Classical Wisdom Litterae - April 2019

This is absolutely critical to Theseus’s plan for a unified Athens. It is not enough for the lesser Attic communities

Athens became—a city-state whose wealth and power would indeed provide a great deal of protection.

t o r e c o g n i z e h i s s ov e r e i g n t y—t h ey have to feel Athenian. Even if they remain on the same land, in the same houses— even if daily life barely changes—the people of Colonus (and the people of every other t o w n A t h e n s i s absorbing) have to become “people of Athens.” Without this kind of mental and pol i t i cal cohes ion, Theseus’s imagined city-state would fall apart, and the whole a r e a w o u l d b e incredibly vulnerable not just to outside attack, but also to i n t e r n a l c o n fli c t s between communities. H o w e v e r , t h i s cohesion is impossible if the townspeople don’t first reject their attachments to the land on which they were born. This is why Theseus chooses to protect Oedipus, and to grant Oedipus ’ reques t s.

So, in some way, the answer is yes: a man who killed his father and slept with his mother can play a big r o l e i n A t h e n s ’ survival and success— at least according to Sophocles. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the idea of a man like Oedipus can play a role—and that’s really the point, in the end, of the play. Like s o many c l a s s i ca l tragedies, Oedipus at Colonus ul timately points back to the i m p o r t a n c e o f tragedy, or poetry, itself. Oedipus’ grave may lead citizens to realize the irrationality of their attachments to things over which they had no control, but only because those ci t izens wi l l know Oedipus’ story. A grave without a story would simply be a plot of land. Athens gets no real benefit

The permanent (though hidden) presence of Oedipus’ grave and its symbolic meaning does indeed grant Athens a very important boon. By promoting the principles that Oedipus’ life and death represent—disassociation from the accidental, the rejection of irrationality—Theseus is one step closer to uniting the lesser Attic communities into the wealthy, powerful, and especially cohesive city-state we know

from the physical grave alone—all the benefit comes from a combination of the secret grave and the circulation of Oedipus’ tale. The city benefits, then, from the presence of poetry, or tragedy to be specific, and Athens’ particular devotion to tragedy will be one more thing that holds its citizens together—and ultimately sets Athens apart. In that case, despite his crimes, Oedipus may be a hero in his own right after all.

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