Oedipus at Colonus

In ancient Greek religion, murder could cause pollution, miasma in ancient Greek, that could harm not only the individual who committed the crime but also everyone associated with him or her. This made pollution an issue of public concern and state security. In the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides reports that the Spartans hoped to convince the Athenians to exile their hawkish leader, Pericles, by reminding them of a curse against the Alcmeonid family. Some 200 years prior, an Alcmeonid had murdered suppliants who had been promised protection, and Pericles was connected to the family on his mother’s side. Even across centuries, the fear of pollution was such that the Spartans thought to use it as a bargaining chip. Curing pollution by offering compensation to the gods and undergoing purification rituals was thus a huge concern in Athens.

Ancient Greek myth narratives repeatedly depict heroes attempting to resolve pollution. In Homer’s Iliad, Agamemnon’s violent rejection of the priest Chryses, who offers a ransom for his daughter, leads to a plague that is only resolved through prayers, rituals, and restitution. In Apollonius of Rhodes’s Jason and the Golden Fleece, the gods order Medea to visit Circe to be purified after she murders her brother.

In Oedipus at Colonus, pollution is a motif that supports the immortalization of the hero. Oedipus arrives in Athens because Thebes drove him out to expunge the pollution that he caused by murdering his father and marrying his mother. His wandering and suffering could be understood as a form of compensation for his crimes, which ultimately leads to his purification and immortalization.

The Prologue begins with Oedipus and Antigone resting in a grove in Colonus, which Oedipus subsequently learns is “holy ground” belonging to the “daughters of Earth and Darkness” (Lines 39-40). When Oedipus asks by what name he should call them in his prayers, the Stranger replies, “The people here call them Eumenides, | all-seeing ones, but other names are used” (Lines 42-3). The “other names” he refers to include Erinyes, or Furies, as well as Semnai, meaning the Holy Ones. The goddesses referred to are three daughters of Night (Nyx) who exact compensation for crimes, especially those against family members.

Literally translated, Eumenides means Kindly Ones. Aeschylus’s Eumenides provides a narrative for how the Furies become the Kindly Ones through propitiation. Referring to them by this name in Oedipus at Colonus draws attention to how a sinister power can become a beneficial one, depending on the actions one takes. In this sense, the Eumenides symbolize the process that Oedipus undergoes: He will be transformed from a harmful power that caused pollution in Thebes to a beneficial and protective one in Athens.