Antigone / Oedipus the King / Electra by Sophocles
No authentic stage directions survive from the ancient world. The text therefore marks only exits, entrances, and the few other actions and gestures that can be indisputably inferred from the spoken words.
Spelling and Pronunciation
Any translation of a Greek author must address the problem presented by the spelling of proper names. Established usage has made many of the ancient Greek mythical names familiar in either Latinized or Anglicized forms. Although it is becoming increasingly fashionable to present proper names in a faithful transliteration from the Greek (rendering the familiar ‘Clytemnestra’ as ‘Klutaimnēstra’, for example), it can alienate the reader or listener who is not conversant with the ancient language. In the interests of euphony and intelligibility, Kitto wisely chose, therefore, an unashamed mixture of transliterated Greek (‘Phokis’), Latinized forms where they are extremely familiar (Oedipus’ rather than Oidipous’, and ‘Laius’ rather than ‘Laios’), English renderings where anything else would jar on the modern ear (notably ‘Thebes’ and ‘Athens’ rather than ‘Thēbai’ and ‘Athēnai’), and his own hybrid mixture of Greek and English in the instance of Iocasta, traditionally Anglicized as ‘Jocasta’ but actually Iokastē in Greek.
Pronunciation of ancient proper names presents a related problem. Here I have taken the liberty of reproducing a slightly adapted version of Kitto’s own sensible note in the original edition: ’Ch should always be made hard, unless an aspirated k (as in loch) is preferred. The diphthong ae is the Latinization of ai; pronunciation in English varies between a long e (“see”) and i (as in high). Oe regularly becomes the long e, and final eus rhymes with deuce.’51 I would add that the final vowel e, common in feminine proper names (Antigone, Ismene, and Danae, for example), is always long. The letter c is often used in place of the Greek k (as in Polyneices and Mycenae), and many prefer to pronounce it inauthentically like the English s.
The Explanatory Notes
These have been kept as simple as possible. I have tried to elucidate mythical and topographical references which might be unfamiliar to the modern reader and to explain terminology relating to obscure ancient Greek beliefs, customs, religion, and ritual. Where there is significant dispute as to the text of the original Greek, it has been noted. I have also indicated points where Kitto’s translation, although in the main faithful to the original, omits, paraphrases, or adds to features present in the Greek, especially where it could affect interpretation of the plays; an important example is his omission of the seven lines which in the manuscripts conclude Oedipus the King (see p. 101 with note). The attribution of lines to different characters, obviously crucial to the interpretation of a passage, is also sometimes questionable. Where there is significant doubt, it has been registered (see especially p. 21 with notes).
NOTE ON THE TEXTS
THE first authoritative text of Sophocles’ plays was established in the century after he lived by the Athenian statesman Lycurgus (see [Plutarch], Lives of the Ten Orators 841–2). Alexandrian scholars in Hellenistic Egypt assembled a fairly comprehensive library of Sophoclean texts and scholarship, but by the time of the Byzantines, who were the conduit through which the MSS of Sophoclean drama reached Renaissance Europe and eventually their first printed edition (Venice, 1502),1 only seven complete tragedies—those we now possess—survived.
An obstacle in the path of any editor of Sophocles’ Greek text is the unreliability of the MSS, which are approximately 200 in number.2 Although one tenth-century MS in Florence, the Laurentianus 32.9, is generally agreed to be the most important, any editor of the Greek text faces a bewildering variety of alternative readings, omissions, and interpolations. Kitto, as a translator, did not normally refer to the MSS, but selected readings from three texts of the Greek which were then available to him. First, the magisterial editions of Richard Jebb, whose Antigone was first published by Cambridge University Press in 1888 (3rd edn. 1900), Oedipus in 1883 (3rd edn. 1893), and Electra in 1894. These volumes include detailed commentaries and faithful prose translations to which Kitto is at many times indebted. The second Greek edition he used was A. C. Pearson’s Oxford Classical Text, Sophoclis Tabulae, first published in 1924 (corrected edn. 1928). The last was the Budé edition, with French translation, by A, Dain and P. Mazon (Paris, 1955–60).
Those equipped with ancient Greek who wish to consult the original Sophoclean texts of the plays should be aware that since the first publication in 1962 of Kitto’s translation, two important new editions of the Greek text have appeared which supersede those mentioned above: R. D. Dawe’s Teubner text (2nd edn. Leipzig, 1984–5), and the new Oxford Classical Text, Sophoclis Fabulae, by H. Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson (1990).
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
THIS list largely avoids works in languages other than English. For a comprehensive general survey of Sophoclean studies until 1959 the reader is directed to H. F. Johansen, ‘Sophocles 1939–1959’, Lustrum vii (1962), 94–288. S. Said updates this to 1988 in Théâtre grec et tragique (= Métis iii. 1–2, Paris, 1988), 416–18 and 468–84.
(1) Editions and Commentaries
Jebb’s seminal commentaries (Cambridge, 1883 onwards, see above, p. xxxviii) are still mines of fascinating information. All of Sophocles’ tragedies have more recently been treated to detailed commentaries in English (without text or translation) by J. C. Kamerbeek, including Oedipus (Leiden, 1967), Electra (Leiden, 1974), and Antigone (Leiden, 1978). Other important modern commentaries on individual plays include A. L. Brown, Sophocles: Antigone (Warminster, 1987), R. D. Dawe, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Cambridge, 1982), J. H. Kells, Sophocles’ Electra (Cambridge, 1973), P. E. Easterling, Sophocles’ Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1982), W. B. Stanford, Sophocles’ Ajax (London, 1963), and T. B. L. Webster, Sophocles’ Philoctetes (Cambridge, 1970). The standard edition of the fragments of Sophocles is S. Radt’s Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta iv (Berlin, 1977), although A. C. Pearson’s three-volume edition, The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917), is still useful.
(2) General Studies
C. M. Bowra, Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford, 1944); R. G. A. Buxton, Sophocles (Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics, xvi (Oxford, 1984). H. Diller (ed.), Sophokles (Wege der Forschung xcv, Darmstadt, 1967); G. H. Gellie, Sophocles: A Reading (Melbourne, 1972); G. M. Kirkwood, A Study of Sophoclean Drama (Ithaca, 1958); H. D. F. Kitto, Sophocles: Dramatist and Philosopher (London, 1958); B. M. W. Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1964); K. Reinhardt, Sophocles (Eng. trans. Oxford, 1979); C. P. Segal, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1981); Sofocle, Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique xix (Fondation Hardt, Geneva, 1983); R. M. Torrance, ‘Sophocles: Some Bearings’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology lxix (1965), 269–327; A. J. A. Waldock, Sophocles the Dramatist (Cambridge, 1951); T. B. L. Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles2 (London, 1969); C. Whitman, Sophocles: A Study in Heroic Humanism (Cambridge, Mass., 1951); R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980); T. Woodard (ed.), Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, 1966).
(3) Specific Aspects
M. W. Blundell, Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge, 1989); R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles’ Tragedies (Oxford, 1980); R. G. A. Buxton, ‘Blindness and Limits: Sophokles and the Logic of Myth’, Journal of Hellenic Studies c (1980), 22–37; P. E. Easterling, ‘Character in Sophocles’, Greece & Rome xxiv (1977), 121–9; V. Ehrenberg, Sophocles and Pericles (Oxford, 1954); G. H. Gellie, ‘Motivation in Sophocles’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies xi (1694), 1–14; C. P. Gardiner, The Sophoclean Chorus: A Study of Character and Function (Iowa City, 1987); A. E. Hinds, ‘Binary Action in Sophocles’, Hermathena cxxix (1980), 51–7; A. O. Hulton, ‘The Prologues of Sophocles’, Greece & Rome xvi (1969), 49–59; G. M. Kirkwood, ‘The Dramatic Role of the Chorus in Sophocles’, Phoenix xiii (1954), 1–22; H. D. F. Kitto, ‘The Idea of God
(4) Other books including interesting discussions of Sophocles
J. P. Euben (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley, Calif., 1986); John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962); Bernard Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (Baltimore/London 1979); J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (Eng. trans. New York, 1988).
(5) Antigone
S. Bernadete, ‘A Reading of Sophocles’ Antigone’, Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy iv (1975), 148–96; v (1975), 1–55 and 148–84; W. M. Calder, ‘Sophocles’ Political Tragedy: Antigone’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies ix (1968), 389–407; R. Coleman, ‘The Role of the Chorus in Sophocles’ Antigone’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society xviii (1972), 4–27; P. E. Easterling, ‘The Second Stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone’, in R. D. Dawe, J. Diggle, and P. E. Easterling (eds.), Dionysiaca (Cambridge, 1978), 141–58; R. F. Goheen, The Imagery of Sophocles’ Antigone (Princeton, NJ, 1951); D. A. Hester, ‘Sophocles the Un-philosophical’, Mnemosyne xxiv (1971), 11–59; J. C. Hogan, ‘The Protagonists of the Antigone’, Arethusa v (1972), 93–100; I. M. Linforth, ‘Antigone and Creon’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology xv (1961), 183–260; M. MacCall, ‘Divine and Human Action in Sophocles: The Two Burials of the Antigone’, Yale Classical Studies xxii (1972), 103–17; T.-C. Oudemans and A. P. M. H. Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Sophocles’ Antigone (Leiden, 1987); V. Rosivach, ‘On Creon, Antigone, and Not Burying the Dead’, Rheinisches Museum cxxvi (1983), 16–26; M. Santirocco, ‘Justice in Sophocles’ Antigone’, Philosophy and Literature iv (1980), 180–98.
(6) Oedipus the King
Rebecca W. Bushnell, Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles’ Theban Plays (Ithaca, NY, 1988); A. Cameron, The Identity of Oedipus the King: Five Essays on the Oedipus Tyrannus (New York, 1968); M. W. Champlin, ‘Oedipus Tyrannus and the problem of knowledge’, Classical Journal lxiv (1969), 337–45; E. R. Dodds, ‘On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex’, in Greece & Rome xiii (1966), 37–49, repr. in his The Ancient Concept of Progress (Oxford, 1973), 64–77; P. W. Harsh, ‘Implicit and Explicit in the Oedipus Tyrannus’, American Journal of Philology lxxix (1958), 243–58; D. A. Hester, ‘Oedipus and Jonah’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society xxiii (1977), 32–61; H. P. Houghton, ‘Jocasta in the Oedipus Tyrannus’, Euphrosyne ii (1959), 3–28; B. M. W. Knox, Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven/London, 1957); M. J. O’Brien (ed.), Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Oedipus Rex (Englewood Cliffs, 1968); Pietro Pucci, ‘The Tragic Pharmakos of the Oedipus Rex’, Helios xvii (1990), 41–9; W. B. Stanford, ‘Ambiguities in the Oedipus Tyrannus’, in Ambiguity in Greek Literature (Oxford, 1939), 163–73.
(7) Electra
B. Alexanderson, ‘On Sophocles’ Electra’, Classica et Mediaevelia xxvii (1966), 78–98; A. M. Dale, ‘The Electra of Sophocles’, in Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1969), 221–9; I. M. Linforth, ‘Electra’s Day in the Tragedy of Sophocles’, University of California Publications in Classical Philology xix (1963), 89–125; R. W. Minadeo, ‘Plot, Theme and Meaning in Sophocles’ Electra’, Classica et Mediaevelia xxviii (1967), 114–42; R. Seaford, ‘The Destruction of Limits in Sophocles’ Elektra’, Classical Quarterly xxxv (1985), 315–23; C. P. Segal, ‘The Electra of Sophocles’, Transaction and Proceedings of the American Philological Association xcvii (1966), 473–545; J. T. Sheppard, ‘The Tragedy of Electra According to Sophocles’, Classical Quarterly xii (1918), 80–8; id., ‘Electra: a Defence of Sophocles’, Classical Review xli (1927), 2–9; F. Solmsen, Electra and Orestes: Three Recognitions in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam, 1967); P. T. Stevens, ‘Sophocles: Elektra, Doom or Triumph?’, Greece & Rome xxv (1978), 111–20; T. M. Woodard, ’Electra by Sophocles: The Dialectical Design’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology lxviii (1964), 163–205; lxx (1965), 195–233; Virginia Woolf, ‘On Not Knowing Greek’, in The Common Reader (London, 1925).
(8) Reception
For Sophocles’ influence see Stuart Gillespie, The Poets on the Classics: An Anthology of English Poets’ Writings on the Classical Poets and Dramatists from Chaucer to the Present (London/New York, 1988), 202–6; H. D. F. Kitto, ‘The Vitality of Sophocles’, in Whitney J. Oates (ed.), From Sophocles to Picasso: The Present-Day Vitality of the Classical Tradition (Bloomington, Ind., 1962), 39–67; A. T. Sheppard, Aeschylus and Sophocles: Their Work and Influence (= Our Debt to Greece and Rome xxiii, Boston, 1927). On the performance history of Sophocles’ plays see Hellmut Flashar, Inszenierung der Antike: Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit 1585–1990 (Munich, 1991).
On the reception of Antigone see Simone Fraisse, Le Mythe d’Antigone (Paris, 1974); L. A. MacKay, ‘Antigone, Coriolanus and Hegel’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association xciii (1962), 166–74; A. and H. Paolucci (eds.), Hegel on Tragedy (New York, 1962); G. Steiner, Antigones (Oxford, 1984). On Oedipus the King see Colette Astier, Le Mythe d’Oedipe (Paris, 1974); L. Edmunds, Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues (Baltimore, 1985); and B. Gentili and R. Pretagostini (eds.), Edipo: il teatro greco e la cultura europea (Rome, 1986). For Electra see Henriette Booneric, La Famille des Atrides dans la littérature française (Paris, 1986); Pierre Brunei, Le Mythe d’Électre (Paris, 1971); H.-J. Newiger, ‘Hofmannsthals Elektra und die griechische Tragödie’, Arcadia 4 (1969), 138–63; Brenda J. Powell, The Metaphysical Quality of the Tragic: A Study of Sophocles, Giraudoux, and Sartre (New York, 1990).
CHRONOLOGY
(all dates BC)
508
Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms at Athens.
497–494
Birth of Sophocles.
480
Persians defeated at the battle of Salamis.
468
Sophocles’ victory in first dramatic competition, defeating Aeschylus.
443/2
Sophocles holds office of Treasurer.
442?
Antigone?
441/0
Sophocles elected general in Samian campaign.
438
His victory in dramatic competition, defeating a group of plays by Euripides, including Alcestis.
431
Sophocles awarded second place in dramatic competition. The obscure Euphorion won first prize, and Euripides came last with plays including Medea. Outbreak of the Peloponnesian war.
420/19
Sophocles instals cult of Asclepius in his home.
413
Magistrate at Athens after defeat of Athenian expedition to Sicily.
409
Victory with Philoctetes.
406/5
Death.
404
Peloponnesian war ends with the defeat of Athens.
402/1
Oedipus at Colonus produced posthumously by Sophocles’ grandson, also named Sophocles.
ANTIGONE
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ANTIGONE, daughter of Oedipus and Iocasta
ISMENE, her sister
CREON, King of Thebes, brother of Iocasta
HAEMON, his son
A GUARD
TEIRESIAS, a Seer
MESSENGER
EURYDICE, wife to Creon
CHORUS of Theban elders
Guards, Attendants, etc.
Scene: Thebes, before the royal palace
ANTIGONE1
Enter, from the palace, ANTIGONE and ISMENE
ANTIGONE. Ismene, my own sister, dear Ismene,
How many miseries our fa
And is there one of them that does not fall
On us while yet we live? Unhappiness,
Calamity, disgrace, dishonour—which
Of these have you and I not known? And now
Again: there is the order which they say
Brave Creon* has proclaimed to all the city.
You understand? or do you not yet know
What outrage threatens one of those we love?
10
ISMENE. Of them, Antigone, I have not heard
Good news or bad—nothing, since we two sisters