The Banishment of Oedipus

Abstract

The Choephori and the Bacchae remain masterpieces of Greek literature although an unkind fate has removed a leaf (or more) from their texts. For the first part of this article I would like to assume that an unkinder fate has deprived us of the end of that greater masterpiece, the Oedipus Rex. The play (as we have it) now concludes with the heart-breaking farewell of Oedipus to his infant daughters. We could wish no better end, but it is not characteristic of Greek tragedy in general or of Sophoclean tragedy in particular to end on a dramatic high-point; loose ends must be tied up and the tension must be eased. We may reasonably assume that some such development occurred at the end of the Oedipus Rex. Fortunately, there is a good deal of evidence to tell us (in general) what happened. The versions of Euripides’ Phoenissae and Seneca’s Oedipus may be useful, particularly the latter (which is much closer to the Sophoclean original); there is, of course, Sophocles’ own Oedipus Coloneus; most important of all, there is the evidence of the Oedipus Rex itself, to which I shall now turn.