Oedipus

Good morning and welcome to LLT121 Classical Mythology, in which we resume our adventures in the city of Thebes, the city that the gods seem to love to hate. The original founder turns into a snake. We’ve got that at Thebes. A young man is turned into a stag for seeing Artemis bathing in the nude. Yes, we have that at Thebes. The son kills the father. We have got that. We do that at Thebes. The son marries mother. We do that, too. Brother kills brother. Yep. If it’s bad and it happened in ancient Greek mythology, you can bet it happened at ancient Thebes. I’ve already told you why that is. It happens to be right next door to Athens. Where I want to start today is with one of the most famous characters in all western civilization, one of the most—ha, ha—complex people you’ll ever want to meet. This guy is by the name of Oedipus. Oedipus starts off as a little baby, a cute little baby. He used to be a little boy. Then he winds up as this sad, mewling, puking, unhappy man who has poked his own eyes out with a brooch. This is the gore dripping out of his eyes and all of that because he suffers from classical Greek mythology’s worst documented case of arti manthano. Now I get it. I pause for your questions up to this point. When last we left off, Laius had become king after a long wait with some interesting mathematics behind it, if you’ll recall. Laius had just become king of Thebes. Laius marries the lovely Jocasta. They find out that they cannot have any children. When they go to the Delphic Oracle to find out what the haps are, Laius is given the following helpful information. “You will beget a son. He will kill you.” However, steadfast king, devoted public servant that he is, Laius recognizes that it is his job, it is Jocasta’s job as king and queen of Thebes to beget a child. So they do.
One fine morning Jocasta gives birth to a wonderful, smiling, healthy baby boy. They look at the happy, smiling, baby boy and Laius realizes, “This baby boy is going to grow up and kill me.” As we’ve already seen from other legends this is a fairly common motif in heroic legend. You will recall that Acrisius had been told that his daughter Danaë would give birth to a son who would kill him. The son was Perseus, who did indeed grow up to kill Acrisius. So Laius and Jocasta determine to kill the innocent little child. But please pan in on him. He’s so cute. What did he ever do wrong? Happy, smiley little baby, besides being very badly drawn. They decide to kill him. They can’t kill him dead for three reasons I can think about. One, you can’t kill this cute little baby. Number two, the story demands it. Number three, it is a common motif. You always expose the young baby. They can’t expose him, themselves. So they give him to a trusty shepherd. There’s a shepherd who works for Laius and Jocasta. They say, “Shepherd Bob, go out and expose the little baby. To make sure he doesn’t run away we will put a red hot iron bar through his feet.” He’s not in the least happy about that. The iron bar ran through his feet causes the little footies to swell up, earning this kid the name, in ancient Greek, of “swell foot,” or, in ancient Greek, Oedipus. The kid’s name is Swell Foot because when he was very young somebody rammed an iron bar through his feet.
Well, they take him out to the mountain. Theban shepherd Bob takes him out to the mountain, but he runs into a henchman of the king and queen of Corinth. The king and queen of Corinth King Polybus and his old wife is named Merope. It so happens that Polybus and Merope are looking for a kid. They haven’t been able to beget a child, either. All of a sudden, here comes one of their servants carrying a healthy, reasonably happy, young baby, a boy. He can be a prince and grow up to be a king. Where did you get it? No, we won’t even ask where you got him. The only thing about this little baby that Polybus and Merope notice is that he has a iron bar rammed through his feet and his feet are swollen. So they decide to call him Oedipus, or Swell Foot. I like to call him Eddie. Polybus and Merope bring Oedipus up as their own child. He never suspects for a moment that these people are not his blood parents, until one day when he’s about 18, he is drinking with some of his buddies in the town of Corinth. Keep in mind that Oedipus believes that he is the son of Polybus and Merope and the heir to the throne of Corinth. They are drinking and, as young men will sometimes do, they call each other names for the sheer joy of being young, drunk, and male.
Somebody calls Oedipus a bastard. Oedipus says, “I’m not a bastards.” The guys chuckles knowingly and says, “You are, too. You’re a bastard, Eddie.” Since there was no such thing as childbirth registry and birth records in ancient Greece, Oedipus leaves Corinth and goes to the award winning Delphic Oracle, which boasts a 100 percent accuracy rate. Oedipus inquires of the Delphic Oracle. I’m sure he phrases the question exactly this way. “Who are my parents? Are Polybus and Merope my parents?” He receives back the helpful response, “You will kill your father and marry your mother.” He would be tempted—I know I would be tempted—to grab the Pythoness or the high priest by the collar and shake him within an inch of his or her life and say, “That wasn’t what I was looking for.” But folks, that is the answer he gets. I know that in our next class when we discuss the play, Oedipus the King, by Sophicles there are going to be a few of you who are going to say, “He should have known better. He shouldn’t have killed his father. He shouldn’t have married his mother. He shouldn’t have killed anybody. He shouldn’t have married anybody.” I’m here to tell you that life is not that danged easy. I mean to suggest the Oedipus was doomed from the start. Well, he pretty much does that because what he does is as follows. He still doesn’t know who his true parents are, so he decides to walk towards anywhere that is not Corinth. He happens to be walking towards the city of Thebes. At the crossing of three roads Battlefield, Sunshine, and Glenstone. Could you imagine an intersection of Sunshine, Battlefield, and Glenstone in Springfield? Could you imagine how many people would lose their tempers there? Can you imagine how many people would be killed there in non-vehicular accidents?
Well, Oedipus comes to this big rock marking a fork in the road. There are two paths he can go by, etc. He’s deciding which of the two in the long run he had better go upon. This old goober in a chariot comes hurdling by and runs Oedipus out of the road. Oedipus reacts. Remember that little trick I did when I asked you about the intersect of Battlefield and Glenstone? How somebody with a boom box is pulled up beside you and you’re late for your appointment with the one you love and all you can get on the radio is KTXR, the Gentle Giant? You light the wrong end of your last cigarette with your last match. How you, too, might be tempted to commit violence on this idiot who actually stops at a yellow light. Many of you raised your hands and said you would consider doing physical violence to somebody under these circumstances. I applauded, not because I approve of physical violence, but because I like it when students admit to being human. I told you that I once tried to throw a lit cigar into the window of somebody else’s open car because he made me mad.
Well, to make a long story short Oedipus who is not pleased at being run off the road drags the old guy out of his chariot and kills him. Now, we all know, and its okay for us to know this, very seldom in Greek tragedy are there any surprises. Everybody knows the plot line, just like some sleazy soap opera, where you know that Patch and Scorpia hate each other. They are talking about how much they hate each other and won’t go near each other. We all know they’ve got the hots for each other. We all know they’re going to get together. We all know Oedipus is going to kill his dad. Yep, that old guy was his dad, Laius, king of Thebes. To those of you who say, “Oedipus shouldn’t have killed anybody,” I ask you have you ever been so mad while driving a vehicle that you would consider harming somebody else in another vehicle who was driving improperly? Matt, your comment. Or Scott. Or Moosehead. Any comments? Elizabeth? I’ve been talking the whole time.
Okay, Mark, make a comment. Yeah, that is entirely possible. I mean, sometimes, when I get really mad at somebody who is driving improperly, it is really my fault. I once had a student say, “Do you drive a red Ford Escort?” which I did at the time. She said, “Well, you yelled at me and flipped me off.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry.” She said, “You should be. You cut me off.” You see what I mean? It’s immaterial, Mark. What is important is, one way or another, he’s going to kill Laius, and he just did. He doesn’t know he’s killed Laius. He’s just killed some old creep. He keeps trudging on to the city of Thebes. The city of Thebes is being beset by a creature known as the Sphinx. You have no doubt seen the Sphinx. The Sphinx is a creature with a lion’s body and a woman’s head. The Sphinx asks all travelers a riddle. If you don’t answer the riddle correctly, the Sphinx kills you. The riddle is as follows. “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and walks on three legs in the evening?” The answer, of course, is a human, who as a little baby crawls on all fours, who as a mature adult walks upright on two legs, and who, as an old person, walks on three legs, two legs and a cane. Pretty simple, isn’t it? Well, nobody understands this riddle, so people are just dying like flies as the Sphinx kills them off. As if that isn’t bad enough, word has just reached Thebes that King Laius has been killed in a terrible traffic accident. Of course this is Thebes. The people are kind of used to it. In the absence of the king, Jocasta’s brother, Creon, is ruling.
I’ll tell you this right out. Creon really doesn’t want to be the king of Thebes. He doesn’t ever want to be the king of anybody. He keeps showing up in these Greek tragedies. He always gets stuck being king. He doesn’t want to. He decides to make a deal. He makes this announcement. He says whatever heroic hero can come and rid the city of Thebes of this horrible monster called the Sphinx by answering the Sphinx’s riddle can marry my sister Jocasta and be king of Thebes instead of me. Of course, people come to take Creon up on this offer, but they die when they can’t answer the Sphinx’s riddle. The Sphinx would do better than that, Mark. The Sphinx would kill herself. Enter Eddie. Oedipus shows up and the Sphinx looks him up and down and says, “Okay, Ed, what creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at midday, and three legs in the evening?” Oedipus says, “man.” The Sphinx does a back flip off the walls of the city of Thebes and dies, to the great applause of one and all. Everybody applauds. As one they come clamoring out of the city and they say, “Stranger, whoever you are, thank you so much. Please be our king.”
They are very grateful to Oedipus for saving them from the Sphinx. So grateful, in fact, that they forget dead King Laius. Creon is thrilled as he turns over the kingship to his new brother-in-law, this stranger by the name of Oedipus. I pause here to remind you of what a great scholar has observed. Apropos of ancient Greek myth and heroic legend. Legend by its very nature contains a kernel of historical fact. Granted it’s very unlikely that any mythical half woman half lion creature ever established herself on the walls of any ancient city and strangled people. It’s very unlikely. I don’t think that happened. What I do think might have happened and there’s absolutely nothing to prove this. I’m sure other people have had this theory before me. It doesn’t take a genius to draw a connection with the word Sphinx and the word, if you’ll pardon my English, sphincter. Both words come from a Greek root, which means to choke or even to strangle. Sphinx, just like sphincter, in the ancient Greek language would simply mean choker or strangler. Suppose I were to say that, in the year of our Lord 842 BCE, I’ll say it was October of 842 BC, a strange disease began to come over the people of Thebes, which caused large swellings to build up in the throat area. Eventually, it cut off breathing so that the poor, unfortunate souls died of asphyxiation. Who the heck is going to remember all that? They will probably remember “choked to death.” These people of Thebes were choking to death. Pretty soon they were suffering from the choker, the Sphinx, the choking disease. Pretty soon people started getting bored to tears. It turns into a monster with a woman’s head and a lion’s body. Folks, legend, by its very nature, contains a kernel of historical fact. I would be willing to bet that the Sphinx originally started as a legend or story about a plague that may have caused people to choke to death. On the other hand it might not have.
What we do know is that Jocasta and Oedipus settle down into matrimony. They mingle in love and have four children, Antigone their daughter, Eteocles and Polynices their sons and Ismene their daughter. These people, depending on how you want to count it, are either Oedipus’s children or his siblings. They are either Jocasta’s children or grandchildren, depending on how you want to look at it. It would probably give Oprah a whole year’s worth of shows. You might ask, “Why is it that the gods didn’t get mad immediately at this horrible crime?” You might ask, “Why didn’t the gods just torch up Thebes like a cheap cigar the day they got married?” You might ask, “My god, didn’t Oedipus ever take his socks off when he engaged in marital congress with his wife? Shouldn’t Jocasta have known? Oedipus, Swollen Foot, holes in feet?” The story won’t have it that way. Yes, go ahead. One complaint, Crystal, and that is all you get. No, it’s gone, Crystal. They took the bar out of his foot, but I’ll tell you, they weren’t swollen, but, I bet you, he still had a pretty interesting scar. Just guessing. I’ve taught this class for very many years and I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer.
Well, one day a plague strikes Thebes. This is about 20 years after the marriage. The kids are almost all grown up. This is the setting of Sophicles’s play, Oedipus Rex. Yes, it is. Oedipus decides, “Hey, there’s this big plague. People are yelling, ‘Help us Oedipus. We’ve got another plague.’ People are just dropping like flies. Oedipus this really bites. Oedipus help us.” Oedipus is absolutely helpless, but he does send Creon off to consult the Delphic Oracle. Yeah, but this is tragedy, Mark. We make up the rules as we go along. Creon comes back with the information, “There has been miasma. Somebody in this town of Thebes, who is still here, has murdered Laius 20 years ago. In what I would term the most chilling example of dramatic irony in all of Greek tragedy, Oedipus pronounces this enormous curse including all the horrible things—May he never know another day’s rest in this life or the next. May he be pursued by an amorous mastodon for the rest of his days. May the fleas of a thousand camels, etc. etc.—never realizing. I don’t think he knows that his calling down the curse on his own bad self. We all know that because we all knew the plot when we walked in.
To make matters worse the next person that shows up is Tiresias, the blind prophet, the guy who is wearing his dark Wayfarers, traveling with a little kid who is helping him see. He is kind of old. Oedipus says to Tiresias, “Tiresias, who did it?” Tiresias knows who did it. He’s been given the gift of prophecy. Tiresias says, “I can’t really tell you, King Oedipus.” Oedipus says, “Tell me. This is the plot isn’t it? You and Creon are trying to put me out of a job.” “You’re not going to like the answer.” Oedipus rages farther and farther you’re going to read in your next exciting assignment for our next class. He starts calling Tiresias a blind old bat. You can’t see past the end of your nose. You’re telling me that you can see into the future. Why don’t you go perform an impossible biological feat on yourself, you jerk. Again, it is horrible dramatic irony, because, as I already told you, the play Oedipus Rex is going to end with Oedipus saying, “Oh my god, arti manthano. I was the blind guy.” He pokes his eyes out. We know the play is going to end that way, but Eddie doesn’t. Then Tiresias walks off. Creon and Oedipus get into a yapping match. Oedipus says, “Creon you’re trying to hint that I might be the murderer. You’re trying to ruin the city. You want to be king. Admit it.” Creon barks right back at him, “Eddie you’ve got to be nuts. You think I want to be king of this stinko place?” They’re yapping like a couple of little boys.
Jocasta comes out and say, “Boys, stop yapping. Yes, it’s true I did have this little kid years ago. He was supposed to kill his father. Oedipus, you didn’t kill your dad, King Polybus is still alive, isn’t he? There, there Oedipus. Take a chill pill, Oedipus. And you, Creon, go back to your room.” Well, the situation could have gone on like that just about forever. Sometimes I thought that Oedipus Rex does go on forever, but it’s actually a very interesting play and I’m sure you’re all going to enjoy reading it. What happens next is complication. A messenger comes in, by chance the same messenger years ago, the same old Corinthian dude who had picked up baby Swell Foot. He comes in and says, “Oedipus, King Polybus of ancient Corinth is dead.” Oedipus is jumping up and down going whoo-hoo. He believes he has successfully failed to kill his father. All this time he has been assuming that Polybus is his father. He is no doubt thinking to himself, “As long as I don’t marry the old bag, Merope, I’m cool.” He’s very pleased, until the old messenger says, “They weren’t your real parents. We found you.” That’s where I’m going to leave that story. I’m going to let you read the rest of it.
Suffice it to say that it finally does come out that Oedipus is the guy who killed his dad and married his mom and beget his own kids. He once rushes into the house. He wants to kill Jocasta. That is great. When all else fails kill your mom—or your wife, depending on how you look at it. I’m not advocating that, but he does want to kill her. He sees Jocasta swinging from the chandelier, hanging there dead. He says, “Oh great. I don’t even get to kill you. I’ll tell you what I’ll poke my own eyes out,” which he did. They weren't doing him any good anyway, because he'd been blind to the truth all along. End of the play. Exit stage left.
Here’s what happens next. There are various versions. In one version, the boring version, Eteocles and Polynices rule for a while deciding, Eteocles will be king for the first year, then Polynices will be king for the next year. They will repeat this forever and ever. There is another more interesting variance to this story, which says that Oedipus just lived in a little darkened room in Thebes. He couldn’t rule anymore, because he’d poked his own bad eyes out. One day, they gave him some bad food and he cursed them and said, “I hope you two kill each other.” Which, in fact, they do, because this is Thebes, the city the Greek gods love to hate. We’ll just leave Oedipus wandering around with Antigone and Ismene. They’ll wander around probably for the rest of this class.
It is now time to get into one of the great war plays of all time, The Seven against Thebes. Pardon? Crystal. Keep in mind that the Greek gods and goddesses get to mingle in love with their own kids because, as I’ve tried to suggest in the beginning of class, the gene pool is pretty small. Probably not, but, put it this way, by the end of today’s class, Eteocles and Polynices and probably Antigone will all be dead. It is very rough being a Theban. I know that’s no answer, but it’s all the answer you’re going to get. Eteocles and Polynices make a deal. They make a deal that Eteocles gets to be king of Thebes for the first year. He will rule for exactly 365 days and then Polynices, his brother, will take over and be king for a year. How well do you want to bet that this is going to work out, Regina? Why? Brilliant, it would be too easy. Also, because this is Thebes, and also because try to imagine yourself sharing supreme power over a city with one of your siblings. No thank you.
Polynices hangs out in the award winning city of Ellis with King Adrastus. At the end of one year of staying with Adrastus, Polynices says, “Well, it’s time for me to be king of Thebes.” He sends a little messenger to Eteocles. “Eteocles, my turn to be king of Thebes, now.” Just like you might say to your little sister or brother, “It’s my turn to sit in the front seat,” or, “It’s my turn to decide what we’re going to watch,” etc. Probably, we have all been there, right? Only this is war. Eteocles sends back to Polynices inviting Polynices to perform an impossible biological feat upon himself. “No, I like being king. It’s good to be king.” So Polynices and Adrastus decide to start up an expedition to take Thebes back by force. This is the subject of the award winning play, Seven against Thebes, by Aeschylus. He is the king of the town where Polynices has been hanging out. In addition are recruited Parthenopeus, Hippomedon, Capaneus, Tydeus, and last, the seventh of the Seven against Thebes, is a guy who revels in the name of Amphiaraus. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go because he’s a prophet by trade. He knows he’s going to die in this war. This is what happens. They bribe his wife to make him go. I don’t know how that works, but they offer her the necklace of Harmonia, the first queen of Thebes, in order to make Amphiaraus go. Oh, I know how my wife could make me go. She could tell me, “Honey, either go to this war, which means certain death for you, or clean out your study—and dust it.” I know that would make me go off to war. Off they go.
As they are marching to Thebes, they decide to send Tydeus the guy who is number six, to go into the city of Thebes and offer them another chance. Say, “Guys we are coming with an army. We mean business.” Pardon? Oh, yeah. Of course. Tydeus goes into the city of Thebes, makes his offer, “Eteocles stop being king now. Come out with your hands up. There will be no trouble.” Tydeus gets bushwhacked by people from the city of Thebes. Fifty of the to be exact. Tydeus kills every last one of them. Apparently, they are mad at him. There had been an athletic competition and Tydeus had won, so they jumped him. So Tydeus killed them all. Also, because Athena liked Tydeus.
So Tydeus comes back and reports “Nope they’re not going to go for it.” So the battle starts out. At each of the seven gates of Thebes there is a tower with a heroic hero leading the defense. Tiresias, the blind prophet has gone on record as saying, “If one of the sown men, one of the first families of ancient Thebes, is willing to give his life for the cause, the city will be held.” Wouldn’t you know? Eteocles happens to be defending a tower that is invaded by his brother Polynices. They kill each other in single combat. That fulfills the requirement that one of the Spartoy or one of the first families has died. Heck they got two. The invasion fails. Meanwhile, Parthenopeus dies. Hippomedon is a dead man. Capaneus is an interesting case. Capaneus got up on top of the walls of Thebes and bellowed, “Not even Zeus could keep me out of here.” What did it read on Capaneus’s death certificate? Hubris. Well, at least he got death. Zapped, right on the spot by a thunderbolt. Tydeus, too, suffered a mortal wound. He was dying. He had been fighting in single combat with somebody. He killed the guy, but the guy had given Tydeus a mortal wound. Athena, his divine buddy, was just about to save him. She was speeding down from Mount Olympus, about to help out her buddy, and she caught him eating the brains of his deceased enemy. Athena turned on her heals and said, “Ooo, grotty,” and let him die. Tydeus is dead, too. Polynices is dead. Adrastus is going to live. How about Amphiaraus, the prophet? What was the deal with him, Scott? Right, but everybody else is dead, and he’s still alive. “I’m losing my touch, but I’m not complaining.” He starts running back to the city. All of a sudden the earth opens up and swallows him. That is the end of Amphiaraus. At least he died knowing he was still a good prophet. You are a bunch of ghouls.
So what does that prove? We’re going to still let Oedipus wander around and around. It brings up an interesting question. Creon gets to be king of Thebes for a second time. He’s starting to get old and tired of this stuff. Eteocles and Polynices are dead. In order to ensure peace in Thebes. or to try. he makes the following law. Since he is the king. this is the law. He’s the king, darn it. The ancient Greeks believe that Zeus appointed all kings. He says, let the body of the patriotic hero, Eteocles, who died defending the award winning city of Thebes be buried with all honors. Let him be buried, let him be worshiped, let sacrifices be made in his name. As for that rat, Polynices, the invader, I as the public affairs king of Thebes, decree that he be left out to rot. Let the dogs eat his flesh. Let the birds eat him and then crap on him as a lesson to people who would disturb the civic peace.
Very often a government decides that we should make an example of offenders. This, among other things, underlies the debate over the death penalty. Does the death penalty deter people from committing capital crimes? I don’t know, but there is a school of thought that says yes. There is a school of thought that says no. I don’t care. Oh did I tell you the penalty for burying Polynice is death? On the one hand, you’ve got the king, who is the state with a capital S, decreeing that Polynices not be buried. On the other hand, we have Antigone, star of the play by Sophicles, Antigone. Antigone takes the opposite tack. Antigone says that both of these dead men were my brothers. I love them equally. I am happy to see that Eteocles is being buried. But Antigone believes there is a law that is higher than the law of the state. Antigone believes that, if Polynices is not buried, his soul will know absolutely no peace in the afterlife. Therefore, it is her duty, her duty under a law that supercedes and overpowers any law made by any human, to bury her brother. So this brave heroine does just that. No, she does not dig a six-foot hole in the ground and plant Polynices. She sprinkles dust over his body, which is a symbolic burial. It counts.
When King Creon finds out that somebody has sprinkled earth over Polynice’s body, he sends people high and low looking for the responsible party. Antigone kind of saunters in there and says, “It was me.” Creon yells at her. He storms at her. “I am the king. Zeus obviously wants me to be king. Have you no thought about the state?” Antigone looks him right back in the eye and says, "Yeah, I’m really sorry but this is my brother. It’s my job to see that he’s buried. I’m going to do it again, too.” He yells at her. She saunters out. “Don’t you dare!” Well, of course, the next morning the men find that there’s dust or earth scattered over the putrefying corpse of Polynices. Creon says, “She messed with me. I’m going to make an example out of her.” Sure as heck, he sentences Antigone to die. He can’t kill her or anything like that, so he tells her to march into that tomb. They’re going to close up the tomb and she can die of asphyxiation, or the underworld equivalent of exposure, or something like that. Great.
It so happens that Antigone is engaged to Haemon or Haemon, the son of Creon. His name Haemon means bloody, as in hemophiliac. You can see the promising ending that this story is going to come to. Haemon comes into the throne room of his dad King Creon and says, “Dad, where’s Antigone?” “Oh, she buried Polynices again. So I had to order her executed. She’s down in the tomb now.” Haemon goes, “Dad!” I’m making light of this. Haemon tells his father, “Look, father, two wrongs do not make a right. Why punish this woman for having the courage to do what she believed was right? What is going to be lost by letting her live, etc.? And besides, blah, blah, blah.” Creon goes, “I guess you’re right. Go ahead son. Go get her.” So Haemon rushes to the tomb. He breaks in the door and finds Antigone hanging dead from the chandelier. She has hung herself, just like Jocasta hung herself. So Haemon does what he has to do. He kills himself with a sword, very bloodily. The class ends as the camera pans in on Creon, weeping and suffering the affects of a horrible case of arti manthano, because, finally, Creon gets it. You’ve been a good class. Be ready to discuss the award winning play Oedipus Rex next time.