all Oedipus uses the historical present tense in these lines. Although the events happened some twenty years earlier, they are vivid and immediate in his mind (Segal 2001, 90).

  933–934 staff / this hand holds The hand was the instrument that retained the defilement of its acts. The actor might have raised his hand at this point, as he might have at other times when his hand is named. In Athenian law, acts committed by an agent’s own hand, even if involuntarily, resulted in pollution, but masterminding or delegating the act escaped such stigma.

  936 kill them all Said in pride, perhaps, but not in boastfulness. Laios’ men would have attacked him; only by killing or disabling all would he have survived. In fact, Oedipus killed only four; the fifth (the herald) escaped, or perhaps recovered from a wound after being left for dead.

  937 stranger and Laios . . . were the same blood In Greek, the word for stranger, xenos, could apply to Oedipus himself.

  938 triumph The Greek word so translated is athlios, a superlative form of athlon, a contest or combat.

  949 utter filth The Greek word so translated is anagnos, meaning “guilty,” “unclean,” or “unholy,” and is usually translated as “polluted,” which I avoid to escape confusion with modern uses of that word.

  955 brought me up and gave me birth By reversing the natural order—birth followed by nurture— Sophocles reminds us that Polybos “gave birth” to Oedipus only by bringing him up and falsely claiming him as his own son.

  965 eyewitness Literally, “person who was there.”

  976 braving the road alone The Greek word here is somewhat mysterious and might be translated literally as “with solitary belt.” The word appears nowhere else in surviving Greek. It may mean simply “dressed as a traveler.”

  978 evidence will drag me down Literally, “the balance tips toward me.” The metaphor is from scales for weighing, a typical one in judicial contexts. See Oedipus at Kolonos, note to 1652.

  986 poor doomed child Literally, “unhappy person” (dystanos). Here Jokasta is thinking of the short, doomed life of her baby and uses the most common word for “unfortunate one.” In her final speeches to Oedipus (at 1214 and 1217), she will use the same word to sum up his life.

  989 look right, then left Literally, “shoot frightened glances right and left” (Gould 1970, 106). Ancient Greeks, who habitually took actions and made decisions based on signs and omens from the divinities, interpreted the sudden presence of a person or bird as hopeful (if it appeared on the right) and dangerous (if it appeared on the left). Jokasta has abandoned such precautions.

  996 sky-walking laws Literally, “sky-footed.” The laws to which the Chorus refers here are those whose origins go as far back as human consciousness does, laws inseparable from our instinctive behavior. The laws forbidding incest and kin murder would be those most on the Chorus’s mind.

  1006–1007 A violent will / fathers the tyrant Literally, “hubris plants the seed of the tyrannos.” Hubris, a general word for violence, outrage, and moral insubordination, sums up the actions of a person who exercises pure will without constraint, and thus applies most exactly to a Greek tyrannos. The name tyrannos was given to powerful rulers from the late seventh to the early fifth centuries who “emerged from the aristocratic oligarchy as sole rulers of their city-states, responsible only to themselves. . . . They were necessarily energetic, intelligent, confident, ambitious, and aggressive; they also had to be ruthless and suspicious of plots to overthrow their sometimes precarious position” (Segal 2001, 6). The term did not acquire our pejorative meaning of “tyrant” until Plato, in the fourth century. Throughout the play Sophocles uses tyrannos in the more neutral sense of a basileus, or king, except at 1007, where the modern sense of the tyrant is surely intended.

  1039–1041 Delphi . . . Olympia . . . Abai All are holy shrines and destinations of religious pilgrimages. See note to 179.

  1049 the gods lose force Literally, “the things pertaining to divinity slowly depart.”

  1080 isthmus The Isthmus of Korinth connects the Peloponnesus to the Greek mainland.

  1104 scour Pythian smoke Literally, “scrutinize the Pythian hearth.” The Pythoness delivered the prophecies from within a basement cell inside the temple of Apollo in Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassos. The smoky vapors that rose from the temple floor were reputed to put her in a trance. Recent geological studies of the soil around Delphi suggest that the fumes from its underlying rock structure contained ethylene—a sweet-smelling gas, once used as an anesthetic, that produces a pleasant euphoria. (See William J. Broad, “For Delphic Oracle, Fumes and Visions,” New York Times, 19 March 2002, late ed.: F1.)

  1131 shines a great light Literally, “great eye.” The Greeks believed eyes projected powerful rays toward the people and the objects they looked at. Other uses of this metaphor in Greek literature suggest that a “great eye” was a sign of wonderful good hope or good luck.

  1155 unforgivable harm Literally, “Lest you receive a religious pollution from those who planted you.”

  1214 You poor child! Jokasta calls Oedipus dystanos, the same word she called her child who was exposed and presumed dead (see note to 986). She now knows that child is Oedipus, and will call him dystanos once more at 1217. In his next speech, Oedipus will disclaim all human mothering and claim Luck (Tyche) for his parent (1226); he sees only the good in his situation at the moment.

  1248 Pan A god holy to rural people, Pan was a patron of shepherds and herdsmen, as well as a fertility god amorous to both sexes. The mountain he roves is Kithairon, the mountain on which Oedipus’ parents instructed the shepherd to let him die.

  1253–1256 Hermes . . . Kyllene . . . Helikon Like Pan, Hermes was a god well known to country people for playing childish tricks. Zeus made him his messenger and gave him the wide-brimmed hat, winged sandals, and kerykeion (or caduceus in Latin, meaning herald’s staff) with which he is often shown. Because of his association with roads, Hermes is known as the patron of wayfarers—traders, travelers, and thieves. The Chorus’s mention of him might allude to the crossroads, the place at which Oedipus killed Laios. Kyllene, a haunt of both Pan and Hermes, is a mountain in Arcadia in the central Peloponnesus, the largest peninsula south of Attica, connected to the mainland only by the Isthmus of Korinth. The Muses inhabited a sanctuary on Helikon, a mountain south of Thebes.

  1288 Arcturos A star near the Big Dipper that, when it appeared in September, signaled the end of summer in Greece.

  1326 Kill her own child? The Greek phrase so translated, tlemon tekousa (literally, “poor woman, she who gave birth”), “shows how difficult it is to translate Sophocles’ density and richness of meaning” (Segal 2001, 103). Here Sophocles implies that Jokasta found herself doing something utterly horrible for a mother to do: killing her own child.

  1350 Your fate teaches Literally, “with your example [or “paradigm,” paradigmos] before us.”

  1351–1352 the story / god spoke Literally, “with your daimon before us.” See the introduction to this play for a discussion of daimon.

  1358 who sang the god’s dark oracles Literally, “singer of oracles.” Presumably a reference to the Sphinx’s riddles, but the word “oracle” usually refers to divinely sanctioned responses such as those given by Delphi. Sophocles may here be connecting the Sphinx to the other instances of divine intervention in Oedipus’ life.

  1371 tumbling The Greek word so translated, pesein, literally means to “fall on,” or “attack,” and can refer in one usage to a baby falling between the legs of a woman squatted or seated in childbirth. E. A. Havelock (in Gould 1970, 138) suggests another meaning for the verb—to mount sexually, in which case there is an overtone of violence. A variation of the same verb, empiptein, used at 1431, I translate as “burst into” to describe Oedipus’ entry into Jokasta’s bedroom after she’s committed suicide. (See also note for 1419.)

  1391 Danube . . . Rion
The river Danube was called the Ister in the ancient world. The Rion, the modern name of the Phasis, is a river in the Caucasus, on the edge of what was then the known world.

  1394 not involuntary evil. It was willed The Servant refers to Jokasta’s suicide and Oedipus’ self-blinding; he contrasts these conscious and willed actions with the ones Jokasta and Oedipus made without understanding their true consequences, such as their own marriage. Although Oedipus knew what he was doing when he blinded himself, the action was just as fated as the patricide and incest; Tiresias had predicted Oedipus’ blindness earlier. When the Servant says that voluntary evils are more painful, he cannot mean that they are more blameworthy or more serious but that they are done in horror and desperation—in contrast to the earlier evils, such as the marriage, committed in optimism and confidence.

  1415 doubled lives The reference is to Oedipus’ “double” (diplos) relationship to Jokasta, as her son and husband. The word appears again at 1429 with a comparable allusion, as Oedipus enters the “double doors” of their bedroom. Another significant image of doubled action appears in the piercing of Oedipus’ ankles and the striking out of his own eyes.

  1419 burst in The Greek word so translated is eisepaiein, an unusual compound (from eis, “into,” and paiein, “to strike”) that might have been a colloquial word for intercourse recognizable by the audience (Gould 1970, 47). It is used here to compare Oedipus’ violent action to a sexual attack, and thus to link it both to incest and to parricide.

  1424–1425 furrowed twice-mothering Earth . . . children sprang The Messenger reports that Oedipus identifies Jokasta with an aroura, or furrowed field, as the source or origin of both Oedipus himself and the children he conceived with her. The image of Mother Earth figures significantly in the Kolonos. (See Kolonos, lines 1818–1820, and its introduction, p. 501.)

  1431 burst into Again, the word empiptein (see note to 1371), used to refer to Oedipus’ violation of Jokasta’s “harbor” and her “furrow.”

  1512–1514 Apollo . . . made evil, consummate evil / out of my life Literally, “it was Apollo, friends, Apollo who brought to completion these, my evils [pathea].” A pathos (singular) is here, as often in Greek literature, an unmerited suffering sent by a god.

  1516 these eyes Sophocles uses a pronoun (nin) for eyes, not a noun, and one that is the same for any gender, plural, dual, or singular. The ambiguity is surely deliberate but cannot be translated. Its inclusiveness, however, implies that all the blows that made his life evil, though struck by Oedipus himself, were caused by Apollo.

  1724 you will have your wish Some scholars believe that Kreon is agreeing to Oedipus’ plea to be exiled. But it is more likely that the words are noncommittal in the usual way of politicians.

  1733–1746 Thebans . . . god’s victim Some scholars question the authenticity of these lines, partly because of the difficulty in making sense of several of them, and partly because of their suspicious resemblance to the ending of Euripides’ Phoenician Women. Modern audiences object to them mainly because they seem less than climactic. This objection is illegitimate. Greek dramatists did not place strong emphasis on concluding lines the way modern dramatists do, but often used them to facilitate the departure of the Chorus.

  1746 never having been god’s victim Literally, “having been made to undergo no anguish.” The final word of the play, pathon, “having been made to undergo,” is the same noun used at 1471 in a phrase I translate as “pure, helpless anguish.” Oedipus also used pathos at 1513 when he explained that Apollo was the god who reduced him to misery. The word is often used as a technical phrase for the suffering of the heros in hero cults. The Latin translation is passio, which gives us in its Christian context the “passion” of Christ. The word appears in the concluding lines of two of Aeschylus’ plays, The Libation Bearers and Prometheus Bound, as well as in the last sentence of Sophocles’ Elektra. It does not figure in the conclusion of any of Euripides’ surviving plays.

  OEDIPUS AT KOLONOS

  2 Have we come to a town? It’s clear from the exchange at 28–29 that Oedipus and Antigone know they’re approaching Athens. Oedipus wants to know both what place (koros) or piece of open ground they’re near and what town (polis). The word polis normally means city, but here it more likely refers to a smaller inhabited entity. The eventual answer to Oedipus’ last question is: Kolonos.

  11 on public land, or in a grove Oedipus is so tired that he doesn’t care whether he and Antigone rest in a public space or risk trespassing, which they will shortly do, into a sacred grove (or precinct) from which unauthorized folk are excluded.

  23 nightingales Nightingales symbolize death. This is the first allusion to the “holy place” where Oedipus will die.

  25 Be my lookout Antigone maintains a sentinel’s alertness throughout, spotting in turn the Stranger, the Old Men, Ismene, Kreon, and Polyneikes just before each enters.

  37 Stranger The word xenos, translated usually throughout the text as “stranger,” can also mean, and is sometimes translated as, “host” or “guest” depending on the context. The character called the Stranger in the surviving texts would most probably be a local farmer.

  44–50 fearsome goddesses . . . harsher names The fearsome goddesses (literally, emphoboi theai) are the Eumenides, chthonian (or Earth) powers associated with death and the underworld (as opposed to Olympian, the heavenly or sky gods). Originally known as the Erinys, or Furies, they avenge wrongs done to family members—disrespect for elders, for instance, but especially kin murder. They were worshipped under a variety of names. Thebans, including Oedipus in this play, address them as “Ladies.” In Athens their cult name was “Solemn Ones” (Semnai). Those who called them Kindly Ones did so to deflect their ire. In 50 (literally, “other places have different names”), I translate the euphemistic “different” as “harsher” to highlight the Stranger’s subtext, which is that these goddesses are dangerous. See note to 92.

  51 suppliant Oedipus claims his formal status as a suppliant, one who makes a specific request of a higher authority, usually a god or his representative, or a ruler. Suppliants generally expected and were granted divine protection, though there were horrific exceptions, particularly during times of war or civil strife, in which suppliants were granted safety and then slaughtered.

  54 here is where I meet my fate Oedipus’ words in Greek are compact and mysterious. They may also be translated: “It’s the sign of my destiny.” The Greek word synthema, if translated literally as “sign,” means a particular agreed-upon token, signal, or code word (Jebb 1986, 19). Oedipus could be saying that the name “Eumenides” is the sign foretold to him by Apollo’s priestess at Delphi. Or he could mean that his intended prayer or the grove itself is the sign. In any case, Apollo had promised that when Oedipus arrived at the grove of the Eumenides he would find rest at last. When Oedipus suddenly hears the name of the presiding goddesses, “the Kindly Ones,” he turns brusquely decisive. He’s arrived on promised ground and will not be moved.

  62–64 This entire grove . . . shrine here Sacred groves in ancient Greece could harbor more than one divinity. This grove’s major god is Poseidon, whose affinity with horses and the sea made him important to the Athenians, since navy and cavalry were crucial to their military prowess. The grove also contains shrines to Prometheus, and to the Eumenides, the grove’s resident deities described in the note to 44–50.

  65 brass-footed threshold In Sophocles’ era, a well-known grove was located in Kolonos about a mile north of the Acropolis on the main route into Athens. Somewhere near the grove was a steeply descending rift or cavern in the rock, perhaps reinforced with brass to forms “steps.” Jebb calls them “the stay of Athens: a phrase in which the idea of a physical basis is joined to that of a religious safeguard” (1886, 57n). The ancient audience would have understood the grove’s rich mythical and historical associations and connected them to the area “on stage.” See notes 1746–47 and 1748–50.

  68 We’ve all taken his name Inhab
itants commonly added their hometowns to their given names; e.g., Sophocles of Kolonos; Ion of Chios.

  76 Theseus Theseus was a legendary hero who arrived in Athens as a formidable teenager after killing many human and bestial adversaries on the way from his birthplace in Troezen. He was unaware that the reigning king of Athens was actually his father, Aigeus (though in some versions of the myth Poseidon had actually sired him). Theseus’ great political accomplishment was the unification of Attica under Athenian leadership.

  81 My words . . . can see Oedipus claims here only the immediate cogency of his speech, but his confident assertion suggests the prophetic power his words will acquire and project during the course of the play.

  84 down on your luck Literally, daimon, a personal deity who directs the events of an individual’s life. At this point the Stranger doesn’t realize the full implication of the daimon impacting Oedipus’ life. See introduction to Oedipus the King passim.

  92 eyes we dread Literally, deinopes, or “dread-eyed.” The Kindly Ones were dreaded for their power to “see everything,” especially all kinds of malfeasance. That power enabled them to detect and punish intrafamilial abuse.