Directions: Write a 3-4pg. essay on the following topic. Be persuasive in outlining your criticism/interpretation. One must incorporate 1-2 sources from scholarly journals. Must adhere to MLA guidelines. 

Write an essay on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Is Oedipus to blame? Using events from the play what can we say about free-will and responsibility? Lastly, how much does fate play a role in what transpires in the play? Be thorough in your response 

Fate, Chance, and Tragic Error

Author(s): Roger A. Pack

Source: The American Journal of Philology , 1939, Vol. 60, No. 3 (1939), pp. 350-356

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/291299

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FATE, CHANCE, AND TRAGIC ERROR.

In an earlier paper 1 I discussed the value of the commentator

Alexander’s treatise On Destiny for the Aristotelian theory of

tragic error. I now wish to propose a means by which this and

kindred ideas may be so further correlated as to suggest an

answer to a question which was only touched upon before,

namely: Is there such a thing as a “tragedy of fate “?

Let us begin by representing schematically the classification

of harmful acts given in Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 1374 B:

rdue to AoX0np1a
a wrong (MdKIKfla) lpredictable (i. e., not 7rap6Xoyov)
an error (&a’AdpT?7/a a)

r not due to ,.oxOn7pIC
a mischance ( dzr6xrna) L unpredictable

By making certain valid substitutions we can illustrate the
aapprta of Oedipus, and we can also add a classification of pur-

posive acts, based upon Alexander’s De Pato: 2

Purposive acts Harmful acts

A. due to ante-

cedent causes

a. according

to destiny

rndeliberate patricide and incest (G) b. according -wrong wdeliberate homicide and marriage (R)
to free will r

error

B. not due to *mischane [accidental patricide and incest (I)
accidental homicide and marriage3 (NR)

antecedent causes,

but according to

chance

For the criteria involved I think it would be fair to adopt the
words guilt (G) and innocence (I), and responsibility (R) and
its opposite (NR), as indicated in the scheme, because the result
so obtained squares exactly, as I shall show, not only with the

ISee A.J.P., LVIII (1937), pp. 418-436.
2 For the complete outline, see A. J. P., LVIII, pp. 418-19.

3I realize that “accidental marriage “sounds somewhat anomalous,

but it has at least a certain theoretical value. ” Responsibility ” means,

of course, responsibility for patricide and incest, incurred through

homicide and marriage.

350

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FATE, CHANCE, AND TRAGIC ERROR. 351

terms of the definition but with all that can be learned from the

Oedipus plays about the error of their hero: that is, the fact

that he disclaims guilt, but accepts responsibility.

In joining the two halves of our equation we had no hesita-

tion, I believe, in connecting mischance with acts according to

chance, and wrong with acts according to free will (cf. Rhet.,

I, 10, 1368 B 6-16), but what was to be done with error? A

second glance at the scheme showed that it had already been

disposed of: its element of responsibility belongs to acts accord-

ing to free will, and its element of innocence to acts according

to chance. This would appear to bring out the composite nature

of error: a combination of free will and chance would seem to

dominate the sort of tragedy in which a tragic error is com-

mitted. Such would be the logical outline of a “tragedy of

chance,” and the appropriate apology of Oedipus would be, “I
admit that I killed a man and married a woman, knowing well

at the time that it was hazardous for me to do so. Yet I did not

realize then that the man was my father, the woman my mother.

That part of it was purely accidental.”

Since the hero’s innocence is thus explained by the action of
chance rather than of fate, the latter might seem to be left
entirely out of consideration, and with it the whole concept of

” Schicksalstragodie ” might seem to disappear. In my earlier
paper, however, I held that this element of innocence ” has as
its fitting background the ontological fatalism of Aristotle.”

A priori and on commonsense grounds it is evident that either
fate or chance will serve as a warrant of innocence.4 Instead of
a ” tragedy of chance ” we may have a ” tragedy of fate,” and
it may be represented in schematic form by changing the order
of the harmful acts so as to bring them into relation with a.
instead of B, and substituting fatality for mischance and pre-
destined for accidental.5 Oedipus’ defense will also need recast.
ing: “I confess that I killed a man and married a woman,
knowing full well that I was ‘tempting fate’ by so doing. But

4For fate, cf. Alexander, De Fato, 16, and A. J. P., LVIII, p. 425.

F predestined homicide and marriage
6a. destiny -fatality ~{predestined patricide and incest

error

b. free will -wrong ~ Fdeliberate homicide and marriage
Ldeliberate patricide and incest

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352 ROGER A. PACK.

I did not realize then that I was committing patricide and incest:

that was the work of destiny.”

Logically there are only these two possibilities, in either of

which free will can have but a secondary place,6 essential though
it may be. If, therefore, we reject the ” Schicksalstragidie”
we shall do so at the cost of accepting in its stead either a
“Zufallstrag6die” or a sort of genus imixtum in which both

fate and chance would somehow be active. Admittedly, 4ipxTia
can be interpreted in accidental as well as fatalistic terms, and
accidental error offers no contradiction to logic or everyday
experience,7 whereas the fatalistic sort involves a dilemma, as I
showed before. Yet an analysis of that much-studied play, the
Oedipus Rex, will make it evident that in tragedy there can be
no place for accidental error.

Let us begin with the evidence of the oracles. Here we may
use to advantage the distinction, stated fully by Servius on
Aeneid, IV, 696,8 between fatum denuntiativunt and f. condi-
cionale. According to the first, the oracle received by Oedipus
would take the form, ” You will kill your father and wed your
mother “; according to the second it would be in the form, ” If
you kill a man, it will be your father, and if you wed a woman,
it will be your mother.” Obviously the one is purely fatalistic,
leaving no avenue of escape, while the other is only semi-

a In an unadulterated ” Freiwillenstrago5die ” there would obviously be
no place for &a,uprla, but only for 7rovpt’a. The Orestes of Euripides is,
in some measure, a tragedy of this sort, and it is significant that we
find in it that degradation of character which is noted in one of the
ancient hypotheses.

7 The statement, ” men often err accidentally,” i. e., ” it is an observed
fact that their acts are often followed by unexpected results,” is ” ex-
perimental,” whereas the statement that “men often err because of
fate ” is ” non-experimental ” and bears to the first statement the same
relation as an enthymeme bears to a syllogism. It is a “derivative ”
in the sense of Pareto, and its “residue” belongs, like that of hybris
(” Pride goeth before a fall “) to the class of ” combinations.” The
fact that ” fatalistic error ” is more closely related to the idea of
hybris than is ” accidental error,” appears to support my general con-
tention. For these distinctions, see George C. Homans and Charles P.
Curtis, Jr., An Introduction to Pareto (New York, 1934), especially
pp. 105, 177.

8. . . denuntiativa sunt quae omni modo eventura decernunt, ut verbi
gratia ‘Pompeius ter triumphaturus est: ‘ . . . condicionale vero huius
modi est ‘Pompeius si post Pharsalicum bellum Aegypti litus attigerit,
ferro peribit: ‘ . . .

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FATE, CHANCE, AND TRAGIC ERROR. 353

fatalistic, because it makes the crimes of patricide and incest

contingent upon the presumably avoidable acts of homicide and
marriage. Now Oedipus twice recalls the oracle (Oed. R. 787-
93, 994-6), and both times he uses the “denuntiative” form.

That is, he regards the bare fact of his homicide and marriage
as having been inescapable 9 no less than the awful circumstance

that his own parents were the victims of these acts. He feels
that he had received a prophecy the fulfilment of which he could

passively experience, but not a warning which he might have
heeded. Since he could at no time have behaved otherwise than
as he did, complete exculpation is the result as far as the oracles

are concerned,10 and error is barred as well as guilt.

Of course we should have expected to find the ” conditional”

form. This alone admits of a”papri’a, because it combines the
same elements, the protasis embodying free will and responsi-
bility, the apodosis fate and innocence.’1 Oedipus’ homicide and
marriage do not involve guilt, because these acts, under the cir-
cumstances, are not culpable. No more is he guilty of patricide
and incest, for these are the work of fate. Yet he is responsible

for the initial acts and so in turn for the horrors into which fate

transforms them. His error actually consists in his having

disobeyed the warning of a conditional oracle.12

9 This is in agreement with Oed. Col. 997-8, e06v dLy6ovrc’.
10 Robert (Oidipus, pp. 67-8) held that Sophocles uses only the

denuntiative form for the oracle received by Laius, in contrast to the

practice of Aeschylus and Euripides. But in Oed. R. 711-14 it appears

to be conditional; 0a’,rLs ye’OLT’ surely points to a ” should-would ” pro-

tasis. If the poet had wished to make it denuntiative, he would have

had to write o’s oyevIaoro, representing yev2eratc of the direct statement.
Yet in a sense the choice of the conditional form here is a departure

from the general tone of the play. In this passage Jocasta indulges in

special pleading, the whole trend of which is to minimize the control of

destiny over the life of Oedipus.

11 A condition can be framed in either fatalistic or accidental terms:

“If you kill a man, it will be your father,” or “If, etc., it may turn

out to be your father.” The first is fallacious because it assigns to a

future, particular enunciation the validity of a general enunciation

(cf. A. J. P., LVIII, p. 432, note 49). But the second is logical, because

it does not exclude potentiality. In other words, a ” tragedy of chance ”

would be in harmony with Aristotle’s logic, but a “tragedy of fate ”

contains the inconsistency mentioned in my earlier paper (ad fin.).

12 To illustrate &caprca, van Braam (C. Q., VI [1912], p. 270) submits

the case of a man who, unaware that his wine contains poison, serves it

6

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354 ROGER A. PACK.

Other evidence shows that such is the situation. Oedipus has
no consciousness of guilt, because he declares in 0. Col. 266-7

that he is ” more sinned against than sinning.” A few lines

below (270-2) he adds that in his encounter with Laius he was

provoked (cf. 0. Col. 991-6) to a deed that would have been

justifiable even if wrought with perfect deliberation (Opov6v)

…… .KlO 7r KafOt 4 KOSrtV,
O 7Ttr 7LOwV fLEv JvreSpwv, (IYT Et pOVOV

E7rparu0ov OM8 av w(0( C/7tYVtLvoJV KoS;

The clause E.. . .hrpauuov may be compared with Oed. R. 807,
where he admits that he killed in anger, St’ opys.g3 But pro-
voked or not, it would have been better for him to stay his hand,
for he knew that homicide, no matter how justifiable it might
seem at the time, was not the thing for him under any circum-
stances. He could hardly have said that the possible result was
70,paxoyov. On the whole his mind is none too clear on the

question of his guilt or innocence, though dramatically such
confusion is perhaps natural enough. 14 He has no doubt that

in good faith to a guest; if the guest merely helps himself, unbidden,
it is an drvxriXca, he says, and not ain acAdLpTrT,aa. But another condition
must be added to make the case strictly parallel to that of Oedipus: we
must suppose that the host somiiehow knows beforehand that at some
future time a guest of his will (or may) die in this fashion. A prudent
host, therefore, will refrain entirely from this sort of hospitality, re-
fusing either to ” risk an accident ” or to ” tempt providence,” according
to the explanation which appeals to him the more. To be sure, it is
unlikely that he will so refrain, in the presumable absence of an
oracular warning, but the criterion of the ” calculable ” is not eliminated
thereby, because he may still be guided by the laws of probability (e. g.,
the tables of risks prepared by insurance companies). This, in fact,
would be the only source of foreknowledcge according to a purely ” ex-
perimenital ” view of the problem. Alexander, in ascribing a partial
foreknowledge to the gods (De Fato, 30-1), runs needlessly afoul of a
difficult imletaphysical problem (cf. E. B. Stevens, “Divinity and delib-
eration,” A. J. P., LIV [1933], pp. 225-46).

1 Responsibilty was incurred for such an act according to Aristotle,
Rhet., I, 10, 1368 B 37 ff.; 1369 A 4. It is virtually forced upon Oedipus
because he finds that the curse which he has laid upon the unknown
malefactor (Oed. R. 246-51) comes flying back and seizes upon himself
(cf. 294-5; 350-3; 744-5; 819-20; 830-3; 1291). As a man of his word,
he cannot honorably refuse this self-imposed penalty.

14 Maurice Croiset remarked very justly (Bist. de la litt. gr., III
[Paris, 18992], p. 257): “Une tragedie, a la fin de laquelle on pourrait

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FATE, CHANCE, AND TRAGIC ERROR. 355

his patricide was predestined, but to explain his homicide he

wavers between fate (witness the “denuntiative” oracles) and

free will (witness his admission of 6py71). To chance there is lio
appeal whatever.

In fact, the whole play contains only one episode in which

chance presumes to dispute the field, and its repulse is sudden

and decisive. It is that in which the messenger reports the

death, by natural causes, of King Polybus of Corinth. Due to a

misunderstanding it has been thought that Oedipus is destined

to slay this, his supposed father, so Jocasta receives the news
exultantly as proof that the oracles are worthless (Oed. R. 952-

3). Polybus’ death, she says, was only an accident, and fate,

through the agency of Oedipus, had no hand in it (948-9):

KGL VVV 0o8E

7rpOS T`S Tv’X7S OAXIEV OV’fE TOVO V7rO.

After cautiously verifying the facts, Oedipus agrees (964-72),

then has misgivings; the second part of the oracle is still a source

of fear so long as Merope lives (976). But Jocasta tries to reas-

sure him by enlarging upon her new-found philosophy (977-9):

T-t o’ av fo/oEr’ p qnros , T_ TN TxDsT
KpcLT4E, 7rpovoba ‘ CYTtV OVEV o c’4;

ELK17 XpaflTOV C7V, OT(OS OVV1U-O’ TV3.

dire absolument du personnage principal qu’il a eu tort ou raison, aurait

quelque chose d’abstrait et d’etroit et ne ressemblerait pas ‘a la vie;

elle serait sans profondeur et sans attrait.” It is not intended here to

multiply subjective criticisms of the dramatist, but only to see what

basis he affords for the interpretation of the philosopher. The ” Sopho-

clean ” approach has often been treated adequately enough, e. g., in an

Antrittsrede by Siegfried Sudhaus, Kbnig Odipus’ Schuld (Kiel, 1912);

the point of view is indicated in a note on p. 13: ” Den Begriff Schuld

verstehe ich natiirlich iuberall nur im Sophokleischen Sinne; . . .” In

the “Aristotelian sense ” Sudhaus’ very title would be a misnomer. In

extending the concept of a/hapria to various ” tragic heroes,” critics

have tended strangely to misprize Aristotle and cherish overfondly the

dicta of sundry moderns. Despite their general excellence, even the

most recent studies are not altogether free from this false emphasis.

See S. E. Bassett, “The ‘AgaprTa of Achilles,” T. A. P. A., LXV (1934),
pp. 47-69; A. S. Pease, ” Dido’s Tragic Flaw ” and “Aeneas’s Tragic

Flaw,” pp. 38 f. and 44-47 of his exhaustive commentary on the Aeneid,

Bk. IV (Harvard University Press, 1935) ; and (Mrs.) Minnie Keys

Flickinger, The ‘AluaprTia of Hophocles’ Antigone, Iowa Studies in Classi-
cal Philology, No. II (Scottdale, Pa., The Mennonite Press, 1935).

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356 ROGER A. PACK.

The messenger, an interested listener, asks for an explanation
(989-99), then, thinking to relieve Oedipus of this second fear

as well, he discloses a fact which unexpectedly brings back the
first-that Polybus and Mlerope were only the adoptive parents.’5
As the truth dawns uponl Jocasta she begs Oedipus to drop the
investigation.16 Her new philosophy thus suddenly overthrown,

she returns to the old, as shown by her significant vocative, ” ill-
fated ” (1068, 1071). Oedipus misunderstands her motive. He
thinks she is only afraid he may prove to be of humble birth
(1070; 1078-9). Having accepted her reasoning all too com-

pletely, he counts himself the son of Tyche, for whom he feels
no shame (1080 ff.). The next episode brings the full revela-

tion, and with it Oedipus reverts to his former belief.
So we have found that in the main the atmosphere of the play

is fatalistic, free will being reflected only in the opyV of Oedipus

and chance only in a momentary attitude of Jocasta. If by
” tragedy of fate ” is meant a drama in which fate is the sole
motivating factor, it is correct to deny its existence. Yet it
ought not to be forgotten that fate is a normal and important
concomitant of error when taken in the sense defined by Aristotle.

ROGER A. PACK.
ANN ARBOR, MICH.

15 LI. 1016 ff. In Poetics, 11, this episode is cited as an example of a
peripeteia or re’versal, and that it is, in the philosophical background
of the play as much as its action.

16 LI. 1056 ff. Some critics have thought that Oedipus’ acjAapr1a is his
curiosity and insistence on learning all the facts. But this rests on the
assumption that if the truth had never been uncovered no harm would
have been done, and that any misdeed is pardonable so long as it remains
concealed! Surely such reasoning would have be’en abhorrent to Greek
ethics. Granted that this impulsive curiosity of his is of a piece with
the impulsiveness which prompted the slaying of Laius, still we cannot
look for his a’uapTr?7a proper in the play itself, which is merely a Xvs,
but only in the ‘TLts which precedes it (cf. Poetics, 1453 B 29 ff.).

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• Contents

350
351
352
353
354
355
356

• Issue Table of Contents

American Journal of Philology, Vol. 60, No. 3 (1939), pp. 273-400
Tenney Frank [pp. 273-287]
Horace and the Theory of Imitation [pp. 288-300]
Gnomonica in Aulus Gellius [pp. 301-306]
Cicero’s Accuracy of Characterization in His Dialogues [pp. 307-325]
Lucius Seius Caesar, Socer Augusti [pp. 326-332]
A Paraclausithyron from Pompeii: A Study of C.I.L., IV, Suppl. 5296 [pp. 333-349]
Fate, Chance, and Tragic Error [pp. 350-356]
Census Equester [pp. 357-362]
Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 363-379]
Review: untitled [pp. 380-381]
Review: untitled [pp. 381-382]
Review: untitled [pp. 382-384]
Review: untitled [pp. 384-385]
Review: untitled [pp. 385-390]
Review: untitled [pp. 391-392]
Review: untitled [pp. 392-393]
Review: untitled [pp. 393-394]
Review: untitled [pp. 395-397]
Review: untitled [pp. 397-398]
Review: untitled [pp. 398-399]
Books Received [pp. 399-400]

Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King”

Author(s): R. Drew Griffith

Source: Phoenix , Summer, 1993, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 95-114

Published by: Classical Association of Canada

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1088579

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS? ALLEGED SCAPEGOATING
IN SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPUS THE KING

R. DREW GRIFFITH

IN HIS RECENT BOOK, Sophocles’ Oedipus: Evidence and Self-Conviction,’
Frederick Ahl argues that the text of Oedipus the King offers no proof
for the conclusion, drawn by the protagonist himself, that he has killed
his father and slept with his mother. Oedipus’ self-conviction, he argues,
owes more to the clash of self-interested, half-true statements and false
assumptions of Sophocles’ characters, that is to their rhetoric,2 than to any
logic in the play’s quasi-legal inquiry. The implicatiof of this argument is
that the question posed by traditional interpreters of whether the play is a
tragedy of fate or of free-will is wrong-headed and irrelevant. The present
work critiques the argument of Ahl and of those who have anticipated his
reading. It advocates the traditional idea that Oedipus did in fact do what
he convicts himself of, suggesting that many of the play’s inconsistencies
upon which Ahl bases his argument are evidence not of the innocence of
Oedipus but of the controlling power of Apollo.

Ahl argues that “in this play, no conclusive evidence is presented that
Oedipus killed his father and married his mother.”3 By this he does not sim-
ply mean that Oedipus killed Laius under such extenuating circumstances
as that he did not know his identity, he was provoked to kill against his will,
he was fated by the gods to do so, and as a result he must be accounted
innocent. This, I take it, is the mainstream view of the play among classi-
cists and is well stated in E. R. Dodds’s essay, “On Misunderstanding the
Oedipus Rex”4 and it was Oedipus’ own position in Oedipus at Colonus
270-274. (This view is itself seriously flawed, as I have attempted to show
elsewhere.)5 Ahl’s claim is much more radical. According to him, Oedipus
is totally innocent of the crime of which he is accused; he never laid a finger
on Laius, who died instead at the hands of persons unknown. Thus not only

1F. Ahl, Sophocles’ Oedipus: Evidence and Self-Conviction (Ithaca 1991); referred
to henceforth by author’s name alone. An earlier version of this paper was read at the
University of Western Ontario on November 8, 1991. I am grateful to the audience on
that occasion as well as to Professor Emmet Robbins and two anonymous referees for
Phoenix for much helpful criticism and advice.

2Ahl 15.
3Ahl x.

4E. R. Dodds, “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex,” G&R 13 (1966) 37-49 =
The Ancient Concept of Progress (Oxford 1973) 64-77.

5R. D. Griffith, “Asserting Eternal Providence: Theodicy in Sophocles’ Oedipus the
King,” ICS 17 (1992) 193-211.

95

PHOENIX, VOL. 47 (1993) 2.

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96 PHOENIX

have all the generations of classical scholars misread the play, but Oedipus
himself misreads it in wrongly convicting himself of the crime.

Before considering the innovative aspects of Ahl’s case, let me set it
in the context of the play’s Rezeptionsgeschichte. This is important, for
the advocacy of Oedipus’ innocence has a more interesting history than
is immediately apparent from Ahl’s work. I will therefore summarize and
critique the works of three of Ahl’s precursors before moving on to consider
his own new contributions.

Ahl’s most recent and tenacious precursor in advocating the innocence of
Oedipus is social scientist Rene Girard. Girard has a fascinating theory that
purports, like all great theories, to explain everything.6 Although nominally
a professor of French literature, Girard allows his thought to range over
issues that are best called anthropological and to concern itself chiefly with
the omnipresence of violence in human societies both present and past. The
source of this violence, says Girard, is “triangular desire,” man’s tendency
to want what his neighbour wants simply because his neighbour wants it.
Such desire traces out the triangle of desired object, desiring subject, and
equally desiring neighbour, who mediates between the two.7 (This is not
quite the same thing as envy, which is the desire for what one’s neighbour
already has.) The subject reveres the mediator, hence his imitation of him,
and at the same time, since he recognizes him as his rival in the struggle
to obtain the object of their mutual desire, he resents him; this conflict of
attitudes is, in a word, hatred.” The subject in one triangle will inevitably
also be the subject, object, or mediator in some other and so the pattern
spreads throughout all of society in an infinite latticework of hate. This
structure of endless triangles of opposing force is strained so taut that any
blow delivered to any part of it will cause the whole thing to shatter. When
this happens, a crisis results. Society must respond to the crisis in order to
return to its normal state, and this response, in Girard’s view, inevitably
takes the form of the scapegoating mechanism.
The operation of this mechanism may be discerned in literary texts by
means of four stereotypes. First, there is the crisis involving the generalized

61 will refer to the following among R. Girard’s works in abbreviated form: Deceit =

Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, tr. Y. Freccero (Baltimore 1965); “Symitrie” = “Symitrie
et dissym6trie dans le mythe d’Oedipe,” Critique 249 (February 1968) 99-135; Violence
= Violence and the Sacred, tr. P. Gregory (Baltimore and London 1977); Scapegoat =
The Scapegoat, tr. Y. Freccero (Baltimore 1986); Job = Job: The Victim of his People
(Stanford 1987); “Generative” = “Generative Scapegoating,” in R. G. Hamerton-Kelly
(ed. , Violent Origins (Stanford 1987) 73-105.
Girard, Deceit 1-52.
8Girard, Deceit 10.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 97

loss of difference within society. For example, there may be a plague that
kills rich and poor, just and unjust without distinction. Second, there are
allegations of violations of those taboos that establish social order. For
example, the dead king may be rumoured to have been murdered as though
he were an enemy. Third, someone will be chosen who bears the “mark of
the victim,” which can be any sign that the person is out of the ordinary.
For example, the person may be a foreigner, he may have a limp, he may
even be set apart by his unusual power, for example by being himself a
king. Fourth, the society will unanimously direct a violent attack upon this
marked person, killing him or driving him away in an attempt to cure the
plague that set off the crisis.
It is of prime importance that the scapegoat is chosen “for inadequate

reasons, or perhaps for no reason at all, more or less at random” from
among all those who bear “marks of the victim”9 and that he is completely
innocent of the charges brought against him. This is true even though his
persecutors are acting in good faith and believe him to be guiltyo’0 and even
though he probably is so imbued by the outlook of his society that he shares
their view.1”

Girard illustrates this mechanism with a myth of the Yahuna Indians12
and with a text by the fourteenth-century poet Guillaume de Machaut con-
cerning the contemporary persecution of Jews during the Black Death in
France (people die of plague, it is rumoured that the wells have been poi-
soned, the Jews are alleged to have done so, a pogrom ensues),’3 but he
wishes to show that this phenomenon has been with human society since
time immemorial and that it stands at the centre rather than at the pe-
riphery of our culture, and so turns to the classical period in quest of an
example. He could easily have found many examples of scapegoat-rituals
in ancient Greece or Rome. Rituals in which a scapegoat, or

mous literary representations of them, such as the driving of Encolpius from
Marseilles in Petronius’ Satyricon, or the leading of Lucius around Hypata
during the Festival of Laughter in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. The classical
world also offers, alas, examples of scapegoating in the broader sense of
persecution: one thinks of ostracism as well as of the Athenians’ prosecu-

9Girard, “Generative” 78; this idea is already present in “Symetrie” 103. This idea is
obviously correct and the persecution-concept by definition demands it. In what follows
I will criticize Girard not for holding this view, but for adhering to it too little.
10Girard, Scapegoat 8.
“1Girard, Scapegoat 9.
12Girard, “Generative” 79.
13Girard, Scapegoat 2.
14E.g., J. Bremmer, “Scapegoat Rituals in Ancient Greece,” HSCP 87 (1983) 299-

320.

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98 PHOENIX

tion on false charges of Pericles,'” Aspasia, and Anaxagoras’6 during the
great plague (Thuc. 2.65.3, P1. Grg. 516a, Plut. Per. 32, 35, and Diod. Sic.
12.45.4). But Girard is not content with these; he chooses instead Sopho-
cles’ Oedipus the King. The idea that the Oedipus-myth reflects scapegoat
ritual goes back to Jane Harrison and has been accepted among others by
Jean-Pierre Vernant, who claims that Oedipus occupies an ambiguous po-
sition as at once tyrant and scapegoat;17 nevertheless, Girard goes further
and argues that Oedipus is an example of secular persecution. His choice
of this myth is evidently motivated by the fact that this text is central to
the two pillars of French intellectual life, psychoanalysis and structuralism.
Sophocles’ text received influential analyses in Freud’s On the Interpreta-
tion of Dreamsi8 and Levi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology.19 If Girard
can prove that both of these central disciplines have failed to lay bare the
real point of this shared proof-text, his theory will have gone a long way
toward usurping their supremacy. (This suspicion regarding Girard’s mo-
tive is corroborated by the fact that scattered throughout his writings one
finds attacks upon his two rivals, Freud and Levi-Strauss.)20 Girard has
returned to Oedipus repeatedly in his writings, from an article published
in 1968 until his most recent discussion in 1987.21

15J. Beloch, Die attische Politik seit Perikles (Leipzig 1884); H. Swoboda, “Uber den
Prozess des Perikles,” Hermes 28 (1893) 536-598; and D. Kagan, The Archidamian War
(Ithaca, N.Y. 1974) 90-93.

16A. E. Taylor, “On the Date of the Trial of Anaxagoras,” CQ 11 (1917) 81-87; J. A.
Davison, “Protagoras, Democritus and Anaxagoras,” CQ NS 3 (1953) 33-45, at 41-
45; J. Mansfeld, “The Chronology of Anaxagoras’ Athenian Period and the Date of his
Trial,” Mnemosyne 32 (1979) 39-60, 33 (1980) 17-95; and L. E. Woodbury, “Anaxagoras
and Athens,” Phoenix 35 (1981) 295-315 = Collected Writings (Atlanta 1991) 355-375.

17J. E. Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge 1921) xli,
who writes, “behind the Old King Oedipus is the figure of the scapegoat”; F. Fergusson,
The Idea of a Theatre (Princeton 1949, repr. Garden City, N.Y. 1953) 39; J.-P. Vernant,
“Ambiguity and Reversal: on the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex,” tr. P. duBois
New Literary History 9 (1977-78) 475-501, at 486-489 = Mythe et tragedie en Grace
ancienne (Paris 1972) 117-122; W. Burkert, Greek Religion, tr. J. Raffan (Cambridge,
Mass. 1985) 84, and id., Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley
1979, Sather Classical Lectures 47) 65; R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford 1983) 257-280, esp.
259.

18Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works (Lon-
don 1953) 4.260-264.

19C. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris 1958) 235-242.
20E.g., “Examples [of parricide and incest in myth] are so numerous-so numerous

and so diverse, as a matter of fact, that they cast doubt on the special significance Freud
conferred on the two particular instances he so passionately espoused, the patricide and
mother incest of Oedipus” (Girard, “Generative” 83), and “The triangle is a model of
a sort, or rather a whole family of models. But these models are not ‘mechanical’ like
those of Claude Levi-Strauss” (Deceit 2).

21Girard, “Symetrie,” passim; Violence 68-88; Scapegoat 25-30; Job 33-40; and
“Generative,” passim.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 99

The choice of Sophocles’ text-and let me emphasize that it is Sophocles’
rather than any other version of the myth that Girard has in mind22-is
not, however, a happy one. In order to lay bare the persecution-stereotypes
underlying the text, Girard retells it as though it were a historical docu-
ment, apparently on the assumption that the text is a dim recollection of
some real persecution. He writes:

Harvests are bad, the cows give birth to dead calves; no one is on good terms
with anyone else. It is as if a spell had been cast on the village. Clearly, it is
the cripple who is the cause. He arrived one fine morning, no one knows from
where, and made himself at home. He even took the liberty of marrying the
most obvious heiress in the village and had two children by her. All sorts of
things seemed to take place in their house. The stranger was suspected of having
killed his wife’s former husband, a sort of local potentate, who disappeared under
mysterious circumstances and was rather too quickly replaced by the newcomer.
One day the fellows in the village had had enough; they took their pitchforks and
forced the disturbing character to clear out.23

Girard characterizes this account as a “slight modification” of the origi-
nal text,24 but in fact Girard’s story differs from Sophocles on four major
points (if we consider the claim that Oedipus had two rather than four
children [cf. lines 1459-65] rather as a slip of the pen than as a delib-
erate change). In Sophocles there is no hint that anyone has suspected
Oedipus of having killed his wife’s former husband until Teiresias comes
on stage and makes this scandalous, scarcely comprehensible allegation.
Then too there is no reason to think that Oedipus is portrayed with a
limp,25 and he is obviously not in the habit of discussing his old injury
(1033); it is therefore incorrect to characterize him as a cripple. More-
over, in Sophocles’ version, by contrast with that of Cocteau and Stravin-
sky, it is not “the fellows in the village” but Oedipus himself who pro-
nounces sentence of exile, and as it happens the exile does not, in the
course of this play at least, occur (although it is clearly foreshadowed
in lines 96-101 and 305-309).26 (While we avoid the error of claiming

22Girard, Scapegoat 25; Girard has lately retreated from this position, mentioning
Sophocles only once in his latest treatment, “Generative” 85.
23Girard, Scapegoat 29.
24Girard, Scapegoat 30.
250. Taplin, “Sophocles in His Theatre,” in J. de Romilly (ed.), Sophocle (Ge-

neva 1982, Fondation Hardt: Entretiens sur l’antiquite classique 29) 155-183, at
155.

26M. Davies, “The End of Sophocles’ O.T.,” Hermes 110 (1982) 268-278. J. March,
The Creative Poet (London 1987, BICS Supplement 49) 148-154 revives the theory
of Schneidewin and Graffunder that the present ending of the play was written not
by Sophocles but by another poet of the same name (his grandson, to accompany the
posthumous premiere of Oedipus at Colonus). This suggestion may be correct and
it is in any case impossible to refute speculation of this kind. I note, however, that

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100 PHOENIX

that the Thebans exiled Oedipus, we must not claim that he volunteers
to be chased out like the willing victim of an animal sacrifice or the vol-
unteers for self-sacrifice who people Euripides’ tragedies.27 We will see
that Oedipus is neither victimized nor self-victimizing; his passage of sen-
tence upon himself is evidence not of any irrational destructiveness on the
part either of others or of himself, but of his impartiality in executing the
duties of his office.) Most important, perhaps, is the fact (to which we
shall return) that Girard’s rewriting of the text suppresses all mention of
Apollo. But these problems in Girard’s translation of the text into historio-
graphic language pale by comparison with his odd analysis of the resulting
tale.

Girard’s discussion of the scapegoat-mechanism in general is reminiscent
of the old woman who “[w]hen accused of having made a hole in a kettle
she had borrowed, … argued simultaneously that the kettle did not have
a hole in it, that it had already had one when she borrowed it, and that
the hole she made in it added to its value.””‘ Girard says at once that no
crime has actually been committed, that there was in fact a crime, but that
the scapegoat is innocent of any involvement in it, and that the scapegoat
is guilty of the crime, but that this guilt does not justify the punishment
that he receives. The question of guilt cannot be treated in so cavalier a
manner; we should distinguish more clearly than does Girard between the
victim either of an annual scapegoating ritual or of a spontaneous eruption
of persecution on the one hand and the “fall-guy” made to shoulder all the
blame by his fellow conspirators or the self-confessed criminal legitimately
punished for his crime on the other; the first category is separated from
the second by the all-important issue of guilt. Girard’s curious double
reasoning on the matter of guilt persists in his treatment of the Oedipus
story. Admittedly, he does not actually say that Laius is alive and well and
living in Paris. He does, however, claim both that Oedipus never murdered
Laius and that, although he did commit parricide, that fact is irrelevant to

March’s assumption that a Greek tragedy can be expected not to “[peter] out into
such irresolution” as found at the end of Oedipus the King (p. 152) does not carry
much conviction; the author of On the Sublime found it a common flaw of Sophocles’
plays that a3vvuvvr- 8′ dy~oS noXdki ixaL E-‘rovow dC&rtU rarc (33.5) and Plato favoured
aporetic endings for his dramatic dialogues, which, like Oedipus the King, often turn on
the revelation that someone has thought that he knew something that he did not know.
27Pace Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (above, n. 17)
71. On voluntary self-sacrifice, see J. Schmitt, “Freiwilliger Opfertod bei Euripides,”
Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 17 (1921) 1-103, and P. Roussel, “Le
Theme du sacrifice volontaire dans la trag6die d’Euripide,” RBPhil (1922) 225-240.
28G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, tr. J. E. Lewin (Ithaca and New York
1988) 41, n. 3.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 101

his eventual punishment. Let us consider the first of these two incompatible

claims (we will turn to the second in Part Ii below).
Girard points out that for much of the play the burden of guilt oscillates

freely between Oedipus, Teiresias, and Creon before finally settling upon
Oedipus alone. “It might very well,” says Girard, “have settled on another,
or on none.” He characterizes the determination of how the guilt shall fall as
a “mysterious mechanism.”,29 This mystery is caused, or at least enhanced,
by our own manipulation and delusion as spectators and readers,30 that is
to say from the fact that “[w]e cannot expect a scapegoat-generated myth
to be explicit about the arbitrariness of its victim’s choice.”31
But is the process whereby blame settles on one person rather than an-

other in this play as mysterious as Girard claims? Creon offers his own con-
vincing apologia in the play (lines 583-615): he has not committed regicide
or any other murder and is not conspiring against the throne, because it is
in his best interest not to do so. That Creon’s self-defense is unanswerable

is shown by the fact that Oedipus does not answer it, even though the rules
of a formal debate (dywv) require an answer. Blame does not attach to
Teiresias either, and for good reason. For one thing, he is blind. Blindness,
while doubtless a “mark of the victim,” is a great hindrance to an assassin,
as Oedipus himself remarks (348). Secondly, he is a seer, and in all litera-
ture antecedent to Sophocles, whenever a dispute arises between a seer and
a layman the seer is proven by the sequel to be correct.32 What is true of
seers in general is true specifically of Teiresias, for the chorus says as he
makes his first entrance that “truth is native to him alone of men” (298-
299, cf. Ant. 1092-94). If society always decides in favour of the claims of
the seer and against those of the “layman,” then the choice is–so far from
being arbitrarily random-predetermined and easily predictable. Thirdly,
Teiresias is innocent. This is not a fact that we know in its own right, but
it is a necessary inference from the fact that Oedipus alone is guilty. To
the consideration of this fact let us now turn.

Girard does not elucidate the way in which Sophocles’ play has deluded
so many spectators and readers; he refers to Sandor Goodhart,33 whose
reading of the play he endorses.34 Goodhart states “that the play uncovers
systematically the arbitrariness of the determination of any unique culprit,”
and “that the empirical issue (whether we decide Oedipus killed Laius or

29Girard, Violence 78.
30Girard, “Generative” 74.
31Girard, “Generative” 82.
32D. B. Levine, “Theoklymenos and the Apocalypse,” CJ 79 (1983) 1-7, at 6-7.
33S. Goodhart, “AaIx& “EqTxaoxe: Oedipus and Laius’ Many Murderers,” Diacritics 8

(1978) 55-71.
34Girard, Job 40.

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102 PHOENIX

not) is less important, finally, than the plague of scapegoat violence for which
it comes to substitute.”35 Goodhart in turn restates in more theoretical

form a reading of the play first advanced by Karl Harshbarger in his article,
“Who Killed Laius?”36 In excerpted form, Harshbarger’s argument is this:

There are two versions of Laius’ murder in Oedipus Rex. First, there is the version
that is current in Thebes and is expressed by Creon, Jocasta, the Chorus, and
presumably the Shepherd if he were to talk about it. Second, there is Oedipus’
version …. (120)
Although there are striking similarities in the two stories, there are important
differences … concern[ing] the number of murderers and the number of sur-
vivors …. (120-121)
[T]hese discrepancies are not accidents due to careless writing. The contradictions
are deliberately established for us by Sophocles.

Granting this, … as a matter of cold examination of the evidence, we cannot be
sure that Oedipus killed Laius …. (122)
If it is possible that Oedipus did not murder Laius, [we can] determine from the
play if there is anyone else who might have done it …. I have chosen a suspect
that might appear the least likely: the Chorus. I am not urging the certainty
of the Chorus’ guilt. I am only arguing the possibility of the Chorus’ guilt ….
(124)
If the Chorus is guilty, and if that guilt is made more painful by a renewed desire
to kill again, then the Chorus’ action in the play is to find a way to relieve it-
self …. (130)
The solution-which perhaps Oedipus senses and lends himself to-is a sacrifice.
(131)

But the empirical issue, in Goodhart’s phrase, of whether or not Oedi-
pus killed Laius is crucial to determining whether any scapegoat violence
is occurring in the play at all, and most readers will want to know how
Harshbarger’s surprising reading stands up against an examination of the
play.

The answer is that it does not stand up at all. It is true that there are
two separate accounts of the murder given in the play. Not to prejudice
the matter we could say that two separate murders are described. The two
accounts are of quite unequal evidentiary value. One is Oedipus’ eyewitness
testimony (800-813), the veracity of which is compellingly urged by the fact
that it goes against his self-interest. The other is hearsay reported by Creon
(118-127) and Jocasta (713-716). The source of this hearsay is a still living
witness, whose testimony alone would be acceptable in an Athenian court
(Dem. 46.6-8, 57.4), yet, although he appears as a character in this play,
he is not asked about this crucial point. Moreover, there are two reasons
to suspect this witness’s story. First, it is doubtful how much he actually

35Goodhart (above, n. 33) 56, n. 2.
36K. Harshbarger, “Who Killed Laius?,” Tulane Drama Review 9 (1964-65) 120-131.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 103

saw; he appears not even to have realized that Laius was dead until he
returned (none too quickly, apparently) to Thebes and saw Oedipus on the
throne (759). Second, as one who promised Jocasta that he would expose
the infant Oedipus but then avoided doing so, he “is not above practising a
deception.”37 Furthermore, on this occasion at least he has a strong motive
for lying: as part of the king’s entourage, he would have been expected
to protect the king or else die trying; the shame brought upon him by
his failure to do so can be mitigated to some extent by his emphasizing
(whether truthfully or not) the large number of attackers. Nevertheless,
the hearsay nature of this testimony is diminished by the fact that the
witness gave it in public (849), that is before members of the chorus among
others, and not just to Creon and Jocasta alone, and there is independent
confirmation 6f two important aspects of it: the time and the place of the
crime. All Thebans know that Laius died shortly before Oedipus came
to Thebes, and our independent knowledge that Laius was on an embassy
to Delphi when he was killed (114), an embassy that would have led him
through the crossroads, lends credibility to the shepherd’s claim that Laius
died at that place.
It is also true, as Harshbarger says, that the two murders differ as to the

number of reported assassins (one vs. many) and the number of reported
survivors (none vs. one). Let us consider what is known from the text
and from common background knowledge concerning these two murders.
The scene of the murder committed by Oedipus (801) was real rather than
fictitious and was well known to the play’s first audience.3″ Laius was
reportedly murdered at the same crossroads. We also know something of
the relative timing of the two murders. The following events happen within
a brief period (cf. 736-737): Oedipus consults the oracle and straightway
commits murder; news of Laius’ murder reaches Thebes; Oedipus solves the
riddle of the Sphinx and becomes king in Thebes. It is possible to narrow
down this time-frame considerably, in the following way. When he was
murdered, Laius was on an embassy to Delphi (114). Oedipus’ victim was
also on such a mission, as is shown by the herald who accompanies him
(802) as well as by his whereabouts at the time of death. The historian
Callisthenes reports that in the archaic period the Pythia granted oracular
responses only one day each year (FGrHist 124 F 49). Even in later times
the frequency of consultation had increased only to one day per month
(Plut. Mor. 292e-f). Since both Laius and Oedipus’ unidentified victim
were on their way to consult the oracle within the same space of a few
days, they must have been murdered on the same day.39

37W. C. Greene, “The Murderers of Laius,” TAPA 60 (1929) 75-86, at 84.
38See APPENDIX.

39It may be objected that Oedipus’ victim could not have been intending to consult
the oracle on the same day on which Oedipus had already obtained his response from

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104 PHOENIX

Given that both murders occurred at the same place at about the same
time, it is unlikely that they were different murders. First, in the account
of neither murder is mention made of the wreckage and gore littering the
intersection from any quadruple homicide already committed there. Second,
the lone survivor of Laius’ party can only recognize and fear the newcomer
Oedipus as he apparently does (759) if he has already seen him; the only
occasion for this sighting deducible from the text is the fatal encounter on
the road. At the same time, it is highly likely that the accounts are different
descriptions of the same murder. That variant versions of stories abounded
in ancient Greece (as at all times and places) is abundantly clear from
Herodotus’ Histories 1.5 etc. A recognition of them is already a feature of
Pindaric narrative in the generation before Sophocles (Pyth. 11.22-25, cf.
Homer Od. 2.30-33, 42-45).
The particular nature of the discrepancy in the two accounts of the
murder-for that is manifestly what we are dealing with-concerns num-
bers, as we have said. There are two symmetrical falsehoods: the surviving
shepherd wrongly augments the number of murderers; the murderer Oedi-
pus wrongly diminishes the number of survivors. Why does Laius’ slave
report that Laius was killed by more than one assassin (123 etc.)? Perhaps
because of the inaccuracy of his observation and because of his mendacity,
which we have already noted.40
The case with Oedipus’ misinformation is parallel. Too forthright to lie,
he may be mistaken. The lone survivor evidently did not linger on the scene

it, for the necessary purification and sacrifice must have taken some time. Yet, if Laius
was travelling in the great haste evinced by the behaviour of his entourage (805), he will
have spared little time for such niceties; we might expect that he shared Oedipus’ char-
acteristic impatience and chronic haste as well as his looks (743). For his part, Oedipus
will have arrived at the crossroads soon after consulting the oracle. The crossroads are
about 18 kilometres downhill from Delphi, a brief journey for a man sound of foot (as I
believe the actor’s portrayal will have shown Oedipus to be) who is running away from
something (796).
40A third possibility is that the shepherd is reporting honestly that supernatural
beings visible to himself alone contributed to the slaughter, as Apollo helped Paris kill
Achilles (I1. 22.359-360, Aesch. fr. 350 TrGF, P1. Resp. 383b) and as “one of the deities”
guides Oedipus to his hanging wife (1258). The phenomenon of perceiving more per-
sons than are actually present, known to us as Shackleton’s delusion (E. H. Shackleton,
South [London 1919] 209) was familiar to the ancients. One thinks of Nebuchadnez-
zar, who saw in his furnace not the three victims he had thrown in, but four persons
(Daniel 3.24-25), and of the phantom Deiphobus (II. 22.295). It is characteristic of such
manifestations that they are visible to one person alone, as is Achilles’ vision of Athena
(II. 1.198) or Priam’s of Hermes (I1. 24.444-446).
E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1951, Sather
Classical Lectures 25) 85, n. 25 says that at OT 1258 Sophocles credits Oedipus with
having “a temporary clairvoyance of supernatural origin.” Supernatural portents ac-
company the deaths of kings in Shakespeare also (cf. Julius Caesar 1.3.1-40 and Hamlet
1.1.113-116).

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 105

or otherwise make himself conspicuous, for, if he had, he would probably
not have survived and certainly not have remained ignorant of Laius’ death
as he apparently did (he expressed shock at learning upon his return to
Thebes that Laius was dead, 759). Moreover, Oedipus is prone to jump to
erroneously absolute conclusions and was no doubt too busy manslaughter-
ing to concern himself with making an accurate count.41 On the other hand,
Sophocles’ gods are capable of concealing from the sight of certain charac-
ters events that they do not wish them to see; the second burial of Polynices
during a sudden tornado (Ant. 417-422)42 and the apotheosis of Oedipus
within the grove of the Furies (OC 1661-64) are examples. Perhaps the
gods concealed the presence of the surviving shepherd from Oedipus. The
possibilities that I have put forward as alternative explanations need not
constitute an either/or. The Greeks were not uncomfortable with a type
of thinking that some moderns label as “overdetermination,” according to
which seemingly incompatible human and divine agencies work together to
the same end.

Ahl incorporates much of this earlier material into his own book, ac-
knowledging in particular the influence of Goodhart43 and culminating in
the presentation of Oedipus as a Girardian scapegoat.44 The objections that
I have already raised apply therefore to these sections of Ahl’s argument.
In addition, Ahl adds a number of interesting new insights to the case for
Oedipus’ innocence, in particular the isolation of rhetoric as the “mysteri-
ous mechanism” that determines how the burden of guilt shall fall.

Particularly deserving of comment are three of the new points that he
raises. First, he uses a euhemerizing comment in Pausanias (9.26.2-4, cf.
schol. Hes. Th. 326) to the effect that the sphinx was really the leader of
a band of highwaymen in order to suggest that she stands at the origin of
the rumour that robbers killed Oedipus (Soph. OT 122) and to offer her, as
against Harshbarger’s proposal of the chorus, as the prime suspect in the
case.45 This suggestion has no warrant in the text and its only merit is
novelty.

41It is better to ground the discrepancy in Oedipus’ account in a feature of his own
character and action as I have done than to find in it a maladresse on the part of
Sophocles as does L. Roussel, “Le R6cit du meurtre de Laios,” REG 42 (1929) 361-372,
at 370.

42See most recently R. Scodel, “Epic Doublets and Polynices’ Two Burials,” TAPA
114 (1984) 49-58.

43Whose article Ahl (62) characterizes as a “brilliant discussion.”
44 Ahl 262.

45Ahl 12, 63, 65.

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106 PHOENIX

Second, as well as clearing Oedipus of the charge of regicide, he denies
also that he is the son of Laius and hence an incestuous parricide. Ahl bases
this denial upon an unreliability that he detects in the information conveyed
by the anonymous Corinthian. The Corinthian, says Ahl, is motivated by
self-interest, contradicts himself in his account of his acquisition of the
infant Oedipus, and offers no proof of the new identity that he reveals for
the king.46 These points do not impugn the reliability of the Corinthian’s
report. It is true that he hopes to profit from his message (1006) just as the
guard who must bring unwelcome news to Creon in Antigone 223-236 fears
that he will suffer; this natural expectation (cf. Trach. 191, El. 772, Phil.
552) offers no textual warrant for the elaborate portrait of a manipulative
schemer that Ahl extrapolates from it. It is less true that he contradicts
himself in saying first that he found the infant Oedipus (1026) and then that
he was given him (1038). It is forgivably loose usage to speak of finding
a foundling (eeopnua, the word is used in 1106), especially in Greek, where
esptaicO means “to get, gain, procure” as well as “to find.”47 Thus, like most
messengers, the Corinthian moves from general statement to the specific
treatment of details; there is nothing suspect in this. It is absolutely false
to say that the Corinthian offers no proof of Oedipus’ identity as the son of
Laius and Jocasta. He offers the most traditional and effective recognition-
token, the scar, for he knows about the infirmity of Oedipus’ feet and this
must be genuine knowledge and not spur-of-the-moment deduction, as Ahl
implies, for the infirmity is invisible (Oedipus does not limp) and Oedipus is
not in the habit of discussing it (1033). This recognition-token establishes
the credibility of the Corinthian’s report in three ways. First, with it he
offers a simple and previously lacking explanation for Oedipus’ affliction.
Second, it enables him to offer the affliction itself as an explanation for
Oedipus’ name. Until now, Oedipus has thought that his name meant, “I
know about feet,” because he had solved a riddle concerning feet. But how
could Polybus, who named him, have known that he would one day solve
a foot-riddle? The only thing, in fact, that he did know about the baby he
was given was that his feet were distinctively maimed and hence he named
him, “my foot is swollen.” Third, the recognition-token dovetails perfectly
with Jocasta’s story of having exposed an infant with pierced ankles (718),
for while infant-exposure may have been common, infant-anklepiercing is
unparalleled.
Third, Ahl claims that the oracle comes neither from Apollo nor from
the Pythia, but from the theorist Creon, who as a Theban might well have
a vested interest in seeing Oedipus become a scapegoat.”4 Yet if Creon has

46Ahl 173 (self-interest), 178-180 (self-contradiction), 192 and 206 (lack of proof).
47LSJ s.v. ebplicco Iv.
48To the poetic mind the meaning of one’s name is often not actualized until the

middle or end of life: so Pelops was recognized as “black faced” only once he had grown

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 107

fabricated the response, why does he invite Oedipus to test it by going to
Delphi himself (603-604)? If he looks upon the oracle as an instrument of
political vengeance, why does he himself consult it as a first priority upon
his acquisition of power (1438-39)?

III

In the end, Ahl may allow the truth of all that I have said, and still
discount my arguments. In addition to distancing the self-punishment of
Oedipus from his guilt in the matter of parricide and incest, he follows
Girard49 in strengthening the connection between his self-punishment and
the plague. Bernard Knox has demonstrated that “the plague is not a
traditional feature of the Oedipus story …. [but apparently] a Sophoclean
invention”50 and Ahl rightly follows him in this view,51 noting that the
play’s opening description of a plague would have surprised the audience.

Why did Sophocles import the plague into the story of Oedipus? From
a biographical point of view, we can suggest two possible reasons why
Sophocles would have invented the plague at Thebes. The first reason,
and the central point of Knox’s and Ahl’s treatment of the question, is
that the latest possible date for the premiere of Oedipus the King is the
City Dionysia in March 426.52 This is four years after the date of the

a beard (Pindar 01. 1.68), Helen as the “ship-destroyer” only once her abduction had
become a casus belli (Aesch. Ag. 689), and Hippolytus as “loosed by horses” only once
he had met his death in a chariot-accident. That Oedipus views his name in this poetic
light rather than in the more prosaic way as a reflection of qualities apparent at the
time of his birth is suggested by the fact that his own reading of the name, oAIa n6&aS,
resembles the Doric form OiiS68aq found only in the choral songs (OT 495, 1193), while
the “prosaic” reading, oi&ei noiaS, suggested by the Corinthian resembles the common
(i.e., unpoetic) Attic form, OW{inou;.

49Girard, “Generative” 83-84.
50B. M. W. Knox, “The Date of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles,” AJP 77 (1956)

133-147, at 134-135. The state of our knowledge regarding the plague is left unchanged
by the discovery in 1976 of the Lille papyrus of Stesichorus’ Theban poem. Classicists
have not devoted much attention to the plague in the drama, once they have used it to
address the issue of dating. Rare exceptions are G. Daux, “Oedipe et le fl6au (Sophocle,
Oedipe-roi, 1-275),” REG 53 (1940) 97-122 and J. Duchemin, “La Peste de Thebes dans
l’Oedipe-Roi de Sophocle,” L’Information littdraire (1949) 108-115.

By contrast with the narrative poets of epic and lyric, the dramatists were compar-
atively free to innovate with their mythic material, because everyone realized that the
drama was a fictional recreation rather than the presentation of a literally true story; cf.
E. Robbins, “Pindar’s Oresteia and the Tragedians,” in M. Cropp et al. (eds.), Greek
Tragedy and Its Legacy: Essays Presented to D. J. Conacher (Calgary 1986) 1-11, at 3.

51Ahl 35.

52Knox’s argument is that Oedipus the King is parodied in Aristophanes’ Knights of

424 B.C.; some also find parodies of OT 629, & n6~tc, r6y in Aristophanes’ Acharnians of
February 425 as well as in Eupolis’ Cities (fr. 219 PCG) of 422 (the ever-sceptical Dawe

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108 PHOENIX

first outbreak of plague in Athens (Thuc. 2.47-55).53 For those (like Knox
and Ahl) who accept the latest possible date for the play, the plague-motif
will be a case of art imitating life. There is another possible reason, not
mentioned by them. Sophocles had an abiding interest in medicine, pos-
sibly stemming from his experience of the plague. He held the priest-
hood of the healing-hero, Amynus, the “warder off of evil” (Vita Sopho-
cleis T1 A.11 TrGF emend. Koerte; codicum lectio “AXwvo;)54 and his
house evidently doubled as a shrine to that hero. This was no pass-
ing interest on the poet’s part,55 for when the worship of Asclepius was
introduced into Athens several years after the probable date of Oedipus
the King, and before a temple was built for his worship, he was “enter-
tained as a guest” by Sophocles in his own house (Plut. Numa 4.6, Etym.
Magn. s.v. Ae5iv). On this occasion he evidently wrote the hymn to As-
clepius (737 PMG) mentioned in Lucian Encom. Demosth. 27, Philostr.
VA 3.17, and Philostr. Imag. 415.7. His concern for medicine is still
clear many years later in his description of Philoctetes’ snakebite in the
eponymous play of 409.56 On this view, Sophocles would have added the
plague to the plot of Oedipus the King in order to give a nod to his au-

ad OT 1515-30 doubts that these are allusions to Sophocles). The most recent discussion
of the dating is C. W. Miiller, Zur Datierung des sophokleischen Odipus (Wiesbaden
1984, AbhMainz 1984.5) who, perhaps rightly, dates the play before the war and (pp.
31-38) points to a difference between the Homeric and Sophoclean plagues on the one
hand and the (on his view) post-Sophoclean real-life plague on the other, namely that the
literary ones are temporary divine punishments, while the real-life one was an epidemic.
See further E. Robbins, “Achilles to Thetis: Iliad 1.365-412,” EMC/CV 34 (1990) 1-15,
at 7, n. 20.

530n the plague at Athens see J. C. F. Poole and A. J. Holladay, “Thucydides and
the Plague at Athens,” CQ NS 29 (1979) 282-300, who cite further bibliography to
which add A. Parry, “The Language of Thucydides’ Description of the Plague,” BICS
16 (1969) 106-118 = The Language of Achilles and Other Papers (Oxford 1989) 156-176,
A. Gervais, “A propos de la peste d’Athenes: Thucydide et la litterature de l’6pid6mie,”
BAGB (1972) 395-429, and J. S. Rusten, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War: Book
2 (Cambridge 1989) 179-194.
54U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Der Glaube der Hellenen (Berlin 1932) 2.225.
55By contrast with his (probable) service as Hellenotamias (treasurer of the confed-
eracy of Delos) in 443/2 and as general in 441/0, both of which were positions of one
year’s duration that left, as far as we can tell, no permanent imprint on his life or work.
See B. D. Merritt, “The Name of Sophokles,” AJP 80 (1959) 189 and L. E. Woodbury,
“Sophocles Among the Generals,” Phoenix 24 (1970) 209-224 = Collected Writings
(above, n. 16) 206-221.

56The argument says that the play was produced In Frauxvitov, i.e., in the third
year of the 92nd Olympiad; on medical concerns in the Philoctetes see E. Wilson, The
Wound and the Bow2 (London 1952) 260; for more general discussions of Sophocles
and medicine, see F. R. Walton, “A Problem in the Ichneutae of Sophocles,” HSCP 46
(1935) 167-189, at 170-176 and J. H. Oliver, “The Sarapion Monument and the Paean
of Sophocles,” Hesperia 5 (1936) 91-122, at 121-122.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 109

dience as though he were saying, “my message applies to you” (Hor. Sat.
1.1.69-70).57
The addition could, of course, change the message, but the degree and

nature of that change will be controlled by intertextual allusion, and Sopho-
cles’ plague may be explained entirely in intertextual rather than biograph-
ical terms. At the outset of a work of Greek literature the description of
a plague-which is in any case an obvious device to engage the specta-
tors’ attention-cannot possibly fail to recall the Iliad,s” a work in which a
haughty young man discovers to his horror that his obsession with protocol
and his own prestige has cost the life of his aptly named surrogate father,
Patroclus. This reminiscence makes of Achilles an apt analogue for Sopho-
cles’ Oedipus. It is possible to read the Iliad from a Girardian perspective,
although the scapegoat will be in the eye of the beholder. For some it might
be Thersites,59 for others, Helen, for others still Briseis,o6 but no scapegoat
found in the Iliad would be remotely analogous to the Oedipus scapegoat
posited by Girard.
Moreover, the connection between the plague and the punishment of

Oedipus is not immediate. The previous national affliction, the Sphinx, far
from sparking demands to avenge the murder of Laius, had the opposite
effect, preventing any investigation into the crime from taking place (130-
132). The present plague also brings with it no spontaneous outcry for
blood. The notion of punishing someone comes from the Pythia, or less
plausibly (as Ahl would have it) from Creon’s fabricated response. Even
if we assume, although nothing but universal scepticism would invite the
assumption, that the Pythia does not serve as Apollo’s spokesperson (cf.
712-713), we must conclude that she is speaking for herself alone, for as
a citizen of a different city residing in a foreign state she has neither the
motive nor the capacity to act as mouthpiece for any hypothetical collective
scapegoating urge of the Theban populace.
If the Pythia’s reply is what it claims to be, namely the word of Apollo,

then to Oedipus’ question of how he can save his city (71-72) Apollo appears

57Cf. Ahl 35.

580n the plague in the Iliad, see F. Bernheim and A. A. Zener, “The Sminthian
Apollo and the Epidemic among the Achaeans at Troy,” TAPA 108 (1978) 11-14.
59W. G. Thalmann, “Thersites: Comedy, Scapegoats, and Heroic Ideology in the

Iliad,” TAPA 118 (1988) 1-28, at 22-26.
60Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (above, n. 17) 74,

and M. Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic (Ithaca
and London 1989) 21.
Oedipus’ counterpart in the opening of the Iliad is Agamemnon, the king who causes

the plague, as Oedipus ostensibly causes the plague in the OT. No-one would suggest
that Agamemnon is a scapegoat because, with his cruelty (Il. 6.55-60), incompetence
(II. 2.1-483), and impiety (supplied by the later tradition: Aesch. Ag. 338-340, 524-
527), he richly deserves the misfortunes that he reaps.

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110 PHOENIX

to reply, “Pollution is nurtured in this land. Drive it out … by driving out a
man or avenging murder by murder, for bloodshed has been storming on the

city” (97-101). This reply, especially its first word, “pollution” (?piaa?La),
seems to involve the notion that a ritually polluted person is magically a
carrier of physical disease. Although the idea is well attested in Greek
literature, we ourselves regard it as nothing less than barbaric and even
Sophocles knew that disease was spread by contact with diseased persons
or corpses (Oavara

Sophocles fails to tell us that the expulsion occurs, much less that it
ends the plague. This would be insignificant if the plague were a tradition
already known to the audience, for the dramatist might find it unnecessary
to belabour the obvious.64 If, however, Knox and Ahl are right to claim
that the plague is an invention of Sophocles (and I believe that they are),
then he will also be obliged to invent the end of the plague, if there is to be
one. That he does not do so, and that Oedipus’ expulsion in other mythic
accounts does not end Thebes’ troubles (there follow the violent deaths of
Polyneices, Eteocles, Antigone, Haemon, and Eurydice),65 encourages the
belief that Apollo is conceived of as demanding a legitimate prosecution
rather than as abetting a persecution for magical ends.

81Girard, Scapegoat 26.
62Ahl 39.

63Cf. 969-970, where Oedipus again shows his awareness of the riddling nature of the
oracle.

64D. H. Roberts, Apollo and his Oracle in the Oresteia (G*ttingen 1984, Hypomne-
mata 78) 24.

65Ahl 45.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 111

In his rewriting and analysis of the text, Girard had suppressed all men-
tion of Apollo and of the Pythia. Apollo is absent from Ahl’s reading
also, although for different reasons. Because Ahl sees the words of Apollo
that so influence the course of the action as a fraud perpetrated by Creon,
Apollo is wholly fenced off from the play; his existence is called into ques-
tion, his relevance flatly denied. This suppression of the role of Apollo
has a venerable ancestry in the criticism of the play. Aristotle’s treatment
in the Poetics of tragedy, of which he holds Oedipus the King to be the
greatest example, largely ignores its religious component. Stephen Halli-
well correctly remarks that “[t]he treatise’s minimal concern for religion
should … be taken at face-value as a virtual rejection of any central role
for modes of religious understanding or explanation within the scheme of
a poetic plot-structure.”66 Walter Burkert, speaking of the myth rather
than the play, writes that, “if myth is defined as a tale about gods, or
as a sacred tale, this would exclude central parts of Greek mythology, in-
cluding Oedipus.”67 It is with this most orthodox part of Ahl’s analysis
rather than with any of its more radical aspects that I find the greatest
fault.

The oracle that brings about the long-overdue inquiry into the murder
of Laius is only one of four direct interventions of Apollo in the course of
events staged or narrated in the play. It was Apollo who predicted to Laius
that his son would kill him (713-714), a prediction that brought about the
maiming and abortive exposure of the infant Oedipus. It was Apollo, again,
who predicted to Oedipus that he would kill his father and sleep with his
mother (791-793), a prediction that caused him to avoid Corinth and come
to Thebes. It is Teiresias in his capacity as messenger of Apollo (284-285,
410) who tells Oedipus at the outset of the play that he is the murderer of
Laius (362), a statement that brings about a demonstration for our benefit,
as it were, of Oedipus’ considerable temper.
In addition to these four direct interventions, we must see the fortuitous

arrival of the Corinthian stranger at the very moment of the inquest into
the regicide, an event that enables Oedipus at last to discover his parent-
age, either as a flaw in the composition of the play, an improbability of

66S. Halliwell, in G. A. Kennedy (ed.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism 1:
Classical Criticism (Cambridge 1989) 172.
67Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (above, n. 17) 22.

To be fair, Burkert does accord due weight to Apollo’s role in this play; cf. his excellent
remarks in Oedipus, Oracles, and Meaning (Toronto 1991, The Samuel James Stubbs
Lecture Series 1) 23, “there remains the fact that the problem of gods, and of oracles and
seers, is … much in the foreground in the whole play, even if many modern interpreters
tactfully tend to gloss this over,” and at 27, “The horrible breakdown of Oedipus proves
the veracity of divine prescience, proves the existence of an all-comprehending intelli-
gence that envelops this world of ours, proves the function of the ‘universal signifier’ and
thus the meaning of the universe. This proof is worth the sacrifice, the breakdown of
this man with whom we unwillingly identify, Oedipus.”

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112 PHOENIX

the sort for which Zoilus was wont to “whip” Homer,”6 or as another in-
tervention of Apollo-covert, this time-in the action of the play. We owe
it to Sophocles to take the latter possibility seriously. We may wish to
see the hand of Apollo at work in the play’s other coincidences, namely
that the sole survivor of the attack upon Laius is-“astonishingly, wildly
improbably”69–the same man who was too tender-hearted to expose the
infant Oedipus (1051-53) and that the Corinthian is the same man who
gave the infant to Polybus and Merope (1022). The large number of these
improbabilities argues either for a wildly high degree of coincidence or for
the operation of an invisible, purposive causal force. The only candidate
for such a force mentioned in the play is Apollo. And who, if not Apollo,
was the 8aig6vov … n who led Oedipus to the body of his wife (1258)?
Whatever view we ourselves finally adopt, both Teiresias and Oedipus see
in all of these things the workings of Apollo (376-377, 1329-30).

IV

Near the beginning of this paper, I offered an account of triangular desire;
let me conclude with another geometrical parable. When open, a belt is a
longish rectangle. Done up properly, it has the shape of a cylinder. If the belt
gets accidentally twisted through one hundred eighty degrees, the resulting
surface differs fundamentally from the cylinder. The mathematician August
Ferdinand M6bius discovered in 1865 that the surface, called the M6bius
strip, has only one side. This is not apparent when you look at just part
of the strip, which appears to have two sides like the original belt, but only
when you consider the whole thing. Mathematicians like to explain this
one-sidedness by saying that a fly who walks along the centre of the strip
without ever deviating from his path will eventually pass the antipodes of
his starting point (the point obtained by drilling a hole through the belt).
This fly has acquired almost mythic status: a sculpted shield over one of
the fireplaces at Princeton University shows him crawling along the M6bius
strip proving its one-sidedness to himself.70

68Oddly Voltaire, “Lettres sur Oedipe, III,” in Oeuvres completes, ed. L. Moland
(1877, repr. Nedeln, Liechtenstein 1967) 2.18-28, the modem Sophocleomastix, does
not complain about this facet of the play. Others do, however. See most recently J.
Peradotto, “Disauthorizing Prophecy: The Ideological Mapping of Oedipus Tyrannus,”
TAPA 122 (1992) 1-15, esp. 7.
69A. Cameron, The Identity of* Oedipus the King (New York and London 1968) 22,
quoted with approval by R. D. Dawe, Sophocles: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge 1982) 20.
Ahl (192) writes of this coincidence that “the fabric of credibility is stretched thin even
by the standards of comic recognition in Plautus or Shakespeare.”
70W. Lietzmann, Visual Topology, tr. M. Bruckheimer (London 1965) 110-113. The
fly is already mentioned in H. Seifert and W. Threlfall, Lehrbuch der Topologie (Leipzig
1934, repr. New York 1947) 8.

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OEDIPUS PHARMAKOS 113

A typical homecoming plot is like the cylinder of the correctly fastened
belt, uroborically illustrating the theme of Ma fin est mon commencement,
to quote Guillaume de Machaut once again.71 Oedipus’ homecoming de-
parts from the norm because of a one-hundred-eighty-degree simple twist
of fate. He comes back to whence he started, but in an inverted position:
having left as legitimate (if unwanted), he returns as usurper; having left as
Jocasta’s son, he returns as her husband. This twist of fate unites opposites
and accounts for the play’s many coincidences.
The spectacle that Sophocles affords us in this play is that of Oedipus

marching along like the mythical fly on his M6bius strip in order to return
to his point of origin and discover who he is. That the fly finds the two sides
of his strip to be one is no coincidence, but the result of a mathematical
law. That Oedipus finds that he has murdered his father and slept with
his mother is no mere coincidence either, but a logical, determinate fact.
Let us call what determines it (for want of any better name) the justice of
Apollo.

DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY
KINGSTON, ONTARIO K7L 3N6

APPENDIX: THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

In view of the confusion of the commentators on this point, it is worth
describing in detail the crossroads where Laius met his death. One road
runs roughly east-west from the gulf of Corinth through Delphi to Thebes.
This road is intersected at an oblique angle by a road from Daulis to the
north. This second road continues in a south-westerly direction beyond the
intersection to Ambrossus and hence to the sea, but this continuation is
not mentioned by Sophocles, is irrelevant to the situation, and should be
ignored. In other words, we are to think of a fork in the road72 rather than
of an intersection of two crossing roads, such as is indicated by the modern
name of the place, Stafriodhromo tou Mega. Oedipus enters the intersection
from Delphi, his victims from Thebes; Sophocles mentions Daulis only as

71W. J. Starr and G. F. Devine, Omnibus: Music Scores 1. Earliest Music through
the Works of Beethoven (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1964) 23-24. Further examples of this
clich6 include: “The beginning and the end are common,” Heraclitus 22 B 103 Diels-
Kranz, “En ma fin est mon commencement,” the motto embroidered on Mary Queen of
Scots’s chair of state (see M. Baring, In my End is my Beginning [New York 1931] vii),
and “In my beginning is my end,” T. S. Eliot, “East Coker,” 1.1.

72This generates “three roads” as the text repeatedly says, if one views the matter,
as the Greeks did, with reference to the point of intersection. We, on the other hand,
viewing it from the point of view of one or other of the roads, would speak of “two
roads.”

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114 PHOENIX

the coordinate for the third road. In the direction along which Oedipus is
travelling, the fork in the road represents a bifurcation and hence a choice;
in the direction in which his victims are travelling the fork constitutes the
convergence of an ineluctable fate.73

73R. C. Jebb in his commentary (Cambridge 1893) ad 733 and S. Rossiter, The Blue
Guides: Greece (London 1967) 367-368, seem to think that Laius is travelling along the
road from Daulis rather than along the direct road from Thebes, but this is obviously
wrong because (1) this would be the long route and Laius is in a hurry and (2) it is
fitting that Oedipus and Laius meet each other head-on.
It is not obvious what plot-events would have brought Laius and Oedipus to Potniae

(= mod. Greek Tachi, practically a southern suburb of Thebes) where the murder takes
place in Aeschylus (fr. 387a TrGF). Oedipus is evidently travelling north, overland
from Corinth (on his way to the Delphic oracle, which he will never get a chance to
consult?). The choice of Potniae for the encounter may have been suggested to Aeschylus
by religious considerations, for, as the home to a shrine of Demeter and Kore, it is an
appropriately uncanny place, rather than by any pragmatic plot considerations.

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• Contents

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• Issue Table of Contents

The Phoenix, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1993) pp. 95-188
Front Matter
Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” [pp. 95-114]
Deep Ambivalence: Notes on a Greek Cockfight (Parts II-IV) [pp. 115-124]
“Marriage More Shameful Than Adultery”: Slave-Mistress Relationships, “Mixed Marriages”, and Late Roman Law [pp. 125-154]
Notes and Discussions/Notes De Lecture
Green Lizards in Horace: “Lacertae Virides” in “Odes” 1.23 [pp. 155-157]
Book Reviews/Comptes Rendus
Review: untitled [pp. 158-159]
Review: untitled [pp. 159-161]
Review: untitled [pp. 161-162]
Review: untitled [pp. 163-165]
Review: untitled [pp. 165-168]
Review: untitled [pp. 168-169]
Review: untitled [pp. 170-174]
Review: untitled [pp. 174-177]
Review: untitled [pp. 177-181]
Review: untitled [pp. 181-183]
Review: untitled [pp. 183-185]
Review: untitled [pp. 185-187]
Review: untitled [pp. 188]
Back Matter

References

Pack, Roger A. “Fate, Chance, and Tragic Error.” The American Journal of Philology, vol. 60, no. 3, 1939, pp. 350–356. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/291299. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

Griffith, R. Drew. “Oedipus Pharmakos? Alleged Scapegoating in Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus the King.’” Phoenix, vol. 47, no. 2, 1993, pp. 95–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1088579. Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.