Antigone / Oedipus Rex / Oedipus at Colonus

The oral traditions of Greece included the mythos of the life of Oedipus long before the first performance of this play, and the audience knew exactly what would happen before the gears of the plot begin turning. But the relentless, clockwork motion of the play kept theatergoers rapt then, as it does now, because watching fate unfold when it is known to you but not to the people who are its prisoners is a privilege borrowed from the gods.

Oedipus is portrayed bold, mighty, and just, as the Priest claims him "greatest in all men's eyes".(l 40) Yet he also has human foibles and it is soon clear he has a destiny that, in spite of his actions, cannot be avoided. One theme of Oedipus the King is based on his hubris, but there is also the show more importance of his search for knowledge, the truth of his own being. Before the action of this play begins, Oedipus has already attempted to outrun fate, marking himself early for destruction. By attempting to escape a prophecy that he would kill his father, and leaving the palace at Corinth where he was raised, he sets the machinery of doom in motion.

Traveling along the highways, he soon enough meets and murders a man he thinks is merely an overly aggressive stranger. Years later, he discovers that the dead man is his natural father, Laius, and that he has unwittingly performed the act he was trying to avoid. The play begins with Oedipus again attempting to reshape the arc of his life that was described by prophecy. The hints of his coming failure are numerous.

In the Priest’s first long speech, when he begs Oedipus to save the city, he appeals to the king’s long experience—as a statesman, as a wanderer, as a ruler and as a vagrant. Unknown to the Priest and to Oedipus—but known to the audience—is that this king’s experience also includes killing his father and marrying his mother. The very experience to which the Priest appeals is moving Oedipus step by step to destruction. This exchange between the Priest and Oedipus is an example of how Sophocles builds dramatic tension into his play by including multiple levels of meaning in a single statement.

The technique will be repeated throughout the play. It reappears just a few lines later, when Oedipus tells the Priest that he has asked for help from the Oracle at Delphi and will follow its advice or consider himself a traitor. With the borrowed omniscience of the gods, the audience knows that Oedipus is already a traitor for having killed Laius, and that he will be faced with pronouncing the judgment he has pronounced upon himself. It remains only to witness what happens.

In another exchange weighted with similarly complex levels of meaning, Creon tells Oedipus what he has learned from the Oracle. Creon begins with the murder of Laius as background, and Oedipus says that he knows of the previous king, but has never seen him. Creon continues, delivering the Oracle’s instructions, and Oedipus vows to find and punish the murderer of Laius.

While the Oracle’s wishes are being delivered by Creon and while Oedipus reacts to them, the audience knows, as before, what Oedipus does not—that he murdered Laius, that he is the dead king’s son and that the widowed queen Oedipus married is his mother. Once again, there is something transfixing, tragic and doomed about watching Oedipus, in his ignorance, attempting to follow the Oracle’s orders but all the time preparing for the revelation of his crime and his subsequent doom.

The first hint of the truth is revealed to Oedipus by the blind prophet, Tiresias, and the king answers the seemingly unbelievable charge with rage, insults and threats. Raised in Corinth by the royal house as if he were the natural son of his adoptive parents, Oedipus rejects what Tiresias says as errant nonsense, saying "Had you eyes I would have said alone you murdered him [Laius]."(ls. 348-9) The blind prophet, who taunts Oedipus as being the one who is unable to see the truth, claiming "you are the land's pollution."(l 353) He challenges the king to reconsider everything about himself and the challenge is met with rage - Oedipus is unable to see the truth or to hear well-intentioned advice.

Pride and faith in his own abilities moves Oedipus ever onward toward doom, failure to honor the gods results in the very destruction they foretell, and humanity is unable to escape what is predicted for it. His wife, Jocasta, is a flawed individual. Her arrogant dismissal of the gods and her proclamations of victory over fate foretell her undoing. As much as Oedipus, she is unable to see until it is too late that her life fulfilled the very prophecy she sought vainly and pridefully to undo. Oedipus begins to see, in brief glimpses, how blind he has been to the central facts of his own life.

Thinking that he is doing a good deed, a Messenger tells Oedipus that it’s fine for Oedipus to come back to Corinth any time—he’s in no danger of fulfilling the prophecy there, the Messenger says. By telling Oedipus that the queen who raised him is not his natural mother, the Messenger has unknowingly revealed enough of the truth to make Oedipus tragically curious and to push Jocasta toward despair. Motivated by a simple desire to ease worry, the Messenger has released the machinations of fate that will produce the full revelation of the truth and all its awful effects. When the Messenger speaks, he is as blindly ignorant of his fatal role in serving destiny as Oedipus and Jocasta are of theirs. He speaks, but he does not see.

In this section, the theme is hammered home time and again that people go through their lives thinking they are fulfilling one purpose when they are actually lurching toward the completion of several others. The gods know this and watch events unfold from above. The first audiences of this play knew the histories of its characters before the first lines were spoken, and the drama unfolded for viewers who watched with the borrowed omniscience of the gods. Modern readers are left to decide for themselves what they think about fate, prophecy and human attempts to outrun destiny.

The climax of the play is both pitiful and tragic. Yet, it also yields knowledge for Oedipus of who he really is, even as he goes forth as a blind man. The chorus intones the message that "Time who sees all has found you out / against your will;" (ls. 1213-14). As Aristotle put it in his Poetics, Sophocles has organized his story so as to emphasize the elements of ignorance, irony, and the unexpected recognition of the truth. The magnificence of this drama has allowed it to endure and challenge readers ever since. show less

So... not over-rated. Fagles' translation is solid, much clearer than his Aeschylus, though I actually prefer the opacity he brought to that text. Of course, that might have been in Aeschylus. I will never learn Greek well enough to tell.

Antigone was the earliest of these plays, though the last within the narrative. I can't help but read it with my Hegel glasses on: the clash between Creon and Antigone is an example of a failed conceptual grasp of the world, in which the claims on us of family/tradition/ancient gods cannot be accommodated by our living in larger, civic communities. Divine law and human law sometimes do not go together, but only a tyrant would insist on hewing to the latter alone. Removing the Hegel glasses, I can see show more that Creon, to his credit, does change his mind. But this being Greece, by then it's all too late. The 'lesson', if you like, is simply that one has to exercise excellent judgment in these matters.

This question of judgment works through the Oedipus plays, as well; each tyrant (Oedipus in OK, Creon in OC) fails to use good judgment; the good king Theseus does exercise it, and thus Athens rules etc etc... I know we're 'meant' to think that these plays are really about always bowing down to the gods and accepting fate, but that just doesn't square with what actually happens: Athens succeeds because of Theseus's wisdom just as much as his piety; Thebes will eventually fall because of its kings' folly just as much as their impiety. In OK, Oedipus has the chorus's support in his argument with Tiresias, because Oedipus's defeat of the Sphinx acts as proof of his regality; but when he accuses Creon without evidence, they give up on him... because by acting without evidence, he shows poor judgment. And so on.

The best play for reading is easily Oedipus the King, which is horrifying and glorious in equal measure. Also, if anyone out there knows of a good book on Tiresias, let me know.

As for Knox's introductory essays, they're not particularly thrilling. There's too much plot-summary (good news for freshmen, I guess), and his insights are so skewed ("these plays aren't depressing! They're about how we do have some control over our lives!") that it's hard to take him seriously. but they're still worth reading. show less

Oedipsu The King:
While I tend to read things in publication order, Sophocles' Theban Plays probably have enough wiggle room on what's been lost and when they were written that I can go through them in chronological order.

With my first introduction to the Greek plays being The Oresteia by Aeschylus, I found myself liking them enough but having a bit harder time pulling out from them what made them so influential on the road to Plato. With Sophocles, there's no strain in figuring out what messages from the plays were used to talk about humanity in a greater context. On top of that, these are really good stories. Either that or I'm finally becoming smarter in reading the great books...nah!

Oedipus The King (aka Oedipus Rex) is essentially show more a murder mystery in the style of Columbo, as the audience knows who the murderer is, but with the twist ending for the character revealed. Modern jokes and Freud made popular the story of Oedipus for all the wrong reasons (go figure that Freud was wrong about something). Here, the story follows in the similar styles of previous Greek epics and plays and that's the story of pride going before the fall and a sprinkling of destiny vs. free will. Oedipus starts as a likeable character who is attempting to save his people from a plague as a result of a murder (dun dun duuunnn). He's a likable character at first and has been known to be a clever person with the defeat of the Sphinx which the kingdom in his control is the result of. He has also attempted to defy the gods not out of malice but in an attempt to show love for those he is slated to kill.

All that good will is built up and then dashed as he goes on to make rash vows for justice and being braggadocio as he solved one riddle so a murder investigation should be easy pickings for someone as big brained as he is, especially after he insults one of the best prophets of the Greeks. The buildup in the writing shows why Sophocles got the accolades after Aeschylus. Sophocles uses rising tension and bits of revelation to add to it. From there, it's a great ride over the cresting hill when it all comes down on Oedipus. The interesting thing that Greek plays have that us modern readers can have with the audience is that we tend to know the stories these characters are a part of already. The audience knew the back story of Oedipus and the outcomes. What Sophocles gets to do is try and create a compelling story to reveal the details of that revelation and the story takes on a universal quality as we're still using similar story elements to this day. The concept of pride and the downfall is one that keeps popping up for the Greeks and it seems like it once again up to Christianity to solve the problem of how to handle pride. Final Grade - A-

Oedipus at Colonus:
Last to be written by, probably second overall, Oedipus at Colonus continues Sophocles's tales of pride and justice. Where Oedipus the King was similar to a modern murder mystery, Oedipus at Colonus is like an adventure tale with a tale of good and bad kings and the hints of the supernatural that makes a pre-Enlightenment tale fun.

Oedipus returns and even though his ending during the last story was hubris before the fall, it's hard to not like him and that character trait is held up by Sophocles at the beginning of the story even if Oedipus is a little more whiney at the beginning. Returning character of Creon is less virtuous here than he was in the previous story and is the clear knave here and the character change from Oedipus the King is a bit off from the innocently accused but noble character from before. The character to shine though is Thesus, the king of Athens. It's clear that Sophocles would write the king of Athens in such a grand way, being an administer of justice, protector of the weak, and enlightening leader. It's quite clear through this character that Sophocles is calling the Greeks to a higher calling and comes from that same line of Homer and Aeschylus where one goes from a confederation of people to cities and onto nation states. What type of people do you want to be and is it one who wants to enrage the gods or be blessed by them by doing what you know is the right thing.

While it's not as big of a roller coaster ride that Oedipus the King was, Oedipus at Colonus is a great read to see the development of what the West will become. Final Grade - A-

Antigone:
While probably being first written, this is a good conclusion to the chronological story of Oedipus and his family. Sophocles shows why he took the topic of the respected Greek playwrites of his time. The previous stories involved a murder mystery and one of adventure, this one is a Romeo and Julie heist story. And who says ancient literature is boring?!

Antigone is a story about contrasting ideas and ideals. Antigone and her sister, Ismene, kick off the story being constrasting characters of those who fight and those who submit. Is the drive to do what is right paramount or is it to be safe and obey human orders. This is a great jumping off point for the rest of the story where these themes become even more clear and probably less subtle.

Creon returns, but he has a few redemptive qualities than he did in Oedipus at Colonus. He matches both Oedipus' pride cometh before the fall and elements of Orestes of The Libation Bearers in trying to figure out what the right way to turn is. He's a much better character here than in previous stories, but almost being the main character probably helps that. Knowing that the plays were done in a different order would make seeing the character of Creon in a different light than that of the chronological order and that would be a fascinating thing to consider. Antigone is hard not to like. She takes the role of stand up for what is right even in the face of the king which us modern readers have an affinity for. A surprising character that is written very well rounded is Creon's son, Haemon who attempts to appeal to logic, ethics, and correct tradition while at the same time being respectful and obedient. The juxtaposition between father and son lends to mirroring the story well.

Like the previous stories, the call to the audience and to Greece as a whole is, what kind of people do you want to strive to be? Are there natural laws (the laws of the gods) that oversee and counterman the laws of man and what does a good leader look like. The greater ideas of what is man is also beginning to be explored here and the hints at universal truths and understand seem to be coming out more here. All three plays were a pleasure to read and one that modern audiences can really enjoy. Final Grade - A

Overall for this book:
A big complaint I have about this book that I have for the series is that the notes are in the back of the book instead of at the bottom of the page. Also, the notation scheme are little bubbles instead of numbers to make for an easy reference. This is an atrocious thing to do for those of us nerds who care about things like this. show less

What like you don't read greek tragedies as light reading?

Antigone remains my favorite, howevef I greatly enjoyed all of Doerries translations here. Written with both lyrical quality and with enough modernization that its easy to follow along with, Doerries did a stand up job.

This is my second collection of Sophocles' works, and overlaps slightly with the first one I read, as Oedipus at Colonus is in both.

Here, three "Theban Plays" are presented together to form a pseudo-trilogy, although they were not originally presented as such. Sophocles probably wrote these years apart, as entries in now-lost separate trilogies. However they still struck me a forming a coherent whole.

Oedipus the King is the only one of the three which doesn't seem to focus on Sophocles' usual theme of "stubbornly doing right no matter the cost" vs "picking your battles". It's more of a straight presentation of the story as we know it - the dramatic irony is laid on thick as Oedipus discovers the truth behind his ancestry and marriage. show more As in Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus's fatal flaw of stubborn and hasty anger is present as he rages at both his brother in law Cleon and the sage Teirisias before finally realising the truth.

I feel like I preferred the other translation of Oedipus at Colonus, although that might have just been because it was fresher the first time. I didn't identify any obvious differences between the two versions.

Antigone follows the fallout from the events of Oedipus at Colonus, as Oedipus's fiery and loyal daughter insists on burying her traitor brother, despite being threatened with death. The ending is very "Romeo and Juliet"-coded, which goes to show there's no new stories under the sun.

Taking the "tilogy" as a whole, I found Cleon to be the most intriguing character, and he seems to go through a full character arc from the "first" to "last" play (there's no guarantee they were actually written in that order). In Oedipus the King, he's the brother of the queen, uninterested in gaining the crown for himself but fully dedicated to the stewardship of his city. As time marches on, he becomes increasingly ruthless, resorting to more and more extreme acts for the good of his city. Finally, in Antigone he has become what Oedipus once was - blinded by his own stubborn anger and unsuspecting of the punishment fate is about to exact upon him. Like Oedipus, he loses everything.

A couple of notes. I was confused when I first started reading the Theban plays, because I thought Thebes was a city in Egypt, and had no idea there was also a Thebes in Greece. They don't tell you that in these books, presumably because they presume a passing familiarity with ancient Greece.

The second is the answer to a translation convention that has been bothering me throughout my Greek literature journey. The use of "God" and "hell" and so forth in an anachronistic fashion is apparently deliberate - the translators have chosen to replace certain instances of Zeus etc with modern idioms in order to invoke the correct reaction in the reader/audience. Personally I find it more jarring this way, but at least I now know why they do it! show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1968366.html

This is the Wordsworth Classics edition of Antigone / Ἀντιγόνη, Oedipus the Tyrant / Οιδίπους Τύραννος and Oedipus at Colonus / Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ, all translated by Jamey Hecht. I took them fairly slowly, to let the blank verse translation sink gently into my mind.

I found Antigone / Ἀντιγόνη the most politically interesting of the three. The title character's brother has died as a rebel against Creon, the king of Thebes; she wishes to give him decent burial, contrary to royal command. It's quite a striking narrative of a woman demanding what we would now call human rights against the established political power (which claims moreover to show more have divine backing). Creon pushes his authority too far and suffers awful consequences.

I had read Oedipus the Tyrant / Οιδίπους Τύραννος previously in a different translation. I found it just as powerful here, with perhaps a better rendition of Oedipus' increasing consternation and horror as the truth becomes clear to him. I did wonder if Sophocles' audiences would have been in any suspense whatsoever as to what was going to happen; surely everyone going into the theatre would have been muttering "killed his father, married his mother" and just watching to see how well it was done?

Oedipus at Colonus / Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ seemed to me the weakest of the three, and I had to start it again after getting halfway through and realising I had missed most of the plot. Here the blind Oedipus has found refuge near Athens, but the factions in Thebes (his sons and Creon) have been told by an oracle that the resting place of his corpse will determine the victor in their struggle. Oedipus gets some good bitter speeches about how unfair life is in general, and his own in particular, but I found the play as a whole much more difficult to follow.

The decision to present the three plays in order of composition here did not work for me. For readers not passionately devoted to analysing how Sophocles' writing style evolved over the decades of his career, it surely makes much better sense to order them by internal chronology, ie Oedipus the Tyrant / Οιδίπους Τύραννος first, then Oedipus at Colonus / Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ, then Antigone / Ἀντιγόνη last. This has the merit of explaining why Antigone's brother was fighting Creon, and also puts the strongest plays first and last, which makes for a more satisfying experience as a reader.

The almost complete lack of stage direction offers a blank slate, but also a challenge, to anyone wanting to direct the plays today. show less

42. Sophocles I : Oedipus The King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone (The Complete Greek Tragedies)
published: 1954 (my copy is a 33rd printing from 1989)
format: 206 page Paperback
acquired: May 30 from a Half-Price Books
read: July 3-4
rating: 4½

Each play had a different translator

Oedipus The King (circa 429 bce) - translated by David Grene c1942
Oedipus at Colonus (written by 406 bce, performed 401 bce) - translated by Robert Fitzgerald c1941
Antigone (by 441 bce) - translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff c1954

Greek tragedy can fun. After all those rigid Aeschylus plays, that is the lesson of Sophocles. The drama within the dialogue is always dynamic, and sometimes really terrific. I had to really get in the mood to enjoy reading a play by Aeschylus, show more otherwise I might be bored by the long dull choral dialogues. These three plays are all different and all from different points in Sophocles career, but they each drew me on their own.

Although they are all on the same story line, they were not written together, or in story order. Antigone was first, and was written when Sophocles was still trying to make a name for himself (vs Aeschylus). Oedipus the King came next, when Sophocles was well established. Oedipus at Colonus was apparently written just before Sophocles death, at about age 90. It wasn't performed until several years after his death. All this seems to show in the plays. Antigone having the sense of an author trying to make a striking impression. [Oedipus the King] carrying the sense of a master playwright with it's dramatic set ups. Oedipus at Colonus is slower, and more reflective. And two of the main characters are elderly.

Oedipus the King

This is simply a striking play, from the opening lines. In line 8, Oedipus characterizes himself to children suppliants as "I Oedipus who all men call the Great." It shows his confidence, but, as Thebes is in the midst of a suffering famine, it also shows outrageous arrogance - it's the only clear sing of this in the play. He is otherwise a noble character throughout. Of course he doesn't know what's coming. In the course of the play he will learn, slowly, his own tragic story - that a man he had killed in a highway fight was his father, and that his wife, and mother of his four children is also his own mother. As each person resists giving him yet another dreadful piece of information, he gets angry at them, threatening them in disbelief at their hesitancy. His denial lasts longer than that of Jocasta, his mother/wife, who leaves the play in dramatic fashion herself, first trying to stop the information flow, and then giving Oedipus a cryptic goodbye. And even as his awareness gets worse and worse, he cannot step out of character, the show-off i-do-everything-right ruler, but must continue to pursue the truth to it bitter fullness.

Oedipus at Colonus

A mature play in many ways. It's slow, thoughtful, has much ambiguity, and has many touching moments. The opening scene is memorable, where a blind Oedipus moves through the wilderness only with the close guidance of his daughter, Antigone.

...

Who will be kind to Oedipus this evening
And give the wanderer charity?

Though he ask little and receive still less,
It is sufficient:

Suffering and time,
Vast time, have been instructors in contentment,
Which kingliness teaches too.

But now, child,
If you can see a place we might rest,

...

It's interesting to see Creon, Jocasta's brother, turn bad. But it's more interesting to see Oedipus have a bitter side to him. He maintains his noble character, and that is the point of the play—he is hero because he never did anything bad intentionally, and yet he bears full punishment. But he also makes some interesting calls, essentially setting up a future war between his Thebes and Athens. And, Antigone is striking too. She saves Oedipus critically several times through her advice or her speech. While sacrificing herself and maintaining real affection for Oedipus, she is also shrewd, stepping forward boldly and changing the atmosphere.

Antigone

This play takes place immediately after what [[Aeschylus]] covered in [Seven Against Thebes]. Polyneices has attacked Thebes with his Argive army, and been repulsed by his brother Eteocles. Both are sons of Oedipus and they have killed each other in the battle. Creon is now ruler. He is a stiff ruler. Despite much warning, he refuses to listen to popular opinion, instead threatening it to silence (a clear political point is being made). But the problems start when he refuses to give his attacker Polyneices a proper burial. He threatens death on anyone who does try to bury him. Antigone openly defies this rule, setting up the play's drama. It's an extreme tragedy with a hamlet-like ending where practically everyone dies. I felt there was less here than in the other two plays, but yet there is still a lot. And it's still fun.

Overall

I don't imagine citizens of Thebes liked these plays. There is an unspoken sense of noble Athen poking fun its neighbor throughout. But, as it's not Athens, they give the playwright freedom to work in otherwise dangerous political points - and those are clearly there. But, mostly, these were fun plays. They don't need to be read as a trilogy. They were not meant that way, despite the plot-consistency. Each is independent. There are four more plays by Sophocles. I'm actually going to save them and start Euripides next. Because I think Sophocles is something to look forward to and that might push me through the next bunch.

2016
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