The Wrath of Oepidus

Abstract

T HE Oedipus Coloneus completes the tale of the Oedipus Rex. It is true that, according to the traditional estimate, more than twenty years intervened between the writing of the two plays. It is also true that between the character of one drama and his namesake in another, no absolute identity is to be automatically assumed. Most of the figures in Greek tragedy, particularly those of Sophocles, are types rather than unique personalities, artfully constructed rather than copied from life.' The Creon of the Antigone is a king, and as a king he has little in common with the Creon of the Oedipus Rex. Indeed the brother of locasta is conceived along lines which belie any relationship with the adversary of Polyneices. What, then, gives us the right to see an organic link between the two Oedipus plays? For one thing, the Rex quickly became a famous work,2 in spite of its failure to win the first prize for its author. No Athenian audience confronted with a new treatment of the Oedipus myth could fail to be reminded of Sophocles' earlier piece. But more important, Sophocles himself, by countless references to the action of the earlier