Chapter SeventeenLecture Two

Oedipus and Thebes

Heroic Sufferer for Truth or Victim of Curiosity

Sufferer or Victim

• Oedipus not like other “cosmic” heroes– Not of divine birth– He overthrows his father but creates not order

but chaos

• In Homer’s version, Oedipus continues as king after truth is discovered

• In Sophocles’s, he blinds himself and eventually is exiled

Sufferer or Victim

• The discovery combines the anagnorisis and the peripateia

• Was he just a toy of fate?• For the Greeks, he had no moral fault and

did what any intelligent person would have done in the same situation

• He is confused about his true self, between what he appears to be and what he is

Sufferer or Victim

• He dies as the pharmakos for the city, outcast

• His intelligence is restless and he solves riddles, including his own– Typically for the Greeks, the truth is an awful

one

The Seven Against Thebes

The Seven Against Thebes

• Eteocles and Polynices rule in alternate years

• Eteocles reneges

• Polynices goes into exile

• Adrastus (Argos)– Daughters must be yoked to a boar and a lion– Polynices and Tydeus

The Seven Against Thebes

• Adrastus will restore the two to their kingdoms– First Thebes, then Calydon

• Great leaders are summoned– Amphiaraüs (a prophet who knew that all but

Adrastus would die on the campaign)– Eriphylê (sister of Adrastus and wife of

Amphiaraüs) is bribed to decide on behalf of the campaign

The Seven Against Thebes

• Amphiaraüs makes his sons swear to avenge his death

• The seven heroes1. Adrastus

2. Amphiaraüs

3. Capaneus

4. Hippomedon

5. Polynices

6. Tydeus

7. Parthenopeus

Oedipus at Colonus

Sophocles

Oedipus at Colonus

• Oedipus, now in exile, arrives in Athens as the Grove of the Furies with his daughter Antigonê

• Delphi: wherever Oedipus is buried that city will never be captured

• Eteocles and Polynices both want him back

• Theseus (king of Athens) refuses to give him back

Oedipus at Colonus

• Oedipus curses both his sons and goes off to disappear mysteriously

Tydeus at Thebes

Tydeus at Thebes

• Tydeus goes into Thebes to persuade Eteocles to step down

• Pins all their champions in wrestling

• Killed all but one of fifty Thebans who ambushed him

• Folktale qualities – mysterious, powerful stranger, all but one . . .

The Battle Before Thebes

Aeschylus

Seven Against Thebes

The Battle Before Thebes

• Seven Theban heroes each defend one of the seven gates of Thebes, drawing lots for which gate would be his– Menoeceus kills himself to fulfill the condition

for the safety of Thebes

• Capaneus is killed by Zeus for an impious boast

The Battle Before Thebes

• Amphiaraüs savagely prevents Tydeus from becoming immortal by giving his skull to Melanippus who eats the brains

• Amphiaraüs himself is protected from being hit in the back by a spear by Zeus– He’s swallowed alive into the ground

The Battle Before Thebes

• Eteocles finds himself paired with Polynices

• They kill each other with a mutual blow

• Thebes is spared

• Only Adrastus escapes– In a chariot drawn by Arion (< Poseidon +

Demeter)

Sophocles’ Antigonê

Sophocles’ Antigonê

• Creon (now ruling at Thebes) forbids the burial of Polynices

• Antigonê defies the order

• She is condemned to be shut in a cave and left to die

• Creon’s son Haemon (who’s engaged to Antigonê) tries to intervene, but Creon will not listen

Sophocles’ Antigonê

• Creon finally listens to the prophet Tiresias, but it is too late:– Antigonê hanged herself in the cave– Haemon tries to kill Creon, but fails. Then he

kills himself

Revenge of the Parthenos

Revenge of the Parthenos

• The play is a circle of opposites– male | female– young | old– state | family– the living | the dead– humans | gods

Revenge of the Parthenos

• Politically Antigonê is the conservative and Creon is the progressive

• Philosophically Creon advocates nomos and Antigonê physis

• As to gender roles, Antigonê is the untamed parthenos which no civic power can stop

The Epigoni

The Epigoni

• Ten years later, the “descendents” of the original seven attack Thebes again

• Eriphylê bribed again, this time by the robe of Harmonia

• Orders her son, Alcmaeon to lead an expedition against Thebes.

• Thebans abandon their city and it is sacked

The Epigoni

• Now Alcmaeon, son of Eriphylê and Amphiaraüs, avenges his father’s death by killing his mother– As he was ordered to do by his father before

the Seven Against Thebes expedition

• He is driven insane for the matricide and later killed

End