Ethics

For all the moral complexity of the Sophoclean world, certain values recur with great clarity. In Oedipus at Colonus, Theseus is surely right to accept Oedipus, and the chorus wrong in their initial horror of his pollution. The play directs the audience to feel contempt for the Thebans’ plan to keep Oedipus and his grave under their control while not admitting his pollution to their territory. Yet Oedipus himself restrains his impulse to kiss Theseus (1130-31), not wishing to touch one who is so uncontaminated. Although he insists on his innocence, Oedipus sends Ismene to perform a ritual of atonement for his trespass on the goddesses’ sacred grove. He remarks that one person ‘‘of good will” could suffice to repay for vast numbers (498-99). At the same time, he inquires carefully about the exact requirements of the ritual. So there is a positive piety of respect for the divine and for local customs, but no endorsement of ritual anxieties.

In Antigone Creon (the rationalist) insists that the gods cannot care about Poly-nices, who wanted to destroy their shrines, and denies Tiresias’ assertion that the pollution of the exposed corpse has interfered with communication between gods and mortals. Mortals, he insists, cannot pollute the gods. At the same time, he has had Antigone immured, to die of starvation, in order to avoid the pollution of a violent death. For Tiresias, this compounds the initial crime, since it is a second violation of the proper separation of living and dead. The attempt to avoid pollution can make pollution worse when it is not guided by a deeper sense of the world’s order. Whether mortals can pollute the gods is not the point. Both Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone show a dislike of legalistic attitudes toward religion.

Ajax, too, is much concerned with the hero’s burial, but in this play pollution is not a concern at all, though Odysseus refers to the right of burial as ‘‘the laws of the gods’’ (1343). The issue lies almost entirely within human ethics: maltreating corpses goes beyond a proper limit for enmity. Odysseus says that he urges that Ajax be buried because he himself will someday need burial. Agamemnon expresses frustration at the universality of self-interest, for he does not really understand Odysseus’ point. Athena has used the example of Ajax to warn Odysseus not to be arrogant toward the gods, but Odysseus changes the emphasis of the lesson slightly, so that it is directed at recognizing how vulnerable human beings are. Similarly, Theseus explains that his sympathy for Oedipus is based on his own experience of wandering and exile.

Sophocles is consistently concerned with this aspect of the traditional virtue of sophrosune. Those who recognize that all human beings are vulnerable to calamity will show compassion to the suffering of others. Theseus is willing to fight on Oedipus’ behalf, and Odysseus in Ajax spends his own political capital on behalf of Ajax, even though he hated him in life. Deianira pities lole and the other captives, even though they represent her husband’s triumph. Neoptolemus, though tormented by his pity for Philoctetes, still takes a long time to act on his feeling, probably because he is too young to recognize Philoctetes’ fate as one that could happen to him.

The plays are equally concerned with the effects of profound suffering. There is no single reaction: Oedipus is not Ajax. Sophocles is interested especially in prolonged anguish. Learning that lole is Heracles’ concubine has the effect it has on Deianira because Deianira has waited so long, because Heracles has betrayed her so often, and because she depends on him so completely. Oedipus in Oedipus at Colonus has learned patience in material things through his wanderings, but the ferocity of his anger surely is in part the result of his years of deprivation. Philoctetes and Electra are both difficult and harsh. Neoptolemus complains that Philoctetes has ‘‘become savage,’’ yet the audience has to be impressed by his endurance - how could anyone expect him to give up years of resentment in a moment? Electra’s attempt to persuade her sister that they try to kill Aegisthus themselves represents a particular heroism of despair, when the news of Orestes’ death follows her endless waiting. These characters test the limits of the audience’s ability to imagine such experience, to try to understand it, and to feel appropriately.

So when the chorus of Oedipus the King sings about the vulnerability of all mortals in response to the disaster that has befallen Oedipus, the conventionality of their reaction should not make us dismiss it. Oedipus was the savior of Thebes, the most capable man in the world, yet he has met with calamity. The chorus does not sing about anything Oedipus did to deserve his fate, nor do they offer an explicit warning against human self-confidence. Even Antigone, where Creon’s final lines acknowledge his error, is not a cheap lesson. Even if the moral seems familiar, it is not easy.

At the end of Philoctetes, Heracles appears to proclaim the will of Zeus. Heracles says that he has won ‘‘an immortal glory for my excellence [athanaton aretOn], as you can see,’’ and he promises Philoctetes similar fame (1419-22). The speech thus elides the apotheosis of Heracles and the eternal fame of Philoctetes, even though these are ordinarily quite distinct. At the end of the speech, when he warns the heroes to revere the gods’ shrines when taking Troy, he says that ‘‘Zeus regards all other things as second: piety does not die with mortals; it does not perish, among the living and the dead’’ (1442-44). If these lines imply that Zeus rewards piety more than anything, they elide the distinction between heroic action and piety just as the speech earlier confused eternal fame and apotheosis. The crucial terms are unstable.

Philoctetes’ action arises from a prophecy, Helenus’ statement that Troy will fall only when Philoctetes comes willingly to Troy with his bow. That is at least one version of the prophecy, which is quoted in different forms. Neoptolemus and Odysseus try all three possible ways to bring Philoctetes along: deception, force, and persuasion. None is successful, and throughout it is not entirely clear what ‘‘willing’’ means or whether it is an essential condition. Indeed, some passages suggest that the bow alone would suffice to enable the Greeks to win. At the end, when Heracles persuades Philoctetes, not only is the prophecy fulfilled in its strongest interpretation, but that interpretation turns out to be the only humanly satisfying one. It is wrong to deceive or force one’s friends, or to deprive a hero of the honor he deserves, and the bow itself is a numinous object that should be respected. Piety in a broad sense includes all these concerns. So the elision of piety and heroic deeds is no accident, but lies at the center of Sophocles’ view of the human condition.