The weapon with which Oidipous struck the man in the cart was a stick (σκήπτρον). One might suppose this to have been a walking stick; Oidipous was, after all, on a journey of many days’ duration. This meaning is not, however, among the ten uses of σκήπτρον listed in LSJ, eight of which make sense in this context and to which response can therefore be mapped: α) staff or stick, used by the lame or aged, β) blind man’s cane, γ) royal sceptre, δ) herald’s baton or ceremonial mace conferring the right to speak in Assembly, ε) priest’s or soothsayer’s staff of office, ζ) stick held up to call upon the gods to witness an oath, η) cudgel to punish the refractory, and θ) mace symbolizing royalty, kingly power. As all of these usages contribute to the audience’s understanding of this context, we shall explore them one at a time, moving from most to least common.
α) The most common meaning of σκήπτρον is “staff or stick, used by the lame or aged.” This word evokes the image of an elderly man walking with the aid of a cane, and while at the time when he met and killed Laios at the crossroads Oidipous was at his physical prime, the image of an old man with walking stick has a strong association with the Sphinx’s riddle, which requires identification of a creature that “goes on four in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening,” to which Oidipous’s answer was: “man,” who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks erect on two feet through midlife, and then in old age walks with the help of a cane. [Gm] When Oidipous solved the riddle, he should have been walking on only two feet (one might recall the reading of his name: “Woe! Biped!”), but as he says, he had a σκήπτρον in his hand. Was he, then, lame, as suggested both by the other primary use of σκήπτρον and by another reading of his name: “Swell-foot”? Scholars have been of two minds on this question, but if he walked with a limp, this would have been evident to the original audience as soon as he came forward from the palace in answer to the supplication. Let us suppose for a moment that Oidipous does not limp onto the stage. Considering the injuries to the infant just described by Iokaste, mention of a cane might still prompt the audience to recall the meaning of his name and wonder that he should not be lame. Thus, just as the word σκήπτρον will have superimposed upon the image of Oidipous at the crossroads the shape of an elderly man leaning on a walking stick, it will have prompted the audience to juxtapose the injuries inflicted by the father on his son and the blow inflicted by the son on the father. If he limped at the crossroads, the son carried with him the injuries done him by his father, and if he used a cane, he brought with him the instrument with which to redress those injuries. Laios himself put the murder weapon into his son’s hand. The σκήπτρον joins acts of violence separated by roughly twenty years. It is more, then, than an object; it is a sign of the connection between father and son. It draws attention to the fact that they are terribly alike in the readiness—even abandon—with which they resort to violence. [Gd] It draws attention to the fact that, where the father’s violence was a response to the prophecy that he should be killed by a child born to him and Iokaste, the son’s violence was a response to being forced off the road as he raced away from the prophecy that he should kill his father. The σκήπτρον thus also joins the prophecies to which the acts of violence are a response. The staff’s metonymic joining of violent responses to complementary prophecies points up yet another parallel: both actions fail of their purpose. The father falls short in his effort to eliminate the threat posed by his son, while the son falls short in his effort not to harm his father. The difference on one level is extreme: the willingness to destroy one’s own child is confuted by the willingness to go to all lengths to avoid destroying one’s own parent. In relation to prophecy, however, they are identical: both men feel impelled to resist its realization and both men believe this to be possible. Their common belief is overturned by a single blow from a singular instrument. Their common impulse leads to their common destruction. [Md] [Mw] [Mpea] [Apamu] This doubling and redoubling of the object’s significance imbues it with super-natural meaning and power. Just as double entendre in the word σκήπτρον opens the audience’s awareness to meanings on a plane beyond that of which the world’s mortal speaker is aware, the physical object to which his word refers can itself be read as a divine signifier inserted into the plane of mortal action; it points to the fact that Apollo was engaged in the dispensation of justice. His intervention addresses both facets of the crime that Laios attempted: murder of an infant and assault on the institution of prophecy. When Oidipous kills Laios, then, he serves as an agent (albeit unwitting) of justice on two levels: mortal and divine. The single blow from a singular stick signifies both the god’s commitment and capacity to justice at a point where mortal and immortal planes intersect. [Dj] [Apa] When the audience recognizes Oidipous’s service to the god in the delivery of justice, it will of course recall his explicit promise to do just that in bringing Laios’ killer to justice (ll. 135-6). It has been clear to the audience that the present action makes Oidipous himself the target of a divinely supported effort to cleanse the city of pollution. What is just now emerging from the physical signifier linking the crimes of the father with those of the son is the understanding that, like Laios’ transgression before him, Oidipous’s transgression lay in his impulse to negate prophecy and his belief that this was possible. Indeed, such a belief implicitly dishonors the god. [P] The supplication at the beginning of the play seems to have worked: a god has come, and contrary to what either the audience in the Athenian theater or the suppliants around the Theban altar will at first have thought, this god is not only willing to help the city; for many years he has been making efforts remove pollution from the city by reestablishing justice. The fact that the god is at pains to make this aspect of his project known through the insertion of signifiers in both speech and material reality indicates that the removal of pollution through the restoration of justice will only cleanse the city if the city learns something from it. [Aj] [Apc]
β) Blind man’s cane. The blind prophet Teiresias earlier in the play stated that Oidipous will some day see darkness (ll. 419-20). Recalled to that remark by the word σκήπτρον, the audience can now see that the incident at the crossroads suggests that Oidipous has always been blind, for if he had been able to see that the man in the cart was his father, he would not have struck him. He was figuratively blind. But how can figurative blindness be hurled at him as an accusation? The incapacity to see only has meaning if he could have seen that that man was his father. [Mpei] Could he have known? When Teiresias informs him that he is Laios’ killer (l. 362), he refuses to hear it and threatens the seer with violence. This suggests that, given the opportunity to recognize his father, he might refuse it. Indeed, when he encountered Laios, he was rushing headlong from Delphi because the Oracle, speaking for the god, had told him that he would be his father’s murderer (ll. 792-3). If Oidipous was truly in doubt about his father’s identity, as he claims (ll. 780-7), he should have taken the Oracle’s statement to mean, “You will be a man’s murder; that man will be your birth father, and thus you will know your birth father.” Instead of deciding not to return to Corinth, he might rather have decided to avoid killing any man, or he might have asked the Oracle for guidance, whether there was any way to avoid killing his birth father. In any case, when he does kill a man, he should immediately put two and two together and wonder, “Can this be my father?” That he does not ask this question suggests that he does not have faith in what he has heard; he is deaf to the words of prophecy, and this deafnes has made him blind to what is right in front of him. Such blindness leads the audience to redefine “blind” and “sighted” as the contrast between mortals’ sensory capacity to see physical surfaces and incapacity to see less obvious relationships. [Md] [Mpea] [Apcma]
γ) Royal sceptre. The third relevant lexical meaning of σκήπτρον is “scepter” as a badge of kingship. Oidipous was, when he arrived at the crossroads, no king; indeed, as he has just explained, he had just determined forever to turn his back on Corinth, which presumably meant renouncing the royal power and privilege that he stood to inherit there. Yet, because the man he knocks from the cart is his birth father, Laios, king of Thebes, whose royal power he would rightly have inherited had he been raised in Thebes, his violent act creates a vacancy in the kingship to which he is by birth entitled. So, when he strikes his father he unintentionally takes the first step towards regaining the scepter of Theban power. This suggests that Laios’ killing is appropriate in that it prepares for Oidipous’s return to his rightful position as Thebes’ ruler. The stick with which he kills Thebes’ king prepares for his hand to receive the scepter with which he will rule; the two sticks are metonymically connected. From this perspective, the killing of birth father enjoined by the god at Delphi was not only just (cf. m811.1) but appropriate. [Ad] The audience may consequently wonder if Oidipous’s reaction to the prophecy would have been as negative if he had known that the god was referring not to Polybos, the Corinthian father who raised him, but Laios, the impious infanticide. Thus, Oidipous’s negative judgment of the god appears to have been founded on a double-pronged error: the god was not dismissing his question about his father’s identity but answering it, and the god was not forecasting his involvement in a horrific crime but guiding him to restoration of his rightful place. Apollo emerges from these considerations in a positive light. No such reappraisal of the god, however, has occurred in Oidipous’s mind; he continues to complain of mistreatment. The audience might now judge Oidipous for this shortcoming: his blame for Apollo is unjustified; it betokens a lack of faith, a misjudgment, and a disrespect. [P] [Md] So certain is he of the god’s malevolence that he overlooks evidence to the contrary, as a consequence of which he embarks upon a course of action that causes the very problems for which he blames the god. [Mpea] [Mw]
δ) Herald’s baton or ceremonial mace conferring the right to speak in an assembly. The lexicon’s fifth English equivalent for σκήπτρον (we pass over the fourth) is the staff or baton borne by heralds and speakers in meetings where the leadership will decide policy. The audience might understand Oidipous’s carrying the mace in two ways: either he is serving as a messenger or herald to speak for another or he means to speak for himself. This ambiguity is the same as the one heard by the audience when, at the very beginning of the play, he asserts that he deigns the matter of the supplication to be too important to send an intermediary (cf. m7). The audience soon discovered, however, that the god was using him as a vehicle for communication via double entendre. He believes that he speaks for himself while he can be understood to be speaking on behalf of another (in this case: the god Apollo). The audience may gain insight from both perspectives. Coming directly from Delphi where he consulted the god, Oidipous may be understood by the audience to have been acting as the god’s messenger or herald. The blow he strikes with the herald’s staff can thus be understood to make a statement on the god’s behalf: “Behold my action!” [Apco] From this viewpoint, Laios was struck down not by Oidipous, but by Delphic Apollo. Since Apollo originated the prohibition on intercourse between Laios and Iokaste, their disobedience was an offense against him and their attempt to eliminate the child represented a challenge to his powers. For justice to be served, it was not enough that Laios be punished; it had to be done precisely as prophesied, and the execution of justice had to be promulgated, so that it might deter others from mounting similar challenges. [Aj] [Ad] [Apamu] [Apco] If, on the other hand, the herald’s staff announces an intention to speak, perhaps to negotiate, the violent blow struck with it is an abuse of its function, for rather than initiating a discussion, Oidipous turns immediately to violence. The juxtaposition with the walking cane necessitated by the crippling injury done him by Laios suggests that he inherited the predilection for violence from his father. Furthermore, the audience, having already been sensitized by earlier prompts to look for parallels between Thebes and Athens, may recognize the same predilection for violence in Athens, which at the time of the play’s production was similarly choosing violence over speech, both shutting down (further) public debate on the question, whether to send an embassy (signalled perhaps by the carriage of a herald’s staff) to Delphi to consult about war and plague and going to war without requesting negotiation or arbitration as a means for resolving differences. [Gt-a] [Mg] The parallel further suggests that Athens’ fate will be like Oidipous’s; if, like Oidipous, Athens persists in choosing violence over verbal solutions such as arbitration or consultation, it will be made to suffer. [Mi]
ε) Badge of a priest’s or soothsayer’s office. The sixth lexical example is the staff’s use by “priests and soothsayers” to signify their status. Oidipous is neither. There is a metonymic connection, however, because Oidipous was propelled to the meeting with his father by the interview he had with the Pythian priestess. It appears that the priestess, acting for the god, set the staff in motion; it can thus be seen to be an instrument of her action on the god’s behalf. By the same consideration, if the staff was put into Oidipous’s hands by injuries that stem from his father’s violent efforts to negate the words of a soothsayer such as Teiresias, it can also be traced back to Apollo. By metonymic extension both the Pythia and the soothsayer strike Laios dead with their staffs of office. Oidipous is in this regard himself only the vehicle that delivers the σκήπτρον to its destination. Oidipous’s phrasing here supports this idea by suggesting that he may have been dimly aware that the staff had a life of its own, for as he puts it, the man in the cart was struck with the staff “out of my hand.” The object seems to have sprung from his hand to strike of its own accord. The audience can trace the staff’s seemingly magical or supernatural animus back to the soothsayers and through them back to Apollo. [Apaos]
ζ) Wand held up to call upon the gods to witness an oath. This brings us to a seventh lexical citation: “In oaths or protests it was held up, the gods being called to witness.” Oidipous has never wished to call anyone to witness in relation to the killing at the crossroads, and had the need to rid Thebes of pollution not pressed him to investigate Laios’ death, he never would have given it another thought. But in presently referring to the staff that delivered the blow that at once fulfilled two prophecies as a σκήπτρον, Oidipous’s speech implicitly calls the gods–but also the audience in the theater of Dionysos–to witness his killing of Laios in accordance with two prophecies. This is deeply ironic, because in his mind both now and at the moment he struck the fateful blow, he was actively and consciously doing everything in his power to avoid performing the deeds of whose necessity the god Apollo had previously informed his father and just now also informed him. The fact that he is unaware of calling gods and men alike to witness his failure and Apollo’s success seems further to demonstrate the god’s superior capacity both to effect his will and make public his capacity to do so. [Gd] [Apcmu] [Apaos]
η) “Cudgel to punish the refractory” is yet another lexical variation on staff attested by LSJ. It suggests that in striking Laios, Oidipous was serving as an instrument of justice and ally of the god precisely in accord with his earlier declaration of this intent (cf. m811.1). [Aj] The audience will judge that Laios’ offenses are disrespecting Apollo by disregarding his prophecy and then actively working to negate that prophecy. Seeking to negate a prophecy makes Oidipous like Laios, and so it can be inferred that the punishment inflicted upon him, like that inflicted upon his father, is a just response to the impiety he has demonstrated. The fact that he is now complying with a prophecy does not remedy the earlier breach. Indeed, had he not earlier run from prophecy, it might not now be necessary for Apollo to again execute justice, for had Oidipous accepted the parricide as a duty enjoined by the god, he would have acted as the god’s willing agent, for which justice might dictate reward rather than punishment. When he assumed that parricide was to be avoided at all costs, he presumed to put his own judgment ahead of Apollo’s. [P] [Mpea] The audience can see that the deed communicated to him by Apollo would not in fact have been intolerable for him to perform, because he felt no compunction about killing Laios when he thought him to be a stranger. Had he known him to be his birth father and had he also been informed of the circumstances under which he himself was born, mutilated, exposed, and saved, he might very well be expected to have willingly acted as Apollo required. Assuming, however, the worst about the god and fleeing Delphi with the intent of avoiding at all costs the tasks Apollo sought to impose upon him makes of him Apollo’s enemy. For this he does deserve punishment, which is delivered to him in the worst terms possible: being made to murder his father and marry his mother against his will and without his knowledge. His choice was not, then, whether to do what was required of him, but whether to do it willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. Choosing the former makes one an agent; choosing the latter makes one an instrument, a cudgel for the punishment both of others and oneself. [Apamu]
θ) The lexicon lists as the final meaning for the word σκήπτρον the sceptre as symbol of kingly power. The audience might therefore consider that when, with a blow from his staff, Oidipous kills Thebes’ king, he clears the way for his own accession to the throne. The sceptre signifies that rule is a holy office, and those entrusted with it would do well to bear in mind their duty to honor the gods by seeking their guidance and submitting to their will. This is accomplished by sending an embassy to Delphi. [Mg] [P] [Mip]