Oedipus the King

1. Oedipus the King by Sophocles

2. Sophocles • Born at Colonus near Athens • Born circa 496 B.C. • Died 406 B.C. • Family was aristocratic • Had a classical Greek education • only males educated • memorization the primary learning tool • Wrote on tablets

3. Sophocles Continued • Learned Homer • Goal of education to produce good citizens • Sang a hymn at the victory of Salamis (480 B.C.), a battle which saved Greece from Persian invasion • Acted as a general • Member of a commission that guided Athens that followed a desperate military defeat to Sicily (413 B.C.)

4. Sophocles Continued • Most successful dramatist who presented plays in the theater of Dionysus • First victory in 468 B.C.; defeated Aeschylus • Won first prize 18 times • Won second prize occasionally • Never came in third

5. Sophocles Continued • Wrote 123 plays • Seven survive: Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus, Electra, and Trachiniae

6. Athenian Theater • Athenians invented theater • Chorus was the oldest element • the chorus consisted of dancers (hence choreography) • drama began as a dance to Dionysus • When Oedipus the King was performed, theater was still an act of religious devotion to Dionysus, the god of all living, growing things

7. Athenian Theater Continued • Theater only active during the three-day festival of Dionysus • Dancers often wore masks • Thespis added the first actor • Sophocles had the genius to add two more • Audience was made up of average people • Theater could hold fourteen thousand • Audience was quite lively

8. Athenian Theater Continued • Players wore masks enabling them to play multiple parts • The chorus stayed on the stage the entire time • Drama based on well-known myths, which had the authority of history and religion • The stories held the moral, religious, and historical ethos of the race

9. The Legend • Playwrights used well-known myths as the basis of their plays; automatically had a sense of authority • Exposition and character development was built in • Audience recognized the story • Dramatic irony a key element in the plays

10. The Legend Continued • Audience in a unique position; they understand the past, present, and future in every situation of the play • Audiences understood everything on two levels at once • Their role became at once godlike and everyman: he sees the image of his own life and sees it through an all-knowing lens

11. The Oedipus Legend • Jocasta and Laius, queen and king of Thebes, are childless • Told by Apollo that their son would kill his father and marry his mother • When Oedipus was born, Laius put a stake through his feet and ordered a shepherd to abandon the baby on a mountainside • The shepherd pitied the baby and gave him to another shepherd

12. The Oedipus Legend Continued • The second shepherd gave it to the king and queen of Corinth, Polybus and Merope, also childless • They name him Oedipus which means “swollen foot” • Oedipus, now a young man, heard from a drunkard that he was not the real son of the king and queen • Oedipus went to Delphi and was told he would kill his father and marry his mother

13. The Oedipus Legend Continued • He leaves and meets a chariot at a crossroads where, enraged by his ill treatment by the charioteer, kills the entourage, including Laius • Oedipus comes to Thebes which is being plagued by the Sphinx - part bird, lion, woman • Oedipus solves the riddle and gets the prize -- Jocasta • He rules well for many years; has children • A new plague breaks out in Thebes which is where the play begins

14. Aristotle • 384 – 322 B.C. • Agreed with Plato that universals, (ideas or forms as he called them), are real, and that knowledge derived from the senses is limited and inaccurate • Asserted that form and matter are of equal importance: both are eternal and neither can exist inseparable from the other

15. Aristotle • His god was simply the Prime Mover, the original source of the purposive motion contained in the forms • No place in his religious scheme for individual morality • Highest good consists in self-realization, that is, in the exercise of that part of man’s nature which most truly distinguishes him as a human being

16. The Golden Mean • The solution to living a good and purposeful life is to be found in the golden mean, in preserving balance between excessive indulgence on the one hand and ascetic denial on the other.

17. Works Consulted Oedipus the King. Sophocles. Trans. Bernard M. W. Knox. New York: Washington Square Press, 1969.