Theatre of Apollo: Divine Justice and Sophocles' Oedipus the King 9780773566279, 0773566279

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The Theatre of Apollo Divine Justice and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

Literary critics have consistently marginalized the role of Apollo in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King: some declare him to be inscrutable, others ignore him, and still others deny his existence altogether. In defiance of this long-standing critical consensus, Drew Griffith offers a new interpretation of the play by arguing that Apollo brings about Oedipus’s downfall as just punishment for his hubris. By imaginatively recreating the play’s original staging and debunking the interpretations of various critics, including Aristotle, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, E.R. Dodds, Frederick Ahl, and John Peradotto, Griffith shows that Apollo is a constant, powerful presence throughout the play. He contends that although we can sympa-

thize with Oedipus because of his sufferings, he is still morally responsible for murdering his father and sleeping with his mother. Apollo is therefore not indifferent and his actions are not unjust. Griffith focuses on Apollo’s commandment “know thyself,” a commandment Oedipus belatedly and tragically fulfils, to stress both the need for self-understanding in the study of ancient literature and the usefulness of ancient literature in achieving self-understanding. R. DREW GRIFFITH is associate professor of classics, Queen’s University.

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The Theatre of Apollo Divine Justice and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

R. DREW GRIFFITH

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston * London ¢ Buffalo

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 1996 ISBN 0-7735-1500-3

Legal deposit fourth quarter 1996 Bibliothéque nationale du Québec Printed in the United States on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funds have also been received from the Office of Research Services, Queen’s University.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Griffith, R. Drew, 1958The theatre of Apollo: divine justice and Sophocles’ Oedipus the king Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7735-1500-3

1. Apollo (Greek deity) in literature. 2. Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. 3. Justice in literature. I. Title. PA4413.07G75 1996 882’.01 CQ96-900525-3

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc. in 10/12 Palatino.

For Gloria, Matthew, and Graham

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Contents

Preface ix Introduction 3 1 Poem as Fact: The Historical Method in Literary

Criticism 7 2 Stage Directions for Sophocles’ Oedipus the King 14

3 Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in the

Play 29 4 Asserting Eternal Providence: The Question of Guilt 45 5 The Authority of Prophecy: Theodicy in the play 59

6 Reading the Name of Oedipus and Other Riddles 70 7 The Humiliation of Oedipus 76

8 Conclusion 82 Appendix A: The Date of the Play 87 Appendix B: The Scene of the Crime 89 Appendix C: The Meaning of toeiome yao modu (786) 91

Notes 93 Abbreviations 123 Bibliography 125

Index 143

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Preface

This is essentially a teacher’s book. The material arose out of lectures delivered and seminars led in two courses at Queen’s University at Kingston (Classical Studies 101 and Classical Studies 312) between 1989 and 1993. The stimulating discussion provided by my students, no less than the onus of finding something new to say about an old play, has been invaluable in shaping the work. Many of the ideas found here have also received an airing before my peers. A version of chapter 1 was read at a special session on literary theory at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada in Victoria, British Columbia, on 22 May 1990. I am grateful to

John G. Fitch for inviting me to contribute to the session and wish

to thank those present for their warm response and stimulating questions, especially Desmond Conacher, Hugh Parry, Christopher Brown, and Matthew Clark. A version of chapter 3 was read at the University of Western Ontario on 8 November 1991 and subsequently published in Phoenix 47 (1993): 95-114. A version of chapter 4 was read at Concordia University in Montreal on 4 March 1991 and subse-

quently published in ICS 17 (1992): 193-211 after receiving much helpful criticism from Ruth Scodel. A version of chapter 5 was read at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada in Ottawa

on 1 June 1993. I am grateful for the encouragement and advice of Eric Csapo, Robert Fowler, and Anthony Podlecki. A version of chap-

ter 7 was read at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of Canada in Sainte Foy, Quebec, on 27 May 1989 and subsequently published in Sileno 16 (1990): 97-106. The above-named journals in each

x Preface

case have granted their kind permission to reproduce material that has already appeared. For much discussion of various facets of this work I am indebted to

Gloria D’Ambrosio-Griffith, Christopher Brown, John Porter, and Emmet Robbins. Other scholars, notably Charles B. Daniels of the University of Victoria and David Hester of the University of Adelaide, have offered helpful criticism in their correspondence about issues raised in the original articles from which this work has grown. Two anonymous readers for the Aid to Scholarly Publications Program have saved me from numerous errors. The kind assistance of all

these scholars in no way indicates agreement with the views expressed herein. I owe my thanks to Ross Kilpatrick for suggesting McGill-Queen’s University Press as a possible home for this work and to Frederic Schroeder for sharing his hard-won wisdom about scholarly publishing in Canada. Don Akenson and Roger Martin of McGill-Queen’s were a constant source of help and good-natured advice, and my copy editor, Susan Kent Davidson, has spared the reader many obscurities and infelicities of expression. To my wife, Gloria, who has been exemplary for her loving support

and patience during its composition, and to my sons, Matthew and Graham, who have been both constant companions and research assistants, this book is with gratitude humbly dedicated.

The Theatre of Apollo

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Introduction

The conclusions of this essay would have been uncontroversial had they been published a hundred years ago. In the intervening years nearly every thesis of this book has been so thoroughly critiqued and allegedly refuted that one might suppose no more need be said. In returning to these questions at all, much less in arriving at the conclusions that it does, this book may seem reactionary.

My research in other areas has frequently suggested to me that hypotheses that have apparently been conclusively disproved may in fact have great explanatory value and thus some plausible claim upon our attention, if only they are supported by new and rigorous arguments. Domenico Comparetti’s view that Tantalus is, according to Pindar O72. 1, punished on Olympus rather than in Hades, and Wilhelm Jordan’s view that the Homeric phrase “rosy-fingered Dawn” denotes the literal fingers of a personified goddess rather than metaphorically describing the natural phenomenon of morning twilight both appear to me to be hypotheses of this sort.* This general category also includes, in my view, the notion that in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King Oedipus is justifiably punished by Apollo for the crime of patricide, into which he has been led by his hubristic self-image as a god. Since 1899, when Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff published his excursus on the play attacking this view,? it has been abandoned by scholars as being naive. Yet the arguments that Wilamowitz and the other (often far more radical) scholars who followed him advance are not unimpeachable, and the “naive” view, which I espouse, has considerable explanatory power for the interpretation of the play.

4 The Theatre of Apollo

The present work advances arguments, many of which I believe to be new, in support of this view. Since many of the arguments that follow are of the ad hominem sort, the structure of the entire essay is not at all moments equally appar-

ent. I therefore offer the following synopsis. Chapter 1 advances a theoretical argument to the effect that the chief question about Oedipus the King, as about any work of classical literature, is whether it is true in the sense of being in conformity with lived experience. On the one hand, this claim is advanced in opposition to the claims of historicist scholars, who argue that the aim of classical scholarship is the historical one of recreating the intention of the author, his society at large, or the genre. (My own nor-historicist objective is to discuss divine justice and Sophocles’ play, not merely divine justice in the play.) On the other hand, the claim is advanced in opposition to cultural rel-

ativism, which rightly emphasizes the difference between ancient and modern worlds, but at the cost of causing us scrupulously to keep away from the ancient texts our own deepest concerns. The assessment of the truth of classical texts against the basis of our own experience has as its best result that it will lead us as viewers and readers to know ourselves better.

Chapter 2 presents the stage directions that can be inferred from the text of the play. In addition to its considerable intrinsic interest, this project allows us to see that, although he never appears as a character in the play, Apollo is thoroughly present, in the sense that part of the architectural space of the theatre is demarcated as his precinct. This architectural device is exploited in the stagecraft of the play to create the impression of Apollo’s presence far more deftly than any deus ex machina could have done.

Chapter 3 addresses the case put forward by Karl Harshbarger, Sandor Goodhart, René Girard, and Fredrick Ahl that Oedipus did not kill Laius, who died instead at the hands of a person or persons unknown, and that Oedipus is therefore to be thought of as a victim of scapegoat-persecution rather than as a legitimately (self-)prosecuted felon. (Ihe idea that Oedipus is a scapegoat has been mentioned, independently of the question of his participation in the murder, by, most notably, Jane Harrison, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Walter Burkert.) I argue that the divergent accounts of the murder offered in the play by Oedipus and the herdsman do, in fact, refer to the same event and that the version of Oedipus comes closer to the truth. I argue that the Corinthian’s report about Oedipus’s parentage is also truthful. Finally, I suggest that the plague is an unfortunate accident not causally related to the operation of divine justice in the play.

5 Introduction

In Chapter 4 I address the claims of Wilamowitz and E.R. Dodds that, although Oedipus did in fact kill Laius, he is essentially morally innocent and therefore Apollo in punishing him cannot be in any

| human sense just. I argue that by murdering the belligerent stranger, his superior and elder, along with his retinue, including the sacred _ herald, while they were engaged upon official religious and state business, Oedipus violated the prerogatives of Zeus of Strangers, the respect due to superiors and elders, and the principle of fitting retaliation; he is therefore guilty of murder. He knew that he was acting in ignorance and yet behaved as though he did not know this; he is therefore guilty of father abuse. To express these two conclusions in one: he is guilty of parricide. He was fated to commit his crime, but it cannot be shown that he was compelled to do so, and certainly not in the way in which he did. These arguments open up the possibility that Apollo may be in some sense just, and I offer Simonides’ reactive definition of justice as an all-too-human formula to which Apollo’s actions seem to correspond. The first part of chapter 5 picks up the suggestion of John Pera-

dotto that Apollo does not exist in the real world, existing in the world of the play only as a smoke-and-mirror illusion brought about by the occurrence of striking coincidences as well as by the fact that these coincidences conspire to bring to fulfilment the Pythia’s prophecy. All these plot-events, opines Peradotto, subvert what we know to be the important role of chance in the world we actually live in and

create a vision of an incredible, deterministic universe. I use two thought-experiments to show that the play contains many coincidences, not because the whole plot would disintegrate if it did not but because so many Signs point to Oedipus’s state as incestuous parricide that in the random workings of the world only a very few need surface for the truth to be revealed. I also argue that neither Apollo’s prophecy nor its delivery, not to a disinterested third party but to the protagonist himself, in any way adds a deterministic element to the world of the play. The second part of chapter 5 defends the justice of Apollo against

the problem of evil constituted by the incest by characterizing the pain involved as the prepaid price for Oedipus’s subsequent empow-

self-knowledge. |

erment both as hero (in the Greek sense) and as one who has attained

Chapter 6 picks up the issue of Oedipus as a reader of signs and illustrates how he greatly overrates his own capacity in this regard. Among numerous signs that he misreads (which may even include the Sphinx riddle, of whose decipherment he is so proud) is his own name. His recognition that his name refers to a deformity of his feet

6 The Theatre of Apollo

rather than to his skill at solving riddles amounts to the adoption of a new name marking a fundamental change in his character. The first part of chapter 7 argues that, while Oedipus is punished for the crime that he has actually committed and not just for his character, nevertheless the crime arises from his state of mind. Two facts shed some light on that state: that he twice in the play appears to suppliants in answer to prayer, thereby usurping a function of the gods;

and that he listens unblinkingly to the priest of Zeus speaking of “your altars,” a phrase that suggests not merely “altars of Oedipus”

but also “altars to Oedipus.” These facts suggest that Oedipus is hubristic (in the ordinary English sense of the word) — that is to say, that he thinks of himself as a god. The second part of chapter 7 argues that in the play’s recognition scene Oedipus recognizes himself by means of a deformity of the feet. Recognition scenes often involve feet; yet feet are of two types, perfect and deformed. Perfect feet are possessed by the gods, deformed feet by heroes (Achilles, Heracles, Bellerophon, etc.). Thus, in recognizing his own foot deformity, Oedipus finally finds a sign that he can interpret correctly and reads upon his feet the mark of his mortality. The Conclusion briefly suggests that the reader of a work of literature collaborates with its author in creating meaning and that this act is parallel to that whereby one creates a meaningful pattern out of the

jumbled data of lived experience. In this way, what we learn about when we read any work of literature, as when we think about the world, is ourselves. Since I have argued that Oedipus the King is an exhortation to self-knowledge, the act of interpreting the play, no matter

what our interpretation, accords with the text, since it is obedient to its essential commandment. Throughout this book I make frequent references to recent develop- | ments in mathematics and physics. In a work of classical philology these may seem out of place, and I venture here an explanation. I see them not so much as parables elucidating Sophoclean complexities by means of homely analogies (in which capacity they would certainly fail) but as attempts to fulfil the anti-historicist promises of chapter 1 by relating the play to present-day concerns. I also see them as participating in the same mathematical discourse as Oedipus’s tragic dilemma (“What has four legs, two legs, and three legs?” and “Can one murderer be the same as many?”).

1 Poem as Fact: The Historical Method in Literary Criticism

Classicists often refuse to theorize about their aims and methods. There is no one correct way to gather apples, says Basil Gildersleeve,’ nor, says A.E. Housman (eager not to be outdone in the quest for banausic examples),? is there one correct way to catch fleas; why, therefore, should there be a single correct method of classical scholarship? This reluctance to discuss method may in general be a good thing. It is not so good, however, at a time when classical studies are in a state of crisis, and it is my belief that the present is such a time. It is not that classics fails to attract students, but rather that it no longer exerts any influence upon, or commands any respect from, the deans, principals,

presidents, and ministers who govern our culture and education, most of whom seem determined that every funded academic should be off somewhere committing a social science. In Anthony Grafton’s

words, “What is done at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes is studied avidly by so many who pay no attention at all to the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.” Given this sense of crisis, it seems fitting to open yet again the questions of how we actually read ancient literature and how we might go about doing so in the future. Although rooted deep in antiquity, it was in the nineteenth century that the discipline of classical studies received the distinctive character that marks it to this day. In keeping with the spirit of the times, classicists in that century organized the various sub-disciplines that make up classical studies — epigraphy, textual criticism, literary criti-

cism, philosophy, and so on - so that one particular branch stood ahead of all the rest. That branch was history.*

8 The Theatre of Apollo

Aristotle defines history as the study of ta yevOueva, or past events (Poet. 9.2, 155 1°). So understood, history can use ancient literary texts, which are obviously not themselves past events, only as documents

illustrating events external to themselves, namely the intellectual operations or intentions of the authors who created them.> This is, in fact, exactly how many classicists seek to use these texts. To cite only one of many exponents of this position, Adolf K6hnken wrote in 1983: “What we are trying to find out by analyzing the text is the intention of the author, not what [his] audience (of which we know very little, anyway) may or may not have thought. The individual members of this audience (like ourselves) may have erred about the signif-

icance of words and phrases ..., and it is our task to establish the truth (i.e., the significance intended by [the author] and embodied in our text).’””°

Perhaps by treating poems as documentary facts in this way, schol-

ars hope to objectify them, but the etymology of the two words suggests that “facts” are every bit as made-up as “poems.”7 A more serious problem is that literary texts are highly defective as documentary evidence for their author’s intentions.® At least four reasons for this inadequacy can be advanced. First, a poem’s content of intended meaning is difficult to separate from its literary form? and is not easily paraphrasable.*° This is true even in what are, from the intentionalist critics’ point of view, best-case scenarios. For example, we know Vergil’s Aeneid to have arisen from a prose précis (now lost),™ which presumably embodied the author’s intentions, yet no one has been able to reconstruct this précis; or again, Pindar’s Second Olympian begins with a programmatic exordium in which Pindar himself declares that the poem’s subjects are Zeus, Heracles, and Theron,’? yet no one believes that this declaration completely exhausts the implications of the poem’s remaining ninety-three lines. Secondly, since language is a social code, its products exceed the boundaries of a single individual’s control, and chance plays an important role, as for example with Homeric formulae, whose position is determined by metrical necessity rather than by sense (we will be examining Sophocles’ healthy respect for chance in chapter 5). Thirdly, as the archaic Greeks were acutely aware (e.g., Il. 1.188~9),"3 the individual is himself divided by internal fissures that often prevent him from having a single unified intention. Fourthly, since people rely upon language as their primary means of communication,** to the undoubtedly large extent that a linguistic text fails to communicate, communication (as distinct from inspired, empathic guesses) cannot take place. The inadequacy of literary texts as documents of their authors’ intentions appears to tally with several ancient notions about life and

g Poem as Fact

literature. For the ancients themselves tradition outweighed originality (cf Arist. Metaph. A 3, 983°23),4 the public good outweighed private interest (cf Isoc. 18.60, Lys. 31.5-7),1° and the effect of an action outweighed the intent (cf IJ. 19.137—-8).*”7 Moreover, the poets

abdicate their own intentionality by appealing for guidance to the Muses, without whom “we hear only rumour and know nothing” (Il. 2.486). This appeal is no mere facon de parler but, as Plato saw (Apo. 22b—c; Meno 99d), accounts for the poets’ inability to explain the

beautiful poems they compose. This is no peculiarity of antiquity, for we note even today that great poets and great interpreters of poetry are virtually never the same people.

More sophisticated classicists recognize the limitations of using literary texts as documents of their author’s intention and generalize the intention, positing its locus outside the author, either in the Weltanschauung of his society at large*® or in the rules of the genre.’9

The great advantage of this modification is that the opinions of society can be learned from other texts and artifacts of that society. Yet two problems remain even here. On the one hand, people often take the very ideas most familiar to them so much for granted that they do not express them.?° On the other, those works great enough to have been preserved from antiquity may well, as Longinus observes (Subl. 14), say things beyond the comprehension of their own time. This brings us to the question: if literary texts are such defective documents of the intentions of their authors, or more generally of the societies and genres in which they were composed, why has anyone bothered to preserve them all these years? The answer is that using poems as historical documents is like turning screws with a dime: it can be made to work in a pinch, but it does not reflect the true excellence of the instrument. Works of literature find their dgetry outside the study of history as Aristotle defined it. Another facet of this problem is that this view of history suggests a qualitative difference between ourselves and the authors we study. It almost invites us to see ourselves as living after the end of history. If history were, in Jules Laforgue’s words, un vieux cauchemar bariolé, “a gaudy old nightmare,”** then we must have just awakened from it. If

we were outside of history, we would be looking back upon it from our privileged vantage-point, like Zeus surveying the Trojan War from Mount Ida (II. 14.292-6). Yet for us, as for Zeus, this panorama might prove deceptive. Believing that they stand outside of history, many classicists feel that they can use some mental time-warp to transport themselves back to a desired moment in the past. This objective can be traced back at least to Macchiavelli?* and receives its classic formulation

10 The Theatre of Apollo

from Gottfried Hermann, who wrote in 1834 that “only he will be able [to interpret ancient texts] rightly who has been so well versed in ancient letters and so properly nourished by them that he has been made almost an ancient [quasi ... antiquus]. In this way, having been led to the same meaning as the ancients he might bring it back and convey it to others.”*3 This idea has been carried even further. I quote a text from 1934: “We must not only enter into the place, the time, the class - we must even become the man himself, even more, we must become the man at the very moment at which he writes a certain poem.”*4 I regret to report that the author of these remarks is the normally lucid Milman Parry. In this statement Parry is guilty of a sleight of hand unworthy of his high intellect. One can indeed create a fictional persona who explores his own concerns in the context of some other age; the proof of this claim is the existence of historical fiction. Becoming a real person who actually lived at some other time differs from this not merely in degree but in kind: it is an impossible and absurd retrograde metempsychosis.*> We often laugh at the excesses of the quasi antiquus scholars: at Heinrich Schliemann for breaking his son’s nose to obtain a more Greek profile;?° and at T.K. Oesterreich for chewing a pound of bayleaves in an attempt to recapture the inspiration of the Pythia.*” We laugh at Borges’ fictional character Pierre Menard, who attempted in the 1920s to recapture the Zeitgeist of Cervantes. “The initial method he conceived,” writes Borges, “was relatively simple: to know Spanish well, to re-embrace the Catholic faith, to fight against Moors and Turks, to forget European history between 1602 and 1918, and to be Miguel de Cervantes.”?° But it is their quest itself, and not the excesses to which it has occasionally been subject, that is disturbing. What is so disturbing about these scholars is, first, the impossible nature of their quest. Their quest is impossible because the cardinal

feature of the ancient authors whose work we study is their creativity. We cannot at once renounce creative activity and settle, in, August Boeckh’s phrase, for Erkenntniss des Erkannten, “the understanding of what is known,” and at the same time claim that we are emulating the discoverers of new knowledge. The exact repetition that these scholars seek is impossible: one cannot step into the same river twice (Heraclitus 22 B 12 Diels-Kranz).

The second, more disturbing aspect of this approach is these scholars’ astonishing indifference to the concerns of the present. These concerns have a powerful hold over us, for we too are inside of history, and if history is a dream, it is one from which we will never awaken. For this reason I would replace Aristotle’s view of

history with that of Hegel, who writes that, “whatever happens,

11 Poem as Fact

every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own

time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.”3° It is true that Hegel is speaking of philosophy and not philology, but

this distinction blurs at the point where philology becomes not merely “the love of words” but “the love of the Word.” Hegel’s sophisticated view of history, in which the modern and the ancient worlds confront one another in a relation of dialectic, is not an invitation to the cultural relativism (cf Hdt. 3.38.4) that Alan Bloom

has recently shown to characterize the American mind3? and that must a fortior! mark the “multicultural” Canadian consciousness of the present writer. Classicists have developed several versions of the “distinct society clause” to protect ancient texts from our modern presuppositions. They advise: “What is not mentioned in the [text] does not exist” ;3* “Explain Homer from Homer” ;?3 and “The critic must not impose the taste of his own age on that of [the ancient author].”34 In so far as these precepts prevent ethnocentrism from distorting our view of the ancient texts,7> we must approve of them. But too often they have caused us scrupulously to keep away from the ancient texts our own deepest concerns. To the extent that this has happened, the cultural relativists are no further ahead than the quasi antiquus scholars. Indeed, there is a disquieting sense in which the history of classical scholarship is the history of our flight from the texts to the study of which we have devoted our lives. Modern commentaries on Homer still record the lines that Aristarchus athetized on the random chance that someone might find this information useful, but they mention, if at all, only as quaint curiosities the attempts by Crates of Mallus,

Heraclitus, and Porphyry to test Homer’s statements against their own ideas and experience — and thereby to take them seriously.3® Since the time of Horace we have been willing to admit that a poet may err on occasion (Hor. Ars. P. 359 = Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism” 180),37 by which (since we know enough not to judge his work by our own ethnocentric tastes) we mean that he does not succeed in saying what we presume he intended to say. We greet with

silence, however, the question of whether the poet might err by failing to tell the truth, although this is the one area where we might actually catch an author nodding - and the one area where it really

matters. We are so busy looking for evidence of the intention of the poets, who (by invoking the Muses) expressly declare that their poems do not reflect their intentions, that we do not bother to test the claim, on which they repeatedly insist (e.g. Pind. Ol. 4.17, Nem. 7.48),?°

12 The Theatre of Apollo

that their poems are true and in some way approximate real lived experience of the world. In so far as critics are obliged by the etymology of their name to sit

in judgment, the truth is the only valid criterion for judgment that they possess. What then, in the words of a famous judge (John 13.38), is truth? We may adapt the scholastic definition, veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus,?9 and say that a poem is true in so far as it corresponds

to the data of that essential, universal experience that the more straightforward philosophers assure us exists (Arist. peri hermeneias

16a). An interpretation of a poem, in turn, is correct in so far as it at once fails to violate anything that we know of the particular, accidental features of the poem’s cultural context (without necessarily therefore conforming to any a priori theoretical construct alleged to represent those features, such as for example a theory of “shame culture”) and at the same time reveals the essential universal experience in the presentation of which the poem’s truth consists. To involve our own experience in evaluating the truth-claims of the poets is not necessarily to invite readerly solipsism. The physicist Erwin Schrédinger writes that “this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Bramins express in the sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple

and so clear: tat tvam asi, ‘this is you.’”4° Schrédinger is quoting the Chandogya Upanishad (6.8.7), but we find a similar idea in Greek

thought in Plotinus’s statement mavta elow, “the sum of things is within us” (3.8.6.40). One who shares the vision of Schrédinger can indeed fulfil Parry’s ambition — not by launching himself backward in time like a “chrononaut” but by watching the past rise up vertiginously to meet him. Interpretation thus has two moments: the scholarly moment, consisting in the recognition of difference and otherness in the particular accidental features of a poem’s cultural context, and the phenomenological moment, consisting in the recognition of sameness in the context of that difference and thus of a ground of shared experience between the poem and ourselves. For example, as the first moment, one might show with Bernard van Groningen that the archaic Greeks were “in the grip of the past” in the sense that they, unlike ourselves, looked to the past rather than to the future as a validation of knowledge and a perfect expression of reality.4’ Interpretation is not complete, however, until one realizes that the sense in which the Greeks

were in the grip of the past is trivial compared with the sense in which they, like ourselves, were future-oriented. The Greeks, no less

13 Poem as Fact

than we, feared their non-existence after death but felt no terror in contemplating their non-existence before conception, although the difference between these two states is evidently only the difference of

past and future. In this more profound sense they (like us, and like people everywhere) are in the grip of the future. If we fail to notice the poets’ truth-claims, or if we dismiss them as hollow convention or naive error, then despite all our careful strategies our reading will go astray, lose its true object, and dissipate in a welter of trivial detail. I say “lose its true object” because the obligation that we, like Socrates, owe to the god at Delphi is to acquire selfknowledge. It is the promise of self-knowledge that packs students into “Psych” and “Sosh” courses; yet classical literature teaches us

that the true path to such knowledge is not through Analysis or through watching rats in a maze but through dialogue with the great texts of the past. Confrontation with these texts, more surely than any other activity, will forge order in the chaos of your experience and enable you in Pindar’s words to “become what you are by learning” (Pyth. 2.72).

To the encounter with one of the most deservedly famous of ancient texts —- and one that most clearly calls upon its audience-members and readers to know themselves — let us now turn.

2 Stage Directions for Sophocles’ Oedipus the King

This chapter attempts to reconstruct the stage directions used in the original performance of Sophocles’ play, on the basis of what we may reasonably conjecture about the resources of Sophocles’ theatre, in order better to elucidate some of the play’s meaning. Every translator and editor of the play has, of course, been constrained to provide his own stage directions, although they do not do so with equal diligence (the fullest attention to this question is paid, not surpris-

ingly, by Richard Jebb). The numerous studies of the stagecraft of particular playwrights (e.g., Oliver Taplin on Aeschylus, David Seale on Sophocles, N.C. Hourmouziades and Michael Halleran on Euripides, and K.B. Frost on Menander)’ contain helpful obiter dicta about Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. There have also been several

article-length studies of the stage directions of individual scenes.”

Nevertheless, no one has yet made a comprehensive attempt to analyse the staging of the entire play. This chapter consists of three

sections: first, a description of the acting area; second, the stage directions themselves, including a discussion of entrances and exits (the exclusive focus of Taplin’s and Frost’s work) as well as the no

less interesting question of costumes and properties; and third, a discussion of the division of roles among the actors. I make two assumptions: that every action mentioned in the play was in fact enacted; and that Sophocles used the minimum resources necessary to enact them. Neither assumption can be proved, although the second may reasonably be hypothesized as a reaction against the excesses of Aeschylean spectacle, but both have the virtue of simplicity

15 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

and define a limit case: the minimum requirement for a realistic staging.

The rear limit of the acting area is marked by the facade of the scene building, which, after some wandering about in the early theatre, had

settled down opposite the cavea.> This facade has one+ centrally located doorway four metres in width> with double doors that open inward.° The normal condition of a house door is closed.? An open door is an indication that one or more of the inhabitants is temporarily engaged in business without — ie., in the case of a theatrical door, in the acting area. The opening and closing of these doors amplifies the effect of entrances and exits from the skene and adds to them a mythic dimension, as with the gates of Janus’s temple (Livy 1.19.2-4, Verg. Aen. 1.293-4) or the gates of War (Verg. Aen. 7.607ff).

The area before the facade of the skene consisted of a perhaps more or less circular? dance-floor (6eyjotea), dating back to the days of the dithyrambic performances,? 25.48 metres in diameter," and — between the skene and the orchestra — a rectangular stage (Aoyetov) around 7.5 metres wide by 1 metre deep,” either at grade or more probably raised by a very small number of steps** added following the introduction by Thespis of the first actor. At the centre of the dance-floor stood an altar on which sacrifices were offered to Dionysus during the festival and at which on one occasion Aeschy-

lus is rumoured to have sought refuge from the crowd he had angered by revealing the Eleusinian mysteries (Heracl. Pont. fr. 170 Wehrli = Aesch. test. 936 TrGF).*4 The victims sacrificed on this altar must, originally at least, have been adult male goats (teayou), who lent their name to the “tragedies” performed there.*? The blood running over this altar would be especially pleasing to Dionysus, who, as lord of the liquid element (Plut. Is. et Os. 35, 365a), was closely associated with wine, which is a type of blood.*® The chorus danced around this altar (Aesch. fr. 379 TrGF), but no sacrifices were offered on it —- or anywhere else — during the plays themselves, in which awkward interventions were sometimes necessary to avoid making sacrifices (e.g. Ar. Pax 1017, Av. 848, Ach. 241).*”7 Moreover the plays have less to do with Dionysus (Suda s.v. obd€v Mec TOV ALOVUCOV,

Polyb. 39.2.3) than we might have expected in a festival dedicated to

him.” Somewhere on the stage, probably off-centre beside the central skene door and apparently as a permanent feature (Pollux 4.123), Aeschylus introduced (Vita Aeschylea test. A 14 TrGF) a property altar,*9 which may be dedicated to whatever god the plot demands,*° or perhaps used to represent a tomb (Aesch. Pers. 598ff, Cho. 4),7" or

16 The Theatre of Apollo

ignored altogether in pastoral plays (e.g. Eur. Cycl.). Before real-life

houses there often stood a pillar or (possibly pillar-shaped) altar dedicated to Apollo of the Streets (AmdAAwv “Ayutevc).?* In the absence of any indication to the contrary, the property altar was therefore assumed to be dedicated to Apollo, as frequent references in the plays show.* The acting space was thus divided into two contrasting zones. The circular (?) dance-floor closer to the 14,000-member audience,”4 occu-

pied by the chorus, who dance (dgxeto8at, yooevelv), was fittingly dedicated, in the manner of a sacred precinct (téwevos), to the god of mob-psychology (cf #tacevetat puyav, Eur. Bacch. 75); and the rectan-

gular stage further from the audience, occupied by the actors, who speak (Aoyetov < A€yw) according to regimented rules of balanced set-speeches (Qfjoetc) and stichomythia, was fittingly dedicated as a quasi-precinct to the more remote Apollo,#> who, in direct contrast to

Dionysus, is the principle of individuation® and is as prominent in drama as his rival god.?7

(Beyond the dance-floor and stage sat as spectators the people of Athens in an auditorium that sloped up the sides of the Acropolis. The Acropolis was sacred to a third deity, Athena, whose Parthenon temple dominated its summit and who gave her name to the entire

city. As the dance-floor was sacred to Dionysus and the stage to Apollo, so the auditorium was sacred to her. She is the only other deity”® to rival Dionysus and Apollo for the number of appearances on stage in the surviving plays.?)

The contrast between Dionysiac chorus and Apolline actors mapped out in the different acting areas of the theatre is reflected inthe plot of Aeschylus’s Eumenides as a struggle between the chorus of Furies (who, like Dionysus, represent dark, primeval forces) and Athena and Apollo, who are portrayed by actors. This contrast is even clearer in Aeschylus’s lost Bassarids (fr. 23-25 TrGF),

in which the eponymous chorus of Dionysus votaries apparently rent limbmeal Orpheus, a devotee of Apollo, portrayed by an actor (cf Eratosth. Catast. 24).>°

So we see that just as Dionysus impinged upon the pre-eminence of Apollo at Delphi, taking over the shrine during the four winter months, when Apollo vacationed among the Hyperboreans (Plut. de E apud Delph. 389c), so Apollo was an interloper in the domain

of Dionysus at Athens. Moreover, just as drama impinged upon the Delphic oracle during the octennial Septerion festival (Plut. de def. or. 417e-418d), in which a group of young men set fire to a tent (oxnvy) erected on the threshing-floor (GAws),3" so the oracle of Apollo intruded upon the theatre of Dionysus, as is clear already in Aeschylus’s Choephori and Eumenides.

17 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

In a more general way the tragedies place great emphasis upon insolence (UBeis) and the moral blindness (Gt) that stems from it, and Aristotle finds the defining aspect of the tragic character in this moral blindness, to which he gives the more prosaic name of “error” (Quaotia, Arist. Poet. 1453a).32 Yet insolence and moral blindness violate the moderation (ow@eEoovvn) that is the principal injunction of Apollo, as reflected in his maxims “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess” (Pl. Prt. 343b), while Dionysiac religion is essentially ex-

cessive and involves such insolent inversions of normality as cele-

brating at night rather than by day (aavvuyic; the revel, xaos, stands in lieu of sleep, xoipnua, xHpa) and dismemberment of living animals and eating of their meat raw rather than cooked (OmaQayYUOS, MUOdayia).

The people who gathered in the theatre for the premiére of Oedipus the King were aware of all of these things. They would have looked with anticipation upon the scene building as Wilamowitz described the audience of Euripides’ Heracles: “whether they have to think of a

house in Thebes or Troy or Hades, they do not yet know, but they think like Hamlet that the players cannot keep counsel. Let’s wait until they applaud; we will then also learn to whom the altar belongs.” 33 Their interest in this last question would only have been intensified

as the actors representing Oedipus and the priest of Zeus and the mutes representing the young Thebans took their places around the altar,>+ for this drama begins as a suppliant play in the manner of Aeschylus’s Suppliant Maidens. The suppliant motif had not yet (ie. ca 42535) devolved into the hackneyed cliché that it was to become at Euripides’ hands (cf. And. Held. Suppl. and Helen).3° The audience would have to wait until line 919 to learn that the altar is dedicated to Apolio,?” but this discovery would be no more than a confirmation of their strong suspicion.

(One other god deserves special mention: Zeus. So far as we know, this supreme god never appeared on the Athenian stage — with the barely possible exception of Aesch. Psychostasia — although

artists in other genres do not shrink from portraying him.3® In his absence his children Apollo, Dionysus, and Athena serve as his emissaries to humankind. This is especially true of Apollo, who, through his oracle, acts as spokesman of Zeus [Soph. OT 151, 498-9; cf Hymn. Hom. Ap. 132, Aesch. Eum. 19, 616-18, 713]. The leader of

the suppliants is a priest of Zeus [18]; in other words, he holds the highest priesthood in the city, and his participation in the embassy

convinces the audience of the extent of the catastrophe facing Thebes.)

The altar of Apollo serves throughout the play as a constant, permanent reminder of the presence of the god. It is not the only visible

18 The Theatre of Apollo

sign of the god that appears on stage. Creon enters wearing the laurel crown of a successful theorist, that is, ambassador to the oracle (83); Teiresias, the prophet of Apollo (284-6), is on stage from 300 to 461, and Jocasta brings garlands and incense to Apollo (913).

So the altar and three of the play’s eight speaking characters serve as visual reminders of Apollo’s unseen presence. The proximity of the altar to the skene door sets up expectations that will immediately be defeated. As the priest and children form the opening tableau, we see them in supplication about an altar, and we think that it is the god to whom they are turning. One may supplicate either a god or a man, but the procedure is different in each case: to supplicate a god one sits at an altar holding boughs wrapped with fillets of wool, while to supplicate a man one must grasp his knees.3? In the opening tableau the assembled company is clearly supplicating a god. Then the door opens and Oedipus emerges. All the characters, including himself, expect him to answer their prayers. The priest is scrupulous about saying that he doesn’t think Oedipus equal to the gods (eoio1 ... obx LGovpeEvVOov 0’ 31), although there was nothing im-

proper about thinking so: Homer refers to many a hero as an iod@¢0¢

a>, and Sappho can say in a context with no hint of impiety that a man appears to her to be toog @éauow (fr. 31.1-2 Lobel-Page, Voigt).4°

Despite this disclaimer, we see that the priest actually does think of Oedipus as a god when he speaks of Oedipus’s altars (Ba@potot toic ooic, 16) — the altars belong to the god, not to him. For a flickering

instant, when Oedipus answers the people’s prayers, he takes on the role of the god, and we witness a primal, Dionysiac (cf 871 PMG) scene in which the future sacrificial victim appears as an avatar of the god.*' It is a brief moment, for Oedipus will soon speak (how telling of his assertive character that he speaks the play’s first words!), and the audience's attention will be directed elsewhere, but this first glimpse of Oedipus has set the tone for what is to follow.

In addition to these features are the on-ramps (gtoodot) that lead into the dance-floor from the left and right. These are roads, and “the Greek stage is, in a sense, a place where three roads meet.”4* This triplicity of roads is fitting to tragedy in general, with its trinity of actors and its trilogies, where it creates a sense of inclusive totality (Arist. de caelo 268a12), but especially to this play, which recuperates into its narrative economy an earlier event at a place where three roads meet. By convention, one on-ramp is thought of as leading to the country, the other to the city; the third “road” is that demarcated by the skene door, which leads into the palace.

Because it involves role-playing, drama is essentially substitutive. This fact manifests itself not only at the dramaturgical level but at the

19 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

linguistic as well, where we find such rhetorical figures as concrete for abstract and vice versa, plural for singular, and the part for the whole. The possibility of substitution creates ambiguity as well as alternative meanings according to narrower or broader contexts of understanding. These linguistic features entail the polyvalence that is a sine qua non of the irony for which this play in particular is well known. Yet verbal ambiguity and polyvalence have no visual analogue: a stage-property must be either real or imaginary, one or many,

representing the whole or only a part of something. Our dilemma is how to reconstruct unambiguous stage directions from a consciously ambiguous text. The need to resolve this dilemma in some way or other explains the dogmatic tone of some of the remarks that follow. PROLOGUE before line 1: Enter one priest (18, reading Bentley’s tegevc* and taking

Bageis, 17, with the scholiast as a poetic plural) and two‘ childmutes,47 one perhaps dressed as female, one as male, stage left.4° They are

wearing white (the colour of supplication*?). They are holding (laurel?) branches (3, 19, 143). Their heads are bare, but the branches bear crowns (or

else, less likely, are themselves metaphorically called “crowns”).°%° They move in haste>* to the altar of Apollo, where they sit (2) and groan (5).

(Jean Bollack characterizes this tableau by saying, “There is a visual message in the branches: it is a whole suppliant wood that is there.”°? This suggestive view, with its echo of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane [Shakespeare Macbeth Iv.i.93, v.vi.33], would fittingly suggest the confusion into which the plague has plunged Thebes: a wood has

appeared in the city — not the country — and has taken up its place | before the palace doors.) line 1: The double skene doors are opened inward by two attendants.°3 Oedipus enters through the door followed by them. (Oedipus begins the play as master of his house as well as of the whole city. He will soon be reduced to a state of house arrest. Already at 460-1 Teiresias orders him inside [iwv/ ciow AoyiGov]; at 679 the chorus will tell Jocasta to

take him in, and at 1429 definitively Creon will order attendants to remove him into the house.) He holds a sceptre (cf 456, 811).°4 He does not now or at any time in the play limp.°5 He enters unbidden and restless; perhaps he paces throughout the scene. At the sight — and sound®®° — Of his entry, the priest and child-mutes fall

silent. The children remain seated; the priest kneels. (This is the normal

posture for a suppliant and will be repeated during the “mirror scene,” in which the chorus kneels before Teiresias [327]).°” Oedipus speaks.

20 The Theatre of Apollo

line 78: Enter Creon stage right, wearing a crown of laurel leaves and berries (83). (To hold a crown in one’s hand or on a branch shows a desire for God’s help; to wear a crown on one’s head, as Creon does, shows that one believes the help to have been granted.) This, like any entry via the eisodos, is time-consuming, and expectation builds.5®

How does the priest know that Creon is coming? Jebb writes (on olde, 78) that “some of those suppliants who are nearer to the stage entrance on the spectators’ left ... [make] signs to the priest”; Kamerbeek

adds that this is a better solution “than to believe that some of these had come near to the priest and had whispered the announcement in his ear (as suggested by the [scholiast], who is displaying much phantasy as to the respective sharpness and dulness of sight possessed by the youngsters and the priest).” line 93: Creon moves towards the house as though to enter it (the door remains open at this point) and convey his news in private; Oedipus

bars his way. (This is one of the many indications that the monarchy _

of Oedipus is characterized by a maggnota more at home in a democracy*? and that there will be no such thwarting of speech as one sees in the oppressive omerta, the code of silence, of Aeschylus’s Oresteia.® It also shows Oedipus blocking Creon’s desire to enter the palace as he had usurped Creon’s claim to the throne after the death of Laius.®' As Jebb remarks,°? Creon “is not supposed to be an inmate of the palace.” This scene will be recalled when Creon finally does

enter the house at the end of the play after thwarting Oedipus’s desire to leave it.)

line 1g0: (Gould’s suggestion® that Oedipus holds up his own hand as he speaks the words to.avuty xevol, “with a hand of the very same sort,” is perhaps over-subtle.) line 146: Exit Oedipus door. Oedipus’s attendants (referred to vaguely with the singular GAAoc of 144) exit stage left to summon the peo-

ple, i.e. the chorus (144); we will next see them in the company of Teiresias. Some scholars delay Oedipus’s exit until 150,°4 but there is a convention that “characters normally have the last word on exit. Dramatic attention is on the departing person, and it is a time for him to speak unless there is some reason why he should not.”°5

lme 150: Exeunt priest, child-mutes and Creon stage left, taking their branches with them (143), unhurriedly this time.°’ Some scholars have

Creon accompany Oedipus into the house,” but then we are faced

21 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

with an inconsistency, for his next entry (at 513) must be made from stage lett; how could he have got from the house to the city without our noticing (Greek houses have no back doors™)? That the Greeks were sensitive to such issues is shown by the fact that Carcinus was censured because he gave Amphiaraus an exit from the eisodos followed by an entry from the skene (Arist. Poet. chap. 17 = 1455a26). AS. Owen resolves this problem by giving Creon an entry from the skene

followed immediately by an exit stage left at 216, but this seems clumsy. Moreover, since Oedipus has just told Creon to give his full

report in public, what would motivate his entry into the house at this point? Yet if Creon exits stage left at 150, as I believe, how did he convey the suggestion to Oedipus that he send for Teiresias? This will be a minor dramatic inconsistency, but no more so than the fact that we do not see the two messengers dispatched to fetch Teiresias (288)

although, strictly speaking, they should pass before our view. Door closes. For the only time in the play, the acting area is momentarily vacant.

PARODOS line 151: Enter the chorus stage left,7° “moving in a solid rectangular alignment of ... three by five persons ... the flute-player [comes] in with

the chorus.”7" They are quite distinct from the (three?) suppliants who have just exited.”* The chorus are representative citizens of their community (512, 911) held in high honour (1223). They are called old men (1111), but it is unlikely that much effort was expended to give them specific character. Once in the orchestra, the chorus will pre-

sumably adopt a shape in conformity to the perhaps circular space they occupy.”

FIRST EPISODE line 216: The door opens. Enter Oedipus unattended (his servants have been dispatched to fetch Teiresias, 288-9, and will soon enter accompanying him, 297). He is aware of the content of the chorus’s prayer,

and many scholars suppose that he has entered before 216.74 Such

a procedure would be by no means unprecedented,” but we can imagine Oedipus hearing the jist of their prayer from within. A simi-

lar entry occurs at 531. For the second time in the play Oedipus offers himself in answer to prayer. As R.W.B. Burton says, “the appearance of Oedipus with the single word aitets as an answer to the

prayer invests the king with an almost divine significance;”” “he appears like a god.”77

22 The Theatre of Apollo

line 276: Here and elsewhere in iambic trimetres it is the koryphaios who speaks on behalf of the entire chorus. He will not be distinguished from

them by his costume but possibly by his position in the orchestra, in what way we do not know. line 300: Enter Teiresias stage left accompanied by a boy (cf 444, Ant. 988-90, 1013, 1088) and by Oedipus’s two servants (297 with Kamerbeek’s note). Teiresias’s mask will show that he is blind (it will have no eye-holes), his gestures that he is old. The old man accompanied by a

boy will resemble the old priest of Zeus accompanied by the two child-mutes, but now the encounter is reversed: he comes in answer

to Oedipus, not vice versa. The echo of the prologue will be increased if Teiresias too takes his stand at Apollo’s altar, not this time as suppliant but as spokesman of the god.

lines 326-7: Spoken by the koryphaios (=, A) or by Oedipus (L)? Probably by Oedipus (the chorus is otherwise silent between 299 and

404), but the plural clearly indicates that he is serving as a spokesperson for the chorus as well as for himself. Does the speaker literally prostrate himself before Teiresias? It seems unthinkable that Oedipus

would kneel, but perhaps the chorus kneels before Teiresias as the priest has done before Oedipus. The position occupied by Oedipus in the prologue has now been usurped by Teiresias — this would explain why Oedipus launches at 345 the charge of conspiracy against Teiresias. line 437: Teiresias turns to leave and is halted by Oedipus.”®

line 446: Oedipus, satisfied that he has had the last word, turns to depart, accompanied by the servants. Teiresias addresses 447-51 to his departing back.79

line 450: The palace doors close audibly. Tetresias and the boy remain alone on stage, and the remainder of his speech (451-61) is a solilo-

quy addressed to no one in particular, although heard by the boy and the chorus. The third-person forms are really that and not some

rhetorical trick. The scene is modelled to some extent upon the Cassandra scene in Aesch. Ag. (Sophocles was a close student of Aeschylus®’), with the prophet uttering pellucid but unheeded prophecies about the fate of the hero who has recently entered the house. (The alternative to this reading — that Oedipus remains on stage and hears all of what Teiresias says but is too stupid to understand it — does not merit consideration: Oedipus’s character may be

23 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

flawed; his intellect is unimpaired.) There will likewise be a clear dramaturgical reason why Oedipus does not remark upon Jocasta’s claim that she pierced the feet of the infant son (see on line 717, below). line 461: Exeunt Tetrestas and boy stage left.

SECOND EPISODE | line 513: Enter Creon stage left (whence he last exited) without his crown. His entrance is motivated by news of the charges against him. If we ask who informed him of these charges, we must say Teiresias, but the problem probably does not pose itself to the audience. line 531: The doors open; enter Oedipus from the palace with two attendants.

Why? He does nothing but berate Creon, and so we may assume that

his purpose in entering is to do just that. He must therefore know that Creon is present. This is the second time in the play (cf 216) in which Oedipus, while still within the house, knows what is occurring without. line 634: Enter Jocasta from the palace. She has heard the quarrel (the doors have been open since 531), and she comes out to mediate. As

Oedipus’s wife she inhabits the palace, the only other character to do so.

line 678: Exit Creon stage left. The chorus suggests that Jocasta lead Oedipus indoors, but the time has not yet come for him to

be led.

line 717: Oedipus stops listening and turns away (cf brooteadets 728, used literally). Jocasta has mentioned the murder at the crossroads,

and this distracts Oedipus from her later statements regarding the exposure. This is the second time in the play that Oedipus fails to hear crucial information (cf 450).

line 860: Oedipus does not dispatch his two attendants, who are with him on stage, but for once delegates responsibility. Jocasta does not dispatch anyone in our presence either. The investigation is losing momentum. line 862: Exeunt Oedipus, Jocasta and two attendants within. The doors close.

24 The Theatre of Apollo

THIRD EPISODE line 911: Doors open. Enter Jocasta and two attendants. They carry crowns and lekythot and place them upon the altar of Apollo (919), where they will

remain for the duration of the play, unlike the suppliants’ branches of the prologue (143). Her intention is to go thence to the temples (912). Presumably, therefore, the little party begins to head towards the left exodus at 924 and ts interrupted by the entry stage right of the Corinthian. The opening of this scene is, as Kamerbeek (1967, 181-2) remarks, para

prosdokian: we had expected to see the herdsman. This is, as Dawe says (1982, 188 ad 912-13), a counterpart to the suppliant scene in the prologue, but the direction is reversed, issuing from, not going to the palace.

line 925: Enter Corinthian, stage right. He is an old man. Here, if any-

where, we will want the traditional traveller’s costume — broadbrimmed hat and kothornoi. (The hat is out of keeping with Creon’s costume, pace the producers of the Harvard production [Jebb 1893, 202], where it will only detract from the essential piece of headgear, the crown.) line 945: Exit one attendant into the skene.

line 950: Enter Oedipus from the palace with the attendant who just exited.

line 1069: Exeunt both attendants stage left in quest of the shepherd. (Notwithstanding the tig of 1069, 1114-15 show that a plurality of attendants is involved: tovg ayovtacs; Sophocles wants both attendants off in order to remove all extraneous persons from the tableau

that ends the act [see below].) The shepherd is to be found in the country, not in the city; nevertheless, he is to be found in the environs of Thebes, to be carefully distinguished from far-off places such as Delphi and Corinth. line 1073: Exit Jocasta into the house.

line 1086: There is no exit, although the act is at an end.®* There remain on stage Oedipus and the Corinthian, the mysterious stranger who will destroy him (one thinks of Pentheus and Dionysus in the as yet unwritten Eur. Bacch.). They remain frozen in a tableau throughout the stasimon. The palace doors remain open.

25 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

FOURTH EPISODE line 1110: Enter herdsman with Oedtpus’s two attendants stage left. The herdsman ts dressed accordingly — in shabby skins, holding perhaps a shep-

herd’s crook. We see that the skene must be equipped with a hidden rear door, allowing the actor who has just portrayed Jocasta to exit in secret in order to reappear via the eisodos as the herdsman. Such a door will have no admitted place in the skene when it represents a house or palace (which had no rear doors), but it is overtly mentioned when. the skene represents a cave (e.g. Soph. Phil. 19, Eur. Cycl. 706). line 1154: At Oedipus’s order, the attendants begin to torture the herdsman by twisting back his hands (amooteé war YEQaS).

line 1185: Exeunt omnes; but whither? Oedipus must enter the house, apparently accompanied by attendants (although they are not mentioned in the narrative of the messenger from within, the é&ayyedoc, 1252-79). The door closes. The Harvard production has the Corinthian

and the herdsman run out of opposite parodoi, the ones by which they had entered. This is excellent theatre; it provides the play’s second use for the secret rear entrance to the skene. Here the acting area as telodos is most fully exploited. The force of revelation is like a blast that scatters the witnesses in every possible direction. Among the persons whose plans have just been destroyed are, of course, Oedipus and Jocasta, but also the shepherd (who had hoped to maintain

ward). |

a low profile) and the Corinthian (who had hoped to obtain a reEXODUS line 1224: Open door. Enter messenger running. The running slave (ser-

vus currens) becomes a stock figure in New Comedy* but is as yet a rarity. The doors must close again immediately upon his entrance, for they will open for Oedipus at 1295. This would indicate that the messenger has no intention of returning (immediately at least) to the

palace. He is a refugee, and we may wonder whether the carnage within is total, as in Eur. Heracl. line 1295: The doors open.

line 1297: Enter Oedipus. The two attendants apparently enter now also; they will be called upon at 1430, unless they have already been

26 The Theatre of Apollo

transferred (but how and when?) to Creon and are to enter with him at 1423. Oedipus wears a new mask. This is a very important fact; let us

pause to consider its implications. Why does Oedipus blind himself? Teiresias says that Apollo is sufficient to cause Oedipus to fall (376-7), and after his self-recognition Oedipus acknowledges this by saying, “These things were Apollo” (1329). This admission involves the familiar idea that Apollo is the one who “has destroyed” (amwAeoev, Archil. fr. 26 West, Aesch. Ag. 1080-2, Eur. Phaethon 224-6 Diggle, Pl. Cratyl. 404d and 405e),°3 with reference to the reputation that he earned not only for his treatment of Cassandra (Aesch. Ag. 1202-12) but also for his treatment of Achilles (Aesch. fr. 350 TrGF), Coronis (Pind. Pyth. 3.35), and others.

The chorus call Apollo the “Lycian” (203), a word derived from a

root signifying “light.” The root produces a number of words for “twilight” (Auxopac, Avxauyns, Avxogws) and the normal word for “lamp” (Avyvos).°4 The word “Lycian” occurs in this play in the context of many words for “light,”®5 and the oracle is spoken of elsewhere in the play as “brilliant” (Aapmoeds 81). It is clear, therefore, that Sophocles thinks of Apollo as pre-eminently a god of light.

This play was written at a time when Apollo was becoming increasingly identified with the sun,® and, although Sophocles is not known to have used this identification,®” his view of Apollo as a god of light may have led him to share this equation of the god with the sun. Such an equation would explain the otherwise perhaps surpris-

ing claim of the chorus (660) that the sun is the foremost of all the gods. Like Apollo, the “far-darter” (Soph. OT 163), the sun is an archer (Od. 5.479, 19.441, Soph. Ajax 877, Eur. Her. 1090, tr. fr. adesp.

546.7-8) and has a pronounced destructive aspect brought out by the relatives given him in myth — the witches Circe and Medea and the “paneful” Aeetes (Od. 10.137).

Creon orders Oedipus inside the palace out of respect for the sun (1426). If the sun is not to see Oedipus again, neither is Oedipus to see

the sun, for he has plunged himself into darkness (1313) by putting out his eyes. A contributing motive in Oedipus’s self-blinding may then be to spare himself from having to look upon the god who has destroyed him. Whatever psychological motivation we might offer from Oedipus’s perspective for the blinding, there is an important dramaturgical motivation from Sophocles’ perspective. Oedipus fails in his attempt to avoid his fate and blinds himself, his hand acting as Apollo’s agent (OT 1329-32). The blinding necessitates that the protagonist change masks before his re- entry at 1298, as is the case with the Cyclops in Euripides’ play (line 663, with Seaford 1988, 220).®° Such a change

27 Stage Directions for Oedipus the King

would be unremarkable in comedy, where, for example, Pheidippides (presumably) has a change of mask to show his transformation from a tanned athlete into a wan sophist (Ar. Nub. 1170), and there may often be a change of mask to show rejuvenation of old men.*9 But tragedy was less liberal in its use of mask changes. The other Sophoclean play in which a character is blinded, Thamyras, apparently required no change of mask.®° Moreover, a change of mask generally indicates a change of character and so suggests that Oedipus has become a new “person” in the etymological sense of the word. (Fittingly, the new person has a new name, and at this point Oedipus comes to a new understanding of his name, a point to which we will return in chapter 6.)

The mutability of Oedipus’s person (revealed by the blinding, change of mask, and new understanding of his name) is profound despite his failure to adapt to his new circumstances, namely his per-

sistance in giving orders to Creon even after his self-recognition.” The transformation of his character and the inconstancy of his situation contrast in the sharpest possible way with Apollo’s constant, unswerving presence. line 1329: Dawe asks, “does Oedipus gesture to, or stumble at, the altar or statue of Apollo which lies close to his own palace (919)?” If the answer is

yes (as it might well be), then now for the first and only time in the play Oedipus will leave the threshold of his palace and approach the property altar that has attracted so many other characters to it. line 1423: Enter Creon stage left. He has been left king in Oedipus’s stead (1418) and gives orders to the two attendants (1430); the change

of command is not instantaneous, however; note that the servants hesitate considerably before obeying. Creon may be accompanied by two child-mutes in the roles of Antigone and Ismene,?* but this would tend to

suggest that they were living with Creon, which is on the face of it improbable. The daughters, like Oedipus and Jocasta, would naturally inhabit the palace. Nevertheless, Oedipus suspects (1473) and Creon confirms (1476~7) that their presence is his doing. Moreover, at the end of the play (1522) Creon separates Oedipus from his daughters. Since Oedipus enters the house at that point (cf 1430), the girls must exit stage left; this exit will be less surprising if this is the place

whence they have come. The Harvard production made everyone exit into the palace. line 1522: Exeunt Oedipus and Creon into the skene; exeunt child-mutes with attendants stage left.

28 The Theatre of Apollo

The persons of the drama and their distribution among the players are as follows: on stage

actor A Oedipus

actor B Creon

Teiresias

Corinthian

actor C priest Jocasta

herdsman exangelos

mute A (child) first suppliant Teiresias’s boy

Ismene

mute B (child) second suppliant Antigone

mute c (adult) Oedipus’s first servant mute D (adult) Oedipus’s second servant in the orchestra

koryphaios 14 choreuts flute-player

Excluding the messenger from within, who is not a character in his own right, the characters played by the deuteragonist and the tritagonist show a curious symmetry, with Creon, the consulter of oracles, balanced by Jocasta, the sceptical critic of oracles; with Teiresias, the intractable religious professional, balanced by the priest of Zeus, the flattering one; and with the Corinthian herdsman become courtier, who volunteers information unasked, balanced by the Theban courtier become herdsman, who conceals information by refusing to answer questions. In the phenomenon, ubiquitous in the Greek theatre, of having a single actor portray a multiplicity of roles, the unifying substrate of the actor’s presence is often felt (and, to the limited degree that we can speak of such things, presumably consciously intended by the dramatist) beneath the diversity of seemingly unrelated characters. Movie-goers may think of the effects in this regard achieved by Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove or Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers.

3, Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in the Play perch’ 1’ no spero di tornar giammai ... * (Because I do not hope to return again)

In his recent book Sophocles’ Oedipus: Evidence and Self-Conviction,? Fredrick Ahl argues that the text of Oedipus the King offers no proof

for the conclusion, drawn by the protagonist himself, that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Oedipus’s self-conviction, he argues, owes more to the clash of self-interested, half-true statements and false assumptions of Sophocles’ characters — that is, to their rhetoric? — than to any logic in the play’s quasi-legal inquiry. The implication of this argument is that the question posed by traditional interpreters of whether the play is a tragedy of fate or of free will is wrong-headed and irrelevant. This chapter critiques the argument of Ahl and of those who have anticipated his reading. It advocates the traditional idea that Oedipus did in fact do what he convicts himself

of, suggesting that many of the play’s inconsistencies upon which AhlI bases his argument are evidence not of the innocence of Oedipus but of the controlling power of Apollo. Ahi argues that “in this play, no conclusive evidence is presented that Oedipus killed his father and married his mother.”4 By this he does not simply mean that Oedipus killed Laius under such extenuating circumstances as that he did not know his identity, was provoked to kill against his will, was fated by the gods to do so, and as a result must be accounted innocent. This, I take it, is the mainstream view of the play among classicists; it is well stated in E.R. Dodds’ essay “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex,”> and it is Oedipus’s own position in Oedipus at Colonus 270-4. (This-view is itself seriously flawed, as I will try to show in the next chapter.) Ahl’s claim is much more

30 The Theatre of Apollo radical. According to him, Oedipus is totally innocent of the crime of which he is accused; he never laid a finger on Laius, who died instead at the hands of persons unknown. Thus not only have all the gener-

ations of classical scholars misread the play, but Oedipus himself misreads it in wrongly convicting himself of the crime. Before considering the innovative aspects of Ahl’s case, let me set it in the context of the play’s Rezeptionsgeschichte. This is important, for the advocacy of Oedipus’s innocence has a more interesting history than is immediately apparent from Ahl’s work. I will therefore summarize and critique the works of three of Ahl’s precursors before moving on to consider his own new contributions.

Ahl’s most recent and tenacious precursor in advocating the innocence of Oedipus is social scientist René Girard. Girard has a fascinating theory that purports, like all great theories, to explain everything.©° Although nominally a professor of French literature, Girard allows his thought to range over issues that are best called anthropological and to concern itself chiefly with the omnipresence of violence in human societies both present and past. The source of this violence, says Girard, is “triangular desire,” man’s tendency to want what his neighbour wants simply because his neighbour wants it. Such desire traces out the triangle of desired object, desiring subject, and equally desiring neighbour, who mediates between the two.’ (This is not quite the same thing as envy, which is the desire for what one’s neighbour already has.) The subject reveres the mediator, hence his imitation of him, and at the same time, since he recognizes

him as his rival in the struggle to obtain the object of their mutual desire, he resents him; this conflict of attitudes is, in a word, hatred.® The subject in one triangle will inevitably also be the subject, object, or mediator in some other, and so the pattern spreads throughout all of society in an infinite latticework of hate. This structure of endless

triangles of opposing force is strained so taut that any blow delivered to any part of it will cause the whole thing to shatter. When this happens, a crisis results. Society must respond to the crisis in order to return to its normal state, and this response, in Girard’s view, inevitably takes the form of the scapegoating mechanism. The operation of this mechanism may be discerned in literary texts by means of four stereotypes. First, there will be the crisis involving the generalized loss of difference within society. For example, there may be a plague that kills rich and poor, just and unjust without distinction. Second, there will be allegations of violations of those taboos

that establish social order. For example, the dead king may be rumoured to have been murdered as though he were an enemy. Third,

31 Oedipus Pharmakos?

someone will be chosen who bears the “mark of the victim,” which can be any sign that the person is out of the ordinary. For example, the person may be a foreigner, he may have a limp, he may even be

set apart by his unusual power - for example, by being himself a king. Fourth, the society will unanimously direct a violent attack upon this marked person, killing him or driving him away in an attempt to cure the plague that set off the crisis. It is of prime importance that the scapegoat is chosen “for inade-

quate reasons, or perhaps for no reason at all, more or less at random” from among all those who bear “marks of the victim,”? and that he is completely innocent of the charges brought against him. This is true even though his persecutors are acting in good faith and believe him to be guilty’® and even though he probably is so imbued with the outlook of his society that he shares their view.”

Girard illustrates this mechanism with a myth of the Yahuna Indians’? and a text by the fourteenth-century poet Guillaume de Machaut concerning the contemporary persecution of Jews during the Black Death in France (people die of plague; it is rumoured that the wells have been poisoned; the Jews are alleged to have done so; a pogrom ensues);13 but he wishes to show that this phenomenon has been with human society since time immemorial and that it stands at the centre rather than at the periphery of our culture, and so turns to the classical period in quest of an example. He

could easily have found many examples of scapegoat rituals in ancient Greece or Rome. Rituals in which a scapegoat, or PaQUAXOG,

is driven from society to alleviate some ill are well-attested,*4 and

there are famous literary representations of them, such as the driving of Encolpius from Marseilles in Petronius’s Satyricon or the

leading of Lucius around Hypata during the Festival of Laughter in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. The classical world also offers, alas, examples of scapegoating in the broader sense of persecution; one thinks of ostracism as well as of the Athenians’ prosecution on false

charges of Pericles,5 Aspasia, and Anaxagoras’ during the great plague (Thuc. 2.65.3, Pl. Grg. 516a, Plut. Per. 32, 35, and Diod. Sic.

12.45.4). But Girard is not content with these; he chooses instead Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.

The idea that the Oedipus myth reflects scapegoat ritual goes back to Jane Harrison and has been accepted among others by Jean-

Pierre Vernant, who claims that Oedipus occupies an ambiguous position as at once tyrant and scapegoat;’” nevertheless, Girard goes

further and argues that Oedipus is an example of secular persecution. His choice of this myth is evidently motivated by the fact that this text is central to the two pillars of French intellectual life,

32 The Theatre of Apollo

psychoanalysis and structuralism. Sophocles’ text received influential analyses in Freud’s On the Interpretation of Dreams’® and LéviStrauss’s Structural Anthropology? If Girard can prove that both these central disciplines have failed to lay bare the real point of this

shared proof-text, his theory will have gone a long way towards usurping their supremacy. (This suspicion regarding Girard’s motive is corroborated by the fact that scattered throughout his writings one finds attacks upon his two rivals, Sigmund Freud and Claude Lévi-Strauss.”°) Girard has returned to Oedipus repeatedly

in his writings, from an article published in 1968 until his most recent discussion in 1987."

The choice of Sophocles’ text - and let me emphasize that it is Sophocles’ rather than any other version of the myth that Girard has in mind?? — is not, however, a happy one. In order to lay bare the persecution stereotypes underlying the text, Girard retells it as though it were a historical document, apparently on the assumption that the text is a dim recollection of some real persecution. He writes: Harvests are bad, the cows give birth to dead calves; no one is on good terms with anyone else. It is as if a spell had been cast on the village. Clearly, it is

the cripple who is the cause. He arrived one fine morning, no one knows from where, and made himself at home. He even took the liberty of marrying the most obvious heiress in the village and had two children by her. All sorts of things seemed to take place in their house. The stranger was suspected of having killed his wife’s former husband, a sort of local potentate, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was rather too quickly replaced by the newcomer. One day the fellows in the village had had enough; they took their pitchforks and forced the disturbing character to clear out.*

Girard characterizes this account as a “slight modification” of the original text,?4 but in fact Girard’s story differs from Sophocles’ on four major points (if we consider the claim that Oedipus had two rather than four children [cf lines 1459-65] rather as a slip of the pen than as a deliberate change). In Sophocles there is no hint that anyone has suspected Oedipus of having killed his wife’s former husband until Teiresias comes on stage and makes this scandalous, scarcely comprehensible allegation. Then too there is no reason to think that Oedipus is portrayed with a limp,” and he is obviously not in the habit of discussing his old injury (1033); it is therefore incorrect to characterize him as cripple. Moreover, in Sophocles’ version, by contrast with that of Jean Cocteau and Igor Stravinsky, it is

33, Oedipus Pharmakos?

not “the fellows in the village” but Oedipus himself who pronounces sentence of exile, and as it happens the exile does not, in the course

of this play at least, occur (although it is clearly foreshadowed in lines 96-101 and 305-9).?° (While we avoid the error of claiming that the Thebans exiled Oedipus, we must not claim that he volunteers to

be chased out like the willing victim of an animal sacrifice or the volunteers for self-sacrifice who people Euripides’ tragedies.” We will see that Oedipus is neither victimized nor self-victimizing; his passage of sentence upon himself is evidence not of any irrational destructiveness on the part either of others or of himself but of his impartiality in executing the duties of his office.) Most important, perhaps, is that Girard’s rewriting of the text suppresses all mention of Apollo. But these problems in Girard’s translation of the text into historiographic language pale by comparison with his odd analysis of the resulting tale. Girard’s discussion of the scapegoat mechanism in general is reminiscent of the old woman who “when accused of having made a hole

in a kettle she had borrowed, ... argued simultaneously that the kettle did not have a hole in it, that it had already had one when she borrowed it, and that the hole she made in it added to its value.”° Girard says at once that no crime has actually been committed, that there was in fact a crime but the scapegoat is innocent of any involvement in it, and that the scapegoat is guilty of the crime but this guilt

does not justify the punishment he receives. The question of guilt cannot be treated in so cavalier a manner; we should distinguish more clearly than does Girard between the victim either of an annual scapegoating ritual or of a spontaneous eruption of persecution on the one hand and the “fall-guy” made to shoulder all the blame by his fellow conspirators or the self-confessed criminal legitimately punished for his crime on the other; the first category is separated from the second by the all-important issue of guilt. Girard’s curious double reasoning on the matter of guilt persists in his treatment of the Oedipus story. Admittedly, he does not actually say that Laius is alive and well and living in Paris. He does, however, claim both that

Oedipus never murdered Laius and that, although he did commit parricide, that fact is irrelevant to his eventual punishment. Let us consider the first of these two incompatible claims. (We will turn to

the second below.) . Girard points out that for much of the play the burden of guilt oscillates freely among Oedipus, Teiresias, and Creon before finally settling upon Oedipus alone. “It might very well,” says Girard, “have settled on another, or on none.” He characterizes the determination of

34 The Theatre of Apollo

how the guilt shall fall as a “mysterious mechanism.”?? This mystery is caused, or at least enhanced, by our own manipulation and delusion as spectators and readers*° — that is to say, from the fact that “we

cannot expect a scapegoat-generated myth to be explicit about the arbitrariness of its victim’s choice.”3*

But is the process whereby blame settles on one person rather than another in this play as mysterious as Girard claims? Creon offers his own convincing apologia in the play (lines 583-615): he has not committed regicide or any other murder and is not conspiring against the throne, because it is in his best interest not to do so. That Creon’s selfdefence is unanswerable is shown by the fact that Oedipus does not answer it, even though the rules of a formal debate (a@ywv) require an answer. Blame does not attach to Teiresias either, and for good reason. For one thing, he is blind. Blindness, while doubtless a “mark of the victim,” is a great hindrance to an assassin, as Oedipus himself remarks (348). Secondly, he is a seer, and in all literature antecedent to Sophocles, whenever a dispute arises between a seer and a layman, the seer is proven by the sequel to be correct.>* What is true of seers in

general is true specifically of Teiresias, for the chorus says as he makes his first entrance that “truth is native to him alone of men” (298-9; cf Ant. 1092-4). If society always decides in favour of the claims of the seer and against those of the “layman,” then the choice is — so far from being arbitrarily random — predetermined and easily predictable. Thirdly, Teiresias is innocent. This is not a fact that we know in its own right, but it is a necessary inference from the fact that Oedipus alone is guilty. To the consideration of this fact let us now turn.

Girard does not elucidate the way in which Sophocles’ play has deluded so many spectators and readers; he refers to Sandor Goodhart,33 whose reading of the play he endorses.44+ Goodhart states “that the play uncovers systematically the arbitrariness of the determination of any unique culprit” and “that the empirical issue (whether we decide Oedipus killed Laius or not) is less important, finally, than the plague of scapegoat violence for which it comes to substitute.”35 Goodhart in turn restates in more theoretical form a reading of the play first advanced by Karl Harshbarger in his article “Who Killed Laius?”3° In excerpted form, Harshbarger’s argument is this: There are two versions of Laius’ murder in Oedipus Rex. First, there is the version that is current in Thebes and is expressed by Creon, Jocasta, the Chorus,

and presumably the Shepherd if he were to talk about it. Second, there is Oedipus’ version... (120)

35 Oedipus Pharmakos? _ Although there are striking similarities in the two stories, there are important differences ... concern{ing] the number of murderers and the number of

survivors... (120-1) [T]hese discrepancies are not accidents due to careless writing. The contradictions are deliberately established for us by Sophocles.

Granting this, ... as a matter of cold examination of the evidence, we cannot be sure that Oedipus killed Laius .... (122)

If it is possible that Oedipus did not murder Laius, [we can] determine from the play if there is anyone else who might have done it ... I have chosen a suspect that might appear the least likely: the Chorus. I am not urging the certainty of the Chorus’ guilt. lam only arguing the possibility of the Chorus’

guilt... (124) If the Chorus is guilty, and if that guilt is made more painful by a renewed desire to kill again, then the Chorus’ action in the play is to find a way to relieve itself... (130) The solution — which perhaps Oedipus senses and lends himself to — is a sacrifice. (131)

But the empirical issue, in Goodhart’s phrase, of whether or not Oedipus killed Laius is crucial to determining whether any scapegoat violence is occurring in the play at all, and most readers will want to

know how Harshbarger’s surprising reading stands up against an examination of the play.

The answer is that it does not stand up at all. It is true that there are two separate accounts of the murder given in the play. Not to prejudice the matter, we could say that two separate murders are described. The two accounts are of quite unequal evidentiary value. One is Oedipus’s eyewitness testimony (800-13), the veracity of which is compellingly urged by the fact that it goes against his selfinterest. The other is hearsay reported by Creon (118-27) and Jocasta (713-16). The source of this hearsay is a still-living witness, whose

testimony alone would be acceptable in an Athenian court (Dem. 46.6-8, 57.4),37 yet, although he appears as a character in this play, he is not asked about this crucial point. Moreover, there are two reasons to suspect his story. First, it is doubtful how much he actually saw; he appears not even to have realized that Laius was dead until he returned to Thebes and saw Oedipus on the throne (759).3° Second, as one who promised Jocasta that he would expose the infant

Oedipus but then avoided doing so, he “is not above practising a deception.”3? Furthermore, on this occasion at least he has a strong motive for lying: as part of the king’s entourage he would have been

expected to protect the king or else die trying: the shame brought upon him by his failure to do so can be mitigated to some extent

36 ©The Theatre of Apollo

by his emphasizing (whether truthfully or not) the large number of attackers. Nevertheless, the hearsay nature of this testimony is diminished by the fact that the witness gave it in public (849) — that is,

before members of the chorus among others, and not just to Creon and Jocasta alone - and there is independent confirmation of two important aspects of it: the time and the place of the crime. All Thebans know that Laius died shortly before Oedipus came to Thebes, and our independent knowledge that Laius was on an embassy to Delphi when he was killed (114), an embassy that would have led him through the crossroads, lends credibility to the shepherd’s claim that Laius died at that place. It is also true, as Harshbarger says, that the two murders differ in the number of reported assassins (one vs many) and the number of reported survivors (none vs one). Let us consider what is known from the text and from common background knowledge concerning these

two murders. The scene of the killing by Oedipus (801) was real rather than fictitious and was well known to the play’s first audience.4° Laius was reportedly murdered at the same crossroads. We also know something of the relative timing of the two murders. The following events happen within a brief period (cf 736-7): Oedipus

consults the oracle and straightway commits murder;** news of Laius’s murder reaches Thebes; Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx and becomes king in Thebes. It is possible to narrow down this time-frame considerably, in the following way. When he was murdered, Laius was on an embassy to Delphi (114). Oedipus’s victim was also on such a mission, as is shown by the herald who accompanies him (802) as well as by his whereabouts at the time of death.

The historian Callisthenes reports that in the archaic period the Pythia granted oracular responses only one day each year (FGrHist 124 F 49). Even in later times the frequency of consultation had increased only to one day per month (Plut. Mor. 292e-f). Since both Laius and Oedipus’s unidentified victim were on their way to consult the oracle within the same space of a few days, they must have been murdered on the same day. Given that both murders occurred at the same place at about the same time, it is unlikely that they were different murders. First, in the account of neither murder is mention made of the wreckage and gore littering the intersection from any quadruple homicide already committed there. Second, the lone survivor of Laius’s party can only recognize and fear the newcomer Oedipus as he apparently does (759) if he has already seen him; the only occasion for this sighting deducible from the text is the fatal encounter on the road. At the same time, it is

37 Oedipus Pharmakos?

highly likely that the accounts are different descriptions of the same murder. That variant versions of stories abounded in ancient Greece

(as at all times and places) is abundantly clear from Herodotus’s Histories 1.5, etc. A recognition of them is already a feature of Pindaric narrative in the generation before Sophocles (Pyth. 11.2-25; cf Homer Od. 2.30-3, 42-5).

The particular nature of the discrepancy in the two accounts of the murder — for that is manifestly what we are dealing with — concerns numbers, as we have said. There are two symmetrical falsehoods: the

surviving shepherd wrongly augments the number of murderers; the murderer Oedipus wrongly diminishes the number of survivors. Why does Laius’s slave report that Laius was killed by more than one assassin (123, etc.), as the oracle reported by Creon has already sug-

gested with its reference to “murderers” (tovcg abtoévtas, 107)?” Perhaps because of the inaccuracy of his observation and of his mendacity, which we have already noted. The case with Oedipus’s misinformation is parallel. Too forthright to lie, he may be mistaken. The lone survivor evidently did not linger on the scene or otherwise make himself conspicuous, for, if he had, he would probably not have survived and would certainly not have remained ignorant of Laius’s death, as he apparently did (he expressed shock at learning upon his return to Thebes that Laius was dead, 759). Moreover, Oedipus is prone to jump to erroneously absolute conclusions and was no doubt too busy manslaughtering to concern himself with making an accurate count. However, Sophocles’ gods are capable of concealing from the sight of certain characters events that they do not wish them to see; the second burial of Polynices during a sudden tornado (Ant. 417~22)*° and the apotheosis of Oedipus within the grove of the Furies (OC 1661-4) are examples. Perhaps the gods con-

cealed the presence of the surviving shepherd from Oedipus. The possibilities that I have put forward as alternative explanations need not constitute an either/or. The Greeks were comfortable with a type of thinking that some moderns label “overdetermination,” according to which seemingly incompatible human and divine agencies work together to the same end.

Ahl incorporates much of this earlier material into his own book, acknowledging in particular the influence of Goodhart,4” his presentation culminating in a profile of Oedipus as a Girardian scapegoat.*® The objections that I have already raised apply therefore to these sections of Ahl’s argument. Ahl also adds a number of interesting new insights to the case for Oedipus’s innocence, in particular

38 The Theatre of Apollo

the isolation of rhetoric as the “mysterious mechanism” that determines how the burden of guilt shall fall. Particularly deserving of comment are three of the new points that he raises. First, he uses a euhemerizing comment in Pausanias (9.26.2-4; cf schol. Hes. Theog. 326) to the effect that the Sphinx was

really the leader of a band of highwaymen in order to suggest that she stands at the origin of the rumour that robbers killed Oedipus (Soph. OT 122) and to offer her, as against Harshbarger’s proposal of the chorus, as the prime suspect in the case.4? This suggestion has no warrant in the text and its only merit is novelty. Second, as well as clearing Oedipus of the charge of regicide, he denies also that he is the son of Laius and hence an incestuous parri-

cide. Ahl bases this denial upon an unreliability that he detects in the information conveyed by the anonymous Corinthian. The Corinthian, says Ahl, is motivated by self-interest, contradicts himself in his account of his acquisition of the infant Oedipus, and offers no proof of the new identity that he reveals for the king.*° These points

do not impugn the reliability of the Corinthian’s report. It is true that he hopes to profit from his message (1006), just as the guard who must bring unwelcome news to Creon in Antigone 223-36 fears that he will suffer; this natural expectation (cf Trach. 191, El. 772,

Phil. 552) offers no textual warrant for the elaborate portrait of a manipulative schemer that Ahl extrapolates from it. It is less true that he contradicts himself in saying first that he found the infant Oedipus (1026) and then that he was given him (1038). It is forgivably loose usage to speak of finding a foundling (evenua; the word is used in 1106), especially in Greek, where edgioxm means “to get, gain, procure” as well as “to find.”>* Thus, like most messen-

gers, the Corinthian moves from general statement to the specific treatment of details; there is nothing suspect in this. It is absolutely false to say that the Corinthian offers no proof of Oedipus’s identity as the son of Laius and Jocasta. He offers the most traditional and effective recognition token, the scar, for he knows about the infirmity of Oedipus’s feet, and this must be genuine knowledge and not spur-of-the-moment deduction, as Ahl implies, for the infirmity is invisible (Oedipus does not limp) and Oedipus is not in the habit of discussing it (1033). This recognition token establishes the credibility of the Corinthian’s report in three ways. First, with it he offers a simple and previously lacking explanation for Oedipus’s affliction. Second, it enables him to offer the affliction itself as an explanation for Oedipus’s name. Until now, Oedipus has thought that his name meant “I know about feet” because he had solved a riddle concern-

39 Oedipus Pharmakos?

ing feet.5* But how could Polybus, who named him, have known that he would one day solve a foot riddle? The only thing, in fact,

that he did know about the baby he was given was that his feet were distinctively maimed, and hence he named him “Your foot is swollen.” Third, the recognition token dovetails perfectly with Jocasta’s story of having exposed an infant with pierced ankles (718), for while infant exposure may have been common, infant ankle-piercing is unparalleled. Third, Ahl claims that the oracle comes neither from Apollo nor from the Pythia but from the theorist Creon, who as a Theban might well have a vested interest in seeing Oedipus become a scapegoat.* Yet if Creon has fabricated the response, why does he invite Oedipus to test it by going to Delphi himself (603-4)? If he looks upon

the oracle as an instrument of political vengeance, why does he himself consult it as a first priority upon his acquisition of power (1438-9)?

In the end, Ahl may allow the truth of all that I have said and still discount my arguments. In addition to distancing the self-punishment of Oedipus from his guilt in the matter of parricide and incest, he follows Girard in strengthening the connection between his selfpunishment and the plague. Bernard Knox has demonstrated that “the plague is not a traditional feature of the Oedipus story ... [but apparently] a Sophoclean invention”>> and Ahl rightly follows him in

this view,>° noting that the play’s opening description of a plague would have surprised the audience. Why did Sophocles import the plague into the story of Oedipus? From a biographical point of view, we can suggest two possible reasons. The first, and the central point of Knox’s and Ahl’s treatment of the question, is that the latest possible date for the premiére of Oedipus the King is the City Dionysia in March 426.°7 This is four years after the date of the first outbreak of plague in Athens (Thuc. 2.47-55).>° For those (like Knox and Ahl) who accept the latest possible date for the play, the plague motif will be a case of art imitating life. There is another possible reason, not mentioned by them. Sophocles had an abiding interest in medicine, possibly stemming from his experience of the plague. He held the priesthood of the healing hero Amynus, the “warder off of evil” (Vita Sophocleis T A.11 TrGF emend. Koerte; codicum lectio “AX\wvoc)°? and his house

evidently doubled as a shrine to that hero. This was no passing interest on the poet’s part,°° for when the worship of Asclepius was introduced into Athens several years after the probable date of

40 The Theatre of Apollo

Oedipus the King, and before a temple was built for his worship, he was “entertained as a guest” by Sophocles in his own house (Plut. Numa 4.6, Etym. Magn. s.v. Ac&iwv).®! On this occasion he

evidently wrote the hymn to Asclepius (737 pmcG) mentioned in Lucian Encom. Demosth. 27, Philostr. VA 3.17, and Philostr. Imag.

415.7. His concern for medicine is still clear many years later in his description of Philoctetes’ snakebite in the eponymous play of 4o09.°2 On this view, Sophocles would have added the plague to the plot of Oedipus the King in order to give a nod to his audience,

as though he were saying, “My message applies to you” (Hor.

Sat. 1.1.69—-70).°3 |

The addition could, of course, change the message, but the degree and nature of that change will be controlled by intertextual allusion,

and Sophocles’ plague may be explained entirely in intertextual rather than biographical terms. Indeed, in chapter 1 we have considered a number of theoretical reasons for preferring an intertextual approach. At the outset of a work of Greek literature the description of a plague -— which is in any case an obvious device to engage the

spectators’ attention - cannot possibly fail to recall the Iliad,®4 a work in which a haughty young man discovers to his horror that his obsession with protocol and his own prestige has cost the life of his aptly named surrogate father, Patroclus. This reminiscence makes of Achilles a fit analogue for Sophocles’ Oedipus. It is possible to read the Iliad from a Girardian perspective, although the scapegoat will be in the eye of the beholder. For some it might be Thersites,°> for others Helen, for others still Briseis,°° but no scapegoat found in the Iliad would be remotely analogous to the Oedipus scapegoat posited by Girard. Moreover, the connection between the plague and the punishment of Oedipus is not immediate. The previous national affliction, the Sphinx, far from sparking demands to avenge the murder of Laius, had the opposite effect, preventing any investigation into the crime from taking place (130-2). The present plague also brings with it no

spontaneous outcry for blood. The notion of punishing someone comes from the Pythia, or less plausibly (as Ahl would have it) from Creon’s fabricated response. Even if we assume, although nothing

but universal scepticism would invite the assumption, that the Pythia does not serve as Apollo’s spokesperson (cf 712—13), we must

conclude that she is speaking for herself alone, for as a citizen of a different city residing in a foreign state, she has neither the motive nor the capacity to act as mouthpiece for any hypothetical collective scapegoating urge of the Theban populace.

41 Oedipus Pharmakos?

If the Pythia’s reply is what it claims to be, namely the word of Apollo, then to Oedipus’s question of how he can save his city (71-2) Apollo appears to reply, “Pollution is nurtured in the land. Drive it out ... by driving out a man or avenging murder by murder, for bloodshed has been storming on the city” (97-101). This reply, especially its first word, “pollution” (uiaoua), seems to involve the notion that a ritually polluted person is magically a carrier of physical disease. Although the idea is well attested in Greek literature, we ourselves regard it as nothing less than barbaric, and even Sophocles knew that disease was spread by contact with diseased persons or corpses (Bavatadoga 181, with Dawe’s note; cf Thuc. 2.51.4-6). We all agree with Girard that “the stereotypical crimes of which [Oedipus] is accused ... never spread the plague,”°? and with Ahl that, since it does not actually exist, pollution is most likely to be found

where it will serve political expedience.° Thus it appears for a moment as though Apollo is abetting a persecution after all. But this interpretation presupposes that Apollo’s words differ from the other two oracles mentioned in the play. In response to Laius’s

question “What should I do to have children?” (hypoth. 2, Aesch. Sept. [= pars 2 fasc. 2 p. 1 Smith]), Apollo replies that he is ordained to | die at the hand of his child (713). In response to Oedipus’s question concerning his parents’ identity, Apollo says that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother (789-93). As Oedipus himself complains (789), these responses do not answer the questions asked.°9 If the oracle about driving out pollution conforms to this pattern, there will be no implied causal link, magical or otherwise, between the ex-

pulsion of the polluted individual and the end of the plague. It will rather be as though the god had said, “The plague lies outside your control, but here is a problem that you can solve, namely the murder

of Laius.” .

Sophocles fails to tell us that the expulsion occurs, much less that it ends the plague. This would be insignificant if the plague were a tra-

dition already known to the audience, for the dramatist might find it unnecessary to belabour the obvious.” If, however, Knox and Ahl are right to claim that the plague is an invention of Sophocles (and [ believe that they are), then he will also be obliged to invent the end of the plague, if there is to be one. That he does not do so, and that Oedipus’s expulsion in other mythic accounts does not end Thebes’ troubles (there follow the violent deaths of Polynices, Eteocles, Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice),7* encourages the belief that Apollo is

conceived of as demanding a legitimate prosecution rather than as abetting a persecution for magical ends.

42 The Theatre of Apollo

In his rewriting and analysis of the text, Girard suppresses allmention of Apollo and of the Pythia. Apollo is absent from Ahl’s reading also, although for different reasons. Because Ahl sees the words of Apollo that so influence the course of the action as a fraud perpetrated by Creon, Apollo is wholly fenced off from the play; his existence is called into question, his relevance flatly denied (in chapter 5 we will consider quite different reasons for denying the existence of Apollo in the play). This suppression of

the role of Apollo has a venerable ancestry in the criticism of the play. Aristotle’s treatment in the Poetics of tragedy, of which he holds Oedipus the King to be the greatest example, largely ignores its religious component. Stephen Halliwell correctly remarks that

“the treatise’s minimal concern for religion should ... be taken at face-value as a virtual rejection of any central role for modes of reli-

gious understanding or explanation within the scheme of a poetic plot-structure.”7* Burkert, speaking of the myth rather than the play, writes that, “if myth is defined as a tale about gods, or as a sacred tale, this would exclude central parts of Greek mythology, including Oedipus.”7> It is with this most orthodox part of Ahl’s analysis rather than with any of its more radical aspects that I find the greatest fault.

The oracle that brings about the long-overdue inquiry into the murder of Laius is only one of four direct interventions of Apollo in the course of events staged or narrated in the play. It was Apollo who predicted to Laius that his son would kill him (713-14), a prediction that brought about the maiming and abortive exposure of the infant

Oedipus. It was Apollo again who predicted to Oedipus that we would kill his father and sleep with his mother (791-3), a prediction that caused him to avoid Corinth and come to Thebes. It is Teiresias in his capacity as messenger of Apollo (284-5, 410) who tells Oedipus at the outset of the play that he is the murderer of Laius (362), a statement that brings about a demonstration for our benefit, as it were, of Oedipus’s considerable temper. In addition to these four direct interventions, we must see the fortuitous arrival of the Corinthian stranger at the very moment of the

inquest into the regicide, an event that enables Oedipus at last to discover his parentage, either as a flaw in the composition of the play,

an improbability of the sort for which Zoilus was wont to “whip” Homer,” or as another intervention of Apollo — covert, this time — in the action of the play. We owe it to Sophocles to take the latter possibility seriously. We may wish to see the hand of Apollo at work in the play’s other coincidences, namely that the sole survivor of the attack

43 Oedipus Pharmakos?

upon Laius is — “astonishingly, wildly improbably”” — the same man

who was too tender-hearted to expose the infant Oedipus (1051-3) and that the Corinthian is the same man who gave the infant to Polybus and Merope (1022). The large number of these improbabilities argues either for a wildly high degree of coincidence or for the opera-

tion of an invisible, purposive causal force. The only candidate for such a force mentioned in the play is Apollo. And who, if not Apollo,

was the daiuovwv ... tig who led Oedipus to the body of his wife (1258)? Whatever view we ourselves finally adopt, both Teiresias and Oedipus see in all these things the workings of Apollo (376-7, 1329-30).

Near the beginning of this chapter I offered an account of triangular desire; let me conclude it with another geometrical parable. When open, a belt is a longish rectangle. Done up properly, it has the shape

of a cylinder. If the belt gets accidentally twisted through one hundred eighty degrees, the resulting surface differs fundamentally from the cylinder. The mathematician August Ferdinand Mobius discovered in 1865 that the surface, called the Mobius strip, has only one side. This is not apparent when you look at just part of the strip, which appears to have two sides like the original belt, but only when you consider the whole thing. Mathematicians like to explain this

onesidedness by saying that a fly who walks along the centre of the strip without ever deviating from his path will eventually pass the antipodes of his starting point (the point obtained by drilling a hole through the belt). This fly has acquired almost mythic status: a sculpted shield over one of the fireplaces at Princeton University shows him crawling along the M6bius strip proving its onesidedness to himself.7°

A typical homecoming plot is like the cylinder of the correctly fastened belt, uroborically illustrating the theme of Ma fin est mon commencement, to quote Guillaume de Machaut once again.77 Oedipus’s homecoming departs from the norm because of a one-hundred-

eighty-degree simple twist of fate. He comes back to whence he started, but in an inverted position: having left as legitimate (if unwanted), he returns as usurper; having left as Jocasta’s son, he returns as her husband. This twist of fate unites opposites and accounts for the play’s many coincidences. The spectacle that Sophocles affords us in this play is that of Oedipus marching along like the mythical fly on his Mobius strip in order to return to his point of origin and discover who he is. That the fly finds the two sides of his strip to be one is no coincidence, but the

44 The Theatre of Apollo

result of a mathematical law. That Oedipus finds that he has murdered his father and slept with his mother is no mere coincidence _ either, but a logical determinate fact. Let us call what determines it (for want of any better name) the justice of Apollo.

4 Asserting Eternal Providence: The Question of Guilt

On the last occasion I had the good fortune to read E.R. Dodds’ famous essay “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex,”" I felt certain misgivings at some of his conclusions. Dodds is denouncing a view that he discovered in some undergraduate essays on the question “In what sense, if in any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of God to man?” The offending view? holds that “we get what we deserve”? — that is, that Oedipus in some measure merits his suffering. Dodds’ position in answer to this has an ethical aspect (Oedipus has an “essential moral innocence‘), a religious one (Sophocles’ “gods are [not] in any human sense just”>), and a literary-critical one (“there is no reason at all why we should require a dramatist - even a Greek

dramatist ~ to be for ever running about delivering banal “messages’ ”®). Many have anticipated Dodds in his position” and others have followed him,® with very few dissenting.? This position is consonant with the emotional reaction of anyone watching or reading the play. Our sympathies are with Oedipus: we feel terror and pity at his plight, and this makes us want him to be innocent and his nemesis,

Apollo, to be unaccountably vicious. This emotional reaction is important, because Greek tragedy is an emotional medium.*°

Tragedy is also, however, an intellectual art-form, and the intellectual clarification of the concepts of terror and pity is arguably as

much a part of tragic catharsis as is any psychological purgation through terror and pity." As well as feeling for Oedipus, we must analyse his situation. Texts contemporary with Sophocles suggest that, while feeling about the play much as we do, many members of

46 The Theatre of Apollo

its original audience would have questioned Dodds’ analysis. Oedipus has no essence beyond what we can infer from the deeds that he performs, and of these Sophocles’ contemporaries would have found some morally innocent and others not. Apollo’s actions, meanwhile, would have seemed to them to be just in an all-too-human sense. The first chapter argues that we should not constrain ourselves to historicist modes of understanding; nevertheless, the present chapter is devoted to the analysis of the roles of Oedipus and Apollo in the play along lines suggested by fifth-century thought in order to show that even within the terms of historicist interpretation, the guilt of Oedipus and the justice of Apollo are clear.

Beyond doubt, Oedipus suffers greatly in Sophocles’ play. He has been living in a state of incest, and he blinds himself in order to be unable to see the children conceived in pollution (1273-4, 1369-70). Let us suppose that he is not responsible for his incest and the pain that he experiences is innocent suffering.*? (We will return to the problem of innocent suffering in chapter 5.) The presence of this inno-

cent suffering explains our sympathy for his actions but should not. cloud our analysis of them. If there is any additional suffering that Oedipus merits, it must be because he has done something. He is not likely punished for a character flaw,”? because not all tragic heroes suffer a hamartia, which is in any case more likely an ignorance of fact than a moral flaw,*4 and because actions and not character traits cause things to happen in Greek

tragedy.”

Oedipus does only one thing on stage: he “pursue[s] the truth at whatever personal cost” and “accept[s] and endure[s] it when found.” This is shown by the moment (1170) when he pauses in his course of action, having realized its implications, and chooses to follow Delphi's command and implicate himself by pursuing the truth. This decision recalls that moment in Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers (899-903) where Orestes pauses briefly and then immediately chooses to follow Delphi’s command and kill his mother. But this very self-prosecution points backward in condemnation to an earlier

act, namely Oedipus’s murder of his father Laius (which, on the basis of the arguments advanced in the last chapter, we are justified in considering him to have committed). The murder of Laius might justify part of Oedipus’s suffering, since it is a deed and not a character flaw and since it not only precedes but also paves the way for his suffering.’? Laius’s death makes Jocasta a widow, and so enables Oedipus to marry her*® and reside in

Thebes; the residence of the regicide in Thebes in turn causes the

47 Asserting Eternal Providence

plague (106-7) that sets in motion the plot. Still, small causes can provoke disproportionately large effects, and our question remains. The crime of parricide has two components: homicide and father abuse. The play enforces this distinction: the quests for Laius’s killer and for Oedipus’s father remain separate for most of it, not merging until the recognition scene (1182-5). Let us examine the crime under

these two headings, beginning by considering the murder of Laius in the context of fifth-century Athenian law. This is relevant, given Greek tragedy’s tendency to anachronism,'9 the audience’s familiarity with the Athenian judicial apparatus, and the probability that the play draws heavily for its structure on the process of judicial inquiry.*°

Classical Athenian jurisprudence recognizes three kinds of killing,** and different scholars have classified Laius’s murder under all three. The first is the unintentional killing of an innocent victim (what we would call “manslaughter”). The hero of Oedipus at Colonus claims unintentionality to defend himself from the charge of parricide (273, 547-8, 988-99). Yet if Oedipus did not know that Laius was his father, he knew that he was a human being and that his act was homicide, in

contrast to Deianira, who could (but, interestingly, does not) plead unintentional killing, having administered a poison believing it to be a love potion. The second kind is justified homicide (which has no equivalent in, for example, Canadian jurisprudence), which is the intentional killing of a criminal caught in the act. The best-known example is the killing of an adulterer apprehended in flagrante delicto,** but another is the

killing of a highwayman caught red-handed.?> Oedipus does not claim to have thought that Laius was a robber.*4 Indeed, according to

the admittedly none-too-factual report of Laius’s surviving slave, Laius and company suspected Oedipus of intending to rob them (122), as he does in Euripides’ version.”°

The third kind is intentional homicide (ordinary murder). Selfdefence” was a mitigating circumstance in a case of intentional homicide, rather than grounds for lawful homicide.*7 Demosthenes (21.71~—5) tells how a certain Euaeon, who killed a man in retaliation for a single blow, was convicted by one vote. This case shows that, despite the considerable sympathy that the jury obviously felt for the killer, “the mere fact that the victim struck the first blow was not sufficient to acquit the killer.”8 One must show that the victim intended

to kill the murderer. Yet Oedipus does not argue self-defence,” claiming, as he would have to do, that Laius was about to kill him,*° stating in fact that on this occasion3* Laius wanted only to drive him from the road (805). Moreover, according to Plato (Leg. 869b) — who

48 The Theatre of Apollo

may or may not be reflecting Attic law — parent murder is the only crime in which self-defence is not an extenuating circumstance. One might suppose that Oedipus’s act was a third-degree murder

since he acted without malice aforethought (807),77 and that he was guilty of something less than premeditated homicide, but this claim would ignore fifth-century Attic law, which reserves no special category for homicide that is intentional but unpremeditated. “The Athenians used [the terms] ‘unpremeditated’ and “‘unintentional’ interchangeably ... The practical effect of this was to narrow unintentional homicides to our category of accidental killings. This meant that all other killings were classified as intentional and were subject to the severest penalties. Sudden killings thus received no

more lenient treatment than any other intentional killings unless some justification such as self-defence could be shown”) (which in Oedipus’s case, as we have seen, it could not). Again, one might argue that, whatever the judgment of a hypothetical fifth-century court, the heroic society in which Oedipus is imagined as having lived would have “acquitted” him. Not so. In Homer and Hesiod a murderer faces one of three penalties. He may either be killed by the victim’s family,34 go into exile,?> or offer mon-

etary compensation.2° Only two of the murders mentioned in epic are not followed by such an atonement: one is the murder of Laius; the other is Heracles’ murder of Iphitus.37 When Sophocles recounts

the latter (Irach. 38, 270-9), he supplies the penalty, exile, that is missing in Homer’s account. Given Sophocles’ supplement to this story, Oedipus stands alone among epic murderers3® in escaping human retribution. We do not know why this is so in the epics, but Sophocles supplies an explanation: the Thebans were too distracted by the Sphinx to investigate the murder and try the killer (130-1). Although postponed by the Sphinx, punishment was as fitting for Laius’s killer as for any other. This is why the oracle orders the murderer’s exile (98) and why Oedipus pronounces this sentence upon him (236-43).

The audience’s appreciation of Oedipus’s act was conditioned by the precepts of ancient Greek popular morality.3? For example, Laius’s murder occurred at a crossroads (716, 730, 733, 800-1), an important fact since it is a constant in the myth, while the precise location is variable.*° The crossroads is a place where a decision must be made, as in the story of the choice of Heracles.4* As in that story, the alternatives confronting Oedipus were as much moral as directional: by turning one way, he would kill four strangers; either by retreating (an option available to Oedipus, but not to Heracles) or by deviating temporarily from his chosen path, he would spare them.

49 Asserting Eternal Providence

Three considerations make clear the judgment that morality passes upon these alternatives. First, since Laius was trying to push Oedipus from the road (804-5), which was narrow (1399), and since there was

another path available, one party should step aside. According to Homer (il. 9.69, 160-1), one should yield to the kinglier ~ that is, to him who commands more men* - and to the elder. The old might defer to the young of higher rank, but with both age and rank* on his side one would expect deference and try to exact it if not forthcoming. Laius (a king) is actually kinglier than Oedipus (a king’s son) and obviously so, travelling in a mule-car (753, 803)44 with a retinue, while Oedipus goes alone on foot*. In the parallel incident in the [iad (1.188-92), when Achilles is provoked by Agamemnon, who is both

kinglier and elder, he contemplates homicide, revealing that the course actually chosen by Oedipus is not unnatural, but then wisely abstains from violence. Laius was also clearly older than Oedipus, for his hair was “a sable silver’d” (742) and Oedipus calls him “elder” (805, 807), not necessarily an old man, but a senior figure?® deserving

of respect. Oedipus should not have quarrelled with Laius, not because he might be his father*? but because morality demanded respect for elders.*° Secondly, Laius was a stranger (813), whom it is wrong to kill,#9 for

“all strangers are in the keeping of Zeus” (Od. 6.207-8 = 14.57-8) in his capacity as Zeus of Strangers.°° Indeed, some may even be Zeus incognito.>* These beliefs are grounded in social reality: the stranger lacks brotherhood, law, and hearth (J/. 9.63) and is very vulnerable. To limit this vulnerability and prevent a breakdown of society, the Greeks ritualized the behaviour proper towards strangers. When a stranger presents himself at one’s house, he must be entertained no matter how inconvenient (cf Eur. Alc. 76ff). Even in battle one should not attack a man of unknown identity lest he be a god.>* The proper behaviour of strangers meeting as wayfarers is shown in the Iliad, where Priam, the old man, travelling away from home with his herald, encounters the unrecognized young man, his surrogate son, who is Hermes in disguise and whom he suspects of being a brigand.>3 In contrast to Oedipus, Hermes is a paragon of courtesy.°+ To murder strangers is extreme barbarity, fit for Laestrygonians or Cyclopes,

each of whom is a law to himself and cares nothing for others (Od. 9.112-15), but unthinkable to a civilized Greek. Of potentially ironic application to Oedipus is Hesiod’s observation (Op. 327-32) that whoever harms a stranger is as bad as a father abuser. Thirdly, Laius was accompanied by a herald (753), recognizable as such (802), presumably through his caduceus.*> The herald accompanied him because he was an “envoy sent to consult the oracle”* (114)

50 The Theatre of Apollo

on official religious and state business. Oedipus at first “[forebore] to strike the sacred herald”°7 — whom he does eventually kill — because heralds are inviolable.** To violate their rights was “sacrilegious” ;°9 to kill them was to break the customs of all men.® Herodotus (7.133-7) tells how the Spartans killed Dareius’s heralds and were incited by the

hero Talthybius, in life the herald of Agamemnon, to send men to Xerxes to die to expiate the crime. Xerxes refused to act illegally like

the Spartans; yet, although he spared them, their sons later died, Herodotus editorializes, in requital for Talthybius’s wrath. Once, whenever Athenian youths assembled, they wore mourning for the herald Copreus, whom the Athenians had killed (Philostr. VS 2.1.5 = 2.59 Kayser). An Athenian herald murdered by the Megarians was buried with full honours at the Dipylon gate, while his murder caused enmity between the two states.”

Three arguments, all inadequate, might be raised in Oedipus’s favour. The first is that he did not choose to kill Laius because, unlike Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigeneia (Aesch. Ag. 206-17), his deliberation is not reported. Lacking on his lips is “the characteristic cry of the tragic hero,”® “What should I do?”® Yet this is a feature of his character, not of his situation. The only one to hesitate in our play is

Creon (91-2, 1443); Oedipus is full of Sophoclean self-assurance, impatient at others’ slowness (74, 287, 1162) and always quick to

| jump to a suspicion (124-5, 139-40, 380-9). More quick-witted than Agamemnon, he will not laboriously deliberate before choosing the wrong course; it is his particular glory to rush “with characteristic decisiveness” into actions whose outcome is ruinous.

Secondly, Oedipus was provoked. Laius was rude to him and seems by nature to share his temperament as well as his looks (743), as we would expect of kings, who laid great store by heredity.°5 Mo-

rality, far from counselling one to turn the other cheek, commands vengeance: helping friends and harming enemies is the oft-cited recipe for justice. Still, the vengeance exacted by Oedipus exceeds the wrong done. Oedipus says, “[Laius] paid no equal penalty” (810),°7 a phrase reminiscent of the herald in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (532-3), who says that the Trojans “do not boast that they wrought more than they suffered.” This reminiscence is ominous in view of the conse-

quences that Agamemnon’s excessive vengeance had for him. Of course, in all self-defence killings the victim gets more than he gave, but this is only because he is less successful; in terms of intent the acts are equal, with one killing in order to avoid being killed. Yet by Oedipus’s own admission Laius only sought to remove him — albeit forcibly — from the road (804-5). On this point again morality suggests

that the vengeance should fit the offence, being equal to instead of

51 Asserting Eternal Providence

greater than the crime,°? a principle enunciated by Antigone (Soph. Ant. 927-8).

If equality of retribution was not an absolute standard of morality, the Greeks were at least sensitive to the problems inherent in excessive retaliation (cf Soph. fr. 589 TrGF). This is clear in the present pas-

sage, where the escalating violence spirals rapidly out of control: Laius and his servant drive Oedipus away, perhaps using only words (804-5); Oedipus responds with a blow, evidently of his fist (806-7); Laius is then the first to use a weapon, coming down upon Oedipus’s head with an ox-goad (807-9); Oedipus finally kills them all with a deadlier weapon, his staff (811-13). Why, then, mention the provocation at all? (It is not in earlier or later accounts.”°) The reason is that neither here nor anywhere else did Sophocles portray an irredeemably evil man. Faced with a dilemma, Oedipus chooses a crime that he would never have gone out of his way to commit. Thirdly, it will be argued that no one censures Oedipus for murder as murder (as distinct from regicide and parricide). On a strict application of the principle that what is not mentioned in the play does not exist (schol. Il. 5.385d), such censure must be impossible. The answer to this lies in the play’s structure. The rapid movement of the play between two distinct questions, the public one of who killed Laius (106-7) and the private worry of Oedipus over his parents’ identity (437, 779-93, 1017), allows no time for the identity of Oedipus’s victims to be raised in its own right. If a third question arises at all, it is the red herring of whether one can foreknow the future (720-2, 945-9, 981-2). Oedipus reveals to Jocasta and the audience his past, apparently for this first time,7* only when the play is half over (813), and in the context of the distracting search for Laius’s killer. If Oedipus chose to kill the old man and his act was no mere acci-

dent or reflex, what was his motive? None is explicit in the text, which gives an account remarkable for its succinctness (813); we must infer one from Oedipus’s character.” Oedipus, exemplary in so many respects, is led to his crime because he has the Sophoclean hero’s impulsive incapacity to yield,”3 as when he ignores the pleas of his wife

and herdsman to stop his investigation (1060-1, 1165).74 Read this trait as hubris” or heroism; it keeps him from yielding to the old man and thence leads him to murder. “Character is destiny.”” If Oedipus is unquestionably guilty of murder, we must turn to the question of whether he is guilty of the other component of parricide,

harming his father. Oedipus does harm his father and this was a grave offence,7” but he never would have done so knowingly, having

taken elaborate, if futile, steps to avoid it. Therefore, he could”

52 The Theatre of Apollo

defend himself by saying that he did not know that Laius was his father. One can act in ignorance and still bear some blame, according to Pittacus of Mytilene, who enacted a law that one be fined double for an offence committed while drunk.7? This law was not designed

to discourage drunkenness,” or he would have outlawed wine, but rather, as Aristotle approvingly explains, because one is culpable of a crime committed in ignorance if this ignorance arises through negligence.*! Oedipus’s abuse of his father is an extraordinary example of

such a crime. | One would not have thought Oedipus negligent in harming his father. Indeed, his abandoning of his comfortable life in Corinth to

embark upon the wandering that brought him to Thebes seems the opposite of negligence. Nevertheless, Oedipus was negligent in

remaining ignorant of his father’s identity, having been led into this negligence again by his impulsive character. He made the trek to Delphi to learn who his parents were and, upon hearing that he was

destined to defile them, immediately abandoned the object of his journey, for the oracle manifestly did not resolve it (788-9), raising instead the separate (789) issue of parricide and incest, and Oedipus

set off to flee Corinth. Far from distracting him from his parents’ identity as it did,* the oracle’s response made it imperative that he pursue just this quest. As a distant second best, he might have contemplated a life of non-violence and celibacy® rather than murdering

the first people he met and marrying in the first city to which he Came.

The failure to consult the oracle further is an essential ingredient in his downfall and shifts the blame on to his own shoulders, as is shown by Sophocles’ friend (cf Soph. fr. 5 West IEG) Herodotus.*4 Herodotus tells how Croesus, having received the oracle that if he attacked Persia, he would destroy a mighty empire, caused his own misfortune by attacking without first determining which empire was meant (Hdt. 1.91.4). Delphi addressed a similar rebuke in like circumstances to the children of Heracles (290 Parke-Wormell = L63 Fontenrose). While repeated consultation of an oracle might seem an improbable pestering of the god, myth records many examples of just this phenomenon.” Like that of Croesus and the Heraclids, Oedi-

pus’s ignorance results from his negligence in failing either to understand Apollo’s warning or to inquire further about a question that the oracle has just shown to be crucial. In this regard Creon is an important foil, showing constant reliance upon Delphi (603, 1442-3). There are signs that Oedipus has not been told the truth: the scars on his feet that have always troubled him (1033) and the story of the

53 Asserting Eternal Providence

drunk (780), which was widely circulated,®° and which Polybus and

Merope do not deny outright (783-4). Oedipus, a reader (though often, as we shall see in chapter 6, a misreader) of signs, has to his credit noted these and feels the uncertainty of his parentage as an im-

pairment of his intellect (786); it motivates his hundred-kilometre walk on mountain roads from Corinth to Delphi and repeatedly rears its head during his quest for the regicide (437, 779-93, 1017). He elevates his ignorance into his governing principle, acknowledging that he is “the Know-Nothing Oedipus” (397) and relishing the irony of his apparent superiority over the divinely inspired Teiresias. This man, who knows of his ignorance, acts not once but repeatedly as though he were privy even to hidden facts, treating the many phantasms of his imagination (124-5, 139-40, 380-9) as though they

were manifest revelations (534-5). Likewise at the crossroads he acted — knowingly and yet as though unknowingly — in ignorance, recklessly failing to yield when it was moral and convenient to do so. In light of these observations, we see that Oedipus is guilty of parricide as well as being an innocent victim of incest. But there is still

one point to make in his favour, namely that his fate was unconditionally pre-ordained.®” “Sophocles,” writes Dodds, “has provided a

conclusive answer to those who suggest that Oedipus could, and therefore should, have avoided his fate. The oracle was unconditional ... And what an oracle predicts is bound to happen.”® While a conditional prediction allows for the play of free will, an unconditional prediction might be supposed to imply predestination. Even on this assumption the prediction does not exonerate Oedipus, for predestination does not, paradoxically, constitute a compulsion. Dodds knows this. His own book The Greeks and the Irrational made

familiar the concept of overdetermination, whereby according to early Greek thought an event may be “doubly determined, on the natural and on the supernatural plane.”®? We cannot deny this overdetermined status to Oedipus’s act: he killed Laius by free choice, thereby abdicating any claim to essential moral innocence. Oedipus’s

act is also determined on the supernatural plane by fate, and the Pythia says so (713),% but fate is an impersonal force, not an Olympian deity or even a lackey of the gods like the Furies, and it is as binding upon gods as upon mortals (cf I. 16.433-61). Oedipus’s unsuccessful attempt to elude his fate has been attributed to hubris,®* but he would have invited greater condemnation either by rushing towards Corinth in homicidal and libidinous determination to fulfil the prophecy or by quietly going about his business like some Stoic avant la lettre. Moreover, Socrates is not hubristic in

54 The Theatre of Apollo

trying to disprove Delphi’s claim that he is the wisest of men,” a less than total faith in the ineluctability of the Pythia’s predictions being neither unusual at Athens nor in itself evidence of impiety.

Even apart from overdetermination, Oedipus’s fate does not absolve him of blame, since he could have fulfilled it in total innocence. Laius could have “died at the hand of his son” (713) and Oedipus become the “murderer” (793) of his father had he killed him accidentally, for example while hunting or playing the javelin or discus (cf e.g. Hdt. 1.43, Apollod. Bibl. 1.3.3). One who kills by accident is readily called a “murderer” by a society that denies this name and

the consequent legal proceedings neither to animals nor even to inanimate objects (Arist. Ath. Pol. 57.4; cf Soph. OT 969-70).

Furthermore, an unconditional prediction is not evidence for pre-

destination if time for the agent making the prediction is not an abstract, inexorable forward flow. Consider this example: suppose I videotape a group of playing children and, before playing back the tape, I state that during the play-session Lee will steal Tom’s teddy bear. My prediction is unconditional and will be brought to pass, and yet I did not compel Lee to act in this way; I may even wish that it had not happened (it has spoiled my movie). I am, in fact, incapable of imposing my will on the children or of removing theirs from them, but I can accurately predict how they will act because I do not experi-

ence time as they do, as a chronometric, impersonal medium. If Apollo has a relationship to time like that in this example, he could accurately predict events without ordaining them and he could have such a relationship to time only if Time itself is a free agent, moving

forward or backward, quickly or slowly, for the benefit of those whom he would help. According to the Greek conception, such was in fact the nature of Time.” In our play Time is personified as “the All-seer” (1213).% The situation in the play is more complex than in the videotape example because Apollo does not predict the event to a disinterested third party but to the protagonist himself, and Oedipus

reacts of his own free will to the god’s prediction. Yet such is the nature of fate that any action that Oedipus might have taken in response to any prediction that Apollo might have made would have ended in the same result, albeit brought about by a different chain of intermediary events.

To sum up: By murdering the belligerent stranger, his superior and : elder, along with his retinue, including the sacred herald, while they

were engaged upon official religious and state business, Oedipus violated the prerogatives of Zeus of Strangers, the respect due to superiors and elders, and the principle of fitting retaliation; he is therefore guilty of murder. He knew that he was acting in ignorance and

55 Asserting Eternal Providence

yet behaved as though he did not know this; he is therefore guilty of

father abuse. He was fated to commit his crime, but it cannot be shown that he was compelled to do so, and certainly not in the way he did. What, then, of Apollo, who manifests himself in the story of Oedipus (1329)? If Oedipus had been, as the prevailing view holds, essentially

morally innocent, then Apollo would have been unjust in allowing him to suffer as he does. Now that we have found Oedipus in fact responsible in some measure for some of the suffering that he incurs, the possibility arises that Apollo’s actions may be just. There is no a

priort reason to think that they are so; the gods of Greek myth lie, commit adultery, are gluttons. “Men find some things unjust, other things just; but in the eyes of God all things are beautiful and good and just.”9> Nevertheless, if the actions of Sophocles’ Apollo conform to an accepted definition of justice, we should admit that he at least is in that sense a just god. We have seen that he did not compel Oedipus to kill his father and

sleep with his mother, but neither did he try to prevent him from doing so — for example, by giving him a straightforward answer to his question concerning his parents. The reason he did not is linked, perhaps, to the fundamental difference of power between god and man. Gods cannot reveal themselves undisguised to men without destroy-

ing them;®° when they appear incognito they are often recognized only at the end of the encounter and only by the extremity of their body, their feet (J. 13.71-2, Verg. Aen. 1.405, etc.). This disguise prin-

ciple is intensified in connection with verbal communication. Gods have their own language and their own special intonation.?” The inevitable process of translation needed to enable them to communicate with men is complex: at Delphi, when “the enquirer entered, the Pythia was already under the influence of Apollo, and was in some abnormal state of trance or ecstasy ... [Her] answer would vary in its

degree of coherence and intelligibility. When it had been given, the prophet would reduce it to some form, and dictate it to the enquirer.”°° The answer given by this convoluted process was perforce oblique: “The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks nor hides, but gives a sign” (Heraclitus 22 B 93 Diels-Kranz). It is scarcely surprising if the answer is not so straightforward as we would like. Even so, Apollo does not lie to Oedipus. The cause of Oedipus’s extraordinary ignorance of the events attendant upon his birth lies with Polybus and Merope. The drunk at the banquet accused Oedipus of being a supposititious child (780), but this is itself either a lie or an error, for Polybus was privy to the secret (1021). Even at the drunk’s

56 The Theatre of Apollo

false charge the royal couple express anger, thereby effectively misleading Oedipus (783-4).99 Later, a quick detection of the regicide is prevented by the lone survivor’s mendacious description of “many robbers” (122-3).*°° In both cases humans, not gods, have lied. Whether we find any justice in Apollo’s actions will depend upon our definition of the term. Simonides’ definition, cited by Polemar-

chus in Plato’s Republic, is “giving back to each person what is owing.”'°' So conceived, justice is wholly reactive. It requires one not to initiate any action but only to respond in kind to the actions of

others. It does not require one to help any person (by warning of impending disaster or by any other means) unless one has been helped first by him. True to the Greek’s anthropomorphic conception of the gods, this rule applies to human-god relationships just as

to relationships between humans. In the Iliad Apollo helps Chryses because he has roofed many temples for him (iI. 1.39). In the Oresteia

the gods punish Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra in response to their breaking of laws. According to this conception of justice, Apollo is under no obligation to help Oedipus by warning him of the impending catastrophe, for Oedipus has performed no prior service for him. Yet, once Oedipus has offended the gods by his sacrilegious behaviour at the cross-

roads, Apollo is obliged to intervene and ensure that the fitting penalty of exile is enforced. He does this through the plague and the oracle to Creon (97); we can also see him at work in the fortuitous arrival of the Corinthian messenger (924), who, again by a striking pseudo-coincidence, is the very man who rescued the infant Oedipus in the first place (1022). Compassionate and comforting Apollo is not, but he is just in this all-too-human sense. At this point a further objection might be raised. Given that, from Oedipus’s perspective, the murder of Laius is a crime justly punished by his subsequent suffering, is not the same act, when viewed from the perspective of Laius, merely an absurd suffering and, as such, evidence for the wanton cruelty of the gods that negates any other hint of divine justice in the play? When viewed from the perspective of Jocasta, does not the incestuous marriage, discovery of which provoked her suicide, also refute any claims of divine justice? I can meet

this objection in two ways: first, Laius was not a wholly innocent bystander at the time of his murder, having actually provoked Oedipus to strike. Second, the suffering of Laius and Jocasta may be construed as punishment for an earlier crime of their own: that in which he “yoked” the feet of the infant Oedipus (718) and she gave the child to a herdsman to kill (1173-4).?°?

57 Asserting Eternal Providence

Opinion is divided over whether newborns were commonly exposed in fifth-century Athens.‘ Even if they were, it would be rare to treat a healthy, legitimate, first-born son like Oedipus in this way.**4 Exposure did not constitute homicide, first because the newborn was not a legal person until its adoption into the family during the naming festival, which took place on about the tenth day of life,*™ and an unwanted child would be exposed before this time —- Oedipus, for example, at three days (717-18); and secondly because the parent

did not actually kill the child. Yet, while not criminal, the act was open to moral censure: Oedipus blames his parents for hurting him knowingly, while he committed his crimes in ignorance (Soph. OC 273, 547-8, 988-99); the servant saved him out of pity (1178), and Jocasta, thinking of the exposure, calls him “wretched” (855).7° Furthermore, Oedipus’s was no ordinary exposure. Ordinary exposure is

not necessarily lethal, thrusting the newborn from the family only, not necessarily from life. All children exposed in myth’ and, presumably, many in real life were saved and reared as foundlings,’® for the parents, callous enough to abandon their child, scruple actually to shed its blood. By contrast, Laius and Jocasta, intending actually to kill their son, left him on a trackless mountain (719) where the hope of rescue was slight and took the unprecedented step of maiming him, which both weakened him and made it unlikely that he would be rescued even if found. We note the symmetrical justice in the adult Oedipus’s causing the deaths in fact of the parents who tried to kill him as an infant. If they had not exposed Oedipus and tried thereby to evade Apollo’s oracle, then Oedipus would have known who they were and

would not have unknowingly murdered the one and slept with the other (he shows a revulsion from doing so willingly). Recognition that Oedipus’s guilt and Apollo’s justice are greater than is usually allowed for affects how we understand what — if any — is Sophocles’ message. Sophocles’ gods, like those of Aeschylus, are just in an obvious human sense. It is no longer true, on the basis of this

play at least, to speak of “the incomprehensible ways of the divine will” or to hold that “one must not bring in false concepts of human morality involving good and evil.”"°? These are precisely the concepts necessary to understand Apollo’s role in Oedipus’s suffering. It is even less true to say that “what causes his ruin is his own strength

and courage, his loyalty to Thebes, and his loyalty to the truth.””° This is only “the immediate cause”™ of his ruin, and the Greeks are far more sensitive than we to ultimate causes, abounding as their myths do in nativities, inventors, aetiologies, and even an original sin

58 The Theatre of Apollo

or two.’? This is especially true in a legal context: for example, in Plato’s Apology (18a—b) Socrates identifies and refutes his “former accusers.” Oedipus is himself an aficionado of ultimate causes, beginning with confident relish (132) the seemingly hopeless investigation

into the regicide and extrapolating from Teiresias’s claim that he, Oedipus, has committed parricide and incest not only an alleged proximate cause (Teiresias has been bribed to say this) but also a putative distant cause (Creon bribed him because he wants the kingship [380-9]). We must never forget the ultimate cause of Oedipus’s ruin — the murder at the crossroads comes back after all these years (613, 1213) to haunt him.

The profound differences between Aeschylus and Sophocles are not theological, and it is difficult to agree with those who find in the

god who tells Orestes, “You must kill your mother,”*3 a kinder, gentler Apollo than the god who tells Oedipus, “You will kill your father.” What is new — and far from comforting —- in Sophocles is his

assessment, gloomy even by Greek standards, of the limits of human knowledge. The ignorance of Sophoclean characters runs through a broad spectrum: Oedipus mistakes his parents for strangers, homecoming for exile, and hereditary kingship for unconstitutional rule; Creon in Antigone twice mistakes the priorities of the living for those of the dead;"4 Deianira mistakes a poison for a love-potion; and Ajax mistakes a sheep for Agamemnon. In Sophocles humans deceive one another’5 and people act with a self-confidence unwarranted by their feeble grasp of reality. Only once does a god deceive — Athena in Ajax (51-2) -— and her deception, motivated by retribution (762-77), pre-

vents a crime from being committed. It is in his anthropology rather

than his theology that the uncompromising quality of Sophocles’

world consists.

The function of art, according to Dodds, quoting Dr Johnson, is “the enlargement of our sensibility.”"° This phrase is perhaps too broad to capture the specific virtue of tragic drama. The virtue of tragedy lies elsewhere, in a region suggested by the examination question set by Dodds for his undergraduates, namely, in adding understanding to our spontaneous emotional response, in order to assert eternal providence, and justify the ways of God to men.

5 The Authority of Prophecy: Theodicy in the Play

John Peradotto, in his recent presidential address to the American Philological Association entitled “Disauthorizing Prophecy: The Ideological Mapping of Oedipus Tyrannus,”* seeks to strengthen the

claim of Wilamowitz and Dodds that Apollo is not in any human sense just into the claim that he does not even exist, being rather an illusion created by Sophocles’ chance-riddled, coincidence-crippled plot.* I wish in this chapter to defend my position concerning the justice of Apollo against Peradotto’s claim of his non-existence. First, I

will critique his argument that the perception “by the unscientific mentality ... [of] divine activity” in the play is brought about by the “operation of the poet on the plot, specifically in the creation of the coincidences,” and is therefore an illusion. Then I will turn to the claim that in order to enter into dialogue with the play we must suspend our disbelief in prophecy, a claim that I consider under three facets, treating separately the questions of the possibility in an aleatory world of divine foreknowledge, of the possibility of the revelation of such knowledge, and of the purpose of such revelation. Before considering this third aspect, I address the question of whether, if he actually exists in the world of the play, Apollo acts justly. Peradotto enumerates six coincidences in the play (he actually cheats, counting the coincidence that the Corinthian brings news of Polybus’s death at the time of the murder investigation prompted by the plague

twice, as both numbers one and six, and so his number six is completely superfluous).° The first three of them — that the Corinthian

60 The Theatre of Apollo

arrives when he does, that he is the same man who once received the infant Oedipus from the herdsman’‘s hands, and that the herdsman is also the sole survivor of the attack upon Laius — are striking coincidences in the extreme, which is to say that the probability of any one of them occurring is very low. How do these striking coincidences affect the outcome of the play, and why are they there?

Peradotto says, “Change the play to bring [the Corinthian] in twenty minutes earlier or twenty minutes later and the tragedy dissolves.”© This, however, is not true; the tragedy simply takes a different form. We can show this with a thought-experiment. Suppose that

this stranger had never appeared (in other words, eliminate Peradotto’s first two coincidences). The Theban herdsman has already been sent for as a witness in the murder inquest. It is often remarked,

sometimes as a criticism, that he never testifies on the matter for which he is called. What forestalls his questioning about the murder is the arrival of the Corinthian. Had the Corinthian not arrived, the herdsman would have been interrogated as a witness to the murder. We can guess what would have happened had this occurred. The herdsman had made a public statement shortly after the murder to the effect that there were many murderers, and it is on this point that he is to be questioned anew. His statement was a lie. We know this from other evidence in the play, specifically the testimony of Oedipus, whose honesty is urged by the fact that his account goes against his self-interest, while the herdsman has a motive for lying, namely to exonerate himself from his failure to protect the life of his master. Presumably he will repeat his earlier mendacious statement. But under cross-examination he would not have persevered in this lie any more than he actually perseveres in denying that he once gave the infant

Oedipus to the Corinthian stranger. When he admitted the truth, Oedipus would stand convicted of regicide. (Note that this scenario also avoids Peradotto’s third coincidence, for we need now never learn that this witness to the murder of Laius played any role in the abortive exposure of Oedipus.)

Had this occurred, Oedipus would have had to pass sentence of exile upon himself. Jocasta, ever quick to console her husband, might well have offered, as she in fact does at lines 707-25, the refutation of the oracles to Laius and to Oedipus as a consolation: he may be a regicide, but at least he is not an incestuous parricide. In of-

fering this consolation, she would have had to repeat the detail about the mutilation of Oedipus’s feet. This is the recognition token used by the Corinthian to prove his claim that Oedipus is really the son of Laius and Jocasta, not of Polybus and Merope (1032). But this recognition token has already been mentioned by Jocasta (718). The

61 The Authority of Prophecy

correct inference from this mention was not drawn by Oedipus at that time because he was distracted by her mention two lines earlier of the crucial detail in the account of the murder of Laius ~ that it occurred at a crossroads. Thanks to the recognition token, it will be recognized that Oedipus and Jocasta’s son are the same person, for

although infant exposure may have been common, infant anklepiercing is unparalleled. Then Jocasta’s attempted consolation of Oedipus would unintentionally drive the final nails into his coffin, proving him an incestuous parricide in fulfilment of the oracle as well as a regicide. As tools for bringing about the revelation of Oedi-

pus’s condition, these three coincidences are supererogatory: the truth will out in any case. We can perform a second thought-experiment involving even more

radical surgery into the network of coincidence in the play. Peradotto’s coincidence number seven is that in her “otherwise brutally austere” account of the murder of Laius, Jocasta mentions the crossroads (716). “But for that detail, which Oedipus catches on, the action would not turn in its fatal direction,” writes Peradotto.” True enough: it would turn in another fatal direction. For two lines after her mention of the crossroads, Jocasta mentions the ankle-piercing. Oedipus does not hear her words because, as Peradotto says, he has caught on the detail about the crossroads. If that detail were omitted, he would catch instead on the detail of the ankle-piercing. “My ankles were pierced when I was a baby,” he would note, “yet | have never heard of anyone else with pierced ankles except for this child whom you mention. I must be your son. The incest half of the oracle has been fulfilled. Is it possible that the parricide half has also come true? There were those men I once killed at a crossroads ...” And the play would reach its dénouement by this course, without mention of crossroads by Jocasta, no Corinthian, and nothing about his or the herdsman’s remote past. Only two of Peradotto’s coincidences remain. One of these is that a drunk tells Oedipus that he is not Polybus’s son. This rumour was widely circulated (786),? and so the probability of Oedipus’s hearing it from someone is high. The other is the meeting of Laius and Oedipus at a narrow defile. Peradotto exaggerates in saying that the meeting brings them “into a lethal relation with one another.”? It is the

actions of both men that make the encounter lethal; [ myself have encountered many people at intersections without murdering any of them. But Peradotto is right about one thing: this is a genuine coinci-

dence. Laius and Oedipus might have lived their whole lives and never met, or they might have met on a broad plain, or in a crowded room, etc. Their meeting in a narrow place is a genuine coincidence

62 The Theatre of Apollo

without which the play would indeed “[collapse] like a house of cards.”*° But this coincidence occurred in the past relative to the dramatic time of the play, and every event, however contingent, becomes necessity by virtue of being past and hence irrevocable.** Indeed, the story of Oedipus, like that of anyone else, is full of such events. Sup-

pose Laius and Jocasta had never married, that the herdsman had carried out his grisly orders, etc.; in any of these cases the play would also collapse. If the coincidences are not necessary to convict Oedipus, neither do

they necessarily of themselves create the impression of a divine agency at work. In other words, Sophocles has not used the coincidences as a cheap trick to manufacture a god out of whole cloth. This can be shown by considering Jean-Paul Sartre’s story The Wall. The plot hinges upon a startling, highly improbable coincidence, namely that Pablo Ibbieta’s lie regarding the hiding-place of Ramon Gris turns out to be the truth, for Ramon has changed hiding-places unbeknownst to Pablo. This coincidence points to the absurdity of human life and thus in turn to the non-existence of God. Oedipus is undoubtedly right in concluding that the coincidences in his story are the work of Apollo, but the correctness of this conclusion derives from the fact that it is more economical to hypothesize the action of a single

force to account for the coincidences than to imagine that so many separate forces are working independently to one end; Oedipus’s conclusion does not derive from any imperative to deny the role of chance in the world. The role of chance, random mutation in biological evolution, had already been proposed by Empedocles (31 B 97 Diels-Kranz), and to the determinists of his time who, like Einstein in our century, thought that God does not play dice with the world, Sophocles replied, “Oh yes he does — loaded ones” (dei yao eb mintovow ot Atoc xbpot, fr. 895 IrGF). God plays with dice - that is to say, he accords chance a role in the world — because only in a world that allows some room for genuine chance (not just predetermined acts of God masquerading as coincidence) does free will have any place. Free will is illustrated in this play above all by the two crucial choices made by Oedipus: his decision, recuperated into the economy of the play by a retrospective

narrative, to murder Laius at the crossroads, and his decision, enacted before our eyes, to pursue his investigation even once he realizes that it has come to point towards himself. Chance therefore exists and has doubtless touched the life of Oedipus in many ways. He is not wholly wrong to have called himself the

son of Chance (1080), and his new claim that “these things were Apollo” (1329) means only that divine design is more prominent in

63 The Authority of Prophecy

his life-story as he now sees it than is chance. Chance has touched Apollo also, for “the world is,” as John Dewey says, “a scene of risk.”?? But the dice Apollo plays with are loaded; he hedges his bets.

In this sense there may be a theological point more than merely a question of dramatic economy to the superfoetation of agents that reveal Oedipus’s guilt (and Peradotto is right to chastize those who “attempt to tame the intellectual scandal of coincidence by disguising a problem of content as a virtue of technique”"3). Any one or two or even three of them may go awry, but they cannot all fail; by buying so

many tickets in the lottery of justice, as it were, Apollo takes his chances like anyone else and yet is still certain of winning. Sophocles

has presented in this play the scenario with the maximum possible number of coincidences, not because the whole plot would disintegrate if he did not do so, as Peradotto claims, but for precisely the opposite reason. The abundance of coincidences shows to anyone willing to perform thought-experiments of the type that I have just outlined that so many signs point to Oedipus’s state as incestuous parricide that in the random workings of the world only a very few need surface in order for the truth to be revealed.

What makes divine design prominent in the play is not the mere presence of coincidences but the fact that these coincidences bring to

fulfilment the prophecy of Apollo, and especially that they reach their culmination following the prayer of Jocasta, doubter of oracles (707-25), to Apollo for a resolution (918-23). '+ But does not the fulfilment of Apollo’s prophecy of itself prove that Sophocles has banished chance from his play and hence created in it a science-fiction

world with no relation to the world in which we live? Peradotto

compares Apollo to Laplace’s hypothetical demon, whose “knowledge of the mass, position, and velocity of all bodies at any given instant in the universe would allow it to infer all past and all future states of the universe.”*> But Apollo’s foreknowledge need not be a matter of inference from the workings of a deterministically mechanical universe. It may instead derive from direct observation of a nonpredetermined universe if Apollo stands outside of time.’ That this

is possible within the context of Greek thought is shown by the nature of Time, which we saw in the last chapter to be that of a free agent moving forward or backward, quickly or slowly, for the benefit of those whom he would help. That it is likely within the context of Greek thought that Apollo does so is shown by the fact that divine life is seen as integral and unfragmented, by contrast with man’s life, which is €dynuegosg — that is, “subject to what each day brings,” or in other words subject to temporal fragmentation’? (hence the

64 The Theatre of Apollo — | importance of the motif of the single day in this play as well as in Aj. 753-5 and Phil. 82-5). The integrity of God’s life can best be ex-

plained by its timelessness.'® The foreknowledge by a timeless God | of an indeterminate universe (by contrast with the prior inference made by Laplace’s demon) entails no compulsion for his creatures. From the fact that Apollo foreknows that Oedipus will kill Laius it follows, not that he cannot do otherwise but only that he will not do otherwise. Admittedly, Sophocles’ language is insufficiently rigorous in this regard, for he reports the prophecies in terms suggestive more of compulsion than of mere futurity (uoiea 713, xoetN 791).

Peradotto says that we must suspend our disbelief in prophetic authority during the play, not forgetting to reinstate it on the way out of the theatre, hence the “disauthorizing prophecy” of the title of his

article. Precisely what disbeliefs must we, on Peradotto’s view, suspend? In order for Apollo to predict the future to Oedipus without

depriving Oedipus of his free will, three conditions must obtain: Apollo must exist; he must be outside of time; and he must be free to

reveal to humans truths about the future, about himself, and about themselves. Precisely these three conditions are associated with theism (as distinct from deism, which denies the third one), and the theist position can be supported by logical arguments. The existence of God has been argued for on the basis of its predictive power about the world, namely that if God exists it is likely that he would create a world such as we inhabit, while the existence of this world as uncre-

ated is of low probability..2 The timeless nature of God has been argued for on the basis that only something timeless could be the final cause of temporal things.7° Although Sophocles’ polytheism would problematize attempts such as that of Richard Swinburne to argue the theist position on the basis of its simplicity (one god invoked to explain the many constituents of the universe), at least Sophocles’ gods — by contrast with those, for example, of Homer and

Euripides — do not act at cross purposes, and to this degree they. may all be seen as manifestations of a single godhead (Apollo, for example, expressing his immanence, Zeus his transcendence, Athena and Artemis his female aspect). In this way Sophocles’ theology may more resemble the Hindu doctrine of multiple divine avatars or the Christian Trinity rather than polytheism properly so called." It obviously lies far beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate theist arguments; I merely note that their existence points to the logical internal

coherence of the text-world of the play, a necessary condition for _ identity of text-world and real world. A sufficient condition could only be provided by establishing a fit between the world of the text and the data of lived experience. It is disbelief in the existence of such

65 The Authority of Prophecy

fit (if we have such disbelief) that we must suspend in viewing the play. While this is no small matter, any such disbelief that we may have must be suspended in reading so many works that the mental muscles involved are well exercised and their involvement in viewing Oedipus the King will scarcely be remarkable.

[f Apollo’s foreknowledge does not limit Oedipus’s free will, does not his prediction of the event, not to a disinterested third party but to the

protagonist himself, add a deterministic element? In other words, does not Oedipus, in killing Laius, unintentionally send through the medium of Apollo’s prophecy a message backward in time to himself to the effect that he will kill Laius, so that from the time of his receiving the message onwards he has no freedom not to commit the crime? The answer to this question can be found in an analogy from contemporary physics. Physicists suspect the existence of subatomic particles called tachyons, which have a velocity greater than the speed of light. (The speed of light is the speed limit of the universe in the sense that no particle may be accelerated to that speed; but nothing in theory prevents the existence of a particle that from its inception travels faster than the speed of light, provided only that it never decelerates to that speed.) If tachyons exist and could be harnessed to practical

effect, they could convey messages that would arrive before they were sent. This possibility raises a philosophical question: suppose I receive a message on my tachyon-telephone from the future that a man I have not yet met will soon die at my hands. Is it therefore not within my power to spare him? It certainly is; I have both the ability and the opportunity to do so. But were I to spare him, I would not

have this reliable message from the future that he has died at my hands. Ignorance is not a necessary condition of an action’s being

within one’s power. If I try not to perform the action precisely because I believe the message, I will still be free to do what I want, although the thing that I want to do will have changed: previously I had no specific intention regarding killing or sparing the man I did not know; since receiving the tachyon message, I now wish to spare him. (This change of intention may well occur even without messages from the future.) I may still, of course, fail to carry out my new motivation; indeed, if I have received a truthful message that arouses in me a contrary desire, I will fail to carry it out. This could happen if, for example, I am overcome by rage at a supposed insult and kill the man without pausing to consider that I am violating my intention to spare him, or that ] am bringing to pass the situation conveyed by the

message from the future.*? The application of this example from the philosophy of science to the case of Oedipus is obvious.

66 The Theatre of Apollo

Given that the prediction is not a predetermination in the fatalistic sense of the word, it might still be a predetermination in the weaker sense that Apollo may be reasonably certain that Oedipus will react

to his oracle in such a way as to bring it to fulfilment, namely in the way in which he in fact does.*> Statements with this kind of determining effect are common in everyday experience. [f I say “Albert is

visiting us” in the knowledge that you find Albert a bore, I may be helping to determine that you will come back later.** Yet in so far as this weaker kind of predetermination is involved in Apollo’s prediction, it does not deprive Oedipus of free will and responsibility for his actions. On the contrary, it puts the responsibility squarely on his shoulders, for it is Oedipus’s impetuous, though well-meaning, choice of one of several possible responses to the oracle, and not the oracle itself, that causes the disaster.

If, as I have argued, the possibility of divine foreknowledge and of predictions based upon that knowledge does not violate the rules © of a logically possible world, and so can be taken seriously, we must ask the question: why does Apollo predict the future to Oedipus? We can get the answer to this question right only if we have correctly understood the nature of Apollo. It, as ] have argued in the last chapter, Oedipus is punished for the crimes of regicide and parricide, then Apollo has given to him what is owing according to the Simonidean account of justice (642 PMG), and Apollo is therefore just in this all-too-human sense — unless, that is, the justice of Apollo is undermined by the problem of evil entailed by

the innocent suffering of Oedipus, Jocasta, and their children in the matter of the incest in respect of which Oedipus bears, by contrast with the murder of Laius, no responsibility.> In the last chapter we advanced some arguments against this possibility, but there is more to be said. In discussing Oedipus the King we are, of course, tempted to expatiate upon Oedipus’s obvious misfortunes. We think that the suicide of his mother /wife and his self-blinding form the end of his story. But

it is not the end of his story (what narratologists would call the histoire) that is constituted by these things, for that must coincide with his death, but only the end of Sophocles’ account of it (the récit),?° and the end of the account is, as it happens, a very ill-defined thing. Not only does Sophocles rush in medias res in presenting this story; he also leaves off a mediis rebus, leaving many a loose end (Will Oedipus go into exile? Will the plague come to an end? What will become of his

children?). Indeed, the deus of this play never appears ex machina, remaining at the end firmly ensconced in the machine. The end of

67 The Authority of Prophecy

Oedipus’s story is not quite so hopeless as it appears at the point where Sophocles breaks off?” his presentation in this play. In fact Oedipus’s story will turn out to be one of empowerment. I do not refer to any vague “heroic ... victory in defeat””* but to two very specific facts. On the one hand, the blind exile will acquire posthumous powers as a hero (in the Greek sense), helping his friends and harming his foes from beyond the grave. We will be told this explicitly in the as yet unwritten Oedipus at Colonus (lines 92-3), but we can intuit from Oedipus the King that something like this will be the case because

of the parallel established between Oedipus and Teiresias. Though blind, Teiresias has supernatural powers; Teiresias predicts correctly that Oedipus will soon become blind (418-19), and the unstated corollary is that he will soon acquire supernatural powers. On the other

hand, within the play itself Oedipus acquires self-knowledge. As Socrates knew, self-knowledge empowers. Therefore, the suicide of Jocasta and the self-blinding of Oedipus constitute not the end of Oedipus’s life’s journey but a crucial, painful

way-station upon it. To some extent Oedipus is responsible for his own misfortunes, but to some extent he is blameless (specifically, in the matter of incest and Jocasta’s consequent suicide). In so far as Oedipus’s misfortunes are innocent suffering, they are the price that must be paid in advance for his final state of empowerment. Oedipus,

of course, has no desire for this kind of supernatural, posthumous empowerment, any more than he desires to pay this horrible price for it. Apollo desires it. Apollo’s plan specifies that Oedipus should enter his heroic status by way of parricide, incest, and self-blinding, just as Teiresias entered his prophethood by killing copulating snakes, undergoing a double sex-change, and becoming blind. Oedipus’s plan for himself, which he makes up as he goes along, is very different: he sees himself with a more tangible, temporal power, as Sphinx-slayer and tyrant of Thebes. In the conflict of these mutually incompatible plans for Oedipus’s life, it is the god’s that inevitably triumphs.

If the nature of Apollo is just, we can then guess at his purpose in making his revelation to Oedipus. In this context I see a parallel to the Book of Jonah. (Scholars have often cited Job as a Biblical parallel

to Oedipus — both men had rotten luck*? — but in many ways the Book of Jonah, in which the will of God is fulfilled despite the unwill-

ing prophet’s attempts to foil it, provides a better parallel.°) The Lord tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and proclaim that it will be destroyed in forty days. Jonah promptly boards the first boat to Tarshish, which is to all intents and purposes the antipodes of Nineveh. He does not succeed in escaping, for there is a storm at sea, and he is

68 The Theatre of Apollo

thrown overboard into the belly of a big fish, where he rethinks things and decides to go to Nineveh after all. He delivers God’s message. The people repent, and God decides not to destroy them. Jonah is vexed with God. Oedipus too receives a message from God. When he has asked Apollo who his parents are, he receives the oracle that he is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Oedipus is

vexed, feeling that in giving him this oracle, Apollo has failed to answer his question and so dishonoured>* him (w’ 6 PotBos ... atwtov ‘e&€meupev, 788-9) — as though it were the purpose of gods to honour

mortals rather than vice versa. He does not go home to Corinth, where he thinks his parents are living (for he seems very quickly to

have forgotten his doubts about their identity). Instead, he heads for | Thebes, which is in the opposite direction from Corinth. Oedipus’s visit to Delphi is pivotal to his story and crucial in creating its resemblance to that of Jonah. During that visit Oedipus feels

that the oracle has dishonoured him by failing to respond to his ques- | tion. This is an important point. There is a story told by Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, about the man who went faith-

fully to synagogue for fifty years and finally came to his rabbi and announced that he had become an atheist. “Why is that?” asked the rabbi. The man answered, “Because for fifty years I have prayed daily

to God to make me prime minister and he hasn’t answered my prayer.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” the rabbi replied; “God has answered your prayer. The answer is no.”3? While Jonah understands the call of

God but chooses not to heed it, Oedipus, like the would-be prime minister, fails to recognize that God has answered his question, because that answer does not conform to the narrow parameters of his expectation.

One ordinarily expects God to give one commandments. God's word to Jonah, “Go to Nineveh,” reassuringly fits this pattern. But Apollo does not give a commandment to Oedipus of the type “You must (or must not) do x.” He does not even give him a warning of the type “If (or unless) you do x, y will happen to you.” Instead he gives

him an unconditional prediction, “You will do y.” We have seen above that the existence of this unconditional prediction does not compel Oedipus to act as he does, yet one might argue that Oedipus has in no way violated the will of Apollo, because Apollo, whatever he may have predicted, has not commanded him to do anything. Although superficially attractive, this argument is badly misleading, for Apollo has indeed given Oedipus a de facto commandment, which Oedipus fails to heed. It is true enough, as Oedipus says, that the statement “You will kill your father and sleep with your mother”

does not answer the question “Who are my father and mother?”

69 The Authority of Prophecy

None the less, the answer is by no means irrelevant to the question; in fact, it shows the question to be of the most vital importance. In other words, Apollo’s response contains within it the de facto commandment “Find out who your father and mother are,” which is of much the same effect as saying “Find out who you are”. Now this last commandment, in the form “Know thyself” (PL Prt. 343b), is a very familiar piece of Apolline advice.

It is, moreover, a piece of advice that Oedipus would have done well to heed immediately. It is a commandment that he will eventually fulfil, for the anagnorisis of this play (1182) is not the customary recognition of another person previously disguised or the discovery of an error in judgment previously made, but rather Oedipus’s recognition of his own identity. The purpose of Apollo’s revelation is to urge Oedipus to know himself.

6 Reading the Name of Oedipus and Other Riddles segni di segni, perché su di essi si eserciti la preghiera della decifrazione’ (signs of signs, for upon them is enacted the prayer of decipherment)

Oedipus thinks of himself as a reader of signs par excellence. He casts himself in the roles of detective searching for clues (221), navigator

by the stars (795), and psychologist analysing the behaviour of his wife (1078). His ability to read the riddle of the Sphinx (396-8) offers both to the community and to himself apparent confirmation of his semiotic skill. It is clear as the play progresses, however, that Oedipus is not so much a reader of signs as a misreader of them. It is only

when we understand his chronic misreading of signs that we can fully appreciate the force of the anagnorisis (to which we will turn our attention in the next chapter).

Among the signs that Oedipus persistently misreads we may count the following: he misinterprets Teiresias’s reluctance to speak as evidence of his complicity in a coup d’état (345-9), the Pythia’s response as an irrelevance (789), the stars as guides that will lead him away from his parents (795), and Jocasta’s anxiety as shame at his possibly humble origins (1078-9). Instead of giving Oedipus her breast,? Jocasta had exposed him upon the mamelon of Cithaeron,

and Oedipus repeats her confusion of anatomy with landscape.? Although he prudently infers from Apollo’s oracle a prohibition against homecoming, he erroneously understands this prohibition geographically, as “Don’t go back to Corinth,” rather than anatomically, as “Don’t re-enter Jocasta’s womb.” The most important sign that Oedipus encounters and one that he most tellingly misreads is his own name. His punning reference to

71 Reading the Name of Oedipus

himself as “the know-nothing Oedipus” (6 wndév eidws Oldimouc, 397) shows that Oedipus interprets his name as ol6a 2d68ac, “I know about feet.” Thus understood, the name refers to his greatest moment, his solution of the riddle of the Sphinx, which involved feet.4 This interpretation is especially cogent with reference to the collateral form, Oléurddy¢, coined to accommodate the name to the dactylic metre of epic. This form does not fit into the iambic trimetres of dramatic dialogue, but once it has been Doricized as Oiéiunodaz, it can be and is used in the choral songs of the drama as an optional alternative to the more familiar form (OT 495, 1193). Of the two forms, then, one

represents the degree zero of poeticity, being used in speech and dramatic dialogue (the artful imitation of speech), while the other, with its epic heritage and the Doric alpha, marker of lyric, represents a heightened degree of poeticity.> Doric is the dialect and choral song the place where we expect grandiose and high-flown suggestions that

soar above the mundane reality recorded in the Attic dialect of the episodes. It is not until the recognition scene (1182-5) that Oedipus realizes what Polybus, who named him, meant by the name. He intended it to mean oldei sous, “Your foot is swollen,” with reference to the oedema of Oedipus’s feet caused by their having been “yoked” by Laius and Jocasta as part of his exposure. Yet even this does not exhaust the signifying potential of the name. Bertrand Russell used to exemplify the conjugation of irregular verbs as follows: “I am firm in my judgments,” “You are obstinate,” “He is a pig-headed fool.” So too the text of Oedipus the King offers a similar

paradigm of interpretations for the name “Oedipus,” for Teiresias, who can foretell the future, reads the name in yet a third way, as £16’ omou, “He used to see where (things are),” with reference to Oedipus’s impending loss of sight (cf 924-6). Oedipus cannot see his own location, namely, that he is living in his native land and not in exile (Teiresias says: 006’ d6QGv tv’ el xaxot, “You do not see the evil in which you are,” 367, and ob xai dé50Qxa¢ xot BAémetc iv’ et xaxod /

otd’ Eva vaiets, 008’ Gtwv olxeis eta, “You have not seen nor do you see the evil you are in, nor where you live nor with whom you share your house,” 413). Neither can Oedipus see the whereabouts of Apollo’s oracles —- namely, that they are supreme and not void (cf 946-7, 952-3, where Jocasta invites Oedipus to listen to the report of the Corinthian and consider where the god’s oracles have gone). Usually one expects a murder mystery to be a whodunit, but

this play returns repeatedly to the question “Where?” as well as “Who?” Even after the twin quests for the murderer of Laius and the

72 The Theatre of Apollo

parents of Oedipus have been solved, the question of “Where?” persists (1309-10, 1436-7).

In the Sphinx’s riddle three creatures who appear to be distinct turn out to be one and the same. Likewise, this entire paradigm of interpretations telescoped within his name shows that Oedipus is three persons in one. Again as in the riddle these three persons are not presented paradigmatically but are enacted syntagmatically as the successive stages of a metamorphosis, from the infant with swollen feet through the adult in his prime, glorying in his understanding of the riddle, to the blind old man. This syntagmatic actualization of

the name passes between the ag8ea ... modotv, “joints of his two feet” (718), present in the interpretation of the name by Oedipus as oldet mous, to the de8ea ... xvxAMV, “joints of the circles of his eyes” (1270), implied in et6’ én0v, moving from one deformity to another, finally encompassing his entire body from head to foot.

That Oedipus can have so drastically underestimated the signifying potential of his name — that is to say, misread it — during all this

time shows that it is no ordinary name. The understanding of its meaning hinges upon the second iota. If it is replaced by alpha, then OIAITIOAAS becomes OIAATIOAA®® and the name refers to Oedi-

pus’s knowledge and to his skill at riddles. If, however, it is supplemented by an epsilon, then OIAITIOY=2 becomes OIAENIOY®= and refers to his deformity. Either way the iota must change. Unchanged, it bars the reading of the name, problematizes it. The magnitude of this disquieting effect is out of all proportion to the cause, for the iota is itself a slight thing. Visually it is a mere jot. To the ear, also, it signifies insignificance. The iota is the marker of the diminutive in Greek: oixog versus oixidtov. So too in English: “Molly. Milly. Same thing

watered down,” as Leopold Bloom says.” Or consider the pair of the famous linguist Noam Chomsky and his miniature counterpart, the talking ape Nim Chimpsky.’ Such pairs abound: maximum/ minimum, God/giddy, fact/fiction. That Oedipus’s name is not quite, although almost readable shows that it partakes of the characteristics of human speech. “Sex” is called mteoos in the language of the gods and égo¢ in the language of men, but only the former term with its clear reference to wings is readable.

The human term must be supplemented in order to be read (PI. Phaedr. 252b). The gods have their own language, different from and superior to any human speech (Hes. Theog. 831). In that tongue things are given the “true names,” which the Platonic Cratylus seeks to uncover, and words are immediately comprehensible without recourse

to substitutions or supplements. It is in the divine tongue that each thing receives the ritual name (6vop.a tedeotixOv) that is concealed by

73 Reading the Name of Oedipus

its worldly name, as Rome’s true name, Amor, offspring of Venus, is concealed by the retrograde form, Roma, which is its vulgar appellation.? The relation of divine to human speech is crucial to the play, for

| it is Oedipus’s inability to understand the language spoken by the Pythia that causes him to leave Delphi prematurely before he has understood the significance of the oracle given to him (789). To phrase this another way, the understanding of Oedipus’s name hinges upon the question of the equivalence of iota with alpha on the

one hand and with the epsilon-iota diphthong on the other. If this formulation seems improbably geometric, we should recall Dawe’s important comment on Oedipus’s claim that one cannot equal many (845), namely: “Oedipus’ tragic dilemma is reduced to elementary

| mathematics.”*° We might add that not only should one not equal many in the case of murderers, but zero should not equal one in the case of survivors, as it appears to do in this play (118 versus 813). Cocteau likewise refers to the story as “one of the most perfect machines constructed by the infernal gods for the mathematical annihilation of a mortal.”™ I have already in chapter 3 noted that the course of Oedipus’s life-journey traces out that most wonderful topological mystery, the Mobius strip, in that Oedipus comes back to whence he started but in an inverted position, for, having left as legitimate (if unwanted), he returns as usurper; having left as Jocasta’s son, he returns as her husband; and two persons who seem to be distinct — investigator of the crime and criminal — are in fact one and the same. While

everyone else in the play (especially Creon, 543-4, 563, 579, 581, 611-12, 627), as well as the whole movement of the plot itself, affirms relations of equality between superficially disparate things, Oedipus constantly denies them, saying not only that one cannot equal many (845) but that no one is as sick as himself (@>o éy@ ... && icov 60~1), that Laius paid no equal penalty for his aggression at the crossroads

(810), and that his father cannot equal such a zero as the messenger from Corinth (1019). We may expand upon Dawe’s insight: not only Oedipus’s tragic dilemma but his very name with its implied equality of seemingly unequal things is pervaded by arithmetical conundra.

The movement of a single letter is enough to convert accident into necessity, the casual into the causal. In many respects Oedipus’s

name resembles the man who bears it. Like his name (Otéimouc/ Oidimodac), Oedipus is double. He is at once tyrant and king, foreigner and native, saviour from the Sphinx and apparent cause of the _ plague. As the interpretations of his name in the paradigm become increasingly pejorative, so his fortunes are on a steady decline: he stands seemingly secure at the beginning of the play as beloved ruler of Thebes but ends up as a wandering exile. The enigmatic iota of his

74 The Theatre of Apollo

name, which must be supplemented or replaced in order for the name to be understood, is another point of similarity between the name and its owner. With his glasnost, which is unlike the behindclosed-doors approach of Creon (91-2, 1424-31), so very unlike the omerta of the principal figures of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, he would seem to be easily read. Yet, as the reading of his name is problem-

atized by a mere iota, so the clear siting of Oedipus himself is hindered by small things — the slander of a drunk at a banquet, the second-hand report of the survivor from the assassination, the thirtyyear-old memories of an old shepherd, the curious scars on his feet. Oedipus’s name is closely linked to his body. However one understands it, all are agreed that the second element, -mouc, refers to feet. The riddle of the Sphinx, “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night?” also concerns feet. The riddle points to a relationship between various numbers of feet and various degrees of knowledge. Four feet suggest incapacity and folly — for babies, who walk on all fours, are fools (visto in Greek means both “baby” and “fool”) — as well as riddles, for the canine Sphinx (391)’? had four feet. Two feet suggest the quest for knowledge, as in the case of the amateur sleuth, Oedipus, and the persistent theorist, Creon. Three feet suggest superhuman knowledge, as in the case of Teiresias and the Delphic tripod. A tripod has a

good understanding and so is very stable, “right as a trivet,” as Bob Sawyer says,"> because of the geometric law that any three points are always contained on the same plane. The third leg in Teiresias’s case is a prosthesis or, more simply put, a stick. Sticks can symbolize knowledge. The staff (@GBd0c) of the rhapsode symbolizes cultural memory; the caduceus of the herald betokens news. There is even one kind of stick, the Spartan oxvutaAn or

scroll-wand, that produces knowledge: one wraps around it slantwise a strip of leather and writes the message on it lengthwise in order to encode it; only when wrapped around another dowel of identical diameter will the encoded message become readable. As well as feet, the name refers to eyes. In the recognition scene Oedipus recognizes himself. This is a fulfilment of the Apolline commandment “Know thyself” (Pl. Prt. 343b) and is in effect a conversion or turning, as well as the moment of re-turn at which the hero recognizes for the first time that, despite all his efforts, he has completed the homecoming that he hoped never to make. In this he is a typical survivor of the plague. Thucydides tells us (2.49.8) that an effect of the Athenian plague, even upon survivors, was blindness. During recovery patients did not recognize either themselves or their relatives.

This situation applies perfectly to Oedipus: he survives the plague

75 Reading the Name of Oedipus

and yet is blinded. For a time he does not know himself or his family (in Teiresias’s words, “He does not see where he is of evil,” 367), and then he comes to the horrible moment of recognizing himself and his family.

Immediately after his anagnorisis, Oedipus blinds himself. He has just learned the true reading of his name.“ As a person is given a new name by his master when he passes into servitude (PL. Crat. 384d), as Alcides became Heracles (Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.12), or as the Biblical

Abram, at the decisive moment of his life, acquired the covenant name of Abraham (Gen. 17.5),7° so in the anagnorisis Oedipus’s name changes from a boast about knowledge to an admission of deformity.

This true understanding banishes from his name the idea of knowledge (the oida element), and he, like Socrates, acquires wisdom only in this: that he knows that he knows nothing (PI. Ap. 21d). And know-

ing that he knows nothing, he can no longer see, for to know is to have seen (otda is, grammatically speaking, the perfect of etdov, “I saw”), and to know nothing is never to have seen. Thus the cedema (cf oidet) of his feet ousts from his name the specious verb of seeing (ida), which perishes along with his eyes. This change of name, as much as the change of mask that we discussed in chapter 2, reveals that during the course of the play Oedipus has become a new person, his character has changed.

7 The Humiliation of Oedipus Si che il pié fermo sempre era il piu basso.’ (So that the firm foot was always lower)

Dodds is right to say that Oedipus can only justly be punished (if at all) for his actions and not for any character flaw.? But we saw in chapter 4 that his actions are nonetheless grounded in his character, specifically in his impulsive incapacity to yield. We have thus far left open the question of whether this incapacity is a mark of arrogance or heroism. While this suspension of judgment has been useful to us so far in our discussion, the argument of the previous chapter — that Oedipus’s change of name (like the change of mask considered in

chapter 2) acknowledges and symbolizes an inner change in his character — compels us to examine that character more fully. In the remarks that follow I seek first to prove, primarily with reference to the play’s staging, that Oedipus’s incapacity to yield, which gives

rise to his crime of parricide, is in fact a mark of arrogance rather than of heroism;? and secondly that through coming to understand the deformity of his feet Oedipus realizes fully for the first time that he is mortal after all.

Before I do so, I must make a brief defence of the concept of arrogance as applied to Greek drama. The normal word used by classical scholars and lay people alike in discussing the excessive self-confidence of a main character in a Greek tragedy is “hubris.”

N.R.E. Fisher has recently argued that for the Greeks (including Sophocles) the word Upeiy means rather “the serious assault on the honour of another, which is likely to cause shame, and lead to anger and attempts at revenge.”+ Our play is not helpful in this debate, because the word’s only occurrence in the play, tBets mPutever

77 The Humiliation of Oedipus TVEAVVOV' BBLS ... WQoUGEV Eig AvaYXavV (873), has been interpreted

to mean variously that disregard for divine laws will turn a good king into a tyrant,> that hubris begets as offspring psychological states that are tyrannical,® and that the collective hubris of the community can cause a tyrant to arise within it,?7 and has been con-

jecturally altered to vPow utever tugavvic, meaning “Tyranny begets hubris.”® While no clear resolution of this interpretative crux suggests itself, this fact is irrelevant to understanding hubris in the play, because from none of these versions of line 873 can any clear reference to Oedipus be deduced.

In light of this evidence, it would be prudent to conclude that even if (as I believe possible) I can show Oedipus to have been arrogant — Sophocles and his audience would not have called him DBetotys. It does not, however, follow that they could not have thought of him as being “hubristic” in the usual English sense of the word. Some would argue that a culture can possess a concept without also possessing a name to denote it.? Whether or not this is so, there are many Greek terms apart from tBhe.otys that unquestionably

mean “overweeningly arrogant,” often with the implication of usurping divine prerogatives (e.g. atao0aAoc, bregdiados). These words show that the Greeks did indeed have such a concept, whether or not they called it “hubris.” We should further note that the arrogance of a human being can raise him to the level of a potential rival for a god and lead that god to destroy him — which is the sequence of events that moderns typically classify as hubris. This situation is exemplified in the case of Apollo by Neoptolemus, who was killed while he quarrelled over sacrificial meat at Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi (Pind. Nem. 7.34ff).*° Against this background, then, let us turn to the question of whether or not Oedipus exemplifies such arrogance. Oedipus appears in the prologue to speak the play’s first words in answer to the supplication around altars. Without comment, and apparently therefore without surprise, Oedipus allows the priest to refer to these altars as Oedipus’s own, rather than the gods’ (16). This is

only one action, but it is crucial in determining our assessment of Oedipus, for it is the first action of the play. In case the force of this scene is lost upon us, it is repeated almost verbatim at the outset of

the first episode. Here Oedipus appears in answer to the chorus’s prayer to various Olympian gods. His first word is aiteic, “You called” (216). Here again he usurps the role of gods.” These two significant actions show how the visual effects of staging can work at cross purposes to the spoken words of the play, to under-

cut them. The priest’s claim that he does not liken Oedipus to the

78 The Theatre of Apollo

gods (31) would be reassuring if we did not see Oedipus behaving like a god. Since we do so see him, the priest’s words take on the unintended ominous quality of a warning. Throughout the prologue and the first episode, therefore, Oedipus behaves like a god — that is to say, he is hubristic in the normal English sense. In the play’s recognition scene everything changes. The anagnorisis is, simultaneously, the peripeteia of Oedipus’s status (cf Arist. Poet. 1452a32~—3), for he realizes not only who he is, namely,

the son of Laius and Jocasta, but also what he is. He sees himself to be quite vulnerable for all his intelligence and courage, and this recognition of mortality humiliates the once arrogant king (1410-11). Oedipus is humiliated because the anagnorisis is not the custom-

ary recognition of another person previously disguised (like Soph. El. 1222, 1475-80, or Phil. 923-4) or the discovery of an error in judgment previously made (like Soph. Trach. 71177) but rather Oedipus’s recognition of his own identity, including the history of his exposure and mutiliation.’3 As such it fulfils the will of the presiding genius of the play (cf 96, 712, 788, 1329), Apollo, who famously commanded

“Know thyself” (Pl. Prt. 343b), which means, among other things, “Know that you are mortal.”"4

The issue of self-knowledge on which the anagnorisis turns is reflected in the name “Oedipus.” We have already remarked in the previous chapter that this name admits of (at least) two different interpretations.15 On the one hand, it may be interpreted as oida 168ac, “TI know about feet,” a reading suggested by the pun at 397: 6 wndeév eid@¢ Oidimous.?® On this reading the name would refer to Oedipus’s

ability to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. This riddle is known from other, including pre-Sophoclean sources to concern feet, for the Sphinx asked, “What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon and three feet at night?” to which the answer given by Oedipus was “Man,” for a man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and uses a cane as a third foot in old age.’*” Although not

quoted by Sophocles, its text is an important part of the cultural awareness of his audience and is integral to an understanding of the play, in a violation of the Aristarchan axiom that what is not mentioned in the play does not exist.*® No hermeneutic principle can compel the belief that the audience would labour to exclude from its consciousness this well-known text when Sophocles refers to it seven times throughout the play (36, 130, 393, 440, 508-9, 1200, and 1525). Oedipus is true to his name on this reading of it: no one, not even Teiresias (391-2), surpasses him in the public realm as a theoretical expert on feet.

79 The Humiliation of Oedipus

On the other hand, the Corinthian at 1036 apparently reads the name as oidet movs, “Your foot is swollen.”*9 This reading of the name would refer to the “yoking” of Oedipus’s feet during his exposure.*® The resultant oedema that has persisted ever since, as a memory if not as an actual symptom,”' causes him discomfort not so much physically as mentally, because he does not know its cause.?? Although wise about feet in theory, Oedipus does not know the truth about his own feet.

If his knowledge of his own feet had equalled his theoretical wisdom concerning feet, Oedipus would have realized that there was another answer to the riddle. The answer “Man,” actually given by Oedipus, was public, theoretical, and abstract. He could instead have given a private, concrete answer, namely “Myself, Oedipus.” Oedipus is himself the answer in so far as, like the creature in the riddle, he combines three generations in one person; he belongs to his own generation, but also to that which came before, since he is the father of his half-siblings, and to that which came after, since he is the son of his wife. This bizarre contortion of his family tree is indicated by Teiresias in lines 457-60.

Therefore, Oedipus’s name reflects his failure, despite his obvious intelligence, to achieve self-knowledge prior to the fatally delayed anagnorisis of this play. The name does this by using his feet as a synecdoche, so to speak, for himself.73 Many attempts have been made to explain the emphasis on feet in Oedipus’s name and in this play. With Sandor Ferenczi one may posit the foot as a euphemism for the penis and a swollen foot as a sign of the sexual deviant.*+ One may join Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeing the lame foot as a “persistence of human autochthony.”*5 One may point,

as Shelley did, to the opposition between the imposed foot of the tyrant and the healing hand of the kindly king.2° Again, one may agree with Maurizio Bettini and A. Borghini that lameness is a concomitant of intellectual prowess.*”? One of the play’s most recent editors, Roger Dawe, has himself given a clear answer; there is no

meaning in the myth’s emphasis on the foot of Oedipus: “Greek, from Homer onward, seems to our taste oddly preoccupied with knees and feet,” and any attempt to read meaning into references to feet in Oedipus the King is a “tasteless possibility,” “a piece of hideous over-interpretation.””8 We may sympathize with Dawe’s impatience: expressions involving feet?? and -movg compounds? are indeed common in Greek literature. Yet we may wonder whether this reflects an odd preoccupation or something more meaningful. Three causes combine to explain why

80 The Theatre of Apollo

feet are more prevalent in ancient than in modern story-telling. First, the Mediterranean climate allows for a style of dress that places feet on display.3* Second, the word xovc denotes “the leg with the foot”

and hence a greater part of the body than do the modern terms “foot,” “pied,” “Fuss,” etc.3? Third, in a hunting society, acquaintance with the feet and footprints of one’s prey is of great value, a point not

lost upon the author of the Ichneutai.>3 Tragedy is performed in a medium involving dance, and dance in its earliest form has been connected with ritualized hunting gestures.44 Moreover, whether associated with hunting or not, dance involves the feet. We may note that 40 per cent of Sophocles’ tovg compounds occur in choral lyric. These observations suggest that the “feet” in Oedipus’s name will not be evidence of an odd preoccupation of the Greeks but rather bearers of a culturally conditioned message. One such message suggests itself. Gods are not infrequently identified, especially in epiphanies, by their feet or footgear.*> In II. 13.71-2 the Lesser Ajax recognizes Poseidon despite his disguise as a mortal,

“for he easily recognized the traces of his feet and heels as he departed, for gods are easily recognized” (iyvia yao petomioB8e TOO HOE xvyYUGwV/ OE Eyvwov AmLOvtOS Goiyvator 6€ BEoi meQ).3° There

are many other examples of the beauty, softness, boldness, or holiness of a god’s feet aiding in his recognition during an epiphany.” More-

over, deities’ shoes, like their other accoutrements, are beautiful, being made of silver or gold.3®

Several famous anagnorises involving heroes likewise show them recognized by their feet or footgear: Jason is recognized by his single sandal, Odysseus as his feet are being washed — a scene apparently dramatized by Sophocles in his Niptra — and Orestes by his footprints.3? What is true of individuals is also true of whole races. The “soft-stepping” (apeoPatys) Persian is distinguished by his mincing gait*? and the mythical Sciapod by his habit of holding his webbed foot above his head as a parasol.*! The chief feature distinguishing a mortal’s foot from a god’s is its defectiveness or vulnerability: men have, as we say, feet of clay.4* This is occasionally true of the lowest stratum of society (e.g. I. 2.217, Lys.

24) but is more often and more strikingly true of many Greek heroes from Achilles to Lord Byron. Achilles is “swift-footed” (modaoxij¢ and mo6ac xvuc) in the Iliad, but that does not keep him from dying

by a wound in his heel according to a story that entered literature late*> but seems to have been established in the iconographic tradition by the mid-sixth century.44 Heroes whose feet or heels are wounded include, among others, Bellerophon, Diomedes, Hector, Heracles, Philoctetes, the robot Talus, and Telephus.* Jason lost his

| 81 The Humiliation of Oedipus shoe, as did Perseus (Artem. 4.63), while some warriors fight with only one foot shod by choice.4° Foot defects still often plagued mortals in the historic period:4” despite Socrates’ association with cobblers (Diog. Laert. 2.122), this intellectual Heracles (cf Pl. Ap. 22a)

wore no shoes.‘ The rule that gods are distinguished from heroes by the perfection of their feet is proved by the solitary exception of Hephaestus, who limps.*? Hephaestus is in fact a kind of Olympian Oedipus. He was “exposed” at birth by being thrown from heaven (If. 1.590-4) and

thereby lamed for life (Apollod. Bibl. 1.3.5). He threatened his father and defended his mother (JI. 1.590) and was rehabilitated, not by his

skill at riddles indeed, but by his magic craft.°° What was readily believable in the case of Oedipus, however, was felt in the case of Hephaestus to call for special explanation. The Greeks early developed a rival story to explain his deformity as a result not of a fall but of his parthenogenetic birth from Hera (Hes. Theog. 927). The em-

barrassment is not resticted to the ancients. Wilamowitz says, “A crippled god is obviously completely unGreek.”>"

From these several examples we see that attention to a person’s feet can offer an important clue not only to his identity but also to his ontological status as god or mortal. In light of this, we may suggest

(and it can be no more than a suggestion) that Oedipus’s fall from arrogance to humiliation, obviously brought about by the horrifying discovery of his identity, may have an additional, deeper cause, a cause that raises his fate as parricide and incest from mere monstrosity to the universal relevance that we intuitively feel in it. This cause is the full recognition for the first time of his own mortality. In discovering himself, Oedipus understands at last the memento mori inscribed upon his feet.>?

8 Conclusion

So Oedipus recognizes at last the sign of his mortality inscribed upon

his feet. It is a life-changing revelation. He loses the arrogant selfimage as a god that allowed him to offer himself in answer to prayer,

and is deeply humbled. He changes his understanding of his name from a statement of intellectual strength to a statement of physical weakness and, through the self-blinding, changes his mask, his persona. At this same watershed moment he recognizes that Apollo was at work in his story all along, as Teiresias had said (377, 1329). It is only natural that at the moment of our confrontation with our

own death we should see God, since (as pre-eminently in the Greek conception) gods are the only beings in the universe that are not subject to death.* The ancients did not slaughter their brother animals in shambles as we do, but, aware of the homologous interchangeability of human and animal (as in Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Tauris or the story

of Abraham and Isaac), they sacrificed them on the gods’ altars, thereby enacting death in the presence of the deathless ones. We no longer practice blood-sacrifice, yet the link between the recognition of our personal mortality and of the existence of immortal beings remains with us. Near-death experiencers tell of encountering on the threshold of death a supremely loving being of light, and even in ordinary states of consciousness we still link our own death with God: there are no atheists in foxholes. What kind of immortal being does Oedipus encounter in Apollo? —

He is not one of those gods who so palpably stride the stage in Eumenides or Prometheus Bound. He is at once omnipresent and invisible;

83 Conclusion

constantly interjecting his voice into the story through his messengers, the Pythia and Teiresias, and yet always oblique; caring and pro-

viding for all the characters in the play, but hardly in the way they would choose to be provided for. If God exists in the world we live in, such must be his nature. But does God exist? For all its mathematical elements, Sophocles’ play is not Euclidean. At least in the form in which the text has come down to us, it ends aporetically, with no émeg det SeTEat (QED), and does not claim to prove anything, much less the existence and justice

of God, as Dodds’ more confident students asserted. In any case, as Dodds asks, “Surely no work of art can ever ‘prove’ anything: what value could there be in a ‘proof’ whose premisses are manufactured by the artist?”? In other words, how can a work of fiction meaningfully refer to the world? I would answer: in much the same way that a work of non-fiction can. Recall the claim, which I made in the first chapter, that facts are every bit as made up as poems. Likewise facts are as manufactured (to use Dodds’ term) as fiction. That is to say that the selection, combination, and elaboration of events out of the

jumble of lived experience necessary in order to produce out of that jumble any story at all always entails the creation of that story’s (often implicit) logical premisses. An autobiographical testimonial to the existence — or otherwise -— and the justice ~ or otherwise — of

God is no more or less convincing than a well-crafted fable, such as Sophocles offers us in Oedipus the King.

This particular fable has, not as its conclusion but as its most basic premiss, that the ground of being is a just and powerful God, whom

it pleases Sophocles to call Apollo. How then are we to assess the truth of this premiss? How are we to assess the accuracy of Sophocles’ play as a depiction of this world that we share with him? I argued in

chapter 1 that from a practical point of view we cannot know what Sophocles or his original audience or his society intended by this (or any other) work and that from a theoretical point of view we owe it both to the texts and to ourselves not to ghettoize them by making the intentionalist question the focus of our study. If we repudiate intentionalism, the only recourse we have left in understanding and evaluating texts is to measure them against our own experience. We cannot in turn compare the world of the play with our own construction of reality in the world we live in until we have made such a construction. We cannot read the play without knowing what we think about the world, which is to say, without knowing ourselves. Oedipus the King so clearly demands anti-historicist modes of understanding precisely because it calls upon us to fulfil the will of Apollo by knowing ourselves. This, perhaps, is the ultimate message

84 The Theatre of Apollo

of the play. Whether or not we see this message as “banal,” as Dodds presumably would do,’ is a matter of personal preference. My own feeling is that what appears banal to our intellectual apprehension often becomes challenging, sometimes insurmountably so, when we try actually to put it into practice. If we are to assess the truth-value of the central premisses of the play against our own experience, then we are each participating with Sophocles in a fundamental way in the creation of the play’s meaning. While this tactic allows for a discernible, knowable meaning, it creates its own problem in that it allows for a proliferation of meanings (since there are many audience members and readers). In other words, it implicitly denies the existence of a uniquely authoritative, transcendental meaning. The denial of a transcendental meaning to the text is problematic in that it would appear to go hand in hand with the denial of the existence of transcendental meaning as such.4 In other words, if the microcosm of life that is this play has no single definitive meaning, why should we conclude that life itself has any ultimate meaning apart from that with which we ourselves severally endow it? This question would not, perhaps, be so distressing in the interpretation of certain texts, but how can it be tolerated in my interpretation of Oedipus the King, which hinges upon the nature of God, the ultimate transcendental signifier? Again, can we who live in this unabashedly secular age evaluate

the play against our experience unless we first rescue it from its. own theology? The Athenians sometimes complained of their plays that they had “nothing to do with Dionysus” (Suda s.v. ovdév meEd¢C tov Atovucov’); we might well complain of Oedipus the King, especially on my reading of it, that it has nothing to do with us. Apollo’s well-wrought hall at Delphi had already fallen in the time of Julian the Apostate, the last oracle given (476 Parke-Wormell = Q263 Fontenrose).© The death of the great Pan, last of the pagan gods, was

announced by a mysterious voice to seafarers during the reign of Tiberius (Plut. Mor. 419b-e). The Olympian gods have been supplanted by the God of Abraham, who has himself been pronounced dead by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.” It is clear that we stand at great remove from the god-filled world depicted in the play. But Oedipus

and Jocasta, we recall, also felt themselves to be at some remove from such a world. They too were confident in their modern secular pragmatism — not that we should take much comfort from this recollection.

One solution would be to follow those scholars who have sought to rescue the play from its unwelcome, untimely insistence upon God either by tacitly ignoring Apollo, as Aristotle does, or by actively

85 Conclusion

denying his existence (both within the play and without), as Peradotto does. We have seen good reasons for rejecting such rescue attempts as hopelessly unfaithful to the text. But why, after all, should the lack of a single, uniquely valid mean-

ing of a text entail the lack of transcendental meaning in the world and hence the non-existence of God? We have seen that Oedipus’s freedom of action does not entail Apollo’s non-existence in the play. Likewise, the freedom and responsibility of readers to participate in creating the meaning of the texts that they read does not prove that those texts have no human authors. Nor does it prove that the world out of which they arose has no divine author. Our freedom as readers does not prove that God does not exist, only that he is not a fascist. I leave this suggestion as it stands. This essay is admittedly aporetic about such great questions as the existence and nature of God. I suggest that the reader of a work of literature collaborates with its author in creating meaning and that this act is parallel to that whereby one creates a meaningful pattern out of the jumbled data of lived experi-

ence. In this way, what we learn about when we read any work of literature, as when we think about the world, is ourselves. This is no small gain in knowledge if we accept the premisses that “This is you” and “The sum of things is within us.” Since I have argued that Oedipus the King is an exhortation to self-knowledge, the act of interpreting the play, no matter what our interpretation, accords with the text, since it is obedient to its essential commandment. And that, at least, is a start.

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APPENDIX A The Date of the Play ©

Knox’s argument (1956) for the dating of the play at the City Dionysia of March 426 Bc is that Oedipus the King is parodied in Aristophanes’ Knights of 424; some also find parodies of OT 629, G) MOALG, MOALS, in Aristophanes’ Acharnians of February 425 as well as in Eupolis’s Cities (fr. 219 PcG) of 422 (the ever sceptical Dawe 1982, 245 ad OT 1515-30, doubts that these are ailusions to Sophocles). The most recent discussion of the dating is Muller 1984, who, perhaps rightly, dates the play before the war and (31-8) points to a dif-

ference between the Homeric and Sophoclean plagues on the one hand and the (on his view) post-Sophoclean real-life plague on the other, namely that the literary ones are temporary divine punishments while the real-life one was an epidemic. See further Robbins 1990, 7 n 20.

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APPENDIX B The Scene of the Crime

The crossroads is an important fact, since it is a constant in the myth of Laius’s murder, while the precise location is a variable. Cf Aesch. fr. 387a TrGF (on which fragment, see Hutchinson 1985, xix—xx); see Lattimore 1964, 4. The crossroads (of unspecified location) are mentioned again in Sen. Oed. 278, 772.

In view of the confusion of the commentators on this point, it is worth describing the crossroads in detail. One road runs roughly east-west from the Gulf of Corinth through Delphi to Thebes. This road is intersected at an oblique angle by a road from Daulis to the northeast. This second road continues in a southwestwardly direction beyond the intersection to Ambrossus and hence to the sea, but this continuation is not mentioned by Sophocles, is irrelevant to the situation, and should be ignored. In other words, we are to think of a fork in the road rather than of an intersection of two crossing roads, such as is indicated by the modern name of the place, Stafrodhromo tou Mega. (This generates “three roads,” as the text repeatedly says, if one views the matter, as the Greeks did, with reference to the point of intersection. We, on the other hand, viewing it from the point of view of one or other of the roads, would speak of “two roads.”) Oedipus enters the intersection from Delphi, his victims from Thebes; Sophocles mentions Daulis only as the co-ordinate for the third road. In the direction along which Oedipus is travelling, the fork in the road represents a bifurcation and hence a choice; in the direction his victims are travelling the fork constitutes the convergence of an ineluctable fate. ebb 1893, 102 ad 733, and Rossiter 1967, 367-8, seem to think that Laius

is travelling along the road from Daulis rather than along the direct road from Thebes, but this is obviously wrong, first because this would be the long way and Laius is apt to seek the most efficient route, and second because it is fitting that Oedipus and Laius meet each other head-on.)

90 Appendix B It is not obvious what plot events would have brought Laius and Oedipus to Potniae (= mod. Greek Tachi, practically a southern suburb of Thebes), Where the murder takes place in Aeschylus (fr. 387a TrGF). Oedipus is evidently travelling north, overland from Corinth (on his way to the Delphic oracle, which he will never get a chance to consult?). The choice of Potniae for the encounter may have been suggested to Aeschylus by religious considerations, for, as the home of a shrine of Demeter and Kore, it is an appropriately uncanny place, rather than by any pragmatic plot considerations.

APPENDIX C

~\f

The Meaning of

BMELOTE YAO MOAV (786)

The phrase in its context means: “Nevertheless [i.e. despite the reassurances of Polybus and Merope] (Gums 6’) this insult (tot@’ [= totverdoc; cf 784]) always (del) kept chafing at (Exvité) me (u’) because (yao) it was creeping about (-etome) covertly (é2-) a lot (toAv).” Creeping where? Jebb 1883, 148, and Bollack 1990, ii.482, take it to refer to the spreading of the insult throughout the community; Kamerbeek 1967, 161-2, Dawe 1982, 171, and Lloyd-Jones 1994, 405, to its entry into Oedipus’s heart, where it rankled.

That the phrase refers to the entry of the insult into Oedipus’s heart is argued on the basis of the closest parallel, Aesch. Ag. 450, b@ovegov 8 b2’ aiyos Eomer meodixots “Atoetdais, which may be understood, as for example by Fraenkel 1950, 11.232, as meaning “and grief full of resentment towards the avenging Atreidae creeps covertly [over the people at home].” Moreover, other uses of bmeon (Aesch. Ag. 270, yaou Ww’ Hpbéomer, and Cho. 463, TeOHOS

uw’ bbéoret) involve emotions overcoming someone; these two uses are unambiguous, because the object is explicitly stated. Nevertheless, the Aeschylean parallel is not diagnostic for three reasons. First, its own meaning is far from clear; the sentence could equally well mean

“and grief full of resentment creeps covertly towards the avenging Atreidae.” Second, POovegov GAyos (like yaga and tedpoc) is an emotion that might well creep into one’s heart, while an insult exists properly in society. Third, even if Fraenkel’s understanding of the Aeschylus passage is correct, Sophocles could himself have transferred the image from the psychological to the sociological sphere. While the argument in favour of the psychological reading of OT 786 is thus very weak, there are three arguments (already used by Jebb and Bollack)

92 Appendix C to weigh against it. First, it would be a repetition of the immediately preced-

ing statement that the insult always kept chafing at him. Second, the yao would render this meaning not merely redundant but tautologous; “It disturbed me; it bothered me” may be tolerable sense, but “It disturbed me because it bothered me” is nonsense. Third, moAv implies diffusion, while the psychological reading requires a word meaning “little by little” or perhaps “deeply,” but hardly one meaning “widely.” In addition to these negative arguments, there is to be found in Jebb’s com-

mentary a positive one to support the sociological reading, namely that it agrees with lines 775-7, which imply that the incident had altered Oedipus’s popular repute. All these considerations allow us to conclude that OT 786 refers to the wide diffusion of the slander among the Corinthians.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1 See Griffith 1986 on the view of Comparetti, and Griffith 1993 on that of Jordan. 2 Wilamowitz 1899. CHAPTER ONE

1 Gildersleeve 1884, 341. 2 Housman 1972, 1059. His words are a rough translation of Wilamowitz 1975, 452. Kenney 1974, 98, attributes the distaste for method to A.L. von Schozer. 3 Grafton 1983, 5. 4 Boeckh 1968, 8-9; Lloyd-Jones 1982, xvii. 5 Parry 1971, 408-13, and Slater 1977, 193-4. 6 K6hnken 1983, 354. See also Hirsch 1967, 207; Winnington-Ingram 1983, xi; and Rosenmeyer 1986 (in the discussion following his paper).

7 I was led to this reflection by reading the fascinating first chapter of Needham 1983. 8 Wimsatt 1954, 3-18. Aristotle’s poetics are strongly anti-intentionalist; see Halliwell 1989, 159. 9g Richards 1936, 5, and Collingwood 1938, 28-9. 10 Classicists often use paraphrase as a heuristic tool: Wilamowitz 1908, 329 = 1970, 128, and Woodbury 1966, 599 (on the ancient use of paraphrase, see Greenberg 1958, 262—70). They also often try to extract single-sentence

94 Notes to pages 8-11 Grundgedanken or “matrices” from ancient texts: Dissen and Schneidewin 1843, ii-iii, and Dodds 1960, xlv; cf Gennette 1972, 75, and Riffaterre 1978, 19. Brooks 1947, 180, warns of the “heresy of paraphrase”; Wilamowitz 1906, 179, writes that those who speak of Grundgedanken and such concepts would do better to leave poetry alone; and Young 1963-64, 586, writes, “the whole Grundgedanke of Olympian 2 ... can be nothing but the whole poem; if Pindar had intended to write a poem with a ‘thought’ of only one sentence, [ have no doubt but that he would have written poems of one sentence.” In mathematical terms, non-paraphrasability is a by-product of randomness in the sense that a random sequence of numbers can be described in no shorter way than by reciting it in full, whereas a regular sequence such as 010101 ... can be given by a simple rule; see Chaitin 1975 and Ehrenberg 1977, 53. 11 Donatus, Life of Vergil = Camps 1969, 117. 12 For a discussion of such programmatic exordia, see van Groningen 1960, 63. 13 Snell 1953, 8.

14 Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache, “Being that can be understood is speech,” writes Gadamer 1965, xx. 15 van Groningen 1953, 5. 16 Dover 1974, 156-60. 17 Adkins 1960, 53; Dodds 1951, 3; and Gagarin 1981, 11. 18 Wilamowitz 1922, 7, and Dodds 1960, v. 19 Bundy 1962, 3. 20 Voloshinov 1976, 100; Slater 1977, 197; Burnett 1985, 45; and Woodbury 1986, 292.

21 Laforge 1923, 279; cf Joyce 1986, 28. 22 Macchiavelli 1961, 142, from letter no. 137 (10 Dec. 1513), to Francesco Vettori.

23 Hermann 1834, 8-9. 24 Parry 1934, 410. 25 Respectable thinkers (Pindar and Plato among them) have advanced theories of metempsychosis, but no serious thinker — with the exception of Gédel 1949 — believes in travel backwards in time. 26 Farnell 1934, 183. 27 Dodds 1964, 73. 28 Borges 1962, 49. 29 Boeckh 1968, 8-9. 30 Hegel 1942, 11; the reference is the Greek proverb “Behold Rhodes and the leap,” a challenge to live up to a boast (Erasmus, Adagia 3.3.28). Hegel’s view of history has been furthered by B. Croce, who holds “that every history is contemporary history and therefore that books on the past serve to clarify problems of the present” (Momigliano 1977, 356).

95 Notes to pages 11-14 31 Bloom 1987, 26 and passim. For a general discussion of the question of cultural relativism, see Levine and Campbell 1972, and for a discussion of the ancient appreciation of the question, see Heinimann 1945. 32 Dodds 1973, 68, quoted with approval by Devereux 1973, 36, and Dawe 1982, 19. Dodds’ words are a reformulation of Aristarchus’s comment (apud schol. I/. 5.385 d). See Pfeiffer 1968, 226~7; Fraenkel 1950, li.g7; and Taplin 1972, 97. Where something not mentioned in the text must be supplied (e.g. that Achilles knows that Chryses has prayed to Apollo, Il. 1.380-2), the scholiasts label this the oytjwa xata to GLOTMpEVOV, Which “implies clumsy narrative technique” (Robbins 1990, 4). The true complexity of this issue emerges from Stinton’s discussion (1986). The issue of the participation of texts in the discursive space of a particular culture has been studied by literary theorists (e.g. Culler 1981, 103). 33 Schaiiblin 1977, 221-7. 34 Hainsworth in Heubeck 1988-92, 1.334 ad Od. 7.215-21; Dodds 1960, 1; and Gerber 1982, 135. 35 My own favourite example of such ethnocentrically distorted views is Mure 1857, 578 and passim. 36 Heraclitus, Homeric Allegories; Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs. For modern discussions, see especially Tate 1927, 1929, 1930, 1934, and Lamberton 1986. It is worth noting that the allegorists’ view that dispositions

étonnantes and étrangeté in the text under interpretation demand allegorical interpretation (Pepin 1966, 251) is comparable to Riffaterre’s claim (1978, 2-11 and 164) that an ungrammaticality in the text is the sign of grammaticality elsewhere, namely in the intertext. 37 Scholars who observe that all poets nod on occasion but that this fact should be the critic’s last refuge include Wilamowitz 1930, 119; Norwood 1945, 146; Taplin 1977, 223; and Tarrant 1982, 52.

38 It makes perfect sense that, being under the protection of the Muses, the daughters of Memory (Hes. Theog. 53-4), who love to remember (Pind. Nem. 1.12), poetry should reject forgetfulness (Aj8yn) and champion truth (c-AnOeia), since, as Heidegger insisted, these two concepts are opposed to one another in Greek thought. 39 Prior 1967, 224. 40 Schrédinger 1964, 21-2. 41 van Groningen 1953. 42 Nabokov 1966, 19-20 (I owe this reference to Matthew Clark).

CHAPTER TWO ,

1 Taplin 1977, Seale 1982, Hourmouziades 1965, Halleran 1985, and Frost 1988.

96 Notes to pages 14-15 2 On the play in general: Millet 1881, Owen 1933, Segal 1980-81, Taplin 1982, Seale 1982, 215-60; on the prologue: Rousell 1925, Delcourt 1937, Calder 1959a, Henry 1967, Burian 1977; on lines 300-462: Carrire 1956, Bain 1979, Knox 1980; and on lines 1271-4: Calder 1959b. 3 Hammond 1972, 447. 4 Hourmouziades 1965, 21; Taplin 1977, 439; it has occasionally, but unnecessarily, been supposed that there were two additional flanking doors. 5 Webster 1956, 8. 6 The relevant, but not unambiguous texts are: Soph. Ant. 1186-7, Eur. Or. 1561-2, Ar. Vesp. 152, Men. Sam. 8-86, 151-2, 210, Epitr. 485, Plut. Poblic. 20. It has been argued that the doors swung outward, e.g. Mooney 1914 and Petersmann 1971, but the vast majority of scholars accept the inward-opening view, e.g. Jebb on Soph. Ant. 1186; Beare 1950, 277-86; Dale 1957, 205-6 = 1969, 104; MacDowell 1971 on Ar. Vesp. 152; Gomme and Sandbach 1973, 745; and Willink 1986 on Eur. Or. 1561-2. 7 Mooney 1914, 13. 8 More as in the late theatre at Epidaurus or less as in the early example at Thorikos; Gebhard 1974, 434, argues for a rectangular shape for the early theatre of Dionysus. 9 Miller 1885-86; Cushing 1885-86; Pickard-Cambridge 1946, 5-10; Hackens 1963; Mussche 1965; and Hackens 1965. 10 Dinsmoor 1951, 327, of the theatre built around 421. 11 Webster 1959-60, 501-4. 12 Hourmouziades 1965, 58, and Hammond 1972, 449, suggest two or

three steps. I would prefer three risers and two treaders on the ground that, since the scene building must sometimes represent a temple (e.g. Eur. Ion), the normal uneven number of steps in a temple-crepidoma (see Vitruvius 3.4.4) will be represented. The only illustration of the stage is, apparently, ARV? 1215, 1, on which see Hamilton 1978. 13 Pickard-Cambridge 1946, 70, and cf fig. 52 on p. 155; Webster 1956, 166;

Arnott 1962, 41; Hourmouziades 1965, 58-74; and Dearden 1976, 18. 14 Dérpfeld 1902, Gow 1912, and Robert 1939. 15 Burkert 1966. 16 On the association of wine and blood see Burkert 1983, 224. To the passages that Burkert cites in nn 38 and 39 add Ar. Lys. 205 and Thesm. 730ff.

17 Arnott 1962, 53-4, and Seaford 1988, 170-1, on lines 345-6. With this attitude, contrast the Roman readiness to cast condemned criminals in dramatic roles so that they could be tortured or killed onstage; see Coleman 1990. 18 Dionysus appears as a character in two extant plays: Eur. Bacch. 1ff and Ar. Ran. 3ff, and probably in Aeschylus’s two Dionysus tetralogies, | Edonians, Bassarids, Neaniscus, Lycurgus and Semele, Bacchae, Xantriae

97 Notes to pages 15-16 (=? Pentheus), Trophi, and in Sophocles’ Dionyscus Satyricus and Bacchae if there was in fact such a play. 19 Pickard-Cambridge 1946, 131; Arnott 1962, 45; Dearden 1976, 47; Poe 1989. 20 E.g. Zeus: Soph. Athamas p 99 TrGF, Eur. Heracl. 238, HF 48; Thetis: Eur. Andr. 565; Diana: Plaut. Mil. 411-12; Lucina: Plaut. Truc. 476; Venus: Plaut. Curc. 71-2, Rud. 688. 21 The possiblity of the altar’s serving as a tomb is discussed and rejected, perhaps rightly, by Garvie 1986, xliv. 22 Farnell 1907, iv.148—51; Cook 1925, ii.160—6; and Nilsson 1940, 79-80; cf MacDowell 1971, 247-8. 23 Aesch. Ag. 1081, Cho. 583 (perhaps, see Garvie 1986 ad loc.), Soph. El. 637, Trach. 208-9, OT 919, Eur. Phoen. 631, Ar. Thesm. 748, Vesp. 875, Men. Dyscolus 659, Samia 309, 444, fr. 801 Koerte, Plaut. Bacch. 170, Merc. 676-8, Aul. 606, Most. v.2.30, Ter. And. 726, Heaut. v.2.22. 24 Pickard-Cambridge 1949, 141. 25 His epithets include éudegyog Il. 1.147 etc., ExaPddos Soph. OT 163 etc., and exatyBorog I. 15.231 etc. He dwells for four months of the year

among the Hyperboreans beyond the north wind. As a prophet he aloofly neither affirms nor denies, but gives a sign (Heracl. 22 B 93 Diels-Kranz) and thus bears the cult title Loxias, “the oblique.” 26 Nietzsche 1967, 36. 27 Apollo appears on stage in Aesch. Eum. 64, Soph. Ichneutae fr. 314 TrGE, Niobe fr. 441a TrGF, Eur. Ale. 1, Or. 1625, Alcmaeon in Corinth fr. 73a Snell. The proportion of references to Apollo to references to Dionysus in the plays may be crudely calculated by totalling the entries under ‘AnohAwv, Ao&iac, and ®oiBos on the one hand and Awvvoos and Baxy (€) (t) og on the other in Italie and Radt 1964, Ellendt and Genthe 1872, Allen and Italie 1954, and Dunbar and Marzullo 1973. The results of this tabulation are as follows — for Aeschylus: Apollo 55/Dionysus 1; for Sophocles: 51/13; for Euripides: 209/91 (note that two-thirds of the references to Dionysus occur in just two plays, Bacch. and Cycl.); for Aristophanes: 74/48.

28 With the exception of Hermes, whom, however, I discount because he functions as a messenger of the gods. Almost every Greek tragedy has one or more (mortal or divine) messengers brought onstage not because they hold any intrinsic interest but in order to narrate events that were unseemly or impracticable to portray on stage. 29 Aesch. Eum. 397, Soph. Ajax 1, Eur. IT 1435, Tro. 48, lon 1553, Rhesus 595, Suppl..1183. The combined number of references to ‘AQava, ‘AQnvatia, and

IIadAcc, calculated by the method described in n 27, is for Aesch. 22, for Soph. 16, for Eur. 84, and for Ar. 17. 30 West 1983, 67.

31 The theatre had a oxyvy and an d6exnotea, which, according to Gardner 1907, 123, was Originally a threshing-floor. Drama sometimes ends in the

98 Notes to pages 17-19 pantomimed or hypothesized burning of the oxnvy (Ar. Nub. 1476-1511); cf the lighting of Heracles’ funeral pyre (Soph. Trach. 1191-1215), for a pyre is a kind of house (cf Bacch. epin. 3.49). 32 On anaotia as Aristotle’s word for dt, see Dawe 1968. 33 Wilamowitz 1895, 3. 34. The priest speaks of Bwpot at line 16 and the 1881 Harvard production had three altars, one beside each skene door, but this presupposes three doors, which (as we have seen) is most unlikely. See Jebb 1893, 201, followed by Navarre 1929, 38. Hourmouziades 1965, 8 n 1, suggests two altars “symmetrically placed on either side of the central door,” but as Kamerbeek 1967, 35, comments, “We cannot be sure whether a real plural is meant.” On this possibility, see Jones 1910. Moreover, line 919 appears to suggest a single altar (dedicated to Apollo). The offstage altars, at which supphiants are imagined as gathering, also belong to Apollo in the sense that wives and mothers “at the altar’s edge” (182) sing hymns to the Healer who was associated with Apollo. 35 See App. A. 36 Bond 1988, 61. The only one of these four plays with a secure date is the Helen of 412; the other plays are probably earlier than the Helen, some perhaps even earlier than 425; see R. Lattimore in Grene and Lattimore

1959, 224-8. |

37 Dawe 1982, 231, wonders whether, when Oedipus says “these things were Apollo” (1329), he might “gesture to, or stumble at the altar or statue of Apollo which lies close to his own palace.” 38 He is described in Homer in a manner comparable to the treatment of other gods; Pheidias sculpted a giant statue of him for his temple at Olympia. 39 Gould 1973, 75-8. 40 It is left to Catullus (51.2) with his very different Roman sensibility to add the waver si fas est. 41 Burkert 1985, 64. 42 Taplin 1982, 157. 43 Usener 1903, 1. 44 The most striking instance of this in the play, I argue in chapter 7, is the synecdoche of foot for self in the case of Oedipus. 45 Laccept the explanation of this word and its implications by Dawe 1973,

1.206—7. |

46 Some scholars have envisaged a host of extras to represent the suppliants (e.g. Jebb 1893, 10); Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 248 n 5, makes the suppliants the chorus, who have been present on this view throughout the prologue; Calder 1959a, 121-9, convincingly refutes these suggestions, offering his own: that the audience represents the suppliants and that this fact is indicated by gestures from the actors. Taplin 1977, 130, finds a flaw

99 Notes to page 19 in this staging also, asking, “What are the audience-suppliants to do at S. OT 142ff, when they are told to rise and depart?” I offer the two child mutes pars pro toto; the audience is asked to imagine many other such, not actually present. 47 On children on the Greek stage, see Sifakis 1979, and on mutes, see Stanley-Porter 1973. 48 lam operating on the assumption that the left ezsodos leads to the city and the right abroad (Pollux 4.126-7, Vitruvius 5.6.8). Pace Bieber 1954, there is a consensus that this was not generally true of fifth-century theatre; see Rees 1911; Beare 1938; Dale 1954, 14, on Eur. Alc. 860; Hourmouziades 1965, 128-36; and Taplin 1977, 449-51. Nevertheless, I accept Taplin’s claim (1982, 157) that such a theatrical geography was “Sophocles’ specialty.” (For the convention in later times, see Gomme and Sandbach 1973, 12, and Frost 1988, 103 n 5.) In this play bad news will come from the left (city): the priest brings a description of the plague, Teiresias his

prophetic accusations, and the herdsman the final confirmation of them; meanwhile, the right (country) side will consistently bring apparently good news: Creon’s report from Delphi and the Corinthian’s information that Oedipus is king of Corinth and need not fear Merope. This division is fitting to Oedipus’s story, in which good things apparently come from abroad — like Oedipus himself. I use “(stage) left” and “(stage) right” with respect to, that is from the point of view of, the actor facing the audience — i.e., the left eisodos is the western one in the theatre of Dionysus with its present orientation. 49 Seale 1982, 215. 50 On this question, see Bollack 1990, ii.7. 51 This is a likely inference from the scene regardless of the meaning of Boatete (2), on which see Dawe 1982, 85. Their haste is by no means irrelevant (pace Kamerbeek 1967, 2 ad 2); there is a national emergency. Bieber 1954, 278, has quite a different scenario, viz. making the actors take up

their places as the spectators were entering the theatre (this is the first play of the day). Taplin 1977, 134-6, modifies this slightly, having the priest and children enter ten minutes before the play begins, in full view of the audience, who, however, are expected to erase or cancel this entry as soon as it becomes clear that it is left vague how long they have been there. But is the Oedipus who chastizes Creon and Teiresias for tardiness and who threatens torture to expedite the giving of testimony likely to allow a supplication on his very doorstep to drag on for a vague period? Hardly. His reaction to the suppliants is characteristically instantaneous, and the audience should be shown that this is so. Therefore Seale 1982, 215, rightly remarks, “Oedipus the King opens with a movement, not a tableau,” citing Burian 1977, 83-4, and Knox 1957, 159-60. 52 Bollack 1990, ii.2.

100 Notes to pages 19-21 53 On the two attendants, see Taplin 1977, 79-80. Two is a minimum number; lines 6-7 suggest that Oedipus has a hands-on style of government and will not employ many servants. 54 See Segal 1980-81, 139. This, rather than a crown, which (pace Jebb 1893, 202) he does not wear, is the symbol of his kingship, for kings are oxyjtovyor PaotAnets; see Griffin 1980, 9-13. 55 Taplin 1982, 155.1 follow Taplin’s idea that the Oedipus actor does not limp, because a limping actor seems undignified, and as a “special effect” the limp would become hackneyed and lack the power it must have had in the Philoctetes or Euripides’ Telephus if it had been seen too often before. 56 Hourmouziades 1965, 16; Knox 1980, 331; Frost 1988, 6—7. The noisiness of

Greek doors is owing to a technological limitation: no hinges. Each door swung on metal-covered pivots set at top and bottom of the axis that turned in sockets excavated in the sill and lintel (Beare 1950, 281); hence Aristophanes’ adulterous housewife must resort to wetting the pivot to obtain a stealthy exit (Ar. Thesm. 487-8; cf Plaut. Curculio 158-61). 57 “Mirror scene” is defined by Taplin 1977, 100, as “the repetition or reflection of an incident or scene in such a striking way as to recall the earlier event.” 58 Seale 1982, 217. 59 See Barrett 1964, 236, ad Eur. Hipp. 421-5.

60 The chorus are rightly troubled by Jocasta’s threat to remain silent (1071-5), since suppression of speech is foreign to their experience. 61 Ahl 1991, 117. 62 1893, 90-1, on 637. 63 Gould 1970, 33. 64 E.g. Grene 1954, 17. 65 Taplin 1977, 205. 66 Seale 1982, 220, contra Calder. 67 So the Harvard production (Jebb 1893, 202); Taplin 1977, 246 n 1; this

ought to be so, as Gould 1970, 34, observes at 151, because Oedipus has consulted Creon during the parodos (cf lines 288, 555); Kamerbeek 1967, 122, however (ad 512-862), rightly has Creon exit via the parodos. 68 Taplin 1982, 158. For a plan of the contemporary Greek house, see Rider 1916, 237, fig. 40. Morgan 1982, 121, discussing “House D” from the Athenian “industrial district,” writes, “The yard is entered from the Northwest through a corridor 1.20 m. wide. The apparent entrance from the East is much narrower, and retricted still further by a tiled drain out into the roadway. It seems likely therefore that this was not a real entrance, and was blocked above the drain-level.” 69 Owen 1933, 156, and Else 1957, 488. 70 Le., from the city. Isee no explanation for the statement of Lawler 1964, 82, that they enter stage right.

101 Notes to pages 21-7 71 Lawler 1964, 82. 72 Pace Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 243 n 3. 73 Cf Davidson 1986. 74 E.g. Burton 1980, 148; Gould 1970, 34 ad 151. 75 Taplin 1977, 174. 76 Burton 1980, 148. 77 Seale 1982, 220. 76 Ibid., 226.

79 See Knox 1980, 321-2. The alternative explanation for Oedipus’s failure to understand Teiresias’s words is to have him stop listening at this point, without exiting (so Hester 1993, 17); this staging will account for his failure to understand Jocasta at 717, but the variety of technique implied in the staging I suggest for 446 seems to me a positive virtue and an argument in favour of adopting it. 80 Fraenkel 1960, ii.10, on Aesch. Ag 11. 81 Taplin 1977, 108~14. 82 Anderson 1970 and Csapo 1987. 83 See Kamerbeek 1967, 244, ad 1329-30. 84 None of these words occurs in Sophocles’ extant works. Formally, the word Avxelos suggests some association with Avxos (“wolf”), but it is not one of identity. Apollo kills wolves (he is Avxoxtovoc at El. 6), but this is part of his purificatory nature (he is also a mouse-killer, optv@evs), which is part of his overall association with cleanliness and light. 85 E.g. Aauset, 186; alyAa, 207; as well, the ode contains six words for “fire,” five for “gold,” etc. See Dawe 1982, 114, on line 203. 86 Aesch. Suppl. 212-14, if Baumberger and Kiehl’s emendation ivw is accepted for the mss devvy, (it is, however, rejected by the best commentators, Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980, 172); Sept. 859, if "AmoAAwvt there is not a gloss (Hutchinson 1985, 190, however, thinks that it is); Bassarids p 138 IrGF; Parmenides 28 A 20 Diehls-Kranz; Eur. Phaethon 224-6 Diggle; Scythinus fr. 1 West; Timotheus 800 pmaG; carmen populare 860 PMG; Callim. fr. 302 Pfeiffer = 103 Hollis; and Orphica fr. 172 Kern. 87 Boyancé 1966, 153. 88 Calder 1959b, 301 n 2. It is unthinkable that the colourful description of the blinding given by the exangelos (OT 1276-9) should be followed with

Oedipus’s re-entry with anything less than a new, blackened mask to reflect these horrible changes. 89 Cornford 1914, 171. Shenanigans involving masks may also have figured in satyr plays. Fraenkel 1942, 241; Stark 1959, 7-9; Ussher 1977, 297; and Taplin 1977, 420, suggest that the chorus of Aesch. Theoroi removed their masks onstage and dedicated them on the temple facade represented by the skene. Cratinus, Seriphioi fr. 205 Edmonds = 218 pce (atge detgQo0 tovs BoixéAous) also suggests some play with masks.

102 Notes to pages 27-32 90 Pearson 1917, i.177-8, presents the theory that “the mask of Thamyras ... [had] one gray and one black eye ... which was made effective by the actor turning one side or the other to the spectators as occasion required: that is to say after the blinding of Thamyras, the actor, whose mask could not be changed, took care to present to the audience the gray eye only.” (Before the blinding, we infer, he presumably took care to present to the audience the black eye only. In other words, the poor actor — Sophocles himself — we are told, spent the entire play acting in profile. This arrangement “would seem strangely awkward,” as Sutton 1984, 140, rightly says.) 91 Davies 1982. g2 So Dawe 1982, 241 ad 1472. CHAPTER THREE

1 Cavalcanti, Rime. 2 Ahl 1991. A reaction to Ahl’s work similarly sceptical to that which I present in this chapter is to be found in Hester 1993, 10-12. 3 Ibid., 15. 4 Ibid., x. 5 Dodds 1966. 6 Girard 1965, 1968, 1977, 1986, 1987a, and 1987b. 7 Girard 1965, 1-52. 8 Ibid., 10.

9 Girard 1987b, 78; this idea is already present in Girard 1968, 103. It is _ obviously correct and the persecution-concept by definition demands it. In what follows I will criticize Girard not for holding this view but for adhering to it too little. 10 Girard 1986, 8.

12 Girard 1987b, 79. | 11 Ibid., 9.

13 Girard 1986, 2. 14 E.g., Bremmer 1983. 15 Beloch 1884, Swoboda 1893, and Kagan 1974, 90-3. 16 Taylor 1917; Davison 1953, 41-3; Mansfeld 1979—80; and Woodbury 1981. 17 Harrison 1921, xli, who writes, “Behind the Old King Oedipus is the figure of the scapegoat”; Fergusson 1949, 39; Vernant 1978, 486-9 = 1972, 117-22; Burkert 1985, 84; Burkert 1979, 65; and Parker 1983, 257-80, esp. 259. 18 Freud 1953, iv.260—4.

19 Lévi-Strauss 1958, 235-42. 20 E.g., “Examples [of parricide and incest in myth] are so numerous — so numerous and so diverse, as a matter of fact, that they cast doubt on the

103 Notes to pages 32-5 special significance Freud conferred on the two particular instances he so passionately espoused, the patricide and mother incest of Oedipus,” Girard 1987b, 83; and “The triangle is a model of a sort, or rather a whole family of models. But these models are not ‘mechanical’ like those of Claude Lévi-Strauss,” Girard 1965, 2. 21 Girard 1968; 1977, 68-88; 1986, 25-30; 1987a, 33-40; and 1987b. 22 Girard 1986, 25; Girard has lately retreated from this position, mentioning Sophocles only once in his latest treatment, 1987b, 85. 23 Girard 1986, 29. 24 Ibid., 30. 25 See above, chap. 2, n 55. 26 Davies 1982. March 1987, 148-54, revives the theory of Schneidewin and Graffunder that the present ending of the play was written not by Sophocles but by another poet of the same name (his grandson, to accompany the posthumous premiére of Oedipus at Colonus); see now Hester 1992. This suggestion may be correct, and it is in any case impossible to refute speculation of this kind. I note, however, that March's assumption that a Greek tragedy can be expected not to “[peter] out into such irresolution” as found at the end of Oedipus the King (152) does not carry much conviction; the author of On the Sublime found it a common flaw of Sophocles’ plays that ofévvuvtat 5’ GAdyws MOAAGUIC XAL NIMTOVOLW ATUVYEGTATE (33.5), and Plato favoured aporetic endings for

his dramatic dialogues, which, like Oedipus the King, often turn on the revelation that someone has thought that he knew something that he did not know. 27 Pace Burkert 1979, 71. On voluntary self-sacrifice, see Schmitt 1921, Roussel 1922. 28 Genette 1988, 41 n 3. 29 Girard 1977, 78. 30 Girard 1987b, 74. 31 Ibid., 82. 32 Levine 1983, 6—7. 33 Goodhart 1978. 34 Girard 19874, 40. 35 Goodhart 1978, 56 n 2. 36 Harshbarger 1964-65.

37 Asaslave, he could never give pagtveta in his own person, but information gathered from him under torture (BGoavos) could be entered into evidence. That testimony and torture are mutually exclusive categories is clear from the logographers (Isoc. 17.54, Isae. 8.12, Dem. 30.37), pace the misleading equation of the two categories in rhetorical handbooks (e.g. Ar. Khet. 1376631). lam grateful to David Mirhady for clarification on this point.

104 Notes to pages 35-7 38 The slave spent some time in Thebes after the murder. He makes a public account of Laius’s murder while the Sphinx is still in town and Oedipus is not yet, therefore, on the throne (130-1, 848-50), and later, when he has seen Oedipus upon the throne, he privately asks Jocasta to send him away (758~9). These two appearances of the slave in the story are not to be conflated (Kamerbeek 1967, 157 ad 758-9); Iam grateful to Charles Daniels

for pointing this out to me. :

39 Greene 1929, 84. 40 See App. B. 41 The close temporal proximity of the consultation of the oracle and the murder is only an inference from the text but, I think, one that is justified by three considerations about the narrative of lines 794—-9. First, Oedipus’s

account gives no event occurring between consultation and murder, and the audience has no time to fill in details or speculate about possible lacunae. Second, the murder scene is very close to Delphi (see Appendix B), and Oedipus is no dawdler. Third, especially if we take ébevyov (796) absolutely (with Jebb 1893 and Dawe 1982, as against Kamerbeek 1967), the idea of flight as well as exile is present in the word, bringing with it the notion of speed. 42 It may be objected that Oedipus’s victim could not have been intending to consult the oracle on the same day on which Oedipus had already obtained his response from it, for the necessary purification and sacrifice must have taken some time. Yet, if Laius was travelling in the great haste evinced by the behaviour of his entourage (805), he will have spared little time for such niceties; we might expect that he shared Oedipus’s characteristic impatience and chronic haste as well as his looks (743). For his part, Oedipus will have arrived at the crossroads soon after consulting the oracle. The crossroads are about eighteen kilometres downhill from Delphi, a brief journey for a man sound of foot (as I believe the actor’s portrayal will have shown Oedipus to be) who is running away from something (796). 43 Newton 1978-79. 44 A third possibility is that the shepherd is reporting honestly that supernatural beings visible to himself alone contributed to the slaughter, as Apollo helped Paris to kill Achilles (IJ. 22.359—-60, Aesch. fr. 350 TYGF,

PL Resp. 383b) and as “one of the deities” guides Oedipus to his hanging wife (1258). The phenomenon of perceiving more persons than are actually present, known to us as Shackleton’s delusion (Shackleton 1919, 209), was familiar to the ancients. One thinks of Nebuchadnezzar, who saw in his furnace not the three victims he had thrown in but four persons (Daniel 3.24—5), and of the phantom Deiphobus (I/. 22.295). It is characteristic of such manifestations that they are visible to one person alone, as is Achilles’ vision of Athena (Il. 1.198) or Priam’s of Hermes (il. 24.444-6).

105 Notes to pages 37~9 Dodds 1951, 85 n 35, says that at OT 1258 Sophocles credits Oedipus with having “a temporary clairvoyance of supernatural origin.” Supernatural portents accompany the deaths of kings in Shakespeare also (cf Julius Caesar 1.31.1-40 and Hamlet 1.1.113-16). 45 Itis better to ground the discrepancy in Oedipus’s account in a feature of his own character and action as I have done than to find in it a maladresse on the part of Sophocles as does Roussel 1929, 370. 46 See most recently Scodel 1984. 47 Whose article Ahl 1991, 62, characterizes as a “brilliant discussion.” 48 Ibid., 262. 49 Ibid., 12, 63, 65. 50 Ibid., 173 (self-interest), 178-80 (self-contradiction), 192 and 206 (lack of proof). 51 LSJ s.v. eveEloxw Iv.

52 To the poetic mind the meaning of one’s name is often not actualized until the middle or end of life: so Pelops was recognized as “black faced” only once he had grown a beard (Pind. Ol. 1.68), Helen as the “ship-destroyer” only once her abduction had become a casus belli (Aesch. Ag. 689), and Hippolytus as “loosed by horses” only once he had met his death in a chariot accident. That Oedipus views his name in this poetic light rather than in the more prosaic way as a reflection of qualities apparent at the time of his birth is suggested by the fact that his own reading of the name, oida m0dac, resembles the Doric form Oidinddac¢ found in the choral songs (OT 495, 1193), while the “prosaic” reading otdel movc, suggested by the Corinthian, resembles the common (i.e. unpoetic) Attic form, O1disouc. 53 Ahl 1991, 57. 54 Girard 1987b, 83-4. 55 Knox 1956, 134-5. The state of our knowledge regarding the plague is left unchanged by the discovery in 1976 of the Lille papyrus of Stesichorus’s Theban poem. Classicists have not devoted much attention to the plague in the drama once they have used it to address the issue of dating. Rare exceptions are Daux 1940 and Duchemin 1949. By contrast with the narrative poets of epic and lyric, the dramatists were comparatively free to innovate with their mythic material because everyone realized that the drama was a fictional recreation rather than the presentation of a literally true story; cf Robbins 1986, 3. 56 Ahl 1991, 35. 57 See App. A. 58 On the plague at Athens see Poole and Holladay 1979, who cite further bibliography, to which add Parry 1969, Gervais 1972, and Rusten 1989, 179-94. 59 Wilamowitz 1932, ii.225.

106 Notes to pages 39-43 60 By contrast with his (probable) service as Hellenotamias (treasurer of the confederacy of Delos) in 443/2 and as general in 441/0, both of which were positions of one year’s duration that left, as far as we can tell, no permanent imprint on his life or work. See Merritt 1959, 189, and Woodbury 1970. 61 Fora recent discussion, see Aleshire 1989, 9-10, who stresses that, while Sophocles may have introduced the worship of Asclepius to Athens, he did not found the Athenian Asklepieion. 62 The argument says that the play was produced én [Aauxinaov, ie., in the third year of the Ninety-second Olympiad; on medical concerns in the Philoctetes see Wilson 1952, 260; for more general discussions of Sophocles and medicine, see Walton 1935, 170-6, and Oliver 1936, 121-2. 63 Cf Ahl 1991, 35. 64 On the plague in the Iliad, see Bernheim and Zener 1978. 65 Thalmann 1988, 22-6. 66 Burkert 1979, 74, and Suzuki 1989, 21. 67 Girard 1986, 26. 68 Ahl 1991, 30.

69 Cf 669-70, where Oedipus again shows his awareness of the riddling nature of the oracle. 70 Robert 1984, 24. 71 Ahl 1991, 45. 72 Halliwell 1989, 172. 73 Burkert 1979, 22. To be fair, Burkert does accord due weight to Apollo’s role in this play; cf his excellent remarks in Burkert 1991, 23, “There remains the fact that the problem of gods, and of oracles and seers, is ...

much in the foreground in the whole play, even if many modern interpreters tactfully tend to gloss this over,” and 27, “The horrible breakdown of Oedipus proves the veracity of divine prescience, proves the existence of an all-comprehending intelligence that envelops this world of ours, proves the function of the ‘universal signifier’ and thus the meaning of the universe. This proof is worth the sacrifice, the breakdown of this man with whom we unwillingly identify, Oedipus.” 74 Oddly Voltaire 1877, ii.18-28, the modern Sophocleomastix, does not complain about this facet of the play. Others do, however. See most recently Peradotto 1992, 7 and passim. 75 Cameron 1968, 22, quoted with approval by Dawe 1982, 20. Ahl 1991, 192, writes of this coincidence that “the fabric of credibility is stretched thin even by the standards of comic recognition in Plautus and Shakespeare.” 76 Lietzmann 1965, 110-13. The fly is already mentioned in Seifert and Threlfall 1934, 8.

107 Notes to pages 43-6 77 Starr and Devine 1964, 23-4. Further examples of this cliché include: “The beginning and the end are common,” Heraclitus 22 B 103 Diels-Kranz; “En ma fin est mon commencement,” the motto embroidered on Mary Queen of Scots’ chair of state (see Baring 1931, vii); and “In my beginning is my end,” T.S. Eliot, “East Coker,” 1.1. CHAPTER FOUR

1 Dodds 1966 = Dodds 1973, 64-77. The article has been cited frequently and anthologized several times, e.g. in O’Brien 1968, 17-29; Segal 1983,

177-88; and Bloom 1988, 35-47. 2 Dodds 1966 identifies and refutes two further views (that the OT is a tragedy of fate and that Sophocles, as a pure artist, does not concern himself with morality or religion at all), which, since they are mutually exclusive of the view I support, I join him in rejecting. 3 Dodds 1966, 37 = 1973, 64. 4 Ibid., 42 = 69. 5 Ibid., 47 = 75. 6 Ibid., 45 = 73. Dodds holds a similar view of Aesch. Eum.; he writes (1973, 47-8): “Nearly everyone agrees ... that there is a political point here; but after a century of controversy there is still no agreement on what the point is. I believe myself that this is exactly what the poet would have wished: he was writing a political play, yes; but a propagandist play, no.” 7 Of these Dodds mentions (1966, 38 = 1973, 65) especially Wilamowitz 1899. He also (1966, 42 = 1973, 69) sees similarities between his view and those of Whitman, Waldock, Letters, Ehrenberg, Knox, and Kirkwood.

8 Winnington-Ingram 1980, 203, and Dawe 1982, 4-5. , 9 The view that Oedipus is guilty is expressed by Vellacott 1964, and Cameron 1968, 133. 10 See Stanford 1983, who cites bibliography at 174-6, to which add Kokolakis 1986, and Heath 1987, 5-36. 11 Golden 1976.

12 One could, however, argue (as Charles Daniels has pointed out to me) that by knowing he was acting in ignorance and yet, by marrying Jocasta, behaving as though he did not know this, Oedipus was as guilty of mother abuse as of father abuse. 13 Dodds 1966, 38-9 = 1973, 66. 14 On this question, see especially Bremer 1969, Stinton 1975, and Halliwell 1986a, 202-37. 15 On the general preference for plot over character, see Goldhill 1990, who cites bibliography at 111 n 32. On character in Sophocles, see Easterling 1977:

108 Notes to pages 46-8 16 Dodds 1966, 48 = 1973, 76. 17 Ibid., 39 = 66. 18 There are no grounds on which to assess Oedipus’s guilt or innocence in the case of his incest, for incest was not formally illegal at Athens; see Harrison 1968, 22 n 3, and Broadbent 1968, 155. What matters more than the legality or otherwise of incest is that incest is obviously a violation of motherhood, which the Greeks held in high esteem (see Sommerstein 1989 ad Aesch. Eum. 657-66), and apparently constituted a pollution (Parker 1983, 97-8). 19 Knox 1964, and Easterling 1985. 20 Garner 1987, 103-4, and Lewis 1989; cf Greiffenhagen 1966. 21 See MacDowell 1978, 113-18. 22 Le. én’ adtomwoa, e.g. Lys. 1. 23 “Ev 660 xa8erwv, Dem. 23.53; cf Aeschin. 1.91. 24 Gagarin 1978, 118 n 32, pace Wilamowitz 1899, 55 = 1931-37, V1.209. 25 Eur. Phoen. 44-5. Even in Euripides’ version the robbery is incidental to

the murder and is not the motive for it. 26 “Awvvouevos GOYovta yelo@v Adinwv, Lys. 4.11, Dem. 23.50, 47.7, Isoc. 20.1, Pl. Leg. 869d, Arist. Rhet. 2.24.9 (= 1402a), Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.9.

27 Gagarin 1978. 28 Ibid., 117. 29 As is claimed by Wilamowitz 1899, 55 = 1931-37, Vi.209; Sheppard 1920, xxix; and Bowra 1944, 165. 30 Not even in the OC does he make this claim explicitly, although he says nmadwv pév avtedsewv (271), which implies reciprocity. Mekler’s emendation (accepted by Jebb) at OC 547, nai ya dv, otc Eddvevo’ gw’ GmaMdkeoay, has Laius intent on murder, but the mss read uat yae GAAous Emovevoad xamwAEeoa, which is capable of a wide variety of reconstructions, of which Mekler’s is by no means the most obvious. 31 For Laius had, of course, wanted to kill him when he exposed him years before, a point to which we shall return. 32 Au’ 6eyf\s. This is but the last occurrence of 6oyn and related words in the play, the others being at 335, 337, 339, 344, 364, 405, and 524. 33 Loomis 1972, 93. 34 Od. 1.35-43, 3-309-10, 11.422-30. 35 Ul. 2.661-70, 13.694—7, 15.431-9, 16.572-6, 23.85—-90, 24.480-3, Od. 13.259-75,

14.380-1, 15.271-82, [Hes.] Aspis 9-19, 80-5, Hes. fr. 257 Merkelbach-West.

36 Town: I. 9.633, 18.497-508. 37 Laius: Od. 11.271-80; Iphitus: Od. 21.24-30. 38 There are other murderers known to Greek myth as we find it in Apollodorus who make no compensation or purification for murder; these are listed by Parker 1983, 375, sect. 2 and 3. 39 Ishall henceforth use the term “morality” as a shorthand for “ancient Greek popular morality.”

109 Notes to pages 48~50 40 See App. B. 41 Pind. Pyth. 11.38, Theogn. 911-92, Prodicus apud Xen. Mem. 2.1.21-34 (= 84 B 2 Diels-Kranz), Hdt. 1.11.2, Pl. Leg. 799c. Beyond its empirical demonstrability, recent readers of the play are reminded of this fact by the commentary of Dawe 1982, 3, a scholar scarcely given to rash interpretative conjecture. See, too, Halliwell 1986, 189. 42 Agamemnon, of whom the word BaotAevtegoc is used in comparison

with Achilles, commands one hundred ships to Achilles’ fifty (I/. 2.576, , 685). See Drews 1983; Geddes 1984, 28-36; and Rihill 1986. 43 E.g. Od. 2.14, Tyrt. fr. 12.37 West, Theogn. 935-6.

44 In addition to its usefulness for cartage, an astyvn is the appropriate vehicle for conveyance on ceremonial occasions; see Lorimer 1903, 136-7. Nor is it merely the tool of rustics: a Guaéa drawn by mules was not beneath Priam’s dignity (Il. 24.266-74), and the &mnvy was used as a vehicle for competition in the Olympic games (cf Pind. Ol. 5, 6). Contrast the Near Eastern attitude to the mule as shown by Zech. 9.9 and Matt. 21.5. 45 The king has naturally undertaken a mission to Delphi himself, rather than delegating it; cf Pind. Ol. 6.37-8. No motive for the mission is given or necessary in the play. 46 Dawe 1982, 174 ad 805. 47 As Vellacott 1964, 140, argues. 48 E.g. Ar. Nub. 993, Pl. Resp. 412c, 465a, Xen. Rep. Lac. 2.10.

49 See Gould 1973, 90-4. 50 Il. 13.624-5, Od. 9.270-1, 14.283-4. Burkert 1985, 130. 51 Od. 17.483-7, Ov. Met. 1.212-13, 8.611-724; cf Acts 14.12. Hollis 1970, 108-9, and 1990, 341-54. 52 Il. 6.119-236. This is a special case, since Glaucus and Diomedes are

connected by earlier ties of family; but then so too were Oedipus and Laius, if they had only bothered to stop and find this out. 53 Old man: yéguv I. 24.358, 361, 368, like the meeoBus Laius, OT 805, 807; travelling away from home: I]. 24.481; herald: II. 24.282, 352, again like Laius, OT 753; young man: xoteos Il. 24.347; son: IJ. 24.362, 371, with the note of MacLeod 1982 ad 362 (“Hermes becomes something like Hector to Priam, both as his defender and as his good ’son’”); cf Oedipus’s unrecognized filiation; brigand: Il. 24.355—7, like Oedipus, OT 122.

54 The particular relevance of this story to my argument was pointed out to me by Emmet Robbins. 55 So Jebb 1887, 110 ad 804-12. 56 See Bill 1901. 57 Jebb 1887 ad 804-12. 58 See Wéry 1966. The relevance of this evidence to the case of Oedipus has been noted by Fitton Brown 1969, 308.

110 Notes to pages 50-52 59 Aoefés, Dem. 12.4. 60 Hdt. 7.136.2. A Euripidean chorus cries uh me0¢ Bewv xjouxa ToAUNONS Bevetv, Heracl. 271. 61 Plut. Per. 30.3, Dem. 12.4. Oedipus, who killed a man engaged in a theoria,

will easily insult a seer (386-9; cf his insulting of the Pythia, 964-5), since that is a relatively common form of disrespect for the god’s servants (cf Il. 1.106, 12.231—50, Soph. Ant. 1033-8).

62 Garvie 1986 ad 899. 63 Ti deaom; Aesch. Cho. 899, Soph. Phil. 908, Eur. Alc. 380, cf Aesch. Suppl. 379-80, Ag. 206-7, Soph. Aj. 457, Hdt. 1.11.3-4, Eur. Med. 502, Ar. Vesp. 319a (paratragic). See further Fowler 1987b. 64 Bowra 1944, 190. 65 Cf Neoptolemus in Soph. Phil., who shares the nature of the father he has never known. 66 E.g. Ant. 641-4. Blundell 1989, 26-59. 67 Oduny tony y Eteicev. Bowra 1944, 164, is wrong to say, “Laius was the

ageressor and got what he deserved”; by Oedipus’s own admission he got more than he deserved. 68 Gagarin 1978, 118 n 32. 69 “Ioa ne0¢ toa, Hdt. 1.2.1. 70 Earlier accounts: Od. 11.273, Pind. Ol. 2.38—9; later accounts: cf Eur.

Phoen. 37-44, in which Oedipus is provoked, but not by Laius. 71 This seems to be the implication of 771-3 and of the phrase xai oot, yuvat, TAANGES EEECOD (800).

72 Dodds 1966, 38-41 = 1974, 66-8, ridicules the scrutiny of character, but I would argue that much of this scrutiny has been rather insufficiently focused than misdirected.

73 See Knox 1964, 15-16. 74 He does yield once in the play, with great reluctance, at 669-72, when he spares Creon in response to the combined pleas of Jocasta and the chorus. 75 In chapter 7 we will see reason for preferring the hubris over the heroism interpretation. Some scholars such as Winnington-Ingram 1980 have tried to have an Oedipus at once arrogant (183) and innocent (203). 76 Heraclitus 22 B 119 Diels-Kranz, quoted by Winnington-Ingram 1980, 177.

77 Hes. Op. 331-2, Theogn. 821-2, Aesch. Eum. 269-71, Ar. Ran. 147-50. 78 As he does in Soph. OC 273, 547-8, 988-9. 79 Diog. Laert. 1.76, Ar. Pol. 2.9.9 (= 1274b), Rhet. 2.25.7 (= 1402b). So Pace Diog. Laert. 81 Av duédeiay, Arist. Eth. Nic. 3.5.8-9 (= 1113b—1114 a).

82 He acts as though he knew that Polybus and Merope were undoubtedly his parents; cf 826-7.

i111 Notes to pages 52-6 83 Which can only with extreme latitude be characterized as “compill[ing] a handlist of all the things he must not do” (Dodds 1966, 40 = 1974, 69, quoting Waldock); it would be a short list. 84 Sophocles and Herodotus shared views on many topics: e.g. Ant. 908-12 = Hdt. 3.119.6; El. 417-23 = Hdt. 1.108.1; OC 337-41 = Hdt. 2.35.2; OT 1528-30 = Hdt. 1.32.5; El. 62-4 = Hdt. 4.95; OC 1224-7 = Hdt. 7.46.3-4. 85 4-5, 43-4, 94-5, 161, 216-21 Parke-Wormell = Q58A-B, Q28-9, Q146-7, Q191A-B, Q7-9 Fontenrose. 86 See App. C. 87 148, 149 Parke-Wormell = L17, L18 Fontenrose. Wilamowitz 1899, 55 = 1931-37, v1.209; Dodds 1966, 41 = 1973, 69. 88 Dodds 1966, 41 = 1973, 69 (Dodds’ italics). 89 Dodds 1951, 31. In the present context he cites, after Knox 1957, 39,

the case of Peter, who fulfilled Jesus’ prediction that he would deny him (Matt. 26.34, 74-5) but “did so by an act of free choice” (Dodds 1966, 43 = 1973, 71). Kitto 1958, 60, is right in saying, “there was nothing compulsory about the affair at the cross-roads.” Dodds uses the concept of overdetermination in his study of the Oresteia

1973, 56.

go Cf (Laius’s) toes vios, Pind. Ol. 2.38.

91 Halsted 1979, 77. 92 Pl. Ap. 21a-b (420 Parke-Wormell = H3 Fontenrose). 93 De Romilly 1968, 50, writes, “Even if things are supposed to exist

through all eternity and to have been decided regardless of time, it is with time and in time that they come to be. He uncovers them.” See also Vivante 1972, who cites bibliography at 130-1, to which add Komornicka 1976. 94 This is a title of Zeus (Aesch. Eum. 1045, Soph. OC 1085) and of Helios (Aesch. PV 91; cf Il. 3.277).

95 Heraclitus 22 B 102 Diels-Kranz, quoted by Dodds 1966, 47 = 1973, 76.

96 Zeus and Semele: Pind. Ol. 2.25-6, Eur. Bacch. 6-12; Yahweh and Moses: Exod. 33.18-23. 97 For their own language, see Hes. Theog. 831; for their own intonation, see Lsj s.v. 0ooa and 6udT. See also Watkins 1970, who cites bibliography at 1 nn 1 and 2, to which add Clay 1972 and 1974 and Calderén Felices 1982. 98 Parke and Wormell 1956, 1.33.

99 Nothing would have prevented Polybus and Merope from openly adopting a child, but, as a foundling (1026), Oedipus cannot be adopted if Athenian laws are imagined as holding good in Corinth; hence they are forced to lie. See Harrison 1968, 71.

112. Notes to pages 56-8 100 Goodhart 1978, 56 n 2.

101 To ta dgeiroueva Excotw amodidovat, Pl. Resp. 331° = Simonides 642 PMG.

102 Lloyd-Jones 1983, 121, likewise believes that Laius must deserve his suffering, yet his own solution (that the suffering is provoked by Laius’s rape of Chrysippus) violates Aristarchus’s rule, “What is not mentioned in the play does not exist,” and so is less economical than the view proposed here. 103 Cameron 1932 and Harris 1982 hold that exposure was common; Golden 1982 holds that the exposure of girls was common; van Hook 1920, Bolkestein 1922, Engels 1980, and Patterson 1985 are far more sceptical about the frequency of exposure of children of either sex. 104 Health: Patterson 1985, 113-14; legitimacy: ibid. 115-16; primogeniture: Cameron 1932, 106 (cf Pl. Theat. 161c); maleness: Golden 1981. Tyro in one of Sophocles’ plays of that name exposed her twins because they were illegitimate. It would of course be rare in real life, if not unparalleled in legend (cf Paris: Apollod. Bibl. 3.12.5), that a child should be prophesied to kill his father (Soph. OT 712-13). 105 Richardson 1974, 231-4; Patterson 1985, 105-6; and Golden 1986, 252-6. 106 Golden 1981, 33]; cf Pl. Theat. 1614. 107 On exposure as a motif in myth see Murray 1943 and Redford 1967. 108 Ogentol, Patterson 1985, 121-2. 109 “Die unerforschlichen Wege des géttlichen Willens”; “man darf nicht gut und bése falsche Begriffe menschlicher Sittlichkeit hineintragen,” Wilamowitz 1899, 56 = 1931-37, Vi.210. 110 Dodds 1966, 43 = 1973, 71. 111 Ibid., 43 = 71. 112 Nativities: Pind. Ol. 1.26—7, 6.39—47, 7.35—-8, Nem. 1.35—47; inventors: Pind. Ol. 1.40—-5, 7.42, 13.17-22, Pyth. 2.32, 4.217, 12.6-8, and see Kleingiinther

1933 and Thraede 1962; nagaxona mowtomrumv (Aesch. Ag. 223). See van Groningen 1953, 122. 113 Aesch. Cho. 269-96, 900-2, 953-6, 1029-30, Eum. 798-9. 114 First at Ant. 773-80, 1068-71; secondly at 1192~1205. 115 Aj. 646-92, Trach. 249-90, 569-77, El. 680-763, Phil. 343-g0. 116 Dodds 1966, 45, 49 = 1973, 74, 77. This curious doctrine of enlarged sensi-

bility was no mere temporary aberration of Dodds’ thought, for he had enunciated it years before in Dodds 1944, xliii = 1960, xlvii. Dodds does not specify the source of this quotation, but David Sansone has most plausibly suggested to me that it is an inaccurate quotation from memory of Johnson’s Life of Waller §139: “From poetry the reader justly ex-

pects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy.”

113 Notes to pages 59-64 CHAPTER FIVE

1 Peradotto 1992. 2 Ibid., 4. 3 Ibid., 10. 4 Ibid., 11. 5 Ibid., 7-8. 6 Ibid., 7. 7 Ibid., 8. 8 See App. C. 9 Peradotto 1992, 8. to Ibid., 9. 11 Kretzmann 1966, 41. 12 Dewey 1929, 41. 13 Peradotto 1992, 8. 14 Robert Fowler points out to me the importance of Jocasta’s prayer, the timing of which might well have figured more prominently in Peradotto’s list of coincidences. 15 Peradotto 1992, 4. 16 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.6: Quoniam igitur omne iudicium secundum sui naturam quae sibi subiecta sunt comprehendit, est autem deo semper aeternus ac praesentarius status; scientia quoque elus omnem temporis supergressa motionem in suae manet simplicitate praesentiae infinitaque praeteriti ac futuri spatia complectens omnia quasi iam gerantur in sua simplici cognitione considerat (“Since, then, every judgment comprehends the objects of its thought according to its own nature, and since God has an ever present and eternal state, His knowledge also, surpassing every temporal movement, remains in the simplicity of its own present and, embracing infinite lengths of past and future, views with its own simple comprehension all things as if they were taking place in the present.” Trans. Buchanan and Oates 1957, 64). 17 Frankel 1946. 18 Hasker 1983, 192. 19 This is the project of R. Swinburne’s trilogy, 1977, 1991, and 1981. See also Prevost 1990. Swinburne’s most noteworthy critic is Mackie 1982, 95-101. 20 See Braine 1988. 21 The idea that the Divine Intellect or Nous manifests itself as the various gods of the pantheon is not found fully developed until Plotinus Enn. V.8 [31].9.14-9, Maximus Grammaticus = August. Ep. 16, Procl. Elements of Theology prop. 113, Celsus apud Origen c. Cels. 8.2, and Julian Agatnst the Galileans 115d, but this monotheistic tendency is already apparent in the

114 Notes to pages 65-70 “blanket clause” in prayer (e.g. Zevs, Gots WOT’ Eottv Aesch. Ag. 160-1, quocum@ue tibi placet /... nomine Catull. 34.21-2); see Armstrong 1981. 22 Ihave taken this example (with slight modifications) from Craig 1988, 140 n 10, who in turn has derived it with modifications from Fitzgerald 1970 and Fitzgerald 1974, 543. 23 This excellent point was suggested to me by Anthony Podlecki. 24 I take this example from Prado 1984, 19, who puts it to slightly different use.

25 In chapter 4,n 12, 1 advanced the idea that Oedipus can, indeed, be seen as having some responsibility in the matter of incest, but Iam prepared to suppose here that he has no such responsibility because, even on these grounds (a worst-case scenario for the theodicy interpretation), Apollo is not necessarily revealed to be unjust. 26 For these terms see Rimmon-Kenan 1983, 3. 27 One thinks of the Abbruchsformeln with which lyric poets curtail their narratives in mid-stride; see Schadewaldt 1966, 268. 28 Such readings of the play have been criticized, rightly, by Taplin 1982, 173. 29 E.g. Dodds 1966, 47 = 1973, 76; Fortes 1959, 13-18; and Girard 1987a, 33-40. 30 This parallel has not, to my knowledge, been fully explored. The title of Hester 1977, “Oedipus and Jonah,” is misleading; he mentions the Book of Jonah only once (on 35). 31 LSJ s.v. tiuos 1b, citing inter alia Soph. OT 780, offer the translations “without the honour of ..., not deemed worthy of,” and Jebb 1893 ad loc translates as “not graced [i.e. deprived, disappointed = without] in respect of those things (responses) for which I had come.” 32 Manchester Guardian Weekly 3 Jan. 1993, 20. CHAPTER SIX

1 Eco 1980, 19.

2 Cf Clytaemnestra’s apparent neglect of the infant Orestes, who was cared for by Cilissa, Aesch. Cho. 734-65.

3 This is in part a result of the Greek habit of anatomizing the landscape; cf D’Ambrosio-Griffith and Griffith 1989, 104 n 21. Pindar often enters his myths by means of a geographical subterfuge (the term of Méautis 1962, 264; cf Young 1968, 4) whereby a city is identified with its patron nymph (e.g. Pyth. 9.4-5). Nowhere is the confusion of anatomy and landscape, the transformation of Mother Earth into Earth Mother and vice versa, more pronounced than in the interpretation of precisely those dreams by reference to which Jocasta seeks to allay Oedipus’s fears, dreams of mother-incest (981-2); cf Hdt. 6.107 with Griffith 1994, Suet. ul. 7, and Artemidorus Onitrocriticon 1.79.

115 Notes to pages 71-6 4 On the riddle see Lloyd-Jones 1978, 60-1. 5 The relative quantities of the two alphas show that the reading of Oisinddac as ol60 165a¢ could only be a popular etymology; “however, the Greeks were by no means disinclined to indulge in such fancies of occasion” (Braswell 1988, 370; I owe this reference as well as much clarification on the question of metre and dialect to Emmet Robbins). 6 I use capital letters in this discussion since those are the ones with which Sophocles himself and his audience were familiar; that the Greeks were sensitive to letter-shapes is shown by a number of passages of Greek literature, cf Norwood 1945, 132, and Carson 1986, 57—8. In addition to the passages adduced by Carson, cf Ar. Thesm. 780-1 and PI. Cra. 327e. Fora recent treatment of the letter-shapes of the crossroads incident, see Pucci 1992, 106; on the shape of the letter Y, which figures both in Oedipus’s name and as the shape of the crossroads, see Cumont 1987, 278; and on the importance of this shape for the play as a whole, see Derrida 1981, 362. Another orthographic feature of Sophocles’ time, which I respect here, is the absence of word-division. 7 Joyce 1986, 74. 8 Terrace 1979, 29-30. 9 Stanley 1963, 237-49. 10 Dawe 1982, 178. 11 Cocteau, “La Machine infernale” in 1948, v.190. 12 On the canine nature of the Sphinx, see West 1966, 257, on Hes. Theog. 327. 13 Dickens 1988, 636.

14 The meaning of a name is often actualized only later in life: e.g. Helen “took the ships” (Aesch. Ag. 687), Pentheus became a “man of sorrows” (Eur. Bacch. 367), and Hippolytus was “undone by horses.” In Oedipus’s case, however, the understanding of the name is not actualized in the recognition scene but rather is recovered after having been long lost. 15 On the problems of nomenclature of slaves, see Masson 1972, 9-23, and Collins Reilly 1978, 111-13. 16 So Sarai became Sarah (Gen. 17.15), Jacob Israel (Gen. 35.10), and Simon Cephas, i.e. Peter (Matt. 16.18, John 1.42). This change of name is not to be

confused with the interchangeable, simultaneous use of two names, e.g. Paris/ Alexander, Astyanax/Scamandrius (II. 6.402-3), Ascanius /Tulus (Verg. Aen. 1.267), Saul/Paul (Acts 13.9). CHAPTER SEVEN

1 Dante, Inferno 1.30. 2 Dodds 1966, 38-9 = 1973, 66.

3 In chapter 4,n 91, I rejected the claim of Halsted 1979, 77, that Oedipus is hubristic in attempting to evade the outcome predicted by the oracle.

116 Notes to pages 76-9 It is rather in the manner of his failure to evade it that his hubris is manifested. 4 Fisher 1992, 1; cf 341 n 41. 5 E.g. Kamerbeek 1967, 176 ad loc. 6 Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990, 100 ad loc. 7 Scodel 1982. 8 Blaydes, followed by Dawe 1982, ad loc.

9 Fowler 1987a, 5.

10 This is acommon problem: Pelops, venerated at a heroon at Olympia, was punished by Zeus (Pind. O/. 1). lam grateful to an anonymous referee for bringing this point to my attention. 11 Burton 1980, 148; Seale 1982, 220. 12 On recognition scenes, see Stuart 1918, Scott 1930, Basabe 1950, Solmsen 1967, Segal 1971, Richardson 1983, Murnaghan 1987, and Cave 1988. 13 See Versényi 1962, 25; Champlin 1969; and Hoey 1960. 14 Men. fr. 538 Kock = Comparatio Menandri et Philistionis 2.166—74, Plut. Cons. ad Apoll. 28-9, Lucian Dial. mort. 2.14, Sen. Consolatio ad Marciam 11.1-5, Tert. Apol. 33. See More 1906, 201, and Wilkins 1929, 57-8. Robert 1915, 1.57, writes, “Die Pointe dass das Wort des Ratsels der Ratende selbst

ist, lasst es als ein vergr6bertes und popularisiertes yv@0t oavtov erscheinen” (The point that the answer to the riddle is the answerer himself reveals it as a popularized form of the command “Know thyself”). 15 E.g. by Vellacott 1971, 131ff; Segal 1981, 207; and Brody 1985, 20. 16 See Earle 1901, 40. Note, however, Robert's warning 1915, 1.57, “Dass

jedoch die Fassung mit Rticksicht auf den Namen Otdinous ‘der Fusskundinge’ gewahlt sei, der seinen Trager zur L6sung des Ratsels gewissermassen pradestiniere, diesen Gedanken halte ich, auch abgesehen von der sehr bedenklichen Etymologie, fur keine gltickliche Ausgeburt modernen Scharfsinns” (I consider the idea that the name Oedipus, understood as “I know about feet,” predestined its owner to answer the riddle is a most unhappy offspring of modern creative interpretation). 17 The riddle is referred to by the inscription [x]at tet{ov] on the Vatican cup, ARV*451.1 (470 BC); cf Corinna 672 PMc; Pind. fr. 177.4 Snell-Maehler,

Pyth. 4.263. It is quoted for the first time, apparently from an unknown early tragedy, by Asclepiades of Tragilus 12 F 7 FGrHist. The yotdoc of toimous Beotos = yéouwv is found in Hes. Op. 533; Aesch. Ag. 80, 1258; Maximian 1.219. For a discussion of the riddle and its history, see LloydJones 1978, 60-1. 18 See chap. 1, n 32, above. 19 See also Eur. Phoen. 27; Ar. Ran. 1192; Sen. Oedipus 811-13, 857-9; Chantraine 1968, 780, s.v. Oidtmous; Maxwell-Stuart 1975; Vernant 1978, 483-4; Hay 1978, 27; and Calame 1986.

117 Notes to page 79 20 Soph. OT 718, 1031-8, 1349-50; cf Eur. Phoen. 26, 805, Diod. 4.64.1, Apollod. Bibl. 3.5.7, Sen. Phoenissae 254, Nic. Dam. go F 8 FGrHist. 21 See chap. 2,n 55, above. 22 Cf Soph. OT 1037. There is one place in the play before the fatal recognition scene when Oedipus might have shed his ignorance of the cause of his lameness. At 717-19 Jocasta says that she “yoked” the ankles of her infant son, and Oedipus surprisingly fails to connect this act with his own lameness. Fitton Brown 1966, 22, gives a psychological explanation for Oedipus’s surprising inattention to this point. For his part, Sophocles has Oedipus give a more compelling dramatic motive for his failure to appreciate this vital clue. As we saw in chapter 2, he says clearly at 726-7 that he stopped listening to Jocasta when she mentioned the crossroads at 716, before she described the “yoking” of the infant’s feet. 23 The figure of pars pro toto is of course common in classical and especially in Sophoclean idiom: e.g. Oidistov xdea, Soph. OT 40 (cf 950, 1207, 1235); cf Il. 8.281, Od. 1.343, Soph. Ant. 1, El. 1164, OC 1631, Pind. Pyth. 9.31, Plaut. Mil. 725, Ter. Ad. 261, Catull. 68.119—20, Verg. Aen. 4.354, Hor. Carm.

1.24.2. Not all such figures involve the head; cf Bin ‘HoaxAnein (Hes. Theog. 332; cf Od. 11.601). For similar periphrases with tc see IJ. 23.720, Od. 2.409, 16.476, 18.60, 405, 21.101, 130, 22.354, Hes. Theog. 951, fr. 198.2 Merkelbach-West; and with wévoc see Od. 7.167, 178, 8.2, 4, 385, 421, 423, 13.20, 24, and 18.34. Such a pars pro tofo arises from the archaic concept

of the body as “a mere construct of independent parts variously put together” (see Snell 1953, 6). An interesting later synecdoche of foot for self is found in the iconographic tradition of the god Sarapis (see Dow and Upson 1944). 24 On the foot as penis symbol, see Eur. Med. 679 (with Plut. Thes. 3), Eubulus fr. 108 Kock, Epicrates fr. 10.5 Kock, Ar. Lys. 416, 664, and cf Henderson 1975, 126, 129-30, 138. On the role of this symbolism in interpreting the Oedipus myth, see Ferenczi 1956, 222; Jung 1952, 405; Sas 1964, 105; and Edmunds 1981, 236 n 55. Edmunds 1988, 52 = 1986, 238, argues that “the

| eyes and the feet stand for the genitals of Oedipus.” 25 Lévi-Strauss 1958, 239. This idea was already proposed by Kretschmer 1923, 50ff.

26 Shelley, “Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant,” Leinieks 1975, and Vernant 1982, 34. 27 Cf Ennius Saturae fr. 64 Vahlen?; Bettini and Borghini 1986. 28 Dawe 1982 on lines 130, 418, 467-8, and 878. Among those to have entertained this “tasteless possibility” are Knox 1957, 182, and WinningtonIngram 1980, 188 n 26. 29 E.g. *aloew €&w 1660 mnAod, Alc. 130b.16 Voigt, Aesch. Cho. 697, PV 263-4, Soph. Phil. 1260, Eur. Heracl. 109-10, Hipp. 1293 with Barrett's note, Andr. 1259, Suda s.v. €xtoc, Eur. JA 212, €& evog w0d0c, Soph. Phil. 91,

118 Notes to pages 79-80 nal woot xal mavty, Pl. Symp. 195e, €E Gxuvyntov 20d0c, Soph. Trach. 875, totv mooic xaxov, Eur. Alc. 739, dvya MOSa VoOUaV, Soph. OT 468, Aj. 247, Xoovovu moc, Eur. Bacch. 889, fr. 42 Nauck?, Ar. Ran. 100, and malus pes (whereby inferior poetry may be recognized, Catull. 14.22; cf Ar. Av. 1379). The phrase ytyvwoxeww TO 1aQ 7080s is common in Greek in various forms: see esp. Soph. OT 130; cf Pind. Pyth. 3.60, 10.62, Isth. 8.12, Soph. Ant. 1327, Eur. Alc. 739, Andr. 397-8; cf mapa moda, meaning “then and there,” in Soph. Phil. 838. 30 E.g. anouc, Phil. 632, agylaouc, Aj. 237, Getimous, Trach. 58, devvomous, OT 418, dodonous, El. 1392, Exatoumous, OC 718, éxm0dmv, Aj. 1000, Ant. 1324, 1339, €umodicw, Phil. 432, Eunodwv, OT 128, 445, émimdd.oc, OT 1350, nxotvomous, El. 1104, dg00n0us, Ant. 985, medaw, Aj. 676, med, OT 1349, Trach. 1057, modayos, Ant. 1196, nodiGw, 269¢.13 TrGF, nobmxyes, Ant. 1104, nmorvusous, El. 487, tavumous, Aj. 837, bipistouc, OT 866, and yaAxonous, El. 491, OC 57. (These examples come only from Sophocles; examples from other authors could similarly be multiplied.) See also Gerber 1987, 10.

It is perhaps relevant to Sophocles’ concern for feet that he is credited with the invention of the distinctive tragic buskin (Istrus FGrHist 334 F 36, Verg. Ecl. 8.10 with Servius’s note). For an assessment of the evidence, see Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 204-8.

31 This point is obvious only once it is pointed out, as it was to me by Thomas Wade Richardson. To this style of dress we may owe the wealth of references to the ankles of women and goddesses (references are collected in Maehler 1982 on epin. 5.59). 32 Cf Lucian Alex. 59: dtaoaneic tov 1660 LExEL TOD BouBOvoc.

33 Fr. 314.102-19 = col. Iv.16-col. v.8 TrGF. Note too the hunting imagery at Aj. 5-6 and esp. at OT 109, 221, 476, and 542. Cf Musurillo 1957, 49, and Hay 1978, 42 and 111. 34 Fitton 1973, 254.

35 The prominence of the foot in epiphanies may be linked to the custom among gods and mortals of knocking on doors with the foot rather than the fist (Ar. Av. 54, Callim. Ap. 3, Plaut. Most. 2.2.23 [= 453], Ter. Eun. 284-5, Hor. Sat. 1.1.10, and Carm. 1.4.13). 36 See Rose 1956, 67. One distinctive feature of Poseidon’s feet in this passage is their speed (il. 13.17—-19; cf Il. 5.770-2 and Pind. Pyth. 3.43-4). Hl. 13.71-2 is quoted in Heliodorus Aeth. 3.12.2 (1am grateful to an

anonymous referee for bringing this passage to my attention). 37 Apollo has beautiful feet (Callim. Ap. 3). Ate and Eros have soft feet (Il. 19.92, Pl. Symp. 195d). Bacchus appears without his tragic buskin (Verg. G. 2.7-8). Demeter appears with her foot on the threshold (Hymn. Hom. Cer. 188-9; see Ogle 1911, 260-1). Dionysus appears with feet that are holy, bold, or bovine (Soph. Ant. 1144, Ar. Ran. 330, carmen populare 871.5 PMG; see Brown 1982, 306 n 7). Faunus has a gentle walk

119 Notes to page 80 (Hor. Carm. 3.18.3; see Praenkel 1957, 204 n 4). The ghost of Dareius appears as a quasi-deity (cf Taplin 1977, 115) wearing saffron slippers (Aesch. Pers. 659-60) like Hymenaeus (Catull. 61.9-10; cf 68.70-1). Venus walks like a goddess (Verg. Aen. 1.405; cf 5.649; see Harrison 1972-73), and Juno walks like the queen of the gods (Verg. Aen. 1.46). 38 Beautiful shoes: Hymn. Hom. Merc. 57, Alc. fr. 327.2 Voigt; silver shoes: Pind. Pyth. 9.9; golden shoes: Il. 24.340-1, Od. 1.96-7, 11.604, Hes. Theog. 12, 454, 952, Sappho fr. 103.10 Voigt, fr. 123 Voigt. Empedocles is said to have left a brazen sandal at the crater of Aetna as proof of his apotheosis there (31 A 2 Diels-Kranz, Diog. Laert. 8.69). A statue of Diana wears purple boots (Verg. Ecl. 7.32). Lesbia, appearing as a candida diva, places her foot in its creaking slipper upon the threshold (Catull. 68.70-6; see Baker 1960 and Glenn 1980; I owe these references to David Marko). 39 Jason: Pind. Pyth. 4.75, 96; schol. Pind. Pyth. 4.133 (= 2.117 Drachmann); Pherecyd. 3 F 105 FGrHist.; Ap. Rhod. 1.7—11; Lycoph. Alex. 1310; Odysseus: Od. 19.386—93; Soph. fr. 451a IrGF (Helen also recognizes Telemachus by the likeness of his feet to Odysseus’s in Od. 4.147-—50); Orestes: Aesch. Cho. 205-10; Eur. El. 532-9. The footprint token may have been used before Aeschylus by Stesichorus; cf 217.11-17 PMG. See Tregenza 1955, Lloyd-Jones 1961, Burkert 1963, and Roux 1974. The scarred feet of Oedipus serve as recognition tokens in some late texts (Myth. Vat. 2.230, Hyg. Fab. 67), which may preserve the original version of the myth. See Robert 1915, i.62, and Delcourt 1944, 24-5. 40 Bacchyl. epin. 3.48, Aesch. Pers. 1073. It is particularly significant that the connection of this word with a way of walking seems to arise out of a Greek re-etymologizing of a Persian word; see M. Leumann’s letter quoted in Snell’s note of Bacchyl. 3.48, which has, however, been questioned by Schmitt 1975. 41 Ar. Av. 1553, Archippus fr. 53 Kock, Ctesias 688 F 60 FGrHist. We also hear of races of men that are one-legged (Ctesias 688 F 51[a] FGrHist.), ostrich-footed (a term of uncertain meaning, schol. Ar. Av. 877, Pliny NH 7.24), and so formed that their heels are in front and their toes behind (Megasthenes 715 F 27-8 FGrHist.). See Gaidoz 1892-93. 42 Daniel 2.33. Cf the catalogue of heroes with defective feet in Lucian Trag. 250-60. Chiron surrenders his immortality and becomes a mortal after Heracles wounds him in the knee (Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.4). Men are

distinguished from animals as well as from gods by the shape and number of their feet (tetoandb6mv aavtiwv xat 6vdoamdbwv Foed. Delph. Pell. 1 B 7); hence it was a sign of great fortune that Julius Caesar’s horse had humanoid forefeet (Pliny NH 8.155). 43 Apollod. Epit. 5.3; Procl. Chrestomathy = Davies 1988, 47; Quint. Smyrn. Posthomerica 3.26—387; Hyg. Fab. 107; Serv. ad Verb. Aen. 6.57; Stat. Achil. 1.134; and Fulg. Myth. 3.7.

120 Notes to pages 80-1 44 A proto-Corinthian lekythos from Perachora (ca 680/670 BC) shows a battle scene in which an archer (Paris?) is shooting a figure tentatively identified as Achilles. Of this figure Dunbabin 1962, 11.16, writes, “The arrow is about to hit [him] somewhere not far removed from his heel.” A black-figure amphora from Chalcis (ca 550/540 Bc), formerly in the Pembroke-Hope collection and now lost, poses no problems of identification, for the figures are labelled. Achilles lies dead with an arrow in his heel and one (for verisimilitude?) in his side. Glaucus has tied his foot with a thong and is trying to drag him off. See zruc L.1.182-3. 45 Verg. Aen. 2.273; Heracles: Pl. Euthydemus 297c (the incident is shown on an engraved plate-fibula of the early seventh century; see Burkert 1979, 80, with fig. 5); Philoctetes: Soph. Phil. 7, etc.; cf Aesch. fr. 252-5 TrGF (for other snake-bites in the heel, see Verg. G 4.457—-9 and Gen. 3.15); Talus: Soph. fr. 161 IrGF, Ap. Rhod. 4.1629—-93, Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.26 (see Robertson 1977); Telephus, the subject of a lost Sophoclean tetralogy (on which see Siekewicz 1976): Pind. Isth. 8.48-50, Apollod. Epit. 3.17; others: Laispodias (schol. Ar. Av. 1569); Melampus (he had sunburned feet, schol. Theoc. 3.43-45g [= 130 Wendel], schol. Ap.

Rhod. 1.118-19); Odysseus (his leg was scarred); and Palaemonius (Ap. Rhod. 1.202-6). 46 Eur. fr. 530 Nauck?, Thuc. 3.22.2, Arist. fr. 74 Rose, Verg. Aen. 7.690, Macrob. 5.18.13—-21: Dido wore only one shoe during her magic rites (Verg. Aen. 4.518). Lycurgus wore one sandal (Anth. Plan. 127.1-2) or was wounded in the foot (Hyg. Fab. 132). See Edmunds 1984, who collects further bibliography in 71 n 1 and 73 n 16, to which add Robertson 1972. 47 Agesilaus of Sparta (Xen. Hell. 3.3.3, Plut. Ages. 3.3-5) and Battus 111 of

Cyrene (Hdt 4.161) were both lame. Archilochus recommends the bow-legged general (fr. 114 West), while Tyrtaeus was himself lame (Paus. 4.15.6, schol. Pl. Leg. 1.629a). The boxer Democrates won even though wounded in the feet (Ael. VH 4.15). The Selloi have unwashed feet I]. 16.234—-5, Eur. fr. 367 Nauck?; cf Soph. Trach. 1166-7). 48 Pl. Symp. 174a, 220b, Phdr. 229a, Ar. Nub. 103, 362, Xen. Mem. 1.6.2. Rites of

discalceation such as the Roman nudipedalia emphasize human humility in the presence of the divine as well as reflecting a desire to avoid contact with death through animal products and (at Rome at least) a desire to

avoid the binding effects of shoelaces and other knots: cf Aesch. Ag. 946, | Ar. Nub. 719, 858, Callim. Cer. 6.124, lambl. Vit. Pyth. 85, 105, Sokolowski 1962, 59.15 (114), 91.8ff (161), 116.6ff (197), and Dittenberger 1915 §338.25. see Gruppe 1906, 11.912 n 6; Frazer 1929, 1.237-8; Marbach 1936; Morgan 1901; and Parker 1983, 52 n 78 and 145 n 6 (I owe this last reference to

Richard Levis). ,

For naked feet outside of a ritual context, see M.L. West on Hes. Op. 345; LSJ s.v. xovistodes; Hopper 1960, 246; and Irwin 1974, 121-2.

121 Notes to pages 81-4 49 Il. 18.371, 20.270, 21.331, Od. 8.308. That Hephaestus’s lameness stems specifically from an injury of the feet (rather than, say, of the spine) is clear from Od. 8.308-10, where Aphrodite prefers Ares to Hephaestus because he is sound of foot (aetios). Burkert 1985, 168, rightly says,

“Hephaistos the god has crippled feet, making him an outsider among the perfect Olympians.” See Detienne 1970. The limp suffered by Zeus during his lopsided pregnancy with Dionysus was only temporary (Nonnus Dion. 9.16-24). The Litai hobble precisely because they are human agents (I/. 9.503). The personified elegy has one foot longer than the other (Ov. Am. 3.1.8), but that is obviously a metrical joke. 50 Delcourt 1957, 42-3 and 116-17. 51 “Ein verkriippelter Gott is freilich ganz unhellenisch,” Wilamowitz 1931, 1.320Nn 1.

52 Propp 1983, 93, writes that in exposure-stories, “the child bears the marks of death, but he does not suffer death itself ... This case discovers the significance of Oedipus’ pierced feet, which are another, deformed mark of death.” CHAPTER EIGHT

1 Talbert 1975, Levy 1979, Anderson 1981, and Clay 1981-82. 2 Dodds 1966, 45 = 1973, 74. 3 Cf Dodds 1966, 45 = 1973, 73. 4 Prado 1984, 140. 5 The phrase is used with a different application in Polybius 39.2.3. 6 See Bowra 1970, 233-44, who regards the oracle as a forgery by a Christian

polemicist. | 7 Nietzsche 1968, 8, writes, “Als Zarathustra aber allein war, sprach er also zu seinem Herzen: ‘Sollte es denn méglich sein! Dieser alte Heilige hat in seinem Walde noch Nichts davon gehGrt, dass Gott todt ist!" " (“But when Zarathustra was alone, he said to himself, ‘So it is possible! This old saint in his forest has not yet heard that God is dead!’”’)

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Abbreviations

Abbreviations of the names of authors and titles follow those given in N.G.L. Hammond, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon 1970), ix—xxii. Ac L’Antiquité classique AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJP American Journal of Philology ARV’ J.D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters. 2nd ed. Oxford:

Clarendon 1963 BAGB Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé BIcs Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London

cA Classical Antiquity cB Classical Bulletin cy Classical Journal cP Classical Philology cpce California Publications in Classical Philology cq Classical Quarterly CR Classical Review

cw Classical World EMC/CV Echoes du monde classique/Classical Views FGrHist FB. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin:

Weidmann 1926 G&R Greece and Rome GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

HscP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

124 Abbreviations HThR Harvard Theological Review 1EG M.L. West, lambi et elegi Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon 1971-72 yBL Journal of Biblical Literature yus Journal of Hellenic Studies yRS Journal of Roman Studies LCM Liverpool Classical Monthly ~timMc H.C. Ackerman and J.-R. Gisler, eds., Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. Zurich: Artemis 1981—

sy H.G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H.S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon 1968

MusHelv Museum Helveticum PBA Proceedings of the British Academy

pce R. Kassel and C. Austin, eds., Poetae comici Graect. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1983PcPps Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society

PMG D.L. Page, Poetae melici Graeci. Oxford: Clarendon 1962 Pvs Proceedings of the Virgil Society RBPhil Revue Belge de philologie REG Revue des études grecques

RhMus_ Rhetnisches Museum | TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association TrGF B. Snell, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Gottingen:

Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1971-

ws Wiener Studien ,

zPE Zeitschrift fiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik

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Index

Abram, Abraham: and beautiful feet, 118n37; inspiration when Isaac, 82; his God, 84; his helps Chryses, 56; iden- chewed, 10

name, 75 tified with sun, 26; ig- Beginning and end are Achilles, 26, 49, 80, 109n42, nored by Aristotle et al., common, 43, 107n77

120n44 33,42, 84; neither affirms Birnam Wood comes to

Address to departing back, nor denies, 97n25; never Dunsinane, 19

22 directly answers ques- Blindness: effect of plague,

Adulterers: caught in fla- tions, 41, 55, 68; number 74; hindrance to an as-

grante delicto, 47; of times mentioned in sassin, 34; “mark of victhwarted by noisy plays, 97n27; oblique, 55, tim,” 34; self-inflicted

doors, 100n56 97n25; of the Streets, 16; by O., 26, 46, 75

Agamemnon, 50, 56, 58 one who “has de- Break-off formulae (AbAltar(s): Aeschylus refugee stroyed,” 26; outside of bruchsformeln), 67,

at, 15; how many? time, 54, 63; possible 114n27

98n34; of Apollo, 16, 17, non-existence of, 59,85; —_ Briseis, 40 19, 22, 24, 27, 98n37; of principle of individua- Buskin, tragic (xOoQ0@vos),

O., 6, 18, 77; real vs tion, 16; spokesman of 24, 118n30

stage-property, 15 Zeus, 17 Byron, George Gordon,

Ambiguity, no visual ana- = Arbitrariness of victim’s Lord, 80

logue to, 19 choice, 34

Amynus, Sophocles priest Aristarchus: see “What is Caduceus, sign of herald,

of, 39 not mentioned ...” 49,74

Anachronism in tragedy, Arithmetic: see Mathe- Cancelled entry, 99n51

47 matics Carcinus, censured for in-

Anagnorisis: see Recogni- Arrogance: see Hubris consistency, 21

tion Aspasia, 31 Cervantes, Zeitgeist of, 10 Apollo: all-too-human, 5, unparaphrasable,

Anaxagoras, 31 Avatar, 18, 64 Chance: c. sequences

56; altar of: see Altar(s); | Babies are fools, 74 94n10; role of in world, god of light, 26; has Bayleaves, do not produce 62

144 Index Character: change of, 27;is Discalceation, 120n48 Foreknowledge, 51, 63-6

destiny, 51 Disease, spread by con- Forgetfulness opposed to

Choice: of Heracles, 48; of tact, 41 truth (Heidegger), 95n38 O., 50, 89 Doors: Greek houses have Foundlings: cannot be le-

Chorus: represents com- no back doors, 21, 25, gally adopted, 111ng9; munity, 21; suspects in 100n68; knocked on with found, not given, 38 the murder of Laius, 35 foot not fist, 118n35; lack Future: can it be known?

“Chrononaut,” 10, 12 hinges, 100n56; noisy, 19, 51; everyone in the grip

Chrysippus, rape of, irrele- 22; normally closed, of, 12-13 vant to play, 112n102 open indicating that ocCity vs country, 99n48 cupant is without, 15; Geographical subterfuge,

Cocteau, Jean, 32, 73 open inward, 19; skene 114n3 Coincidences: evidence has back door, 25 Geometry: see Mathefor non-existence of Drama: admittedly fic- matics

God? 62; large number tional, 105n55; substitu- Goats, sacrificed to Diin the play, 42-3, 56; un- tive, 18; see also Tragedy Onysus, 15

necessary to reveal truth, God: dead, according to 61 Elders, respect due to, 49 Nietzsche, 84; not a fasCompensation for murder, Empedocles, 62, 119n38 cist, 85; plays dice, pace

monetary, 48 "Egyeoos, man’s nature, Einstein, 62—3; timeless,

Creon: as foil to O., 52; 63 64

confuses living and Epiphany, 80 Gods: destroy men during dead, 58; defends him- Error, tragic (GUaotia), 17, epiphanies unless dis-

self against charges of 46, 98n32 guised, 55; have their O., 34; hesitant, 50; not Ethnocentrism, 11 own language, 55,

an inmate of the palace, Etymology, popular, 115n5 111n97; immoral, 55; im-

20 Evil, the problem of, 66 mortal, 82; plurality of, Criminals, tortured on Ro- — Exile: of O. not effected in 64, 113N21; recognized

man stage, 96n17 the play, 33, 41, 66; pun- only at end of encounter, Croesus, ruined his em- ishment for murder, 48, 55; recognized by feet,

pire, 52 56 55, 80; seldom crippled,

Crossroads (toiodoc): act- Exposure of newborns, 39, 81; visible only to one

ing area conceived of as, 42, 57, 112mn103-4 person, 104n44 18, 25; as place where Eye(s): see Blindness Grammaticality, 95n36

decision must be made, Eyewitness, 35 Greek preoccupied with

48; constant in the myth, knees and feet? 79 48, 89; Laius murdered Facts, made up, 8, 83 Grundgedanken, 94n10

at, 36, 58, 61, 62 Father abuse, 51-3, 107n12 Crowns, 18, 19, 20, 23,24, Flute-player, 21, 28 Hand, healing, 79

100N54 Foot/feet: as parasol, 80; Hat, traveller’s, 24 bear(s) mark of death, Hearsay, 35

Dance, 15, 80 81, 121n52; oedema of, Heel: Achilles’, 6, 80, Death, marked on feet, 81 39, 71, 75, 79; O's, 120n44; in front with toe Deism vs theism, 64 “yoked,” 23, 39, 42, 56, behind, race with, Desire, triangular, 30, 43 60, 71, 79, 117N22; of clay, 119n41

Dice, God’s, 62-3 80; role in recognitions, Helen, 40 Dionysus: orchestra sa- 55, 80; scar on, 38, 52; Helping friends, harming cred to, 16; plays have shown off in Mediterra- enemies, 50, 67 nothing to do with, 15, nean climate, 80; sym- Heracles: change of name,

84, 96n18 bolize(s) penis? 79; 75; choice of, 48; foot

Disbelief, suspension of, synecdoche for self, 79, wounded, 6, 80; not

64-5 98n44 punished for murder in

145 Index epic, 48; prototype of So- Jocasta, 56, 60,63, 70,and § Murder: see Homicide

crates, 81; subject of Pin- passim Muses: daughters of Memdar’s Second Olympian,8 Jonah, 67-8 ory, 95n38; invoked by Heraclitus (quoted), 10, Justice: see Simonides on poets, 9

51, 55 (bis), g7n25 justice Mutilation of newborns, O. Herald(s), 5, 36, 49-50, 54; a unique case, 39, 57, 61 see also Caduceus Kingliness, degrees of, 49 | Mysteries, profanation of Hero, heroism, 51, 67, 76 Knees, grasped in suppli- by Aeschylus, 15

Herodotus, 37, 50, 52 cation, 18

Highwayman, caught red- Knowledge: about feet,71; Name(s): covenant, 75;

handed, 47 footedness of, 74; of fu- meaning of, actualized

Histoire, 66 ture, 51, 63-6; of late in life, 105n52,

Historicism, anti-histori- Laplace's hypothetical 115n14; must accom-

cism, 7-13, 46, 83 demon, 63-4; symbol- pany concept? 77; of O., History, a nightmare, 9 ized by sticks, 74; “un- 27, 38-9, 70-5, 105N52; Homer: best explained derstanding of what is ritual (teAeoTtx0V), 72from Homer, 11; some- known,” objective of 3; true (ETULOV), 72

times nods, 11 classical scholarship,i0 Naming festival, 57 Homicide: committed by “Know thyself,” Delphic Nebuchadnezzar, sees in

inanimate objects, 54; maxim, 17, 69, 78, 83, furnace someone he did

unintentional, justified, 116n14 not throw in, 104n44

or intentional, 47; unpre- Newborn not a legal permeditated, 48 Laius: looks like O., 50; son, 57

Hubris, 6, 51, 53, 76-8, 82 motive for mission to Nim Chimpsky, the talking

Hunting, 54, 80 Delphi unknown, ape, 72

Hyperboreans, 16, 97n25 109n45; not just aninno- “No,” sometimes an an-

cent victim, 56 swer to prayer, 68

Ignorance: not always Laplace’s hypothetical de- | Nose, Schliemann’s son’s,

grounds for innocence, mon, 63-4 10

52;notanecessary con- _ Letters, the Greeks sensi- “Nothing in excess,” Del-

dition of an act’s being tive to their shapes, phic maxim, 17

within one’s power, 65 115n6 Nudipedalia, 120n48 Incest: a pollution, 108n18; Light: Apollo as god of, 26;

not formally illegal at sets speed limit of uni- Oedema of feet, 39, 71,

Athens, 108n18; O. prob- verse, 65 75,79

ably innocent of, 53; O. Oedipus: acknowledges

possibly responsible for, | Malice aforethought, 48 his ignorance, 53-4; afi-

107N12, 114Nn25 Mask changes in drama, cionado of ultimate

Inconsistency, dramatic, 21 26-7 causes, 58; allegedly Intention: of agent, out- Mathematics, 6, 43-4, 73, never laid a finger on

weighed by effect of ac- 74, 83, 94n10 Laius, 30; altar of: see Altion, 9; of author, not Memento mori, 81 tar(s); apotheosis of, 37; single, 8; of author, un- §Metempsychosis, 10, 94n25 arouses Our sympathy, knowable, 8-9, 28, 83; of | Method, classicists reluc- 45, 66; begins play as

murderer, 47 tant to discuss, 7 master of house, 19; de-

Intertext, 40 Mirror scene in drama, 19, tective, 70; glasnost of,

Iota, signifies insignifi- 100N57 20, 74; has four children cance, 72 Mobius strip, 43, 73 (not two), 32; has handsIrony, 19, 53 Monosandalism, 80-1 on style of government, Mothers, the Greeks loved 100n53; his feet

Jews, persecution of, 31 theirs, 108n18 “yoked,” 23, 39, 42, 56,

Job, 67 Mule-car, 49, 109n44 60, 71, 79, 117N22; jumps

146 Index to conclusions, 37, 50; itsend not mentioned in Sciapods, 80 looks like Laius, 50; the play, 41, 66; killsin- Scroll-wand (oxvutaAn), name of, 27, 38-9, 70-5, discriminately, 30; sets in 74 105n52; navigator by motion the plot, 47, 56 Self-defence killing, 47 stars, 70;neverlimps,19, Poets,mayerronoccasion, Sensibility, enlargement

32, 38, 100N55, 104n42; 11, 95N37 of, 58

not stupid, 22-3; psy- Pollution (uiaopwa), 41 Shackleton’s delusion, chologist, 70; usurpsrole Polybus (and Merope), 39, 104N44

of gods, 18, 21, 77; yields 43,55, 59, 60, 71 Shame culture, an 4 priori

only once in play, 51,76, Polynices, 37, 41 construct, 12

110N74 Polytheism, 64 Signs, (mis) read by O., 53,

Oedipus the King: as suppli- Prediction, unconditional, 70

ant play, 17; date of, 39, 53 Simonides on justice, 5, 56, 87; draws on processof Premeditation, 48 66

judicial inquiry, 47; first | Psychoanalysis, 32, 70 Single day, motif of, 64 play of day, 99n51; pe- Pythia: grants oracularre- Socrates, 13, 53, 58, 81 ters out into irresolution, sponses once a year/ Soliloquy: see Address to

103Nn26 month, 36; in ecstasy, 55; departing back

Omerta (code of silence), messenger of Apollo, Sophocles: actor in his own

20, 74 83; not always believed, Thamyras, 102ng0;

Orchestra of theatre of Di- 54, 70; often consulted friend of Herodotus, 52; onysus, Athens: circu- more than once, 52; pro- general, 106n60; inven-

lar? 16, 21, 96n8 cess of consulting, 55 tor of tragic buskin,

Orestes, 46, 80 118n30; priest of AmyOriginality, outweighed Quast antiquus, impossibil- nus, 39; specializes in

by tradition, 9 ity of becoming, 10 theatrical geography, Ostracism, 31 g9n48; student of Ae-

Ostrich-footed race, 1ign41 ——- Récit, 66 schylus, 22; treasurer

Overdetermination, 37,54 Recognition: inhibited by (Hellenotamias), 106n6o0 plague, 74; scene, 69,70, Speech, freedom of

Pan, death of, 84 71, 78; token, 38, 60-1, (TMAOONALA), 20

Paraphrase: heresy of, 80, 119n39 Sphinx: canine in form, 74; 94n10; useful heuristic Relativism, cultural, 11 distraction from the

tool, g3n10 Rezeptionsgeschichte, 30 murder investigation, Parasol, foot as, 80 Rhetoric, 29, 38 40, 48; riddle of, 70, 72, Pars pro toto: see Synecdo- Riddle: see Sphinx, riddle of 74, 78; slain by O., 67;

che Risk, world as scene of, 63 suspect in the murder of

Parthenogenesis: Hera’sof Rivers, one cannot step Laius, 38 Hephaestus, 81; Zeus’s into the same one twice, Stage, 16

of Dionysus, 121n49 10 Sticks, 74

Past: becomes necessity, Robbers, how many? Strangers: lack brother-

62; Greeks in the grip of, 35-7, 56 hood, law, and hearth,

12 Running slave, 25 49; murdered only by

Penis, symbolized by foot? barbarians, 49; O. mis79 Sacrifices: never per- takes his parents for, 58 Pericles, 31 formed during plays,15; Structuralism, 32

Philoctetes, 40, 80 willing victim of, 33 Suffering, innocent and abPittacus of Mytilene, 52 Sarapis, represented by surd, 46, 56

Plague, Athenian, 31, 39, foot, 117n23 Sun, comes from a bad

74,87 Scapegoating, 29-44 family, 26

Plague, Theban:aSopho- —-_ 2yxfjua. xata TO Suppliant play, Oedipus the clean invention, 39-40; CLOMMLEVOV, 95N32 King as, 17

147 Index Supplication, techniques ity, Holy; roads: see Variant versions of stories,

of, 18-19 Crossroads; things (e.g. 37

Supposititious children, 55 actors, plays): create Vengeance, should fit Synecdoche (pars pro toto), sense of inclusive total- crime, 50-1

19, 79, 98N44, 117N23 ity, 18 Voltaire, 106n74 Threshing-floor, origin of

Tableau, frozen, 24 orchestra? 97n31 Wells, allegedly poisoned,

Tachyon-telephone, 65 Time: Apollo outside of, 31

Tantalus, punished on 54, 63; as free agent, 54, Weltanschauung, 9

Olympus, 3 63, 111n93; God outside “What is not mentioned in

Tat tvam asi (“This is you”), of, 64; travel backward the play does not exist,”

12, 85 in, possible? 94n25; see 11, 51, 78, 95N32, 112n102

Teiresias: expert on feet, also “Chrononaut,” Fu- “What should I do?” 50, 78; infallible, 34, 67; mes- ture, Past, Single day 110n63 senger of Apollo, 83; Time-warp, mental: see White, the colour of sup-

sex-change of, 67; “Chrononaut” plication, 19

usurps position of O.,22 ‘Tradition, outweighs origi- Wine, a type of blood, 15,

Temple-crepidoma, un- nality, 9 96n16 even number of stepsof, Tragedy: anachronism in,

g6n12 47; emotional medium, | Yahuna Indians, 31 Theory (i.e., consultation 45; intellectual art-form, of Delphic oracle), 18, 36, 45; see also Drama Zarathustra (Nietzsche’s),

39, 49 Trinity, Holy, 64 84

Thersites, 40 Tripods, why more stable Zeus: incognito, 49; never Thought-experiments, 5, than four-legged stools, appears on stage, 17; of

60-1 74 Strangers, 5, 49, 54; sub-

Three: angles: see Desire, Truth: correspondence the- ject of Pindar’s Second

triangular; days: O. ex- ory of, 12; opposed to Olympian, 8 posed at, 57; feet, 78, and forgetfulness (Heideg- Zoilus Homeromastix, 42 see Tripods; generations ger), 95n38; what is it? in one, 79; gods: see Trin- 12