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The Second Stasimon of the Oedipus Tyrannus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

R. P. Winnington-Ingram
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Extract

The Second Stasimon holds a central position in the play. It follows the elaborate preparatory scenes and immediately precedes the rapid march of the action towards its catastrophe. The ode is difficult to understand and has been variously interpreted.

We expect a Sophoclean Chorus to react to the preceding episode; and the themes of this ode are indeed related to the long scene that has just been played. Interpreters are not agreed, however, on the precise character of this relationship, except in one particular. It is abundantly clear that the fourth stanza (898–910) relates to the scepticism on the subject of oracles and prophecy which was expressed by Jocasta at the end of the preceding scene. The concern of the Chorus arises, however, not so much from the fact that she expresses a sceptical view which might be thought shocking as from the grounds on which her view was based. On the face of it, and on the facts as stated, an oracle given by Loxias at Delphi has failed, once and for all, to be fulfilled. They feel that, unless facts and prophecy are shown to be in full agreement, this will be the end of oracular authority and the end of religion (if that is how we should translate τὰ θεȋα); and they pray to Zeus the supreme king to give the matter his attention. It is the facts—the apparent facts—that cause their concern. But, when in the first stanza they sing about reverent purity of word as well as of deed, it is commonly—and I think rightly—held that they have in mind, among other things, the impious words of Jocasta. It may be a useful preliminary to the examination of the stasimon as a whole, if we first examine the ‘impiety’ (if that is the right term) of Jocasta, endorsed, as it appears to be, by Oedipus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 91 , November 1971 , pp. 119 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1971

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References

1 This article carries forward a brief discussion of the stasimon in Classical drama and its influence, ed. M. J. Anderson (1965) 39–41, in which I suggest that Sophocles used the song of the Chorus to put forward—and by ironic implication to reject—a religious interpretation of the fate of Oedipus which might be described as Aeschylean. A similar view has since been advanced, independently it would appear, by Müller, G., ‘Das zweite Stasimon des König Ödipus’ in Hermes xcv (1967) 269–91Google Scholar. My article was drafted before I had read his. Since the differences in the two interpretations are as striking as the similarities, I have left my draft more or less as it stood, but have added some references to Müller in footnotes. There is a similar choice of readings in some crucial passages, and there are two fundamental issues on which we are agreed: (i) that, as e.g. in Antigone, the words of the Chorus are used ironically to convey an underlying sense at variance with the conscious mental processes of the singers; and (ii) that Sophocles is reacting to an Aeschylean interpretation or at least to an interpretation of a traditional kind for which the parallels are in Aeschylus (and Solon). I cannot follow Müller in imputing to the Chorus the hubris which they impute to Oedipus—nor indeed in the view that they are, flatly, accusing Oedipus (and Jocasta) of hubris.

2 Clearly recalled by 708 f.:

3 When we are told that Sophocles wished to counteract that scepticism about prophecy which (together with credulity) became prevalent during the Peloponnesian War, we are entitled to ask what prophecies and what oracles current during this period he thought it desirable that his compatriots should believe, remembering that he was not a recluse who only emerged from his study to feed a Holy Snake but a man of the world who had held high office in the state. He must have known as well as anybody that most of the prophecies in circulation were fraudulent and that people were wise to be sceptical of them. He must have known that the warring parties desired to control oracular shrines (cf. Thuc. i 112.5) not only for the sake of their treasures (Thuc. i 121.3; 143.1) but for the propaganda value of their oracles; and, if he heard that Delphi had promised support to the Spartans (Thuc. i 118.3), he will have drawn that same distinction between Apollo and his ministers that Jocasta makes and that even Spartans, used as they were to pro-Spartan oracles, were prepared on occasion to make (cf. Thuc. v 16.2 and Gomme ad loc.). The more reverence he had for Delphi the more he will have regretted the necessity of making this distinction, but he could not mend matters by encouraging the Athenians to accept whatever emanated from this source. For us there is a danger that such a line of interpretation will obscure the prime function of oracles in Sophocles, which is to serve as supreme symbols of divine knowledge and thus of human ignorance.

4 Cf. 724 f.

5 Cf. Jebb (on 711): ‘in 853…the name of the god merely stands for that of his Delphian priesthood’; Müller, op. cit. 271. Contr. Knox, B. W. M., Oedipus at Thebes 172Google Scholar; O'Brien, M. J. in Twentieth century interpretations of Oedipus Rex 10.Google Scholar

6 This is denied by Jebb (on 946) and by Müller.

7 Jebb (‘he assents, almost mechanically’) is right sa against Knox, op. cit. 174, who speaks of ‘firmly expressed approval’. The words (καλῶζ νομίζειζ) commit Oedipus to little; he is preoccupied with the thought that he may be the killer of Laius and sends for the eye-witness. Cf. Müller op. cit. 272.

8 It was to Pytho that he had himself sent Creon (70 f.). Bird-omens played no part at Delphi: the reason they are mentioned here is to remind us of Teiresias, who is not in fact much in the mind of Oedipus at this point. It is natural that the non-fulfilment of a prophecy relating to himself should make more impression on him than that of a prophecy given to Laius. So much so that he now seems to forget what he remembered then: the circumstantial evidence pointing to him as the killer of Laius. This now recedes into the background, but the hint of Teiresias (and his bird-watching) reminds the audience.

9 J. T. Sheppard in his edition on 969 (εἴ τι μὴ τὠμῷ πόθῳ κτλ.). The triviality is such that Oedipus can go on to say that the θεσπίσματα are ἄξι'οὐδένοζ.

10 Cf. Kitto, , Poiesis 230.Google Scholar

11 She has σημεῖα (710).

12 The question seems hardly ever to have been asked, at least not so crudely!

13 And Oedipus ought perhaps to have remembered the drunken diner and the doubts that sent him to Delphi.

14 From ἄνδρες πολῑ;ται (512) onward.

15 649–70.

16 See below p. 133.

17 J. C. Kamerbeek in his edition ad loc. and previously in ‘Comments on the Second Stasimon of the Oedipus Tyrannus’ in WS lxxix (1966) 83 f.

18 φέροντι need mean no more than ‘possess’, here and at 1190 (cf. Ant. 1090). The force of the article τάν? Does it mark an abstraction? Or look forward to the definition (865 ff.), despite the fact that the antecedent of ὧν is λόγων ἔργων τε? Or could it have a possessive force: that purity which they now enjoy?

19 Cf. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational 42 (and n. 79).Google Scholar

20 Despite Knox's argument (op. cit. 7 f.), I still feel that Brunck's emendation is necessary. There is no question of a fall of Teiresias due to Apollo or otherwise nor of a moira of Teiresias, whereas the fall and moira of Oedipus are crucial. It is after πρόζγ'ἐμοῦ that Oedipus thinks of Creon (so J. T. Sheppard ad loc.), a man who is not blind (contr. 374 f.)?

21 Cf. Classical Drama and its Influence, ed. M. J. Anderson, 34 f.

22 The sense of the strophe is unaffected by doubts about the text. I am happy to see that Housman's brilliant solution, adopted by Pearson, is now commended on metrical grounds by Parker, L. P. E., CQ xviii (1968) 253.Google Scholar

23 If there is a reference here to the νόμοζ-φύσιζ controversy, it need not perhaps concern us.

24 I am inclined to agree with Knox (op. cit. 182–4) that there is a play, here and in the antistrophe (878) and elsewhere, on the name Οἰδίπουζ. See, more recently, J. P. Vernant, ‘Ambiguïté et renversement: sur la structure énigmatique ďOedipe-roi’, Échanges et communications, ed. J. Pouillon and P. Maranda, 1263 f.

25 The problems of strophe (see n. 22) and antistrophe are interdependent. Wolff's ἀκρότατα γεῖσ' (for which see Jebb's references) is called ‘very tempting’ by Kamerbeek and ‘most seductive’ by Lattimore, (The Poetry of Greek Tragedy 97 n. 37)Google Scholar, who, however, adds that it ‘ought to be resisted’. Why?

26 A falling man cannot use his feet to counter, as we would say, the force of gravity. Lattimore (op. cit. 48 n. 25), in a different context, has an interesting note on ἀνάγκη, in which he justifies himself for translating it ‘nature’ and ‘natural force’ at Aesch. P V 514 f. For a possible play on the name of Oedipus, see n. 24.

27 Denniston-Page have a useful note on Aesch, . Agam. 757–62.Google Scholar

28 Fr. 5.9 f. D koros equals hubris: Pindar Ol. 2.95; Isthm. 3.2; Aesch, . Agam. 382Google Scholar. hubris breeds koros: Pindar Ol. 13.10; Herodotus viii 77.1 (contr. iii 80.3).

29 ‘It is hubris that breeds a king’ would be a ridiculously untrue generalisation. When Müller, op. cit. 287, while retaining the received text, denies that τύραννον has a prejudicial sense and writes: ‘Würde der Eingang lauten ὕβριν φυτεύει τυραννίζ, so wäre der Sinn der gleiche’, I fail to follow his argument. On this whole matter see p. 126 below (and n. 40).

30 Agam. 750 ff.

31 It should perhaps be stated that πάλαισμα here can have nothing to do with the quarrel between Oedipus and Creon. In point of services to the state, Creon does not compete (cf. 584 ff. and n. 79 below).

32 Jebb cites Isocrates Ep. 7.7 aptly.

33 On 879–80, 883, and in the general note on the Second Stasimon, p. 172.

34 ‘πάλαισμα consilium intelligo, quo regnum adeptus Oedipus est; cuius imperium cum salutare civitati fuerit, ut maneat, chorus precatur’.

35 390 ff. (and cf. n. 41 below).

36 502 ff.

37 The First Episode is largely devoted to this, and particularly the first half of it, up to and beyond the entry of Teiresias.

38 Professor A. H. Fitton Brown tells me that he made the conjecture independently. The corruption can be accounted for by the influence of the following ὕβριζ. It could be argued that a change of case improves the rhetoric. My interpretation of the stanza and the ode does not of course stand or fall by this emendation.

39 Theognis 823,1181, in fact refer to contemporary tyrants, and the passages should not have been cited under this heading.

40 Op. cit. 53–6. (For his interpretation of the passage in terms of Athenian imperialism, see op. cit. 102 f.) There are certainly passages in other Greek tragedies where the context imports a sinister suggestion (cf. Page on Eur. Med. 348), e.g. Ant. 1056, Eur. Suppl. 429, but the word τύραννοζ in itself never means more than ‘king’. Striking examples in our play, prior to the present passage, are 380, 408 f. (which recalls 380 and is something which could not be said under a tyranny) and, especially, 588; immediately following, we have 925, where the word could carry irony, and 939, where it could not.

41 The lines are immediately followed by the name of Phoebus (305). The use of words at 284–6 is interesting. It can hardly be accidental that Sophocles has used the word anax three times in three lines of three different persons. Apollo is anax, a divine lord, as Oedipus is only a human lord. Teiresias is anax in virtue of his religious function, though a man. The presence of two human anaktes in Thebes suggests a potentially difficult relationship, and the psychology of the scene is governed, on the human level, by a situation of rivalry (v. supra): there was no room in Thebes for a Teiresias and an Oedipus.

42 Plato, Rep. 617d, reverses, significantly, the use of αἱρεῖσθαι—it is the man who chooses his destiny. Cf. Classical Drama and its influence [see n. 1] 49.

43 Dobree's ὑπέροπλα, with its epic associations, could be right: in poetry, ὑπερόπτηζ (apart from a dubious tradition at Ant. 130) is first found in Theocritus, ὑπέροπτοζ in Strato; ὑπερορᾶν seems confined to prose. However, a word of seeing might be more appropriate to this rather striking use of πορεύεται, with a suggestion that the offender does not look where he is going, does not see the approach of Justice or regard the sanctuaries of the gods?

44 Ant. 1347 ff., cf. 127 ff. (where Sophocles may well have had the Septem of Aeschylus in mind).

45 E.g. Agam. 381 ff.; 772 ff., after 763 ff.; Eum. 533 ff. For fear in Aeschylus, see J. de Romilly, La crainte et ľangoisse dans le théatre ďEschyle, passim.

46 552 f., 609, 614, 683.

47 (1213 ff.).

48 Cf. J. de Romilly op. cit. 72 n. 1. The agglomeration of such words in the earlier passage (722, 728, 739, 745–7, 749, 767) is hardly less striking.

49 Jebb may insist too positively that ἕδη refers to statues rather than to shrines (cf. Kamerbeek ad loc.). But the connection between the cult-statue and the temple is so intimate that the distinction is not perhaps very material.

50 δυσπότμου: we should not perhaps enquire too closely into the meaning of the word (translated e.g. ‘ill-starred’, ‘funeste’), if it did not follow μοῖρα. Is πότμοζ cause or effect? Does χλιδή arise out of, or bring about, the πότμοζ? Normally, this word, fairly common in Aeschylus and Sophocles, means ‘ill-fated’, of a person or event. Once perhaps in Sophocles (Phil. 1120) it means ‘bringing an evil destiny’. Since an evil moira is prayed against the offender, and since the offences of Oedipus arose out of an evil moira, the word may be used here with a calculated ambiguity.

51 Oedipus has the kingdom, ‘unjustly’, of the man he killed; ironically, he has it also justly by hereditary right.

52 1382, 1441.

53 ἤ: ‘or (to put it positively)’.

54 Since the crime for which Paris has been punished (Agam. 363) is the rape of Helen. I see the force of Kitto's objection (op. cit. 227) that ἄθικτοζ at 891 ought not to carry a sexual reference, since the word recurs at 898 without it, but I feel that it is outweighed by the intricate relevance of the detailed content of this stanza to the state of Oedipus. ματᾴζω is not found of sex, but μάτη (Aesch. Suppl. 820; Cho. 918) and μάταιοζ (Aesch., Suppl. 229, 762Google Scholar; Soph., Track 565Google Scholar; Eur. El. 1064) are.

55 Schadewaldt's ingenious explanation of the grammatical structure of the stanza (SIFC xxvii–xxviii [1956] 489–97 = Hellas und Hesperien 287–94) falls down by its failure to give force to γάρ at 895 (cf. Johansen, H. F., Lustrum 1962/1967, 243Google Scholar, and Kamerbeek ad loc.).

56 Cf. τιμᾷ θεόζ in Soph. fr. 247.1 (with Pearson's references).

57 Cf. El. 245 ff., Phil. 451 f.; Eur. El. 583 f. (with Denniston's references). On 895 f. L. Campbell quotes Thuc. ii 53.4.

58 Cf. 200 ff., esp. 203 ff.; 163; 469.

59 θυμοῦ (rec., Dain) βέλη might be just conceivable in the sense of ‘the bolts of (divine) wrath’. On θυμῶν βέλη Müller, op. cit. 278, says what is necessary.

60 With βέλη θεῶν (adopted by Pearson) παλαιά can be retained in the antistrophe.

61 One should perhaps rather say that ἔρξεται … ἔρξεται might have been tolerated (‘if he does not keep away from …, he will not keep off’), but not with ἔξε;ται (or θίξεται) intervening. See also n. 65 below.

62 ἀμύνειν followed by accusative and genitive is a Homeric construction which should not be denied to Sophoclean lyric.

63 The antistrophe has strong stops at the line-endings corresponding to both 888 and 891.

64 Cf. 1319.

65 I am happy to see that Müller, op. cit. 276, punctuates at 888 and defends the asyndeton, though he interprets the train of thought in a different and (to me) unnecessarily complex fashion. Asyndeton at 889 is not unsatisfactory, since what follows expands and explains δυσπότμου χάριν χλιοᾱζ. The subject of κερδανεῖ, etc., seems at first to be the τιζ of 883, but turns out to be the τίζ … ἀνήρ of the apodosis (tantamount to οὐδείζ), but, since in both cases a hypothetical offender is in question, this is not objectionable. (For Müller τίζ is ‘welcher Fromme’, but it is surely the offender who might, but should not, boast he will go scot free.) The sequence ἔρξεται, ἕξεται, εὔξεται (and something like it must have occurred, however we handle the text) is bound to cause offence, unless the jingle is deliberate. I suggest that this is a naive play upon the sounds of words characteristic of popular gnomic speech and appropriate to the traditional themes of the stanza. If this explanation is correct, then all three words must belong to the same sentence.

66 The first link is, however, between τί δεῖ με χορεύειν and οὐκέτι … εἶμι—both religious activities.

67 τάδε (902), cf. 906 ff. See the commentaries of Jebb and Kamerbeek.

68 ἀθίκτων, σέβων, both looking back to the strophe (886, 891), keep these notions in circulation.

69 Cf. 498. For the idea of Apollo's prophecy as dependent upon Zeus, cf. Aesch., Eum. 19, 616–18Google Scholar. And this is the point, for the oracle of Zeus at Olympia in the fifth century was of mainly local importance (cf. Parke, H. W., The oracles of Zeus 186)Google Scholar.

70 An example of ring-composition stressing a significant theme: note the pleonasm of 54 f. Still to come are 1197 f., 1522 f. and (if genuine, which it is probably not) 1525. J. T. Sheppard, on 54, calls attention to the emphasis laid on this theme and speaks of ‘the danger of the despotic frame of mind’. Without denying that this notion may be present, I am inclined to think, taking all the relevant passages together, that the contrast between divine and human greatness is more significant.

71 On 284–6 see n. 41.

72 And, if they were clearer still, they would be saying: ‘Make Oedipus to kill (or to have killed) his father, to marry (or to have married) his mother’. Cf. Kitto, op. cit. 213.

73 This seems better than to take τἱμαῖζ of the honours paid to him by men.

74 A persistent and highly Sophoclean theme. The use of words of sight and appearance in this play deserves a careful detailed study, which would reinforce Reinhardt's interpretation in terms of the contrast between appearance and reality.

75 There are really two issues: whether Oedipus was culpable, and whether this is what the Chorus had in mind; and opinions will probably continue to be divided on both. Adverse judgments will be found, e.g. in Knox op. cit. 57 f.; Alister Cameron, The identity of Oedipus the king 131 ff; Fitton Brown, A. D., CR n.s. xix (1969) 308Google Scholar, who makes the point that Laius was on a sacred embassy accompanied by a herald. Contr. J. T. Sheppard xxviii f.; Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean tragedy 193Google Scholar; Kitto op. cit. 202 f. Impetuous father meets impetuous son—the irony is obvious. The tragic implications of retaliation are not drawn in this play but in the Coloneus (cf. JHS lxxix [1954] 17 f.).

76 895 (πράξειζ): it is the deed that counts, not the motive.

77 There are strong hints in the Septem (733, 771, 950) that wealth and luxury may have been significant themes in the earlier plays of the Aeschylean trilogy.

78 This theme has been adequately treated by many writers. M. J. O'Brien (op. cit. 8) has recently pointed out that the only quality of Oedipus ‘that becomes a major issue is his intelligence’ and suggests (op. cit. 10) that, if we are looking for a simple formula, we cannot do better than ‘a man matches wits with the gods’.

79 I have been led into an intemperate judgment upon Creon (who was a good man and behaves generously at the end of the play) by a certain exasperation at those who (almost) make him the hero of the play. Of course, in our prosaic lives, we shall be lucky if we behave as well as he did: as to greatness, we do not aspire to it any more than he. O'Brien (op. cit. 14) has a brief well-balanced statement, calling proper attention to 584 ff.—which is an excellent example of how a rhetorical commonplace, a piece of dianoia, can be used to make an important dramatic point.