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Chapter Seventeen Lecture Two

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Chapter Seventeen Lecture Two Oedipus and Thebes Heroic Sufferer for Truth or Victim of Curiosity Sufferer or Victim Oedipus not like other cosmic heroes Not of ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Chapter Seventeen Lecture Two


1
Chapter SeventeenLecture Two
  • Oedipus and Thebes

2
Heroic Sufferer for Truth or Victim of Curiosity
3
Sufferer or Victim
  • Oedipus not like other cosmic heroes
  • Not of divine birth
  • He overthrows his father but creates not order
    but chaos
  • In Homers version, Oedipus continues as king
    after truth is discovered
  • In Sophocless, he blinds himself and eventually
    is exiled

4
Sufferer or Victim
  • The discovery combines the anagnorisis and the
    peripateia
  • Was he just a toy of fate?
  • For the Greeks, he had no moral fault and did
    what any intelligent person would have done in
    the same situation
  • He is confused about his true self, between what
    he appears to be and what he is

5
Sufferer or Victim
  • He dies as the pharmakos for the city, outcast
  • His intelligence is restless and he solves
    riddles, including his own
  • Typically for the Greeks, the truth is an awful
    one

6
The Seven Against Thebes
7
The Seven Against Thebes
  • Eteocles and Polynices rule in alternate years
  • Eteocles reneges
  • Polynices goes into exile
  • Adrastus (Argos)
  • Daughters must be yoked to a boar and a lion
  • Polynices and Tydeus

8
The Seven Against Thebes
  • Adrastus will restore the two to their kingdoms
  • First Thebes, then Calydon
  • Great leaders are summoned
  • Amphiaraüs (a prophet who knew that all but
    Adrastus would die on the campaign)
  • Eriphylê (sister of Adrastus and wife of
    Amphiaraüs) is bribed to decide on behalf of the
    campaign

9
The Seven Against Thebes
  • Amphiaraüs makes his sons swear to avenge his
    death
  • The seven heroes
  • Adrastus
  • Amphiaraüs
  • Capaneus
  • Hippomedon
  • Polynices
  • Tydeus
  • Parthenopeus

10
Oedipus at Colonus
  • Sophocles

11
Oedipus at Colonus
  • Oedipus, now in exile, arrives in Athens as the
    Grove of the Furies with his daughter Antigonê
  • Delphi wherever Oedipus is buried that city will
    never be captured
  • Eteocles and Polynices both want him back
  • Theseus (king of Athens) refuses to give him back

12
Oedipus at Colonus
  • Oedipus curses both his sons and goes off to
    disappear mysteriously

13
Tydeus at Thebes
14
Tydeus at Thebes
  • Tydeus goes into Thebes to persuade Eteocles to
    step down
  • Pins all their champions in wrestling
  • Killed all but one of fifty Thebans who ambushed
    him
  • Folktale qualities
  • mysterious, powerful stranger, all but one . . .

15
The Battle Before Thebes
  • Aeschylus
  • Seven Against Thebes

16
The Battle Before Thebes
  • Seven Theban heroes each defend one of the seven
    gates of Thebes, drawing lots for which gate
    would be his
  • Menoeceus kills himself to fulfill the condition
    for the safety of Thebes
  • Capaneus is killed by Zeus for an impious boast

17
The Battle Before Thebes
  • Amphiaraüs savagely prevents Tydeus from becoming
    immortal by giving his skull to Melanippus who
    eats the brains
  • Amphiaraüs himself is protected from being hit in
    the back by a spear by Zeus
  • Hes swallowed alive into the ground

18
The Battle Before Thebes
  • Eteocles finds himself paired with Polynices
  • They kill each other with a mutual blow
  • Thebes is spared
  • Only Adrastus escapes
  • In a chariot drawn by Arion (lt Poseidon
    Demeter)

19
Sophocles Antigonê
20
Sophocles Antigonê
  • Creon (now ruling at Thebes) forbids the burial
    of Polynices
  • Antigonê defies the order
  • She is condemned to be shut in a cave and left to
    die
  • Creons son Haemon (whos engaged to Antigonê)
    tries to intervene, but Creon will not listen

21
Sophocles Antigonê
  • Creon finally listens to the prophet Tiresias,
    but it is too late
  • Antigonê hanged herself in the cave
  • Haemon tries to kill Creon, but fails. Then he
    kills himself

22
Revenge of the Parthenos
23
Revenge of the Parthenos
  • The play is a circle of opposites
  • male female
  • young old
  • state family
  • the living the dead
  • humans gods

24
Revenge of the Parthenos
  • Politically Antigonê is the conservative and
    Creon is the progressive
  • Philosophically Creon advocates nomos and
    Antigonê physis
  • As to gender roles, Antigonê is the untamed
    parthenos which no civic power can stop

25
The Epigoni
26
The Epigoni
  • Ten years later, the descendents of the
    original seven attack Thebes again
  • Eriphylê bribed again, this time by the robe of
    Harmonia
  • Orders her son, Alcmaeon to lead an expedition
    against Thebes.
  • Thebans abandon their city and it is sacked

27
The Epigoni
  • Now Alcmaeon, son of Eriphylê and Amphiaraüs,
    avenges his fathers death by killing his mother
  • As he was ordered to do by his father before the
    Seven Against Thebes expedition
  • He is driven insane for the matricide and later
    killed

28
End
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