Oedipus at Colonus

Sophocles’s three surviving Theban plays are Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus. While each tackles an episode of the Oedipus myths, the three plays were not part of a single trilogy. They were composed and performed decades apart and out of chronological order of events. The first to be performed, and last in event time, was Antigone, which scholars date to no later than 441 BC. The first in event time, Oedipus Rex, was produced in 429 BC, and Oedipus at Colonus, which narrates the end of Oedipus’s life, was produced posthumously by Sophocles’s namesake grandson in 401 BC.

Oedipus Rex introduces modern readers to a version of Oedipus’s story from his birth to his realization that he has fulfilled a prophecy that he sought to avoid. Oedipus was the son of Theban king and queen Laius and Jocasta. A prophecy revealed that their son would kill his father and marry his mother; thus Oedipus was abandoned as an infant in the expectation that he would die. But a shepherd found the baby and brought him to Corinth, where the local king and queen adopted him. Years later, Oedipus heard the same prophecy and, not realizing that he was adopted, ran away to avoid fulfilling it. Along the way, he encountered a party on the road and, after a dispute, killed all but one servant, who escaped. Unbeknownst to Oedipus, his father had been among those he had killed.

Continuing on his journey, Oedipus arrived at Thebes, which the Sphinx was besieging. She challenged youths to solve her riddles and devoured them when they failed to do so. Oedipus, however, solved her riddle, releasing Thebes from her control. In gratitude, the city offered him the throne and the hand of Jocasta in marriage. They lived happily for long enough to raise four children: sons Polyneices and Eteocles and daughters Antigone and Ismene. But when their children had grown, a plague descended on Thebes, which a prophecy predicted would only pass after Laius’s murderer was discovered. This led to the realization that Oedipus had fulfilled the prophecy. In despair, he took out his eyes, and Jocasta died by suicide. The play ends with Creon awaiting oracles to determine what to do next.

Oedipus at Colonus follows Oedipus in his exile from Thebes. He arrives in Athens with Antigone, seeking sanctuary and offering his body as a gift to the king in exchange. Antigone picks up the story after Oedipus’s death and a war between his sons for control of Thebes, with Polyneices invading with foreign allies and Eteocles defending. Both sons are killed in this battle. Having assumed control of Thebes, Creon orders that Polyneices be left unburied because he was a traitor to his city, but Antigone defies him, leading not only to her death but to the death of her fiancé, who is Creon’s son Haemon, and Creon’s wife, Eurydice.

Because mythology was the “religion” of ancient Greece, modern people might expect an authoritative version of each myth and be surprised when they encounter inconsistencies among the Theban plays and between Sophocles’s narratives and those of (for example) Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. But in ancient Greece, consistency does not seem to have been either required or expected: Each retelling was composed for a particular performance and audience and was shaped for that moment. The point was not to find a definitive answer to which version told the true myth but to engage actively in debate about the nature of truth.

In all three of Sophocles’s Theban plays, a central feature is pollution, miasma in ancient Greek, which can most literally be translated as “stain of guilt.” Laius’s murder is the source of pollution in Oedipus Rex. Leaving Polyneices’s body unburied threatens pollution in Antigone, and Oedipus’s pollution is resolved in Oedipus at Colonus. In ancient Greece, miasma was believed to be contagious and to have the power to cause catastrophic events from one generation to the next, affecting both the guilty and the innocent. Only through sacrifice and rituals could it be dispelled. Though an exact year for Antigone remains elusive, war was a central feature of ancient life that would make burial rites an ongoing concern. When Oedipus Rex was staged in 429 BC, Athens was itself suffering from plague. Oedipus at Colonus was composed in 406 BC when Athenian democracy was in shambles and the city was on the brink of defeat, and it was staged in 401 BC after Athens had been defeated and lost its political prestige and power but after its democracy had been restored. Each of the plays thus engages with themes of transcendent concern but within the context of events of their time.