38 Necessity: the divine personification of absolute and ineluctable destiny, the goddess Anankē was, like Zeus, a daughter of Cronus.
whose names are many: the Greek gods had many different titles. Some were toponymics, referring to the different places in which they were worshipped, and some were descriptive of the particular capacity or function of the divinity in which he or she was being invoked. Dionysus had a large number of titles, including ‘Bacchus’ and ‘Iacchus’. This particular hymn meditates on the numerous places in which his cult was practised.
thy Theban mother-nymph: Dionysus was the son by Zeus to Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia.
Italy: some editors have doubted the manuscripts’ reference to Italia, substituting Icaria, a district north of Athens with an important local cult of Dionysus. But the Greeks had colonized southern Italy, taking their gods with them, and the reference to Italy emphasizes the universality of the worship of Dionysus which is the underlying theme of this ode.
Where Demeter has her abode: Demeter, goddess of arable farming and mother of Persephone, the queen of the underworld, received at her shrine in the Attic town of Eleusis—the ‘abode’ mentioned here—a famous mystery cult in which Dionysus also played a prominent role.
Ismenus’ flood: a river flowing to the east of Thebes, after which Ismene is named.
the savage | Dragon’s teeth had offspring: see above, note to p. 7.
39 Parnassus’ height: Parnassus is a mountain in Phokis with a steep face on which the Delphic oracle, sacred to Apollo, was built. Dionysus was believed to hold revels on the mountain (Euripides, Ion 716).
the spring of Castaly: the Castalia is a stream flowing from the cliffs above Delphi.
Asian hills: the translation departs considerably from the Greek, which names Nysa, a mountain traditionally associated with Dionysus, but located in many different places. Here the Mount Nysa of Euboea in mainland Greece is probably meant.
with swift healing: the Greek refers to Dionysus’ familiar function as katharsios, ’purifier’.
Euripus: the straits between Euboea and Boeotia, the district in which the city of Thebes lay.
40 Pallas: the goddess Athena, whose temples at Thebes are mentioned in Oedipus the King (line 19). In the aftermath of the siege Eurydice was presumably thanking Athena in her capacity as the goddess who protects citadels.
41 no stranger to bad news: Sophocles again hints at the death, prior to the action of the play, of Creon and Eurydice’s elder son (see above, note to p. 23).
41 Hecate and Pluto: it is important for Creon, having failed to send Polyneices’ corpse to the world below with due burial, to appease these gods’ wrath. Hecate was a wandering goddess of crossroads, but also the divine representative on earth of the underworld; Pluto was a ritual title of Hades.
42 Inside the palace: excessive public displays of mourning were frowned upon in Sophocles’ time, and, indeed, at Athens actually outlawed.
43 Enter MESSENGER: there is no indication in the Greek as to whether this messenger is male or female. The character is probably meant, however, to be the same (male) messenger who followed Eurydice into the palace after line 1255.
a blade into her heart: it is comparatively rare for women in tragedy to stab themselves. Most females, for example Antigone and Iocasta, commit suicide by hanging themselves.
44 Megareus: the elder son of Creon and Eurydice, to whose death oblique allusion has already been made (see above, note to p. 41), is finally named.
45 a wife and a son: the translation reduces the pathos of the original, in which Creon addresses both characters vocatively in the second person singular.
OEDIPUS THE KING
49 My children: it is unusual for rulers in Greek tragedy to address their citizens in this way; it implies the ‘benevolent paternalism’ of Oedipus’ rule, but also his absolute power.
Cadmus: the founder of Thebes and its royal dynasty.
the boughs that mark the suppliant: branches of laurel or olive, entwined with wool.
hymns and prayers: the Greek names explicitly the paian, the prayer to Apollo the Healer.
before the altars: the altars in front of the palace, including certainly that of Apollo (see below, line 919).
the shrine | Of fiery divination: the Greek makes it clear that the Theban temple of Apollo Ismenios is meant. Divination by means of burnt offerings was practised there.
The withering god of fever: at this stage no particular god is named as responsible for the plague afflicting Thebes, although later it is unusually identified with Ares, the god of war (line 190).
50 No god we count you: it is important to establish that although Oedipus is an autocrat (unlike the democratically-minded Athenian kings in tragedy), he does not sacrilegiously expect to be regarded by his citizens as divine.
the cruel Sphinx: the Greek here does not actually name the Sphinx, but calls her simply ‘the cruel singer’.
on our bended knees: i.e. assuming the traditional posture of supplication.
51 in Phoebus’ house: in Apollo’s temple.
for they Are signalling: presumably some of the suppliants attending the priest.
There is pollution: the Greeks believed that homicides were afflicted by pollution, miasma, which could communicate itself to all who came in to contact with them.
52 Laius: previous king of Thebes and husband of Iocasta. He was the son of Labdacus and a descendant of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes.
Where was he murdered? It is Aristotle’s only criticism of this, his favourite tragedy, that Oedipus is here implausibly characterized as totally ignorant of the circumstances surrounding his predecessor’s death (Poetics 1460a30).
53 Her riddle: the Sphinx’s famous riddle asked what thing goes on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening. The answer to the riddle is ‘man’. It is noteworthy that Sophocles at no point in the play recounts the riddle explicitly, although tracing Oedipus’ own progress from a helpless baby to a man in his prime to a blinded cripple, who can walk only with the aid of his ‘third leg’—a walking-stick.
the god: named in the Greek as Zeus.
54 Apollo too, who shoots from afar: the chorus invokes three of Zeus’ Olympian children to assist them in their plight. Athena, goddess of cunning intelligence, Artemis, the goddess who presides over the Theban market-place (but is also responsible for childbirth), and Apollo ‘who shoots from afar’, the archer-god whose arrows can bring both disease and remission from it.
to the dark realms of the dead: the Greek actually says ‘to the shore of the western god’, for the home of the shades of the dead was traditionally located towards the setting sun (e.g. Homer, Odyssey 12. 81).
55 Daughter of Zeus: either Athena or Artemis may be meant here.
god of War: Ares, named in the Greek, unusually in this play held responsible for physical afflictions resulting not from violence, but from plague.
to his distant home: this is a reductive adaptation of the Greek, which graphically specifies ‘either to the great deep of Amphitrite [a sea-goddess, probably here to be associated with the Atlantic] or to the hostile waves of Thrace [a country bordering on northern Greece, probably here suggestive of the Black Sea] where it is difficult to anchor’.
lord of the sacred dance: Dionysus, otherwise known as Bacchus, was the patron deity of dancing. See above, note to p. 8.
The savage god: Ares once again. In the Iliad Zeus describes him as ‘the most hated of the gods to me’ (5. 890).
56 lustral water: collective sacrifices made by a household included the sprinkling of its members with consecrated water. Denial of access to this ritual meant, effectively, excommunication.
57 Agenor: a Phoenician king, whose son Cadmus came to Greece and founded Thebes. He was succeeded by his son Polydorus, his grandson Labdacus, and his great-grandson Laius. The enumeration of Laius’ ancestors adds weight and solemnity to the curse Oedipus is about to pronounce.
/> Justice: Dike. See above, note to p. 17.
58 or other form of divination: e.g. by fire, as attempted by Teiresias in Antigone, above, note to p. 35.
62 Cithaeron: a mountain range sacred to Zeus lying near Thebes, and dividing Attica and Plataea. It was there that Oedipus was exposed in infancy.
63 staff: it is impossible for any translation to convey the effect in the Greek attained by the use of the same word, skēptron, for the sceptre which grants Oedipus his royal authority, for the weapon with which he killed Laius, and for the staff on which he will lean, blinded, at the close of the play.
64 The voice of god: here the oracular voice of Apollo at Delphi.
the terrible god: Apollo, armed with his father Zeus’ lightning, is here envisaged as the executor of punishment.
The Furies who punish crime: here the Greek names the Kēres, agents of divine vengeance, often identified with the Erinyes (see above, note to p. 37).
Parnassus: see above, note to p. 39.
Thebes and Corinth: the chorus has no conception that Oedipus’ Corinthian birth and provenance might be in doubt.
69 rage of yours: this and the following three lines, as they stand in the MSS, make little sense. Two lines have probably been lost. The translation offers an intelligible and performable text reconstructed by guesswork: the lines printed in brackets were supplied by the translator.
70 the chief of gods: the sun-god, Helios, is foremost among the gods not in terms of power, but in that he is the most conspicuous and apparent to men. It was customary to swear oaths by him.
72 over a precipice: this detail is not in the Greek, which states that the baby was simply cast out on a ‘trackless mountain’.
73 Daulia: a district south-east of Parnassus. The place where the three roads meet is the point on the road from Thebes to Delphi, leading westward, where a branch diverges off to the north-west in the direction of Daulia.
a Herald: at line 114 the audience was told that Laius was killed while on a pilgrimage to Delphi. The company of a Herald, to lend solemnity to the sacred mission, would have been appropriate.
74 Merope: the Greek adds that she was of ‘Dorian’ stock—a noble lineage which could trace itself back to Hellen, the eponymous ancestor of the Greek people.
75 the stars alone have told me: Oedipus has only been able to locate the land in which he grew up by calculations from the stars, as a sailor uses the heavens to navigate.
any bond of kinship: at this point Oedipus is only hypothesizing a distant blood relationship with Laius.
77 laws: see above, note to p. 5.
A god: the Greek implies a mysterious, but unnamed, divine presence.
77 Pride makes the tyrant: this is one of the most hotly disputed textual points in Greek tragedy. Some editors believe that the sentence should read ‘a tyrant produces pride’. ‘Pride’ here translates hubris.
78 the sacred dance: dancing was so central a component of the cults of Apollo, Dionysus, and other gods that this question really implies, ‘Why should I participate in public worship at all?’
Abae: the location of an important shrine of Apollo, mentioned by Herodotus (8. 33), in north-west Phokis.
Olympian Zeus: the famous cult centre of Zeus at Olympia in the Peloponnese is meant.
thy oracles: a misleading translation of the Greek, which explicitly says ‘oracles concerning Laius’.
79 in his grave: the translation omits two suspect lines after this. Iocasta asks ‘What are you saying? Has Polybus died?’, and the Corinthian responds ‘If I am not telling the truth, then I am worthy to die’.
83 from the cradle: the Greek says literally ‘from my swaddling-clothes’.
they named you Oedipus: Oedipus’ name means, literally, ‘Swollen-foot’.
84 thrice a slave: i.e. a slave whose mother and grandmother had also been slaves.
85 Fortune: the goddess Tuchē, who personified random chance. She was a daughter of Zeus and had a local cult in Thebes.
when the moon | Next is full: the Greek may mean ‘at tomorrow’s full moon’.
Pan: as a god of the countryside, who oversaw the reproduction of flocks, Pan was invested with considerable sexual energy, often expressed in chasing nymphs. He would therefore be a plausible divine candidate for fathering Oedipus on Mount Cithaeron.
86 Kyllene: a mountain in Arcadia on which Hermes was supposed to have been born—a story dramatized by Sophocles in his satyric Trackers.
Helicon: a mountain range in western Boeotia, associated primarily with the Muses.
not bought: slaves who were born and bred in the house of their owners, rather than purchased, were regarded as more loyal to their masters. This fits the characterization of the Theban shepherd.
87 Arcturus: the leading star of the constellation Boötes (Ursa Major), appearing as a morning star in September shortly before the autumnal equinox.
89 parents: the masculine-plural Greek term tekontas is ambiguous. The plural could be used honorifically in place of the singular, in which case this occurrence should be translated ‘father’. But, as in this translation, the Greek can equally well be interpreted as meaning both parents, raising in the audience’s mind the question of the extent to which Oedipus is to be responsible for Iocasta’s death.
Ah God! Ah God!: this is an over-translation of the Greek, in which Oedipus utters two meaningless cries of woe, ’iou iou’.
O Sun: in the Greek Oedipus apostrophizes rather the light.
all desiring: the loose translation omits an important appeal to Zeus.
90 Ister: the ancient name for the river Danube.
Phasis’ flood: now called the river Rion, running through Colchis (approximately equivalent to the modern Georgia) into the south-eastern end of the Black Sea.
Evils self-sought: the suicide of Iocasta and the self-blinding of Oedipus are deliberate and conscious acts based on true knowledge. The messenger thus distinguishes them from the previous calamitous deeds (parricide and incest) which were performed unwittingly.
91 ’Through this . . . To my own child’: there is no direct speech in the original.
some deity: the messenger’s speech implies that Oedipus was guided by some unidentified supernatural agent, for which the Greek term is daimōn, often translated as ‘spirit’. This word is used repeatedly until the climactic moment when Oedipus names Apollo at line 1329.
92 spirit: the Greek term, again, is the anonymous daimōn.
93 O God: the Greek refrains from naming the divine agent, which is still referred to as a daimōn.
93 a blind man: the translation omits Oedipus’ twice repeated utterance here of ‘alas’.
What god: the Greek yet again uses the ambiguous term daimōn.
94 Or on my mother: Oedipus anticipates that he will not have recovered his sight after death when he encounters his parents in the underworld. In the Odyssey, similarly, Teiresias is conceptualized as remaining blind in Hades (12. 266).
death: the Greek actually says ‘hanging’—suicide by the same means as Iocasta.
95 them: it is not clear to whom Oedipus here refers. It may be the members of his own family, or the Thebans in general.
to dwell among the Thebans: the translation wanders far from the Greek. Oedipus actually says that if he had died on Cithaeron he would never have revealed his origins to mankind.
96 nor sunlight can endure: Oedipus’ pollution is so great that it threatens the very purity of the elements, represented by Earth, the rain, and the light respectively.
for she is yours: as Iocasta’s brother, Creon is to be responsible for her burial. It is noteworthy that Oedipus does not name her.
97 some strange doom: it is not made clear in this play how, when, and where Oedipus is to die. In Antigone he had been buried, apparently, at Thebes; in Oedipus at Colonus he dies a supernatural death at Athens.
98 parent: the Greek says ‘father’. Oedipus is officially handing over to Creon the guardianship (a respons
ibility which could only devolve upon a male) of his daughters.
your kin: the translation omits a whole line after this, in which Oedipus asks Creon not to let the girls be reduced to the same level of misery as himself.
99 the end: the translation omits the concluding utterance, as contained in the MSS, delivered by the chorus. It is possible that it is a spurious interpolation and should be omitted; it is also possible that it should be attributed to Oedipus himself. The seven lines can be translated thus: ‘Inhabitants of our native Thebes, behold here Oedipus, who understood the famous riddle and was a most powerful man. Which citizen did not look enviously upon his fortunes? But see the dreadful wave of disaster he has encountered! Therefore let no mortal be called happy until the final fated day when he has crossed life’s border without enduring pain.’