The Oedipus Trilogy — Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

By Sophocles

Disregard for messages from the oracles and gods doesn't turn out well for characters in Greek stories, and Oedipus is no exception. Encompassing murder and betrayal, incest and patricide, this set of three plays follows the life of a man doomed to suffer from birth. Sophocles wrote these classic Greek tragedies in fifth century BCE. This English translation, by F. Storr, was first published in 1912.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lerner Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781467756563

Book preview

PERSONAE

OEDIPUS THE KING

aRgument

To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant’s feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King of Corinth. Polybus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King’s son. Afterwards doubting his parentage he inquired of the Delphic god and heard himself the word declared before to Laius. Wherefore he fled from what he deemed his father’s house and in his flight he encountered and unwillingly slew his father Laius. Arriving at Thebes he answered the riddle of the Sphinx and the grateful Thebans made their deliverer king. So he reigned in the room of Laius, and espoused the widowed queen. Children were born to them and Thebes prospered under his rule, but again a grievous plague fell upon the city. Again the oracle was consulted and it bade them purge themselves of blood-guiltiness. Oedipus denounces the crime of which he is unaware, and undertakes to track out the criminal. Step by step it is brought home to him that he is the man. The closing scene reveals Jocasta slain by her own hand and Oedipus blinded by his own act and praying for death or exile.

dRamatis peRsonae

Oedipus.

The Priest of Zeus.

Creon.

Chorus of Theban Elders.

Teiresias.

Jocasta.

Messenger.

Herd of Laius.

Second Messenger.

Scene: Thebes. Before the Palace of Oedipus.

OEDIPUS THE KING

Suppliants of all ages are seated round the altar at the palace doors, at their head a PRIEST OF ZEUS. To them enter OEDIPUS.

OEDIPUS

My children, latest born to Cadmus old,

Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands

Branches of olive filleted with wool?

What means this reek of incense everywhere,

And everywhere laments and litanies?

Children, it were not meet that I should learn

From others, and am hither come, myself,

I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.

Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks

Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,

Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread

Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?

My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;

Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate

If such petitioners as you I spurned.

PRIEST

Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,

Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege

Thy palace altars—fledglings hardly winged,

and greybeards bowed with years; priests, as am I

of Zeus, and these the flower of our youth.

Meanwhile, the common folk, with wreathed boughs

Crowd our two market-places, or before

Both shrines of Pallas congregate, or where

Ismenus gives his oracles by fire.

For, as thou seest thyself, our ship of State,

Sore buffeted, can no more lift her head,

Foundered beneath a weltering surge of blood.

A blight is on our harvest in the ear,

A blight upon the grazing flocks and herds,

A blight on wives in travail; and withal

Armed with his blazing torch the God of Plague

Hath swooped upon our city emptying

The house of Cadmus, and the murky realm

Of Pluto is full fed with groans and tears.

Therefore, O King, here at thy hearth we sit,

I and these children; not as deeming thee

A new divinity, but the first of men;

First in the common accidents of life,

And first in visitations of the Gods.

Art thou not he who coming to the town

of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid

To the fell songstress? Nor hadst thou received

Prompting from us or been by others schooled;

No, by a god inspired (so all men deem,

And testify) didst thou renew our life.

And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,

All we thy votaries beseech thee, find

Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven

Whispered, or haply known by human wit.

Tried counselors, methinks, are aptest found¹

To furnish for the future pregnant rede.

Upraise, O chief of men, upraise our State!

Look to thy laurels! for thy zeal of yore

Our country’s savior thou art justly hailed:

O never may we thus record thy reign:—

He raised us up only to cast us down.

Uplift us, build our city on a rock.

Thy happy star ascendant brought us luck,

O let it not decline! If thou wouldst rule

This land, as now thou reignest, better sure

To rule a peopled than a desert realm.

Nor battlements nor galleys aught avail,

If men to man and guards to guard them tail.

OEDIPUS

Ah! my poor children, known, ah, known too well,

The quest that brings you hither and your need.

Ye sicken all, well wot I, yet my pain,

How great soever yours, outtops it all.

Your sorrow touches each man severally,

Him and none other, but I grieve at once

Both for the general and myself and you.

Therefore ye rouse no sluggard from day-dreams.

Many, my children, are the tears I’ve wept,

And threaded many a maze of weary thought.

Thus pondering one clue of hope I caught,

And tracked it up; I have sent Menoeceus’ son,

Creon, my consort’s brother, to inquire

Of Pythian Phoebus at his Delphic shrine,

How I might save the State by act or word.

And now I reckon up the tale of days

Since he set forth, and marvel how he fares.

’Tis strange, this endless tarrying, passing strange.

But when he comes, then I were base indeed,

If I perform not all the god declares.

PRIEST

Thy words are well timed; even as thou speakest

That shouting tells me Creon is at hand.

OEDIPUS

O King Apollo! may his joyous looks

Be presage of the joyous news he brings!

PRIEST

As I surmise, ’tis welcome; else his head

Had scarce been crowned with berry-laden bays.

OEDIPUS

We soon shall know; he’s now in earshot range.

[Enter CREON]

My royal cousin, say, Menoeceus’ child,

What message hast thou brought us from the god?

CREON

Good news, for e’en intolerable ills,

Finding right issue, tend to naught but good.

OEDIPUS

How runs the oracle? thus far thy words

Give me no ground for confidence or fear.

CREON

If thou wouldst hear my message publicly,

I’ll tell thee straight, or with thee pass within.

OEDIPUS

Speak before all; the burden that I bear

Is more for these my subjects than myself.

CREON

Let me report then all the god declared.

King Phoebus bids us straitly extirpate

A fell pollution that infests the land,

And no more harbor an inveterate sore.

OEDIPUS

What expiation means he? What’s amiss?

CREON

Banishment, or the shedding blood for blood.

This stain of blood makes shipwreck of our state.

OEDIPUS

Whom can he mean, the miscreant thus denounced?

CREON

Before thou didst assume the helm of State,

The sovereign of this land was Laius.

OEDIPUS

I heard as much, but never saw the man.

CREON

He fell; and now the god’s command is plain:

Punish his takers-off, whoe’er they be.

OEDIPUS

Where are they? Where in the wide world to find

The far, faint traces of a bygone crime?

CREON

In this land, said the god; "who seeks shall find;

Who sits with folded hands or sleeps is blind."

OEDIPUS

Was he within his palace, or afield,

Or traveling, when Laius met his fate?

CREON

Abroad; he started, so he told us, bound

For Delphi, but he never thence returned.

OEDIPUS

Came there no news, no fellow-traveler

To give some clue that might be followed up?

CREON

But one escape, who flying for dear life,

Could tell of all he saw but one thing sure.

OEDIPUS

And what was that? One clue might lead us far,

With but a spark of hope to guide our quest.

CREON

Robbers, he told us, not one bandit but

A troop of knaves, attacked and murdered him.

OEDIPUS

Did any bandit dare so bold a stroke,

Unless indeed he were suborned from Thebes?

CREON

So ’twas surmised, but none was found to avenge

His murder mid the trouble that ensued.

OEDIPUS

What trouble can have hindered a full quest,

When royalty had fallen thus miserably?

CREON

The riddling Sphinx compelled us to let slide

The dim past and attend to instant needs.

OEDIPUS

Well, I will start afresh and once again

Make dark things clear. Right worthy the concern

Of Phoebus, worthy thine too, for the dead;

I also, as is meet, will lend my aid

To avenge this wrong to Thebes and to the god.

Not for some far-off kinsman, but myself,

Shall I expel this poison in the blood;

For whoso slew that king might have a mind

To strike me too with his assassin hand.

Therefore in righting him I serve myself.

Up, children, haste ye, quit these altar stairs,

Take hence your suppliant wands, go summon hither

The Theban commons. With the god’s good help

Success is sure; ’tis ruin if we fail.

[Exeunt OEDIPUS and CREON]

PRIEST

Come, children, let us hence; these gracious words

Forestall the very purpose of our suit.

And may the god who sent this oracle

Save us withal and rid us of this pest.

[Exeunt PRIEST and SUPPLIANTS]

CHORUS

(Strophe 1)

Sweet-voiced daughter of Zeus from thy gold-paved

Pythian shrine

Wafted to Thebes divine,

What dost thou bring me? My soul is racked and shivers with fear.

(Healer of Delos, hear!)

Hast thou some pain unknown before,

Or with the circling years renewest a penance of yore?

Offspring of golden Hope, thou voice immortal, O tell me.

(Antistrophe 1)

First on Athene I call; O Zeus-born goddess, defend!

Goddess and sister, befriend,

Artemis, Lady of Thebes, high-throned in the midst of our mart!

Lord of the death-winged dart!

Your threefold aid I crave

From death and ruin our city to save.

If in the days of old when we nigh had perished, ye drave

From our land the fiery plague, be near us now and defend us!

(Str. 2)

Ah me, what countless woes are mine!

All our host is in decline;

Weaponless my spirit lies.

Earth her gracious fruits denies;

Women wail in barren throes;

Life on life downstriken goes,

Swifter than the wind bird’s flight,

Swifter than the Fire-God’s might,

To the westering shores of Night.

(Ant. 2)

Wasted thus by death on death

All our city perisheth.

Corpses spread infection round;

None to tend or mourn is found.

Wailing on the altar stair

Wives and grandams rend the air—

Long-drawn moans and piercing cries

Blent with prayers and litanies.

Golden child of Zeus, O hear

Let thine angel face appear!

(Str. 3)

And grant that Ares whose hot breath I feel,

Though without targe or steel

He stalks, whose voice is as the battle shout,

May turn in sudden rout,

To the unharbored Thracian waters sped,

Or Amphitrite’s bed.

For what night leaves undone,

Smit by the morrow’s sun

Perisheth. Father Zeus, whose hand

Doth wield the lightning brand,

Slay him beneath thy levin bold, we pray,

Slay him, O slay!

(Ant. 3)

O that thine arrows too, Lycean King,

From that taut bow’s gold string,

Reviews for The Oedipus Trilogy — Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone

[stillatim · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So... not over-rated. Fagles' translation is solid, much clearer than his Aeschylus, though I actually prefer the opacity he brought to that text. Of course, that might have been in Aeschylus. I will never learn Greek well enough to tell.

Antigone was the earliest of these plays, though the last within the narrative. I can't help but read it with my Hegel glasses on: the clash between Creon and Antigone is an example of a failed conceptual grasp of the world, in which the claims on us of family/tradition/ancient gods cannot be accommodated by our living in larger, civic communities. Divine law and human law sometimes do not go together, but only a tyrant would insist on hewing to the latter alone. Removing the Hegel glasses, I can see that Creon, to his credit, does change his mind. But this being Greece, by then it's all too late. The 'lesson', if you like, is simply that one has to exercise excellent judgment in these matters.

This question of judgment works through the Oedipus plays, as well; each tyrant (Oedipus in OK, Creon in OC) fails to use good judgment; the good king Theseus does exercise it, and thus Athens rules etc etc... I know we're 'meant' to think that these plays are really about always bowing down to the gods and accepting fate, but that just doesn't square with what actually happens: Athens succeeds because of Theseus's wisdom just as much as his piety; Thebes will eventually fall because of its kings' folly just as much as their impiety. In OK, Oedipus has the chorus's support in his argument with Tiresias, because Oedipus's defeat of the Sphinx acts as proof of his regality; but when he accuses Creon without evidence, they give up on him... because by acting without evidence, he shows poor judgment. And so on.

The best play for reading is easily Oedipus the King, which is horrifying and glorious in equal measure. Also, if anyone out there knows of a good book on Tiresias, let me know.

As for Knox's introductory essays, they're not particularly thrilling. There's too much plot-summary (good news for freshmen, I guess), and his insights are so skewed ("these plays aren't depressing! They're about how we do have some control over our lives!") that it's hard to take him seriously. but they're still worth reading.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I didn't enjoy these Ancient Greek Plays as much as others I have read in the last few months. I don't know if its the translation, or the subject matter. But I found the stories to be dry, convoluted, and rather boring. I found King Oidipus to be a tragic character that is too whiny and hypocritical. I really feel for his daughters, Imene and Antigone. They were caught in the web that is the curse of their family.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The oral traditions of Greece included the mythos of the life of Oedipus long before the first performance of this play, and the audience knew exactly what would happen before the gears of the plot begin turning. But the relentless, clockwork motion of the play kept theatergoers rapt then, as it does now, because watching fate unfold when it is known to you but not to the people who are its prisoners is a privilege borrowed from the gods.Oedipus is portrayed bold, mighty, and just, as the Priest claims him "greatest in all men's eyes".(l 40) Yet he also has human foibles and it is soon clear he has a destiny that, in spite of his actions, cannot be avoided. One theme of Oedipus the King is based on his hubris, but there is also the importance of his search for knowledge, the truth of his own being. Before the action of this play begins, Oedipus has already attempted to outrun fate, marking himself early for destruction. By attempting to escape a prophecy that he would kill his father, and leaving the palace at Corinth where he was raised, he sets the machinery of doom in motion.Traveling along the highways, he soon enough meets and murders a man he thinks is merely an overly aggressive stranger. Years later, he discovers that the dead man is his natural father, Laius, and that he has unwittingly performed the act he was trying to avoid. The play begins with Oedipus again attempting to reshape the arc of his life that was described by prophecy. The hints of his coming failure are numerous.In the Priest’s first long speech, when he begs Oedipus to save the city, he appeals to the king’s long experience—as a statesman, as a wanderer, as a ruler and as a vagrant. Unknown to the Priest and to Oedipus—but known to the audience—is that this king’s experience also includes killing his father and marrying his mother. The very experience to which the Priest appeals is moving Oedipus step by step to destruction. This exchange between the Priest and Oedipus is an example of how Sophocles builds dramatic tension into his play by including multiple levels of meaning in a single statement.The technique will be repeated throughout the play. It reappears just a few lines later, when Oedipus tells the Priest that he has asked for help from the Oracle at Delphi and will follow its advice or consider himself a traitor. With the borrowed omniscience of the gods, the audience knows that Oedipus is already a traitor for having killed Laius, and that he will be faced with pronouncing the judgment he has pronounced upon himself. It remains only to witness what happens.In another exchange weighted with similarly complex levels of meaning, Creon tells Oedipus what he has learned from the Oracle. Creon begins with the murder of Laius as background, and Oedipus says that he knows of the previous king, but has never seen him. Creon continues, delivering the Oracle’s instructions, and Oedipus vows to find and punish the murderer of Laius.While the Oracle’s wishes are being delivered by Creon and while Oedipus reacts to them, the audience knows, as before, what Oedipus does not—that he murdered Laius, that he is the dead king’s son and that the widowed queen Oedipus married is his mother. Once again, there is something transfixing, tragic and doomed about watching Oedipus, in his ignorance, attempting to follow the Oracle’s orders but all the time preparing for the revelation of his crime and his subsequent doom.The first hint of the truth is revealed to Oedipus by the blind prophet, Tiresias, and the king answers the seemingly unbelievable charge with rage, insults and threats. Raised in Corinth by the royal house as if he were the natural son of his adoptive parents, Oedipus rejects what Tiresias says as errant nonsense, saying "Had you eyes I would have said alone you murdered him [Laius]."(ls. 348-9) The blind prophet, who taunts Oedipus as being the one who is unable to see the truth, claiming "you are the land's pollution."(l 353) He challenges the king to reconsider everything about himself and the challenge is met with rage - Oedipus is unable to see the truth or to hear well-intentioned advice.Pride and faith in his own abilities moves Oedipus ever onward toward doom, failure to honor the gods results in the very destruction they foretell, and humanity is unable to escape what is predicted for it. His wife, Jocasta, is a flawed individual. Her arrogant dismissal of the gods and her proclamations of victory over fate foretell her undoing. As much as Oedipus, she is unable to see until it is too late that her life fulfilled the very prophecy she sought vainly and pridefully to undo. Oedipus begins to see, in brief glimpses, how blind he has been to the central facts of his own life. Thinking that he is doing a good deed, a Messenger tells Oedipus that it’s fine for Oedipus to come back to Corinth any time—he’s in no danger of fulfilling the prophecy there, the Messenger says. By telling Oedipus that the queen who raised him is not his natural mother, the Messenger has unknowingly revealed enough of the truth to make Oedipus tragically curious and to push Jocasta toward despair. Motivated by a simple desire to ease worry, the Messenger has released the machinations of fate that will produce the full revelation of the truth and all its awful effects. When the Messenger speaks, he is as blindly ignorant of his fatal role in serving destiny as Oedipus and Jocasta are of theirs. He speaks, but he does not see.In this section, the theme is hammered home time and again that people go through their lives thinking they are fulfilling one purpose when they are actually lurching toward the completion of several others. The gods know this and watch events unfold from above. The first audiences of this play knew the histories of its characters before the first lines were spoken, and the drama unfolded for viewers who watched with the borrowed omniscience of the gods. Modern readers are left to decide for themselves what they think about fate, prophecy and human attempts to outrun destiny. The climax of the play is both pitiful and tragic. Yet, it also yields knowledge for Oedipus of who he really is, even as he goes forth as a blind man. The chorus intones the message that "Time who sees all has found you out / against your will;" (ls. 1213-14). As Aristotle put it in his Poetics, Sophocles has organized his story so as to emphasize the elements of ignorance, irony, and the unexpected recognition of the truth. The magnificence of this drama has allowed it to endure and challenge readers ever since.

[justagirlwithabook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ah, Oedipus and all of his family problems. I purchased this book my first year of teaching because it was part of the recommended curriculum for sophomore English. While I'm generally not a fan of plays (or having to teach them), this one offered up all sorts of hilarious discussion opportunities with the sophomores and they were hooked. Oedipus has a million problems and it was fun to read and discuss with my students.

[leslie398 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A few years ago I had read the Storrs translation of these plays (the one most commonly found in the free public domain ebook editions) which were disappointingly poor. This translation by Robert Fagles is much much better!! I cannot speak to the introductory material, as I skipped that part but there was a substantial amount of it.

[saturnloft · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When it comes to tragic irony, few ancient or modern playwrights come close to Sophocles and these are the three works that showcase his dark genius at its best. This particular edition is translated by the ever-dependable Robert Fagles, and contains the following plays, in the order they were first produced:1 - ANTIGONE: Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and heir to her family's persistent dark cloud of misfortune. She wants to bury her equally-unlucky brother but her loyalty to her doomed brethren may cost her. (Of course it will! It's Sophocles!)2 - OEDIPUS THE KING: Oedipus is the best king for miles around and everyone knows it, including him.* Unfortunately an ominous stain is creeping into his idyllic kingdom; a plague is raging and it seems the gods are upset about something or other. The only person who seems to know what's up is a blind prophet and he's got some bad news for poor Oeddy.3 - OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: The action in this place takes place between the events of Oedipus the King and Antigone. This the most philosophical of the trilogy, dealing with ideas of fate, guilt, and redemption. (I thought it was a bit boring.)* Uh oh! Hubris!

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sophocles' is one of only three Ancient Greek tragedians with surviving plays. The plays by the earliest, Aeschylus, remind me of a ancient frieze--not stilted exactly, but still stylized, very formal. The plays by the last of the three, Euripides, to me seems the most natural, the most modern. Sophocles is more in the middle in more ways than chronologically. He is credited with adding a third actor onstage to allow for more conflict and less emphasis on the chorus. His Theban Plays are about Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, of the royal family of the ancient Greek city of Thebes, and the plays are often grouped together, but actually were each part of tetralogies that have been lost and written years apart. Only seven of over a hundred plays by Sophocles still remain in existence. Oedipus the King and Antigone are his most famous and influential, and I was introduced to both plays in high school, and amazingly, that didn't put me off for life.Oedipus the King is a mystery story--with Oedipus the detective unraveling a secret that becomes his own doom. You may have heard of the "Oedipus Complex" associated with theories by Freud. Yes, that's this Oedipus, and that speaks to how primal, how deep goes some of the themes in this play. In the book 100 Top Plays, Oedipus the King comes in second only to Shakespeare's King Lear as most important play. Antigone comes in at number fifteen, after Aeschylus' Oresteia and two plays by Euripides. Antigone is the rare play with a female title protagonist--and its basic theme of the individual against the state resonated with me strongly, even as a teenager first reading it. Oedipus at Colonus, I found less memorable and impressive. In terms of the timeline, its events fall between those of Oedipus the King and Antigone, though this was actually one of Sophocles' last plays. That said, it falls nicely in between the two, filling some gaps, and it does have its beauties. But comparing this to the other two is like comparing Shakespeare's King Lear and Hamlet to, oh, his Cymbeline.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Cliff/Spark version of Antigone is this: Two sisters want to bury their dead brother. One wants to bury him admirably and the other doesn't want to break the law. He cannot be buried because he was executed for a crime and must be left to rot in the courtyard as an example for the community. Defiant sister must go against the king alone as everyone refuses to help her. True to Greek tragedy nearly everyone, including the king's wife ends up committing suicide. The end.Of course there is much, much more to the story and, depending on which version you read, you get it. In my version of Antigone translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff the language is watered down and somewhat pedestrian. It's not as lyrical as other translations. A small example: from a 1906 Oxford Clarendon Press version (translated by Robert Whitelaw): "Ismene: There's trouble in thy looks, thy tidings tell" compared with the 1954 University of Chicago Press version (translated by Elizabeth Wycoff): "Ismene: What is it? Clearly some news has clouded you" (p 159). Ismene is basically saying the same thing in each line, but the Whitelaw version has more animation, more movement. In the end Antigoneis a simple story about the man against The Man, no matter how you read it.

[schmerguls · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a modern and inferior translation. The third of the three plays, Antigone, is Greek tragedy at its classic best. Antigone is Oedipus' daughter who defies King Creon's order against burying her brother. He banishes her to be buried in an island dungeon. She hangs herself and Creon 's son and wife commit suicide.

[ncgraham_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The name of Oedipus the King (Oedipus Tyrannos or Oedipus Rex, if you prefer) is nearly synonymous with the idea of Greek tragedy, and maybe with the idea of tragic drama in general. Aristotle referenced it in his Poetics, as (of course) did Freud in his writings. Reading it today, it seems both very ancient and very new, outlandish and yet relevant. I found it immensely gripping, and fascinating in its juxtaposition of fate and human action, sight and blindness, intention and guilt.I was assigned the play in two separate classes this semester, along with Antigone in one of them. I decided to go above and beyond by reading all of the plays, including Oedipus at Colonus, and I'm very glad I did. Although this often-skipped middle work is not as dramatically potent as the other two plays, Sophocles’ use of language is (as others have remarked) even more mature and lyrical than it was before. Also, one really read the three together not because there elements are perfectly cohesive—they aren’t—but because it is only then that the modern reader can understand the full scale of the Theban tragedy, something the Ancient Greeks would have known about going in.Despite the popularity of Oedipus the King and the maturity of Oedipus at Colonus, most everyone I’ve talked to seems to likeAntigone best. I can understand why. It is the most varied of the plays, incorporating a little humor and romance, as well as the usual tragic elements. I think Antigone and Haemon are the first truly sympathetic characters in the cycle, which makes their downfall all the more heartrending.Paul Roche’s translation is easy to read and modern in tone—almost too modern, to tell the truth. There is an almost Hemingway-like disregard of punctuation at times (“What another summons?” should read “What? Another summons?”) not to mention one of the most inane contractions I’ve ever seen (“what’re”). Still, these are minor blemishes, and the sheer readability of Roche's rendering is a definite aid in understanding these ancient tragedies.Scholars have been discussing and debating these plays for literally centuries. I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of them, and can easily see myself coming back to them in the future.

[camarie_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book including the stories of epic Oedipus and his daughter, Antigone. Sophocles is an amazing author. Oedipus is a man who tries to avoid his prophecy, which is to kill his father and marry his mother. Not only marry his mother, but also have four children with her. Now, he searches for an answer to his question: Has he fulfilled the prophecy? Think your life has drama? Please. Oedipus has it worse than anyone. In Antigone, she goes against the law to bury her brother. What will win, reason and order or morality and fate? Beautifully written and relative even today.

[rhinoa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Three plays are collected in this volume surrounding Oedipus and his family. Oedipus was famous for killing his father and marrying his mother after being abandoned at birth. The first play is Antigone which follows the daughter of Oedipus and his wife/mother Jocasta. Her brothers have both died and while Eteocles is given a proper burial, Polynices is left out without any rites by their uncle Creon. Antigone is distraught and goes against Creon's wishes (he is the King after Oedipus) and tries to cover his body bringing about more sorrow to the doomed family.Oedipus the King follows which shows the sequence of events leading up to Oedipus learning the truth about his birth and the crimes he has committed. It has him summoning the shepherd who is the sole witness of the death of Laius and it also emerges how he grew up not knowing his real parents. It's a sad tale as Oedipus did so much to try and avoid fulfilling the prophecy. The final play is Oedipus at Colonus which finishes the story of Oedpius after his exile. It concludes his story taking it to his death in Athens with Theseus. His daughters Antigone and Ismene are with him at the end.I really enjoyed all three plays although I do feel that having Antigone first was out of order and it should have been the final play in the collection. I would really like to see them performed live, especially Oedipus the King which is the most powerful of the three with the truths it reveals. A must for all mythology fans.

[takeitorleaveit_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Freud loved this shizzle. it is a classic. whether or not I want to kill my dad. oh wait, I'm sure of.

[gillis3sarah · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I like Oedipus. In a kind of sick, twisted way, I guess.

[jpsnow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Sophocles is surprisingly easy to read, not unlike a modern novel. I watched my understanding of the Greek society and beliefs being "rounded out" now that I have some context from previous choruses (tragedies) and the epics. The Oedipus trilogy showed an interesting thread through the three works. I can understand why the Greeks found such a format entertaining. Sophocles lived from around 495bc to 406bc and competed and won against Aeschylus in the contests. He was also a leader in Athens, born in Colonus. Oedipus is worth reading both to have that understanding of the classic work, as well as in its own right. I note here only the closing moral: "Therefore, while our eyes wait to see the destined final day, we must call no one happy who is of mortal race, until he hath crossed life's border, free from pain." In Colonus and again in Antigone I noticed what may have been the first reference of "stranger in a strange land." The parallels to Shakespeare are also so evident, best shown by the use of "ill-starred" - although Shakespeare would have done the exact opposite treatment of any death. Deaths typically happen off-stage in the tragedies. The moral of Antigone: "Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise."

[anabellebf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Contains the best tragedy ever written. Always a pleasure to re-read.

[wenestvedt_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you can, see also the stage musical, "The Gospel at Colonus" -- or at least get the soundtrack. Set in a black pentecostal church, starring Clarence Fountain & The Blind Boys of Alabama, a massive choir, guitarist Sam Butler, and assorted other musical & vocal powerhouses, it was one of the best stage performances I've ever seen (Guthrie Theater, 1986 or 1987).