Unity of Plot in the "Oedipus Coloneus"

Abstract

This play presents the story of Oedipus from his arrival at Colonus to his death or disappearance: how he sought and was accorded sanctuary in Athenian territory; how, with the support of King Theseus, he thwarted attempts to get him back made by the Theban king and by his own son Polyneices; and how at last he entered the sacred grove of the Eumenides and miraculously vanished. It has been called a and mystery, and it is indeed that: patriotic in that it shows the acquisition by Athens of a daimOn or hero at the expense of Thebes, religious in that it shows the passing of a man into that hero-state in which he will be vested with more than mortal power to help or harm, and a mystery over all in that mysterious forces are apprehended in the background guiding man and events to an appointed end. But it is also drama in the Sophoclean manner, and it is with that aspect of the Coloneus that I propose to deal. Particularly, I seek to show that we have here a play which, far from being epeisodic, maintains a steady, ordered progress from beginning to end, with not one scene, nor part of a scene, irrelevant or otiose. We shall, I think, more fully appreciate this unity of plot or action if we are prepared to see in the play, written when the poet was a very old man, an underlying purpose similar to that which undoubtedly underlies the earliest of his extant works: I suggest that here, as in the Ajax, he is justifying the cult of an Athenian hero. Acceptance of this hypothesis is not, indeed, essential to an understanding of the artistic integrity of the work; but I submit that it contributes much; and there is the support of precedent. It was a formidable task the dramatist set himself in the earlier play. The task to which he addresses himself in the Coloneus is, if not more formidable, at least more complex; for doubt as to the validity of the cult of Oedipus could be raised on three distinct grounds: (1) Oedipus was a Theban, not an Athenian. Sophocles must therefore show the rightness of the transfer of his protective powers; the fact that various cities worshipped heroes of alien birth would not relieve him of this necessity, once any doubt had arisen. (2) Oedipus after his expulsion from Thebes was a blind old man, infirm and helpless. Sophocles must therefore show how such a man could after death be endowed with the powers of a hero; for we must not suppose that in Greek thought a man could in the hereafter be other than he was when he passed from this life. (3) The taints of parricide and incest were inseparably associated with