Tag: Theatre

Articles

Seeing One's Way: The Image and Action of Oidipous Tyrannos

To find ours, let us step back once more and examine Sophokles’ use of words. At a glance we notice a great deal of words related to sight in Oidipous Tyrannos . Roughly twice as many appear to us here than in the Antigone. The number picks up once more where Oidipous makes his final appearance in Oidipous at Kolonos. We can draw little more from this than that seeing and Oidipous are connected, fundamentally connected.

Articles

APOLLO AND HIS PURPOSE IN SOPHOCLES

Apollo actively intervenes in the fulfilment of Oedipus’ destiny through oracles and immanently in the onstage action. Rather than to punish him for any offence, the god’s purpose appears to be to impress upon Oedipus his existential insignificance. In the context of an ordered but absurd universe, Sophocles emphasises the paradox of the moral greatness of a man whose ‘official’ existential value is less than zero.

Articles

POMPEY’S POLITICS AND THE PRESENTATION OF HIS THEATRE-TEMPLE COMPLEX, 61–52 BCE

In spite of all this triumph Pompey also returned to Rome under unfavourable conditions. The majority of the senate did not respect the great general. He came from a recent noble family of late distinction, he did not rise through the ranks of the cursus honorum in the venerable Roman tradition, and he was not familiar with the protocol of the Roman senate…