The Introduction

As we shall see, however, a Roman rex, a king, is not the same thing as a Greek tyrannos (τύραννος), a tyrant. Each title is ironic, creating its own tensions within the story, but from opposite di- rections. From the beginning, we chose to restore, and express, the play’s original title. We also decided to transliterate the origi- nal Greek names for the characters directly into English rather than continue to employ the more familiar Latinized versions. Oedipus reverts to Oidipous, Jocasta to Iokaste (pronounced Yo- KAHS-tay), and so on. Other than the two main characters the name changes are quite minimal, for example, Choros instead of Chorus.

Partly, these names reflect our desire to present Sophocles directly, rather than mediate him through Latin ears. But there was a deeper reason. The very obscurity of the Greek names al- lows them to evoke the story’s archaic strangeness. The Greeks envisioned the myth of Oidipous as extremely old, taking place well before the Trojan War. It carries within it not just suggestions of the origins of Greek culture but of humanity itself. This archaic quality is part of what drew Freud to the story. It is our hope that using the original names might help convey some of the story’s primordial power. A more technical discussion of Greek names and titles may be found in the Translation Notes that immedi- ately follow this Introduction.

If the names come first, what comes second is the question of what the original Greek audience knew when they sat down to watch the play. Modern scholarship often assumes that everyone who saw the play in Athens would have known the story, and thus introductions usually begin with a synopsis so that modern readers can view the play the same way the Athenians might have watched it. This issue is crucial, for more than any other Greek drama (or almost any play since), Oidipous Tyrannosis built upon surprises. We will see below that the play is in fact a mystery, the world’s first detective story, with a hero as committed to rational investigation as Sherlock Holmes. The pleasure of watch- ing—or reading—it changes if you know the story. Not knowing allows the play to surprise you. Knowing allows you to watch the constantly unfolding layers of irony.

Did everyone in Athens know the myth before they saw the performance? This seems to us a questionable claim, just because in any age there are always people who simply have never paid attention to the things everyone is supposed to know. In the height of American awareness of the Bible, around the late nineteenth century, there were no doubt many people who could attend, say, a drama about John the Baptist and not know what happens to him at the end of the story. The tale of Oidipous was a sacred myth in Greece, but perhaps not on the level of the Trojan War. Homer makes no mention of Oidipous, other than a moment when Odysseus sees Oidipous’s mother in the Underworld (Odyssey, 11.273-280). So we might assume that “everyone” knew that the Greeks defeated Troy by hiding in a wooden horse, but perhaps only a certain sort of educated person might know ahead of time who killed King Laios.

This possibility becomes reinforced when we look at the texts of other Greek plays, such asAgamemnon, by Aischylos (Aeschylus). That play does indeed come out of the most well-known Greek myths, the Trojan War and the homecoming of Agamemnon, the events of which are recounted at length in The Iliad and The Odyssey. And yet, Aischylos thought it wise to essentially delay the play’s dramatic action by having a series of characters retell the Trojan War, Agamemnon’s place in it, and his decision to sacrifice his own daughter to secure the help of the goddess Artemis. Should Aischylos have assumed everyone knew this?