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By Root 5656 0

to all mankind. But, unlike other tragic heroes, Oedipus is still alive. The most obvious thing which has happened to him is that he has become blind - just like Teiresias. Oedipus can longer see the outward world because his sight has turned inwards. He can now see those things which were hidden. He had earlier uttered no more hubristic line in the entire story than his contemptuous dismissal of Teiresias, after losing his temper with the old man for speaking what was in fact nothing less than the truth. `Living in perpetual night' said Oedipus witheringly, `you cannot harm me, nor any man else that sees the light'. The Tyrant had thought he himself could see the light, just when he was most blind. But now that he too is living in the same perpetual night, he can see. Now his blinding ego has been removed from the equation, he is at last on the way to mature understanding.

Oedipus the Wise Old Man

When Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannos in his late sixties, he intended the play to stand alone in its own right. But 20 years later, when approaching the end of his long life, he produced its sequel. In its austere intensity and sense of eternity, Oedipus at Colonus is a typical `late work' of a great artist, like the late paintings of Titian and Rembrandt or the final quartets of Beethoven.

We now see Oedipus as an old man. For a long time after the catastrophe, Creon had allowed him to continue living in Thebes. But eventually he agreed to the people's demand that he should be banished, and this was supported by Oedipus's two sons, Eteocles and Polynices. They have grown up into proud, arrogant young men, and eventually become locked in deadly rivalry to succeed to their father's former throne, still occupied as regent by the ageing Creon. His loving daughters, Antigone and Ismene, are the very opposite. While Ismene remains in Thebes to keep a watching brief, Antigone has insisted on accompanying her blind father into exile as his faithful guide and companion; and as the play opens we see them arriving at Colonus, a sacred spot outside the city of Athens, where there is a deep cleft in the living rock, shaded by trees (Colonus was where Sophocles himself had been born).

At once the image of the old man and his loving daughter strikes an archetypal chord, as in the sight of Prospero accompanied by Miranda. The people of Colonus discover them and explain that they cannot stay in this holy place. When they learn the identity of this ragged old man, they are horrified. But after Antigone and Oedipus have implored them to have pity on a poor, helpless outcast, they agree that their king, the great Theseus, should be called to pronounce on Oedipus's fate.

At this point the other daughter Ismene arrives and, after all three have expressed joy at being lovingly reunited, she reports how all is far from well in Thebes. Polynices has been driven out of the city by his brother and is even now gathering an army to return to seize the throne. But, what makes it worse, an oracle has pronounced that the future safety of Thebes depends on Oedipus returning to live, die and be buried just outside the city. The brothers know this. Each will therefore be striving to win control of Oedipus, to demonstrate to the people that he alone possesses the talisman which can guarantee the city's prosperity. Thus does it seem that, in his old age, Oedipus is about to become a pawn to the ruthless egotism of his sons. The `dark masculine' is again very much in the ascendant. Opposed to it but powerless is the `light feminine', represented by the daughters. In the middle stands the battered, aged hero Oedipus, How will he measure up?

First Theseus enters, with his royal retinue, showing himself at once to be the very model of a `Good King'. Noble in bearing, strong in authority, he is also entirely sympathetic to Oedipus's plight:

When Oedipus explains his situation, Theseus at first cannot understand why he would not wish to return home to Thebes. But Oedipus makes it clear that the only thing he wants is to be allowed to stay right here, in this