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ON NOT MISUNDERSTANDING OEDIPUS TYRANNOS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 July 2019

David Kovacs
David Kovacs*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
kovacs@virginia.edu
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Extract

How are we to understand what happens to Oedipus? What or who is the cause of the terrible deeds—predicted by oracles to both Laius and Oedipus—that he has already committed before the play begins and that are revealed in its course? The purpose of the present essay, whose title alludes to a well-known article by E.R. Dodds, is to draw attention to aspects of the play that have been ignored or explained away. To give them their due it will be necessary to take issue with two views of Dodds (one of which he owes to Wilamowitz) that I regard as mistaken. To argue against an article that is more than fifty years old might be thought a pointless exhumation, but Dodds's highly influential formulations, I will argue, have caused what Sophocles wrote to be either overlooked or misconstrued and are still causing misunderstanding in the second decade of the present century. It is time these views were examined critically.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , May 2019 , pp. 107 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to Jenny March, Nicholas Lane and CQ’s anonymous referee for useful comments.

References

1 An earlier article of mine—‘The role of Apollo in Oedipus Tyrannos’, in J.R.C. Cousland and J.R. Hume (edd.), The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp (Leiden, 2009), 357–68—made a start on this theme. I have since realized that there is quite a bit more to be said.

2 Dodds, E.R., ‘On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex’, G&R 13 (1966), 37–49Google Scholar = The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (Oxford, 1973), 64–77 = Obrien, M.J. (ed.), Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), 17–29Google Scholar.

3 There are some good remarks about incoherences in Dodds's article in Cairns, D., ‘Divine and human action in the Oedipus Tyrannus’, in Cairns, D. (ed.), Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought (Swansea, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 120–8. Some brief remarks in Finglass, P.J., Oedipus Tyrannus (Cambridge, 2018), 70–6Google Scholar, citing Cairns (this note) and Kovacs (n. 1).

4 Lurje, M., Die Suche nach der Schuld: Sophokles’ Oedipus Rex, Aristoteles’ Poetik und das Tragödienverständnis der Neuzeit (Munich, 2004), 1–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar documents the genesis of this view of the play soon after the first printing of Aristotle's Poetics. He also (at 255–77) notes its recrudescence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

5 Dodds (n. 2), 42, quoting A.W. Gomme.

6 See Finglass (n. 3), on 806–9.

7 Compare the way Aphrodite in Hippolytus correctly estimates the way the humans in Trozen, both royal and servile, will act. She knows that Phaedra will fight her love for Hippolytus with all her might, deciding on death rather than adultery; that the Nurse, who cares about her but is without her moral compass, will both worm the secret out of her and try to save her life by approaching Hippolytus; that after her secret is out Phaedra will kill herself and incriminate Hippolytus; and that Theseus, having read her suicide note, will invoke Poseidon's curse.

8 Several scholars seem to treat it as a mere façon de parler. Thus Parker, R.C.T., ‘Through a glass darkly: Sophocles and the divine’, in Griffin, J. (ed.), Sophocles Revisited: Essays Presented to Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Oxford, 1999), 17Google Scholar says: ‘The main reason why “it was Apollo” for Oedipus is simply that, as no one could deny, what Apollo had decreed had come to pass.’ Since what ‘no one could deny’ is that Apollo foretold Oedipus’ misery, I strongly suspect that Parker is using ‘decreed’ as a synonym for ‘predicted’. Kitto, H.D.F., Greek Tragedy (London, 1961 3), 182Google Scholar likewise implies that Apollo predicted but did not bring about the parricide and the incest. Mikalson, J.D., ‘Gods and heroes in Sophocles’, in Markantonatos, A. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Sophocles (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 438Google Scholar admits no more than the possibility of assigning an active role to Apollo.

9 See Mastronarde, D.J., Euripides: Phoenissae (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar, on lines 33, 49 and 413 and Kovacs, D., Euripides: Helen, Phoenician Women, Orestes (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 209Google Scholar.

10 Cairns (n. 3), 137–8 says that there is ‘some purchase’ for the explanation of the role of Apollo I put forth in 2009 (see n. 1 above), but that it is ‘insufficient’: about the parricide, incest and self-blinding he says that ‘those things are bound to happen. Apollo, we are encouraged to think, ensured that they did, but also knew for certain that they would.’ I do not understand why Cairns feels obliged to posit some kind of power external to Apollo that makes it certain these things would happen. He cites nothing in the text to prove this claim. In the absence of such a passage, we are entitled to invoke Occam's razor and refuse to multiply entities without necessity.

11 Cairns (n. 3), 128 is clear that Apollo manipulates Oedipus, and his n. 35 says that this ‘simple and incontrovertible point’ is ignored by what he calls ‘exclusively humanist interpretations’. His note lists ten scholars who agree with him. Most have little to say about how Apollo operated. Cameron, A., The Identity of Oedipus the King (New York and London, 1968)Google Scholar devotes a chapter (63–95) to the immanence of Apollo in the action; Knox, B.M.W., Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and his Times (New Haven, 1957; repr. New York, 1971), 40Google Scholar notes the effect of the oracle to Oedipus on his subsequent action; Griffith, R.D., The Theatre of Apollo: Divine Justice and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (Montreal and Kingston, London, Buffalo, 1996), 42–3Google Scholar is prepared to see Apollo's hand in the arrival of the Corinthian and in Oedipus’ being guided to Jocasta's body. There are similar remarks about Apollo's actions, expressed with greater tentativeness than is perhaps necessary, in Lawrence, S., ‘Apollo and his purpose in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus’, Studia humaniora Tartuensia 9 (2008), 1–18Google Scholar. I have tried to offer further evidence for a point that has often been controverted in the past, but also to examine more closely the how, to the extent that Sophocles’ reticences allow.

12 Taplin, O., Sophocles: Oedipus the King and Other Tragedies (Oxford, 2015), 7Google Scholar, clearly influenced by Dodds, writes that ‘humans in tragedy are not seen as puppets or some kind of “automata” acting out the determinations of higher powers’. His footnote 4 to this statement says: ‘Except when they are maddened or possessed—the exception that proves the rule.’ But, as we have seen, madness or possession is merely one of several ways in which the gods interfere in tragedy. Dodds's misleading image of a puppet continues to do harm almost fifty years on.

13 Compare the way in which the Guard calls the dust storm that allows Antigone to approach Polynices’ body undetected a θεία νόϲοϲ. Scodel, R., ‘Epic doublets and Polynices’ two burials’, TAPA 114 (1984), 49–58Google Scholar says that this remark is a way of suggesting in tragedy, where there is no narrator, what can be described in an epic, the intervention of a god to conceal a mortal entrance or exit. There is more to be said on the subject of utterances about the gods by minor characters. I have discussed this topic in ‘The “grammar” of divine intervention in Greek tragedy’, Phasis 2–3 (2000), 224–7.

14 Taplin (n. 12), 7 n. 5.

15 This is the view taken most recently by Woodruff in Meineck, P. and Woodruff, P., Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 2000), xxvi–xxviiGoogle Scholar.

16 This appears to be the view of Taplin (n. 12), 9, who speaks of ‘the random vulnerability of human fortune’ (emphasis mine). Taplin has a predecessor in Waldock, A.J.A., Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge, 1951), 158Google Scholar, who says that ‘there is no meaning in the Oedipus Rex; there is merely the terror of coincidence’. Scodel, R., Sophocles (Boston, 1984), 62Google Scholar says: ‘An impression of inevitable causality is joined with the terror of coincidence.’ On the following page she says: ‘In the end, Apollo cannot be separated from the pattern of coincidence.’ But if random coincidence is to blame, what role is there for either inevitable causality or Apollo?

17 This point is made by Cairns (n. 3), 123–4.

18 Finglass (n. 3), 33 discusses this question. As he says, nothing in OT connects the journey with the threat posed by the Sphinx, but I do not feel that this possibility can be lightly eliminated.

19 Thus in Ion Hermes in the prologue spells out Apollo's paternity, his sending of the baby Ion to Delphi, his being raised by the Pythia owing to her god-inspired pity for him, and the Apollo-caused childlessness of Creusa and Xuthus. Athena at the play's end adds further explanation. Sometimes, however, Euripides omits an explanation. In IT, for example, Athena at the end does not spell out that the fit that seizes Orestes, causing his capture and bringing him face-to-face with his sister, was the work of Apollo. (There is, however, a possibility that Orestes did so in the lacuna editors mark after 1014: see the supplement in the Loeb edition.) The audience would probably have concluded, if they thought about it, that the god's hand was at work.

20 Parker (n. 8), 24.

21 Parker (n. 8), 24 further suggests that Heracles’ sack of Oechalia, which he justified by a fabricated excuse but actually committed out of a lust for Iole, may be an item supporting an ‘implicit theodicy’.

22 ‘An oracle once came to Laius—I will not say it was from Phoebus himself, but from his servants—that it would be his destiny to die at the hands of any child that was born to me and him.’

23 Apollo, as we have seen, causes Oedipus to blind himself, which was not part of the prediction to Laius. Does this indicate hostility to Oedipus himself? Perhaps it does, but this might be hostility caused by his casting Teiresias’ blindness in his teeth. It is fitting that such an insult should be repaid by a literal blindness that reflects Oedipus’ earlier inability to see the truth.

24 If we had the other two tragedies that accompanied Seven against Thebes we would presumably know the reason for Apollo's hostility. Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983 2), 120–2Google Scholar thinks that Laius’ sin was his abduction of Chrysippus. This would have brought on the punishment of the gods (in particular, it was a crime against Laius’ host). But since we have no evidence clearly earlier that Euripides’ Chrysippus for the story, this is merely a plausible guess. (A scholium on Eur. Phoen. 1760 cites a certain Pisander for this and other details of Theban myth, but we do not know whether this is the early epic poet or someone much later.) As regards OT there is a tantalizing hint in our only glimpse of Laius. Oedipus’ description of his behaviour at the crossroads (804–9) reveals someone given to treating others with contempt (what Athenian law called ὕβριϲ). This suggests that his sin lay in this area rather than in lust: cf. Trach. 280.

25 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, ‘Excurse zum Oedipus des Sophokles’, Hermes 34 (1899), 55–80Google Scholar, at 55. The claim is repeated by Dodds (n. 2), 41. That Wilamowitz was in error was pointed out by Perrotta, G., Sofocle (Messina and Florence, 1935), 203Google Scholar, and Lloyd-Jones (n. 24), 119–20, and indeed he was rebutted in advance by Jebb in 1893. But we find it repeated by Segal, C., Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge (New York, 1993), 28Google Scholar; Griffith (n. 11), 53 and n. 87; and (in the present century) Lurje (n. 4), 392; Garvie, A.F., The Plays of Sophocles (London, 2005), 50Google Scholar; and Macintosh, F., Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus (Cambridge, 2009), 5Google Scholar. Cf. Scodel (n. 16), 6, who calls the oracle to Laius in Aeschylus a warning but that in Sophocles ‘a neutral statement of fact’.

26 The grammar is correctly explained by Rusten, J., Sophocles: Oidipous Tyrannos (Bryn Mawr, 1990)Google Scholar and Kamerbeek, J.C., The Plays of Sophocles, Part IV: The Oedipus Tyrannus (Leiden, 1967)Google Scholar: in historical-sequence oratio obliqua, generalizing subjunctives with ἄν are changed to optatives without ἄν. The lines are correctly translated (‘his destiny would be to perish by the hand of any child that would be born to him and me’) by Blondell, R., Sophocles’ King Oidipous (Newburyport, Mass., 2002)Google Scholar and by Lawrence (n. 11), 3, but mistranslated in von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Griechische Tragödien Übersetzt I (Berlin, 1899)Google Scholar; Grene, D., ‘Oedipus the King’, in Grene, D. and Lattimore, R., Sophocles I (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar and still in the third edition revised by M. Griffith and G.W. Most (Chicago and London, 2013); Mazon, P., Sophocle II (Paris, 1958)Google Scholar; Berg, S. and Clay, D., Sophocles: Oedipus the King (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Meineck and Woodruff (n. 15); Taplin (n. 12) and many others.

27 There is no contradiction between this passage, construed as above, and 853–4, where no condition is mentioned, because the child in question is one already born, which means that the condition has been fulfilled.

28 Finglass (n. 3), on 711–14, after agreeing with me that grammar ‘formally rules out’ Wilamowitz's view, worries that no emphasis is placed on the conditionality of the oracle either by grammar (there is only a single verb form to refute Wilamowitz) or context (nowhere is the possibility raised that Laius could have avoided having children nor is there mention of a sin against Apollo). But no emphasis is needed. Neither Sophocles nor his audience was aware of Wilamowtiz's mistaken view, and the poet had no need, when presenting the only version of the myth that extant tragedy knows, to go out of his way to differentiate it carefully from a version no one would think of until 1899. All that is needed is a statement of the oracle that is consistent with the usual version (as Sophocles’ is with γένοιτο). Siring a child need not involve a sin against Apollo if, as seems likely for our play, the god issued a hypothetical imperative (‘If you wish to avoid death at your son's hands, do not procreate’) and not a categorical one. (But though Finglass [n. 3], on 1183–5 could be right in asserting that Laius did not sin against Apollo, the fact that Sophocles has not emphasized this sin is not proof positive in light of Sophocles’ reticences.)

29 This is the view of the prepositional phrase argued for in my ‘Do we have the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus?’, JHS 129 (2009), 66–8. Sommerstein, A.H., ‘Once more the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus’, JHS 131 (2011), 85–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 85 indicates his agreement. Finglass (n. 3) sees this as a meaning the audience will have heard, but thinks that Oedipus himself means his own future sufferings. He does not say why it would be natural for a man who has already experienced the ultimate in suffering to think that a δεινὸν κακόν lies in his future.

30 If we had no context, we might interpret μήτε μ’ ἂν νόϲον μήτ’ ἄλλο πέρϲαι μηδέν to mean that Oedipus will not die at all, which would be an anticipation of what happens to him in Oedipus Coloneus. But in view of the following explanatory sentence it seems better to paraphrase ‘I have a strong intimation that nothing will kill me, for I am certain that I am destined to cause a dreadful mischief. My life will be spared until I do that.’ (Oedipus does not say that nothing will kill him on Cithaeron, since, on the view put forward here, he will not go to Cithaeron until he has cursed his sons. After that, there is nothing to prevent his death.)

31 See Thebais, frr. 2–3 in West, M.L., Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries b.c. (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2003), 44–7Google Scholar.