When Sophocles wrote
Oedipus at Kolonos in 406/405 BC he was nearly ninety years old, and
Athens was being worn down by its long war with Sparta – in
every way possible the future looked bleak and uncertain. There is a
story that Sophocles wrote this final play to prove that he was still
the master of his faculties and the playwright’s art,
although he must have wondered whether it would ever be performed. As
events transpired it was to be four years before that first
performance, and the Greek world was to be transformed in the
intervening period: Sparta triumphed absolutely, Athens surrendered and
was forced to endure the terror of an imposed tyranny, and then finally
a rebellion overthrew the tyrants and restored the democracy. When the
Athenians took their seats for that first performance in 401 BC it must
have seemed little short of miraculous that they were still able to
conjure up the spirit of the old days – those happy times
when they had enjoyed the plays of the great masters in peace and
prosperity. But here they were, watching the final work by the late,
great Sophocles, and the play duly passed into the pantheon of those
few select works which have survived to the present day. The question
is – what was it about the play which impressed people enough
to make them think it worth preserving? In fact there is a more
fundamental question – what exactly is the play about?
The common view nowadays is
that it is about the acceptance of fate, and the working through of
prophecies. Those who expound it say the same of Oedipus Tyrannos
– that this earlier play was about Oedipus struggling to
maintain the shreds of human dignity in the face of unchallengeable
fate. We are led to believe, therefore, that in the darkest hours of
405 BC, as Athens faced imminent collapse, Sophocles sought merely to
urge his fellow citizens to accept whatever fate threw at them without
complaint – a sort of proto-stoicism as their world came to
an end.
Well, accepting the worst
that fate can offer is certainly a thread that runs through the plays,
and it was undoubtedly part of the message that Sophocles offered to
the Athenians. But we have already seen in Oedipus Tyrannos that there
was a much more immediate and relevant message being presented to its
audience, one that had everything to do with power and politics
– subjects close to the hearts of the Athenians. Oedipus is
caught up in the unfolding of the prophecy about him because he is who
he is – a son of the house of Labdakos, the ruling house of
Thebes. Sophocles presents the curse on the descendants of that house
as the inevitable consequence of their overweening ambition and
tyrannical tendencies. Oedipus is a classic tragic hero – a
man with a flaw – and the flaw in this case is his quick
temper, and his tendency to take sudden, drastic action. He killed his
father in a brutal frenzy at the ill-fated crossroads, and in the same
way he sets himself on the path to ruin by throwing all his energies
into finding the cause of the plague afflicting Thebes. The curious
aspect about this play is how so many modern commentators overlook the
darker side of Oedipus’s character, and see only what is
heroic about him, but in doing so they miss the key message of the
play. What Sophocles was saying was “beware the leader who
harbours the vice of tyranny, because one day he too might become a
plague upon his city”. The Athenians were to experience the
truth of that message all too brutally during the short-lived but
blood-soaked regime of Kritias in 404/403BC.
But what of the final play,
Oedipus at Kolonos, which was written shortly before Athens descended
into its nightmare period? Is there a similarly clear-cut message
within that play? On the surface, one would have to conclude that there
is not: the subject matter – Oedipus turning up as a blind
beggar at Kolonos near Athens, where he is eventually taken down into
the underworld by the Eumenides (the Furies) – seems to offer
little that we in the modern world can really relate to. At first sight
it does seem to be all about prophecies, and arcane religious beliefs,
and it is hard to see what relevance it can possibly have to the
rational world of the twenty-first century. However, once one starts to
analyse the structure of the play, and the themes contained in it, and
then to relate these to the themes of Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone, a
clear and powerful message begins to emerge. The fact that we cannot
see it nowadays is not due to its lack of contemporary relevance
– far from it – the problem is that, like Oedipus
as king in Thebes, we are blind to what is staring us in the face. So,
what was it that so impressed ancient audiences, and convinced them
that this was one of Sophocles’ greatest works?
Let us start by analysing
the skeleton upon which the dramatic action is hung – the
prologue and the five choral episodes. The play starts with Oedipus,
now a blind old beggar, and his daughter Antigone arriving at Kolonos
near Athens. This rural settlement was actually the birthplace of
Sophocles, and there appears to have been some kind of legend
associating it with the final resting place of Oedipus. The question is
– what did Sophocles see in this ancient legend which
prompted him to use it as the basis for his final play? A number of
things are made clear immediately in the prologue: Kolonos is sacred to
the Furies, the “austere and fearful goddesses...all-seeing
Eumenides...anger-prone maidens...sweet daughters of
darkness” (in the translation by Timberlake Wertenbaker).
These strange deities – the ‘kindly’ ones
who also took it upon themselves to wreak terrible vengeance on those
guilty of the worst crimes – turn up memorably in the final
play of the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. There, they are persuaded by
Athena to give up their dreadful pursuit of Orestes in return for being
established in honour at Athens – their fearsome powers
turned to the protection of the city, rather than against it. The
metaphor is clear: the spirit of vengeance is harnessed to the law to
make Athens a place of justice and fairness, where all citizens have
the chance to live in peace. Sophocles actually alludes to these
sentiments in the prologue to Kolonos when he mentions that at Kolonos
Oedipus has come to the Threshold of Brass – one of the
sacred foundations of Athens. The implication is clear: one of the
pillars of Athens is its acknowledgement and worship of these goddesses.
The inhabitants of Kolonos
(the chorus) are horrified that Oedipus has worked on this holy ground,
but he is unabashed: he tells them the prophecy that his final resting
place will be in a spot sacred to the Eumenides – his long,
painful wanderings are over at last. The prophecy, in fact, goes
further – by choosing Athens as his burial place he will
confer a divine protection on the city, and he requests the citizens to
fetch Theseus, King of Athens, from the city so that he can explain it
to him. Sophocles is enlarging on his opening statement: not only do
the Furies help keep the peace within the city, they will also help
protect it from its enemies without. Written as it was in the terrible
year of 405BC this is significant stuff. We will return to the
anger-prone maidens later.
In the second chorus
Sophocles gives us the wonderful choral ode to his birthplace:-
Here, stranger, in this land of fine horses
You come to Earth’s fairest haven
Kolonos, shimmering, bright.
Where comes – no stranger – the nightingale
Her clear voice rising from green glades.
Amidst the ivy dark as wine she dwells
And by the god’s sacred pathways
Dark and bounteous, sealed in impenetrable calm.
This was the rural idyll of Kolonos, lying a short way outside the walls of Athens
– a sacred place protected by the city which was a beacon of
hope in the world, a home to justice and fairness, ally to its
friends and stern admonisher of its enemies. Or at least it could have
been had not the long years of the Peloponnesian War ground it down, so
that there frequently seemed little to choose between Athens and the
militaristic Spartan state it opposed. And Kolonos itself had
suffered, the frequent Spartan incursions into Attica leaving little of
the arcadian tranquillity the ode describes. But Sophocles evidently
thought it worth including in his play, even in that dark year of 405
BC, and we need to ask why.
The answer is given in the
third chorus: here the battle between Theseus and the Athenians, trying
to rescue the daughters of Oedipus, and the Theban raiding party is
described. Sophocles is in no doubt that Theseus is right to lead his
men into battle on behalf of the suppliants snatched from under their
noses, and he has Oedipus bemoaning the fact that he is too old and
frail to join in. The parallels are obvious, with the almost ninety
year-old Sophocles watching impotently as Athenian manhood is
sacrificed to the war with Sparta. Athens may no longer have been the
shining city on the hill as described in his choral ode, but it was
still worth fighting for. Had he been young enough he would have been
standing shoulder to shoulder with the his fellow citizens.
In the fourth choral
episode the mood darkens further, with the chorus ostensibly pitying
Oedipus for his old age and decrepitude. Again the parallels are clear,
and these lines must have come straight from the heart of Sophocles.
Better to never reach old age if all that you can look forward to is
humiliating decline and death, especially – as he could have
added – if you have to watch the death throes of your city at
the same time. The latter parts of the play become increasingly
multi-layered as Sophocles overlays the story of Oedipus with
reflections on his own life, blending the two seamlessly in a
brilliantly virtuoso display.
Finally, in the fifth
chorus, the end approaches: Oedipus has received the summons to descend
into the Earth, and Sophocles – we must assume –
likewise realised that he had little time left. The only thing left to
wish for is a swift and painless passage into the underworld, and to
hope that those who are left behind (whether the daughters of Oedipus
or the people of fifth-century Athens) can somehow pull through their
respective crises. If this was the final scene it would have to be one
of the most downbeat endings of all time but, fortunately, there is one
final dramatic episode to come, and in the space of that one scene
Sophocles manages to transform the whole play. But before we come to
that we need to consider what has befallen Oedipus in the preceding
scenes.
As mentioned above, the
play opens with Oedipus and Antigone arriving at the sacred grove of
the Eumenides at Kolonos. The locals are initially horrified that he
should have trespassed on sacred ground, but he quickly convinces them
that it is his destiny to do so, and that Athens will benefit from
granting him refuge. At this point his other daughter, Ismene, arrives
bringing news of events in Thebes, which are not good. His two sons,
Polyneikes and Eteocles, are at the point of open warfare as they
contest the crown. Meanwhile, his brother-in-law Kreon is on his way to
Athens in an attempt to persuade Oedipus to return with him. However,
this is no gesture of forgiveness but a cynical ploy to benefit from
the prophecy that the city which guards his burial place will enjoy
divine protection. To add insult to injury, even though the Thebans
want Oedipus to return he will not be allowed back into the city itself
on account of his original crime of killing his father.
There are powerful emotions
at play in this first scene as the attitudes of the various members of
Oedipus’s family towards him are contrasted. While his two
daughters are pillars of filial support, Kreon and his sons are
portrayed as being interested solely in the advantage to be gained by
having him in their power. While they won’t deliberately harm
him, they will be perfectly happy if it is merely his dead body that
ends up outside the walls of Thebes. Contrasted with these two extremes
is the attitude of the inhabitants of Kolonos and, once he arrives,
Theseus. Whilst initially hostile to the perceived sacrilege against
the goddesses, they quickly put this aside and show pity on the old
man. Theseus himself goes further, stating that having been in exile
once himself, he will not turn away a suppliant – even one
with such a past as Oedipus. His words are in accord with the Athenian
policy, frequently expressed by ancient writers, of accepting refugees.
Whether through altruism or kindness, perceived religious duty or a
cool-headed calculation that such an influx could be potentially
beneficial, the policy was undoubtedly an enlightened one, and
Sophocles is reminding his audience that this too was one of the
foundation stones of the city. Although at first they may seem uneasy
bed-fellows, kindness and the anger-prone maidens can apparently
coexist – as the name Eumenides suggests, of course.
In the next scene we are
presented with a dramatic confrontation between Oedipus and Kreon, who
has come ostensibly to persuade the old man to return to Thebes.
Although he starts off civilly enough, it quickly becomes apparent that
he intends to achieve what he wants by any means he can. When Oedipus
rejects his request, accusing him of acting in blatant and cynical
self-interest, Kreon responds with threats – telling Oedipus
that he has had his daughters kidnapped. At this point Theseus
intervenes, warning Kreon that he will lead out the Athenians to
retrieve the girls by force – setting the scene for the third
choral episode. One interesting point to note, though, before we move
on is that Theseus makes it clear that his dispute is not with the city
of Thebes, but its corrupt rulers. “It wasn’t
Thebes which taught you to behave like this,” he chides
Kreon, and in giving him these words Sophocles provides a clue as to
one of the messages contained in the play: he is taking aim at corrupt
rulers, and he is not making any distinction as to where they come from
– a significant point when Athens was still mired in its war
with Sparta.
In the brief third scene
Oedipus is joyous at the return of his two daughters, liberated by the
victorious Theseus and his Athenian soldiers, who have risked their
lives for a wretched family of suppliants. But his joy is short lived
when he is told that his son Polyneikes has turned up, and is
requesting an audience with him. Although he is persuaded to see the
young man, he makes it clear that he has no pleasure in doing so.
The fourth scene is key to
understanding the meaning of the play, especially as it reflects themes
which have run through all three of the Theban plays. Polyneikes has
come to ask forgiveness of Oedipus for the wrongs done to him in the
past. Driven from Thebes by his younger brother, he has assembled an
army to try to win back the crown by force and, like Kreon, he wants to
have Oedipus on his side to gain the advantage of the divine protection
this will confer. Oedipus, though, is having none of it, and he curses
both of his sons with the prophecy that they will die by each
other’s hands in the thick of battle. He will offer no
forgiveness for the evil done to him, not even when it is members of
his own family who will suffer as a consequence. Antigone makes a final
attempt to persuade Polyneikes to give up his hopeless attempt to
conquer Thebes, but to no avail – in Greek tragedy characters
remain true to their deepest compulsions even in the face of certain
disaster, and by doing so reveal to us their innermost natures.
Polyneikes could have seen sense on this occasion and backed down, but
eventually his obsessive ambition will be the death of him –
that is a key character trait of all the Labdakids, after all. The
brilliance of Sophocles is in constructing his play such that a few
short scenes and choral episodes are sufficient to seamlessly pull
together so many different themes.
The scene ends with a crack
of thunder heralding the gods’ readiness to receive Oedipus
into the underworld. The truth of the various prophecies is about to be
confirmed: Oedipus will be received by the Eumenides and become a
protecting force for Athens, while his two sons will destroy each other
in battle. The girls, meanwhile, will prepare themselves to return to
Thebes and the final chapter in the drama which Sophocles had detailed
in his play Antigone some forty years before. The only thing which
remains for us, the audience, is to work out what all of this means.
Yes, the working through of prophecies, and the dignity or otherwise of
mortals as they square up to their fates is part of it, but it seems
perverse to argue that this is all. One could equally argue that
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is merely the account of a
prophecy or premonition being fulfilled, and ignore the interplay of
all the characters in between. All Greek playwrights used prophecies to
frame their stories – as many writers do nowadays, in a more
secular form – but we need to look beyond this to see what
else they were saying.
Kolonos is a difficult play
to interpret because Sophocles overlays a number of strands on top of
one another. The basis is the mythical tale of Oedipus and the
rivalries
of the house of Labdakos, but he then uses this to give some very clear
advice to the Athenians of 405 BC, which we will come to in a moment.
The final strand is a very personal account of how it felt to be an
aged playwright at the end of his career and life, forced to watch as
his city is ground down by implacable enemies without, and by the
self-interest and machinations of various groups within. The despair
and dejection that he felt stands out from the pages, and inspires and
informs the story he is telling. But, amazingly, the final message is
upbeat – forming part of what must be one of the most amazing
endings to any play ever written.
So, what is the message of
the play? Not surprisingly, the central message follows on from the
themes of Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone: bad leaders are a plague upon
their people, and it is the duty of the people to oppose them. If you
allow a tyrant to establish himself in power you will end up suffering
for it, and you will only have yourself to blame. Given the murderous
regime that followed the end of the Peloponnesian War in Athens we can
only assume that Sophocles saw this, or something like it, as being a
distinct possibility. His message to the Athenians is absolutely
unequivocal: it is the duty of the citizens of the polis to oppose
those who would rule unjustly, even if it means laying down your life
in the attempt. In fact, the sin of tyranny is so bad that you must
even turn against members of your own family if they are guilty of it,
even to the extent of summoning up the anger-prone maidens to guide
your actions. Tyranny offends the gods, and without their support the
polis is nothing. This was the message Sophocles was giving to the
Athenians in 405 BC, and although the play was not produced until four
years later, they had by that time followed his instructions and
restored the democracy.
It has been pointed out
that the three Theban plays span some forty years, and each one was
written under very different circumstances, with Sophocles inevitably
changing his ideas slightly as the sequence progressed. This is
undoubtedly true, and he has to engage in some nimble footwork to allow
Kolonos to be consistent with the events in Antigone. However, in one
sense the later play pick up one of the themes of the earlier one and
takes it further forward. In Antigone, we have the two sisters united
at first in their condemnation of Kreon’s actions over the
body of Polyneikes. His refusal of burial for it is sacrilegious and,
although Antigone’s actions are criminal in terms of the
collective responsibilities of the polis, Sophocles points out that
this is one of those occasions where individuals must consider more
fundamental moralities. The problem is that Kreon and Antigone are
Labdakids through and through, and so there will be no compromise or
reconciliation, and disaster will ultimately ensue. What is
interesting, though, is the treatment of Ismene, who vainly tries to
pull Antigone back from the brink of fatal confrontation. It has been
noted that, following Antigone’s rejection of her for
faltering in her support, she disappears from the rest of the play.
This is only really understandable if we understand that by acting out
of character for a Labdakid, she has effectively removed herself from
the drama that subsequently destroys the ruling house. It is one of the
clearest hints Sophocles gives us that the play is all about reckless
ambition: if you are one of the vast majority who know when enough is
enough, and are prepared to compromise at times, then you are not going
to end up sharing the fate of the Labdakids.
But does this theme
re-emerge in Kolonos? It does, undoubtedly, and in fact it is expanded
and enlarged on: in rejecting the advances of both Kreon and
Polyneikes, Oedipus is starting from Ismene’s position in the
earlier play and then going way beyond it. It is no longer enough
simply to call for rapprochement between the warring factions
– things have gone too far for that – and now he
must summon divine retribution upon them. It is no coincidence that
having delivered his rejection of his son he is immediately summoned by
the gods: his work on Earth is done and, with the house of Labdakos
about to destroy itself, he can be brought to their side. And in terms
of the plot of Kolonos, Sophocles has no more to say about him
– his dramatic purpose in the play is done.
But that is not quite the
end: we are treated to an account of his apotheosis, which Theseus
alone is allowed to witness as otherwise the protection of Athens
offered by the gods will be put at risk. Even his daughters are not
allowed to know the whereabouts of his tomb. This is a difficult
section to analyse, though it presumably made more sense to the
Athenian audience in 401 BC. Here in the twenty-first century, though,
we struggle to understand the significance of the various references,
and simply have to accept that Sophocles was making some sort of point
about the long-term survival of Athens. What is less in doubt, though,
is the meaning of the three speeches right at the end of the play, by
Antigone, Theseus and the Chorus, ans we will consider them in turn.
First Antigone accepts that
she cannot see her father’s grave, and asks instead that she
be allowed to return to Thebes to try to stop the bloodshed between her
brothers. We know that as far as the legend goes this is a disastrous
decision, but the purpose of the speech at this point is more subtle.
Sophocles is presenting us with the actions of a dutiful daughter and,
although the curse on the Labdakids will mean that she fails, the
Athenians should still take her words as an example. Sophocles could
see the parallels between mythical Thebes and contemporary Athens, and
he wanted to point the Athenians in the right direction.
Next, Theseus declares that
he will honour his promise to support Antigone and Ismene. They came to
Athens as suppliants and the city will uphold its sacred duty to offer
sanctuary. This is a striking message to have been written in 405 BC.
Sophocles is portraying the legendary king of Athens – the
figure who reputedly appeared at the height of the battle at Marathon
and led the Athenians to victory – as saying that he will not
fail to do his duty by the enlightened policies of the city. If this
sentiment was widespread in the city in 405 BC it is perhaps not
surprising that the Athenians had managed to restore a civilised regime
by 401 BC.
Finally, the Chorus speaks
– but the interesting question is with whose voice do they do
so? Theseus in the previous speech had referred to the man who had so
recently died, and as far as the storyline goes he is clearly referring
to Oedipus. But is this Sophocles sending a message from beyond the
grave? Did he realise that the play would probably not be performed in
his lifetime, and so added this final speak as his valedictory address
to the Athenians? Certainly, many of those watching the play in 401 BC
must have seen it in that way. The message is short, direct and utterly
astonishing:-
Enough!
No
more tears
Everything
is in hand.
To the audience it must have seemed like a
bolt of lightning from the
heavens – did Sophocles somehow foresee everything that was
going to take place after he had written the play? Because, when you
consider it, the message could have been penned that very day: the
Athenians did indeed need to put the past behind them, and lay aside
all their grief, and
simply try to get on with their lives. And what of the final comment
– everything is in hand? What was that supposed to mean? Was
Sophocles really saying that Athens was somehow privileged in enjoying
the
protection of the gods? It was not such an extraordinary thing to
believe in those days, of course, but in 405 BC? Sophocles must have
had a huge amount of faith in the future to write those words in such a
difficult time.
And, of course, events have
largely proved him right: Athens survived to see most of its major
rivals – Sparta, Corinth and Thebes – humbled and
brought low. It declined drastically but something of its spirit lived
on. Like Sophocles himself, classical Athens died of old age rather
than the sword.
In the end, Oedipus at
Kolonos is about a prophecy, but it is not a mythical one delivered by
some actor playing a god – it is a message from Sophocles to
the Athenians written in the dark days of 405 BC. First he outlined
what was special about Athens which, for all its faults, still paid due
acknowledgement to the Eumenides and other gods, and continued to
uphold the ideals of sanctuary and fairness. Then he told the citizens
to do their duty to the polis – that beacon of hope in a
suffering world – by opposing those who tried to subvert the
ideals of the city for their own ends. Finally he offered them hope
that things would get better and the city would survive.
Enough!
No
more tears
Everything
is in hand.