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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2019
The third stasimon of Oedipus Rex (OT) is the climax of the play, separating the conversation with the Corinthian messenger from the interrogation of the shepherd, so crucial for the narrative. Indeed, the question τίς σε, τέκνον, τίς σ’ ἔτικτε, critical for the plot, comes right at the beginning of its antistrophe. Sophocles, however, offers no easy answer to it. Instead, he provides yet another narrative misdirection, one that—for the last time—suggests that the paths of the king of Thebes and of his predecessor may have been divergent: the possibility that Oedipus’ divine ancestry would question the prophecy of Apollo. After enumerating Pan, Hermes and Apollo himself as possible parents, the song also mentions Dionysus and the ‘Heliconian nymphs’. The reference to Helicon has perplexed the readers for many years, since the text seems to focus on Cithaeron as the ‘birthplace’. As a result, editions and translations prefer the conjecture ἑλικωπίδων (Νυμφᾶν) proposed by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1879, over Ἑλικωνί(α)δων, the form present in all manuscripts. In this paper I argue that an analysis of our sources for Heliconian cults, an assessment of the performative context, and a close reading of the stasimon and its place in the narrative, all suggest that the manuscript reading should be retained.
I would like to thank B. Burliga, R. Poniat and E. Wesołowska for their helpful comments on an early version of this paper, as well as N.G. Wilson for helping me to obtain an exact reference for Wilamowitz's article.
2 See e.g. Taplin, O., Sophocles, Four Tragedies: Oedipus the King, Aias, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus (Oxford, 2015), 301Google Scholar: ‘Since Helicon is in a different part of Boeotia and completely distinct from Cithaeron, and since this whole song is so centrally focused on Cithaeron, this word cannot be right.’
3 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., ‘Parerga’, Hermes 14 (1879), 161–86Google Scholar, at 177 = id., Kleine Schriften, 6 vols. (Berlin and Amsterdam, 1935–72), 4.1–23, at 13Google Scholar; see Dawe, R.D., Sophocles: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge, 2006 2)Google Scholar; Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N.G., Sophocles: Fabulae (Oxford, 1990; rev. 1992)Google Scholar; Taplin (n. 2); Finglass, P.J., Sophocles: Oedipus the King (Cambridge, 2018)Google Scholar. As for the form Ἑλικωνίδων / Ἑλικωνιάδων, Finglass (this note) explains (at 500): ‘Most manuscripts have the unmetrical Ἑλικωνιάδων, although A before correction has Ἑλικωνίδων (coni. Porson on Eur. Or. 614), which would fit the metre (for instances of Ἑλικωνίς cf. Eur. Her. 791, Ibyc. fr. S151.24 PMGF, Sens on Asclep. A.P. 9.64.5 = 1022 HE, p. 316; Hes. Th. 1 has Ἑλικωνιάς) and shows a known type of corruption.’ For the manuscript tradition, see Finglass, P.J., ‘The textual transmission of Sophocles’ dramas’, in Ormand, K. (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Malden MA and Oxford, 2012), 9–24Google Scholar; Avezzù, G., ‘Text and transmission’, in Markantonatos, A. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Sophocles (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 39–58Google Scholar.
4 Wilamowitz (n. 3 [1879], 177 = [1935–72], 4.13): ‘deos nominat quicumque rupes et pascua colere creduntur, Panem Apollinem Mercurium νομίους, denique Bacchum, cuius sacra in Cithaerone fiunt. (…) at hercle ineptissime Heliconia nympha commemoratur in Cithaerone. ut taceam Heliconis nymphas Musas esse a Baccho alienas, venitne peregrina nympha in Cithaeronem ut conciperet an ut pareret? Bacchus Heliconem non colit, nec quaerit ille, si bene eum novi, prosapiam puellae quicum concumbat: forma pellicitur occulorum fulgores eum percellunt νυμφᾶν ἑλικωπίδων αἷς πλεῖστα συμπαίζει.’
5 Lloyd-Jones, H. and Wilson, N.G., Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Oxford, 1990), 104–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Helicon is indeed near Cithaeron …, but Oedipus, exposed on Cithaeron, would hardly have been the offspring of a Heliconian nymph, and indeed the mention of Heliconian nymphs would suggest the Muses. Wilamowitz … is surely right’; Finglass (n. 3 [2018]), 500: ‘Ἑλικωνίδων is unsatisfactory, since Helicon is a separate mountain from Cithaeron, and given the chorus's emphasis on Cithaeron as Oedipus’ nurse and mother it should be a nymph from that mountain, not an external interloper, that gives birth to him’.
6 Dawe, R.D., Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Leiden, 1973), 1.254Google Scholar and Dawe (n. 3), 208.
7 Schachter, A., The Cults of Boiotia, 3 vols. (London, 1981–94)Google Scholar. Wilamowitz wrote his article just before excavations at Thespiae and the Valley of the Muses began (see Hurst, A. and Schachter, A. [edd.], La Montagne des Muses [Geneva, 1996]Google Scholar).
8 See Schachter (n. 7), 1.192–5; de Ridder, A., ‘Fouilles de Thespies et de l'Hiéron des Muses de l'Hélicon (P. Jamot: 1888–1889–1890, P. Jamot et A. de Ridder: 1891). Monuments figurés’, BCH 46 (1922), 217–306, at 302CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The adjective ‘Heliconian’ and the phrase ‘cult on Helicon’ are used in an inexact and somewhat loose meaning both in the ancient sources and in modern scholarship. First, Helicon is not a single mountain, but a range stretching over eight hundred square kilometres (see Strabo 9.2.25; Bonanno, M., ‘The Helikon and its environs’, in Vlachopoulos, A. [ed.], Archaeology. Euboea and Central Greece [Athens, 2009], 260–9, at 260Google Scholar). This also means that when analysing Heliconian cults one must take into consideration material far beyond Thespiae. Second, most of the ‘Heliconian cults’ discussed in the literature on the subject are not at all ‘on Helicon’ but in its general vicinity. The best example here is the Thespian cult of the Muses (in the so-called Valley of the Muses), centred at an area at the foot of the mountain and not on its sides or said to be located ‘on Helicon’ (see e.g. Buxton, R., Imaginary Greece [Cambridge, 1994], 93Google Scholar; Petridou, G., Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture [Oxford, 2016], 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
9 See Lamberton, R., ‘Plutarch, Hesiod, and the Mouseia of Thespiai’, ICS 13 (1988), 491–504Google Scholar; Murray, P., ‘Poetic inspiration’, in Destrée, P. and Murray, P. (edd.), A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2015), 162Google Scholar; Schachter, A., ‘The singing contest of Kithairon and Helikon: Korinna fr. 654 PMG col. i and ii.1–11: content and context’, in id., Boiotia in Antiquity. Selected Papers (Cambridge, 2016), 236–44, at 241CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘It also seems likely that it was during this period of Spartan occupation and protection that the sanctuary of the Muses on Mount Helikon was formally instituted as an official cult of the polis.’ For a reassessment of the earliest archaeological material and an overview of a broader cultural context, see Mojsik, T., ‘From Hesiod's tripod to Thespian Mouseia: archaeological evidence for early cult activity in the Thespian Valley of the Muses’, Klio 101 (2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar (forthcoming).
10 See Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (n. 5), 104–5. The assumption that the nymphs and the Muses are the same is based on an obsolete idea of the development of the image and cult of the two groups of deities (see Otto, W., Die Musen und der göttliche Ursprung des Singens und Sagens [Darmstadt, 1955]Google Scholar) as well as on simplifying interpretations of later literary accounts, such as Theoc. Id. 7.148 (Νύμφαι Κασταλίδες) or Verg. Aen. 7.21 (Nymphae Libethrides).
11 Wilamowitz's assessment would therefore be correct from the point of view of, for example, a Roman audience, for whom references to metapoetical locations are mostly of intertextual value. However, in Sophocles’ day, the metapoetical apparatus was still a developing phenomenon, and references to the topography of Boeotia, which bordered Athens, did not necessarily have to be of merely literary value for the listeners.
12 See Vasilopoulou, V., ‘Prehistoric use and ancient ritual worship at the cave of Hagia Triada on Helikon’, in Mavridis, F. and Jensen, J.T. (edd.), Stable Places and Changing Perceptions: Cave Archaeology in Greece (Oxford, 2013), 319–28Google Scholar; Vasilopoulou, V., Zampiti, A., ‘Ἐπιγραφικὰ χαράγματα ἀπὸ τὸ ἄντρον τῶν Λειβηθρίδων’, Grammateion 2 (2013), 85–90Google Scholar; Vasilopoulou, V., Zampiti, A., ‘Ἐπιγραφικὰ χαράγματα ἀπὸ τὸ ἄντρον τῶν Λειβηθρίδων. ΠΡΟΣΘΗΚΗ’, Grammateion 2 (2013), 91–2Google Scholar. Other literary accounts of the nymphs’ presence on Helicon include Callim. Hymn 5.65–74, 85–92; Hymn 4.79–85; see Schachter (n. 7), 2.187–90; Larson, J., Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (Oxford, 2001), 138Google Scholar.
13 See Larson (n. 12). The best proof for the association with the Muses being a late development is the aforementioned Leibethrian cave, where so far no traces of any cult of the Muses have been found. It is particularly clear in conjunction with the account of Pausanias (9.34.4) and arguments about early cultic association of the nymphs and the Muses (see e.g. Otto [n. 10]; A. Hardie, ‘Pindar, Castalia and the Muses of Delphi (the sixth paean)’, PLLS 9 [1996], 219–57). A similar case is most likely Ilissos, mentioned particularly in Plato's Phaedrus.
14 See Zeitlin, F., ‘Thebes: theater of self and society in Athenian drama’, in Winkler, J.J., Zeitlin, F.I. (edd.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 130–67Google Scholar.
15 See ὀρεσσιβάτα (‘mountain-roaming’); τῷ γὰρ πλάκες ἀγρόνομοι πᾶσαι φίλαι (‘lover of the upland meadows’); ναίων ἐπ’ ἄκρων ὀρέων (‘dwelling on the mountain tops’); and information about Kyllene.
16 It was noted earlier by Sansone, D., ‘The third stasimon of the Oedipus Tyrannos’, CPh 70 (1975), 110–17, at 115Google Scholar.
17 εὐνάτειρά τις is Arndt's conjecture, for the unmetrical σέ γέ (τις) θυγάτηρ; see Finglass (n. 3 [2018]), 498–9.
18 1107, 1163 and 1391 (see Sansone [n. 16], 116); see also Hom. Hymn Dion. 26.3–4 παρὰ πατρὸς ἄνακτος | δεξάμεναι, where the nymphs take Dionysus from Zeus to raise him (in a cave on Mount Nysa).
19 See 1062–3, 1070, 1076–85. He will voice such a suggestion for the last time when talking to the herdsman (1163–4): πόθεν λαβών; οἰκεῖον ἢ ᾽ξ ἄλλου τινός; | ἐμὸν μὲν οὐκ ἔγωγ’, ἐδεξάμην δέ του.
20 See Boegehold, A.L., ‘Perikles’ citizenship law of 451/0’, in Boegehold, A.L. and Scafuro, A.C. (edd.), Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore, 1994), 57–66Google Scholar. On the practice of abandoning children, see Huys, M., ‘ΕΚΘΕΣΙΣ and ΑΠΟΘΕΣΙΣ: the terminology of infant exposure in Greek antiquity’, AC 58 (1989), 190–7Google Scholar; Grubbs, J.E., ‘Infant exposure and infanticide’, in Grubbs, J.E. and Parkin, T. (edd.), Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World (Oxford, 2013), 83–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Dugdale, E., ‘Who named me? Identity and status in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus’, AJPh 136 (2015), 421–45, at 442Google Scholar.
22 Dugdale (n. 21), 437.
23 On foundling narratives in Athenian theatre, see Finglass (n. 3 [2018]), 63–70 (on Ion at 64–5 and 68 n. 171).
24 See Buxton (n. 8), 89: ‘Being perceived as wild, mythical mountains are the ideal places to expose unwanted offspring’; Petridou (n. 8), 218 and n. 134.
25 See n. 2 above. On the nymphs of Cithaeron, see Schachter (n. 7), 2.186–7.
26 See Eur. HF 240–2, 790–5.
27 See Sansone (n. 16).