Ancient Athenian Drama
Sophocles: The Theban Plays
5th century BC, Ancient Greek.
Knowing nothing of his own babyhood, King Oedipus was not to blame when he killed his own father and married his own mother, and had Antigone and his other children by her.
‘It’s at the heart of tragedy,’ said Quintin.
'How do you mean?’ said Miranda.
‘Suffering,’ insisted Quintin. ‘Suffering that is cast in one direction and lands in another and unexpected place entirely. When Antigone, in Sophocles' play, for example, insists upon burying the body of her brother Polynices. The ruler of the city has forbidden this burial because he wishes instead that the body is mauled by dogs and pecked to pieces by the crows, so he shuts Antigone up in a living tomb as a punishment. But the end result of this is that his own son kills himself and his wife commits suicide. He set out to kill someone and ended up killing two other people instead, and the two, as it happens, whom he loved the most. And like when Agamemnon, in Aescylus’s play Agamemnon, is, on his wife's instructions, killed by a sword in revenge for sacrificing their own daughter Iphigenia with a sword. He thrusts out a sword only to get cut down by one himself.'
‘And when, in Aristophanes’ play The Clouds,' replied Miranda, 'Strepsiades sends his son to the ‘Thinkery’ to be taught wrong arguments by Socrates so that he, Strepsiades, can wriggle out of paying his numerous creditors, the end result is that he gets these same wrong arguments thrown back at himself.’
‘Exactly,’ said Quintin.
‘But The Clouds is a comedy,’ said Miranda. 'It isn't just tragedy that writes all this into the script. And Antigone’s own father and brother, King Oedipus, was not to blame when he killed his own father and married his own mother and had Antigone and his other children by her. The story of Oedipus is not about incest but about lost origins and a change of identity. But when this all came to light, his sons despised him and banished him to poverty and exile and he in his turn cursed them. It was all just a tragic unfolding.
‘But when Oedipus dies, near Athens,’ continued Miranda ‘in Sophocles’ play Oedipus at Colonus, it is a mysterious affair and this person, who has been both beggar and king, both King of Thebes and royal son at Corinth, this man who has been to a woman both son and husband, who has been both son to Jocasta and husband to her, has no grave. He is swallowed by the Earth but is given no single grave, as though this was significant. As though a single grave would be inappropriate.’
