Oedipus at Colonus

Overview

Oedipus at Colonus is about eighteen hundred lines and it is the longest of Sophocles’ surviving plays. He wrote it at the very end of his life, probably in 406 BCE, and died before it could be staged; his grandson produced it in 401, by which time Athens had lost the war, the walls had been pulled down and the democracy had been overthrown and restored. The play is set in a village a mile from the city, and that village was Sophocles’ birthplace.

It is not a sequel in the usual sense. The three Theban plays were written decades apart, in the order Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and they do not fit together tidily. This one assumes the events of Oedipus the King and looks forward to the events of Antigone, and it stands on its own.

What is unusual about it as drama is how little happens and how much is at stake. Oedipus sits down in the first hundred lines and barely moves again until the last two hundred. The action consists of people arriving and being answered. And the central event, his death, is not shown, not described by anyone who saw it clearly, and is not a death in the ordinary sense.

What happens

A blind old man and a young woman come along a road and stop at a grove. Oedipus asks where they are. When a local tells him it is sacred to the goddesses the Athenians call the Kindly Ones, meaning the Furies, he refuses to move: Apollo had told him long ago that he would find his rest at a shrine of these goddesses, and so his life is over and he knows it.

The elders of Colonus arrive, horrified to find anyone in that ground, and then more horrified to learn who he is. They want him out of the country. Oedipus makes his first defence: he did not know what he was doing, and he asks whether a man who kills in self-defence, without knowing whom he is killing, is a criminal. They send for Theseus.

Ismene arrives before him, with news. The oracles now say that Thebes’ safety depends on Oedipus, that the city will want him near but not inside its borders, and that whoever holds his grave will have the advantage in war. His sons, who let him be exiled and are now at war with each other over the throne, have both become interested in his whereabouts.

Theseus comes and behaves impeccably. He knows what exile is, he asks what is needed, and he grants protection without conditions. The chorus then sings the ode in praise of Colonus, its horses, its nightingales, its narcissus and crocus, and the grey-leaved olive that no invader has ever destroyed.

Creon arrives with soldiers and honeyed language, offering to bring Oedipus home. Oedipus tears the offer apart: they want him at the border, not at the hearth. Creon reveals that he has already seized Ismene and now takes Antigone by force, and is only stopped when Theseus returns and recovers both girls.

Then Polynices, Oedipus’ elder son, comes as a suppliant. He is marching on Thebes with seven armies and wants his father’s blessing, since the oracle says the side Oedipus favours will win. He admits he treated his father badly and asks forgiveness. Oedipus lets him finish and then speaks the curse: the brothers will kill each other, neither will take the city, and Polynices will die by his brother’s hand and kill him in turn. Antigone begs her brother not to go back to the war. He goes, knowing.

Thunder. Oedipus says the sign has come, and for the first time in the play he leads instead of being led, walking without a guide to a place he has never seen. A messenger returns to describe what could be seen from behind: the daughters sent away, a voice calling him and asking why he delays, and then, when they looked back, no Oedipus, and Theseus alone with his hand shading his eyes as if against something no one could bear to look at. Where the grave is, only Theseus knows, and he is to pass the secret to one successor at a time.

How to read it

Read Oedipus the King first, and Antigone afterwards if you have time. This play is much richer with the first behind it, and the last scene, in which Antigone asks to be sent to Thebes, is pointed at the second.

Read the ode on Colonus at lines 668 to 719 twice, and then remember where the poet was born and how old he was.

Track the arguments about guilt. Oedipus makes his case three times, to the chorus, to Theseus and to Creon, and the emphasis shifts each time: ignorance, self-defence, and the fact that the oracles had spoken before he was born. Decide whether the play agrees with him, and notice that it never quite says.

Do not look for a confession or a moment of acceptance. A modern reader expects the old Oedipus to have made peace, and what Sophocles gives is a man who has become harder rather than softer, whose anger is now something like a weapon, and whose blessing is worth having precisely because his curse works.

Notice the geography. Thebes wants his corpse as a border defence; Athens gives him a resting place and gets a protector. The play was written for Athenians in the worst year of their history, and it is telling them, among other things, what their city is for.

Questions it raises

• Is Oedipus innocent? He acted in ignorance and in self-defence. Does that answer the pollution, or is pollution not the kind of thing an intention can answer?
• How does a man this polluted become a blessing? Is it the suffering, the argument, or simply the gods’ decision?
• Polynices comes as a suppliant and admits his fault. Is the curse justice, or the one power a helpless man has left?
• The chorus sings that it is best never to have been born, in a play about a man whose death is a gift to the city. Do those two things belong together?
• Only Theseus may see the end, and only one heir at a time may know the grave. What is the play saying about what a city can be trusted with?
• Sophocles wrote this at about ninety, about his own birthplace, about an old man dying. How much does that change how you read it, and should it?