chapter seventeen lecture two oedipus and thebes
TRANSCRIPT
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Chapter SeventeenLecture Two
Oedipus and Thebes
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Heroic Sufferer for Truth or Victim of Curiosity
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Sufferer or Victim
• Oedipus not like other “cosmic” heroes– Not of divine birth– He overthrows his father but creates not order
but chaos
• In Homer’s version, Oedipus continues as king after truth is discovered
• In Sophocles’s, he blinds himself and eventually is exiled
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Sufferer or Victim
• The discovery combines the anagnorisis and the peripateia
• Was he just a toy of fate?• For the Greeks, he had no moral fault and
did what any intelligent person would have done in the same situation
• He is confused about his true self, between what he appears to be and what he is
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Sufferer or Victim
• He dies as the pharmakos for the city, outcast
• His intelligence is restless and he solves riddles, including his own– Typically for the Greeks, the truth is an awful
one
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The Seven Against Thebes
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The Seven Against Thebes
• Eteocles and Polynices rule in alternate years
• Eteocles reneges
• Polynices goes into exile
• Adrastus (Argos)– Daughters must be yoked to a boar and a lion– Polynices and Tydeus
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The Seven Against Thebes
• Adrastus will restore the two to their kingdoms– First Thebes, then Calydon
• Great leaders are summoned– Amphiaraüs (a prophet who knew that all but
Adrastus would die on the campaign)– Eriphylê (sister of Adrastus and wife of
Amphiaraüs) is bribed to decide on behalf of the campaign
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The Seven Against Thebes
• Amphiaraüs makes his sons swear to avenge his death
• The seven heroes1. Adrastus
2. Amphiaraüs
3. Capaneus
4. Hippomedon
5. Polynices
6. Tydeus
7. Parthenopeus
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Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles
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Oedipus at Colonus
• Oedipus, now in exile, arrives in Athens as the Grove of the Furies with his daughter Antigonê
• Delphi: wherever Oedipus is buried that city will never be captured
• Eteocles and Polynices both want him back
• Theseus (king of Athens) refuses to give him back
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Oedipus at Colonus
• Oedipus curses both his sons and goes off to disappear mysteriously
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Tydeus at Thebes
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Tydeus at Thebes
• Tydeus goes into Thebes to persuade Eteocles to step down
• Pins all their champions in wrestling
• Killed all but one of fifty Thebans who ambushed him
• Folktale qualities – mysterious, powerful stranger, all but one . . .
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The Battle Before Thebes
Aeschylus
Seven Against Thebes
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The Battle Before Thebes
• Seven Theban heroes each defend one of the seven gates of Thebes, drawing lots for which gate would be his– Menoeceus kills himself to fulfill the condition
for the safety of Thebes
• Capaneus is killed by Zeus for an impious boast
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The Battle Before Thebes
• Amphiaraüs savagely prevents Tydeus from becoming immortal by giving his skull to Melanippus who eats the brains
• Amphiaraüs himself is protected from being hit in the back by a spear by Zeus– He’s swallowed alive into the ground
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The Battle Before Thebes
• Eteocles finds himself paired with Polynices
• They kill each other with a mutual blow
• Thebes is spared
• Only Adrastus escapes– In a chariot drawn by Arion (< Poseidon +
Demeter)
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Sophocles’ Antigonê
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Sophocles’ Antigonê
• Creon (now ruling at Thebes) forbids the burial of Polynices
• Antigonê defies the order
• She is condemned to be shut in a cave and left to die
• Creon’s son Haemon (who’s engaged to Antigonê) tries to intervene, but Creon will not listen
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Sophocles’ Antigonê
• Creon finally listens to the prophet Tiresias, but it is too late:– Antigonê hanged herself in the cave– Haemon tries to kill Creon, but fails. Then he
kills himself
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Revenge of the Parthenos
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Revenge of the Parthenos
• The play is a circle of opposites– male | female– young | old– state | family– the living | the dead– humans | gods
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Revenge of the Parthenos
• Politically Antigonê is the conservative and Creon is the progressive
• Philosophically Creon advocates nomos and Antigonê physis
• As to gender roles, Antigonê is the untamed parthenos which no civic power can stop
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The Epigoni
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The Epigoni
• Ten years later, the “descendents” of the original seven attack Thebes again
• Eriphylê bribed again, this time by the robe of Harmonia
• Orders her son, Alcmaeon to lead an expedition against Thebes.
• Thebans abandon their city and it is sacked
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The Epigoni
• Now Alcmaeon, son of Eriphylê and Amphiaraüs, avenges his father’s death by killing his mother– As he was ordered to do by his father before
the Seven Against Thebes expedition
• He is driven insane for the matricide and later killed
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