SOPHOCLES

A presentation by Kevin Batton

October 17, 2022

OEDIPUS
ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ
(likely original title)
 ΟΙΔΙΠΟΥΣ
ΤΥΡΑΝΝΟΣ
(ancient manuscript title, to distinguish it from Oedipus at Colonus)
 OEDIPUS
TYRANNUS
OEDIPUS
REX
OEDIPUS
THE
KING
I. Sophocles
 SOPHOCLES
•Born c. 495 BCE in the deme Colonus
•(about 25 years younger than Aeschylus,
15 years older than Euripides)

•Over 120 plays produced across a career

that spanned more than 60 years

•At least 18 victories at the City Dionysia

•Aeschylus won 13, Euripides 4
 SOPHOCLES’ CAREER
c. 468 BCE First competition and first victory (over Aeschylus!)

??? Ajax

??? Trachiniae

442 BCE (?) Antigone

??? Oedipus Tyrannus (second prize!)

??? Electra

409 BCE Philoctetes

406/5 BCE Death of Sophocles (months after death of Euripides)

401 BCE Oedipus at Colonus

 SOPHOCLES’ CAREER
c. 468 BCE First competition and first victory (over Aeschylus!)

??? Ajax

??? Trachiniae

442 BCE (?) Antigone

??? Oedipus Tyrannus (second prize!)

??? Electra

409 BCE Philoctetes

406/5 BCE Death of Sophocles (months after death of Euripides)

401 BCE Oedipus at Colonus

 SOPHOCLES’ CAREER
•Credited by Aristotle with first introducing
the third actor as well as scene painting

•“Having got through the stages of playing

with Aeschylean grandiloquence and then
with the displeasing and artificial element in
my own manner of elaborating my theme,
now in the third stage I am changing to the
kind of style that is most expressive of
character (ēthikōtaton) and the best.”
(Plutarch, Moralia 79B)
II. Oedipus
Calyx-frater, ca. 450s BCE. Metropolitan Museum.
Kylix, ca. 480s BCE. Kimbell Art Museum.
72.AA.126
ca. 480-70s BCE. Louvre Museum.
Sicilian calyx-frater, ca. 330s BCE. Museo Archeologico Regionale, Syracuse.
Charles Jalabert, Oedipus and Antigone, or the Plague of Thebes, 1843, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Henry Fuseli, Oedipus Cursing His Son Polyneices, 1786, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
 OEDIPUS IN EPIC

In the Iliad:

Only Euryalus rose to take [Epeus] on, heroic volunteer,

bred of Talus’ blood and a son of King Mecisteus
who went to Thebes in the old days, when Oedipus fell,
and there at his funeral games defeated all the Thebans.

(23.754-7, trans. Fagles)

 OEDIPUS IN EPIC
In the Odyssey:

I saw
fine Epicaste, Oedipus’ mother,
who did a dreadful thing in ignorance:
she married her own son. He killed his father,
and married her. The gods revealed the truth
to humans; through their deadly plans, he ruled
the Cadmeans in Thebes, despite his pain.
But Epicaste crossed the gates of Hades;
she tied a noose and hung it from the ceiling,
and hanged herself for sorrow, leaving him
the agonies a mother’s Furies bring.

(11.271-81, trans. Wilson)

 OEDIPUS IN EPIC
In the Epic Cycle:

[As witnessed] by Homer, I do not believe that Oedipus

had children by Jocasta; his sons were born of Eurygeneia
as the writer of the epic called the Oidipodeia clearly
shows.
(Pausanias, 9.5.10, trans. Evelyn-White)

The authors of the Oidipodeia [say] of the Sphinx:

But furthermore [she killed] noble Haemon,
the dear son of blameless Creon, the comeliest and
loveliest of boys.
(Σ Eur. Phoen. 1750)

Two other epic poems, the Thebaid and the Epigonoi,

dealt with the Theban cycle.
 OEDIPUS IN LYRIC
A papyrus fragment first published in 1977 and attributed to
Stesichorus seems to depict Jocasta addressing and advising her
sons after the death of Oedipus:

It is in this way, I think,

that both of you may gain release from that doom foretold
By the prophet of Apollo,
If it is true what men say, that the city of Cadmus and his heirs
Are guarded by Zeus,
Ever deferring until a distant tomorrow the evils
Destined to claim our race.
 OEDIPUS IN TRAGEDY
Aeschylus had previously written a trilogy based on the
Oedipus story in 467:

Laius
Oedipus
Seven Against Thebes
Sphinx (satyr play)

Only two lines from the first two plays of the trilogy survive
in a marginal note to an ancient manuscript of Oedipus
Tyrannus:

On our journey we were approaching the junction of three

wagon-tracks were the road forks, where we were passing
the meeting of the three ways at Potniae.
(Σ Soph. OT 733, tans. Sommerstein)
 OEDIPUS IN TRAGEDY
Passages from Seven Against Thebes show that the outline of the
familiar story:

For I speak of the transgression

born long ago, punished swiftly, but remaining to the third
generation, when Laius, defying
Apollo, who had told him thrice
at the central navel of the earth… to die
without issue to save his city…
begot his own death,
Oedipus the father-slayer,
who sowed the sacrosanct soil
of his mother, where he had been nurtured,
and suffered a bloodstained progeny.
(Aesch. Sept. 742-56, trans. Sommerstein)
 OEDIPUS IN TRAGEDY
Passages from Seven Against Thebes show that the outline of the
familiar story:

But when he became aware,

wretched man, of his appalling marriage,
enraged by grief,
with maddened heart,
he perpetrated two evils:
by his own father-slaying hand
he was robbed of his… eyes,
and angered at his sons… he let fly at them
the curses of a bitter tongue.
(Aesch. Sept. 778-87, trans. Sommerstein)
 OEDIPUS IN TRAGEDY
Sophocles’ Antigone suggests Oedipus died at Thebes, seeming
to contradict the later Oedipus at Colonus:

I’ll arrive [at my tomb] as loving to my father,

and beloved to you, my mother,
and as loving towards you, dear brother;
since all of you, when you lay dead, I washed
and dressed and poured out
funeral offerings with my own hands.
(Soph. Ant. 897-902, trans. Taplin)
 OEDIPUS IN TRAGEDY
Euripides depicted Oedipus in his Phoenician Women, which
survives, and an Oedipus, of which only a few fragments remain:

The very learned Euripides produced a poetic drama about

Oedipus and Jocasta and the Sphinx.
(John Malalas, Chronicles 2.17)

“Euripides differed markedly from Sophocles: (1) he included a

long narrative of the Sphinx’s riddle and, it seems, how Oedipus
solved it; (2) Oedipus is blinded not by his own hand but by
servants of the dead Laius while he is known at Thebes only as
the son of Polybus of Corinth; (3) when the truth of Oedipus’ life
is revealed, Jocasta does not kill herself as in Sophocles (and
Homer) from shame, but lives on to share in his guilt and
suffering (in Phoenician Women she tends Oedipus in seclusion
at Thebes and kills herself only after their twin sons Eteocles and
Polyneices have died at each other’s hands).”
(Collard and Cropp)
III. Oedipus the King
 Structure of Oedipus Rex:
Scenes 1,2 Prologue (1-150) Oedipus, Priest, Creon

Parados (151-215) Chorus entrance

Scenes 3,4 First Episode (216-462) Oedipus, Chorus, Teiresias

First Stasimon (463-512) Chorus

Scenes 5,6 Second Episode (513-862) Creon, Chorus, Oedipus, Jocasta

Second Stasimon (863-910) Chorus

Scene 7 Third Episode (911-1072) Jocasta, Oedipus, Old Corinthian, Chorus

Third Stasimon (1086-109) Chorus

Scene 8 Fourth Episode (1110-85) Oedipus, Chorus, Old Slave

Fourth Stasimon (1186-222) Chorus

Scenes 9-11 Exodos (1223-530) Messenger, Chorus, Oedipus, Creon

 Likely distribution of roles:

First actor (protagōnistēs) Oedipus

Second actor (deuteragōnistēs) Creon, Tiresias, Old Corinthian

Third actor (tritagōnistēs) Priest, Jocasta, Old Slave of Laius

“At the base of the whodunit we find a duality…. This novel contains not one but two
stories, the story of the crime and the story of the investigation.”
(Todorov, “The Typology of Detective Fiction”)

“[Sophocles’ Oedipus] portrays the gradual discovery of the deed of Oedipus, long
since accomplished, and brings in slowly to light by skillfully prolonged inquiry,
constantly fed by new evidence; it has thus a certain resemblance to a course of
psychoanalysis.”
(Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams)
 Dramatic Irony

(1-14)
 Dramatic Irony

(1-14)
 Dramatic Irony

(232-70)
 Dramatic Irony

(232-70)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

In Greek, the verb used to mean “I know” in the present

tense, οἶδα (oida), is also the perfect tense form of the verb
meaning “to see.”

οἶδα = I know = I have seen

Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

(408-28)
Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

(408-28)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

(1182-6)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

σαφής (saphēs)

(1182-6)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

(1182-6)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

(1182-6)
 Sight, Blindness, and Knowledge

σαφής (saphēs)

(1182-6)
“Would you rather be Ion of Chios or Sophocles?
Ion and Bacchylides are impeccable, uniformly
brilliant writers in the polished manner; but it is
Pindar and Sophocles who sometimes set the
world on fire with their vehemence, for all that
their flame often goes out without reason and they
collapse dismally. Indeed, no one is his senses
would reckon all Ion’s works put together as
equivalent of the one play Oedipus.”
(Longinus, On the Sublime 33. Trans. Russell)
IV. Aristotle and Freud
Aristotle’s Poetics is a short lecture on the subject of poetry: “both
poetry in general and capacity of each of its genres; the canons
of plot construction needed for poetic excellence; also the number
and character of poetry’s components, together with the other
topics which belong to the same inquiry.” (1447a, trans. Halliwell)
The majority of the work is spent discussing tragedy:

“Tragedy is a mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete,

and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms of its
sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and
through pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) accomplishing the
katharsis of such emotions.” (1449b)
The majority of the work is spent discussing tragedy:

“Tragedy is a mimesis of an action which is elevated, complete,

and of magnitude; in language embellished by distinct forms of its
sections; employing the mode of enactment, not narrative; and
through pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) accomplishing the
katharsis of such emotions.” (1449b)

“Practically every drama has items of spectacle, character, plot,

diction, lyric poetry, and thought, alike. The most important of
these things is the structure of events, because tragedy is mimesis
not of persons but of action and life; and happiness and
unhappiness consist in action…. Thus, the events and plot are the
goal of tragedy, and the goal is the most important thing of
all.” (1450a)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“Plots can be divided into simple and complex… I call ‘simple’ an

action which is continuous… and unitary, but whose
transformation lacks reversal (peripeteia) and recognition
(anagnōrismos); ‘complex,’ one whose transformation contains
recognition or reversal or both….

Reversal is a change to the opposite direction of events… and one

in accord, as we insist, with probability or necessity: as when in
the Oedipus the person who comes to bring Oedipus happiness,
and intends to rid him of his fear about his mother, effects the
opposite by revealing Oedipus’ true identity….

The finest recognition is that which occurs simultaneously with

reversal, as with the one in the Oedipus.” (1452a)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“[T]he plot should be structured that, even without seeing it

performed, the person who hears the events that occur
experiences horror and pity at what comes about (as one would
feel when hearing the plot of the Oedipus).” (1453b)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“Since the structure of the finest tragedy should be complex, as

well as representing fearful and pitiable events… it is clear that
neither should decent men be shown changing from prosperity to
adversity… nor the depraved changing from adversity to
prosperity… nor should tragedy show the wicked person falling
from prosperity to adversity….

This leaves, then, the person in-between these cases. Such a

person is someone not preeeminent in virtue and justice, and one
who falls into adversity not through evil and depravity, but
through some kind of error (hamartia); and one belonging to the
class of those who enjoy great renown and prosperity, such as
Oedipus.” (1453a)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“There should be nothing irrational in the events [of the plot]; if

there is, it should lie outside the play, as with Sophocles’ Oedipus
[i.e., Oedipus’ ignorance of how Laius died].” (1454b)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“There should be nothing irrational in the events [of the plot]; if

there is, it should lie outside the play, as with Sophocles’ Oedipus
[i.e., Oedipus’ ignorance of how Laius died].” (1454b)
Taking each element of tragedy in turn, Aristotle judges how each
is best achieved, and frequently cites Oedipus as an example:

“One might reasonably ask whether epic or tragic mimesis is

superior…. [T]ragedy possesses all epic’s resources as well as
having a substantial role for music and spectacle, which engender
the most vivid pleasures…..

Also, tragedy excels by achieving the goal of its mimesis in a

shorter scope; greater concentration is more pleasurable than
dilution over a long period: suppose someone were to arrange
Sophocles’ Oedipus in as many hexameters as the Iliad.” (1461b)
Aristotle’s prescriptions were interpreted as
strict rules in the Renaissance and Early
Modern periods

Ludovico Castelvetro ,translator of the Poetics,

popularized the concept of the “three unities”

•unity of action
•unity of time
•unity of space
Adherence to these rules characterizes the
neo-classicism of playwrights like Corneille,
Racine, and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors
“There must be something which makes a voice
within us ready to recognize the compelling force
of destiny in the Oedipus…. His destiny moves us
only because it might have been ours—because the
oracle laid the same curse upon us before our
birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us,
perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards
our mother and our first hatred and our first
murderous wish against our father. Our dreams
convince us that it is so.”
(Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams)
“There must be something which makes a voice
within us ready to recognize the compelling force
of destiny in the Oedipus…. His destiny moves us
only because it might have been ours—because the
oracle laid the same curse upon us before our
birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us,
perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards
our mother and our first hatred and our first
murderous wish against our father. Our dreams
convince us that it is so.”
(Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams)
ca. 5th-4th c. BCE. Freud Museum, London.
ca. 5th-4th c. BCE. Freud Museum, London.
Dir. Woody Allen, “Oedipus Wrecks” from New York Stories, 1989.
•Structuralist interpretation
•Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
•Myth as mode of communication
•Binary structures
 Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
• The libretto to Oedipus Rex (1927)
was written by Jean Cocteau, then
translated into Latin by Jean
Daniélou

• “What a joy it is to compose music

to a language of convention,
almost of ritual, the very nature of
which imposes a lofty dignity! One
no longer feels dominated by the
phrase, by the literal meaning of
the words. Cast in an immutable
mold which adequately expresses
their value, they do not require
any further commentary. The text
becomes purely phonetic material
for the composer.”
Igor Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex (1927)
Libretto: Jean Cocteau and Jean Daniélou (trans. e. e. cummings and Deryck Cooke)

Natus sum quo nefastum est, Sinful was my begetting, sinful

concubui cui nefastum est, my marriage,
Cecidi quem nefastum est. Sinful my shedding of blood.
Lux facta est! My light is put out!