Sophocles

B

Thought

The plays of Sophocles reduce the emphasis on divine will—or relegate the will of the gods to the background—and stress instead the importance of human will. In Aeschylus, Sophocles’s most important predecessor, the will of the gods moves in and above human motives. This shift in emphasis enables Sophocles to concentrate on human character, and he produces an astonishing variety of unique, unforgettable individuals. His tragedies present a particular movement of crisis and revelation.

Many Sophoclean tragedies present us with a human being suddenly faced, during a crisis, with the mystery of a universe that imposes failure, agony, and death, defying human ingenuity and understanding. Antigone, for example, develops a main Sophoclean theme: the pain and suffering caused when an individual obstinately defies divine will or political authority, or refuses to yield to destiny and circumstance. The person’s obedience instead to some inner compulsion leads to agonizing revelation and, ultimately, to a mysterious vindication of that person’s behavior and life. Antigone defies the decree of Creon, the ruler of Thebes, and instead bestows the rites of burial upon her battle-slain brother Polynices. Creon has declared Polynices a traitor and ordered that his body be left to rot. In defying Creon, Antigone brings about her own death; the death of her lover Haemon, who is Creon’s son; and that of Eurydice, Creon’s wife.

Human ignorance is another Sophoclean theme. The characteristic Sophoclean hero is someone who begins with a confident assumption of knowledge and ends admitting ignorance or doubt. Even the heroic confidence of Antigone dissolves in doubt in her final speech. This theme is presented in its classic and most terrifying form in Oedipus Rex. The plot of Oedipus Rex turns on the gradual revelation to the mythological hero Oedipus of the dreadful truth that he has become ruler of Thebes by first unwittingly slaying his father and then marrying his mother, the queen Jocasta.

The mystery of the divine stands opposed to human suffering and ignorance. The divine has knowledge—its prophecies are always correct—and it seems to stand, in terms that the human mind can scarcely comprehend, for some pattern of order and perhaps even justice. In a universe so conceived, the human will to action might be expected to wither and disappear. However, Sophoclean heroes are remarkable for their stubborn insistence on action or understanding and for their fierce maintenance of independence. Oedipus stubbornly pursues the search for the truth about himself to the point where he sacrifices his reputation, his kingdom, and finally his eyes. Antigone defies the force of public opinion and the decrees of the state. The balance between the omniscient design of the gods and the heroic force of human will produces the dramatic tension that has kept the plays of Sophocles alive.

---

---

C

Achievement

Sophocles is considered by many modern scholars the greatest of the Greek tragedians and the perfect mean between the titanic symbolism of Aeschylus and the rhetorical realism of Euripides. The contributions made by Sophocles to dramatic technique were numerous, and two of his innovations were especially important. He increased the number of actors from two to three, thus lessening the influence of the chorus and making possible greater complication of the plot and the more effective portrayal of character by contrast and juxtaposition; and he changed the Aeschylean fashion of composing plays in groups of three, each of them part of a central myth or theme, and made each play an independent psychological and dramatic unity. Sophocles also effected a transformation in the spirit and significance of a tragedy; thereafter, although problems of religion and morality still provided the themes, the nature of individuals, their problems, and their struggles became the chief interest of Greek tragedy.

IV

The Plays of Sophocles

A

Ajax

Before the play opens, Ajax, a hero of the Trojan War, has grown bitter because the arms of the fallen Greek hero Achilles were awarded to someone else. He has tried to kill the Greek kings Agamemnon and Menelaus, who awarded the arms, as well as Odysseus, who received the arms. However, the goddess Athena caused Ajax to kill captured Trojan cattle instead. In the play’s prologue Athena exposes the situation of the deluded Ajax to Odysseus. Odysseus pities Ajax, but Athena does not. In the following scenes Ajax regains his sanity and with the help of his mistress Tecmessa finds out what he has done. When he realizes the truth he decides to kill himself, rejecting Tecmessa’s moving appeal.

A notable scene follows in which Ajax appears to debate this decision with himself. The speech is ambiguous throughout, and at the end the chorus, believing that he has given up suicide, sings a joyful ode. In the next scene Ajax kills himself on stage, a scene without parallel in Athenian tragedy. Ajax’s brother Teucer comes too late to save his life, but defends the corpse of Ajax against the kings who declare it shall be left unburied. Two scenes of furious argument result in deadlock, which is broken by Odysseus, who persuades King Agamemnon to permit the burial of Ajax.

The play is remarkable for its presentation of Athena as a fierce, vengeful deity, its favorable treatment of Odysseus (a rare phenomenon in fifth-century tragedy), and the so-called ambiguous speech, which is Sophoclean poetry at its best.

B

Antigone

Antigone, the title character, sets out to bury her brother Polynices, defying the order of Creon, the new king of Thebes. Creon has ordered that the body of Polynices, who died as a traitor in an assault on his native city, be left to rot, exposed to the dogs and birds. Antigone is caught after performing funeral rites and brought before Creon. For her defiance she is condemned to death.

Creon’s son Haemon, who is engaged to Antigone, tries in vain to reason with his father. Antigone is led off to prison and in a remarkable speech tries to analyze her motives for her action. She strips them down to a purely personal love for her brother and abandons the motives of religious and family duty that she announced earlier. The prophet Tiresias now tells Creon to bury Polynices, and Creon, at first stubborn, finally relents.

Creon goes to bury Polynices and release Antigone. However, as we are told by a messenger, Antigone had already hanged herself before he arrived. Haemon, after lunging at his father with a sword, takes his own life. Creon’s wife, Eurydice, goes off to kill herself; she accuses Creon of killing her child. The play ends with Creon’s distraught cries as he carries on stage the body of his son.

The play owes much of its modern significance to the conflict between the individual conscience and the decrees of the state, a conflict that the play dramatizes. The play was once criticized because Antigone disappears from the action early. More recent critical opinion tends to consider Creon as important to the play as Antigone.

C

Oedipus Rex

The people of Thebes come to beg their king, Oedipus, to save them from the plague. Creon, the brother of Oedipus’s wife, announced that the murderer of Laius, the previous king, must first be punished. Oedipus decides to find the murderer. The prophet Tiresias, summoned at Creon’s suggestion, accuses Oedipus of the murder. Oedipus suspects a plot inspired by Creon, condemns Creon to death, but relents at the urging of his wife, Jocasta.

From here, the plot intricacies defy easy summary. Oedipus pushes ahead to the bitter end with his search for the murderer and the truth, learning that he himself was the murderer of Laius, that Laius was his father, and that Jocasta is his mother. In a terrifying scene Jocasta realizes the truth before Oedipus does, tries to stop his headlong pursuit of the truth, and, failing, goes off to hang herself. When Oedipus in the next scene learns the truth, he runs into the house. A messenger comes to tell us he has blinded himself, and soon Oedipus comes on stage, his face running with blood. In a final scene with Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, Oedipus regains mastery of himself and some measure of his old confidence.

Oedipus Rex is justly famed for its flawless construction, its dramatic power, and its effective dramatic irony. The play’s superb dramatic art and the power and terror of its theme have won it a commanding position among the masterpieces of world drama, including even the great tragedies of William Shakespeare. Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his well-known statement on drama, the Poetics, considered Oedipus Rex the most typical and in many respects the most perfect of the Greek tragedies.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain