Cursed by the Gods: Oedipus at Colonus Part Two

Summary

Ascend - The Great Books Podcast: "Cursed by the Gods: Oedipus at Colonus Part Two" Summary

Release Date: June 10, 2025

In the second and final installment of their exploration of Sophocles' "Oedipus at Colonus," hosts Deacon Harrison Garlick and Adam Minihan delve into the profound themes that bring Oedipus's tragic narrative to a redemptive closure. This episode features a thoughtful discussion with guest Eli Stone, offering deep insights into the dramatic zenith of Oedipus's life, the concept of redemptive suffering, and the binding power of love within the play's intricate web of relationships and historical context.

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1. Introduction to "Oedipus at Colonus"

Deacon Harrison Garlick opens the episode by expressing his admiration for "Oedipus at Colonus," highlighting how Sophocles masterfully transforms Oedipus's harrowing tale into one of beauty and redemption. Garlick remarks, “I simply love this play. It adds a thick veneer over the entire Oedipus cycle, making it a story that is simply beautiful and deserves to be studied alongside Job” (00:00).

2. Personal Reflections and Contextual Readiness

Garlick shares a personal anecdote about the birth of his fifth child, intertwining his own anxieties with the themes of the play. He reflects on his struggle with control and anticipation of suffering, drawing parallels to Oedipus's journey. “I realized that I am not as prepared to suffer as I thought” (04:52) sets the stage for a heartfelt exploration of the play’s themes.

Guest Eli Stone echoes these sentiments, discussing his experiences with launching a classical education program and his own challenges with change and uncertainty. Stone connects his reliance on the Lord’s Prayer to the theme of providence in "Oedipus at Colonus," stating, “Fate is not precocious or entirely devoid of a purpose” (06:46).

3. Character Analysis and Symbolism

Oedipus: The Divine Judge

The conversation shifts to analyzing Oedipus’s transformation into a quasi-divine figure who embodies both suffering and prophecy. Stone remarks, “Oedipus becomes the blind prophet, holding court and pronouncing judgment” (27:10), highlighting his role as a moral and spiritual beacon.

Creon: The Sophistic Antagonist

Creon is portrayed as a sophist and antagonist who manipulates Greek ideals for political gain. Garlick critiques Creon’s rhetoric and his attempt to subvert divine laws for the common good, noting, “Creon is trying to turn guest friendship on its head” (16:51).

Theseus: The Noble Savior

Theseus emerges as a deific hero who intervenes to restore order. Both hosts admire Theseus’s consistent portrayal as a character who "just does the right thing," likening him to a "deus ex machina" (15:49). His role is critical in balancing Creon’s manipulations and upholding the sanctity of divine order.

Polynices: The Tragic Villain

Polynices is discussed as a complex character who embodies both suffering and flawed virtue. Garlick admits to finding Polynices “somewhat whiny” and questions his courage versus cowardice, suggesting, “He might as well go march on Thebes” (60:31).

4. Themes of Fate, Providence, and Redemptive Suffering

A central theme explored is the interplay between fate and divine providence. Stone asserts that Sophocles presents fate as inherently purposeful and redemptive, “Good, bad things happen to good people. Nevertheless, fate... brings things about in such a way that all at the end, you can look back and say, all was ordered” (09:22).

Garlick adds that Oedipus’s acceptance of his fate and his proactive role in fulfilling prophecies showcase the Greek understanding of suffering as transformative and purposeful. “Oedipus’s death is going to be a blessing” (13:11) emphasizes this redemptive aspect.

5. The Political and Historical Allegories

The hosts delve into the historical context of Athens post-Peloponnesian War, interpreting characters as allegories for political entities. They suggest Theseus represents Athenian nobility and Creon symbolizes Spartan tyranny, while Oedipus embodies the suffering Athenian populace grappling with loss and identity.

Garlick poses, “What does Oedipus represent? He represents the people of Athens that suffered all of those things” (37:51), prompting a rich discussion on how Sophocles mirrors contemporary societal struggles through his characters.

6. Literary Devices: Blindness and Insight

The motif of physical blindness juxtaposed with spiritual insight is another focal point. Stone connects Oedipus’s blindness to his enhanced spiritual perception, “Those who see physically with their eyes don't necessarily have this deeper insight” (27:10). This metaphor extends to themes of knowledge, prophecy, and moral judgment.

7. The Role of the Chorus and Death

The Chorus in "Oedipus at Colonus" offers reflections that foreshadow impending battles and explore the nature of death. Garlick interprets the Chorus’s praise of death as both a lament and a philosophical acceptance of fate, asking, “What is the role of death for Sophocles in this chorus?” (85:49).

Stone responds by linking the Chorus’s reflections to broader philosophical ideas about suffering and providence, noting, “There's something deeply consoling about that” (09:22).

8. The Beatific Vision and Oedipus's Transformation

In the play’s culmination, Oedipus experiences a transformative moment akin to the beatific vision found in Christian theology. Garlick describes his imagery of a thunderstorm in Oklahoma as parallel to Oedipus’s divine enlightenment, “this is exactly what I have in my head” (83:11).

Stone draws parallels to later philosophical and theological concepts, suggesting that Oedipus’s final revelation represents a glimpse into a divine order, “This is like a theosis” (89:31).

9. The Binding Power of Love

The discussion concludes with an exploration of love as a binding force within the play. Both hosts emphasize Antigone’s role as a mediator, embodying love's power to unify despite tragedy. They connect this to broader Greek philosophical thought, where love (Eros) serves as a fundamental binding agent in the cosmos.

Garlick highlights Antigone’s desire to emulate her father’s divine adherence, “She plays a mediator. She plays one who tries to bind things together” (47:44). Stone extends this to Aristotle’s and Hesiod’s interpretations of Eros as a cosmic force, underscoring its essential role in maintaining order and unity.

10. Conclusion and Future Directions

As the episode wraps up, Garlick and Stone reflect on the enduring relevance of "Oedipus at Colonus" and its profound lessons on fate, suffering, and divine providence. Garlick teases the next episode, which will pivot to Euripides' "Bacchae," promising to explore its unique themes and questions.

Garlick closes with a poignant remark, “This is a moment of joy for him as he approaches his death because he can see the purpose of his life” (89:31), encapsulating the episode’s exploration of Oedipus’s journey from suffering to redemptive fulfillment.

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Notable Quotes:

• Deacon Harrison Garlick (00:00): “I simply love this play. It adds a thick veneer over the entire Oedipus cycle, making it a story that is simply beautiful and deserves to be studied alongside Job.”

• Eli Stone (06:46): “Fate is not precocious or entirely devoid of a purpose.”

• Deacon Harrison Garlick (13:11): “Oedipus’s death is going to be a blessing.”

• Eli Stone (09:22): “There's something deeply consoling about that.”

• Eli Stone (27:10): “Those who see physically with their eyes don't necessarily have this deeper insight.”

• Deacon Harrison Garlick (37:51): “What does Oedipus represent? He represents the people of Athens that suffered all of those things.”

• Deacon Harrison Garlick (47:44): “She plays a mediator. She plays one who tries to bind things together.”

• Eli Stone (89:31): “This is like a theosis.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast masterfully intertwines personal reflections, historical allegories, and deep literary analysis to illuminate the enduring power of Sophocles' "Oedipus at Colonus." Through the insightful dialogue between Garlick and Stone, listeners gain a richer understanding of the play's exploration of fate, suffering, and the transformative power of divine providence. The discussion not only deciphers complex themes but also connects ancient wisdom to contemporary existential questions, offering a profound reflection on the human condition.

Listeners eager to continue their journey through the Great Books will find the upcoming exploration of Euripides' "Bacchae" equally compelling, promising to uncover new layers of philosophical and literary significance.

Transcript

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Today on Ascend the Great Books podcast, we are discussing the second and final part of Oedipus at Colonus, wherein Sophocles brings the horrific tale of Oedipus to a beautiful and redemptive end. We'll discuss the dramatic zenith of Oedipus's life, the theme of redemptive suffering, the binding power of love in all the various ways this play comments on the prior plays and all the relationships therein in Antigone and Oedipus the King. As an aside, I simply love this play. I love it because of how it ends. It adds a thick veneer over the entire Oedipus cycle, a veneer that somehow makes this gruesome tale of Oedipus one that's simply beautiful and one that it really deserves to be studied alongside Job. In many ways, my intuition is that Sophocles hit his stride, and what we find in this play is what the character of Antigone was supposed to be, or maybe what she could have been. A true dark sign from the gods that even gave hope. So with all of that in mind, join us today for a fantastic conversation on the second and final part of Oedipus at Colonus. Welcome to Ascend the Great Books Podcast. My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I'm a husband father, and I serve as the Chancellor and General Counsel Council for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa in Eastern Oklahoma. It is a beautiful evening here in rural Oklahoma. You can check us out at Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and Patreon. We greatly appreciate your support. You can [e-mail] where we have various guides and articles and videos to help you through the Great Books to guide you on your path. Also today we are discussing the second part of Oedipus at Colonis. This is the second play chronologically, but the third play that Sophocles wrote. So we are ending the Oedipus narrative with this episode. Today we have the return of a guest of the podcast. We have Mr. Eli Stone, who used to work at the Chancery with me. He's a member of our Sunday Great Books and discerned with the Western Dominicans for a bit. He's helped us navigate not only Oedipus Rex in the first part of Oedipus at Colonus, but also the Odyssey, and he is entering the world of classical education. Eli, how are you doing?

[Eli Stone]

I'm doing very good, Deacon. Always a joy to be here.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, it's really wonderful to have you back. How's your week going?

[Eli Stone]

It's going pretty well. We're about to launch sort of a camp for high school students. I work at the University of Tulsa Honors College. So they're getting an introduction to the great books, getting to see campus as they're evaluating their college decisions, trying to discern where you hope the goal is to give them an introduction to those classic texts and maybe steer some of them away from the vocational training or the. I just want to go and be an engineer, really give them an opportunity to explore some of these. Some of these great texts that we're reading in this podcast. And right now, like, at a Pacific Lonus, we're not reading this one. This one's a little. Little heavy for the high schoolers. We are reading Antigone. We are reading Antigone. That camp. So that will be. That will be good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah. How was your week going?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

My week is going great. So as far as the garlic household goes, we added a member this week, so I had my fifth child. Mom and baby are doing well, thanks be to God. So we have. Yeah, there's another little garlic running around.

[Eli Stone]

That's excellent. And this makes five, right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Five.

[Eli Stone]

Five, yeah.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

We've got four boys and one older girl. Exactly. Yeah. Everyone has a job. The oldest are assigned different coops. So one's in charge of the duck coop, one's in charge of the chicken coop, and they have their little chores in the morning of gathering eggs. And it's very bucolic and. But it's just normal life for them. But I was thinking about. I mean, there's actually. I was thinking about a lot of things this week. Just, you know, as you have a new child, there's just a lot of things that make you stop and contemplate life and what's actually important. But I was reading. I was reading Oedipus at Colonis in the Hospital, Right. Is the book that I brought with me. And I realized that I am not as prepared to suffer as I thought. Right. Because I'm in this environment, and I. For those who only know me through the podcast, you know, my day job, I'm an attorney, and so I do all the legal Chinese protection insurance and HR for the Diocese of Tulsa. And so I am not terribly accustomed to situations that I am not in control. Right. Because most of my job is.

[Eli Stone]

My whole job is to be in control.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right. My whole job is to get control of the situation and untie the knot, and then hopefully Holy Mother Church can continue on on things that are important. And so I've, I've always been very unsettled at childbirth. Like, obviously I'm not even doing anything. Like, it's not, it's not even like my, you know, I'm not even the one that actually has to do the work, but I'm just not in control. Right. And there's, and there's a million. I mean, the negative side is there's a million things that can go wrong. A million. But there's also a million little graces that come. And I, that's what I was trying to explain to the kids that we, you know, as we brought the baby home and like, obviously now we have family prayer each night and we've been incorporating our gratitude. I don't explain to them like, you know, the existential crisis that I think I have, but just that we have like a thousand things to be thankful for. Like there are just a thousand things that can go wrong. And I realize, like, that's probably not the best way to look at it, but it's the way my mind, like it's risk management. Right? My mind is just sitting there going through all the things that can go wrong. And each little step we go through, I feel almost guilty because it's like, thank you God for the grace that oh, she's doing okay, or the birth went quickly or, okay, the baby seems to come out fine and the baby seems to be fine on this step, but Now I've got 40 more steps ahead and we've got 24 hour tests and we've got hearing tests. And so it's like, I just find myself like constantly being thankful that we've passed one hurdle and then thinking like, well, there's about 500 in front of us. And I just, I have a lot of recourse to the Jesus prayer actually when we're going through that and that it's the mercy aspect of that that I find very intriguing that I have recourse to is just simply asking God for mercy and also asking just for his forgiveness, I think. Right. Offering, I guess. What is anxiety back to him on a situation that I'm not in control of.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, no, I think that's, it's certainly, it's difficult. It's much more difficult than I think we realize because it's very easy for those anxieties to kind of creep into our everyday and we kind of function with them and we don't realize just how anxious we are until our sense of security is challenged or shaken up in some way, be it the birth of a new Child, be it the loss of a job. Right. Something like that. I've actually been going through some similar things on kind of my own end, right. In sort of my discernment process and starting this new classical education program. A lot of changes kind of on. On my horizons, so to speak, and. And just not a, you know, one step may be clear, the next one doesn't seem to make much sense, or I'm left in the dark for, you know, whatever interim period that is. And I've kind of been leaning into. Into the Lord's Prayer a little bit specifically, right. This idea, give us this day our daily bread. And as I pray that I think back to the manna in the desert, right? You're given the bread for today. If you hold on to yesterday's bread, it goes spoiled, it goes bad. And if you try to collect too much, right. You're trying to hoard so much that you'll have some for tomorrow, it doesn't work. It also spoils the next day. So you really just rely and trust that providence orders things well and is not going to leave you, like, wanting. And I think that's obviously very relevant to what we're discussing here. I think we. We mentioned it briefly last time. I really do believe that if. If we want to say that fate is a huge theme of Oedipus Rex, the last play that we read, the second one in this Oedipus cycle, I think this understanding of Providence begins to emerge in a nascent form like redemptive suffering, that. That fate is not precocious or entirely devoid of a purpose or an end to which it's striving. And as much as our personal sufferings might not make sense in light of the moment in which we're suffering or the context immediately surrounding it, good, bad things happen to good people. Nevertheless, fate, providence, the gods bring things about in such a way that all at the end. At the end, you can look back and say, all was ordered. Well, that's very.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I agree.

[Eli Stone]

I think that's very comforting.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I agree. Yeah. It's just in my. I have a lack of habit here. I'm not an anxious person, right. Actually, I would be terrible at my job if I was an anxious person. But this gets me, right, Seeing the love of my life being in this vulnerable state, not really being able to do anything. The husband's, like, sitting there and being encouraging and holding the hand. But it's not like my skill set doesn't bring anything to the table, right. That's what I find. So Humiliating about the situation. There's nothing that, like, I really bring to help. And if, like, there was an emergency, I clearly am not the right person to be helping. And so I don't. It's like, here is the love of my life, here's a child coming in, which somehow is like the way we all got here. But it's still completely wrapped in wonder and mystery and is very surreal that this, like, she's like, holding this human that two minutes ago was inside her. Like, I just somehow. Something so normative, but also just so packed with the surreal, right? It's. It's very. Sublime is the word I'm looking for. It's very sublime. And so, yeah, I mean, recourse to Jesus prayer, but in this, like, tethering it to the text, I find myself on one hand being like, oh, this is so beautiful. How Sophocles, particularly in a pre Christian context, is able to have this, like, quasi redemptive suffering, but also like coupling the blessing with the curse and that Oedipus realizes that he becomes a blessing to others. And like, isn't this beautiful at the same time being like, oh, God, but please don't pick me for that path, right?

[Eli Stone]

Like, yeah, please make me a blessing to others, but not like this, this, right? Like, Lord, give me the resurrection but not the cross, right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It's like, Lord, I. I find this path of suffering very beautiful in a speculative way, but. But please pick someone else, right? And because so you just find yourself, like, you. You think, you know, you think you've had such a maturation of spirit and that your spiritual life has grown in interior life. And then you find yourself in a vulnerable state and realizing. And that's really ultimately why I just cried for mercy. And like you said, ultimately, you. You have to have that faith in Providence, right? You just have to have that the Lord will work all things out for the good. And we just have to decide, like, how we're going to approach it. Like, there's a lot that we don't decide. And obviously in this pagan context with Oedipus, this is a huge concept. This is a huge thread throughout this play that we see really in the third one. I think it's pushed the most. I am innocent. I am not culpable here. That really does pave the way, I think, for Oedipus, for his curse to become a blessing, right, that he isn't culpable for what's happened, but he himself, though, has to in a certain way. I mean, I don't want to be anachronistic here, but in a certain way, he also has to trust in the providence, the divine providence, that they are going to do what they said they're going to do. And I think that's why, to reiterate my point from last time, I fell in love with this play. I fell in love with this play. When Oedipus sees the thunderhead rolling in and he sees the lightning, like his ecstatic joy that death comes and the divine is keeping its promise. I found. Beautiful and incredibly rich.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, no, it's. It's tremendous. We'll get there. It's a very. It's a very powerful scene. Especially like. Yeah, like. Like you said after. After everything, Right. Like, you. You might be able to take a pessimistic, you know, read and say that Oedipus is just wishing for death because he's, like, ready for his life to be over. But I think. I think that's a too shallow read of it. Like, this isn't just a release from the suffering. Like, of course there's that element of it, but in a real way, Oedipus has suffered. And again. Right. Like a little bit anachronistic.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right.

[Eli Stone]

But he has suffered the sins of others. Right. Like the sins of his father and his. Like. And of. And of his mother. Right. Like. Like he has suffered tremendously as a consequence of the sins of others. And. And so his death is going to be a blessing. Like, there it is. Because he has suffered unjustly. That he's not. He's not making remission for his own sins. But it's precisely the. The fact that his suffering is unjustified that enables it to be transformed into something that can be. Be of greater benefit to others after him.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I agree.

[Eli Stone]

And there's. There's so many. So many layers to that. There's so much. So much, I think, richness to that. So I'm excited to dig into the text with you this evening.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah. So we're doing part two, which is an artificial parting that we created, but it seemed to work pretty well. So we are jumping into the text. I'm looking at the Fagles edition for those following along. And so we are just after line 1000, so right here in the halfway point. And so Theseus comes back into the plague. Remember Theseus? He is this mythical king of Athens. This is like if King David walked into Jerusalem or King Arthur and to Camelot and Theseus, then the. Just for the context to kind of refresh our memories. So Creon. Right. Has come. And Creon knows to a certain degree he can't strike out at Oedipus directly, but he wants Oedipus to come back. Because now everyone has kind of realized through oracles, etcetera, that where Oedipus dies is really going to be a dispositive factor in a great battle. And so if Thebes wants to control where he dies, they want to take him back into the city to a certain degree, but still kind of hold him out at arm's length, right? They're not gonna give him, like, a proper burial, these types of things, but they want to control him, really, for the political good. So here we see Creon once again, I think, with a political lens on looking at the common good of the polis as really the. The highest good and being somewhat blind to divine as we saw him in Antigone. And so Creon then, and probably some of his worst, I think, in this play is then going to strike out against Antigone and Ismene to try and leverage them for Oedipus to come back to Thebes. And of course, Oedipus and the chorus, to a certain degree, have cried out for Theseus, and Theseus comes barging in. I just love Theseus in this play because, like, every time he shows up, he just does the right thing, which is so weird for Greek tragedy. Like, that's not supposed to happen. And he just, like, sets things right.

[Eli Stone]

He's like the opposite of a tragic hero. He's just a hero. Like, just straight up, almost a deus ex machina, right? Like, he's just there to save the day.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It is. Yeah. It is like the God of the machine, right? Where they just kind of lower the God and the God fixes things and everything's fine now. He does actually play that role. So one of the questions I had there of this whole section when Theseus comes in is what do you make of the fact that Theseus leaves the altars? He leaves. He interrupts the sacrifice to come back to Oedipus. So he says this at 10:10, right? What's all this? That could alarm me. X, Y and Z. Interrupting me, interrupting me at the altar, my sacrifice. And then it cascades. Because then once he finds out what's happened at, like, 10:24 or so, he says, force our people to break off the rights. Make a dash for it, all of them, right? To go save the girls. They're going to go save the girls. But what did you make of the fact that he's Interrupting the rights to the divine to keep this promise to Oedipus.

[Eli Stone]

This is an excellent question, and I really do think it merits some consideration. I think there's a couple of tacks that one can take, right? Like, I think the narrative construes it in such a way. Obviously Theseus isn't the sort of character that we're supposed to look at, like sideways and be like, should you have done that? It's pretty clear from the narrative that what he does is noble. So then the question is, well, why? Why is it? I mean, it's funny because you just pointed out that, that in a certain sense it seems like Creon and Theseus are doing the same thing. Creon is going to take Oedipus's body and not give it the proper burial rights. He's going to do an injustice to the laws of the gods, right? Like he's going to disregard those. Like we saw in Antigone, he's wanting to do this with Oedipus body. And this is sort of a callback to what happened in the, in the context of Antigone with Polynices, Oedipus son. So we could say that maybe Theseus is doing something similar here. He's leaving the sacrifice to go and take care of a political matter, a promise that he made to the regent of another country. And I think if you were to make a superficial comparison, it sound like that's, that's a really interesting, I think, parallel. But why is it noble when Theseus does it? And why is it not when Creon is, is sort of sub subverting these political or subverting the divine goods for the political good. And I think the answer that comes to my mind is something analogous to what, what Christ tells us, right? Like, do not come to the altar, leave your sacrifice at the altar, if you have a quarrel with your brother, right? Like, go and resolve that. I think it's something analogous in the sense that Athens prides itself on its care for law and its hospitality to strangers. And in this, in this context, Oedipus has come as a vagabond, as a stranger seeking hospitality from Athens. And not only has Theseus given him hospitality, he's also extended citizenship. So now Oedipus is actually an Athenian citizen. And so my, my first pass on this is that you have to have a natural foundation of order and law in order to pass on to supernatural goods. And so maybe where Sophocles is going with this is that the fundamentals of justice are required before one can rightly offer sacrifice, that Theseus cannot allow an injustice to happen in his kingdom and still offer sacrifice. Right. Like there is. There is something disordered about that. And so Theseus has to leave his altar, leave his sacrifice on the altar, and go correct the injustice that's being done against one of his citizens before he can go back and rightly make sacrifice. That's sort of my first pass on this. And I'm curious if you have a different take or what you might have been thinking as you were reading through this passage.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I mean, it was something. No, I like what you said. It was something that stood out to me simply because at first it stands to be a negative. Right? Oh, I've interrupted the justice due to the gods for some lower matter. But then I agree with your presupposition that Theseus is such a mythical, noble character that I think it's an argument of ethos that, like. Well, you can't read this as a negative. It has to be a just act. So I like your read of it, of him going and solving something. I mean, also, there's an oath that's been given. Oedipus tends to also be this thing that is brimming with the divine. Right. He is, he's been. I mean, he really is a sign, right? He is a sign of the divine. And so in certain ways, he's leaving to go take care of the gods or something that he's already promised, right? That. That's more. That's more pressing, right? This. He has to go take care of this. So I just. It was just interesting to me because I think that in any other context, if someone did this, it would be seen as like, I'd flag it as some type of injustice. Like, no, you. You can't break off the rights.

[Eli Stone]

You can't do this, give up the sacrifice before you go into battle. Right? Like that kind of thing.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But again, we see, I think, I mean, not the belabor it, like too much, but I. I think this is something that stood out. But I like the presupposition that Theseus is a noble mythical character. And he doesn't. He's never punished for this. Actually, he seems to receive the blessing of the gods from this, from his treatment of Oedipus, which I think only lends itself to understanding how deep a sign Oedipus has become of the divine itself.

[Eli Stone]

I think that's very true. I think that's good. And maybe this is again, right, like talking about order. Again, we haven't seen Guest Hospitality in the Oedipus plays up until this last one. And the priority, because again, sojourners and wanderers and travelers are the special patronage of Zeus. Those seeking refuge, they like this, this zinnia, this guest friendship, guest hospitality relationship is something that is governed and judged directly by Zeus. And so you could maybe even make the argument that obviously he says he's making sacrifice to the sea God, presumably that's, you know, you've got Poseidon, right? And so, yeah, in the ordering of the gods, right, you have to take care of the one that you've promised hospitality to because that's Zeus versus, you know, the patronage of, of Poseidon. But I think more fundamentally, right, like, if an injustice is being done, you have to have a rightly ordered society before that society can offer right worship to the divine. Above.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I like both of those reads.

[Eli Stone]

We see that in like, even in scripture, right? Like you have Hosea, I think it is, or Amos. You've sold that you sold the needy for silver and those who are hungry for a pair of sandals. Like, I don't want your sacrifices of bulls and goats. I want justice to be done in your land.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

You see that with David too? No, I like both those reads. I also like what you said about that the zinnia, the guest friendship being the patronage of Zeus. So is he leaving a lesser divinity to handle the matter of a greater one? I like that a lot. The other thing I like too about the section is watching Theseus and Creon interact, because you probably can't have two more disparate characters than Oedipus is like, you know, hurling in his commentary as it's happening. But just as like a segue for a guest friendship, look how Creon, like, tries to turn this on its head. I found this really fascinating in 1075. And I knew they'd never harbor a father killer. Worse, a creature so corrupt exposed as the mate, the unholy husband of his own mother. So, like, he's praising Athens, but he's like, why? Why would you take in this person, right? Why? And so he's trying to turn this guest friendship on its head. But two, he continues, far better judgment. I knew as well as you resides on the mount of Aries and in the great court that regulates your land. Surely you would never suffer a fugitive. So a few things about this, like, it's really amazing me how downstream this play is of the Eumenides, because remember, this is part of the Eumenides as really Athena, I mean, the mount of Aries had Already had a mythology to it, if I remember. Ares was tried there. That's why it's originally called that, if I remember correctly. And then there had been some battle there before. And then that's where Athena turns and holds the court at the end of the Eumenides on Orestes. And that's where the Eumenides are then transformed into the kindly ones. And so it's fascinating to me how much that play informs this one. But Creon is such a sophist. That's what this whole passage. I mean, he's taking. He's just taking, like, these core Greek ideas, like guest friendship and this kind of somewhat nascent procedural justice that they have. And he's turning them on. On their head. He's also, like, somewhat lying because Oedipus is not a fugitive. Like, that was a huge turn of phrase, right? They exiled Oedipus and now they want him back. And so they were referring to the guy they exiled as a fugitive. I found. I mean, it's Creon again. I know. I've already said it. I think Creon's at his worst in this play.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah. And I mean, this. This whole section, right? When you have Theseus, really, it's. It's interesting because you see, you know, just before this, you have this back and forth of Creon, the chorus and Oedipus. So it's very dynamic, very fast. But here there's actually a match. Like, there's a maturation and a certain depth to the ideas that are being discussed. And so I think the fact that these, you know, Theseus is like, accusations against Creon. Right? Like, you violated the laws of the state. Like, I can't. I can't allow you to do this. Right. And then Creon comes back and is like, oh, well, I know the laws of Athens are so noble and so great. Like, I can't imagine why you would have this guy, like, among you. Like, yeah, this is just a real rhetorical kind of back and forth. And we should. We should look back to the Eumenides, like you said, that Aeschylus wrote. And we kind of see the same sort of dialogue happening between Apollo and Athena and everyone involved, like, as far in the. In the Furies, in arguing over the case of Orestes. And so really, I think what we start to see here, remember, where are they situated? They're in the grove of the Furies and the Eumenides. Right. And Oedipus is seated and. And this is. This is a theme. I. Kind of a vision Or. Or sort of a mental picture, because what we see, what we start to see happen is Oedipus weighs in and is able to discern the hearts of those around him with such an incredible clarity.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And.

[Eli Stone]

And again, that goes back to this theme of blindness, physical blindness translating into some sort of spiritual insight and vice versa, right? Those who see physically with their eyes don't necessarily have this deeper insight. They're too. Their. Their vision is too polluted by the things of the world to really see deeper and beyond, right, into the divine. But we begin to see Oedipus read the hearts of those around him and pronounce judgment and curses upon them. And so this. And again, right, like, this is a. This is a very interesting. This is a very, very interesting thing because what we saw last play is Oedipus the rash judge. And here we see Oedipus, this quasi divine figure. This again, right, not to be. Not to be impious, but this quasi christological figure seated in judgment just prior, like, to his death, like, weighing the hearts of those around him and speaking blessing or curses upon those around him. And this is sort of like. This goes back to this idea of, like the swan song, right? Or this, that. That. We see it in the Iliad. We see it in the Odyssey, like shortly before someone's death, right? They can pronounce a curse or they'll pronounce some sort of prophecy, and it comes true, right? They have some sort of something about death, like. Like makes the veil between heaven and earth thin enough for mortal man to see beyond and say, this is what I see just before I die. And then when they die, it turns out they have some sort of premonition or vision of what's to come as a consequence of their death. Oedipus has this to an incredible degree. And we saw it before, right? Oedipus curses. Oedipus curses Creon with may your years be as long and as hard as mine. And it's just this incredible curse that Oedipus lays on Creon's shoulders, which, as we know, all comes true. We already know it because we've seen in Antigone, which is the third one chronologically, we saw exactly what happened with Creon after his interaction with Oedipus here. But he doesn't take the cue, right, like, and. And doesn't accept the correction.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

So do you think. So I guess what we would take there is that Oedipus is also a good judge of his own heart. So because this is. This is Really, I mean, there's a long section here from like 1095 to basically 10 or 1160. And the main thesis I took from this is that he's basically explaining why he's not culpable, right? Why he is not there. So he talks about, you know, I have suffered at all and all against my will. Write down like 11, 11 10. How with any justice could you blame me? I wasn't born yet, right? So this is one of the things he points out is like the curses against my father that these things were going to happen, happened before I was even born. So how could I bring them on my own head? I mean, it's very explicit. 11:16. How could you condemn that involuntary act with any sense of justice? And this too, as you said, it's really important to remember where we are. The sacred grove of the Furies of the Eumenides. Because you remember in Orestes, right? The Oresteia. The Furies don't care. They really don't care what the circumstances were. They don't care about your evidence, they don't care about procedures. They don't care about these things like, hey, did you do this act? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, then you get haunted and have a suffer and then get be tortured and Tartarus for the rest of your existence, right? Oedipus has murdered his father. I told you, like when in part one, when he like stumbled into the grove of the Furies, I was like, oh no, this is going to be terrible. But the problem is that they're not really the Furies anymore. They're the Eumenides. And under the patronage of Athens and really Athena, they take in this procedural justice now, takes in circumstances. So it's interesting that he, in a lot of ways here he's holding court, right? That's what he's doing. Like, we've got Theseus, we've got Creon. He's sitting here as judge, even on himself to a certain degree. But really the Furies, I think, are kind of haunting the entire situation. And it's probably notable that his appeal, which is about that these were involuntary, like I'm not culpable, actually ends with a explicit appeal to the amenities down at like 11:55. So now I cry to those great goddesses. I beg them, I stormed them with my prayers. Come to the rescue. Fight for me, my champions. This is a complete transformation. This is one, one of the things I really love about reading the replays and you start seeing how these texts intertwine. If you will, because the idea of the Eumenides as being someone's advocate, like in a good way, is not what we saw in the Oresteia, but here they've been transformed. And as we mentioned last time, which is, I think bears repeating. Not only does Oedipus taking on the Tiresias mantle, right, he's becoming, he's the blind prophet, he's holding court, he's being able to give the prophecies, right, he's, he's a mouthpiece of the gods. But also his journey now is an analog to the Eumenides themselves. So they also came to Athens. They also were transformed. They also in certain ways were curses. These very unpleasant female deities that then are transformed into the kindly ones, which in no way shape or form do you think of them as the kindly ones when you read the libation bearers. So there's another parallel here with him becoming something similar to what happened with the Eumenides.

[Eli Stone]

I think. Yeah, that's. I really like what you say there. I think the other thing that I'd like to add just about this section is we can't read these whole speeches, but they're just incredible. They're just incredible rhetorical exercises. Like they, they just are very impressive speeches, like all around, right? Like Creon's a snake, but he's a very crafty and cunning snake. Like he's a very well spoken one. And so really I found these just very pleasurable to read. And just watch this back and forth. So I think you can certainly like, like understanding all this depth and understanding like all of this context and this deeper sophisticated sort of interweaving of the Furies and going calling back to the Oresteia. You know, Sophocles writing after Aeschylus, right? Like he's, he's inherited this sort of tradition that he's kind of working within. It is still just a phenomenal play. Like it is just a phenomenally written set of dialogue as they go back and forth and, and these speeches are just so incredible. I just found myself enjoying reading them. And so I think obviously the higher doesn't negate the lower, right? Like we can talk about these wonderful ideas, but it's just a great play. It's just great reading.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

It is. There's a lot of good back and forth and there's parts there that are actually so clever that I just laugh like they're somewhat comical about. Oedipus has a few lines when he talks to Creon that I actually think are very, very funny. Actually the the next part is the chorus. This is 1195 or so. My main takeaway from this chorus was that this was basically foreshadowing of the battle to come. And so they're looking ahead of Oedipus will die and his body will mark the spot and then there's going to be this big battle between Athens and Thebes, if I understand correctly. It also then showed me that the entire dialogue between Theseus and Creon is a microcosm of that antagonistic relationship. Right. You're seeing, I think this played out on a small scale that then Oedipus will die and then there will actually be this full scale battle between these two city states. And so we're kind of seeing, you know, the chorus to jump ahead gives a little bit of foreshadowing on this victory.

[Eli Stone]

Yes, I agree. I think it is. It's a. For, it's funny. It's a foreshadowing that goes back to a battle that we already know what happened in. Right. Because again, this all happens. We know what happens because we've read Antigone already. The other thing that's interesting to consider is something we discussed last time, which is the political context of Athens at the time. Right. Like they had just come out of this sort of civil civil war with Sparta, I guess. Civil war. They were rival states, but within the Greek speaking world, it was something of a civil war. Like these two major superpowers, Sparta and Athens, where it went at it, Athens loses and then Sparta sets up this, this sort of puppet, puppet, puppet government that then turns into the reign of the 30 tyrants. And then they come out of that and now they've just recently re established them as a democracy. Sophocles, as I understand, like, correct me on the timeline here, but he's like not even alive when the play is first presented, but it's first presented right after they've sort of reclaimed their independence. And so who do the different characters represent here? Obviously, I think Theseus represents like the nobility of what Athens is supposed to be like or what Athens prides or prided itself on being in. Creon represents Sparta and sort of the crippling, like power of 30 tyrants. What does Oedipus represent here? I think Oedipus represents the people of Athens that suffered all of those things. And so what you have is you have Theseus, this sort of idealistic like vision for what Athens is supposed to be. Right. You mentioned, like this is like George Washington. Right? Like this sort of character that embodies what it means to be an American in so many ways. And like, what. What every American. Sort of what America was supposed to be from the very beginning. Right. Like he's sort of this noble character. And then maybe Creon represent. Well, let's not get into politics, but who. Who would Creon be? Maybe you can debate about that in the comments section, but. But so Creon kind of represents the antithesis of that or. Or kind of the corrupted version of what Athens was, this rival power, Sparta. What does Oedipus represents? He represents the people of Athens that are sitting in the crowd listening to this play, who have just come through this brutal war, and now they are left wondering, what can I do, having borne all of these sufferings that I couldn't control. Right. Each individual sitting in that. In that auditorium amphitheater is not responsible for the war. And they have suffered everything as a consequence of the reign of the tyrants and everything. And they individually, are they culpable of it?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No.

[Eli Stone]

But what do they have to give? Nothing of themselves. They have to choose to make their lives a blessing for those to come after them. And there's something, I think, very powerful. When we understand the context of the play, then as we in understand and like, as we try to piece together, like, what's happening narratively, like, it's very moving on the surface level of it, but then what each character represents and how the audience is perceiving and placing this in the context that they're in, I think is especially moving to consider what is Sophocles speaking to in the hearts and minds of those that would be in the audience as this play is being performed.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's interesting. I had not thought of, like, a historical allegory there, or just at least a series of analogies like Creon representing Sparta, Theseus definitely representing, like, this nobility of Athens. I think that's, like, really clear. Did he, like. One question I have was, where were these plays originally shown? Were they shown in Athens or were they shown in Thebes? Or do we.

[Eli Stone]

This is a really. A really good question. This is a historical piece that I don't have access to. I know traditionally you have. These sorts of dramas are shown sort of in this. In the context of the Dionysian mysteries. Right. I'm not sure if this is something that you've discussed on the play on. On the podcast before, maybe with the Orestaya, but traditionally they're. They're in the context of the annual festival of Dionysius. And three different. Three different plays are shown kind of like one on each night. And that's usually. Sometimes there's a light hearted play afterwards kind of that's tacked on to the end. Sometimes it's called a Seder play. But because these are written in such a way, they're so spread out across Sophocles life that they wouldn't have initially been shown in that context. Later they would be after his death. They're shown in that kind of united, unified context. And Sophocles wins so many accolades. Like decades after his death, right. Like he's still beating out all of the new playwrights and everything. He's. He's kind of universally regarded as this master of Greek tragedy. So. But off the top of my head, I wouldn't know the history as far as when these would have been shown.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The. The Internet has told me that it actually did premiere in Athens.

[Eli Stone]

Okay. And that would make sense. And again, right. Like if he's speaking to an Athenian audience, right. Like all of these themes about like unjustified suffering, like a tyrant, like. And you know, it's interesting, right? Maybe, maybe Sophocles is, is asking the question, like maybe, maybe we were a little tyrannical. Like, maybe this, like we did deserve this in a way. Like we kind of brought ourselves to the point where we let ourselves. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's, it's a very interesting thing to start to question and ask, is this a. Is this an allegory of history? And if so, what is Sophocles trying to say?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, all three of them premiered in Athens. That's good to know. Yeah. Because we're just talking about. Because it is. They're so loaded. If you just sit here and talk about the psychological effect of what the Athenian people have gone through this time. So. No, I appreciate that. I just wanted to double check that because as we're kind of talking about what it would mean to an Athenian, I want to make sure that that's the context that they're actually shown in. And yeah, I appreciate your recap of the Dionysian mysteries, because we have talked about that before. But it's a good, it's a good refresher because I think we always have to remember that these plays weren't just shown for entertainment. Right. They really were a religious element. And again, for the ancient Greeks, the religious isn't really necessarily separable from the civic. Right. So who, who Athens is as a people, they don't have like the strong nature grace, you know, or separation of church and state. Secular religious concept. And so it's all kind of interwoven. And so I think my point here is that a lot of what we've said is about what does this mean to the Athenian people. In waxing on that it's actually a pretty heavy meaning given their context. And so I think that's justified both in the fact that they're given in Athens and they're given as part of these, you know, festivals that already are already kind of brimming with meaning. And we saw this too with Aeschylus in the Oresteia. I mean, he's, he is. That one's actually a triad, but he's very much communicating to the Athenian people what does it mean to be Athenian and what does it mean for us to be a just people? And you can really take it like that because we just don't. I don't know if we have a form of entertainment like this today. Right?

[Eli Stone]

We really don't. And it's, it's. It's very hard, yeah, to imagine, like, what this would have meant to the Athenians. Right. Like, yeah, I think, I don't think we have anything comparable. Nothing. Nothing at all comparable. Everything is consumptive, right. Like, nothing. Nothing really shakes us and impacts us in such a monumental way as this would have. Like, again, right, these plays, when they're, when they're premiered like over the course of Sophocles whole life, there obviously is an impact, like, to each of them, but they're so impactful that for generations to come they are still performing these. And these are. These plays in particular are still winning out over later generations attempts to tell their own story. It's kind of. I mean, if we were to draw some sort of analogy, it's like you've got your modern. Your modern rendition of maybe something like Shakespeare, and it's just like not going to be what it is, right? Like, or, or I'm trying to think of some other sort of, sort of like very iconic film from like the past century that's like. They've tried to reboot it and it just does not work because everyone likes the original.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The stories that a people always tell themselves as they're forming right, on these kind of key junctures of them as a people group just don't seem to be repeatable because they're so impacted and full of history of how. Because it's both a mirror to who the people are, but they're also pedagogical, right? They're also teaching people what it means to be Part of this people group. That's really hard then later to artificially, like create that. Be like, okay, well, we're also going to tell a great story about us. But like, you're only going to have yourself suffering the loss of the Peloponnesian War once. You're only going to have yourself like, you know, thinking that you had this grand empire and then it gets crushed. You have a democracy that's under a puppet government. And so I think the stories that come out of this time period, I think in certain ways are always irrepeatable. That's true of all historical contexts. But there's reasons that we're still talking about the Peloponnesian War. There's lots of wars and lots of things that we don't talk about. So no, I think this is very good. The kind of pushing forward in the narrative a bit. So Theseus, again, he just does the right thing. So here comes Ismene, here comes Antigone, right? We get a reunification scene, which I think is somewhat touching. And then we get kind of an interesting part that I, I wasn't expecting, which is then we're told like, hey, by the way, there's someone here from Argos, right? Because we get this kind of like, I don't know, I. Maybe it was, as a first time reader, I found it to just be a little bit of a side trail or I just, I didn't see it coming, if that makes sense. And so it's like, do you have a relative in Argos? And all of a sudden Oedipus realizes, like, oh yeah, I know who that is. Like, don't even bother, don't even send them here. I don't want to talk to them. And obviously this ends up being his.

[Eli Stone]

Son Polynices, which is an interesting thing, right? How does Oedipus know, right? Which of course, Ismene has come and told him, like, what's going on with the two brothers? Like, she's already brought this. But there's also an interesting. Maybe this is also an interesting element of Oedipus's foresight or insight, if you will.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And one question I had here too is then, what is the role of Theseus here? So we see that Oedipus is very almost set in his ways. He knows, he knows what he wants to do and what he doesn't want to do. There's no reason for him to talk to his son. And Theseus is the one that is. Actually, I think Theseus has a little, a little bit of rhetoric Here, if I can find it. Yes. Theseus has, like, a little bit of rhetoric here where he asks Oedipus, hey, by the way, give me your advice. I need your advice on something. But really, it's Theseus pitching something to Oedipus that then Theseus is counseling him on. It's actually Oedipus that needs the advice. And Theseus is trying to warm him to at least talking to his son. And Antigone plays the same role. So if you look at around 1345, you know, Father, listen to me, young as I am, to offer you advice, permit the king to satisfy himself, his sense of conscience, and serve the God as he thinks best. And for us and for our sake, yield, let our brother come. So it's interesting that we get these contexts in which Oedipus is very set in his way. And then Theseus, Antigone are playing these kind of counselor roles. Antigone makes more sense to me because I recall in the play, bearing her name that she has that wonderful line where she talks about the fact that she does not separate, that she is love. And love binds, right? That's what she does. She binds. We see this over and over again in this play. Antigone is playing an intercessor.

[Eli Stone]

She.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

She plays a mediator. She plays one who tries to bind things together, right? She is constantly trying to rebuild these sinews, these bonds between the family. And then Theseus, it's interesting, like, what. What would he represent in that, right? He's. He's counseling this sign of the gods, Oedipus, in trying, he doesn't tell him what to do, but he tells him to try and soften him a bit, to at least hear his son. I think it's a really interesting role.

[Eli Stone]

I do think it's an interesting role. I think there's a couple ways of reading this. Why is Oedipus so recalcitrant and hesitant? My intuition is that Oedipus knows exactly what. How this is going to go down. And again, he is the sign of the divine right. He has this Tiresias, this sort of prophetic spirit about him, but also this divine power to pronounce judgment. And I think the way that I read this when I was first reading through is that Oedipus knows exactly what his son is going to get himself into if he allows his son an audience. And for the sake of his son, he is like, don't this. He does not want to supplicate me, because he's not. He's going to get the opposite of what he wants. And so in a weird way, like, I kind of read it as Oedipus trying to be merciful to someone he knows. Like, is not. Is not. Like. It's kind of. It's kind of this weird thing. Like, sometimes there's these stories in the Old Testament of God, like, inviting someone to do something so that they can then merit a worse punishment. And I feel like Oedipus is actually doing the opposite here. It's like, I do not want to have to, like, lay the curse on you that I'm going to have to if you do this. So I saw this as Oedipus's foresight and Oedipus's knowledge, allowing him to kind of peer in and see, like, this isn't going to be good.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And.

[Eli Stone]

But then again, right, like, why does he relent? Why does he, like, allow himself to be swayed by Athens and by Antigone? I think this is an interesting juxtaposition with Creon. Creon is not swayed by Antigone, right? And here Oedipus is also in the same position, right? He should not be swayed by Antigone by, like, the objective metrics of, like, the. The order of the society, right? Like, Antigone is his subject. Like, he is the rightful king. He, she is his daughter. He is her father, right? So there's. He's a man, she's a woman. Like, there's all of these social barriers between Antigone's advice and Oedipus's response. And so Oedipus is well within his rights to just dismiss everything she says, but he doesn't. And so this is a very interesting example of the judge weighing, like, the desires and the sort of earnest pleadings of his subjects and his citizens, right? Like. And Theseus is a little bit of a different case, right? Like, this is a counselor. This is maybe. Maybe we could say Theseus is the voice of the people, like, being brought before the judge. And so maybe the judge is like, this is not in the best interest of everyone here. He even says, right, like, his response to Antigone is, well, I don't know how it. How it reads in the Faglist translation. Maybe you can say it here, but here in Fitzgerald, it's, child, your talk wins you a pleasure. That will be a great pain for me. If you have your heart set on this, so be it. So Oedipus knows, like, this is not going to end well, but for the sake of the polis, that Is like, the people. Right. The demos. Right. Like, if he is seated in judgment. Right. Like, again, what are we. What are we allegorically interpreting this as? Like, is Oedipus seated in judgment here? Everyone's begging him to, like, hear this, hear this case. Hear this plaintiff, hear this. Right. Like, case being made. Hear this supplicant. And end up his nose. Like, I cannot grant what he's seeking. In fact, I'm going to have to lay judgment on him. It's better that I don't have to do this. And yet he has to make a concession because it's what the people want. Because it's like, there's this sort of extenuating circumstance. That's kind of how I read this. That's like, my initial take on sort of this. This context, this situation.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I do like the read that, like, he knows this will end up with him cursing his own son. And so he's like, just don't. Don't bring him before me. Like, just don't do this. I like that. That's a positive read. There's also, though, an element here that he also. I don't know if this is a negative, but it's maybe a lesser noble one. He seems to also think that his son might steal him. But his. That's right.

[Eli Stone]

Yes. That's also true.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right.

[Eli Stone]

Isn't like, I just got threatened by Creon. Like, I don't need this Again, if.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He says this, you're right. He says that to Antigone, but then he couples it with a statement to Theseus, you know, don't let him get me in the fagals. It's like, don't let him get me in his clutches. Then Theseus has to, like, once again say, like, hey, actually, he has a beautiful line. He says, your life is safe so long as the God saves mine. Faggles is. I enjoy Fagl's poetic translations. I think he captures a lot of the beauty. So it is a question I like. I like both of those reads. I'm not really sure to what degree they actually preclude one another. Things can be done for multiple inns. So it does lead us, though, into a chorus, which I found fascinating at, like, 1380 and I. Every time we have a chorus, particularly Sophocles, in Antigone, they were almost painfully obvious what their pedagogical purpose was. I think as he went on, I hesitant to say he matured as an author, but as he kind of developed these ideas, sometimes they're a lot more subtle. This one My note to the side was, is this praising the gift of death? Because, I mean, he has some lines in here, right? Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time, who turns his back on a decent length of life. I'll show you. I'll show the world a man who clings to folly. And later, down at, like, 1390, he says, not to be born is best when all is reckoned in. But once a man has seen the light, the next best thing by far is to go back, back where he came from, quickly as he can. So there's like this. This praise of. I mean, obviously, within the context of this play, it makes sense, but there's this, like, over. Almost overarching or, like, almost overbearing praise of death in the middle of this back and forth between Oedipus and Polynices. And obviously, we know where the Polynices narrative is going to go. Him cursing his own son. He's going to be the one that loses the battle, right? This. This is seven against Thebes, right? This kind of famous, famous battle. And then his body will rot on the battlefield. And then that gives us the kind of chronological setup for Antigone. So we get this little praise of death before we enter into what is a. A pretty depressing back and forth.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, I think it is interesting because who dies young in this situation? It's Polynices. Yet who has the better death? Is it Oedipus or Polynices? And I think maybe this. You mean, this is a very interesting chorus because. Yeah, I mean, on the surface of it, you could say it's just like it's. It's sort of. Maybe even antinatalist. Like, it's not, like, even worth being born. Like, suffering is just so great. Like, all the bad outweighs the good. But it also seems to suggest, right, like, he talks about. I mean, he brought out you. You brought out that line. Like a man who, like, tries to extend his age or like someone who tries to overstay their time. Like they're. They're. They're doing everything they can to get a few more days. And the folly in that is it's kind of like, again, right? Providence orders all things well. Like, maybe, like, if you die today, you will, like, die the most virtuous. You will, like, it's all downhill from there. Like, Providence is ordering things in such a way that you are going to be, like, pruned at, like, the prime of your life. And that. That is the state of virtue that you're going to die in. That's the state of virtue you're going to like be remembered for. Whereas if you had an extra five or 10 years, right. Like you would become embittered in your old age because of like all of the sufferings you've had to endure. Right. Like, and so there's this. I think that this, the subtler meaning is condemning the all too tempting desire to grasp at more years and not appreciate good years. And like you said, there's maybe a fittingness to finding and appreciating the right time to die. Right. Like there's a time and a season, right. For everything. Time to be born, time to die. So yeah, that's. That's kind of my, my read into. Into this a little bit. I think maybe it's a little bit esoteric and, and it, it doesn't. Again, right. Like it's. You kind of have this two. Because you have these two fold sort of views being held. Like on the one hand it's like better. Better to not even be born. But then it's like. But if you have to be born, the best thing is to die as quickly as possible. Like that. I don't know how to redeem that. That just seems pretty. Pretty, pretty existential, pretty, pretty opaque to a reading like that. So I don't know if I entirely like that interpretation of this.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, the. It actually reminds me there's a custom legend, whatever you want to call it, that is in the ancient world that then survives into the medieval age that the way you can tell if a man lived a full life and then dies, like when he is supposed to, is that he would die on his birthday. That's like the. Like. So he has like the complete life, right?

[Eli Stone]

Like, interesting.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

He doesn't live longer than he.

[Eli Stone]

Nothing left. Right. Less than.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think this comes with. There's some Neoplatonic reads on this. I think Plato. Don't quote me on that, but I think Plato dies on his birthday or at least there was a legend that he died on his birthday because actually recently they, they. I know they recovered all these scrolls that talk about Plato's death and things like this, but at least I think there was a medieval piety that he died because some of those Neoplatonic texts are written in celebration of his birthday death. And that's one of the things they talk about is that he lived a full life. And this is like one of the signs, right? You're always reading the signs. So. No, it's the chorus, I think raises A lot of questions. I think it's probably worth contemplating. And something worth thinking about is what is the role of death for Sophocles in this chorus? And how does that inform this idea of Oedipus as a blessing and a curse?

[Eli Stone]

So I want to. I want to get your take. I want to get your take on Polynices introduction.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Because I. Oh, man. I was about to. Actually, I was about to start off with saying, I am not sympathetic to Polynices. I. I just am not. I'm sorry. I mean, I know that he got the short straw. He's born in a cursed family. He's. I. Antigone likes him. I. I don't find him very sympathetic. And the way he starts off, I don't think really does him any favors. Right? So in Fagles, it's translated, oh, what will I do? Cry for my own miseries first my sisters, or the miseries of my old father look before my eyes, I find him here an outcast.

[Eli Stone]

Etc, but remember, Polynices is the one that exiled him, right? Like, he was part and parcel of this whole scheme. The other thing, too is, like, as it goes on, like, he's like, it just. He just seems whiny. Like, you know, just as this goes on, like, he kind of has this weird sophistic bend. Kind of like Creon. Like, oh, should I cry for my own misfortunes or those of my dear old dad, who, again, right. Like, he was totally responsible for exiling in the first place. But then it just. It feels like he just goes on and on, right? Like he's. And again, right. What? He. He, like, he turns away from Oedipus. He's like, oh, you know, I'm like, making this appeal to Oedipus, but really, I'm just gonna talk to my sisters. Like, don't let him be mad at me. Like, you tell him, like, for me to, like, listen to me kind of a thing.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, I didn't. I agree with you. I did not find. We have good examples of good rhetoricians for good and for evil. Creon is a good rhetorician, right? He's a sophist. He's a snake. But, like, his rhetoric is good. He. He throws out good arguments. He makes you think about your position. He can turn it upside down. Haman is another one. His own son was a great rhetorician. When he came in and tried to convince Creon to do the right thing, I thought it's probably one of the best arguments I've actually seen in this entire. Theban play collection. I thought the way he approached it, how he kind of stepped into his father's own mindset and tried to pull him out of it. The. The appeal to faith and reason, which I know is that's a little anachronistic, but basically that, hey, the gods give us reason. And that's pretty good, right? We should use our reason. Etc. I. Polynisis. I. I just feel like he stumbles into this. It's like, brother, you're. You're like searching him out. You've come over from Argos. You were, you know, throwing yourself before the altar, and this is the best you've come up with to try? Yeah, I found him somewhat whiny. He's still somewhat imploded. Because, I mean, let's. So let's kind of parse this out, right? So what does he want? He wants. This is like 1500 or so. Relent, relent. And your crushing rage against me speaking to his father as I march on to discipline my brother, right? So he's the older brother, the younger brother has cast him out of Thebes. But remember, as you mentioned, both brothers stood idly by as Creon cast their father out because at that point they saw their father as a liability. And so this is some of the irony that now he's also been exiled and now he's coming back to the person that he did not intercede for to ask him to intercede for him. And Oedipus is not going to have mercy in this situation, right? Oedipus is going to allow this thing to come full circle in 1505, right? He says, the side you join, they said that side will triumph. So again, we're getting this theme that Oedipus is becoming the king maker, actually, almost literally, right? He is becoming the one that decides the victories. And. And just as a side note, all of Antigone's comments during this whole section, again, she's a binder, right? Love binds. She's trying to harmonize these people. She's trying to bring them together. She's a mediator. It doesn't work, but she tries. Right? Oedipus reaction. Obviously, this does not go well. And this kind of plays into what you said earlier is like, was he trying to avoid this to some degree? So this is like 15, 30 or so in Fagols. You degenerate. You. When you held the throne and scepter your blood brother now holds in Thebes, you drove me into exile, your own father. You stripped me of my city. You put me on my back these rags you weep to see now, only now you've sunk to the same depths of pain as I. So a few things there in this reiteration of the story. He. He makes them sound much more proactive in the exile. It's not that they just didn't stop it from happening, but they actually like participated in it. And then again, you see the comparison to himself, which it's always nice that you like to be the person, that you're the standard for what is true suffering. Like, right, you. So you can be like, you know how much you've suffered. You've suffered like me. And it's actually a terrible thing. But yeah, he just doesn't. And so he curses when you're, when.

[Eli Stone]

Your name is like blazoned all over Greece. So that anyone who like ever, you know, like, what is it? Theseus, when he comes in, he's like, I don't even need to ask you who you are. I know who you are because of how wretched you are. And it's like, you are Oedipus. And it's like, wow, okay, thanks.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

But this also, I mean, okay, so I don't have great sympathy for Polynices, but I do think here, there's a tragedy here, that this is a father and son relationship that is this completely soured. So, I mean, 1565 or so, you die, die and be damned. I spit on you, out. Your father cuts you off, corruption, scum of the earth, out and pack these curses I call down upon your head. And then the whole rest of it is literally him just cursing his own son. I mean, to a certain point though, I mean, setting aside the more comical aspects of this and Polynices somewhat poor rhetoric, this is an incredibly tragic scene between a father in a son, particularly from someone who was, you know, Oedipus was also robbed of his own father. Right?

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, no, I, I mean this. And again, right. Like, it's even more like heart wrenching to imagine. Like, Oedipus knows like exactly what he's going to have to do if he accedes to Antigone. And Theseus is sort of like begging, hey, why don't you just hear the guy out? And Oedipus is like, I know, like, this is not. Like, I know my son and I know like what is coming. I know what he's going to ask of me. And like in his quasi divine position, he has not just a. Not just a. Like, like, it's not. This isn't like Oedipus has all the power, and he's deciding willy nilly what to do with it. In a sense, like, Oedipus is becoming a vessel for divine judgment, like an end acting in accordance with fate. And we see this. Like, what exactly does he say? Like, read the lines immediately after I here pronounce for you that you shall never master your native land by force of arms, nor ever see your homeland again, the land below the hills, but you shall die by your brother's hand, and you shall kill the brother who banished you. And, like, he just pronounces not just this curse, but a prophecy. And so it's like he. He knows and is like, again, right? Like, in this weird, paradoxical way, like, he has become the mouthpiece of Apollo and sort of the instrument of the judgment that he himself has also sort of suffered, right? Like, he. He suffered these oracles, like, and. But now he is also transformed by them and becomes this oracle in a way, himself. And when Antigone is begging him, why don't you just hear him out? I'm trying to bind you both together. Oedipus is like, child, you don't know what I know yet. I have. Like, I will accede to your request. And, like, that just makes this all the more gut wrenching for me that. That Oedipus knows exactly the kind of curse he's going to have to bring down on his own son in this tragic way. He says, I don't want to have to bear any more suffering, but if you're going to ask me to do this, this is what I'll do. I'll hear him out and I'll have to pronounce judgment on him because I know exactly, like, he'll have merited this through the sort of impiety, right, like, of this request. Like, he can't allow this to go unpunished.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

What do you take? So let me put it this way. A lot of our conversations with these Stephen plays have centered, particularly in the beginning, about whether or not Oedipus had any capacity to change his fate or whether or not he just simply was going to receive it. And when Josiah joined us when we were discussing Oedipus Rex, I think this is one of our conversations. And we kind of mentioned, like, you know, you try and run away. Every time someone in a Greek play tries to run away from the prophecy, it never works, actually. It typically makes things even worse. But then there was, like, this, you know, comment made on jest of, like, well, if you have a prophecy that you're gonna kill your father, and you stay in the same city and just keep hanging out with your father and keep good relations. Then what ends up happening is like, you know, eventually the axe head accidentally flies off one day and kills him. But it's not. You're not culpable for it, but the more you try and run away from it, the more it just seems to become worse, if that makes sense. So curious, I'm running a lot of interference here, but I'm curious in Polynices reaction. So he does two things that I think are really fascinating. One, he's not gonna tell any of his comrades. So he has mustered this whole coalition in Argos to go attack Thebes, right? This kind of legendary seven against Thebes.

[Eli Stone]

And this is. And this is what Oedipus counsels him. Go back to Thebes and tell your warriors this oracle. Like, he actually instructs him, go tell your faithful, what? What? Like this oracle I've given you. And he refuses to do that. So he also.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, let me. Let me run a little bit interference for him here. Not that I'm gonna die on the hills for Polynices here, but he. Yeah, he doesn't tell his comrades, which. Okay. But then he also decides to go ahead and fight Thebes, which you would think, like, why would you do this? And so in certain ways, I think if you're not familiar with Greek tragedies, you're like, you're an idiot. Why don't you just run away from this? Well, that never works. So in certain ways, I find it almost laudable that he's just like, okay, this is my fate. Goodbye, Antigone. Like, Antigone is also counseling him. Like, this is basically her point, right? Why. Why are you doing this? Why even go? Like, if you. If you receive this prophecy, why go. But we know that these prophecies always come true, no matter what. So he might as well just go march on Thebes and head on this directly, right? Because if he tries to, like, you know, what if he do? What does he could do? Run off to Ithaca? Well, no matter what happens, fate finds a way to make these prophecies come true. So, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm running too much interference for him, but I had a difficulty the first time I read it reconciling his reaction to this because it's very phlegmatic and just receptive. Or he's just like, okay, thanks. I'm not gonna tell anyone this. I'll just pack it in my heart and I'M just gonna go lead this fight against Thebes. But it's not in a way of like, oh, prophecy be damned. This is not Jocasta, right? This isn't just like, oh, this, this won't come true. Polygnis knows now he's going to die. I mean, this is why. Then we get this a little bit on the nose dialogue between him and Antigone of like, hey, by the way, if you make it back to Thebes, please bury me. Which is then, you know, we're playing, we're setting the foundation here for the first play. I don't know. What did you, what did you make of this?

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, this is a really, a really interesting question. I think you're right that there's a nobility in it. But again, is there an easier way to bring the prophecy to fruition? Right? Like, what would have happened if Polynices went back to his army like his father instructed him and, and essentially disbanded it by telling them, like, hey, we're all going to die here. If you follow me, you probably shouldn't. So then what happens? He goes back to his homeland and his brother's gonna take him in. And, you know, who knows what happens in that interaction? But maybe just the two of them die, because that's what, that's the fate. But now, by dragging these armies into it, you don't just have two now, you have Antigone, who's getting dragged into this because she's not able to bury her brother. You've got all the soldiers that die in battle. You've got the six other, like, champions on Thebes side and on the coalition side, right? Like, is, is what, is what Polynices is doing. Like, yes, he's acting out his fate, but he's doing so in a way that obviously violates his father's directive, right? Like the directive of the Oracle, as it were. But then he's also, like, he's just multiplying the suffering, like, by, like, I don't know. I. I think Polynices is still an example of suffering poorly, even if he kind of, in a sense accepts, like, unlike Creon or unlike Oedipus, like, accepts his fate, maybe in a way, and doesn't try to immediately run away from it. He, like, leans into it, but in, in an improper way.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Improper because he's going to bring down so many other people with him, right?

[Eli Stone]

Like, he, he doesn't try to find a way to, like, well, I'm doomed to this and I'm going to embrace it. But in a way that's like, best for the polis, right? Like, because he's just gonna try to conquer Thebes anyway and it's not gonna work. And it's because his father, like, has, has like promised, you're not going to win this battle. All you're going to do is lose all your troops and you're gonna die and your brother's gonna die. Like, that's what's going to happen. So if he had just accepted that and tried to just finish the rest of the fate, it would just be a very less bloody ordeal all around. So there's that, there's that element of it. I'm not sure how much stock I put into that necessarily, but that's kind of my knee jerk take on this. The other thing that I'm curious about is again, if we're thinking about like these different interlocutors, these major figures as like individuals that represent something allegorically going on, I wouldn't know where to put Polynices. I wouldn't know enough about the historical situation. And I wonder if Sophocles is trying to write to maybe these young whippersnappers that think, like, well, maybe we should go fight Sparta back, like, pay them back. Like, I don't know, is there a faction here within the Athenian group that's thinking like, maybe we can try to reclaim this by force and like all of the older, wiser people who just suffered the Peloponnesian War, like, no, we really shouldn't try to reclaim our honor that way. That's not going to work. I don't know. I, I wonder what Polynices, because the other three seem to fit, right? Like in that historical context we picture, we were just painting, right? Like Creon as Sparta, like Oedipus, as these Athenians who have suffered like an enthusiast, kind of as this visionary representation of what Athens is supposed to have been but isn't anymore, right? Where does Polynices fit in? Maybe, maybe in this younger, rasher generation that's growing into this age where they're taking power, but maybe, maybe they don't have the best ideas about how to go about it. I'm not sure.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Good question. I think one thing too, I would, I would mention about what you said that I think is interesting about going back to Polynices decision brings, seems to bring pain and suffering to so many other people. Two thoughts on that. One, we do forget that Antigone. It's not just Polynices body that's left to rot. It's actually all of those who attacked Thebes. So all these guys also are denied their burial rights, which we've seen, obviously, is a substantial point in Greek spirituality. The other thing too is Polynices, though, doesn't seem to have an understanding that his actions will suck in Antigone. So if you look at. There's interesting. They're going back and forth and I don't in obviously, Sophocles, I think, in a certain way waxes a little bit too much here between Polynices and Antigone. Like, I get it, you're promising to burying him now we're reading this back into Antigone, etc. But around like 1640, Antigone says, it's unbearable. Robbed of you, I might as well be dead. And he responds, that's in the hands of a dark power destiny. Whether we live or die, who knows? But the two of you, at least I pray to God you never meet with harm. The world can see you don't deserve to suffer. So there's two things about this. One, I wonder how Fitzgerald translates that opening of Polynices, because Faggles has a note here, and he did something that Faggles tends to do, which is if Fagle doesn't know how they're going to take a term, he actually kind of somewhat poetically puts in the entire definition. So the Greek word there, that's in the hands of a daemon, right? It's a spirit, a dark power. This is. We're going to see the Sophocles or not Sophocles, Sorry, we're gonna see this with Socrates, right? That he has a daemon that talks to him.

[Eli Stone]

But if you remember back in Antigone, this is also the same thing. Like Antigone is this dark omen, right? Like there's this dark power within her or about her, which this is, I think, clearly a callback to, in one respect, another, in another respect. Foreshadow of that. What else does Fagel have to say on that? Is there any?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Well, because he. He does dark power or destiny, right? So sometimes a daemon is not necessarily referring to like a. An actual spiritual being, kind of like by the time Plato writes, right? The daemons are these spirits that seem to be between the mortals and the immortals, right? Eros in the symposium is referred to as a daemon, right? This kind of mediator between man and the divine. And so sometimes, though, it's more of a destiny of fate. And so that's why he. He kind of gives the whole definition, right? A dark power, a destiny. And so it's it's interesting though to me that overall in that context, the, that Polynices doesn't seem to understand that his actions will actually bring in Antigone to suffer. Right. Telling his two sisters that you guys don't deserve to suffer. And I wonder, to your point, if he would have had a better understanding or could have intuited what would happen, whether or not he would have changed course knowing that it's actually going to bring his sister's suffering suffering.

[Eli Stone]

That's a good question. And I mean it's also possible, like, I mean Polynices doesn't seem like an especially virtuous character either. In fact, he seems a little bit like cowardly. That's just the impression I get. And so I wonder like too, is this like in a weird way, like he's going to battle knowing that he's going to die. Like, you might think he's courageous, but actually maybe he's not. And that's a weird parrot. That's a weird, that's a weird thought that I have. Like that, that his impression, My impression of him is cowardly despite the fact that he's doing something alleged like that would. I mean it seems like an otherwise noble or brave thing to do, like going to. Into battle knowing you're going to lose and die. But something just strikes. Strikes me as cowardly about it. So it's, it's a very curious.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Yeah, he's. He's a conflicting character in a certain way. Yeah. Well, let's look at. So here's. We kind of shift into, I think the part of the play finally, like I said earlier, really made me love this work. So we are recording in Oklahoma and I want to paint this picture because this is what I see in my head. In Oklahoma we just have these rolling thunderstorms that come across the plains, right? There's nothing out here to stop them. So we just get these gigantic thunderheads and they come through and there's these, you know, we have these 75 mile an hour straight winds, we have tons of lightning. The whole sky gets lit up. It's beautiful. But it's also destructive. And I just want everyone to know this is exactly what I have in my head. When all of a sudden Oedipus is like, it's here, the signs, right? This isn't just like a little lightning or whatever. I just imagine because I mean, Eli, you've seen this in Oklahoma. It's like, you know, three o' clock in the afternoon. All of a sudden everything starts getting really dark. You're like, wait, what is going on? And then you look up and you just have this huge thunderhead that's moving through, right? These gigantic clouds and everything's going to go dark. There's going to be these winds, these lightnings. Like this is what I'm imagining in my head when Oedipus basically gets excited that the signs are here, that basically the divine, particularly Zeus, but the divine overall are going to keep their promise to him. And so you see this around 1660, right? This winged thunder of Zeus will take me down to death. And any moment sin for him quickly, right, Calling out the Theseus. And so they do, they keep asking him, like, how do you know this is a sign? And Theseus comes in. This is at 1695. I found Theseus to be very sensitive to this. Again, he just seems to do the right thing.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah. So sorry, just to stop. Like, this is an interesting thing, right? Like, Oedipus has to still be alive while he confers, like, what he's conferring. Like, it's. It's really a fascinating trade off that's happening here. It's not just Oedipus's death. Like, he has to like, give something in like his last moments, which I think is a. There's a significance there that I'm not maybe entirely clued into. But like Oedipus, like really is like, Theseus has to make it here before I die. Like, I have to pass on this blessing, which is a very interesting. Like, I think it's just noteworthy, right, that.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, that's a good point. It can't just be. He can't just die and then he becomes like, you know, he just dies in the grove. Well, also that it has to be somewhat esoteric that Theseus is the only one that can actually even see him. As I. There's like this esoteric knowledge then that Theseus has to receive.

[Eli Stone]

So it's not just like no one can see the spot where he dies, right? Like, except for one person, right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And so it has to be like, yeah, I agree with you. It's an interesting element that then Oedipus has to proactively kind of share this with Theseus in his death. He can't just die in the grove. And everyone's like, okay, this is where it is. But this gives Theseus then this esoteric knowledge of like, because he has a comment in here as, like, this will become a bastion for you. And I was thinking about this, like, well, how is that true? Well, that's because Then Theseus then can set up wars, right? So if, like, someone's going to Thebes comes and attacks them, him. Theseus knows where to set up the battle, even though Thebes doesn't, because he knows what is the spot in which he cannot lose, right? That he's guaranteed this victory. And so then Theseus is given this esoteric knowledge on the battlefield that's supernatural that no one else could discern. So it is really interesting that this has to be given very proactively by him. And I found Theseus to be very sensitive to this, like, just understanding the signs. What am I supposed to do? Because you got to think there's a thunderstorm rolling in. Oedipus is this kind of crazy old man who's blind. One other element here is that he can basically see. Did you catch this? Like, he doesn't need any guides. He knows where, like, he is leading Theseus to where he's supposed to go. And so he. And he makes a couple comments on this about the fact that he doesn't need them anymore. He is the guide. He becomes the guide. He doesn't need his children. He leads Theseus. So there's a role reversal here. And I think this plays into everything that you've mentioned earlier about the fact that, like, this is a spiritual event and who has spiritual eyes. Well, it's the blind prophet, right? And so he can become the guy.

[Eli Stone]

Just like Oedipus is like, long speech to Theseus here just before the choral poem is. Is like, this is the sort of thing that is just. Again, like, it's just this very esoteric, right? Like, yeah, I will. Like, yeah, like you. Like you were pointing out here, like, presently, without a soul to guide me, I will lead you to the place I must die. But you must never tell it, not even the neighborhood in which it lies. If you obey, this will count more for you than many shields and many neighbors spears. These things are mysteries not to be explained, but you will understand when you come there alone. And like this. This. Yeah, this sort of mystical, esoteric, right? Like sacred place, right? Like where Oedipus, the. The man who has suffered, all right, like. Or. Or is laid to rest. Like, there's. There's a tremendous sort of like. Again, right? The parallel is, like, incredible. Like, again, like, you're just fighting against, like, impiety or. Or any form of like, comparison. But it. Like, if. Is this like the Holy Sepulcher, right? Like, this is just a very holy place. And the sort of secrecy and. And sacredness with which must be treated is. Is incredible.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And.

[Eli Stone]

And I wonder, like, what again, right, like, to. To put this back into this context, what does this represent? What is Oedipus beginning? What is Sophocles trying to suggest? Like, to Athens, like, there is something that you possess that is so sacred, that can't be communicated, that you have to preserve in this society. Like, there is something about Athens that must be preserved at all costs. And if you preserve it, it will be strength to you. It will be of more strength to you than all of your armies. There's something powerful about that. There's something mystical about that. Like, what is it? Is it. Is it the virtue? Is it nobility? Is it philosophy? Is it reason? Is it more than all of these? Is it somehow all of these tied up into something? What is that sacred thing that has to be preserved at the heart of every civilization to make it last? That's kind of this thing that I think Oedipus is beginning to represent.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That's fascinating. And the thing, too, is that this becomes like, earlier in the play when they showed up to Athens, it was almost comical where it's like, oh, here's Athens, and this is where the Furies hang out. And this is where Prometheus is, and this is Poseidon's over there doing, you know, whatever he wants here, too. Once again, there are a lot of gods that are mentioned in rapid fire when Oedipus is reaching his end. And he actually, I went back and forth on whether I thought it was poetic or whether it was actually happening. Where he talks about, like, this is in 1750, he says, no, I'm the guide. I will lead you to the sacred place. But he says, you know, where the Fates will bury Oedipus in this land. This way. Come, walk on. This way. They lead me on. Hermes, the escort of the dead. Persephone, queen of the dead. Right. Is he really actually seeing with his spiritual eyes? Is he really seeing all these deities now in this kind of grand procession leading him to where he needs to go? Which is an incredibly beautiful picture.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah. The gods themselves are, like, guiding Oedipus to his rest, which, again, goes back to this idea of providence. Right. Like, as much as Oedipus is born in his life, he has been carried along by fate, by the gods, by providence. The divine has been holding his hand the entire time. It has been miserable, but he has made it through. And now, in this mystical moment of rapture, you see Oedipus recognizing, understanding, seeing, walking clearly, despite the fact that he has no eyes. Like he grasps the totality of everything. Like he. He sees the significance of his whole life and beyond it into the future of Athens, like I will be for you. Like this thing, this, like. I mean, like, to use a biblical analogy, this pearl of great price, this treasure that you cannot afford to lose, which you must preserve, like, carefully. And what is it? What is. What is Oedipus? Oedipus is this mystery. Like, he becomes this mystery. And. And I think, you know, if you were to ask, like, what does Oedipus represent? I think the mystery of suffering. And a suffering transformed and born by virtue and transformed. Transformed by providence into something that can be a blessing for generations to come. That's what Oedipus represents. And it. If that's what Oedipus represents, if what Oedipus says is true, like you, Athens, if you preserve this knowledge of what suffering means, then nothing you can do, like nothing you can suffer as a community, will ever harm you. Like, if you preserve this understanding and leave to future generations in your individual death, and as each generation dies, a new one is born with the blessings of the previous ones, then that will endure and that civilization will stand strong no matter what comes. There. There's. There's a lot here. And. And like you said, there's this litany of gods. There's this. There's. There's this divine blessing. Like, this is. This is. I mean, in. In many ways, this is like a theosis. Like Oedipus is being divinized, like before our eyes, transfigured, if you will, into everything that the gods promised that he would be through the oracle.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I think that's why there's. I mean, Exodus is about to die, and what we see him exhibit here is almost an existential joy. And so I think that to your point, and also the chorus, right, the chorus that follows there talks about that now justice will grant him glory, because this is where he sees the purpose of his life, that his suffering now will really become that blessing. He's been telling people this will happen. But now that he sees the thunderhead roll in, now that he sees this procession of gods appear, now that his eyes in a certain way are open in which they are leading him to the secret spot. Now all that's coming true. But I really do think, like, this is a moment of joy for him as he approaches his death. But it is a moment of joy because not just as. Not just that the gods were correct, that the gods kept their promise, but the entire pedagogical purpose of his life is unfurling right before his eyes. Now, actually. Right where actually now he can see why he underwent all these things and that there's actually going to be a meaning to his life.

[Eli Stone]

I. I mean, again, to draw a parallel to something that's going to be massive in. Once we get into Plato and then beyond Plato, into Scripture and into, like, early Christianity, the beatific vision, like, this is. This is almost, I would. I would argue, like a direct parallel. Like what? In his last moments, Oedipus witnesses the entirety of the cosmos. Like, he understands the entire order of things. And I think that's where the solace comes from, knowing his place in that order and recognizing that despite all of the suffering that he endured, he has this clarity and recognition that in this entire celestial hierarchy, like, I have played this small part. And in within the context of that small part, I could have been very bitter. I could have understood and seen my sufferings and in that narrow and myopic context. But now I see this beautiful tapestry that is so infinitely, like, much bigger than I ever could have imagined myself within the world, within time, within eternity. And that in that context, Oedipus has this glimpse of beatitude, right? Like, or. Or something analogous to it, I think. And this is why, I think you latch onto this play. It's why I latch onto this play. It's. It is such a powerful. A powerful hope to rest in that there is a way where we can see beyond ourselves and get a glimpse into the transcendent, get a glimpse into something that's much larger than us. And if we can catch a glimpse of that, we too can die well, like Oedipus. And our death can be a blessing to those after us if we have the eyes to see it. And that's not, again, right. Like, if we deprive ourselves of the sensual pleasures that would otherwise distract us from seeing that. That deeper truth, that deeper beauty, that deeper harmony and order to the world, then we can too, become a blessing, just like Oedipus does.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I agree. I very much agree. I also think that all those lessons that you just mentioned are also what's in the back of Antigone's mind. I think this is part of the tragedy of Antigone, is that she sees her father confirmed as the sign of the gods for standing up and doing what I think he thought to be noble, right, and adhering to the divine. Antigone then adheres to the divine. And I think she wants to be a Sign. She wants to have that glory that the chorus talked about, right? She has a cursed family, and for the family to be cursed, for her to have an opportunity to die a death of glory, I think is something that she actually really craves. And then it's just heartbreaking that she doesn't get to see the sign. Right? The city altars don't light that said that she actually has been correct. And then she kills herself. And I really think that Oedipus is. I mean, I realize that the third one. Right. The second one is the third one. And so there's a. There's some questions here about how much you can read back into this and how much was Sophocles knowing where he wanted to take this narrative. But I really think that as my imagination, as this continue to kind of think about and contemplate this play, I really think that's the. The way I continue to see Antigone is that she was seeing the model that her father was and wanted that, and then it didn't work the way she thought it was going to. And in certain ways, I think Lost Faith kills herself because she hadn't killed herself. I think the play would have turned out better because Haman would have found her alive, and then Creon would have found both of them, but he would have been in a repentant state. So. Not that I think.

[Eli Stone]

And I think, too. I mean, this is. You know, so we've. We've talked about the ordering of these plays, right? I actually think that this is the strongest argument. The deaths, the endings. I think this is the strongest argument for why these plays belong in this order. Because you have a hanging in the first one, you have a hanging in the second one. This is the only one like this is. This is sort of the resolution of that. Like, you have those sort of haunting endings in Antigone and in Oedipus Rex. You don't have that here. The death here is a noble one. And. And in that sense, I think it is the thing that can contextualize the other two endings of the plays in a way that, like, dramatically and thematically and literarily, like, ties everything up just beautifully and brings us to a beautiful resolution. I've tried reading these plays in both orders, and it was very hard to read Antigone after this and feel very satisfied by the end of it. It was like, there's. There's something deeply dissatisfying about reading these books in this order. So I actually think that the endings of these plays is the Strongest argument for why Antigone is the first one to read.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I like that. I like that a lot. It also tracks. I think Fagles makes a similar argument in his introduction. Is that what you see Sophocles wrestling with is the concept of being a curse and a blessing? And how does this actually work out in Antigone? You can tell he's kind of wrestling with this idea, but how does it. How does it work? And. And how's it still a tragedy if you're going to play it out like that? So I agree with you. Having this ending be the ending of all three, then kind of primes them back with a meaning. And this is the order I read them in, so I'm not. I can't comment on. But I can see then if you read Antigone last, how it just ends on a depressing note. Also, Creon's the one that survives. That's terrible. Oh, yeah, it's terrible. So I. One thing I do want to point out here because I think that. I think you did a marvelous job of kind of laying out particularly kind of the. The moral read of this. But one thing I found very touching is this retelling in 1825 of Oedipus last words to his daughters. And again, we had the same thing where the action happens off stage. So we get to the zenith, and then the messenger runs in and has to tell us all what happened, right? We always see this.

[Eli Stone]

But I think what's beautiful about this is that in this context, the messenger has to tell the story, right? Like, because no one has seen the death of Oedipus.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

Right?

[Eli Stone]

At all. And, like, that's part of the secret, right? Like that. And so I think Sophocles beautifully plays with this trope by making Oedipus's death something so secret that only Theseus can see. So of course no one else has seen it. The messenger has to come and talk to everyone else about it. So it's just a beautiful way of highlighting, like this, this literary trope. Sophocles masterfully uses this literary trope to highlight the sacredness and the secrecy with which this mystery has been preserved. So I actually really think this is a very good use of this trope.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, I agree. So he says, In 1825, my children, this is the day that ends your father's life. All that I was on Earth is gone. No longer will you bear the heavy burden of caring for your father. It was hard, I know, my children, but one word alone repays you for the labor of your lives. Love, my children. You had love from me as from no other man alive. And now you must live without me all your days to come. And this, you know, something I'd really like to spend more time contemplating is the role of love in these Theban plays, because Antigone talks about it, too. I don't remember it terribly. In Oedipus Rex, the scene that stands out to me is Creon pulling the. The young children away, which is then repeated in Oedipus at Colonus. But Antigone, the first play, had a strong motif of love. It's not mentioned a lot, but it's an animating factor. And I think that a lot of times we tend to forget that love does have a place within Hellenistic thought. A lot of times we just think of logos, we think of logic, we think of Socrates and his syllogisms and things like this. We kind of forget sometimes that love actually is playing a substantial role within their thought. That obviously, Hebrew culture doesn't have a monopoly on the concept of natural love. And actually, you know, obviously everyone knows that the Greeks have multiple words for love to express different actual concepts and certain ways, their language is more rich than in English. From someone who enjoys the study of Eros, I have become almost infuriated with translators who translate all four words for love in Greek as just love. Because then I find myself thinking, like, well, what word is used here? There's a huge meaning distinction in Greek. But I do think that one thing I'd like to maybe think about more is what is the role of love in these plays? And, like, substantially, what does that actually mean for the Hellenistic mind, particularly. Roll the one that. The idea that I'd like to parse out more is love as a binding agent.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, this is. This is what. This is what Antigone says several times, right? Like, I bind, I don't divide, I bind, right?

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

And if you remember Antigone, the play also then has a chorus dedicating the arrows. So you've got. But when she says that, she's. If I remember correctly, going by memory, when she says that the love binds there, she uses the word for fraternal love because she's talking about her brother. But then the play also then has a chorus dedicated to erotic love, to Eros as a love that also binds but also brings a mania, right? And I think that's how we should interpret Haman at the end, right? That he has this. This manic stage to him because of the death of his love of Antigone. And so it's just because the idea that love binds, even if it's one that brings mania, the idea that it binds is one that Plato is going to take up, right? Particularly in Eros, which becomes the broad term for our natural love, and that Eros, that erotic love, is actually a binding agent. And we'll see this in Symposium, this is actually, in Plato's Symposium, this is a core presupposition amongst some of the speeches that love is a binding agent, not simply amongst people, but even amongst the entire cosmos in certain ways. Hesiod saw this, right? If you remember when we talked about Hesiod's theogony, Hesiod has Eros as one of the four primordial gods. And Eros there tends to. He's not very explicit about it, but Eros tends to be the generative force of the cosmos. The thing that, you know, the cosmos has. Has broken. It's gone from a unity to a multiplicity, but then these multiple parts are coming together and creating more parts, and Eros tends to be the thing that actually then is binding them all together and making them fecund. And if you recall, Aristotle actually praises Hesiod for this insight, this mythic insight in his metaphysics, for understanding that the cosmos is actually animated by love. So it's just, you know, as we kind of roll off here at the end of Oedipus Colonus, that's one of the questions that I still would really like to think about, and whether or not we take love in the role of love in this kind of like, pre Socratic Greek thought seriously enough, what it actually means to them.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's very good. I think moving forward, too, I mean, it will be interesting to compare someone like Oedipus to someone like Socrates in the apology, right? Like, you know, Socrates has that famous line, he ends the apology with like, I go to die and you to live. Like, which is the better fate, like, remains like, only the gods know kind of a thing. And it's an. And it's a very. I, I think too, right? Like Socrates, as this, you know, who's on trial here, right? Like, is it Socrates or is it the Athenians that are judging him because he asked some. He. It's. It almost reads like Socrates is the one trying his audience, much like Oedipus tries Theseus and Creon and Polynices here. So I think there's some interesting parallels to be made, certainly, as we move forward into the rest of The Greeks. And yeah, love is this binding agent is another interesting sub theme within these plays. Really the one I think that just sticks out to me most is. Is. Is fate, is providence. Right. Like I think this, this nascent idea that. That fate is not capricious but always in the service of the good is something that you'll see in like later Stoic authors, right. Like nature gives you nothing that you can't bear. And the universe or fate or whatever force that guides all things always has a reason for the things that it brings upon you, whether they're pleasurable or painful. And so there's something very preparatory for Christianity in that. And I think, to your point, right, about this convergence between the Hebrew, the Greek and the Roman worlds, I think this is a huge part of the huge contribution of the Greco, Greco, Greek speaking world to the Christian tradition.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

I agree. And I think too, you know, the ending of the play is always somewhat dispositive, right. Particularly Sophocles, who I think tends to have these strong elements of teaching in his plays. And so in Fagles, the very last line of the play, the last two lines is come my children, weep no more, raise the dirge no longer. All rests in the hands of a mighty power. So I mean, just like that providential theme, remember, we also have talked about last time that there's a good understanding that the Athenian aristocratic class is losing its faith in the pantheon. There's a theme of like whether prophecies are really true. Right. Are these just myths? Etc. And so here we have these plays that have a very strong element of providential guidance and that we know. Providence through prophecy.

[Eli Stone]

Yeah, certainly. And, and too. Right. Like there's a. It's. It's also just interesting, this theme of blindness. Right. Like there, there's an insight that may like be at variance with the things you can see in the world. And so even like the limitations of human reason I think are a. Are. Is another theme that, that this, these plays really delve into that Sophocles is really tapping into. And we'll see like this cautionary sort of thing enter in like with, with Plato later when he's dealing with the Sophists, right. Like there's. It's very easy to get hung up on like what's before your eyes and fail to see the deeper meaning or the deeper patterns that lie behind it. And so I think this, this theme of sight and blindness, light and darkness, it features very prominently in John's Gospel. As, as we know there's. There's a Lot of richness and depth there. It's just a very pregnant text. Like, at these Oedipus plays, like, I really feel like this is why I latched on to them. And. And obviously, like, in the context of Colonus, like, it colors the rest of the text. But everything we've discussed, like the.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

The.

[Eli Stone]

The sort of, like, stubbornness and persistence of Oedipus and Oedipus Rex against the Delphic maxims, right? Like, kind of flying against what the oracles revealed and kind of how he's. He's, like, worsened his own sufferings. And then. Yet even. Even though, like. And again, right, if we want to say, like, Oedipus has a fault or his sins, right, like providence weaves in those threads of sin, so to speak, into his eventual fate, which is to become a blessing to others. And so there's. There's something deeply consoling about that. The fact that Oedipus could get everything so wrong in Oedipus Rex and then become this incredible figure that is. I mean, again, right, He's. He's. He's divinized in a way. There's something deeply moving about that and deeply, deeply hopeful in believing and seeing. Like, in Oedipus, a man of sorrows, like a man borne down heavily by affliction, like, as one from whom we turn our face. Right, like, again, right, like this just a very powerful job like figure, a very powerful suffering figure that I believe really strongly points us to Christ.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

That is a marvelous last word. We're going to end it on that. That is a good last word and a good way to close Oedipus at Clonus and the entire kind of Theban plays. I enjoyed it. I very much enjoyed, Eli, you joining us for these and kind of helping us to work through them. Greatly appreciated your insights and helping us to parse them out. So thank you for being with us, Deacon.

[Eli Stone]

It's like I said, it's always an honor. I'm really excited that we got to do these plays, and I'm honored that you invited me to delve into these. These are my favorite Greek plays, so I've really enjoyed them. Thank you again.

[Deacon Harrison Garlick]

No, it was very good. So next, if you're reading along, as we kind of journey through the Greek plays, we are going to read Euripides Bacchae, a very different play that raises some very different questions. Actually, I got some text tonight from someone who read the Bacchae for the first time, and they were very confused and had lots of questions for me about what they just read. So if you haven't read the Bacchae, it is certainly worth your time. It's an interesting, interesting play. So we're gonna continue on as we started the Greek plays. You can check us out at thegreatbookspodcast.com, twitter, Facebook, Patreon, etc. We appreciate the support and we will see everyone next week. Thank you.