INTRODUCTION

Summary

Situation at the end of the Tyrannus

At the close of the Oedipus Tyrannus the situation is briefly this. By the fact of the guilt which has been brought home to him Oedipus is tacitly considered to have forfeited the throne. His two sons being still young boys, their maternal uncle, Creon, succeeds to the direction of affairs. The selfblinded Oedipus, in his first agony of horror and despair, beseeches Creon to send him away from Thebes. Let him no longer pollute it by his presence: let him perish in the wilds of Cithaeron, as his parents would have had it. Creon replies that he cannot assume the responsibility of acceding to the wish of Oedipus: the oracle at Delphi must be consulted. If Apollo says that Oedipus is to be sent away from Thebes, then it shall be done.

Events of the interval between the plays

Sophocles supposes a long interval–some twenty years, perhaps–between the two dramas of which Oedipus is the hero. As the exile himself says, ‘ʾTis little to uplift old age, when youth was ruined.’ We have to make out the events of this interval, as best we can, from stray hints in the Coloneus.

Expulsion of Oedipus

The promise with which Creon pacified Oedipus at the end of the Tyrannus does not appear to have been fulfilled. The oracle was not consulted as to whether Oedipus should remain at Thebes. He remained there; and, as the lapse of time softened his anguish, the blind and discrowned sufferer learned to love the seclusion of the house in which he had once reigned so brilliantly.