← Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript133 lines
- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend the Great Books podcast, we are discussing the first part of Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles, the somehow horrific but beautifully redemptive end to the Oedipus cycle. We'll explore Oedipus journey as a blind exile, his transformation into a sign of both suffering and blessing, and the profound themes of Providence, justice and the Athenian identity and what this meant to an Athens suffering the defeat of the Peloponnesian War. I really love this play. I mean, I loved Antigone, Oedipus, the king. It's growing on me, particularly if you see it as an antecedent to the Platonic principle of know thyself. But this one I particularly loved. Oedipus, that Clonus, I fell in love with immediately, mainly due to Sophocles brilliance and showing how suffering can be a blessing to others. The way he ends the story of Oedipus is so beautiful that I'm not entirely sure you could even call it a tragedy. So with all of that in mind, join us for a great conversation on the tragic yet beautiful drama of Oedipus at Colonus. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband, father and serve as chancellor and general counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa in eastern Oklahoma. I'm recording here in beautiful rural Oklahoma. Check us out at Twitter or X, YouTube, Facebook and Patreon. You can also check us out@thegreatbookspodcast.com where we have guides and articles to help you understand the great books. And today we are continuing in the Theban plays as we discuss Oedipus at Colonus. Today we have a guest, a returning guest, friend of the podcast, Mr. Eli Stone, who worked at the Chancery with me for a bit. He's a member of our Sunday Great Books group. He also discerned with the Western Dominicans. He's helped us navigate several great books, including the Odyssey and also most recently, Oedipus Rex. And he is entering the world of classical education. Eli, how are you doing?
- [02:18]
Eli Stone
Doing pretty well, Deacon. How are you?
- [02:19]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I am doing well. It is a good day out here in Oklahoma. It is a good day. So tell me a little bit like you're excited you're going to enter the world of classical education, which I think is excellent. But you already have like a small group, right? You have your own great books, small group that's kind of up and running. Tell us a little bit about that.
- [02:38]
Eli Stone
Yeah, so actually, I wish we could have spoken with this last time about with Josiah while he was still with us going through Oedipus Rex because he is kind of the host, actually. We, we tend to meet in his house. He and his wife Kirsten are lovely. They're. They're wonderful, wonderful young adults in our parish community here. But yeah, it's a. It's a really nice little group. Kind of started just from a Sunday after mass coffee group. A few of us just got together and we were always talking about kind of books that we were reading, but it was always haphazard, like none of us were kind of reading the same thing. So, you know, if we wanted to share something about a book, someone else just had to connect it with something else they were reading. And it kind of made it a little awkward. So we all just kind of got together one day and said, well, what if we just read like the same book? Like, everyone keeps recommending this book and each of us kind of had our favorites. And so we all just kind of like got our favorite book together and decided we would take turns reading, like everyone reading them with the groups. It's not exactly a traditional great books sort of sequence like we've got going on here with this podcast, where it's very chronological, very orderly in that. In that respect, very thematic, but more just books that we've kind of chanced upon that speak to us a couple that like more contemporary novels like Shusaku Endo has his book Silence, which was made into a movie by Martin Scorsese recently. Very popular kind of in. In. In the broader community. But there's a smaller, lesser known book that he wrote called the Samurai, which is, I think, the better of those books. The better of those novels, I really question quite like it a lot. And so we read through that one. Reading through Dune again, the recent movies they've made about this is kind of an impetus for that, some short stories. I think at one point we did a. A listening session for some eclectic sort of musicians album that kind of like references all of these like, philosophers and thinkers. I know one of the most recent things that we did is we. We did a film screening of the 1960s Soviet film Andrei Rublev, which is sort of loosely based on the life of the Russian iconographer of the. I think he was 14th century, 15th century. And so just all kinds of sort of cultural, sort of a little bit of a hodgepodge. But it's really, I guess the kind of common thread uniting it all together is obviously the community that we've built and we're digging into these texts with kind of an eye to trying to glean what we can deeper truths about culture and beauty and art and the human person. And really what everything that we're doing in this podcast as well, it's just not as structured or as orderly or as linear, perhaps.
- [05:25]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So what short stories have you done?
- [05:27]
Eli Stone
That's a good question. So one of the. A few of them. Let me think. There's been a couple by one of my favorite authors, Walter Miller Jr. He wrote a apocalyptic novel called A Canticle for Leibowitz. He wasn't a super very famous author, but he wrote a lot of other sort of pulp science fiction short stories. And we've read. We've read a lot of shorter things. One of the shorter things that we've read is one of Gene Wolf's short stories called Feather Tigers that was a sort of interesting one about aliens in the far future doing archaeology and trying to piece together what human society must have been like. One of them, I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head, is by one of my favorite authors, Walter Miller Jr. And it's about sort of man in the far future, like, seeking out the Garden of Eden by going and flying to all of these distant planets and kind of not being satisfied with anything he finds out there. But then when he comes back to Earth, like he comes back to the original Eden, he doesn't recognize it. And so there's sort of something there about man's ambition and conquest. Not a short story, but an essay that we've read is by Simone Weil. It's, I believe, called something like A Right View of School Studies with a Mind to Prayer, which is a very beautiful reflection, kind of in the vein of classical education. What is the purpose of study? And Simone Weil argues that it's to teach children how to properly pray, because, she argues, a good education doesn't teach you, like, basic facts that you then repeat by rote. It teaches you how to wonder. And in learning how to wonder and to wait for the answer to present itself to you, you learn how to approach God in prayer and then wait for a response from him. And so it's lots of beautiful, different things, shorter things, much more manageable sometimes than, you know, an entire novel or an entire book. We did read through Crime and Punishment, which was delightful. It took us a couple of months to slog through it, and, you know, we had to miss a couple of weeks. And so we lost a couple people here and there. But we were able to make it through together. And so sometimes those shorter. Those shorter essays and short stories make for some better, better experience if you're meeting weekly like we are.
- [07:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So we had recourse to. What's her name? Simone. No, Simone vay. Right.
- [07:58]
Eli Stone
Yeah.
- [07:59]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. I butchered her name terribly the first time I tried to mention her on the podcast because I couldn't remember her name. It's like Simone Wheel something I can't remember.
- [08:06]
Eli Stone
Yeah.
- [08:06]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And we got a bunch of YouTube comments correcting me, which is fine. Humility is part of the Great books process, Right. Having that docility to the tradition. But she also has a wonderful essay on the Iliad, which we had recourse to when we studied Homer, which is really haunting. Right. She's writing, I think, in World War II, and she writes that basically the main character, the main protagonist of the Iliad is force, Right? The force basically of fate that's basically just crushing everyone in the play. Whether you're Achilles or Hector or Priam, it doesn't matter. Everyone is basically being moved forward and crushed by this fate. And obviously it has a lot of parallels to the fact that she's, you know, riding in World War II. So she's a. She's an excellent writer. And I have not explored her other writings. So I'll have to look into that because certainly agree that a proper and true education begins in wonder.
- [08:54]
Eli Stone
Yep. I think. I think it's Plato. He says wonder is the fountain of wisdom, right? Like it's the source, it's the. The spring of wisdom, if you will.
- [09:04]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And if I remember right, both Plato and Aristotle say that. Then wonder in the kind of. The ordinary man is first sparked within him by looking at the stars, by looking up at the cosmos and wondering why and what is this? And Dante plays on that. Right. Each volume of the Divine Comedy ends with a reference to the stars. And so this is actually something I've even tried to. Well, I should say try. I'm giving myself points for having thoughts that I actually haven't done. But one of my goals, I should say, in my own kind of like family formation, is I really want to get something for my children that helps them understand constellations. And we live out here in the rural area, and you can actually see the stars. So if you. If you look a certain direction that doesn't have the glow of the city, Right. And we could probably wax on about the analogs there, that you can no longer see the stars in the city because of the artificial lights, there's a lot that can be made of that. But it's something I really actually want to bring into our own little homestead life here is try and teach my children how to look at the stars. But once again, I find myself trying to inspire a wonder in my children that I did not have. And so I have to teach myself this thing before I can teach it to them.
- [10:14]
Eli Stone
Yeah. And I mean, there's no time like the present. And I think Sunday, great books, this podcast, like, these are all great places to kind of start and work on cultivating that wonder. So.
- [10:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Okay, so let's shift. Let's speak about wonder. We're going to wonder at the end of Oedipus. Here we are reading the third play in the Theban plays, Oedipus at Colonis. So just like a. A quick maybe introduction reminder to everyone. So this is the second play in, say, chronological order of the narrative, but it is the third play that Sophocles wrote. So, again, as we've discussed them here on the podcast, we're moving from Antigone to Oedipus the king to Oedipus Axelonus. And we're doing this because, one, he didn't write them as a triad, so they're very spread out over his whole life. And we'll actually talk more about when and why did he write this one. But they're spread out, so they're not a triad like the Oresteia is, which are meant to be read together. And so reading them in the way that he wrote them and then presented them as these plays helps us to track the maturation of his own thought. It also helps us understand, like, if we're going to try and unearth, you know, what's going on behind the intent of Antigone, or what's going on behind the intent of Oedipus, we also know what we can pull from. What it's maybe a little hazy we can pull from because we actually know the order that they're actually presented in.
- [11:39]
Eli Stone
Yes, that's very good. And one of the other things that I think is, you know, just worth mentioning is kind of just briefly recapping, Right. Like in the story of Antigone, we have Antigone, who is one of Oedipus daughters, who's essentially on trial for trying to do what she thought was right. She appeals to the gods, wherein she tries to bury her brother in accordance with those customs, and her Uncle Creon, who is kind of reigning in the wake of Oedipus's you know, the. The vacuum, the power vacuum there. He. He says that no, this body can't be buried. And so it's kind of a conflict between, you know, the state and the gods, right? Like, where do you owe your first duties? And so that's kind of what we explored into in Antigone, um, and then in Oedipus. Oedipus Rex, right? Like Oedipus the king. We're. We're looking at the kind of, like, going back in time and looking at where did this kind of begin with Oedipus. And there's sort of this investigation that Oedipus goes on trying to find and understand who murdered the king that came before him, right. In some sense, right? Like he. He makes this kind of bold claim, like, I am this great king who is able to solve all of thieves problems, and I solved the riddle of the Sphinx. And so now I'm going to try to solve this problem and find out who murder murderers and drive out the plague from the city. And in the course of this investigation, right, he comes to learn more about himself and he finds out that he is the plague of the city, right. He sends himself into exile and kind of begins this. This sort of not necessarily begins the curse. Obviously, we talked about last time, how the curse actually predates him in the sense that it comes from his father and some of the problems that his father. Like some of the sins of his father. But in unearthing this curse, he is now driven into exile. And this, you know, kind of leads into what. What we've already seen that Antigone suffers. And so really, I think all of these plays are about suffering in a really tremendous and deep and very raw way. I don't think it's accidental that among the three sort of cultures that we, you know, we kind of like, look at, or if you look at all of these ancient civilizations, there's, you know, usually a myth about someone who suffers greatly, right? Like you look at the Book of Job and the Hebrew tradition, here we have Oedipus. In this Greek tradition, there's. There is someone who suffers almost everything possible, right? Like the. Like the. Someone who is cursed by the gods and crushed by fate or crushed by everything. And I think in this triad, what we've seen is just a tremendous amount of suffering, right? Both of the plays that we've ended on have ended with hangings, right? Like. And someone, like, just someone losing everything, right? Like Creon losing his entire family, Oedipus losing, like, his mother and his father. Like, I think what. There's this really haunting omen that the. The prophet gives him, right, this day will give you a father, or like this, this, or this, this, this day will give you a father and a mother and will like destroy you. Like, it will be your undoing. And so just this tragedy, like in a. Not just in the technical sense, but also in the real sense of the word, this whole story is a tragedy. And so here at Oedipusic Colonists, we're going to see the culmination. What does this suffering bring about? Where does all of this tragedy end? Is there an end to it? And if so, what does that end look like? And like, is there any reason or any, any redemption at all that can be found in it? I think that's kind of the overall thrust of what these, these kind of plays are exploring.
- [15:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think I would add to that. I think that's very good. I think I would add to that simply is one, is that he couples suffering with a blessing. Right? That. Does suffering have one, a pedagogical purpose? Does it actually teach the person something? But two, that there's. That Oedipus ends up being this sign of both suffering and blessing, which I think is incredibly unique. And it's something that Sophocles, I think, really has actually been working out over the last couple plays. And I think Oedipus at Colonis, this is why I think we have to read them in the order that he wrote them, because I think here's where he really hits his stride. Like a Death of Oedipus is why I love this play. Because again, I'm a first time reader. I didn't read these in my first great books foray in my own formation. And so I was very new to this. And to be quite frank, you know, Oedipus the King, I was like, okay, we know the story. I didn't quite have an appreciation for it. Oedipus at Colonis is long, it's 2,000 lines. So I'm like, where is this going? And then the way it ended then I loved it all. I was like, oh, I see it now. Oh, I love it. Oh, and I love Oedipus the King. Because then it's like this character I just thought was so brilliant. I mean, God forgive me, not to be impious on my own side, but there's something about Oedipus story that isn't found or isn't communicated the same way as we see in Job or even in Odysseus. Who's the other one that everyone says you were born to suffer? Both Job and Odysseus have a restoration. Oedipus doesn't have a restoration. His death becomes a blessing in a different way, if that makes sense, right? He's not restored to being the King of Thebes. Like, if he was Job, he'd be restored to King of Thebes. Like, he'd get a new wife. He'd get, like, new kids. Right? Like, you'd get, like, everything. So Oedipus, I think, has a certain element of suffering that is unique, that's really kind of captured my imagination. And two, I think that the other thing that I think Sophocles is focusing here and has focused on all three plays, is that man is not his own agent. That man is with inside a cosmic order that he does not control. Right? Man is not the measure of all things. And that's a huge theme here. And the third one is, is Oedipus culpable for what happened to him? And if not, like, what does that allow him to be? Because I think that right now, as we kind of talked about in the last podcast, just like some cultural background, there's a lot of evidence that the aristocracy of Athens is starting to lose faith in the Pantheon and starting to doubt things like prophecy. And so it's interesting that Sophocles then gives them a play in which a man's agency is almost completely robbed of him. Right? He suffers all these things through real, no intentional choice on his own, of knowing fully what he's doing. And then there's also then all these prophecies that come in and weave together that you ignore or fight against at your own peril. And this is really what I think Jocasta in the last one represents, right? She is the aristocratic class that is kind of forgetting this because we see this in Plato. We'll see it. That doesn't go away. I don't know if anyone really believes in the Pantheon anymore when we get into the dialogues outside of maybe Euthyphro. So there's. There's this. I agree with you. There's some, like, deep themes here to unearth. There's an interesting history here too, which is that Sophocles dies before this play is actually presented. So this is like, in a lot of ways, his last hurrah, right? This is his swan song. And so he dies in, like, 406, 405 BC. The play isn't shown until 401. It's actually shown by his grandson Who I believe is also named Sophocles, in case that wasn't confusing enough. But then one of the things that's really interesting here is that you have to keep in mind that Athens is in the middle of the Peloponnesian War. Basically, the entire Mediterranean is going through its world war. Athens and Sparta, the two world powers, right, have gone to war. And this has sucked in every other city state in the area, including even tangentially, like Persia, into this conflict. In 404, Athens basically loses, right? They lose. And Sparta puts them under harsh conditions. And this is where you get. Sometimes a lot of people will make reference to the 30 tyrants. The 30 tyrants that. That operated and governed Athens. And this comes from this. They're. They're basically. The way I look at them is they're basically a puppet government of Sparta and they don't rule very long, just a few years. But this is like the context. So between Sophocles writing it and then he dies, and then you have the end of Peloponnesian War, then you have the 30 tyrants, then you have the fall of the 30 tyrants and a return to democracy. Then the play is shown in 401 BC. And so you have to really think about, like, what's going on in the world for this audience, particularly for Athenians who might have been watching this play.
- [20:00]
Eli Stone
Yeah, I think those are all great, like, historical pieces to bear in mind, right. As we know, like, there. There's a significant gap between when Oedipus. Oedipus Rex would have been written, right. And. And I mean, in that time, right, like, there's a mention of this plague in the city, right? And this would have been performed at a time when Athens was going through some. There was some kind of, like, sickness. Some kind of plague is like. So he's like, I hear the moans of the dying in the streets, and it's like, no, that's actually happening, right. Maybe people in the audience are actually hearing. Right? So Sophocles is a very connected author. Like, he's very connected to his audience and very, I think, sensitive to those things that they're seeing and that they're. They're. The anxieties that they're. They're. They're dealing with or what have you. To go back to something that you said before with respect to suffering and human agency. Right. Actually, one of the other things that's curious about these plays is that there is no direct action of the gods either in the play. It's interesting because it seems like there's not much human agency. There's also not much divine agency. We don't see the gods leaping down from Olympus to, like, do something like we see in the Iliad or the Odyssey even. And so fate is kind of this mysterious thing, maybe analogous to something we could call Providence. And I think this is something Sophocles is exploring here. Human actions mixed with divine ordinance mingling together into what is often a very painful and laborious process of suffering. Various things which we don't necessarily see a rhyme or reason for. And I think by the end of this play, Sophocles demonstrates that fate, the gods, providence, whatever you would like to call it, can turn suffering into good. And this is one of the. This is one of the reasons why, I think you really enjoyed this play when you got to the end. It's one of the reasons why, when I first read these plays, I was so drawn to them, and I just. I had to reread them and share them with this friend group that. That we, you know, we were reading. We decided to read these together with. And why, when you first suggested it for the Sunday grade books, I was like, yes, let's. Please, let's read these, because there is something here, I think. And again, I kind of want to echo your blasphemy. If it's blasphemous to suggest. I feel like there's a richness here or a mature.
- [22:30]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
For the record, I just said impious. Not technic, not technical, just impious, perhaps.
- [22:36]
Eli Stone
Yeah, that's fair. Very, very important distinction. But. But I think, you know, Job is an old myth, like, probably older even than. Than your Homers, like Iliad and Odyssey. So let's. Let's give. Let's give the Hebrew authors some credit, right? Like, they're. They're doing this suffering servant stuff well in advance of the Greeks here. But I think there is a refinement of this archetype that's present here in Oedipus. And that's why I'm really excited to be kind of diving into the play now.
- [23:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I actually think, because Job is another story that really captures my imagination and I think also serves as an antidote to a lot of the modern ways we look at God, right? That God, that. What is it called? That moral, therapeutic deism, right? That God is basically just ends up being a fairy godmother that confirms all of my ideas that I pray to. To give me what I want. Job really crushes that in a lot of wonderful ways. But actually the characters for the last couple years in Job that really have caught my attention are actually Job's first children. Because Job might be restored, but there's a lot of people who died that were not restored, right? They're not, like, resurrected and given their lives back. And so that's where I think some of the comparisons with Oedipus come together, is like, okay, well, what about Job's first children? What about Job's servants? These kind of tangentials in the story that we tend to forget about. But, like, their death served, like, a certain purpose that here, thousands upon thousands of years later, we're still discussing their narratives and what in the pedagogical realities that their narratives actually give us, that actually then really burst forth meaning from their death, right? Their death. The children, if I remember right, it's a whirlwind, right, that knocks out the four corners of the home and they all die. It seems so tragic then, that death, they suffer, but then it continues to echo through the generations a reality, a truth about the divine and the cosmos and who man is, that just really is not repeatable in a certain way. And I think that's where Oedipus falls. Oedipus reminds me more of them than of Job in a certain way, because there's not a restoration, per se, but there's a way that his death becomes this pedagogical lesson. So maybe a few more guideposts on just like, the history. Because I was just curious, because we're gonna. We're moving into. Just like, where's the podcast going? Right? We're. We're finishing up a Theban plays. We're gonna read the Bacchae next, and then we're going to read a few plays by Aristophanes. We're gonna shift into some comedies, and then we're gonna get into play. D'oh. Start kind of a slow, methodical, intentional read of Plato. And so one of the things that I was curious about and so I just mapped it real fast, is that we should probably mention that Socrates is alive, right? So Socrates is actually born in 470 BC. So he's actually 69 years old when this play is shown. So in 401, when this play comes out, he's 69 years old. And actually, if you recall in his apology, when he's tried by Athens, he actually mentions that part of his, you know, his piety, his bravery, etcetera, his patriotism, if you will, towards the polis, is that he was actually told by the 30 tyrants to go Arrest someone for execution. And he refused. And so he's. He's very much embedded in this exact same history. Plato's also alive. Plato's actually 27 when this play comes out. Aristotle's not alive. Aristotle was born in 384, so he's maybe not even a thought yet.
- [26:04]
Eli Stone
He's still.
- [26:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
He's still a little.
- [26:05]
Eli Stone
Yeah, but, yeah, Socrates. Well, I don't know about Socrates. He might have been. He might have been. I believe Socrates fought in the Peloponnesian War, but Plato definitely does. Right? So, like, this is also another, like, form of their commitment to the state, Right. Military service, you know, and so forth.
- [26:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah. Socrates, military service is discussed by Alcibiades at the end of the Symposium. Socrates is just as bizarre as a warrior as he is as a gadfly in Athens, right? Because he doesn't. He doesn't fear death. So he's just, like, walking around in the war doing things while everyone else is, you know, suffering under their passions. So, anyway, just a few historical guideposts. Let's get into the actual text and kind of parse out some of these themes that we've been discussing.
- [26:48]
Eli Stone
So I think the first thing to note is the opening, right? We have an invocation. Again, not an invocation of the gods, but of man, right? As we saw in the first play, Antigone invokes his mane. And then in the last play, we have Oedipus sort of calling to the. Calling to his. His polis, his people, but they're actually supplicating him. So there's kind of this dual. Dual invocation. Like they're invoking Oedipus as though he's a God capable of curing them of the plague. And here Oedipus is invoking, like, his daughter, right? Like he. He is speaking to Antigone. So I did think that was an interesting thing that you drew out last time, and it's a good place to start.
- [27:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, No, I appreciate you mentioning that because I think that's incredibly important. The other thing that I would mention, just a few preliminaries, is that because if you look at the kind of, like, stage instructions, if you will, the time and scene, the grove of the Furies at Colonis looms in the background while Athens lies in the distance. To the right, Clonus is actually Sophocles hometown. That's actually where he was born, which I thought was an interesting note. And two, the grove of the Furies. Right? Now, I'm just gonna flag it as we'll kind of see this play out, but I was surprised how much this play pulls from the mythology of the Eumenides. So for those of us who are, you know, working through the plays here on the podcast, when we read Aeschylus Eumenides, it tells the story of how the Furies are basically transformed into, you know, these blessings for Athens. And so there's a deep analogy here that starts running between Oedipus and the Furies. But it was just wonderful to have read that, because then you see how much it imprints on this particular text. There's also a line here in six, our theme of suffering. And Aeschylus also talked a lot about suffering, that suffering brings wisdom. I noticed that on line six. And again, we're reading the Fagel's edition, it says acceptance. That is the great lesson suffering teaches is acceptance, which again, is kind of tied into the idea of docility to humility, to understanding the reality around you and how different this is than the Oedipus who, you know, was king, and these are my children, and he has to save the city, and he'll be the one to find the criminal. Right. Which is that brilliant move, that he is the criminal. So it's this acceptance. We see an Oedipus here that in a certain way has also been transformed.
- [29:21]
Eli Stone
I'd be curious to dig more into the word on acceptance. So Fitzgerald. I've got the Fitzgerald translation myself, and it's contentment, which is very Pauline. Right. Like, I have learned the secret to being content in all things. Right, right. For Oedipus, I think that suffering has been a teacher. And so the pedagogical value of suffering, I think, is. Is something that you. You've. You. You mentioned before as a theme. But here we begin to see it here in the text from Oedipus himself after decades of wandering. Right. So if you remember back in Oedipus, Oedipus the king. And this becomes clearer, like, as we go through the text, right? But for a time, he was left. Left kind of alone in Thebes. But now he's been exiled. He's been. He's been spurned by Thebes as kind of a curse. And so they've sent him out to wander, and he has no. He has no. No place to rest. No place, no home. He's blind, obviously. So Antigone is following him everywhere, leading him everywhere, I suppose not following him. And so. But yeah, after decades of this, he's. He's found acceptance where he's found some. He's found a way to be content with seemingly nothing. Right.
- [30:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Antigone. That's a good point. The transition to her one, this play only made me love her more. I just. I just fallen more in love. Antigone, actually, that's the thing about reading them in the order he wrote them because, you know, as he's writing this, he's giving a commentary on his prior plays. And so Antigone's like piety and love that she shows for her father I find to be incredibly endearing here. And also, as you mentioned, this is, you know, several, several years later, because now last time we left Antigone, she was a child. She was a child being pulled away actually from her father, which is a scene that actually has an echo in this play as well. And so now she's this adult, she's leading her father. And I think she just shows a deep piety. So let's look at the Furies, because what ends up happening this opening scene is that they come to this grove and down at like 45, you know, one of the citizens has basically told them, stop. Like, you're basically in a holy place.
- [31:31]
Eli Stone
Yeah. So let's, let's dial it back a little bit. So they don't know where they are. Right. They're wandering, they're. They're taking this long road. Oedipus has grown tired. He's an old man by now. I don't know actually, like, if we can reason out how old he is, I think a reasonable estimates probably around 50 or 60. Right. Like, so he at least. Right. Because, you know, obviously he was, you know, he was probably in his 20s when he came back home. Or maybe, maybe in his 30, like maybe approaching 30. On his way back home from home. Right. He was raised in Corinth, came back to thebes, maybe around 30, has a child, has his children. Right. Like, so he's Maine. And Antigone, he would have been young, so probably maybe a 10 year gap there. And now this is about 20 years later. So he's, he's probably in, you know, about 60, which in the ancient world is very old. That's, that's not a pretty rare occasion. Right. Like you usually die in battle or you die of some kind of terrible plague or sickness. And so Oedipus is very old. He's blind, obviously. And it seems like his travels have been very hard on him. He asks, he asks Antigone to sit down and they find, they find kind of the nearest place that they can sit down. And as it turns Out. This is sacred ground, which is where this stranger comes up and warns them about where they're standing.
- [32:57]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, this is where you get down at line 45 or so, the citizens explaining, it's untouchable, forbidden. No one lives here. The terrible goddesses hold it for themselves. The daughters of Earth, the Daughters of the Darkness. Interesting. Oedipus doesn't seem to know these titles, right? He says, who tell me their awesome names so I can pray to them, right? He doesn't. He doesn't seem to. These titles don't seem to resonate. And he says, the citizen replies, the ones who watch the world, the kindly ones, the Eumenides, that's what people call them here in other places. Other names are proper. So this is where we see, as we said earlier, this is downstream from the Eumenides, the play by Aeschylus. The Furies have been transformed. So this is. Remember the Furies that are these Blood Avengers, right? They're the ones that actually come up from the pit of Tartarus, and they seek out those that have violated the deepest bonds of justice, right? Particularly the blood between, say, you know, a father and son, or a father and children, or particularly between a Oresteia, right? It is a son who kills his mother, Orestes kills Clytemnestra, and they basically, they kind of have a twofold purpose. They haunt the person who committed the crime and basically drive them mad. And then when they die, they'll be tortured in the abyss. But then they also, to a degree, plague the person who's supposed to be the Blood Avenger, right? The person who's supposed to go out and, like, do these things. Like, you have a mantle, and if you don't do these things, you're exiled, you're cursed, you know, etc. And so here we see them in their transformed state. And I think that is an incredibly important aspect for this play. Because, just like, as I was reading this the first time, I mean, this went off like a light bulb because a few things. One, he killed his own father. So I was expecting, like, oh, no, this is.
- [34:45]
Eli Stone
This is gonna end badly.
- [34:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Bad, right? You're in the wrong place, bud. Like, you got to get out of here. Like you. We've seen this happen before, and we don't see that happen. And I think that that's a big thing to track throughout the play. Just simply that these aren't the Furies that we saw in the Oresteia. These are the Eumenides. They've been incorporated into the justice and laws of Athens into a more procedural justice, into a justice that does take into account circumstance, and that is key for understanding Oedipus is the circumstance. And I think that in a lot of ways, they start to represent the justice that Oedipus is seeking here, that he also pleas for himself in saying that he's not culpable. The other thing that occurred to me is that. And we'll kind of see this. This develop throughout the play. So they throw this out as a thesis, and then we can test it as we move forward. Is that I think in a lot of ways, the Eumenides foreshadow Oedipus himself. And so the Furies came and basically also came to Athens and were transformed, right? And so they. Which really were seen as curses, right? No one wants the Furies around. No one wants the Furies after them. They are, in a lot of ways, a curse. They are then transformed into the kindly ones. They're transformed into, you know, a source of blessing. And this. This is a really a foreshadowing then of what's going to happen with Oedipus himself. And I think we see this. Sophocles kind of gives us this commentary when Oedipus says, this is the sign, right? The pact that seals my fate. And he basically says, oh, yeah, by the way, there's this prophecy. So it goes in the whole theme. Prophecy, right? There's this prophecy that when I find this place like this is. This is how I know I've. I've come to the end. This is how I know that I find my rest.
- [36:30]
Eli Stone
Yeah. Which is an interesting thing. We didn't really talk about it in Oedipus the King, because I think it's less obvious there, right. It's a little more subtle. But if you read the original prophecy, which was given to Laius, right, It's that the boy will. The boy will be raised up and he will kill his father. And then he, like, exposes his son. And then, like, he goes to, you know, his son grows up in Corinth, and then he goes to the Delphi, the Oracle at Delphi. And it's like, you're going to kill your father and you're going to sleep with your mother. And then now here we have another addition, which is that. Oh, and by the way, after all of that, you're going to be like a cursed and afflicted, and you're going to wander the earth until you find the place. You know, you find the Furies, you find this place. And so it's interesting. Like why haven't we heard this part of the prophecy before? Is it because it's being withheld? Is it because like the entire prophecy is like given and like just no one thinks that, that, that the later parts are important, right? Like, or is it like there's a progressive revelation going on here? Like as each element of this prophecy is being fulfilled, something else is added, something else is given. And I think it's a really interesting. Either way you interpret it, right? You could say, well maybe we just have a really, as humans we really have a short, we're very short sighted. Like we, we just really focus on what's immediately like right in front of us. So Laius gets this prophecy, this delt, this oracle, this long oracle, and he just focuses on the first part and like flips out, exposes his son, doesn't like give it a second thought. Maybe we can say Oedipus does the same thing and then now he's like able to make sense of the whole and have an appreciation for the whole in a way that enables him to actually embrace his fate. Another way of interpreting it is actually that with each attempt to evade his fate, it's gotten worse. And so you try to resist the first oracle, King Leas. Well now it's going to be worse when Oedipus does come back home. He's not only going to kill you, he's going to take your wife as his. And then when Oedipus tries to avoid that fate, that ends up not working out either. And so now there's, it's worse. Like he, he's like exposed, he's ruined all of this stuff. Instead of going and doing that in Corinth where it actually wouldn't have been so bad. Instead he tries to run away and come back to come to Thebes, which surprise is his home. And so now it's interesting because there's this other half of the prophecy which has never been mentioned before. So where is it coming from? And is it new? Is it old? I think that's a very interesting question that we should be asking ourselves.
- [39:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It's a good question. It's kind of challenging me on what my presupposition was. When I read it. I took it because we see so much new prophecy in this, right, that people come with more oracles saying, oh look, you know, Ismene comes in and says, look, here's a new oracle. This is how this works. I kind of took this as a progressive revelation that as he's, he's moving through the stages of his life. It seems then that they give him another prophecy, some type of oracle that he can reinterpret what his stage of life is supposed to be oriented towards, if that makes sense, because he seems to only know enough to get through each section of his life. The other theme here that I. I want to address that tethers to the historical aspect that we've talked about, is this play has a lot about Athenian superiority. And so if you look at like, line 65 or so, we just start name dropping. Gods, you know, who's around here in Athens? Everybody. Prometheus is over there, Poseidon's over there. Everyone's around here. Like, this is like a mythologically rich place. And then it's almost comical. Like, I almost laughed at line. I don't know, it's a little after 80. Where then like, King Theseus shows up. I mean, this is like Arthur from Camelot walks out, or King David walks out of Jerusalem, right? I mean, this is like the hero, cult king, founder of what it means for Athens to be the superior culture and city state. And so that's something to think about because we have like a whole chorus later on. We have several sections of the play that really are pointing towards that Athens has this rich, deeply mythological, but deeply superior culture to it. And you contextualize that in the fact that just lost the Peloponnesian War and it just survived the 30 tyrants. I mean, you have to think of an Athenian watching this and what that's communicating to them about their own polis and heritage.
- [41:06]
Eli Stone
No, I think that's a very, very important thing we saw in the last play, right? Like, there's. There's maybe a question, right? Like, how good is tyranny? Like, we've seen Creon be a terrible king. We've seen Oedipus be a terrible king. And I think to. To your point, right, as Oedipus at Colonus is being written, people are going to be thinking back to those plays and they're going to be thinking about the 30 tyrants, like what they just experienced instead of being ruled by the people. Right. I had a colleague I was speaking to a little bit about Oedipus Rex, and one of the things that he noted in the play is that the people are very passive in that play, right? Like, they complain a lot, but they don't. They don't take any initiative to, like, try to persuade the king differently or. Right. Like, there's. There's not a lot of, you know, these this council of elders that acts as the chorus is not involved in the governance of Thebes in any way. Whereas here we actually see what happens. Theseus shows up and then leaves and trusts the people to carry out what needs to be carried out. And it's a very different dynamic. And I think it's interesting, like you said, let's. Let's examine, right, what is the role of the. The people in Athens here? What is kind of this. What is. What is Sophocles maybe hinting at here with respect to his understanding of the virtues of a democratic polis versus a. A sort of an aristocrat aristocracy or. Or a straight monarchy or tyranny? Yeah, I think all of those. All of those are especially kind of on display here in this last play.
- [42:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like that. I have to think about that more. I didn't think about the fact that they're freshly a democracy, and here he is writing about this king. Because King Theseus in this play is very mythological himself. What I mean by that is, is that he doesn't seem to really error. Like, he just seems to do what's right.
- [43:05]
Eli Stone
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And I mean, there's like one part where he starts to judge Oedipus, and Oedipus is like, don't judge me. Theseus immediately self corrects and was like, oh, yeah, you're right. I should hear your whole story first. Like, brother, this is a tragedy. You're supposed to spiral down into madness. You're not supposed to just like, gently correct yourself. And so I. That's a wonderful point. Is what is Sophocles communicating to his. To the Athenians, right? His countrymen, who just got out of the 30 tyrants and has returned to a democracy, presenting this wonderful kingship. And he does defer to the people, but I don't know, I. That man. How many plays are the choruses? Old Men? Like, I noticed, like, all the, like, almost all of them, except for, like, the amenities. They're all old men. And 99 of the time, they're inept. Right? Think about, like, the old men in Agamemnon. They're like, watching their king get murdered. And they're like, someone should do something. It's like, guys, you should. You could do something. And this one is like, they're not that bad, but they're still like. Like when Creon. We're jumping ahead just like to play out this theme. Like, when Creon's taking Antigone and his meaning, like, they're. They're like, oh, no, don't do that. Like, nope, nope. Stop touching them. Like, don't. And Creon just does it. Like, he's like, nope. And then Theseus has to show up again. And that's when you're like, there's this, like, sigh of relief. And Theseus, you know, corrects things and rectifies things. So, no, I like that political read of what is Sophocles communicating to his audience there? Look at the. The prophecy that we were discussing is at, like, 110. So he says, I will reach my goal. He said, my haven, where I find the grounds of the awesome goddesses and make their home my home. There I will round the last turn in the torment of my life. I think this is important, a blessing to the hosts I live among. Because he doesn't have the full prophecy yet, Ismini has to come in and give him the other part. So earlier at, like, line 87 or so he says, like, oh, you should tell the king I'm here because a small service. He may gain a great deal. And at first I was like, wait, what's he talking about? Because he doesn't actually know about his tomb and all that. So it's interesting that as you kind of talk about, these prophecies tend to cascade. They link together and mature off of one another. So he has, like, an incipient understanding here. Well, I'll be a blessing to my host. Well, yes, you will, but you've got to get the second shoe there, that you're going to be a blessing to your host. As a grave.
- [45:25]
Eli Stone
Yeah. No, and I think. I think, too, right? I mean, there's. Like I said, there's two ways to read this, right? Like, that this is a prophecy that's been given and just maybe not understood or, like, really worked out. And then there's the progressive revelation vision, and I think both are actually tremendously comforting. Or. Or maybe one is more corrective, right? Like, in the sense that in hindsight, we're often like, oh, yeah, like, that was obvious from the very beginning, right? Like, and then on the other hand, right, like, the gods will give you what you need when you need it, right? Like, so either way, there's sort of this beautiful lesson in Providence. Either, like, Providence orchestrates all things in such a way that it's obvious in hindsight it was all working for the good, or vice versa, right? Like, you know, like, you have to take things kind of in each season, right? And trust that you can make sense of all of it in retrospect and only kind of work on what you've been given day to day, as it were. Either way, I think there's a beautiful lesson involved in whichever way you interpret how these prophecies are given. Are they given all at once? Are they kind of piecemeal over Oedipus's whole life? But it is interesting, right? Like that he says, yes, I'm going to be a blessing to others. I think. I mean, part of me reads this as Oedipus withholding. I think Oedipus knows exactly what he needs to ask Theseus. But he doesn't want to be. He's cautious, right? Like, Oedipus is someone who's been a vagrant. He's been taken advantage of. He's been beat down so much. I think he's just being very, like, slow to show what he has to offer. Because someone like Creon or someone else, you know, if you give them the blessing part first, you're maybe going to give that away to someone who's going to take that for unsavory motives versus, like, Oedipus being able to actually kind of judge the hearts of the people that he's interacting with. And this is another powerful theme which I think we'll see especially in the latter half of this. Oedipus. Remember in the last play, Oedipus was acting as a judge, but he was pronouncing sentences before he had all of the facts. He was making rash decisions. He was judging everything wrongly. He was accusing the prophet Tiresias of being of, like, selling out to Creon, right? And all of these things. Whereas now that he's blind, he has this spiritual insight that allows him to accurately judge everyone around him. Oedipus doesn't say anything wrong in this play, which is. It should be magnif. Like, it should be a shock to us. Like we just went from Oedipus Rex to Oedipus at Colonus. And this is a completely different Oedipus he had. He is the most lucid he's ever been. Creon, like, insists that he's, like, gone crazy in his old age. But Oedipus actually is seeing the world rightly, for the first time. And I think there's something very powerful about that. And as we see Oedipus judging the hearts of those around him, choosing in a sense, like, where he's going to allow himself to be laid to rest, there's. There's a real prudence that he is actually weighing and a sort of wisdom that we get to see him Exercising that he's never exercised before. And I. So I think Oedipus, the blind Oedipus, being seated in judgment and seeing everything clearly, more clearly than anyone else does, and having to withhold certain bits of information for the purposes of testing those around him. Like, there's something very powerful about that, that interpretation.
- [49:14]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I like that.
- [49:15]
Eli Stone
Could it be that Oedipus knows, like already, like he knows what's to come, but he's like making sure that, you know, you're not the person I need to speak to, so you're not going to get all the information. Wait until your king comes, and then I'll. I'll kind of spill the means, right?
- [49:28]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it could be. We have to kind of look and see with Ismene, like what. What seems to be relevatory to him, but I think to really kind of push into yours or really maybe to back. It is. You know, we talk about that Oedipus has been transformed into something similar to the Eumenides. But the other thing is that he's been transformed into something like Tiresias, somewhat ironically, right? He becomes this blind prophet. He brings his own prophecies. He understands the hearts of those around him to a certain degree. And so, you know, he's, you know, he's blind. And so we get a lot of the. The play off sight and things of that nature. And so it's interesting that then in the play that has a lot to do with prophecy and how prophecy legitimately structures reality and the agency of man. Oedipus, as part of his transformation, takes on a prophet like aspect. So let's, let's push forward a little bit in the narrative with this back and forth that we get with the choruses. So they do have to move, right? They need. They need to not sit on the sacred things, but they're going to move a bit. But it's interesting because it's a little bit more subtle here. But if you think back to the Odyssey, we actually have guest friendship that's animating a lot of what's actually happening here, right? So Oedipus is the stranger, he is the guest. He's shown up, he's asked for, you know, some kind of safety notice that they're not asking his name. If you remember in the Odyssey, like you. You show that hospitality first and then later they have to share their name and their story. And I think that same structure plays in here down at like 195 in the chorus says, you know, no one will drag you from this place of rest, Never, old man, not against your will. But he does need to move, right? He needs to move a little bit from where he actually is. And one of the things that I really noted too, as they're kind of showing him this hospitality, that guest friendship, as even like you and I talked about with Odysseus, it's reciprocal. And so you receive, like, this hospitality as the stranger, but then the guest, right, the stranger has to reciprocate in certain ways, not only just saying his name, the story, but also he kind of molds himself to where the customs are of his host. And I really think that you see Zinnia, this. This guest friendship, justice being woven together by Sophocles. These two major themes come together in 205, where the chorus says, patience, stranger here in a strange land, poor man, hate with a will. Whatever the city holds in rooted hatred, honor what the city holds in love. So if our preliminary understanding of justice here, even post Oresteia, is still you hate your enemies and you love your friends. And I think that Creon, in the best way, what he was trying to do in Antigone, is that it's the polis, then that sets this on a very high level. So here in Colonis, Athens, etcetera, if you're gonna be welcomed as a guest, part of guest friendship, part of the reciprocal nature here is that then you take on that justice of the polis, and you know, what you're supposed to love and what you're supposed to hate, and Athens becomes that barometer for it.
- [52:35]
Eli Stone
Yeah. And. And we see this too, right? You have to submit to the laws and the customs of the place that you are being a guest in, which is exactly like what we see happen. And we see exactly like Creon does not do this. And that's exactly like his faux pas, right? That he does not. He does not submit himself to the decrees of Athens. Right? And so whereas Oedipus here, right, when even just in the small act of them saying, don't stand there, come a little bit further down, right? Like he's respecting. He's respecting his host. And, you know, yeah, I think there's a maturation there. Or, you know, maybe not a maturation, but maybe an explicit example of the expectation that a guest treats his host with just as much respect as he expects of his host. That we. I don't think we've seen a Quite another example of this like in the Odyssey or the Iliad before, right?
- [53:31]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Let's look at where it kind of goes Downhill. Remember this guest friendship part of it is that you give your name and who you are. Well, that's typically fine, but if you're.
- [53:40]
Eli Stone
If you're Oedipus, that's not.
- [53:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
This has certain problems. So in 220, right? So help us there. Now rest at ease and tell us who are your parents, right? Which is hilarious. It's like, it's such an innocuous question, but for Oedipus, it's a little bit loaded. And Oedipus tries to push back fatherland friends, I'm in exile, but don't, don't want. Old man. What are you holding back? And so, you know, obviously down they push him. They push him, which I don't really take. I did not fault them here because this is the ritual, right? This is the custom of guest friendship. Like, it's weird that you've been received, you've been welcomed, you even somewhat violated the sacred grove. But we're kind of skipping that right now and just moving you to a safer place and also promising you that people aren't going to bother you. And so they push him. And again, I didn't find this really to be at their fault. And I just love then like 236 or so. Do you know the son of Laius? Oh, like the leader just replies, oh, right. Born of royal blood of Thebes, dear God, and the wretched suffering of Oedipus, you're that man. Please don't be afraid whatever I say. And then the leader just, you know, yells. So it's funny that Oedipus's story is like, already saturated the Greek world. Like he's not even dead. And everyone already knows about his suffering and who he is. But the thing I thought was really interesting here is that the leader, then their reaction, they pivot right out with you out of our country, far away, Oedipus, but your promise, won't you make good on your promise, right? That he could stay and not be bothered. The chorus basically is like, fate will never punish a man for returning harm for him first done to him. And so how I read this, maybe I'm reading it more charitably towards the chorus, as I should, but guest friendship pivots off the divine right. Zeus is the one that oversees guest friendship and he's the one that backs it, right? So this is Odysseus and the Cyclops, right? If you violate guest friendship, than you are cursed. But we even saw in the Odyssey that if you're cursed by the gods, you're not owed guest friendship. And this was.
- [55:53]
Eli Stone
Antiochus.
- [55:55]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, it's the guy that's in charge of the winds. Yeah, right.
- [55:58]
Eli Stone
He's.
- [55:58]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And so remember, he gives him the winds in the bag and they're blown back. And Odysseus comes with his, like, hat in his hand, is like, hey, I'm back. Can you help me again? And the guy throws him out. And he throws him out on the premise that he's cursed by the gods and that he needs to get out of his house now because he's not going to be cursed by the gods. So if someone. That's. It's an interesting distinction that if a supplicant comes to you, but he is cursed by the gods, then you don't owe him guest friendship. Actually, you seem to have a duty.
- [56:25]
Eli Stone
Or at least something that's prudent serve his sentence, right? Like, this is part of your curse, is that you don't receive guest friendship, correct?
- [56:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And so I didn't take the chorus. So because of that, I really appreciate, kind of. This is why we read the great books in order. This is why we let the dialogue happen, right? The authors be in dialogue with one another. And it builds. That wisdom builds. Because I do think the dynamics that we saw in the Odyssey help explain here that I don't really fall. I don't fault the chorus here. I think they're following the custom of what would be correct. And even down at, like, you know, Antigone serves as, like a mediator, an intercessor, right? Trying to explain at 270, right? They say, well, we're actually moved by your misfortunes. Like, we're, you know, we're moved by this, but we dread what the gods may do. We have no authority. We cannot go beyond our first commands. You must leave.
- [57:22]
Eli Stone
This is an interesting thing too. Oedipus then immediately after, right. Starts lamenting, like, what use is reputation, right? Or what use is my glory? Which. Not what we would normally associate with glory, but like this idea of reputation, right? In the Iliad and Odyssey, this is huge, right? This reputation is what you earn by dying in battle. Like, this is what this is. This undying glory is what. This is what Achilles is seeking after, right? Like, this is what he trades his life for for, right? His undying glory. And then Oedipus, he uses his. His undying glory, right? Like he uses his glory to get himself back home. Like there's an advantage to glory in either case here. Glory, reputation, whatever you would like to use that word that. That's useless to Oedipus, right? Because it's actually, like, harming him. And so it's actually a really interesting reversal, I think. You know, we want to talk about threads of continuity, right? Like guest friendship being one of them. And kind of this rule or exception to that rule being like, if you're cursed, you don't have to abide by this. This is actually an anti. Sort of anti Homeric theme, right? Like, that glory actually doesn't help you. Like, in Oedipus's case, I don't want anyone to know who I am because the second they find out who I am, like, like, I'm gonna be thrown out. Even if, as Oedipus would argue, like, I'm not culpable. Even if these things happened to me, I couldn't do anything, have it be otherwise. I admit, no fault of my own. And yet I'm being judged or condemned or exiled or suffering a lack of hospitality. I'm not being treated with. You know, this is. This is really. This is really, like. To put. This is really anachronistic. Like, this is much later, like, my basic human dignity is not being respected, right? Just because of my reputation's preceding me, which is, again, like, very anachronistic. Like, I don't think the Greeks have, like, this concept of, like, basic human dignity. Like, especially not for women, especially not for slaves, right? Like, so very anachronistic. But I think it's very nascent here, right? Like, Oedipus believes he ought to have a right to have his story heard. And. And so in this case, his reputation is actually working against him, I think.
- [59:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think to parse out that same idea, I think that one of the key factors is that we're introduced to here is that he is not culpable. He's not culpable. And that is going to blossom throughout this text into an incredibly important theme. And one of the reasons, I think, that Sophocles can do this dance that he does to marry being a blessing and a curse. To marry. This idea of these two kind of opposed concepts, I think a lot of that has to do with Oedipus becomes a sign. He becomes his own kind of agent of the gods, if you will. Kind of like we saw Antigone being the dark sign of the gods. I think Oedipus becomes his own type of sign.
- [60:42]
Eli Stone
I think if you were to read. Actually, I'm curious if you can read a couple of those passages, like in this long soliloquy, Oedipus Has. He talks about his reputation. But there, toward the bottom, he. He mentions, like, you know, how was I evil in myself? Like I was wrong. Like I was. I had been wronged and I retaliated. But how could I have been evil? At the very end, though, I'm curious what Fagel says. He says, here I come as one endowed with grace by those over nature. Right? What is. What does Fagels have to say there toward the end of his little soliloquy?
- [61:17]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
He says, so to your point, this is line 310. And Fagels, he says, don't reject me as you look into the horror of my face, these sockets raked and blind. I come as someone sacred, someone filled with piety and power, bearing a great gift for all your people. Yeah. So, I mean, he argues. He argues with them. And then I think the resolution, which is held in tension, right, because we've. We've got to wait to see how this actually resolves is that the chorus is like, okay, well, we're gonna go get Theseus. Theseus has to adjudicate. We don't know. Never mind. We have no idea how to do this. You know, that we're. Go get Theseus to adjudicate this. But I think that we have to understand Oedipus's argument here. I think it pivots heavily off the fact that he's not culpable, that the gods have done this to him, and therefore, like, don't throw him out as one that's been cursed. Because I think the implication there is, like we saw with Odysseus is you're cursed because of your own actions, right? You opened the wind back, right? You did this thing. Oedipus is saying, I didn't do these things. And even like the Father, you know, which he has to do a little bit of gymnastics on, you know, is basically saying, well, it's self defense and I didn't know this. And again, stepping back again, all of this is circumstantial. And if we were pre Orestaya, I don't think this would matter. The Furies would just come and hunt you down. But we're also.
- [62:43]
Eli Stone
Let's also go back to Job, right? Like, this is Job's argument. Like, he's like, yeah, I'm suffering all of these things. And the first thing his friends say is like, repent of whatever you sinned. Like, you know, like, whatever you did. Like, go and offer sacrifice and tell us what you did. And he's like, I didn't do anything. I've like, always been this good guy. And that's the whole tension of the drama of Job is that I am not culpable and yet I'm suffering. Right. And that. That unjust. That. That felt sense of unjust suffering or. Or disproportionate suffering is really. I think, yeah, Sophocles is really drawing this out. And Oedipus, I think you say you're. You're correct. He's very. Making a very compelling argument that I couldn't have known these things.
- [63:23]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I.
- [63:23]
Eli Stone
And. And like, even if I did, like, is 20 years in exile not long enough? Right. Like, blinded, you know, entirely dependent on other people for my sustenance. And the other thing too is he calls Athens out. He says Athens has the reputation for being, like, sheltering, like, sheltering those who, like, need refuge. And yet you're going to turn me away. Like you. You claim to be this city for the people, and yet you turn away. Right. These guests.
- [63:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Which, again, is a loaded phrase for Athenian audience.
- [64:01]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, it certainly would have been.
- [64:03]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So this ends with like, okay, we gotta get Theseus. And then in the interim of understanding this, we're introduced to a new character for the play, Ismene. So is Meanie's kind of seen in the distance. She's kind of garbed as a traveler. Right. Someone who's been on the road. And so she comes in and I actually really appreciated this because it was nice to see Ismini in action, if that makes sense. Right. It was nice to see her, like, proactively doing something because she's such a contrast to Antigone in the play. Antigone, where she just seems to be so passive, and she seems to be, you know, her whole lens that she looks at, that whole dilemma is, but I'm a woman and I'm. I'm powerless. There's. Antigone is a play on relations, and she always picks the subservient one. And then that's her excuse for why she can't do anything. So I kind of like, just off the bat here, when I was reading it for the first time of, like, there she is in action. She's doing something. And she seems to be doing something relatively correct.
- [65:00]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, I think it's. It's refreshing and too. Right. Like, you know, she. She comes and she talks. And then this is where the chorus says, like, in the meantime, while you're waiting, while you're waiting for Theseus, maybe. Maybe you should do something to, like, rectify the wrong of you trespassing. On the sacred grove. And Oedipus is like, yeah, I should do it, but I'm blind, I can't do it. And is mean. He volunteers to do it, right? She's like, she's going to go and offer the sacrifice on behalf of her father. And so there's. She's plays a very active role here. And I think it is very refreshing. Like you said, the other big thing.
- [65:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
That we get out of this is then also information on the brothers. And I think this was kind of key, and it's kind of key to understanding some later tensions in the play on. Sophocles just takes a huge potshot at the Egyptians. Just like, wow, what is wrong with the Egyptians? Like, you know, their women have to go work and the men sit in the house like women, you know, in the shade. And so I didn't realize the Egyptians had that reputation. But apparently Sophocles finds that an apt comparison. But it's interesting. It's your brothers, right? He says, no, it's your brothers that should be doing this work. Why is it the sisters? Why isn't Antigone leading him around? Why is it Ismene is doing this? Why is it not the brothers? And so this is one of the first kind of critiques of them, which I think is important. And also it's another thing where he praises Antigone. And this is another section that I just, you know, my love for her continues to deepen, right. That she. This is, I don't know, 365 Antigone or 376 Antigone, from the time she left her childhood behind and came into full strength, has volunteered for grief, Wandering with me, leading the old misery Hungry feet cut through the bristling woods an eternity worn down by the drenching rains and scorching suns at noon. Hard labor, but you endured it all, Never a second thought for home, a decent life, so long as your father had some care and comfort. I mean, the piety that Antigone has towards her father is immense. Yeah.
- [67:02]
Eli Stone
And I. I mean, I think it's, you know, I mean, we want to put these in, like, Catholic terms. Like, this is like heroic virtue, right? Like this is above and beyond. Right. Even what I think you could argue is expected of her in her culture and given. Given everything. And yet she is sort of this model for what. What? Yeah, like piety or. Or what. She is every. She is everything that Oedipus could have possibly, like, hired for her to be for him.
- [67:34]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. I Also think too. One thing I noted is that Oedipus, it's like Oedipus, this is a really touching scene. You don't have to call your daughters, your daughter sisters. Like, you don't have to do that. Why do you do that? And I've noticed too, that he does it. And I don't. Correct me if I'm wrong. And you know, we can get comments on YouTube, but I don't think they ever reciprocate. They always call him father. He is the one that will remind them and muddle this up and talk about my, you know, my sister daughters. But they don't seem to ever reciprocate with that type of language. But at the same time, they don't. It's just, you know, water off a duck's back for them. They don't seem to ever, like, it doesn't faze them. They don't bring it up. That doesn't. They just kind of seem to let it go and continue to show him, you know, the filial piety that I think is owed to him as a father.
- [68:25]
Eli Stone
Yeah, I don't. I'm not sure. Yeah. What deeper? I mean, I do think it is interesting that you bring this up. I don't know why, like, maybe Sophocles is so intentional about not mirroring that language. Right.
- [68:40]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Something to parse out there. But then I think the big thing that Ismini brings is she brings news of the brothers. And so not only are they not doing what they're supposed to be doing, they're fighting for the throne. And so she gives an update that's around like 405 or so. She talks about that they're fighting for the throne, etc. But then I think the real big news is that there's a new oracle and she's bringing news, right? She's the messenger here. She's kind of the person who's gone to, you know, there's always like a person who's gone to Delphi or the oracle and then brings back, you know, what was said. And so it kind of has to unfold a bit at around a little bit before 4:30, right? She says, they are in your hands. The oracle says, the power rests in you. And so Oedipus is asking her questions, how's this work? And she says, well, you know, Creon, at any rate, make no mistake, he's coming for you for just this reason. Soon, not late, I warn you. So all of a sudden, like, it's me he's telling him like you. You're gonna have a power over this. This struggle for the throne, and really over Thebes in general. And Creon's coming to claim you. And you can see Oedipus trying to work this out. She says. She says to him, to settle near the fatherland of Thebes, to have you in their power, but you may not set foot within the borders. And he doesn't quite get it. He's like, well, what. What use am I to them? She says, your tomb will curse them if it lacks the proper rights. It's. Again, he's still like. He's like, okay, fine. Like, he seems to think that's a given, right? Of course, it takes no God from the blue to teach us that. But she explains that's why they really want to keep you close at hand as a good, strong ally. Not in a land where you can be your own master. And then he kind of shows where I think his mind is. He says, but surely they will shroud my corpse with Theban dust, which has. No one can read that and not think of the first play. Yeah, absolutely.
- [70:37]
Eli Stone
Straight from Antigone, right?
- [70:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Like, at least they'll do this, right? With a dust. So, apparently, at least the sprinkling of the dust, the symbolic ritual of burying the dead, they'll at least do that, right? No, not with your father's blood on your hands. That's forbidden, Father. Then that's when Oedipus finally switches. Nope. Then they will never get me in their clutches. Never. So I had to read this multiple times to figure out, like, what. Where. What is his anticipation? And then what does he think is happening here? And so the way I took this was that, you know, Oedipus seems to think that it's okay that they come and get him and bring him back, and he seems to be okay with this. But then the idea that they're gonna bring him back but keep him as an exile and then also not give him his burial rights. Like, basically, all they're trying to do is control where he dies. Like, does he. Does he die within their power? They can actually construe where it is that he dies. Then he seems to push back when he realizes that he's. He's going to be maybe not even buried, he's going to die as an exile. Even if they bring him back because there's no actual reincorporation of him into the city, it's not like he's going to go to. What's he always talking about? His ancient house, right? He's not just going to be under home arrest. They're not going to allow him in. They won't give him the rights. And he's going to die, as we've seen, in this, this horrible state of not having the proper rituals. And that seems to be what jars him. Because I had to read this a few times to understand what is the dynamic that's happening here. Why. Why is the news that Creon's coming to get him? That's not where he freaks out.
- [72:13]
Eli Stone
Well, I think, I think, yeah, I don't. I think he would welcome. Like, I mean it's interesting. I, I think there's a lot of layers here. There's a lot of layers. I think one is. Oedipus knows that he's going to die and he knows, I think, and this is why I think he knows like that, that that prophecy that his death is going to be a blessing to others. Presumably Creon knows this too. That's why Creon wants to come and get him, right, like, and have the, you know, to put this in Catholic parlance, right. He wants to get the relics right. Like this is a long standing thing in human history, right, like, especially with the hero cult that we're hero cults that we've been, we've been introduced to kind of here, in here in Oedipus in particular, in this, in this kind of story. But yeah, you see it in like these. Theseus, you see it in like Hercules and some of these others. Pericles I think is another kind of example of like a hero cult that kind of crops up there. But anyway, so where, where was I going with this? Ah, okay. So. So Oedipus knows that his death is going to be a blessing to others. Creon wants to come and get his body. But in true Creon fashion, like we should, like, we should think back to what the Creon in Antigone was. He's this middling, like split the difference halvesies. Like okay, we want the blessing, we don't want the curse. We don't know what to do with the oracles. We don't know what to trust. So what if we just buried him on the line but we didn't give him any Theban dirt, we only gave him exile dirt. And like maybe like we can get the good stuff and like not have any of the consequences of it. Like any of the bad consequences. And like Oedipus obviously, like is completely disrespected by this and so, but, but I think Oedipus also realizes that, like, this is not actual guest friendship. Like, he is not being received. Like, he can't possibly be a blessing to these people. Like, the prophecy is not going to come true. You bury my body, like, outside the borders of Thebes. I'm not going to be a guardian spirit or a blessing to Thebes or. Right. Like, I'm not going to be able to help you. And so what we see here, though, is I think on a deeper, like, relational level, Creon is using Oedipus now, right? Like, this isn't about Creon wanting to actually bring Oedipus back or feeling guilty about kicking, you know, kicking Oedipus out and exiling him 20 years ago. Creon is just here for the benefits, namely Oedipus's body, right? Like, and even then, he's still not going to, like, honor Oedipus's body, like, in any respect. He's going to, like, leave it outside the city limits. And yeah, like you said, this should be echoing like the Creon that we saw in Antigone. Like, this is exactly the same Creon, which is already a pretty significant departure from what we saw in Oedipus Rex, where he seemed to be this sensible man. He seemed to be like, the one that was trying to talk sense into Oedipus. There's something really that's shifted in. In Creon here. And I think it has to do with this conquest of the throne. Right? We've got this weird trifecta of three people fighting over the throne in Thebes. And, you know, Creon is wanting to get what he can while not having to suffer any of the potential consequences of that action. Right? So I think there's a lot of layers to sort of why Oedipus is revolted by this idea. And I think chief among them is that Oedipus is just being used as a tool here. And this is why Oedipus, I think, too, doesn't. Doesn't tell the people, hey, if you give me sanctuary, I'm, like, going to die and, like, be the best thing that ever happened to you. Because he's trying to, like, root out, suss out, like, are you go. Are you here? Like, are you here for my benefits? Because that's exactly what Creon's doing. And so I think Creon is actually kind of like this. This foil to Theseus, who we're going to see, like, introduced here very soon as well.
- [76:15]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Oh, yeah, no, there's certainly parallels. Many good thoughts. I do think Creon is At his worst in this play. So as we. If Antigone is. Is only more endearing, I think Creon and Antigone, the play, I can give some justification to for why he thinks the way that he thinks and what he's trying to do for the stability of Thebes here. I just think he's at his worst. And his best, I think, is Oedipus the king. He seems very docile in what he's trying to parse out. I think, too, I'm growing to your thesis. I kind of see where you're coming from. That is Oedipus withholding certain information and details about his prophecy that he doesn't really need Ismini to come and tell him that he actually already knows how he's going to be a blessing, that it's really going to be his death and his tomb. Because it does surprise me here that he actually pushes back on her when she tries. I mean, her main thesis, right, that she says is your tomb will curse them if it lacks the proper rights. And his response to that is like, yeah, we already all know that. Like, that's how that works. So it's not. It doesn't seem to. What he really seems to find out here is that there's not going to be any true reconciliation between him and Thebes. And I love what you said, that basically Creon depersonalizes him. Oedipus simply becomes an instrument. And that's how I read it. Of just like, okay, now we've got this whole prophecy about you being a curse to us. So basically we just need to take you back and control where it is that you die. Like, if we have to. If we have to have this negative prophecy, I'm at least going to try and manipulate it to a certain degree to, you know, for my better ends. I don't need you gallivanting in some other, you know, country or polis, which is the problem.
- [78:00]
Eli Stone
Like this. This has been happening since day one. Like King Laius ignoring what the prophet said. And like, well, I've got this bad word. I'm going to try to, like, manage it as best I can, right? Like. Or Oedipus, like, I got this bad, terrible fate, like this horrible prophecy. I'm going to try to manage it the best I can by running away. And like, it never works. It never works. And no one's learned this lesson, right? So, yeah, I think it's just really ratcheting up the irony here, right? Like, Creon, the voice of reason in the last play is doing the exact same thing that Oedipus was doing in the last play.
- [78:34]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Which again, just goes right into our thesis about Sophocles having these. This pedagogical insight into prophecy and that human agency cannot come in and control this. Right? And actually there's like a general theory or premise in Greek tragedies that the more you try to control and affect these prophecies, pretty much the worst it's going to be for you, right? The just kind of pushing forward a bit. So we, we see with Ismene that she clarifies that his tomb, whoever his tomb is, will be a site of a great Theban defeat, right? So we're kind of getting more of parsing out of what his death actually means as being a curse. At 470, he curses his sons. And so this was really interesting because he, he gives us more information that helps understand his reaction. And so the way I understand this is because you could really push back here and say, well, I don't understand. And Oedipus, the king, he's begging to be exiled. Like he wants to be exiled. So why now is it bad for him that he can't be brought back to the city? Like, what, what is going on here? Because I do think there's a little bit of gymnastics that's going on here on the incentives. And so my understanding is in, in that 470, when he kind of goes on this monologue which ends up cursing the sons, is that he explains that, yes, he asked to be exiled and basically they told him no. And then he got comfortable in his ancient home, right? He's basically. I don't know if he's on home arrest or house arrest, but he's basically there and he talks about my rage subsided. And then I, I became at home. I came, you know, I had peace, I found rest. Okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I'll live out the rest of my life in Thebes and you know, as basically, you know, here in my house as this blind man, etc, and then they decide to throw him out, right? So as soon as he finds peace and comfort in where he is, then they decide to exile him and the sons don't intervene. And I think that's the big part, right? The sons don't intervene to save him from being exiled. And if I understood it correctly, this is then seen as like an incentive for the throne, right? Like if he's present, it might cause problems for them. And so out of their own greed, right? This is seen as a mal Intent. Out of their own greed, they allow their father to be exiled. And so now he curses them in their battle for the throne.
- [80:56]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly correct. And I mean, presumably, right. Like, during this period, like, maybe this is when Oedipus receives his further prophecy, right, that you will be a blessing to this place. And so as he finds comfort, as he has a better understanding of what his fate actually holds, he actually comes to find some comfort. Like, all of my suffering will actually mean something for the city when they bury me. And that's when they throw him out. And his sons decide, well, you know, I. I want to be king now. So we're just gonna. We're gonna, you know, send the old man off. And, I mean, this is kind of like an enemy, too. If we want to draw an analogous sort of, like, insult, you know, like in the story of the prodigal son, the. The son that asks for his share of the inheritance first, it's basically just saying, like, go ahead and die, right? Like, I want my inheritance now, and I'll, like, go and live my life. And. And that's kind of the same sort of thing. Like, we want to rule now. Get out of here. And yeah, so just this really. Yeah. Oedipus has really, really been slighted by Creon and by his sons here, of course, and all of them are fighting for the throne now, which should be tremendously ironic for those of us who read Antigone, because Creon is upset and, you know, Oedipus the king, because both of them are obsessed, of course, as kings, tyrants, they're obsessed over losing their rule. Like, they're afraid that someone's going to come and exile them or come and murder them in their sleep. And. Right. Like, that's. That's the way that tyrants go, right. That's the way that dynasties are succeeded, often by blood. And so there's, I think, again, even in all of this conversation of, like, the way that families are torn apart by a desire for whoever is going to succeed the throne, right? The younger son usurps the older, which is an interesting thing, right?
- [82:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The.
- [82:52]
Eli Stone
The older son is, like, away. And the younger son takes. Takes the opportunity to seize the Theban throne. Like, this is the stuff that, like, half of the Old Testament is about, right? Like, it's just blood upon blood. And. And I think to an Athenian audience, it's like they're. They just lived this with those 30, right? They just saw all of this. And so to see it kind of here in dramatic fashion, I think is. Is a very powerful, powerful kind of commentary on what. What and stands for. And Athens is uniquely positioned and has a unique sort of value system that will allow it to escape some of the fate that. The terrible fates that Thebes kind of suffers here.
- [83:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The. This is somewhat of an aside, but I was recently having a few beers at a. At a tavern with a few fellows, and we got into a conversation about Plato, and one of them explained that he thought this was one of the rationales for the guardians in Plato's Republic not being able to have families. And of course, it's a. It's a. It's a bizarre passage where he talks about, you know, it's basically a eugenics program and there's gonna be a lottery and, you know, how they get to marry and how the children are held in common. It seems like a precursor to communism, and it's really off putting to a lot of people. But he thought that what was going on behind the scenes, the pedagogical purpose of that was that Plato was showing how these blood relations turn into blood feuds. And if you're going to have an aristocratic class that serves as, like, the guardians of the city, then they have to put the polis above their family and they can't dissolve back into these blood feuds. And this is really a perfect example of that happening. Right, and this passage ends too, with what you already pointed out. I think that its placement in the text actually only highlights it even more, that after he curses the brothers, they're not doing. Not only were they not doing what they're supposed to, they're doing what they're not supposed to be doing. And it ends then with Ismini volunteering to be this advocate in the rituals. And I like what you said earlier is that we see her being proactive. We see her agreeing to take this on. And so that's around 5, 60 or so that they kind of go through, you know, what needs to happen in the ritual.
- [85:10]
Eli Stone
I think, to this point, before we skip too far ahead, because I really do think this is beautiful. Remember last time we talked about Oedipus's faults, right? Like, he's. He's like, gone to the oracle so many times, but he's, like, ignored the Delphic maxims, which are, like, written over the door, right? Like, know yourself, don't make a rash pledge, do all things in moderation. Like, Oedipus doesn't do any of those things in the last play. But here, like, the tenderness and sort of the like, the openness, the docility that. That Oedipus has. He's like, learning this ritual. Tell me what happens next. Do I do it this way or do I do it this way? I want to make sure I get it right. Like, I mean, they're just even here, right? Like, when they tell them, like, this is how you should pray. He's like, listen very carefully. Like, this is like that. Just like that. That line stuck out to me is just, like, one of the most pious things that Oedipus has ever said, right? Like, golly, where is it?
- [86:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It's. He's almost eager to do the ritual.
- [86:04]
Eli Stone
Yeah. Lay three times down nine young shoots of olive on it with both of your hands. Repeat this prayer, the chorus says. And Oedipus says, I'm eager to hear this. It has great power, right? Like, I don't know how Fagl's translates it, but just like that. I don't know that. It just seems like Oedipus, like, really highlights. Like, I'm listening. I'm very zoned in right now. Like, I want to make sure I get these words exactly correct. Like, teach me. Like, almost like the disciples teach us how to pray, right? Like, this is like, tell me what I need to say. Just very, very docile, Oedipus, that we haven't seen before. And I think it just shows that, like you said, there's this transformation that's happened in Oedipus character.
- [86:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. I'm interested in your thoughts on this next passage. This is around, I don't know, a little bit before 580 Ismene has left, and the chorus gathers around Oedipus, and they start asking him all these questions, like they know who he is. But they're like, you know, the dreadful agony you face. No recovery, no way out. The agony you live through for the sake of kindness. Oedipus says toward a guest, don't lay bare the cruelty I suffered. Why do they do this? They push like, they already know who he is. He's revealed his name, but they push him to confirm his story. And, I mean, the only way I could read this was through that ritual of guest friendship. That it just wasn't enough for him to be like, oh, yeah, I'm Oedipus. Everyone knows my story. Like, they want to hear it from him directly. And so they. They. They push it because there's a certain way you could see this as a. As a cruelty, right? Like, why. Why are the. Why is the host forcing him to do this, which is a. Which is a unique capacity because I don't think we really saw that too much in the Odyssey, right, Where Odysseus telling his story would have been of, like, a cruelty to him, even though he does weep a little bit when they. They sing the songs of Troy and. And things like that. But here they push him. And I couldn't figure out why the chorus was doing this. And the best thing I came up with is they're completing the ritual of guest friendship and that Oedipus needs to tell the story or at least confirm it, right? He's the eyewitness, which is a big theme, right? You. You're the one who actually can confirm it. You have to tell the story, right?
- [88:24]
Eli Stone
There's an irony, right? Like, eyewitness blind.
- [88:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The blind guy is the eyewitness.
- [88:29]
Eli Stone
Yeah, I do think it's interesting. I think. I think this party probably is like, a little bit of a continuation of the thing where, like, Oedipus suggests that he's. Suggests that he's innocent, right? But he doesn't give the. He doesn't have the chance to defend himself, right? And so we see this, like, specifically with Theseus when Theseus arrives, right? Like, he is asked to, like, tell his story, like, in full. Like, I want to hear it from you, right? Like, like, I. I would recognize you from a mile away. Like, I just see how sorry, like, and how sorrowful and wretched and pitiful you are, right? Like, I know who you are, but I need to hear your story from you. And I think this is a little bit of an opportunity for Oedipus to present himself to the people of Athens, right? Like, this is. This is his introduction, right, Even before Theseus arrives.
- [89:21]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So I like that. I like that. So it's basically. Even though it's painful, it's a reiteration of his innocence, actually. Ultimately, I mean, he's not. He doesn't see that in the beginning, but he makes several comments because he actually handles both incidences separately, Jocasta and his father. But both of them. I just looked real fast. Both of them. He reconfirms. Like, these are. These are things that happen to me, right? They're not things that I actually did. And so, no, I like that read of it. That what it serves in the narrative, because that's what I was trying to figure out, like, understand it from guest friendship. What. What's it really serve, though, in the plot? Like, why. Why do we have this? I guess it is just another touch point for him. To explain that I'm innocent.
- [90:03]
Eli Stone
Yeah. And. And he's presenting himself to the people of Athens too, right? Which obviously they have a king. So, like. And they've kind of, like, deferred. Like, we're gonna let the king judge this. But I think we also start to see, like, this is actually the people beginning to exercise a little bit of, like, what they should be exercising if they're Athenians, which is their rule, like the rule of the people. And so you see, like, obviously they, like, kind of like, at first they're just like, just leave. Like, we're not going to exercise our judicial. Like, we're not going to exercise our prudence here. We're just going to tell you to leave. And Oedipus begs them to stay. And they're like, well, we're going to defer to a higher power because, like, you know, that's easier, right? So there's like that initial, like, knee jerk. We're not going to deal with this one way or that. We're not going to deal with it. We're going to push it up, like, to someone else. But now you actually start to see a little agency, like, actually, like, let's actually hear your story. Like, let's actually talk with you. Let's actually do what we're supposed to be doing here. And so I think there's a little bit of a maturation we see in the people here of Athens. Maybe not a full maturation, as we'll talk about, like, in a. In a later episode where there's maybe a little bit of a. An incapacity or a little bit of a fear that. That keeps the people from acting when they should. But, yeah, I mean, here at the very end, right? I mean, he. He's. Yeah, he. He kind of like reiterates, like, I didn't know what I was doing with my mother, and then, like, against my father. I was defending myself. Right. Like, he says that explicitly. But then Theseus arrives, which maybe you should like, give just a very brief touch point on, like, who Theseus is. Like, we have the ship of Theseus, like some kind of, like, Theseus is like a name that people have probably heard but maybe don't know.
- [91:45]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Theseus is one of the. So I'm just going by memory here, but, yeah, Theseus is one of the old heroes, right? If you remember Nestor in the Iliad, he's like, part of the men are so weak now. We're so weak because he remembers the age before this age of heroes.
- [92:02]
Eli Stone
So.
- [92:02]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So Theseus is one of these heroes. You think of him along with Heracles or Hercules. Perseus would be another one. Perseus fought Medusa. Hercules had his 12 labors. Bellerophon. Bellerophon probably doesn't get enough credit, but Bellerophon, we saw him, he was a part of his lineage, was in the Iliad and was a huge example of guest friendship and courage. But Bellerophon fought the Chimaera and flew on Pegasus, right? He's a horse tamer. And so this is like their heroic age. And that's why I was saying earlier, like, Theseus walking in is like King David walking in or King Arthur walking in, right? This is a mythical character. So Theseus is the one who defeated the Minotaur. That's his right. Each. Each character seems to have this labor they undergo. And so he famously volunteered as tribute to borrow that phrase, and went over to Crete, right? Was it went over the Crete and the Minotaur would devour these Athenians who were, you know, sacrificed to him. So Theseus, you know, cleverly defeats the Minotaur.
- [93:03]
Eli Stone
And so the mystery of the labyrinth, right, like that's the other. That's the other component.
- [93:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The Minotaur is in a labyrinth. He solves this mystery. The labyrinth was created by Daedalus, if I remember right, which is another fascinating character mythology that's always coming up with all these gadgets and inventions and things like that. So he, Theseus, has the aid of the local princess, and Theseus, in somewhat moral ambiguity, abandons her on an island on the way back, right? So she comes with him, if I recall correctly, he abandons her. I think the thought process there was. I think Dionysus was in love with her. And so he was like, oh, God wants her. I have to leave her here. And so, you know, we could have some questions about the morality of that decision. But then, probably most famously, if memory serves, he forgot what he was supposed to do. So when the ship is returning, if I remember correctly, the ship that came to get them has a black sail, right? It was like this very ominous ship that came and picked up the tribute and took him to the Minotaur to be devoured. And if memory serves, he was supposed to replace it with a white sail on his return home as a sign of hope that he had survived. And he had, you know, been heroic and actually had this great, I guess, his own Aristea in a certain way, right? The zenith of his glory. And he forgets. And so his father, King Aegeus, right, is looking at this and sees the ship with the wrong sail on it, which then the black sail would have said that basically his son has been devoured by the Minotaur. And so he chunks himself into the sea, he throws himself off into cliff which is now known as the Aegean Sea, right. That bears his name today. And so then Theseus comes back and long story short, then becomes King of Athens. And so that's my off the cuff memory of how that works. That mainly comes from reading my children Du Lierre's children's mythology. So if people are like that was kind of the kids version. That's because of what I'm most habituated to.
- [94:59]
Eli Stone
Yeah, that's, that's good. That's a good, that's a good synopsis. Good. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of details that probably, you know, don't necessarily need to be retold and they're not PG anyway and all that fun stuff. But.
- [95:09]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right, but he's a, he's a, but he's. I mean I think the, the main point here is that he's, he himself is a mythological character, right? He is part of that heroic age. And it's interesting to have Theseus in dialogue with Oedipus because Oedipus then he, I guess maybe the tether, these narratives together, he in a certain way is also approaching the zenith of his glory. He also is approaching being able to achieve hero cult status. Right. I mean, are your bones going to be something people fight over when you die? This seems to be a somewhat dispositive aspect about whether or not you've reached hero status. So I think there really is this very fascinating dialogue to see Theseus and Oedipus in dialogue with one another because they really both retrospect, are these hero characters.
- [95:58]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, I think that's very good. And Theseus too, right? Like even, even in solving the labyrinth, like kind of represents this sort of like intellectual, right. This, this, this sort of scheming, right. Like capacity, right. That, that Athens, like, like not Oedipus, Odysseus, right, Like comes to be known for and kind of begins to represent like what does it mean to be an Athenian? What does it mean to be a Greek is, is not just to be like good in battle, but also to be cunning, to be able to solve these mysteries, to solve these riddles. Oedipus like, as we see, like kind of has this life of the mind himself. He has this wit, he has this capacity to discern. And so Theseus meeting Oedipus like there's kind of this meeting of minds, this kind of meeting of kindred spirits here that I think is. That I think is important.
- [96:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like that a lot, by the way. That's a. That's a really important distinction. But now that you say that, all those bells are ringing, because then he, Theseus, serves as a contrast to Heracles, right? So Hercules was like the hero of Greece, right? I mean, he is the guy. And Theseus becomes somewhat of a contrast to incorporate the intellect into the hero cult. Now, that's a wonderful, wonderful insight because I think that does dovetail really well into what we're seeing with Oedipus.
- [97:11]
Eli Stone
Yeah, yeah. I'm curious, what is your impression of Theseus? Like, you kind of said like, this, like, he's just like this guy that can do no wrong, right? Like, and then when he does wrong, like, he very quickly corrects, he's like, oh, yeah, you're right. Like, sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
- [97:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Oedipus, in certain ways, I found him refreshing only because, like, in a tragedy, you just simply expect that everyone's going to bunker down on some particular.
- [97:33]
Eli Stone
Double down on their mistakes. And like.
- [97:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And so you're sitting there the whole time like, why, why are you doing this? Like, why are you just doubling down on this so hard and spiraling into madness? But Theseus then, and maybe to continue the theme that you brought up, he is the voice of reason. He seems to be this, like, very calm, dispassionate, very rational voice that seems very quick to ascertain truth and also very quick to act. None of those things we find in Greek plays. People aren't quick to figure things out. They're not quick to do the right thing. I mean, usually, you know, like Creon, everyone has to be murdered from first or kill themselves before you understand what you should be doing. So I, I really liked him. And in a certain way I found him very refreshing through the play because then when he comes in, I'm like, things will be. There'll be rectitude, right? Things will be well ordered because Theseus is here. And I wonder, I mean, that's coming from, you know, a boy in rural Oklahoma. I really wonder how that was received by an Athenian audience.
- [98:31]
Eli Stone
Right? Like, is. Is Theseus representing, like, Athens as a whole? Or like, is he representing a rightly ordered king? Like, this is a really interesting question. Like, we have that.
- [98:42]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
You have to think that Athens right now is having somewhat of an identity crisis. I mean, in some way, right? I mean, They've had a rapid, I mean one, your empire just fell in the Peloponnesian War. You fell to Sparta, which you certainly don't like. You just then went through the 30 tyrants and tons of people were murdered and you suffered all kinds of things and now you've come out on the back end outside of this like Spartan puppet government and you've reemerged into a democracy. But this thing's really nascent and you're not the same Athenians you were a decade ago. So I think that Theseus has to be like, maybe they put a different analog here. Maybe this is like George Washington coming into the play, right? And it's like, maybe we should remind what's it mean to be, you know, in America? What is Murica, Right? Like, what does this actually mean? Like, these are the things that you should know, right? What does it mean to be a red blooded American? And maybe that was something, you know, if we were going through identity crisis. Well, if we just imagine that we as Americans didn't know who we were and had lost our way, then yeah, you, you write a play and George Washington comes in and is this like larger than life mythological character who reminds you what it means to be an American? Maybe that's what's happening here with Theseus.
- [99:49]
Eli Stone
Yeah, I think that's, I think there's certainly like an element of that. I think there are certainly, yeah, like a, a sense of like trying to find some kind of guiding light or some principle by which to order the new like nascently formed democratic state. Right. Going back to another thing that we talked about, which is like Oedipus like withholding, right? Like he plays like sort of this like real cat and mouse kind of game with Theseus. Like, oh, well, like I'll tell you, but I'm not going to tell you yet. Like, or you're going to figure it out, but I'm not going to be the one to tell you. Like, you'll, you'll hear about it from others when they show up. It's like, why doesn't Oedipus just come out and say this?
- [100:30]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But Theseus seems to handle it with grace. I mean he does have that one little moment, but he corrects really quickly. So I, yeah, I, I saw that and I was like, what is happening here? But because Theseus seems to take it in stride. Theseus seems to understand that there's some reason for Oedipus the slow play this. And maybe it's, maybe it's kind of, I Think you alluded to this earlier. Maybe it's for his own protection, right? He's trying to slowly kind of show the layers of what's actually occurring here. And what. Because, again, he really is. That you've got to peel past the layers of the curse to see. Actually, there's a blessing here for you. There's actually a pretty significant blessing here for you. But he seems to be very slow to show this.
- [101:10]
Eli Stone
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's. That's good. Now, it is interesting that, like, Oedipus is kicked off on a soliloquy when, you know, Theseus asks him, like, well, what. What about your death could cause, like, war, right? Because he. This is like, one of the things that he, like, confides. He's like, I'm afraid for my sons. And they're. And my sons are afraid of war, right? And Theseus is like, well, how is war gonna break out? Which, of course, again, you want to talk about, like, what Sophocles audience is hearing. Like, how could we. Like, who could imagine war? Like, come on. And it's like everyone in the audience is, like, having flashbacks, Right? Like, it. It's just. It's a very. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think prior to the Peloponnesian War, right, Like, you know, Athens probably felt like, you know, we've never known such peace. Like, how could we possibly lose this? And. And yet here, like, the peloponnesian war comes, 30 tyrants come. It's just a disaster. So.
- [102:09]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
And his monologue there has. It's not a monologue that really caught my attention the first time I read it, just to be honest. But then, kind of looking into this play, it's a monologue that a lot of people point to as, like, famous lines from the play. Because he talks about time and he says, just in brief, O Theseus, dear friend, only the gods can never age. The gods can never die. All else in the world almighty. Time obliterates, crushes all to nothing, the Earth. Strength wastes away. The strength of a man's body wastes and dies. Faith dies and bad faith comes to life. The same wind of friendship cannot blow forever. He just goes on and on and on. And so it's really interesting. I mean, it is an interesting concept of time. You see, Odysseus, I think it's not really like a prophecy, but you see, that wisdom that he seems to have, maybe channeling my inner Aeschylus, he seems to have achieved a certain wisdom that maybe comes from the acceptance of suffering as we saw in the early, the beginning of the play that he then can have these observations on the human condition.
- [103:21]
Eli Stone
I think he's also channeling that prophetic. Right. Like, I mean, kind of toward the end he says like, he kind of like breaks off and he says, well like there's no use in speaking of hidden things like this, you know, in like kind of this role of the prophet is to like uncover or like, to, to like, that's, you know, the meaning of the work word apocalypse. To like reveal or to, to pull back the veil and kind of like show what's underneath. I think here like Oedipus breaks into that prophetic where he just begins like peering, like peeling, like he's not talking about anything in his concrete circumstances anymore. He just goes straight into like the heart of the human condition. And then he like kind of goes back and he's like, oh, well, I mean, you know, whoops. I kind of like slipped into that, that sort of prophetic trance. Like now here all that matters is that you like keep your word to me, right? That you'll like take care of me and let me, let me die here. Right. Which is interesting, but it works.
- [104:20]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I mean Theseus, right? His response, such kindness. Who could reject such a man first? In any case, Oedipus is our ally. By mutual rights we owe him hospitality. So here comes the guest friendship in my read of this is that Theseus as a host went above and beyond.
- [104:39]
Eli Stone
Well, like, no, keep reading from that passage. Like it's, it's beautiful.
- [104:43]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, so he says, by mutual rights we owe him hospitality. What's more, he has come to beg our gods for help and render no small benefit to our country in return to me as well. So I respect his claims. I'll never reject the gifts he offers. No, I will settle him in our land, a fellow citizen with full rights. So my read of this was as a first time reader is all that tracks according to guest friendship until the very end. Where then this seems to be something more than what Odysseus asked. Right. So the, the host is offering a greater gift in response to the gift that the host offers, that now we're going to incorporate you into the city. Right? You're no longer going to be a stranger, that you're not going to be a guest, you're going to be one of us. And it seemed like that was Theseus coming over the top as part of this like reciprocal relationship.
- [105:35]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, I, it is. And I think like that generosity is like, I don't know, I Mean, it's interesting, like, you ask, like, what compels Theseus to make that offer, right, Because Oedipus doesn't ask for it. Like, he just asks, like, show me this hospitality. Show me this guest friendship. Now, I mean, it's also possible, like, I don't know, but, like, he asks for burial. Like, Oedipus asked specifically for burial. So that might be a thing where you have to be a citizen to be buried in the city. Doesn't seem to. Like, I don't. I'm not aware of any cultural, like, like, rule that that would be the case for. But I do think it's a sign of Theseus's generosity and by extension, like Athens, Athens hospitality and openness to receiving people from all over, right? Like, and incorporating them. Like, we. We see this, like, especially, like you're saying, right, this plays being performed in the time of Socrates. And then, like, you know, Plato is also alive at this time. Aristotle himself is not actually Greek, but we see that he comes into Greece later and, like, comes and he does his. And so, like, in this new regime, right, that is being kind of, like, built or is, like, in nascent form as this play is being performed, sort of this. I don't want to say multiculturalism, like, per se, but, like, there's an openness to the stranger, right? Like an incorporating, giving, like extending citizenship to those that are not necessarily born of this region or born of this bloodline or born of a family that, like, we know. And, like, there's an openness to receiving guests, and not just guests, but, like you said, making them more than guests, but actually incorporating them into the polis. And I think there's a virtue there. I really. I think that's something that makes the democratic state strong, that it's able to accept the best from those. Those other nations around it. And so, yeah, it is. It is an interesting passage, like, what compels Theseus to do this? What compels Athens to extend this hospitality or this willingness to make citizens of those that are not native to Athens.
- [107:45]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But Athens, too, on the other side of that. There's a lot of analogues here to our own American project, which seems to, you know, invite the stranger in and actually gives them access to become full citizens. But it's interesting too, though, that we have to keep in mind the beginning of the play in which the citizens talking to the stranger say, okay, well, if you're in Athens, you have to hate what Athens hates, and you have to love what Athens loves. So there is, like, A justice right to be incorporated into the polis. There's a. There's a certain justice. Like Oedipus can't remain the Oedipus. He was pre citizenship in Athens. Right. So there's a. There's an integration of the stranger into the polis according to the standards of the polis. Right. It's not just simply a federation of standards, you know, our federation of strangers that compose Athens as a polis. But there seems to be some justice that they have to absorb. Right. You have it reflect the Athenian justice. What does it hate? What does it love to be that true citizen?
- [108:43]
Eli Stone
Yeah, I think those are all very good, very good thoughts. Yeah. Because again, right, like we see Oedipus submitting himself to the Athenian law, right. And that's not what we're going to see happen. Very shortly afterward, out of his hints at it here, he says Theseus asks him, like, what are you going to be doing? Like, you're, you're staying here. That's fine. Like, I'm not going to stop you. But like, what are you, what are you hoping to accomplish? And he says, I will prevail over those who have exiled me. Right. Like, I'm going to, like, I have business to attend to here. Right. Like I have to, like kind of there's something else I have to do here. And of course, he's referring to Creon and his sons. And. And as we'll see when Creon and his sons come back into the picture, they're not receptive to the laws of the city. They don't respect the laws of the city. And so there's not that reciprocality there.
- [109:34]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So I agree. Well, let's look at the chorus because I found this chorus to be kind of fascinating. So this is a little bit before 765. I found this. You might have a different read. I found this again to be a longer version of what we saw earlier, which was basically an ode to Athens, Athens. And so it lists like, well, an ode to Athens tethered to divine favor, right? So it seems to go, Dionysus is in here, the muses, Aphrodite, the olive tree, which is a famous gift from Athena. Obviously Athens bears her name, but also Poseidon. Like, if I remember correctly, he's actually the originator of horses, of stallions. Because there's like a, if I remember right, the waves, you know, they kind of look like horses, right? They're stallions. They're crashing. This is part of his gift as well. So there's just like this litany of the divine, of all these blessings that come down to Athens. And that's how I read this. It's like an ode.
- [110:31]
Eli Stone
And Colonis too, right? Like himself, Right. Like, so Colonus is not just a place, right. Like, it's actually like a home. Like it's the ancestral homeland of this great mythic hero figure. Right. Colonus, who was a horse tamer. Right. And so, like, this is another. Right. Like kind of tie to the divine. Yeah. So and then two. Also worth noting, right, that Athens, like Sparta, is known for its military prowess. Like Athens was known for its navy. And so having Poseidon like, incorporated here as well, like, there's a reference or a nod to Athens sort of military might when it. With respect to its. Its naval power. And so, yeah, I really do think you're right on. Like, this is an ode to Athens, like, as a city.
- [111:21]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, as we. As we kind of bring this kind of part one to a close, we can't do so without introducing Creon. And so Creon comes into the play. You know, they see him. There's like this. They see him coming in the distance, right? There's this like, anticipation of him being here. And he speaks a little bit down by 8:30. And you know, he's here. He says, I'm here just to persuade the old man here to return with me to the land of his fathers. I bear the mandate of my entire people. I thought that was really fascinating. Now, one, Creon is a sophist.
- [111:58]
Eli Stone
Creon's a snake, like he is.
- [112:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Because he. Is it in this section? I don't know if it's in. It's. I don't think it's in the section that we. It is. It's in this section. It's at 9:21. Oedipus, I think, really nails it here about what Creon is. He says, this is 9:20. He says, you and your wicked way with words, Creon. I've never known an honest man who can plead so well for any plea whatever. I mean, this is sophistry, right? There's no real truth. It's just the rhetoric. It's just the skill of persuasion to move your audience to your predetermined end. It's not about the conformity of the mind to reality. It's just the rhetoric. And man, I think he just nails Creon here as a sophist. That's who he is. Because he is like, he turns things around. He's very good about pivoting arguments. And here at the Beginning. He's just like, you know, I'm here on behalf of the people. Remember the people. The people that you called your children. Remember those people? I'm just here for them.
- [113:01]
Eli Stone
Yeah. And I think, too, right, this is like, an appeal to the Athenian audience, too, right? Like, the people, like, I am, like, I'm here for the people. I'm not coming of my own accord as a tyrant. Wink, wink. Right? Like, which we all know Creon's a tyrant. Go back to Antigone. Right? Like, we know what Oedipus is. I mean, what Creon is like as a king. And even there, it's actually interesting because I think if we read, like, we understand what Creon's doing here, it actually colors the way that we might read Creon back in Antigone if we were to go back and read it. If this is the Creon here, like, the snake that can kind of, like, twist everything around, then when Creon's, like, waxing eloquent about, like, how the ship of the state was, like, knocked aside and we, by the God's help, have, like, righted it, and it's like. Like, I don't know, like, how much of that's just bluster.
- [113:51]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So now you have me concerned that all of my justifications for Creon are actually me falling victim to his sophistry. I have. I have fallen victim to rhetoric unhinged and unconnected to truth.
- [114:02]
Eli Stone
No, I think it's great. I really. And, like, from here forward, right? Like, these dialogues. So, like, some of the conversations, like, really piecemeal, small bits of conversation, really. It's a series of speeches in the second half of this play. Like, Creon and Oedipus, like, kind of responding to each other. Theseus gets involved. One of Oedipus sons comes in later. So really, as we move forward, actually, I think we've talked in kind of broad strokes about some of these themes. But really, I think, you know, in the next. You know, next week when we kind of, like, come back and we really, like, kind of start digging down into these. These speeches, we'll really be able to kind of tear them apart and dissect them a little bit and really, like, kind of see the flow of what's going on. Because I really think this latter half is where Oedipus at Colonis really shines with respect to kind of the ideas that each person represents. Oedipus, the suffering servant. Creon, this kind of sophistic, like, snake. Theseus, this, like, icon of wisdom or. Or of right political rule and Oedipus kind of sitting in judgment, like, of everyone's motives. I think it makes for a fascinating dynamic that really brings the whole Theban plays to a wonderful conclusion.
- [115:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I agree. Yeah. There's a lot of rhetorical flourishing in the back half. And I will say, too, if you maybe play my own cards here, I. I really didn't appreciate all of Oedipus the King, actually. I. I found Oedipus the King somewhat of a boring read the first time I went through. And I did not actually appreciate Oedipus at Colonus really that much. Outside, I liked it more. I kind of liked. I liked seeing more of the characters. I liked an insight into Antigone. It's not until the end of Oedipus Clonus that it kind of like, shines a light on the entire Oedipus narrative. And that's when I most appreciated this play. So if you've only read the first half of this play and you're joining this week, you're like, guys, I'm struggling here. Does this go somewhere? I think it does. I actually think that it has a wonderful ending and an ending that informs the rest of the text and just kind of round this out the rest of the factual narrative here. Creon, you talk about being a snake. I mean, the fact that he's like, okay, I won't touch Oedipus, but we have other ways of making you suffer, which is such a terrible phrase because, like, Oedipus is like, the guy who suffered more than anyone. And then Creon's like, well, we're gonna make you suffer more to get what you want. Then he goes after the daughters. I mean, here he really is this, like, just despicable character. And the chorus, I don't know. I. I've never. I'm not terribly impetus sympathetic towards the choruses because this is where you get this, like, back and forth where Creon, as a strong character is definitely overriding the chorus. They're more proactive and they're more active than the choruses we've seen before, like in Agamemnon, that seem to just be incredibly inept and are confused that they could do something about what they're witnessing. But you. You kind of get them going back and forth. Don't do this. But Creon's still doing what he wants to do. He still takes possession of both of the daughters, and he's even going to grab Oedipus here towards the end.
- [117:04]
Eli Stone
Yeah. And I wonder, like, I Mean, I wonder what. What narrative purposes serves. Obviously, I think the carrying away of the daughters is like you said, like, it harkens back to like, Oedipus Rex, which should yank at our, like, heartstrings all the more, right? Because that was like a really, like. Of all the moments, like in. In Oedipus at the king, like, you know, you might get emotional at. Right? Like, that's. That's one. Right? Like, that's the one. And here, right, this is being reenacted in a very violent fashion. I also wonder, like, is there a sense in which, like, the injustice has to actually be done? Like, the city has to like, let. Or. Or. Or the gods or Providence.
- [117:39]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Right.
- [117:39]
Eli Stone
Has to let Creon actually lay a hand on Oedipus and actually violate in order for justice to be done. Right. Like, for what Creon. Like, this is, you know, maybe. Maybe like this is kind of like, you know, analogous to like, God hardening Pharaoh's heart, like in. In Egypt or, you know, depending on, like, your translation, like, allowing, like, Pharaoh to. To, you know, do the things that he's, like, resolved to do, like strengthening that heart, right? To. To go on to, you know, so that in, like, the order of the. The providential plan of, like, things or the fated course of events, what Creon is going to get has to be deserved. So we're going to let Creon, like, lay a hand on Oedipus's daughters and, like, take hold of Oedipus against his will so that the fate that's reserved for Oedipus or that the fate that's reserved for Korean is now deserved. It's kind of an interesting. Yeah, it is kind of an interesting thing, though. Like, the chorus kind of hemming and hawing, like, obviously protesting but like, not acting much. Maybe this is like a tragedy of the. Not. Not a tragedy of the commons, but like bystander, right? Like, this is the bystander effect, like so many people around to help. No one does. Right.
- [118:50]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
It's interesting to read this within the political landscape that we've been discussing the whole time, where the chorus, the people seem to be, like, inept at getting done what they need to get done. And so you have to have this almost like deus ex machina event of Theseus coming in and immediately, like, writing everything. And that's where we'll kind of pick up next time with line 1000 is Theseus's re. Entry into the narrative, which I find absolutely fascinating for multiple reasons. You know, Creon. Yeah, I Agree with you. I mean, I don't know if I want to give a defense of him. He's still very much, I think, viewing things through the political. So if I was going to give maybe not a defense, but try and bolster where he's coming from and not just reduce him to, like, a sophist, he still seems to put Thebes above all else. Right. So he says, like, 970. I thought it was interesting that he accuses Oedipus at being bent at defeating his own country, because Creon, I think, at his best in Antigone is misreading the common good of the polis, at least at the beginning. I think he drifts into being a tyrant, but he misunderstands what's actually good for the polis. And so here you could say he's making the same mistake, is that Creon seems to be okay understanding what's good or bad for the city, but he's not good at interpreting it and inside the cosmic whole when it comes to the divine. And so if Oedipus is a sign, just like Antigone was a sign, Creon seems to misunderstand it and doesn't understand how to actually approach a divine sign for the good of the polis. And so he tries the force things, which is not going to work. And so maybe that's giving him too much credit, but I'm trying to understand his thought process here in relationship to the first play. And that's what he seems to do. He just. He can't look up. He understands the political, but he doesn't understand the divine.
- [120:36]
Eli Stone
Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's certainly true because. Right. Even, even, even, like, his maneuvering, right, like about hemming and hawing over Oedipus's body. He's, like, trying to collect the benefits, but he doesn't want to bring ruin to Thebes by, like, bringing a cursed body into the, you know, into the. Into the city limits. Right. So he's. He's trying to, like, have it both ways for the sake of the city. One, the last thing I'll draw attention to here before we conclude, like. Right. You know, I think it's highly significant is that Oedipus actually lays a curse on Creon. And so this is an interesting thing. Like, we ask ourselves, why is Creon so stupid in Antigone? Well, like, now we have an answer like Oedipus. And two, I mean, this is an element of sort of, you know, Greek. I mean, it's like it transcends like kind of the Greek, right? Like this idea of the swan song, like you said, or the idea that someone's, like, last words have a. Especially if there's like any. Any sense of prophetic or there. There's any sort of sense of invocation of the gods, right? Like someone's dying wish or someone's dying. Like prophecy comes true, like, bar none always happens. Especially someone like Oedipus who is like, in this process of being transformed into this, you know, prophetic wisdom figure that is going to be a blessing for others in his death. The translation I have here says, you know, Creon. Creon tells Oedipus to be silent. And Oedipus says, no, may the powers here not make me silent until I say this. Curse you scoundrel, who have cruelly taken her, who served my naked eye pits as their eyes on you and yours forever. May the sun God, watcher of all the world, confer such days as I have had. And such an age is mine. Which, golly, like, I mean, if. If, like, you follow the narrative, right? Like, Oedipus is the man who has, like, suffered the worst fate. Like, everyone agrees. Like, his fame has spread throughout the world because of how unfortunate this man is. Like, his curse is not like anything. Like, he doesn't. He doesn't lay another curse on. He's like, Creon, I wish that you had a life just like mine. Like, that is my curse to you. You will have a life like mine. And that. That happens. We see that at the end of Antigone. So in such an age, that's the other. That's the other bit of it. That's. That's a zinger, right? Like, you're not going to have the easy way out of like, suicide or an early death. Often battle. Like, you're gonna suffer this and you're gonna carry it the rest of your life. It's just really metal. Like, I just love it.
- [123:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I like the tethering of that to then Creon's spiritual blindness. And Antigone, right? Because he doesn't actually.
- [123:24]
Eli Stone
He doesn't. He doesn't. He can't make sense of any of it, right? Like, he still feels like I did everything right. Like, can't see.
- [123:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's interesting to see how much, you know. Does he have any type of actual metanoia. Does he have any type of actual, like, repentance and turning around? To what degree does he. Does he actually understands what has happened to him? You know, he. At least. But the Problem is, right when you get labeled as a sophist, then it gets really difficult to actually understand whether or not his words correspond to his heart. Because once you can just, you know, speak for anything, then it's difficult to actually tether those two together. Because you could say the Creon at the end of Antigone. It's the first time he prays, right? It's the first time he actually has recourse to the divine is at the end of Antigone. But I do like tethering his spiritual blindness in that play to this particular curse. And one thing too, and I'll end on this, is in Fagel's introduction to this, which I would suggest people read maybe after they read the play. You can also check out our resources that we have on our website. But I think Faggles is a really good resource for this. He actually explains that the word that he translates as prayer is the same as curse. It's actually just whether it's a positive or it's a negative. Right. It's just an invocation to the gods. It just depends on, you know, whether you're actually asking for a blessing or a curse. But it's actually the same word there. Well, Eli, I think we have unearthed this as much as we can. I think we've. We've overturned a lot of truths and looked at this, and I think there's a lot of anticipation then seeing how part two plays out. So next week, we will pick up at line 1000 with our good king Theseus re entering the narrative, and we anticipate him bringing order and revolution, rectitude. We'll see. I think, very intriguingly, how does Theseus interact with Creon? How do these two characters, you know, play off of one another? The sophist and then the good king. That seems to represent, at least in the nascent form, an actual wisdom and an order and a lawfulness. So very good. Well, Eli, we really appreciate you today.
- [125:23]
Eli Stone
Yeah, thanks, Deacon. Always happy to be here.
- [125:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
All right, everyone, check us out on X and also on Facebook and YouTube and Patreon, and visit us at Zoom, the greatbookspodcast.com and we will see you next week. Take care.