166 KARL REINHARDT

threats or protests, as in the agon-scenes of comedy; word rebounds

against word, reproach against reproach, maxim against maxim. There is so
little attempt to disguise the genre that the agon is even described as
such in the choral anapaests that introduce the second half (1163). 13
Thus as a method of representing the opponents, the agon appears to our
minds to be unduly restricted by the formal nature of its construc- ANTIGONE: DEATH AND LOVE,
tion. Instead of situations which develop from the nature of the pervading HADES AND DIONYSUS
hostility, there is a ready-made schema, a mere substitute for it, which
has to be filled with the appropriate ingredients. Perhaps the lack of
development, movement and progress is due to the traditional nature of the CHARLES SEGAL
form. Even the grudging retraction of Agamemnon which is provoked by
Odysseus makes no difference. The attitudes of the opponents at the end
Antigone's lonely journey to the cave and Hades follows an ancient
are just the same as they were at the beginning; the strife continues to rage
heroic pattern, the dangerous quest into the unknown, which pervades
in all its fury but it does not shift its ground — and in this too it is similar
to the agon-scenes of comedy. ancient literature from the Gilgamesh Epic through the Odyssey, Aeneid,
The tableau on the stage makes amends to us for this in one respect: and beyond. Her heroic journey, however, also has a distinctly feminine
all the time that the brawl is growing in intensity, Tecmessa and fury- character. She defies the city in the name of the house, and she takes
saces kneel in the background, guarding the body, a silent, motionless on the role of Kore the Maiden, carried off to marry Death in the Under-
group. The child holds in his hand the hair-offerings of his family as a world and then returned, after a period of barrenness and mourning on
gift to his dead father, in the posture prescribed by Teucer (1180): earth, with the joyful new vegetative life of the spring. Antigone's cave
is a place of contact between worlds: between life and death, between
Teucer Olympian and chthonic divinity, between gods and men. In moving into
Take it, dear child, and guard it, and let no one the darkness of the cave Antigone effects a passage between life and
Remove you, but cling fast, inclining over him . . .
death, the familiar and the unknown, vitality and sterility. This experi-
At the end, the chorus divides, going away in groups to either side, ence is in part modeled on that of Kore-Persephone in her descent to
as Teucer commands: to dig the grave, erect the tripod, fetch the armour. become the bride of Hades.
Teucer and the boy remain by the dead man, they raise him —:he is still Antigone, however, is a Kore who does not rise again to new life. She
bleeding. refers to herself repeatedly as 'bride of Hades', a term that makes the
Thus there is much in this play that is unique. Methods which will be analogy with Persephone unmistakable, particularly as the association
discarded by Sophocles in his later work stand cheek by jowl with others with Persephone was a regular feature of funerary practices and funerary
which point ahead to later developments. Above all there is the concep- epigrams for girls who died young.' Yet although the Eleusinian Demeter
tion of a single figure who is presented in only one or two situations, plays a prominent role in the fifth stasimon, there is no clear allusion to
which is unparalleled in the later plays. To a greater extent than any of the return of her daughter. When Antigone invokes Persephone by
the later works, the Ajax seems to have been composed around this name in the context of her imminent descent to Hades as her 'under-
central character; the rest of the characters are seen in the light of this ground bridal chamber' (nympheion, 891, 1205), it is to Persephone as
dominating figure, whether they interpret it, look back at it, or stand in queen of the dead, 'she who has received the greatest number of my
contrast to it. But the interpretation falls short of the conception, and perished (kinsmen) among the dead' (893-894).
the form of the play seems to conform to the religious drama of the
older style rather than to rise from the heart of the work. It is not until From Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass. and
the Oedipus Tyrannus that both form and content grow together so as London: Harvard University Press, 1981) pp. 179-88. Reprinted by permission of the
author. Text excerpted by the author from a lengthier chapter with certain
to form a perfect unity.
footnotes omitted for this edition. Those referring to this essay for scholarly
purposes are requested to consult the original version.
168 CHARLES SEGAL
ANTIGONE 169

The mythic paradigm of Persephone enlarges the reversal of upper

No longer a principle of continued life, this Kore-figure appropriates
and lower realms predicted by Teiresias. Not only are rites of burial and
a mater dolorosa, ever-weeping Niobe, image of her own crystallized
sacrifice inverted but the Kore's cycle of descent and ascent as well.
This Kore remains in the lower world and draws her living spouse down grief. No new life after a sojourn in darkness awaits her, but perpetual
sadness and loss. Haemon, plunging into the cave, claims his bride-of-
after her. We may recall again Antigone's special devotion to the cult of
the dead and to 'the Justice who shares her house with the gods below' death as an inaccessible Kore, whom he can embrace only in a grimly
funereal version of a sexual union (1236-41). In the Kore myth the
(451).
grieving Demeter's withdrawal threatens to extinguish life on earth, but
In the Kore myth the maternal figure, Demeter, remains a constant
source of hope for the return to life and light. In this play that figure is she relinquishes grief when Zeus 'leads holy Persephone forth from the
murky darkness into the light' (Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 337-338;
Eurydice, whose name, 'the wide-ruling one', signifies the Queen of the
cf. 302-309). Thereupon Demeter again 'sends the grain upward from
Dead. At the end, more like Antigone's Niobe than the chorus' Demeter (cf.
the fertile plowlands, and all the wide earth is heavy with leafage, heavy
1120 ff.), she mourns the hopeless death of her children and then returns
with flowers' (471-473). In this play, however, the divinely sanctioned
to the death-filled interior recesses of the doomed house. A mater
command, 'Send up the maiden (kore) from the dwelling dug beneath
dolorosa, she too is drawn into the dark, Hades-like hollows of
(the earth),' is not fulfilled (1100-1101). The phrasing of these lines,
enclosure. There is no Demeter-like mother left alive to call the Kore
literally 'send the kore upward,' uses the same verb of ascent (an-hiemi)
back to life. The maternal figures of the fourth stasimon, Danae, Cleo-
patra, Eidothea, either suffer or inflict imprisonment and in the last as the Eleusinian text, where Demeter, mourning her daughter under-
ground, refuses to 'send upward' the rising grain (Hymn to Demeter
example destroy rather than nurture children.
307, 332, 471). Sophocles' Kore-figure, however, leaves house and king-
Antigone herself doubles with the grieving figure of the Great Mother.
In comparing herself to the petrified Niobe, she projects an image of dom plunged in darkness and sterility, both literally and metaphorically.
Each of the male characters discovers that aspect of the female ap-
herself as the mater dolorosa as well as the maiden wedded to Hades.
propriate to his experience and attitude. Haemon, a victim of Eros, is
Logically, Antigone cannot be Kore and Demeter at the same time. Yet
united with Antigone as the bride of Death. Creon will find in the female
mythic imagery often operates with exactly this fruitfully illogical union
figure who dwells in the recesses of his house neither Kore nor Demeter
of opposites. Here a mythic archetype is split into two contradictory and but their complement, the grieving mother and `wide-ruling' (Eury-Dike)
yet simultaneously coexisting aspects of the self. The Kore is also the Queen of the Dead, whose desolation has now spread over his entire
mother at an earlier stage. So here Antigone, who takes on herself the realm. Having denied the basic ties of kinship and the sanctity of family
task of burying and mourning the dead son, often the role of the mother bonds, he finds his wife a corpse, herself the 'all-mother of the corpse'
or wife, is the Earth Mother who grieves over her children. The maiden (1282). As a manifestation of chthonic female power and maternal
claimed by Death, who ought to be resurrected with the new life of the vengeance, she makes the interior spaces of his own house (mychoi,
year, will instead remain in the Underworld with her dead (893-894).
1293) a dark place of corpses (1298-1300).
Sophocles' dramatic structure makes clear the discrepancy between It is not by accident, therefore, that the tale of the disasters of his
the reality of Antigone's life and the mythic patterns to which she house centers on Eurydice. The full, grim account is addressed not to
assimilates herself. She is a virgin girl, neither mythical mater dolorosa the chorus but to Eurydice as she emerges from the house (1181-82,
nor a maiden wedded to a god in the Underworld. Her union with death, 1184) to address Pallas Athena in prayer (1184). These prayers to Olym-
though figuratively a marriage, is in fact a cruel, desolate end. Her future pian Athena, goddess of the city in all its glory, are answered, in a sense,
husband, a living mortal not the awesome god below, chooses the same by Creon's belated, failed prayers to the chthonic Hecate and Pluto
cavernous hollow and the same doom but with no hope of any future
(1199-1200) as catastrophe inside the gates of house and city (oikeion
union. The pattern of universal renewal of vitality implicit in the Kore kakon, 1187; penthos oikeion, 1249) overwhelms victories outside the
myth contrasts also with the bleak reality facing Creon's city. It, too, gates. Creon had defended the gates and ramparts of 'seven-gated Thebes'
has lost touch with those cosmic processes that involve passage between from invaders outside, as the chorus joyfully sang in the parode (101,
Olympian and chthonic realms, the interchange between life and death, 122, 141). When Eurydice crosses the gate (pyre, 1186) of her house to
renewal and destruction. the outside, it is only for a moment. Then she returns within (1255), to
170 CHARLES SEGAL AVTIGONE 171

draw Creon with her into the dark spaces of that Hades-house, as she 876; nympheion, 891). The grim 'bride rites' (nymphika) of Hades in
draws him after her into the dark, passionate grief which she 'secretly the cave will then definitively cancel `births' (1240; cf. nympheion
hides held down in her angered heart' (katascheton / ktyphE(i) kalyptet Haidou, 1205). In the same semantic field as `birth,' the dragon's seed'
(spore drakontos, 1125) is connected with the death of Creon's sons in
kardia(i) thymoumen4i), 1253-54; note the powerful alliteration).
These reversals and their spatial analogues of ascent or descent find present and in past (cf. 1302-1305). Thus Danae and Cleopatra inter-
lock with Niobe as multivalent paradigms for the hopes of fertile marriage
other mythical correlates in the last two odes of the play. The three
and their destruction in the house of Antigone and Creon. They also
myths of the fourth stasimon, Danae, Lycurgus, and the blinding of
bring the deeper mythic pattern of Kore and Demeter closer into the
Phineus' sons, all have to do with imprisonment and deprivation of light.
The first myth, that of Danae, has the closest analogies to Antigone's foreground. The struggle between Creon and Antigone expands to in-
clude a dialectic between house and cave, city and wild nature, central
situation. Danae, like Antigone, `changes the light of the sky' for a con-
fining chamber's vault (944-946) and is 'hidden in a tomb-like chamber' Greece (Argos, Athens) and the remote periphery (Thrace) in these
myths of royal women encountering divinity.
(946-947; cf. 886-887). Yet this downward movement of a mortal into
darkness is balanced by a happier descent on the part of Zeus, whose The fifth stasimon, the Ode to Dionysus, returns us again to nature's
`gold-flowing seed' (gonai, 950) accomplishes a sexual union and a re- fertility (1131 ff.) and to astral imagery (1126 ff., 1146 ff.). The starlit
union with life which are denied Antigone. The implicit comparison, night sky of the purifying Dionysus (1144, 1146-47) sets off by con-
like Antigone's own comparison of herself to Niobe, has its pathos: trast Creon's figurative descent from happiness to misery (1155 ff.) and
Antigone will be the bride of Hades, not of Olympian Zeus. Like the the literal details of his descent to the cave (1204 ff.).
Niobe simile, it suggests the frustrated rhythms of fertility and renewal This cave and the dark forces which it contains prove to be the final
(cf. 827-832). For King Lycurgus, however, who corresponds much test of Creon's conception of human power and of Antigone's tragic
more closely to Creon, imprisonment in a cave is a punishment only, heroism. For her it is a place of tragic isolation and tragic fulfillment,
and, this is appropriate to Creon's `descent',. ambiguous locus of the tension between her devotion to loved ones and
In the grim third myth, the tale of the blinding of Cleopatra's two death-bent, stony heroism.' For Creon the cave symbolizes all that he has
sons by their stepmother in Thrace, the motif of the cave veers between repressed. It is the subterranean reservoir of dark passions and the place
savagery and divine ancestry. Daughter of the wind god Boreas and the of lonely encounter with love and death, Eros and Hades. The Eros
which Creon denied in a crude image drawn from the arts of civiliz-
Athenian Oreithyia, Cleopatra 'received her nurture in distant caves,
ation (`There are other fields for him to plow,' 569) returns in the cave to
amid the winds of her father' (983-985). Yet her kinship with Boreas in
defeat him: Eros takes his son from him and gives him to Antigone for an
the far North also connects her with the violence of nature (thyellai,
inverted union in the realm of the dead (1240-41).
`winds,' usually indicates destructive storms). At the opposite extreme
from the subjugated nature of Creon's city and close to Niobe in her The conflict between Creon and Antigone is not only between city and
identification with the forces of the wild, she is nevertheless deprived house, but also between man and woman.3 Creon identifies his political
authority and his sexual identity. 'If this victory (k7ate") rests with her
of the civilized city par excellence, the Athens of her mother, 'seed of
the Erechtheids of ancient birth' (sperma archalogonon antas' Erech- without punishment, then I am not the man, but she's the man' (484-485).
theiddn, 981-982). 'Seed' and 'birth' here take up the theme of marriage
The word kratc-, 'victory', `power', repeatedly describes his sovereign
and fertility from the previous strophe. power in the state (166, 173, for example). He sees Antigone, then, as a
Cleopatra's blinded sons 'have their origin from an unhappily married challenge to his most important values and his self-image. 'A woman will
mother' (so Jebb for metros echontes anympheuton gonan, 980). not rule me (arxei) while I live', he says a little later, again ilnking the
Anympheutos gong, however, means literally 'wedless birth'. Not only conflict of the sexes with political power.
does it contrast to the 'ancient birth' of her Erechtheid ancestry in the In this same speech Creon confronts an opposing principle of an
next line, but in moving from the sky god's 'birth seed' (gonai, 950) to especially feminine kind, Antigone's 'reverence for those of the same
the dark, cavernous spaces of dangerous stepmother it cancels out Danae's womb', homosplanchnous sebein (51 I). On this basis Antigone defends
Zeus-sent, fruitful 'births' (950) and recalls the unfulfilled 'birth' of herself against the male-oriented, civic ethic of the polis. She makes kin-
Antigone, the 'brideless bride' of Hades (nympheus5, 816 ;an-hymenaios, ship a function of the female procreative power: she defines kinship in
172 CHARLES SEGAL
ANTIGONE 173
terms of the womb (splanchna). Thus at the end of her great speech on
the unwritten laws she calls Polyneices `the one (born) from my mother, Cleisthenes' reforms involved cutting across the exclusive blood ties of
dead' (ton ex ernes I metros thanonta) whom she, for that reason, will the clan or genos, where ties through the mother are more obvious.' As
not leave 'a corpse unburied' (athapton . Freud long ago pointed out, paternity is only an inferential relation,
. nekyn, 466-467). As her
defiance of Creon continues into the stichomythy, her word homos- whereas maternity is immediate and visual. There can be no doubt about
planchnos some fifty lines later etymologically defines `brother' as 'one the mother who has given birth to the child, but there is no equivalent
of the same womb' (511). Hornosplanchnos calls attention to the root certainty about the father who sired it.1° It is in keeping with Creon's
meaning of the familiar word for 'brother', adelphos, from a- (`same', fierce adherence to the polls and his inferential, abstractive mentality
equivalent to homo-) and delphys (`womb', equivalent to se lanchna).4 that he leans heavily on patriarchal lineage and authority (639-647; cf.
In this view of kinship she reopens, on a personal level, the debate be- 635). His stress on patriarchy, though illogical in one sense (see 182-183),
tween Apollo and the Erinyes in Aeschylus' Oresteia;5 however, she is congruent with his antifeminine, antimaternal attitude (see, e.g.,
gives the decisive tie of blood not to the father's seed, as Olympian 569).11 The conflict between him and Antigone, then, is not just between
Apollo and Olympian Athena do (Eumenides 657-666, 734-741), but family and city, but between fundamentally different concepts of life.
to the mother's womb. That conflict necessarily involves Creon's son, the extension of his
Antigone's definition of kinship as homosplanchnous sebein reaches power in the male line both in the city and in the house. As the victory
deep into the conflicts of values in the fifth-century polls. The establish- of Orestes in the Eumenides reflects a successful separation of the male
ment of Cleisthenian democracy at the beginning of the century rested, adolescent from his ties to the mother and an initiation into the male
in part, on breaking down the power of the clan and blood ties,. instead, society of phratry and polls,' the death of Haemon reflects just the
allegiance to the polis was to subsume and transcend the ties of blood. Opposite: the failure of the political tie of the male band to pull the
Benveniste's study of kinship terminology in Greece takes this conflict youth away from the mother to the city and a return to the womb as the
back a stage further.' The Greek vocabulary of kinship sharply dis- underground cavern, the mysterious seat of life-and-death, the elemen-
tinguishes between male and female lineage . The old Indo-European term tal procreative power which remains under the control of the woman,
for 'brother', phrater (LE. *bhrater, Latin (rater) survives in the Greek the 'All-Mother', whom Creon will soon encounter in her destructive
term for the members of a phratry (phratry; cf. phratry). The phratry con- and vengeful aspect. Haemon thereby rejects not only his father but
sists of men united as members of the male band through the masculine, also his adult male role of political responsibility in the city, succeeding
patriarchal line and 'issued mystically from the same father'.7 Though his father to the throne of Thebes. In both literal and symbolical action
based on kinship, it is kinship extending beyond the oikos into the he fulfills Creon's worst fear, `alliance' with the woman (740; cf. 648-
polls, where it has political power.8 An old term for `brother', kasis, 651).
kasignitos, which may originally have denoted maternal lineage, becomes The tie through blood alone, through the womb, Antigone makes
assimilated to the strictly paternal line, and the original Indo-European the basis of her philia. Philia, which includes notions of love', 'loyalty',
word for 'sister' (equivalent to Latin soror) is then lost. For brothers `friendship', and `kinship', is another fundamental point of division be-
related by blood Greek then develops a new term,adelphos, `of the same tween Creon and Antigone. An exchange a few lines after her 'reverence
womb' (a-delphys), which denotes kinship through the mother. Sym- for the homosplanchnoi' (511) sharpens the clash between the two
metrical to adelphos is homogastrios, or the doublet, ogast5r, literally views (522-523):
`co-uterine', from gaster, 'womb'. Antigone's homosplanchos is Creon: The enemy (echthros) is not a loved one (philos), not even
the exact equivalent of homogastrios. Whether or not homogasfrios and when he is dead.
homosplanchnos are historical survivals of a pre-Indo7European matri- Antig.: It is my nature to share not in enmity, but in loving (synech-
linear system of kinship in Greece does not concern us here. What is thein, syrnphilein).
important for the Antigone is that the distinction between paternal and
Creon here repeats his political definition of philos from his first speech
maternal lineage is a live issue for audiences of mid-fifth century Athens.
(182-183), but now it is opposed by Antigone's fierce personal loyalties.
Antigone does not phrase her conflict with Creon strictly in terms
Once more the `sameness' of the womb cuts through that principle of
of maternal versus paternal kinship, but that division is relevant since
differentiation that separates philos from echthros. Creon's `politicization
174 CHARLES SEGAL ANTIGONE 175

of burial' distinguishes between the two brothers as hostile political Earth as a political territory Earth as locus of blood kinship
forces: 'The one he promotes in honor; the other he dishonors' (22).13 To Earth as plowed terrain Earth as receiver of the dead
Antigone, however, those 'of the same womb' are worthy of the same World above (Olympian religion) World below (chthonic gods)
degree of honor (time) and love (philia). The homo-splanchnoi are to be Fusion and sympathy with nature
Control over nature
joined in the sister's sym-philein. Acceptance of death
Use of death
Antigone's claim of sameness, however, overlooks a critical difference. Tragic death as 'Hades' bride'
Rejection of eras (cf. 569)
As the first ode points out, origin from that one womb is a source of Logos (mutually exclusive alternatives) Mythos (paradox)
horror and pollution: the two brothers are the 'miserable wretches who, Future or gnomic present Past (the dead, inherited curse)
born from one father and one mother, levelled double-conquering spears Calculations of time Timeless
against one another and so won, both of them, a common share of Manipulative rationality Emotionality
death' (143-146).
The contrast of 'one' and 'two', the use of the dual forms, the inter- Parallel to the loss of the unrestored Kore in the house of Oedipus is
play between 'common' and 'both' in the last line all stress the pollution: the premature death of the unmarried son in the house of Creon. Here
`They destroyed one another in double portion on one day, smiting and Creon's strength crumbles at its weakest point, that is, at the point of
being smitten with pollution of the same hand' (autocheir miasma), says his own link with the cycle of generation. In the two encounters with
Creon soon after (170-172). That those so intimately linked in 'oneness' Haemon in the middle and at the end of the play Crean has his sharpest
should suffer such violent 'difference' is itself the expression of an infec- confrontation with forces beyond his control. Haemon is Creon's link
tious division in the house. it is Antigone's tragic task to insist on the with a house through procreation. Antigone and the cave act, in a sense,
ultimate 'oneness' or 'sameness' and thereby close over this difference. as the agents of the powers of the house, earth, and death when they
The struggle is marked in her opening words. Her striking phrase of rob Creon of his last human ties. 'You will give one of those from your
address to Ismene, 'common self-(wombed) sister' (koinon autadelphon, own loins' (splanchna), Teiresias warns, 'a corpse in exchange for corpses'
1), attempts to reaffirm family unity in blOod against the harsh reality (1066-67). Through Haemon Creon too feels deep physical and bio-
of Ismene's picture of the 'two' brothers who on 'one day' died with logical ties to the splanchna.15 This word, as we have noted, generally
`double hand' (13-14). Antigone's 'common' sister contrasts also with denotes the womb and not the loins. It thus confuses Creon's rigid dif-
the chorus' common death' (146) of the two brothers. That phrasing ferentiation of male and female and thereby, puts him in touch even
of kinship in the first line of the play intensifies the blood tie and points more fundamentally with life and death.
back, in turn, to the deeper horrors of sameness in the house of Oedipus, Creon himself is deeply concerned with family solidarity, as his
the incestuous marriage and the patricide.14 'The woes that come from opening lines to Haemon make clear (639 ff.). Haemon sensitively
Oedipus' occur in her second line. Even her dual form when speaking of exploits this sympathy with his father: he begins his plea, 'Father, I am
herself and Ismene in the third line has its significance, for it repeatedly yours' (635). But this concern on Creon's part only increases the pathos
denotes the polluted fratricides (recall 143-146, above) and comes to of his downfall through his alienation from every member of his house,
mark a shift of allegiance on Antigone's part as she leaves the living kin living and dead (1302-1303). Exhibiting something of what Bergson
for her bond to the dead. Creon's path is, of course, just the opposite: called 'intellect's congenital lack of comprehension for life', he disregards
he insists on 'difference' and carries it to its logical conclusion in the -until too late what his blood kin might teach him about the meaning of
face of those bonds of 'sameness' which the gods finally vindicate. The familial ties. Hence his house, instead of being a locus of civilized values
list below will recapitulate: and the place that transmits new life from generation to generation,
becomes, like the house of Antigone and Oedipus, a place of death and
Creon Antigone
savagery, a cavern-like 'harbor of Hades'.
Philoi as those devoted to city Philoi as kin ties Fleeing his father's house for the cave, Haemon exposes that house
Differentiation by political loyalties Oneness of 'same womb' to the terrible savagery which in the fourth stasimon occurs in a far-off
Separation from mother Return to womb and mother (earth) Thracian setting at the very limits of civilization. Here too the act of
Patriarchal kinship (phratry) Matrilinear kinship (homosplanchnoi) savagery (see agria damar, 'savage wife', 973) was directed against the
176 CHARLES SEGAL

eyes (ommata, 974; cf. agria ossa, 'savage eyes', 1231). These 'savage
eyes' turned against the father by the son ironically echo the bitter
father-son conflict earlier, where Haemon shouted out his bitter threat,
14
`Never will you see my face as you look upon me with your eyes' (764).
`Eyes' mark a progression from angry looks to deeds of bloody ven-
geance. Now 'the evils in the house', to en domois kaka (1279-80), are the ON MISUNDERSTANDING THE
last blow to the king's tottering strength. Deeper father-son hostilities lurk OEDIPUS REX
in the background (cf. the Freudian equation, eyes = penis), but we
cannot discuss those here.
When Creon uses the language of procreation, it is only to reinforce E. R. DODDS
his authoritarian principles. Thus in his encounter with Haemon, he
praises 'obedient offspring', literally 'obedient births' (gonai, 642).
On the last occasion when I had the misfortune to examine in Honour
`Begetting (phiteusai) useless offspring', he generalizes in his favorite
Moderations at Oxford I set a question on the Oedipus Rex, which was
mode of speech, only 'sires' (physai) trouble for oneself and laughter
among the books prescribed for general reading. My question was 'In
for one's enemies (645-647). Haemon's reply about the gods' planting'
what sense, if in any, does the Oedipus Rex attempt to justify the ways of
(phyousi) wits in men (683) takes a very different view of the process
God to man?' It was an optional question; there were plenty of alter-
of birth as a metaphor for man's relation to nature.' This verb, phyein,
natives. But the candidates evidently considered it a gift: nearly all of
involving growth, birth, procreation, not only points back to more
them attempted it. When I came to sort out the answers I found that
mysterious aspects of birth (cf. 144, 866) but also includes Antigone's
they fell into three groups.
utterly opposite attitude toward birth, kinship, and 'inborn nature' or
The first and biggest group held that the play justifies the gods by
physis (see 523i 562).
showing — or, as many of them said, 'proving' — that we get what we
Crean's demand for obedience assimilates the order of the house to
deserve. The arguments of this group turned upon the character of
the order of the city and levels out the difference between them: lack
Oedipus. Some considered that Oedipus was a bad man: look how he
of authority, anarchia, 'destroys cities and overturns houses' (672-674).
treated Creon — naturally the gods punished him. Others said 'No, not
Scornfully dismissing ties of kinship with a slur on Antigone's reverence
altogether bad, even in some ways rather noble; but he had one of those
for 'Zeus who looks after kindred blood' (658-659), he asserts his
fatal hamartiai that all tragic heroes have, as we know from Aristotle.
principle that the man who is good in the realm of the house will also
And since he had a hamartia he could of course expect no mercy: the
be just in the city (661-662). Creon's word for 'order' here, as elsewhere
gods had read the Poetics.' Well over half the candidates held views of
in this speech, is kosmos (660, 677, 730), the word used to describe
this general type.
Antigone's burial of the corpse (396, 901). The one subordinates kin
A second substantial group held that the Oedipus Rex is 'a tragedy of
ties to the 'order' of the polis; the other defies the polis to 'order' the
destiny'. What the play 'proves', they said, is that man has no free will
rites owed to a dead kinsman.
but is a puppet in the hands of the gods who pull the strings that make
him dance. Whether Sophocles thought the gods justified in treating their
puppet as they did was not always clear from their answers. Most of those
who took this view evidently disliked the play; some of them were honest
enough to say so.
The third. group was much smaller, but included some of the more
thoughtful candidates. In their opinion Sophocles was 'a pure artist' and

From Greece & Rome 13 (1966), 37-49. Reprinted by permission of Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
178 E. R. DODDS ON MISUNDERSTANDING THE OEDIPUS REX 179

was therefore not interested in justifying the gods. He took the story of undergraduates still think) that the hamartia of Oedipus must in Aris-
Oedipus as he found it, and used it to make an exciting play. The gods are totle's view be a moral fault, They have accordingly gone over the play
simply part of the machinery of the plot. with a microscope looking for moral faults in Oedipus, and have duly
Ninety per cent. of the answers fell into one or the other of these found them — for neither here nor anywhere else did Sophocles portray
three groups. The remaining ten per cent. had either failed to make up that insipid and unlikely character, the man of perfect virtue. Oedipus,
their minds or failed to express themselves intelligibly. they point out, is proud and over-confident; he harbours unjustified
It was a shock to me to discover that all these young persons, sup- suspicions against Teiresias and Creon; in one place (lines 964 ff.) he
posedly trained in the study of classical literature, could read this great goes so far as to express some uncertainty about the truth of oracles.
and moving play and so completely miss the point. For all the views One may doubt whether this adds up to what Aristotle would consider
have just summarized are in fact demonstrably false (though some of megale hamartia. But even if it did, it would have no direct relevance to
them, and some ways of stating them, are more crudely and vulgarly the question at issue. Years before the action of the play begins, Oedipus
false then others). It is true that each of them has been defended by was already an incestuous parricide; if that was a punishment for his un-
some scholars in the past, but I had hoped that all of them were by now kind treatment of Creon, then the punishment preceded the crime
dead and buried. Wilamowitz thought he had killed the lot in an article which is surely an odd kind of justice.
published in Hermes (34 [1899] , 55 ff.) more than half a century ago; `Ah,' says the traditionalist critic, tut Oedipus' behaviour on the
and they have repeatedly been killed since. Yet their unquiet ghosts still stage reveals the man he always was: he was punished for his basically
haunt the examination-rooms of universities — and also, I would add, unsound character.' In that case, however, someone on the stage ought
the pages of popular handbooks on the history of European. drama. to tell us so: Oedipus should repent, as Creon repents in the Antigone;
Surely that means that we have somehow failed in our duty as teachers? or else another speaker should draw the moral. To ask about a character
It was this sense of failure which prompted me to attempt once more in fiction Was he a good man?' is to ask a strictly meaningless question:
to clear up some of these ancient confusions. If the reader feels — as he since Oedipus never lived we can answer neither 'Yes' or 'No'. The legiti-
very well may — that in this paper I am flogging a dead horse, I can only mate question is 'Did Sophocles intend us to think of Oedipus as a good
reply that on the evidence I have quoted the animal is unaccountably man?' This can be answered — not by applying some ethical yardstick
still alive.
of our own, but by looking at what the characters in the play say about
him. And by that test the answer is 'Yes'. In the eyes of. the Priest in
the opening scene he is the greatest and noblest of men, the saviour of
I
Thebes who with divine aid rescued the city from the Sphinx. The
I shall take Aristotle as my starting point, since he is claimed as the Chorus has the same view of him: he has proved his wisdom, he is the
primary witness for the first of the views I have described. From the darling of the city, and never will they believe ill of him (504 ff.). And
thirteenth chapter of the Poetics we learn that the best sort of tragic when the catastrophe comes, no one turns round and remarks 'Well, but
hero is a man highly esteemed and prosperous who falls into misfortune it was your own fault: it must have been; Aristotle says so.'
because of some serious (megale) hamartia: examples, Oedipus and In my opinion, and in that of nearly all Aristotelian scholars since
Thyestes. In Aristotle's view, then, Oedipus' misfortune was directly oc- Bywater, Aristotle does not say so ;it is only the perversity of moralizing
casioned by some serious hamartia; and since Aristotle was known to be critics that has misrepresented him as saying so. It is almost certain that
infallible, Victorian critics proceeded at once to look for this hamartia. Aristotle was using hamartia here as he uses hamartema in the Nico-
And so, it appears, do the majority of present-day undergraduates. machean Ethics (1135b12) and in the Rhetoric (1374b6), to mean an
What do they find? It depends on what they expect to find. As we offence committed in ignorance of some material fact and therefore free
all know, the word hamartia is ambiguous: in ordinary usage it is some- from ponEria or kakia .1 These parallels seem decisive; and they are con-
times applied to false moral judgements, sometimes to purely intellectual firmed by Aristotle's second example — Thyestes, the man who ate the
error — the average Greek did not make our sharp distinction between flesh of his own children in the belief that it was butcher's meat, and
the two. Since Poetics 13 is in general concerned with the moral character who subsequently begat a child on his own daughter, not knowing who
of the tragic hero, many scholars have thought in the past (and many she was. His story has clearly much in common with that of Oedipus, and