The man standing in the symbolic space opened for the god emphasizes his own renown, declaring to the suppliants on stage and making clear for the first time to the audience in the theater of Dionysos that he is “all-famous Oidipous.” This claim will prompt the audience to check immediately for personal knowledge of someone by this name who would be known to everyone. One version of the story with which we can be certain that the play’s spectators would have been familiar is found in Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus recounts his underworld meeting with Oidipous’s deceased mother:
And I saw the beautiful Epikaste, Oidipous’s mother,
who in the ignorance of her mind had done a monstrous
thing and married her own son. He killed his father
and married her, but the gods soon made it known to all mortals.
But he, for all his sorrows, in beloved Thebes continued
to be lord over the Kadmeans, all through the bitter designing
of the gods; while she went down to Hades of the gates, the strong one,
knotting a noose and hanging sheer from the high ceiling,
in the constraint of her sorrow, but left to him who survived her
all the sorrows that are brought to pass by a mother’s Furies.
(11.271-80, trans. Richmond Lattimore)
From Pindar comes the additional fact that an “ancient oracle spoken at Delphi” foretold the father’s death at his own son’s hands (Olympian Odes 2.35-45). Incorporating aspects from both earlier versions, Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes gives greater scope to the role of Oidipous’s parents and their response to prophecy:
. . . Laius defied
Apollo, who bade him thrice
at Pytho’s earth-centered shrine,
from which come oracles, to die
childless to save his city.
But, yielding to his own foolish counsel,
he begot disaster for himself,
Oedipus who killed his father
and seeded his mother’s
sacred soil, where he himself was reared,
accepting the bloody stock
that grew. He came from parents mated
by distracted frenzy. (745-57; trans. Christopher Dawson)
Oidipous is indeed a well-known fugure, yet, identifying him introduces a complication, for while parricide and incest are among deeds most horrific, the speaker has just a moment ago declared that he deems himself to be the proper person to answer the suppliants’ formal petition for divine help. It is quite evident that, rather than being crushed under the weight of his terrible deeds, this Oidipous sees himself as the people’s past, present, and future savior. So, if he is indeed the mythic Oidipous, he himself has not yet obtained knowledge of the circumstances that will make him most famous. But, then, to what fame can he be laying claim? The audience will also have been able to recall another slightly less impressive story about Oidipous, according to which he solves a riddle put to him by the Sphinx, thereby eliminating this hybrid monster of divine origins and so both saving himself and liberating the people of Thebes from its predation. This deed must be the one he has in mind, for it correlates well with the self-confidence he projects.
From the discrepancy in the outcomes of these tales the play’s spectators will realize that the moment that they are presently witnessing must lie after Oidipous’s encounter with the Sphinx but prior to the gods’ revelation to all mankind of his parricide and incest–those deeds that will make him not simply famous, but infamous. The audience thus views the scene as both unfolding in the Theban present and as a past event seen from a future vantage when Oidipous will have been shown by the gods to have killed his father and married his mother. Oidipous’s speech has meaning from three temporal perspectives; past, present, and future. Oidipous himself has access to knowledge only of the present basis for his fame. The gods and the play’s audience, informed as it is by myth, have access to all three perspectives. Myth gives the audience a privileged position. [Gm]
The multiple temporal perspective permits the audience to hear two voices delivering different messages with the same speech. [Gd] It will note that by calling attention to himself as “famous” Oidipous seems to be contributing to the revelation that Homer ascribes to the gods. He is being made an unknowing party to the gods’ public revelation of his own misdeeds. So, while the proclamation of Oidipous’s infamy issues from his mouth, the audience will infer that his voice serves the will of a god. It appears, then, that he must to some extent be in service to the gods; his speech is serving their ends. He appears to be in their thrall. This discovery heightens the audience’s receptivity and sensitivity to further instances of double entendre; that is, of divine speech flowing through mortal mouths. [Apcmu]
The audience may even now realize that another double entendre has already just expressed itself in the words that Oidipous uttered a moment ago, when he declared that, “judging it improper” (δικαιῶν; line 6) to hear the suppliants’ prayers “from other intermediaries” (lines 6-7), he has come in person. Since he emphasizes that he came in person, which suggests that he could have sent an intermediary to get word and bring it back to him, but he thought this matter too important to be entrusted to a messenger [Ad] [Apcma], it seems odd for Oidipous to imply that he sees himself as one among possible intermediaries. The two incompatible meanings put the audience in the position of having to make a choice between them, but unable to do so, it may at first have decided to ignore the implications of the word “others” (cf. m7). In hindsight, now having become aware that a god is also speaking, the words have a new meaning in which the problem introduced by “others” disappears, for eschewing “other messengers” the god has come “himself.” Who, then, are the god’s other messengers? And other than whom? Other than Oidipous, for he is the present vehicle for the god’s speech. As an unwitting vehicle for divine speech, he may be compared to the Pythian priestess at Delphi, whose agency is altogether removed from the communication between god and mortal consulter. [Apcmu] The god, then, although he does not show himself, gives evidence of being present. [Ap]
Oidipous’s speaking for the god occurs in ignorance of this relationship. Juxtaposition of the two claims allows the audience to see that his ignorance extends further; he has made a false assumption. [Mpea] Oidipous supposes that, since he himself sent no intermediary in response to the supplication, no intermediary has been sent. Since the audience is witness to Oidipous serving as messenger for an unseen speaker, it knows his reasoning to be faulty; a medium has indeed been brought to serve the god who has come in person. Furthermore, that Oidipous deigned to answer a summons directed to a god suggests that he arrogantly dismisses the summons as the expression of a childishly gullible or superstitious populace. [Md] Indeed, Oidipous’s first words to this gathering before his palace was “children” (cf. m.02), a term of address he repeats as he assures the suppliants that he deems their suffering worthy of his personal attention. Believing that no god will answer their supplication, Oidipous places himself above his people’s childish faith in religious ritual. As, however, the obvious double entendre has shown the audience, a god has come. The audience will find Oidipous’s beliefs to be dismissive of gods and condescending to mortals; he is both impious and arrogant.
That Oidipous denigrates the use of an intermediary and scoffs at the notion that a god might come in person raises a new question: Is it appropriate to criticize a god either for using an intermediary or for not coming in person? Criticism might be deemed appropriate if the intermediary performs inadequately and the god could have avoided its use. If, on the other hand, the god can perform adequately through an intermediary, criticism of one’s use cannot be justified, and if such use provides a viable avenue for the god to utter speech in the human domain, exercise of this option should meet with approval and even gratitude. Indeed, considering that the play’s spectators will, like Oidipous, not have expected the god to answer to the supplication that opened the dramatic action (cf. m.01), present signs of the god’s active engagement already exceed expectations. It is therefore a mistake to denigrate the god’s use of an intermediary: it misjudges those who believe in it and it misjudges the god’s capacities. [Mpe]
Clearly it has not occurred to Oidipous that by stepping into the ritual space set aside for the god he might himself implicitly offer himself as the god’s representative or to serve as his vehicle. Oidipous’s insensitivity to space marked as sacred suggests that he utterly dismisses the possible arrival in any form whatsoever of a divine response to the suppliants’ prayers. Thus, when he offers himself to the people, it is not as the god’s intermediary but as his replacement. So, where the audience may initially have greeted his emergence from the palace with relief, for his arrival promised to put an end to the presumably pointless supplication practiced by the players on the stage, with a god now evidently on the scene and actively engaged in the speech and action, it will find itself challenged to reconsider its own assumptions about the possibilities of divine intervention.
The word δικαιῶν, “deeming/judging” (line 6), seems now to echo the judgment at which the audience will just have arrived. From this perspective, Oidipous’s statement underscores what is in fact improper, which is to arrogate to oneself the duties, responsibilities, and capacities of a god. This allows the audience to hear another double entendre. Where Oidipous claims to be using his own faculties of judgment, the audience will hear his words delivering a god’s message about the reason for his appearance, namely: to judge. The present participle suggests a single speaker actively engaging in the making of a judgment. [Aj]
Given the audience’s expectation that it is about to witness the revelation of Oidipous’s crimes, the god’s arrival to deliver a judgment suggests a legal proceeding in which Oidipous is on trial. Again, double entendre juxtaposes god and mortal; both are judging, but the mortal judgment is based on a false assumption, while the immortal judgment is in keeping with myth and its facts or truths. It is ironic that Oidipous’s impiety not only does not in the slightest impede the god’s communication; rather, it serves Apollo, whom the suppliants have singled out with their wool-wrapped myrtle branches, to make his presence known and to allow him to charge Oidipous with impiety. “Judging it improper to speak through the intercession of others,” the audience hears the god say, “I have come in my own person to render judgment.” Apollo can be expected to mete out punishment for Oidipous’s impiety, and the fact that Oidipous’s suffering is precisely what the audience expects to witness in the course of this play suggests that when the verdict is delivered, as soon it must be, the audience should properly view it as an expression of divine justice. The play thus announces itself to its audience as a reconsideration of piety as it relates to assumptions about the gods’ use of intermediaries as a medium for communication with a city in crisis. It will demonstrate the gods’ capacity to mete out justice to those whose impiety prevents their willing subordination to divine direction in the cause of furthering civic wellbeing. [Mw] This demonstration challenges the audience to consider that its faith in this or any mortal, its judgment that his courageous and self-confident leadership offers more hope of salvation than the gods, is doomed. This realization might, however, only underscore and intensify the audience’s frustration; for it deplores gods who will not answer the people’s prayers at a time of direst need, but rather cruelly contrive a horrible end for anyone willing to put their skills and energies at the people’s service. The audience proceeds, then, on the assumption that the play’s iteration of the Oidipous myth may yet provide a basis from which to observe and learn from the gods’ caprice, injustice, and underhandedness in relation to Oidipous, and consequently to firm up its resolve to go it alone without divine support for its actions. [P]