Within the familiar format of the Aris & Phillips series, Jenny March provides a lucid, accessible and appreciative guide to one of the most widely read and taught works of classical literature. A Greek text based largely on the OCT by Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson (Sophoclis: Fabulae (Oxford 1990)) is preceded by an introduction, accompanied by a facing English translation and followed by a commentary. In her introduction, March surveys the mythical traditions about Oedipus that Sophocles inherited and transformed, summarizes the plot with particular emphasis on its tight construction and deployment of dramatic irony, and lays out the play’s key themes. In the process, she articulates a strong, affirmative interpretation of the play: Oedipus is a noble figure – intelligent, enterprising, righteous, compassionate and understandably angry when provoked; he is the victim of a terrible tragic fate for no apparent reason; in response, he displays admirable willingness to accept responsibility for his actions and determination to keep going despite his misfortunes. His story shows us the precariousness of the human condition and the strength of the human spirit.
This, then, is a compelling, but also limited, post-Enlightenment, humanistic and largely ahistorical account of Oedipus, very much at home in the modern contexts of Great Books and what is known in the US as General Education. The capacity of the play to raise darker questions about hidden motivations, the psychological dynamics of blaming and self-blaming or the corrupting effects of ambition and power on well-intentioned people, is left unexplored. In a final section, ‘The myth lives on’, devoted mostly to ancient reception, March feels obliged to make a very brief mention of Freud but concludes that his theory of a universal human desire to perform Oedipus’ crimes sheds no light on Sophocles’ play. The reader is not prompted to think about the play in relation to the religious institutions of classical Greece, such as scapegoat ritual, hero cult or worship through choral performance, or in relation to the politics of democratic Athens, where the merits and liabilities of a single powerful leader were a pressing issue and Oedipus’ qualities of intelligence and proactivity were seen as collective traits of the whole city. (Tellingly, Jean-Pierre Vernant is cited solely for his argument against Freud.) March firmly rejects the transmitted ending, with its open-endedness and rebuke to Oedipus’ desire for control, arguing that Sophocles’ original play closed with Oedipus resolutely going into exile as he and the oracle had said he must.
In keeping with the goals of the series, this edition ‘is intended for those studying the play both in Greek and in English’, with a commentary ‘based on the translation of the play rather than on its text’ (48). It is not easy to serve both of those audiences at once, and this, like many Aris & Phillips editions, is of greater value to the student of Greek. The translation is intentionally ‘as literal as possible, while still retaining a reasonable fluency’ (48). Its close adherence to the original wording and sentence structure makes it an excellent resource for someone trying to understand Sophocles’ Greek. But, as a stand-in that might convey something of the vitality and beauty of the original, it is inevitably less successful: more distance from the literal is needed to achieve that in English. It would be hard, for example, for a Greekless reader to grasp the mysterious menace of Teiresias’ revelations to Oedipus from a mouthful like, ‘And without realizing it, you are an enemy to your own kin in the world below and on the earth above, and a dread-footed curse, double-edged from mother and father both, shall one day drive you from this land, looking then on darkness when now you see true’ (87).
March’s commentary has much to offer both kinds of targeted reader, with helpful information about the play’s mythological background and references, reconstructions of the staging and good observations about the development of the action and the states of mind of the characters; her own insights are supplemented by frequent quotations from other critics. But here, too, her heart is really in the Greek text, and she often discusses textual questions and matters of Greek diction and syntax. In this respect, the book is well suited to serve as the primary text in a course in which the play is introduced for the first time in Greek, especially given the idiosyncratic character of the Cambridge Green & Yellow edition by Roger Dawe (Sophocles: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge 1982)). But that will depend – and this is a conundrum presented by the Aris & Phillips series in general – on an instructor who is comfortable with giving their students immediate access to a translation just as they first confront the Greek text.
