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Oedipus Tyrannos

In English, the title of Sophocles play chronicling the rise and fall of Oedipus is rendered as Oedipus the King, but this translation loses some of the interesting meaning contained in the original Greek title, Oedipus Tyrranos, as well as the Latin version, Oedipus Rex, because tyrannos and rex each denote slightly different kinds of kings depending on the source of their authority. Tyrannos denotes someone who became ruler through force, rather than inheritance, whereas rex denotes someone who became ruler through a line of succession, and recognizing this fact allows one to appreciate the irony inherent in the title due to the fact that Oedipus is both tyrannos and rex, in that he becomes king through force by killing his father and dispatching the Sphinx, but the throne is one he would have already had a claim to through birthright. One may view the irony in the titling of the play as a means of highlighting the conflation of roles within the play, because it is precisely this conflation that leads to Oedipus' downfall.

Though certain interpreters view "king,' tyrant,' or just 'leader' [as] valid choices" for tyrannos, at its most basic it connotes the ascension to kingship through force, and understanding how this force and violence is integral to Oedipus' status as king wills serve to reveal the underlying argument of the play (Davis & Walton 299). The process by which Oedipus becomes king is not actually contained in the body of the play, but rather in the Argument which proceeds it, which relates how Oedipus, after learning that he is destined to murder his father and marry his mother, fled from his adoptive parents (who he believes are his biological parents) and "as he journeyed on his way, he met Laius his father in a chariot, and slew him, not knowing whom he slew" (Sophocles viii). He then proceeds to Thebes and answers the Sphinx's riddle, is "made king in room of Laius, and [marries] Jocasta" (Sophocles viii). Thus, before the play even really begins one can see how Oedipus is both tyrranos and rex; he has a right to the throne of Thebes because he is Laius' son, but he actually ascends to that throne through force by killing Laius and defeating the Sphinx, which is again actually his birthright, because when "Laius, son of Labdacus, ruled in Thebes […] there came unto him an oracle that if Jocasta his wife bare him a son, he should thereafter be slain by that son" (Sophocles vii). This is crucial to note because it reveals how Oedipus' dual roles of tyrranos and rex are inextricably bound up with each other; his ascension to the throne through violence is not merely parallel to his right to the throne as the son of the king, but actually is his birthright, in that his status as the son of Laius means that he can only attain the status afforded to him through inheritance through violence against his father.

That Oedipus' dual role as tyrranos and rex is the source of his downfall is only natural, because from these inextricable roles stem all of the other problems, which may also be seen as further examples two disparate roles converging into one, a process that serves to commit a kind of violence to the traditional familial roles. Just as Oedipus' relationship to his father is summed up in his dual role as tyrannos and rex, in that he enacts his birthright by killing his father, Oedipus' relationship with his mother, Jocasta, similarly represents a violent conflation of roles, because Oedipus becomes both son and husband. The dangerous condensation of familial relationships is referenced by Oedipus upon discovering the truth about his parentage when he yells "Cursed in my birth, and in my marriage cursed, / And cursed in blood-shedding I stand revealed," and examining these lines in greater detail will help to demonstrate how the play suggests that the conflation of roles serves to ultimately destroy the people inhabiting those roles (Sophocles 99).

As both of his parents contributed to his birth, Oedipus' exclamation regarding his birth refers to both, because "cursed in my birth" can refer to both his birthright as the son of the king, a birthright fated to bring violence and destruction, and the fact that he was "begotten and begetting in one womb!" (Sophocles 101). Here, the roles of Oedipus, Laius, and Jocasta are conflated into one in the image of Oedipus' birth, because this is the event which both defines their traditional roles in relation to each other and ensures that these roles will shift and combine as a result of the original oracle concerning Laius' death at the hands of his son by Jocasta. Thus, Oedipus' reference to his cursed birth at what is very nearly the end of the play refers back to the very opening lines of the Argument by repeating the image of the prophesied birth, but this time the characters are seeing that image with the same clarity as the audience.

The cursed nature of Oedipus' marriage is highlighted by Jocasta's death, because after learning the truth about her and Oedipus' relationship, she goes "straight to her marriage-bed" and hangs herself there after lamenting "o'er the marriage-bed / Where, fate-abhorred, a double brood she bare" (Sophocles 103). The repeated references to the marriage-bed included in the account of Jocasta's death fits within the plays larger focus on the conflation of familial roles, because the bed itself marks a physical location of this conflation; this bed is likely where Oedipus was conceived in the first place, and it marks the spot where that ill-fated conception reaches it dramatic conclusion, with Jocasta killing herself and Oedipus blinding himself with her clothes pins, "on him, on her, a mingling doom" (Sophocles 105).

The last line of Oedipus' exclamation upon finding out the truth of his parentage, "and cursed in blood-shedding I stand revealed," refers once again to his particular relationship with his father and his dual role as tyrannos and rex, because any of the blood shed in (or before) the play is a direct result of his role as Laius' son. He stands revealed as both tyrannos and rex, and this revelation is too much for him to bear, so he literally stabs his own eyes out, having "no joy in the light" (Sophocles 108). Following his blinding, Oedipus is final able to understand the literal and metaphorical violence he has been destined to commit against both his father and mother, respectively, noting that "to both alike / Deeds I have wrought that not the strangling cord / Rightly could recompense" (Sophocles 111). The combination of roles which occurs in the play is ultimately unsustainable, and thus death circles around Oedipus, because he represents the center holding these disparate roles together. This actually helps to explain why Oedipus does not die, like Laius and Jocasta, but rather is blinded and exiled; put simply, he cannot die, because by inhabiting all of these various roles, he is transformed into an almost amorphous character protected from those things which might affect any one person but which cannot affect him because he does not fit into any definable category. Thus, when he states that "this my curse / is destined for no other man than me," he is implying that though cursed, through the habitation of these myriad roles, son and husband, tyrannos and rex, he has become something unique, paradoxically more than any single role but somehow less than a genuine human (Sophocles 113).