December 28th 2015

We’ve all heard of “The Riddle of the Sphinx”, but who can repeat it? I can, because I have been reading Sophocles. The riddle of the sphinx goes as follows;

Oedipus and the
 Sphinx

"Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" (She strangled and devoured anyone who could not answer.) Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age. By some accounts there was a following riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night".

The Sphinx had taken control of Thebes and the only means by which her power could be undone was if someone could solve the riddle. When Oedipus prevailed he was made king. That was the start of his trouble!

Oedipus fell foul of the gods even before he was born.

Apollo was a serious member of the god clan and among his many powers was the power of prophesy and he decreed, even before Oedipus was begot, that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus had no knowledge of this event to come, but Laius, his father, and Jocasta, his mother were aware of the prophesy of Apollo and decided that the only way to avoid this unthinkable outcome was to have Oedipus slain. This task was entrusted to a shepherd who took Oedipus up on a mountain side and pinned his feet with an iron staple. The servant shepherd could not bring himself to kill the infant and instead entrusted him to the care of another shepherd who lived far away in Corinth, who in turn gave the child to Polybus the King of Corinth who was childless.

One of Apollo’s ministers conveyed the prophesy to Oedipus, who was now Prince of Corinth, and presuming Polybus to be his father resolved to flee thereby avoiding the fulfilling of the prophesy. His wanderings, by circuitous routes, brought him back to Thebes. After having solved the ‘riddle of the sphinx’ and restoring the city of Thebes to peace and tranquility, Oedipus was crowned king. On his route back to Thebes, Oedipus was attacked by an assassin on the road and killed his assailant, not knowing his attacker was Laius, his father. Thus the first part of the prophesy was fulfilled. When news of the King’s death reached Thebes, the Queen, Jocasta, was suddenly cast into widowhood. She took the obvious option of marrying the newly crowned king, Oedipus. Thus the prophesy of Apollo was fulfilled.

Oedipus and Jocasta, his mother, begot two sons and two daughters so in fact Jocasta was both mother and grandmother to her own children. Lucky there was no investigation by social services. After a period of seeming prosperity the gods decided to revisit the scene and bring matters to a head. The net result of this was the blinding by his own hand of Oedipus and guided by his daughter Antigone he set off on his adventures again to try and find salvation.

This entire episode might sound a bit off the wall but the Theban Plays of Sophocles were written 2,500 years ago and are still in print and enacted all over the world. Betcha Jilly Cooper won’t last that long!

Classical Greek tragedies might not sound like interesting reading material but the following passage from ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ belies that opinion:

Here in our white Colonus, stranger guest,

Of all earth’s lands the loveliest,
Fine horses breed, and leaf-enfolded vales
Are thronged with sweetly-singing nightingales,
Screened in deep arbours, ivy, dark as wine,
And tangled bowers of berry-clustered vine;
To whose dark avenues and windless courts
The Grape-god with his nursing-nymphs resorts.

Here, chosen crown of goddesses, the fair

Narcissus blooms, bathing his lustrous hair
In dews of morning; golden crocus gleams
Along Cephisus’ slow meandering streams,
Whose fountains never fail; day after day
His limpid waters wander on their way
To fill with ripeness of abundant birth
The swelling bosom of our buxom earth.

Here Aphrodite rides with golden reins;

The Muses here consort; and on these plains,
A glory greater than the Dorian land
Of Pelops owns, or Asiatic strand,
Our sweet grey foster-nurse, the olive, grows
Self-born, immortal, unafraid of foes;
Young knaves and old her ageless strength defies
Whom Zeus and Pallas guard with sleepless eyes.

And last, our Mother-city’s chiefest pride

I yet must praise, all other gifts beside,
Poseidon’s gift, which makes her still to be
Mistress of horses, mistress of the sea.
Here in these lanes wild horses first obeyed
The bit and bridle; here the smooth oar-blade
In slim and handy shape first learned to leap
And chase the fifty sea-maids through the deep.

Paul Durcan, Paul Muldoon, Louis MacNeice, John Montague (RIP),Vona Groarke and all you loose-verse shapers; eat your hearts out!