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Moving from the place of Aeschylus we're
gonna now move into a couple of places one

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by Sophocles and one by Euripides.
These three playwrights Aeschylus

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Sophocles and Euripides make up the three
greats of ancient Athens.

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And we'll have a chance to sample each of
the materials that survived from, from

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these poets.
In the case of Oedipus and.

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Or in the case of Sophocles we're gonna
look at this play Oedipus.

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The question that we run into here is a
question that we're used to.

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We've seen it in the case of Odysseus.
We, we've talked a lot about the question

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of identity.
What makes up a, a Greek identity.

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Now in the case of Odysseus we tried to
look at how this identity gets reformed

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from Books five forward,
Recall Odysseus has to recover all the

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things that make him into a, a, an
important and powerful Greek male.

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He has to recover his name.
His lineage.

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The place he's from and his history,
His own background.

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What Sophocles does in taking the story of
Oedipus is to turn it into another kind

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treatment of this question of identity.
But in the case of Oedipus the question of

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identity at each turn is inverted.
Things are turned upside-down and knocked

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all, all a-kilter.
For Sophocles the question of the name

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comes up.
Yes, what's Oedipus' name?

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Well, he doesn't quite understand what it
is, it's gonna come back to get him.

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What's his lineage?
Well, he doesn't really know that either.

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In fact, that's kind of the point of the
play, his lineage is, not only upset, it's

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actually perverted, it's actually turned
upside-down in a awful way.

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His background, where does this...
Where is he from?

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What city is he from?
We don't know that.

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He thinks he knows, but he doesn't
actually know the correct answer there.

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And what's his past again.
It's something that he's completely

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unaware of.
So all these important pieces of a Greek

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identity in the play of Oedipus are gonna
come back in a in a way that is absolutely

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upside down.
Oedipus's story, we ran into before, it

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shows up when Odysseus goes to the
Underworld in Homer, page 258 in the

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Fagles' translation.
We got Odysseus underneath there, he runs

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into this woman named Epicasta.
We hear of a story about her that matches

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the story that w-, rest on a woman
Sophocles knows as Jocasta.

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And Epicasta we hear about her,
She has there are the elements there are

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come apart.
A son kills a father, a mother marries a

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son, and a mother commits suicide.
So the basic elements are there, but it's

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not detailed, and Homer doesn't go into,
any, grand, depth in, into this story.

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When Sophocles takes it over, he remakes
these bare details into an extremely

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powerful statement and exploration of,
Greek ideas of identity.

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For the whole play, Sophocles has his main
character, Oedipus, after something.

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He's trying to figure out an identity.
He's trying to figure out who is the

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murderer of this prior king of Thebes,
Laius.

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Well, at the same time.
The time he's doing that, unbeknownst to,

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unbeknownst to Oedipus.
He's also pursuing another kind of

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question.
The question of his own identity.

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So who is the murderer of Laius turns out
to be for Oedipus the same question as,

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who am I?
Once he gets on top of that question, then

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awful things are gonna come to his own
knowledge.

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What he thought was his background is
turned upside down.

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The question of his name, parents, city he
is from, and his past, all come back to

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haunt him.
In the staging the play, very much like

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what we see in, in tragedies, Up til now,
we saw this in Escalus.

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We're gonna see it again in Euripedes.
There's a central door back behind us.

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Lots of stuff is gonna go on behind that
door.

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Oedipus stands center stage.
And messengers come to him, and deliver

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him information that he then has to figure
out and riddle with.

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He's trying to come to some kind of,
Gather the information, so we can come to

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a clusion, about this, question of the
identity of the murderer, also behind that

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central door, Jocasta comes out, and then
she co-, goes back behind it, she commits

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suicide back behind there, and when
Oedipus makes his disappearance, toward

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the end of the play and rips out his own
eyeballs and that all happens, behind that

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door, as we're used to by now.
There are, background pieces to this play,

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not least the scene depicted famously on
this beautiful piece of ceramic, Oedipus

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has an interesting background, we learn
it, as the play goes on, it comes out.

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Some of it in choral odes, sometimes in
the reminisces, reminiscences of some of

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the characters.
But I thought it might be useful just to

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give a kind of schematic overview of this
past.

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All that's happened to Oedipus before the
play such that as it's going on, we can

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focus on what happens in the action of the
play itself.

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Oedipus is born.
Yes indeed he's born from Laius and

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Jocasta and they are upset that there is
this infant that's arrived at them.

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There's been an oracle, in fact, that the
person will overthrow Laius.

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He then decides to expose the baby, to
leave the baby out on a hillside.

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The idea is that the baby was going to
wind up being a gift to the gods and won't

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be around anymore.
He gives this nasty duty off to one of his

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servants who takes the child with him out
into the,

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Out into the hillside a shepherd.
He meets up with a shepherd from Corinth,

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and rather than exposing the child, gives
over baby Oedipus to this Corinthian

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shepherd.
The Corinthian shepherd then, goes back

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down to Corinth and presents it to the
king, who just so happened to be looking

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for a child himself, with his wife.
They then tell, take over this baby,

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thrilled, they've adopted him to their
family, call it their own.

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The king raises the child, and all is well
until Oedipus hears another oracle, which

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tells him that all is not quite right with
him, and that at some point, he's going to

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kill his father and marry his mother.
He then runs away.

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From who he thinks his father and mother
are and, on the way kills a man at a

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crossroad.
When he does, he comes back, he comes back

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to the city of thieves having just killed
who turned, the person that turned out to

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be Laius.
And they're having an awful time because

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they're is this sphinx that is plaguing
their city.

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And it won't leave until someone is
capable of answering it's riddle.

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Well, Oedipus is a very smart man, he can
go off and answer the riddle of the

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sphinx.
The sphinx then shrivels up and goes away.

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The plague is lifted and as an extreme
example of Xenia, the people of Thebes say

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oh wonderful, you are our hero, you've
saved us from this awful plague.

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Please come in.
Have our Kingdom.

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Marry our queen.
Welcome.

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You can be our new king.
Oedipus is thrilled.

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Takes that up.
All seems to be perfectly ready.

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This.
Just recently widowed queen, conveniently,

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turns out to be Oedipus' new wife.
But then, all is still not quite right,

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and in Thebes another plague arrives from
Apollo, and it's here that our story

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begins.
Oedipus discovers that the plague was sent

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because of the murder of Lias, the
murderer was never found, and there's

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going to be trouble.
The story is gonna unfold from here, and

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we're focused next, on some of the themes
that come up.