Suppliant and Saviour: Oedipus at Colonus

6THE CENTRAL THEME is the transformation of Oedipus into a hero.' It is perhaps unfortunate that the subject of Sophocles' last play can be defined so concisely, for the definition has led to confusion. The suspicion that the long middle scenes of the play, Oedipus' encounters with Creon and Polynices, form a dramatic diversion unrelated to the central theme has been surprisingly widespread and persistent. Carl Robert long ago advanced the curious hypothesis that the Polynices scene was a hasty result of Sophocles' quarrel with his own son, Iophon.2 Wilamowitz defended the play against the charge of slapdash revision, but himself judged the middle section an essentially intrusive attempt to link Oedipus' death to the events of Theban legend.3 Waldock, in his unabashed way, asserted that Sophocles had chosen a subject too thin for a whole play and was now faced with the problem of spinning out suitable material to cover the gap in his theme.4 All these views are founded on a misapprehension of the central theme of the play. Sophocles does not bring Oedipus to Colonus to die and be venerated as a hero, but to become a hero before our eyes. That is to say, Oedipus at Colonus is a drama of confrontation and contest, not a sacred pageant. Oedipus' struggle to achieve death and transformation in accordance with his oracle, the essence of the action, is largely enacted in the irrelevant middle section of the play.5