2005 Season - Genesius Guild

Sophocles: "Oedipus At Colonus"

At the end of his life, Sophocles turned once again to the subject of one of his most powerful tragedies, Oedipus the King. Although Oedipus had striven all his life to avoid the fate predicted for him - that he would kill his father and marry his mother - he discovers at the end of “Oedipus Rex,” that he is guilty of patricide and incest. He blinds himself after the suicide of his wifemother, Jocaste, and asks to be sent into exile. “Oedipus At Colonus takes up the story twenty years later.

The second tragedy served two purposes for Sophocles: it addressed the question aroused by the first play, “Is Oedipus a criminal or a victim?” It also is a tribute to Colonus, the deme (suburb) of Athens in which Sophocles was born and raised.

The play not only addresses the end of Oedipus’ life, but sets the stage for the fate that will befall his children in “Antigone.” The tragedy was performed in 402 B.C.E., after Sophocles’ death, and was awarded first prize.

One commentator calls the story “a profoundly spiritual tale . . . of prophesized redemption. Sophocles deals with no particular creed or belief. He is more concerned with the general spirituality of every human . . . who faces the conflicts of life and the inevitability of death.”