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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Justice is a theme common to both of Sophocles' Oedipus plays, but it is subjected to scrutiny from two quite different viewpoints. The mythical Oedipus was pre-eminently suited to be an example of the workings of universal justice, as Sophocles conceived it, both because his crime and its discovery might be presented as a vivid dramatic event, and because Oedipus' very existence confronted the starkest questions of justice and morality, innocence, guilt and criminal intent. So rich was this broad theme that Sophocles treated it on two occasions, far removed from each other in time and spirit, yet the dramatist was able to derive new elucidation of the universe in his second encounter. But critics generally are unwilling to face the issues of justice and guilt squarely. The O. T., especially, gives rise to much embarrassment or plain evasion, yet only by facing Sophocles' actual presentation of the problem and assessing it on Sophocles' own terms can we arrive at a satisfactory response to the predicament of Oedipus – a response which will affront neither our intellect nor our morality.
1 Cf. Prof. Gellie, G.H., Sophocles, A Reading (Melbourne, 1972), pp. 94–95Google Scholar; for a different view, Vellacott, P.H., ‘The guilt of Oedipus’, G & R (1964), 137–148.Google Scholar
2 See Devereux, G., ‘The self-blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles' Oidipous Tyrannos’, JHS 93 (1973), 36–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The play says as much.
3 Gellie, op. cit. p. 205.
4 For strong assertions of innocence, Dodds, E.R., ‘On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex’ G & R 13 (1966), 38–42Google Scholar; Gould, T., ‘The innocence of Oedipus: the philosophers on Oedipus the King’, Arion 4 (1965), 363-86, 582–611Google Scholar; ibid. 5 (1966), 478-525.
5 Aesch, . Cho. 269-9.Google Scholar
6 Aesch, . Eum. 576-80Google Scholar and passim.
7 O.T. 711-4.
8 The text used is that of Data, A. and Mazon, P., Sophocle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1958, 1960; 2nd ed. of vol. 1, 1962)Google Scholar.
9 Kamerbeek, J.C., The Plays of Sophocles: Commentaries, Part IV, The Oedipus Tyrannus (Leiden, 1967), p. 8Google Scholar.
10 Jebb, R.C., Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments, Part I. The Oedipus Tyrannus3 (London, 1893), at 1. 714.Google Scholar
11 Herodotus i 91, especially 91.4: the anecdote is humorous; most Greeks must have been very well acquainted with the various devices of Delphi to avoid recriminations. Croesus was justly aggrieved at spending money to no purpose. Sophocles does not indulge in such discrediting attacks on Delphi. The oracles in the O. T. are deadly serious and open to no such ambiguous interpretations of this order.
12 See Dodds, loc. cit. (note 4 above).
13 O.T. 109 
, 290 
, 561 
. We must consider the age of Oedipus and his children only in relation to this play. Any attempt to tie in the three ‘Theban Plays’ as a sort of informal trilogy is confronted by a series of totally incompatible chronologies.
14 Cf. Freud, S., Totem and Taboo, trans. Strachey, J. (London, 1960), pp. 80 and 132.Google Scholar
15 Cf. O,T. 25-7.
16 Cf. Benardete, S., ‘Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus’, in Woodard, T. (ed.), Sophocles. A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey, 1966), p. 107Google Scholar; Howe, T.P., ‘Taboo in the Oedipus theme’, TAPA 93 (1962), 128-30Google Scholar.
17 Cf. Winnington-Ingram, R.P., ‘The Oedipus Tyrannus and Greek archaic thought’, in O'Brien, M.J., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex (New Jersey, 1968), pp. 83-5Google Scholar. While accepting his point on daimones, I would still allow Oedipus a greater measure of independence. It is a little difficult to separate off daimon from mania (1300-1) in the chorus usage, and it may be an ambiguous way of explaining violent emotion. Kamerbeek's (op. cit.) remarks on 1329-33 are very much to the point here: he argues that we are not meant to notice ‘that Oedipus’ words do not exactly answer the Chorus' question'. The chorus ask two questions: how could you blind yourself? and what daimon drove you to it? Oedipus' reply similarly divides the divine from the human levels of activity.
18 Cf. Gellie, , ‘The Second Stasimon of the Oedipus Tyrannus’, AJP 85 (1964), 121Google Scholar and n.15, and Sophocles, p. 94, on O.T. 879-80. Kamerbeek, , ‘Comments on the Second Stasimon of the Oedipus Tyrannus’, WS 79 (1966), 86Google Scholar, would interpret the phrase as more directly relevant to Oedipus. The differences are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as he makes them.
19 Cf. Schlesinger, A.C., ‘Tragedy and the moral frontier’, TAPA 84 (1953), 166 and 171Google Scholar.
20 Cf. Gellie, , Sophocles, pp. 99–101.Google Scholar
21 Cf. the sentiments of Soph. Ajax 127-33.
22 Gellie, op. cit. p. 251.
23 See Golden, L., ‘Zeus, whoever he is…’, TAPA 92 (1961), 156-67Google Scholar, on the special qualities and innovations of Aeschylus' solution.
24 ‘
can surely be taken as a reflection on Oedipus (note the balance with 
and 
), and not merely as a limited application to the chorus' view of him. In a play in which verbal slips abound, with telling irony, no word is too small for consideration; reinforcement of the same phrasing occurs at 273 
.
25 And see O.T. 255-8.
26 Cf.O.T. 1436-7.
27 On this topic see Dyson, M., ‘Oracle, edict, and curse in Oedipus Tyrannus’, CQ 23 (1973), 202-12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Cf.Od. xi 271-80.
29 Cf. Gellie, op. cit. pp. 82-4.
30 The only possible exception is at 1154 
. This may be for the purpose of binding them, to be expected in the circumstances. But there seems to be no direct textual evidence to support a view that Oedipus is having the old man hurt to gain information; his threats centre rather on death (but cf. 1152).
31 Dodds, loc. cit.; Adkins, A.W.H., Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), pp. 101-2.Google Scholar
32 One of the aspects of the O.T.; in the broader view it is about knowledge and limitations: see Versenyi, L., ‘Oedipus: tragedy of self-knowledge’, Arion I (1962), 20–30Google Scholar.
33 But cf.O.T. 738,828.
34 See Knox, B.M.W., Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven, 1957), p. 39Google Scholar.
35 See Knox, ibid. pp. 10, 38.
36 Rep. 380 a-c.
37 Athena appears at first sight to be nasty and spiteful – and to some of the audience she may have so remained; but the moral framework of a god is not that of a mortal, and she cannot be judged on appearances alone. See Gellie, , Sophocles, pp. 249-50Google Scholar.
38 Adkins, op. cit. pp. 118-9, argues the differences between the theory and practice of oracles; cf. Gellie, op. cit. pp. 102-3.
39 Diels, H., Kranz, W. (edd.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker6(Berlin, 1951), Vol.i, p. 177Google Scholar: fr.119. Kamerbeek, J.C., ‘Sophocle et Héraclite’ (in Studia Varia Carolo Guilielmo Voll-graff [Amsterdam, 1948]), pp. 84–98Google Scholar, rightly, if negatively, disputes any direct connexion between the dramatist and the philosopher. Such a link is not assumed here. But the ethical notions current in Sophocles' time will have influenced him, and Heraclitus' pronouncement is general enough as well as being a truism.
40 See Kamerbeek, , The Oedipus Tyrannus, pp. 6–7Google Scholar, on Aeschylus' treatment of the Laius-Oedipus theme.
41 Freud, , The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Strachey, J. (New York, 1965), p. 298Google Scholar.
42 Cf. Gellie, op. cit. p. 86.
43 Cf. Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind, trans. Rosenmeyer, T.G. (New York, 1960), p. 108Google Scholar: ‘A tragedy offers no scope for dividing the world into two levels, one producing the values by which the other operates.’
44 Cf. Gellie, op. cit. p. 100.
45 Ibid. pp. 94-5.
46 On a more specific note, Jones', J. observation is to the point: ‘Thebes is put right with the gods, and the religious institutions of oracle and prophecy are vindicated’ (On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy [London, 1962], p. 204)Google Scholar. As Jones remarks, it is a result of Oedipus' tragedy which is usually ignored. Dodds, , The Greeks and the Irrational? (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), p. 75Google Scholar, holds that the oracle of Apollo was of vital importance to the stability of the Greek mind and life.
47 Cf. Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), p. 128.Google Scholar