The Chorus appears to be speaking double entendre, for meaning to say that it finds no basis for discounting Oidipous’s public reputation (φάτις) or withdrawing its support from him as he endeavors to clear up the mysterious murder of a member of the city’s ancient ruling family, it can be heard to say that, in serving as a helper to the ancient line of local rulers (the Labdakidai) in the matter of unclear deaths, it will not challenge any prophecy (φάτις). [Gd] Yet mention of earlier generations of the family in the same breath as prophecy seems to speak directly to the prophecy given Laios, warning him against intercourse with his wife, and threatening his death at the hands of the child so conceived, should Laios ignore the warning. The Chorus will indeed not move against this prophecy; it has been realized. Once the audience thinks of the φάτις as prophecy rather than reputation, it can reconsider its interpretation of the modifying adjective “public” (ἐπιδήμιος). Were the prophecies given Laios public knowledge in Thebes? Did everyone know that Laios had been warned not to have intercourse with Iokaste and the consequence, that if he did, the son borne to them would kill him? If so, Laios’ death should have been neither altogether unclear nor mysterious. Rather like its ruling family, the citizenry seems to have set the prophecy aside. Indeed, even now it gives greater importance to his reputation for solving a riddle and so saving the city, as it presently hopes he will do in the face of plague. In addition to the mystery of Laios’ killing, then, “mysterious deaths,” can refer to the plague for help against which the Chorus was earlier supplicating the help of Apollo. The city’s stance towards mortal agency and prophecy appears to be contradictory; while it beseeches Apollo for help, it consistently bows to the authority, reputation, decision, and action of its mortal ruler. The problem, according to the Chorus’s own words, lies in its lack of a proof, a touchstone. In this the audience will find an irony, for it knows the prophecies to have been fulfilled. The Chorus does have access to a proof that it cannot recognize because it has set aside the publicly-known prophecies touching on its ruling family. Indeed, the version of the prophecy related in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes stipulates that Laios’ disobedience to the prophetic injunction against intercourse with his wife will result in the city’s destruction. Thus, the city has two complementary bits of evidence for the god’s power: Laios having died a violent death and Thebes’ plague. As a result of their insistence on a touchstone in direct experience, reason, and personal judgment neither the Chorus nor Oidipous is able to benefit from divinely supplied insights, without which important aspects of relationships, such as that between the houses of Polybos and Labdacus or that among the members of the house of Labdacus, cannot be perceived. As a result, neither Oidipous nor the Thebans is able to perceive the specific circumstances under which Laios died or the way in which those circumstances are embedded in a larger context comprising the domains of nature, mankind, and the gods.
[Apcma] [Mi] [Apaon] [Mpea] [Mpei] [Md] [Mw]