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Oracle, Edict, and Curse in Oedipus Tyrannus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. Dyson
M. Dyson
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
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Extract

Apollo's oracle gives specific instructions concerning the treatment of the murderer of Laius. Oedipus issues an edict of excommunication and bindshimself under a curse. I wish to examine the relationship between these three pronouncements as they occur initially and as they are used throughout the play. The basis of what I have to say is tentative in that it consists in a particular interpretation of Oedipus' addres, 216 ff., and in the assumption that Sophocles employed a distinction between an edict, that is a secular command of the kingas governing authority, and a curse which, once pronounced, is felt to operate independently. However, both the interpretation and the assumption are farfrom arbitrary, and if they are acceptable the resulting analysis reveals whatmight be called Sophocles' creative use of past episodes. The terms of the oraclegive way to an edict of excommunication, and this in turn, becomes the contentof a curse which initially had a different content.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , December 1973 , pp. 202 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

page 202 note 1 I wish to express my gratitude to Mr. R. J. Dickinson of Durham University for criticism and comments which have improved this essay.

page 203 note 1 Since Oedipus has learned that the murderers are somewhere ‘in this land’, 107–10, we should understand the distinction between Theban and alien as one between citizen and resident alien, not as a reference to the robbers of 122–5, who, being bribed from Thebes, may be presumed foreign. Oedipus thinks himself to be a resident alien, and thus his words have overtones of Sophoclean irony.

page 203 note 2 This interpretation clears away, I believe, a puzzle in these lines, namely how the people can be ordered to excommunicate someone whose identity is unknown. This has led to the suggestion that Oedipus is ordering the culprit to avoid the community rather than vice versa, cf. Tanner, G., C.R. xvi (1966), 259–61Google Scholar, criticized by Henry, A. S., C.R. xix (1969), 125–6Google Scholar, or to explanation by reference to alleged Athenian legal practice, cf. Greifenhagen, G., Hermes xciv (1966), 147–76Google Scholar. Greifenhagen sees numerous legal parallels in Oedipus' speech, all highly dubious, I think, including. But this was simply a procedure for obtaining information and did not include judgement and penalty passed in advance on persons unknown, cf. Lipsius, J., Das Attische Recht (Leipzig, 1905), i. 208–11Google Scholar, and for a less formal view, references in Bonner, R. and Smith, G., Administration of Justice from Homer to Aristotle (Chicago, 1938), vol. ii. The Prytaneum court does provide a sort of parallel, but is manifestly irrelevant: since Oedipus is just starting his inquiry, it would be premature to conclude that there is no known individual to be accused, which is the situation in which the Prytaneum practice was employed.Google Scholar

page 203 note 3 Several are given and discussed by Ziebarth, E., Hermes xxx (1895), 57–70, e.g. p. 67 from Pordoselena, 319–317 B.C.:.Google Scholar

page 204 note 1 The regular use of the perfect to express a future idea, cf. O.T. 1166, is not parallel here. A future tense would be standard in such sentences as this, cf. Schwyzer, Griechische Grammatik, ii. 187. However, this is not decisive. Neither future indicative (or equivalent) nor future-perfect would be suitable, for the murderer is already unknown at the time of speaking. If the context secures a future viewpoint, as I think it does, that is sufficient.

page 204 note 2 For a curse supporting an oath, cf. Dittenberger, S.I.G.2 461, lines 53 Z∈ū (quoted by Vallois, R., B.C.H. xxxviii [1914], 264)Google Scholar. For a curse to cement an alliance, cf. Plutarch, Arist. 10,. For one occurring in a treaty between Athens and a state in the Delian League, cf. Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1969), 123.Google Scholar

page 205 note 1 On the first point cf. Rees, B. R., C.R. lxxii (1958), 201–4Google Scholar and A. S. Henry, loc. cit.; on the third see J. T. Sheppard's note ad loc. (‘Those critics are mistaken who…’). But the view so majestically dismissed by Sheppard is shared by Knox, B. W., Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven, 1957), pp. 81–2, ‘pronouncing a sentence of excommunication from all normal civic and domestic functions on any Theban who withholds information’.Google Scholar

page 207 note 1 A slight but nevertheless real example of creative use of previous episodes. It was Oedipus who instituted the search in which all join, and thus features of the oracle and the speech containing the edict have been combined. These lines go distinctly further in creating the impression that Oedipus is carrying out Apollo's command.

page 209 note 1 Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (O.U.P., 1962), pp. 203–4Google Scholar brings into prominence the possibilities that Sophocles conceals. He observes, however, that ‘it is true that Oedipus does not console himself, when disaster strikes him down, with the thought that his ruin is inextricably bound up with his city's deliverance from the killing plague’, p. 207. Surely, if the deliverance were relevant, the Chorus or someone in the play must mention it. But it is not mentioned at all after 665. As Kitto, , Greek Tragedy, 3rd edn. (Methuen, 1961), p. 179, very pertinently asks: ‘The stranger who once saved Thebes by his own intelligence must now, though Theban born, save it by leaving the city for ever. How did Sophocles come to miss such a dramatic ending ?’ For a similar view to that of Jones, cf. Knox, op. cit., p. 189, on 1449 ff.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 Jones, op. cit., pp. 208–9, gives thil passage wider reference than its place in Oedipus' speech warrants. Drawing on and 1290–1, he says that Oedipus ‘alsc refers his final expulsion, when it occurs, to this initial curse’. But Oedipus is not talking of his final expulsion. Jones maintains: ‘so far from the curse being absorbed within the parricide and incest (when they arc established), it continues to the end, undiminished.’ It is my contention that tilt phrasing and placing of these passages show; them to be of far less significance than the same themes had earlier. Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford, 1944), has, like Jones, many fine things to say of the curse, but he too goes well beyond the evidence in claiming that ‘Oedipus blinds himself because of his curse’ (p. 184). In order to support his contention that Oedipus would have suffered less heavily if he had not cursed himself, Bowra places much stress on the life of a wandering outcast that awaits Oedipus, though he observes that ‘the play closes without emphatically proclaiming it’ (p. 174). But this virtually amounts to proof that Sophocles has other things in mind.Google Scholar

page 211 note 1 That Oedipus is polluted, whether or not he had criminal intentions, is of course fundamental. But the matter does not end there. Sophocles certainly could have altered the tone of the catastrophe by playing down Oedipus' initiative and emphasizing the cruelty of the gods. A bitter reaction to divine dispensation is found at Trach. 1266 ff. The notion of moral innocence introduced at O.C. 265 ff. may be absent from the earlier O.T. because Sophocles deliberately excluded it, not because he did not think it relevant (or had not even thought of it yet). Certainly Euripides managed to combine pollution and vindictive deities in H.F.: cf. Knox, op. cit., p. 38: ‘Sophocles has chosen to present the terrible actions of Oedipus not as determined but only as predicted, and he has made no reference to the relation between the predicted destiny and the divine will.’

page 212 note 1 As is done, I think, by Jones, op. cit., p. 209. ‘It is plain from Oedipus’ manner of shifting between “I was fated” and “I have doomed myself” that he regards both representations as adequate to his case⃜ They are nothing more than modes of statement lying at hand, probably not even conceived as alternatives.’ I would like to add that I find Jones's book more stimulating than any other on Greek Tragedy.