The Maelstrom
Imagine, if you will, you find yourself in Athens in 429 BCE. Your city is emerging from a siege imposed by the Spartans. The confinement of the siege, as is often the case, resulted in a plague that ravaged the population. You almost certainly either had the disease yourself and had a brush with death, or knew people who contracted it and died. Pericles, scion of the Alcmaeonid clan, general in multiple campaigns to consolidate and defend the Athenian empire, the man who built the Parthenon and other buildings of the Acropolis to which millions will flock over the next 24 centuries, is dead. After the simmering tensions of the past decade, war with the Peloponnesian League is not a shocking turn of events, but to have it strike so close to home, and with such devastating consequences likely gives even the most grizzled veteran some pause. You don’t know it yet, but the scourge of war with Sparta will be the dominant feature of Athenian life for a generation, and will result in the fall of the empire and end of the current democratic regime. How did we get here? Why is this happening? How do we correct the course and repair the damage? Nations and cultures constantly confront these questions during their histories. Individuals grapple with these same questions throughout our lives. Depending upon how far back you’re willing to go, and how many follow-up questions you’re willing to ask, the answers can get very complicated, but the human mind is very good at finding, or imposing patterns upon events. Something about hindsight being 20/20. Students of history and political theory debate the causes of the Peloponeisian war and downfall of Athens to this day. These same questions are posed about the Persian Empire, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Rome, or any other once powerful political entity that has suffered a defeat, contraction, or has ceased to exist. I will not wade into these waters. Minds far sharper than mine have set forth and ultimately been found wanting. I think having some appreciation of the situation facing the Athenian audience of 429 BCE is useful for understanding what Sophocles may have been trying to say when he wrote his plays for that year’s City Dionysia festival tragedy competition.
Sophocles had been a successful playwright in Athens for nearly 40 years when he wrote Oedipus Tyrannus. Born in 497/496 BCE, Sopholces grew up during the years of the First (490 BCE) and Second (480 BCE) Persian Wars. Coming of age when your state faces the very real existential threat of conquest and domination of what was possibly the most powerful empire the world had yet known probably left an impression on young Sophocles. Veneration of the generation who did the fighting that preserved your way of life would be reasonable. The desire to strengthen one’s position against the persistent threat posed by the unvanquished enemy is understandable. Skepticism of those who undermine or abandon the traditional values, attitudes, and practices that created the strength and stability that have dominated life since that great generation dutifully protected the patrimony strikes me as a natural position to adopt; provided a perspective of glorious victory, prosperity, and stability were your experience during that time. I believe there is evidence to believe that these attitudes may approximate those held by Sophocles. At the age of 17 Sophocles was chosen to lead the Paean, the choral chant praising the gods, for the Greek victory over the Persians at Salamis. In 443 BCE he served as a Hellenotamiai, one of the treasurers of Athens whose primary role was to receive tribute payments from city-states that were once part of the Delian League, but now under the hegemony of the Athenian Empire. Shortly thereafter, in 441 BCE, he was elected one of ten Generals and was part of the expansionist policy of the time. He participated in the campaign to “integrate” the island of Samos into the empire. To me these events suggest he was aligned with the ruling power structure of Athens during the events that would lead to the Peloponesian war. It seems likely he was a loyal, patriotic Athenian who actively served the polis. In return the citizens of Athens seemed to embrace him. Not only was he elected to one of the more powerful positions in city government, they trusted him with the money. Twice. In 411 BCE, after the disastrous Sicilian Expedition that would contribute greatly to Athenian defeat in the Peloponnesian War, he was appointed as one of the Probouloi (commissioners) tasked with helping the city recover from the lost men, money, and materiel. I am not aware of his alignment with respect to the rulers of Athens in the immediate run-up to the war. It seems possible that with Pericles as a patron, and with a lifetime of Athenian victory as his heritage, like many before and since, he felt his city was blessed by the gods and destined to spread its benevolent influence far and wide. Pericles gives evidence of the sort in his funeral oration given after the first campaign of the war, “because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as our own”. When describing the multigenerational process of how the empire was developed he says “But if they were worthy of praise, still more were our fathers, who added to their inheritance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire. And we ourselves assembled here today, who are still most of us in the vigor of life, have carried the work of improvement further, and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and war. Of the military exploits by which our various possessions were acquired, or of the energy with which we or our fathers drove back the tide of war, Hellenic or Barbarian, I will not speak; for the tale would be long and is familiar to you. But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great.” However there is a substantial gap in Sophocles’ public service record between his time as general, and when he served as a Probouloi. Perhaps in the immediate lead up to and throughout the war he opposed the decisions that were being made, and who was making them. It seems possible a man raised on the pious virtues of a previous generation and the ideals of democracy might become disenchanted with the realpolitik of an expansionist empire. That he was entrusted with authority after the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition suggests he may have been on record as having opposed the move as bad policy before it went sideways.
In that same era there was a growing trend in Athens for men to take up the subject of rhetoric under the tutelage of paid instructors collectively referred to as Sophists. If Aristophanes and Plato are to be believed, these men were amoral, impious, often unintelligent, and taught skills that may have impressed the uneducated masses, but did not necessarily result in genuine insight or wise decisions that would improve the public welfare. Many Platonic dialogues are dedicated to demonstrating the shortcomings of sophist instructors, and Aristophanes’ play The Clouds lampoons Socrates and lumps him in with this group. It seems unwise to put too much stock into admittedly fictional accounts of events that happened more than 2000 years ago, but I think it reasonable to say the influence of sophist instruction was not universally considered to be good. The idea that rich and powerful people giving long, fancy speeches to win public approval might not be the best crafters of policy doesn’t seem like an outlandish sentiment to me. Perhaps Sophocles’ prolonged absence from public life reflects a growing weariness of the realities of electoral politics. Maybe, his brain was just overflowing with dramatic ideas and he wished to write instead. Maybe he hoped to wield influence through his art rather than with the apparatus of state. As far as I am aware we don’t have the personal writings of Sophocles, and we only have the complete text of seven of over 100 plays he is recorded as having written and performed. Humans are complicated. We all have thoughts and feelings we don’t or can’t fully articulate. Speculating on who a person was and what he thought and felt based on less than 10% of that person’s artistic output is fraught with peril. On the other hand, one doesn’t typically write for public consumption unless one feels one has something to say. What might someone who grew up in the post-war patriotic milieu of an Athens growing in wealth and power, but who has witnessed that the leadership and policies that once brought prosperity have now turned to open war with their most powerful regional neighbor want to say to his fellow citizens who are emerging from a tragic plague brought on by that war?
How about the story of a guy who kills his father and marries his mother? Total non-sequitur right? Maybe. Maybe not. My perspective on this play changed dramatically when I learned a bit of the history outlined above and a few details about the Oedipus myth. By far the most enlightening fact was that Sophocles didn’t originate the story. Oedipus is referenced by Homer in both the Iliad (Book 23) and Odyssey (Book 11) as well as by Hesiod in Works and Days. The references in those works are the type that suggests the myth was well known before their texts were consolidated more than 300 years before Sophocles wrote his play. In 467 BCE Aeschylus presented a trilogy of plays featuring the Oedipus myth. Consequently we can be reasonably certain Sophocles’ audience knew the basics of the drama when they walked into the amphitheater that day. We all know reboots aren’t always embraced by the audience. Sophocles won second prize that year, the worst he ever did in competition, maybe the Athenians wanted novelty? Regardless, the play was appreciated in, and immediately following Sophocles’ lifetime; Aristotle used it as an example of the tragic form in his notes on poetics. If the story was just a reboot there must be something more going on here. I’m going to be completely unoriginal and suggest it has to do with how the drama is structured and the depth of irony Sophocles employs throughout the play.
The thing to bear in mind when considering Oedipus is that nobody (except Teiresias a minor character who appears in only one scene) in the play knows the entire truth of the situation. Consequently, Sophocles is free to build layer upon layer of dramatic and situational irony. Even though I knew the story, and had read the play before, when I re-read it recently I found myself saying things like “Oh snap”, and “Holy $#!t”, and using lots of skull emojis in my notes. I don’t know what sort of decorum was expected at the tragedy competition of the City Dionysia, but the attributes of the god being celebrated lead me to believe there were audible groans and guffaws from the audience that day. The irony is not subtle. The emotional roller coaster of not only Oedipus, but of Jocasta is really something. In case you’ve somehow made it to this point in your life and don’t know the basics of the myth, here is a brief chronological synopsis of the Sophoclean version.
Laios and Jocasta learn from the oracle at Delphi that their son will kill his father and wed his mother. Hoping to subvert disaster, they bind the child by his ankles (leaving lifelong scars and leading to his name Oedipus “swollen foot”) and give the infant to a loyal servant with instructions to take him to the mountains and to kill him by exposing him to the elements. The servant cannot bring himself to kill the child. He runs into a shepherd in the mountains and the child is taken away to the foreign land of Corinth. There he is adopted into the royal household and is raised believing Polybus and Merope are his parents. Many years later at a banquet a drunkard lets slip that Oedipus isn’t the legitimate son of the royal couple. Oedipus confronts his parents, and they lie to him and assure him that he is in fact their son. Still rankled by the disturbing accusation he leaves home and presents his question to the Oracle at Delphi, but is not told who his parents are, instead he is informed that he will kill his father and marry his mother. He immediately decides to never return to Corinth and sets off to seek his fortune. While traveling he encounters a man at the intersection of three roads, and if Oedipus is to be believed the man’s aggression leads him to think his life is imperiled, and in what is jokingly referred to as the first recorded act of road rage, he kills the man and his entourage and continues on his way. Later, while traveling near Thebes, he is confronted by the Sphinx which has been terrorizing the city since the death of its former king Laios. Oedipus solves the riddle of the beast and liberates the city. Creon, regent of the city, rewards the foreigner for his service and offers his sister, Jocasta the widowed queen in marriage, and the role of king to the young hero. Years pass, he prospers and gains the love and admiration of the citizens. He raises a family with Jocasta. Next I’ll run through the dramatic and rhetorical highlights of the drama itself, but it is essential that you remember that no single character possesses the totality of the preceding details until Act 3.
The play opens with the citizens of Thebes gathered to present an appeal to king Oedipus. A new plague has besieged the city and they know he, the conqueror of the Sphinx, can figure it out. The plague has affected plants, domesticated livestock, and even people. Nothing is reproducing as it should. If the audience already knows, does this qualify as foreshadowing? Either way it’s immediately clear Sophocles is not going for subtlety here. In this exchange the Priest of Zeus, who represents the Theban citizens, makes clear that it is the gods acting through the king that they expect to solve this problem, not Oedipus acting as a man. Oedipus offers his empathy and assures the citizens that he has already acted in the interest of the polis and sent his brother-in-law Creon to receive prophecy from the Oracle at Delphi, and as luck would have it, here he comes now. After being greeted by Oedipus, Creon offers to relay the Oracle’s pronouncement in private, but Oedipus insists that everyone should hear what Apollo has to say. Remember that. Anyway, it turns out the reason everything sucks is that we never avenged the murderer of our former king Laios and his murderer is present right here in River City, and until we cast him out nothing’s gonna change. So not only is there a plague upon the city, but there’s a murderer on the loose. [/dramatic music and a crash of lightning] Maybe you should’ve taken the hint from Creon a few lines back Oedipus? Oedipus has heard of Laios, but never met him (side eye emoji), and inquires about why his murder was never avenged. It turns out he was away from Thebes on a journey to the Delphic Oracle. A band of robbers attacked him and his entourage and there was only one survivor. The bandits were never found because that darn Sphinx set up shop outside the city walls, and I really like what the translation I read had Creon say, “The riddling Sphinx had led us to let things that were obscure go, and to investigate what was at our feet.” In a prior incarnation of this essay I had a digression of moderate length about the potential symbolism of the sphinx that I’ll spare you now. Oedipus, who defeated that very Sphinx thus becoming ruler of Thebes, has a plan. Pretty simple, ask everyone what they know, leave no stone unturned, and figure it out. Basically this is Tommy Lee Jones initiating the manhunt for Dr Richard Kimball in The Fugitive. I put a skull emoji in my notes after reading these lines, “For whoever slew Laios might wish to take vengeance on me also with a hand as fierce. Therefore by avenging Laios I serve myself. Come, my children, as quickly as possible rise from the altar-steps, and lift these suppliant boughs. Let someone summon here Kadmos’ people, warning them that I will leave nothing untried. With the god’s help our good fortune—or our fall—will stand revealed.” There’s another great line when Oedipus chastizes the people who didn’t perform their duty to the polis and avenge their king years ago, and then declares his intention to bring this whole business, plague and murder mystery to a close: “ Even if the matter had not been urged upon us by a god, it still would not have been fit that you should leave the guilt thus unpunished, when one so noble—and he your king—had perished. You should have searched it out. But now, since I hold the powers which he once held, possessing his bed and the wife who bore his children, and since, had his hope of offspring [genos] not been unsuccessful, children born of one mother would have tied us with a common bond—as it was, fate swooped upon his head—I will uphold this cause, as though it were that of my own father”. Like I said, subtlety is not what Sophocles is striving for here.
The next scene reveals more about Oedipus’ character. Thorough investigation, gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses (turns out there was one) and piecing together the puzzle is one way to solve a mystery. It turns out there is another. Just ask the local seer. If understanding the origin of the plague can be done by way of divine oracle, perhaps special dispensation from Olympus can be used to solve the problem as well. Teiresias is the local mantis (seer/ prophet) and the chorus, composed of the city elders of Thebes, suggests Oedipus seek out his insights. The king is all over it. In fact he’s already sent for him, he should be on his way, I wonder where he could be? Oh look, here he comes now, how convenient. Oedipus gets right to the point and fills Teiresias in on the latest information from Delphi. Teiresias implies he knows something, but he’s gonna keep his mouth shut. Oedipus is having none of this. The entire city suffers, this man knows something which may be helpful and he’s holding his tongue? WTF man ‽‽ I suspect that despite the tension of the conflict this scene got a few laughs. After a bit of back and forth, about the time the personal insults start flying Teiresias says “You find fault with my anger, but you do not perceive your own that lives with you; no, you blame me.” (337-338). I’m not mad, you’re mad.
This frustrating exchange with Teiresias pushes Oedipus into slightly unexpected territory, “In my anger I will not spare to speak all my thoughts. Know that you seem to me to have helped in plotting the deed, and to have done it, short of performing the actual murder with your own hands; if you had eye-sight, I would have said that you had done even this by yourself.” He accuses the blind prophet of being involved in a plot to kill Laios. How exactly does he arrive at this accusation? Upon first reading it struck me as completely unfounded. It is. Oedipus has no evidence to make this assertion, but it’s also not a totally crazy conjecture. You have a long-standing unsolved murder, the city suffers under a plague, this guy claims to know something, and is refusing to share. Feels kind of like he’s “pleading the 5th”. Teiresias makes one other appearance in Greek literature of which I’m aware. Odysseus travels to the underworld to consult with him and learn about how to overcome the wrath of Poseidon and return home. Teiresias gives him some very explicit, very correct information about his journey in that interaction. Teiresias has legit street cred as a prophet for this audience. By having Oedipus make this accusation Sophocles has set Oedipus against a known quantity as a representative of the gods. His wit and wisdom, established by besting the sphinx and years of rule are now in conflict with the certain knowledge and will of the gods as established by the Priest of Zeus, the revelation brought by Creon, and Teiresias. This conflict is brought into sharp relief when Teiresias responds to this accusation, “I order you to abide by your own decree, and from this day forth not to speak to these men or to me, since you are the accursed defiler of this land.” Oedipus, in an effort to foster cooperation has said that anyone with previously unshared knowledge about the murderer, and even the criminal himself will be banished rather than killed, and Teiresias makes the direct accusation that Oedipus is Laios’ murderer and should therefore be banished.
Oedipus finds this laughable. He “KNOWS” he didn’t kill Laios. He never met the guy, Laios was dead when he got here, everyone knows that. It’s why he’s the king. He can’t believe he even heard it correctly:
Oedipus: What did you say? Speak again, so I may learn it better.
Teiresias: Did you not understand before, or are you talking to test me?
Oedipus: I cannot say I understood fully. Tell me again.
Teiresias: I say that you are the killer of the man whose slayer you seek.
Oedipus: Now you will regret that you have said such dire words twice.
Teiresias: Should I tell you more, that you might get more angry?
Oedipus: Say as much as you want; it will be said in vain.
There’s a bit more name calling as the conflict escalates, and Teiresias drops another bomb on Oedipus accusing him of sleeping with his mother. I can imagine this provoked a profound mixture of humor and horror in the audience. Again, to appreciate the effect one must remember all the things Oedipus doesn’t know about himself yet. The audience sees the iceberg and Oedipus is like the captain of the Titanic running full speed ahead confident he steers an unsinkable ship. There’s a reason high school English teachers still make kids read this thing.
Oedipus’ mind moves quickly. It’s very unlikely that Teiresias, a blind prophet, managed to kill the king and his entourage while they were traveling outside the city. Who could he be covering for? Why does he accuse Oedipus of the murder when it’s so obvious to Oedipus he can’t have done it. One typically remembers when one murders a king. Who stands to gain from this public accusation? Perhaps the guy he supplanted as ruler of the city? Creon. Creon was serving as regent after Laios’ death and lost his position to Oedipus, maybe he wants it back? Who is it that brought back the news from Delphi and announced to the entire city there was a murderer on the loose? Creon. Who should have solved this murder to begin with? Creon. Oedipus does not verbally develop these ideas, but even before he’s parted ways with Teiresias he has already connected the dots of this conspiracy in his mind when he asks Teiresias, “Are these Creon’s devices, or your own?”. This conspiracy theory isn’t “self-confessed sexual assailant, serial liar, and tax evader turned lone anti-child trafficking crusader” level crazy, it makes sense. Ambitious guy, angry about his loss of status, seizing upon a moment of crisis to unseat his rival is a pretty common play for power. It’s very plausible; the problem is that it is pure conjecture. It speaks to the type of intelligence that could solve a riddle that held a city hostage, but we are all familiar with how logical thinking can be abused and can spin out of control when faulty assumptions or lies are used as the basis for decision making. You think maybe the author, concerned with the behavior of a people and government lead by guys using sophisticated rhetorical skill devoid of fixed or traditional moral ideals, could have crafted a character to speak to those anxieties? I don’t think Sophocles is portraying Oedipus as a type or caricature of a sophist, but I do think he uses Oedipus to draw attention to the limitations of human intellect.
I’ve said repeatedly for this play to work the audience must bear in mind all the things it knows that Oedipus doesn’t. First Teiresias accuses Oedipus of murder he reminded us of Oedipus’ true identity and relationship to Laios, and now he reminds us of Oedipus’ true relationship to his wife Jocasta, “Do you know who your parents are? You have been an unwitting enemy to your own people, both in the Underworld and on the earth above. And the double lash of your mother’s and your father’s curse will one day drive you from this land in dreadful haste, with darkness upon those eyes of yours which now can see. What place will be harbor to your cries, what part of all Kithairon will not ring with them soon, when you have learned the meaning of the nuptials in which, within that house, you found a fatal haven, after a voyage so fair? And you have not guessed a throng of other evils, which will bring you level with your true self and with your own children.” Coming into this conversation Oedipus knew who he was, where he was from, and had no reason to suspect he was connected to the riddle he was trying to solve. At this point all those things remain true for him, but Sophocles has assured us we will in fact get the Oedipus story we thought we were getting when we took our seats, and this conversation with Teiresias highlights how profoundly devastating that information will be to our protagonist. It’s been a very revealing ten seconds Harold. Honestly, the repartee of this scene alone is worth the price of admission.
The rapid devolution of Oedipus’ conversation with Teiresias could be a function of the stress of the situation and the initial intransigence of the seer. Prior to this Oedipus appears as an engaging and empathetic man of action out to do right by the polis. In fact, at the end of his exchange with Teiresias after hearing the calamity that awaits him Oedipus responds “But if it saved this polis, I care not”. However, as we peel back the layers on the mystery we are also given ample reason to revise that initial assessment of his character. When Oedipus engages Creon in the next scene there is no question in Oedipus’ mind about Creon’s guilt. The first words out of Oedipus’ mouth are a host of accusations and questions toward Creon, “Are you so boldfaced that you have come to my house, you who are manifestly the murderer of its master, the palpable thief of my tyranny? Come, tell me, in the name of the gods, was it cowardice or folly which you saw in me and which led you to plot this thing? Did you think that I would not notice this deed of yours creeping upon me by stealth, or that if I became aware of it I would not ward it off?”. A brief note that in ancient Greece a tyrant was anyone who came to be ruler by non-hereditary means, which in Oedipus’ case is quasi true and false at the same time. This guy is smart, but not exactly measured in his approach. The pattern of impulsivity is becoming the clear modus operandi. We also see his insecurity about his position when he next asks Creon, “Is your attempt not foolish, to seek the tyranny without followers or philoi—a prize which followers and property must win?”. Who does Creon think he is, hoping to become king of a great city like Thebes when he has no property, and no following in the city? If you’re gonna attempt a coup, someone better have your back. Except, these words describe the exact manner in which Oedipus gained the throne. I believe the term for this is projection. Creon attempts to reason with Oedipus, and offers what I think is a series of reasonable approaches to establishing his guilt or innocence and Oedipus denies them all and he goes so far as to express his desire to have Creon killed. I’ll take this moment to remind the reader he has said he will simply banish the actual murderer of the last king. His priorities are brought into sharp relief in this exchange.
Creon: What do you want then? To banish me from the land?
Oedipus: Hardly. I desire your death, not your exile, so that I might show what a thing is envy.
Creon: Are you resolved not to yield or believe?
Oedipus: [Oedipus’ response is missing.]
Creon: I see you are not in possession of phrenes (mind/wits).
Oedipus: Sane, at least, in my own interest.
Creon: But you should be so in mine also.
Oedipus: You are kakos (filthy).
Creon: But if you understand nothing?
Oedipus: Still I must rule.
I suspect this reminder of the potential for capricious abuse of power played well in a city which had overthrown monarchy and embraced democracy. It also shows how anxious for self-preservation Oedipus has become. We have gone from solving a mystery to save the city to a reign of terror faster than you can say Maximilien Robespierre three times fast. This provokes the chorus to interject and plead Creon’s case and eventually Oedipus relents muttering about how this action will lead to his downfall. It won’t. Throughout this scene Oedipus has shown ample evidence of going off the rails over this conspiracy he believes he’s uncovered. He clearly needs someone to help him calm down, it’s the sort of thing only a wife, or mother can pull off. Why not both? Jocasta is summoned.
Jocasta is not only Oedipus’ wife and, unbeknownst to both at this point, his mother, but she is the widow of the murdered king and has just learned that the man who killed her first husband is in the city now; she is also Creon’s sister. Despite these competing emotions she brings a level head into the scene and after clarifying the source of Oedipus’ anxiety, the seer accused him of being the murderer, she quickly lands on a sure fire way to calm his nerves, “Then absolve yourself of the things about which you are speaking. Listen to me, and take comfort in learning that nothing of mortal birth is a partaker in the art of the mantis (seer). I will give you a pithy indication of this: An oracle came to Laios once—I will not say from Phoebus himself, but from his ministers—saying that he would suffer his fate at the hands of the child to be born to him and me. And he—as the rumor goes—was murdered one day by strange [xenoi] robbers at a place where the three highways meet. The child’s birth was not yet three days past, when Laios pinned his ankles together and had it thrown, by others’ hands, on a remote mountain. So, in that case, Apollo did not bring it to pass that the child should become the slayer of his father, or that Laios should suffer [paskhein] that which he feared: death at the hands of his child; thus the messages of the seer’s art had foretold. Pay them no regard. Whatever necessary event the god seeks, he himself will easily bring to light”. Sophocles has been efficient with this anecdote. Jocasta has offered a momentarily credible counter-narrative to basing one’s beliefs/actions upon the statements of supposedly divine seers and therefore offered comfort and redirected Oedipus’ focus. She has also provided multiple avenues of inquiry into the murder investigation, and most importantly unfolded the roadmap to answering the questions of Oedipus’ identity for the audience. It has also reinforced the conflict between revealed knowledge and human intellect. It’s not a direct challenge to the existence of the gods and their will manifesting in human life, but a question about how one identifies them. This is THE vexing question shared by all believers. Unlike Aeschylus who had Olympians in supporting or starring roles in his plays, and Euripides who is famous for his use of the Deus ex Machina, literally having a deity appear on a raised crane/platform called the “machina”, who would wrap up the conflicts of his plays, Athena is the only god or goddess to ever appear in any of the extant works of Sophocles. Even then, Ajax, in the eponymous tragedy, is the only character who can see her and so her appearance raises the question of Ajax’s sanity. This is to say it seems as though one of the hallmarks of Sophoclean drama is humans seeking to comprehend the divine through traditional means like oracles, seers, and augury, so this direct examination of Oedipus and Jocasta seeking to displace traditional methods of divination would fit within that paradigm and potentially serve as either an endorsement or cautionary tale depending upon how he treats it, and how the audience interprets the play. If nothing else, the solid logic employed to counter the conjecture provoked by peeling back of onion layers serves to point out how thoroughly Sophocles has constructed the backstory to maximize the irony of the drama.
As long as this essay is, it is actually an attempt to shorten a piece I’ve already written that ran to 23 pages and over 15,000 words, so if I don’t pick up the pace my attempt to revise will surely fail. What follows is an attempt to highlight how Oedipus’ character is developed within the trickle of revelations that occur during his time with Jocasta.
Oedipus’ self-ignorance as murderer:
Oedipus learns more details about the circumstances of Laios’ murder from Jocasta (location, king’s appearance and size of the king’s entourage) 729-755 “Unhappy that I am! I think that I have laid myself under a terrible curse without realizing it.”
Oedipus’ self-ignorance of parentage, identity as murderer, and dominant character trait of impulsivity:
After overhearing a drunken man at a party Oedipus disbelieves his parents and sets out for Delphi, and after receiving no answer about his parentage, but instead receiving a warning about murdering his father and marrying his mother immediately exiles himself from the people wasn’t sure were his parents in the first place, and then almost immediately kills a man who is about the age of his father and to whom he bears a striking resemblance at a place where three roads met near Delphi at about the time Laios was murdered. Also the fact that a father and son engaged in a fight to the death at an intersection might have something to say about a genetic predisposition to poor impulse control.772-823
Use of human intellect to question revelation from divine oracles:
After Oedipus integrates the new information provided by Jocasta with his own narrative, he points out that the claim of the sole survivor of Laios’ murder was that the acts was committed by a group of robbers, not a lone assailant which, if true, entirely contradict Oedipus’ recently developed concerns. 839-858
Oedipus’ impulsivity:
Jocasta offers up a prayer to Apollo for the frenzied state of her husband’s mind. “For Oedipus excites his thūmos (mind) excessively with all sorts of griefs, and does not judge the new things from the old, like a man of noos (intellect), but is under the control of the speaker” 914-916.
Intellect contradicts divine oracles:
After a messenger from Corinth arrives and tells Jocasta that Polybos, the man Oedipus believes to be his father, is dead she exclaims, “O you mantis-delivered words of the gods, where do you stand now? It is this man that Oedipus long feared he would slay. And now this man has died in the course of destiny, not by his hand”.
After confirming this information for himself Oedpus joins her, “Alas, alas! Why indeed, my wife, should one look to the hearth of the Pythian mantis, or to the birds that scream above our heads, who declared that I was doomed to slay my sire? But he is dead, and lies beneath the earth, and here I am, not having put my hand to any spear—unless, perhaps, he was killed by longing for me; thus I would be the cause of his death. But the oracles as they stand Polybos has swept with him to his rest in Hādēs. They are worth nothing”.
Oedipus Ignorance of parentage and use of intellect to contradict divine oracle:
There’s an extended exchange between Oedipus and the Messenger from Corinth about how, despite the fact that he is being invited back to rule Corinth as king, Oedipus will not return because he absolutely will not risk fulfilling divine prophecy of marrying the woman he believes to be his mother Merope. Little does he know that this messenger is one of the few people who knows with certainty that Oedipus is not the child of Polybos and Merope, but that the messenger was once a shepherd and he received Oedipus from a servant of Laios when they ran into one another in the mountains. 988-1046
Oedipus’ ignorance in combination with impulsivity:
Oedipus learns from the chorus that the shepherd he’s already summoned, the sole witness to Laios’ murder, is the shepherd most likely to have crossed paths with the Corinthian messenger all those years ago. When Oedipus seeks to confirm with Jocasta her tone is markedly changed, but Oedipus refuses to heed her warnings.
Jocasta: Hear me, I implore you: do not do this.
Oedipus: I will not hear of not discovering the whole truth.
Jocasta: Yet I wish you well; I counsel you for the best.
Oedipus: These best counsels, then, vex my patience.
Jocasta: Ill-fated man, may you never know who you are!
Jocasta is the first character to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Oedipus, excited to learn his own identity, dismisses her behavior as the anxiety of a woman who might learn her husband actually comes from the lower classes. The Chorus is caught up in this same momentum. For the audience, who has known his identity the entire play, we see clearly exactly how Sophocles is going to sew the narrative pieces together, and the effect is similar to watching any cringe-inducing video of an accident or injury. At this point I feel comfortable speeding up even more.
The shepherd arrives and there’s a lot of back and forth in which the details are slowly revealed. Similar to Teiresias and Jocasta before him, he suddenly clams up and is reluctant to divulge key information regarding the identity of the child (Oedipus) he bore into the mountains. In yet another show of impulsivity Oedipus threatens him as well, “You will not speak as a favor, but you will in pain.” (1152). After a bit more questioning the servant finally reveals that the child he took into the mountains was the son of Laios and Jocasta, and in a rush Oedipus finally grasps his true identity, his culpability for the plague upon the city, the murder of Laios, and his relationship to his wife and children. What the audience saw coming the entire play, leads to him refusing the see thereafter. He rushes off stage to blind himself, fulfilling the prophecy delivered by Teiresias earlier in the day.
Act three opens with an extended messenger speech relaying the details of Jocasta’s suicide and Oedipus’ self-blinding. In case the audience somehow lost the thread, maybe they were standing in line for retsina, or figs during a key moment of the play, Oedipus reviews how intricately all the pieces had to line up to lead to his fate. Oedipus reunites and reconciles with Creon, they make arrangements for his children and exile. The Chorus laments the whole sorry tale, and we close on a broken man bereft of power, prestige, family, and home.
The Weird Sisters
This raises an important question: Is there anything for the audience to learn from Oedipus? The message seems clear that one cannot avoid one’s fate. Laios, Jocasta and Oedipus all took drastic measures to prevent the exact events that were foretold, and which ultimately came to pass. I’ve come across numerous classicists who claim the obvious questions about fate and free will which modern audiences consider obvious were not those which an ancient Greek audience would have asked. I don’t know if this is true or not. I do know that modern audience members, endowed with exacting models of the physical universe, who wrestle with questions of determinism vs free will can easily perceive a deterministic answer in these events. I have an admittedly limited knowledge of ancient Greek literature and culture, but the little I know leads me to believe that there was not a monolithic, universally accepted understanding of fate. This is kind of obvious if we consider the facts of the situation. First, “ancient Greece” is an imprecise term. What we recognize as ancient Greek culture is generally reckoned to have begun around 800 BCE, this is a culture that would span not only mainland Greece, but countless islands in the Mediterranean, would cross the Aegean sea and settle “Ionia” in what is now western Turkey, it would be spread by commerce, and conquest in the form of Alexander The Great and the remnants of his empire in The Seleucid, Antigonid, and Ptolemaic kingdoms which would survive until the Roman Conquest in the first century BCE. Even then, the Romans famously appropriated many aspects of Greek culture for their own purposes. At a minimum we’re talking about a group of large, geographically diverse populations syncretizing their own inherited understandings of the world with locally developing and imported ideas over seven to eight centuries; it seems unlikely there was a singular understanding of “fate” in those circumstances. That may be true, but perhaps Sophocles had a singular understanding on display in the play?
I’d argue there is at least one way a 5th century Athenian could have understood fate as a way of recognizing the complexity of life that is ultimately beyond our control, but in which agency remains operational. Sophocles and Herodotus were contemporaries. In his history of the Persian Wars, Herodotus gives an example in which fate can both be accepted as something that is known, can be foretold, and is beyond direct human control, but which is somehow contingent upon human agency. In the second Persian invasion of Greece Xerxes focused on destroying Athens to both avenge the loss his father suffered at the battle of Marathon, and due to its role leading the resistance against Persain rule. Drawing upon the enormous resources of the empire, the Persian army was far superior to anything the Athenians and their allies could muster. The Athenians sent to the Oracle at Delphi for guidance. The initial prophecy was dire. Herodotus records it as “Why sit you, doomed ones? Fly to the world’s end, leaving Home and the heights your city circles like a wheel. The head shall not remain in its place, nor the body, Nor the feet beneath, nor the hands, nor the parts between; But all is ruined, for fire and the headlong god of war Speeding in a Syrian chariot shall bring you low. Many a tower shall he destroy, not yours alone,
And give pitiless fire many shrines of gods, Which even now stand sweating, with fear quivering, While over the rooftops black blood runs streaming In prophecy of woe that needs must come. But rise, Haste from the sanctuary and bow your hearts to grief ”. Not very promising. The Athenian leadership was not satisfied. They sent more gifts and sacrifices with a second delegation and sure enough received a slightly different pronouncement. The second oracle reportedly said “the wooden wall only shall not fall, but help you and your children. But await not the host of horse and foot coming from Asia, Nor be still, but turn your back and withdraw from the foe. Truly a day will come when you will meet him face to face. Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women’s sons When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in”. There was debate about how to interpret this second prediction. Famously, Themistocles, the Athenian general who had argued for the construction of a formidable navy, said the Greek ships were “the wooden wall” that wouldn’t fail. He led a retreat of most of the Athenian population and engaged the Persian Navy in the battle of Salamis and won a historic victory that would turn the tide of the war in favor of the Greeks. There were also those who believed the “wooden wall” referred to a barrier that had once stood around the acropolis. When the majority of the population abandoned the city, they took shelter in the location of the ancient citadel, and were all destroyed when the Persians arrived. It seems likely Sophocles would have been aware of these events, and the fact that both fates were fulfilled, yet were contingent upon the decisions made by people speaks to the possibility that fate and agency are not mutually exclusive concepts. Ultimately, I suspect fate is similar to time travel in modern science fiction; a storyteller will employ whichever paradigm suits his or her needs.
OK, but why did I bother with such a lengthy digression? Because I think it matters when examining Oedipus and his tragic fall. If Oedipus is simply the victim of an incalculably unlikely series of coincidences that was his divinely foretold fate, then I must ask if he is culpable for his actions? Is this story a genuine tragedy or just a sadistic tale with no redeeming value? Perhaps there is nothing more to see here than a scandalous tale which engages the base instincts of gossip and voyeurism, presented with a lacquer of irony and an arch smile. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think Sophocles deliberately presents and develops Oedipus’ character in such a way as to make a very specific point.
In his notes on poetics Aristotle cited this play as an excellent example of the elements he felt were essential to a good tragedy. Among those elements was “hamartia” which is commonly translated as the “tragic flaw” of the hero. The attribute of the character that leads to his downfall. In this case I’ve argued Sophocles has abundantly developed impulsivity as his defining character trait. Using the Athenian response to the Delphic Oracle’s pronouncements as our model, can we conceive of this story unfolding differently and yet still fulfilling the fate foretold? I think we can. The choices surrounding his birth and adoption are beyond his control, but Oedipus makes a choice to leave Corinth to clarify his origins and seek his fortune. Once at Delphi he learns of a disturbing fate and imposes exile upon himself. This isn’t totally irrational. If you’re looking to avoid the hand he has been dealt, exile strikes me as a reasonable choice. Except for the fact that the reason he was there in the first place is to understand who he is, and he’s no nearer that truth at that moment than he was before his journey to Delphi. Perhaps he could have sent a messenger to Corinth and said something like “Hey Polybos and Merope, I know you’ve raised me as your son, and told me the rumor I heard was false, but I’ve just learned this very disturbing thing, so I REALLY must know the truth this time”? Barring getting the truth from his guardians he could have made the decision to not kill anyone his father’s age, and to not sleep with any women old enough to be his mother. Yet, it seems like immediately after learning the prophecy, at a crossroads near Delphi he kills a man old enough to be his father and to whom he bears a striking resemblance. While Oedipus’ fate is decreed, and the choices of others impact his circumstances, his choices matter. He commits the acts that bring his downfall. Obviously, had he made different choices we wouldn’t have the compelling myth/ story to share for the past 3000 years, but can we imagine a character placed in similar circumstances, making different choices, yet fulfilling fate in a less tragic manner? I think we can.
Classical myth is filled with humans attempting to escape very literal or obvious fulfilments of prophecy and then falling headlong into the unexpected. Croesus is an obvious example. The Themistoclean interpretation of the oracle prior to the Persian invasion demonstrates that a non-literal fulfillment is certainly possible. Perhaps Oedipus never learns who his parents are exactly, but does learn Merope and Polybos aren’t his parents. He returns to Corinth, eventually Corinth and Thebes come into conflict and Oedipus defeats the current ruler of Thebes (maybe Laios, maybe someone else) in battle and conquers Thebes thus “killing” his father. As victorious conqueror he joins the two cities under his rule, thus “marrying” his mother. It’s a stretch, and would make for far less compelling drama, but the point is that it is conceivable that absent his impulsivity Oedipus could have made different choices, and fate would still be fulfilled, and therefore Oedipus was not ”doomed” by malignant forces, but we can learn from Oedipus’ tragic flaw.
I’ve heard some argue that “tragic flaw” is not the only interpretation of hamartia. The word derives from the verb hamartanein which means to miss the mark, or to err, as in shooting a projectile. The hero is aiming at something, but misses. It could be that he is aiming at the right target and simply fails to achieve his goal, or that he is aiming at the wrong thing. In the case of Oedipus his impulsivity drives his fall based on this understanding as well. His first aim chronologically speaking is to learn his identity, but he is distracted from that task by learning his fate. He then seeks to subvert his fate, but is distracted by a violent confrontation with a stranger, later he is tasked with liberating the city from plague, but is distracted by a conspiracy theory, a desire to once again undermine prophecy, and then finally he returns to desire to understand his own identity. Had he “hit the mark” on any number of those prior aims he could have been spared the tragic fall he endures. As I previously argued, had he forced the issue and succeeded in learning his identity when he initially set out from Corinth he might have subverted the most gruesome parts of his tragedy. I’d go so far as to say that had he even just unraveled the mystery of his role in Laios’ murder without the distraction of his identity he could have at least spared everyone the emotional anguish that came from learning his identity. He could have heard what Teiresias told him about his role, remembered he’d murdered a guy on the road, and confirmed that he was the culprit from the servant without the distraction of chasing the conspiracy and his identity. There are plenty of examples of heroes having to be cleansed of the crime of murder, even of their own family, in Greek myth. Hercules’ twelve labors were the price of atoning for the murder of his own children. Oedipus could have fulfilled his duty to the polis and removed the plague had he not missed his goal of solving the murder. That’s pretty unlikely based on the arrival of the Corinthian messenger, and the story would be ruined, but the point remains Oedipus’ tragedy is a function of forces beyond his control as well as his own choices, and the common denominators of his unfortunate choices are ignorance about himself, and impulsivity.
Perhaps it feels like I’m straining to make this work. It seems very unlikely that Sophocles himself actively considered these far fetched alternatives. After all, the legend of Oedipus was at least three centuries old when he wrote the play. He knew how it had to end before he put ink to parchment or whatever his tools were. However, I think there’s one last bit of information with which he and his audience would have been familiar, that may not be obvious to the modern reader. The Delphic maxims. The oracle at Delphi plays an enormous role in the drama. The initial revelation to Laios starts off the series of unfortunate events, Oedipus exiles himself based on similar pronouncements, Oedipus meets and kills Laios on the road to Delphi, and Creon’s report from the oracle about the plague launches the investigation that begins Oedipus’ inexorable descent into misery. Apollo’s shadow is there in every scene, invisible, but looming over every conversation and interaction. I’m told that when a visitor actually arrived at the temple at Delphi he or she was offered two or three universal pronouncements carved above the entry to the oracle. The two most famous of these were: Know Thyself and Nothing In Excess. With all his anxiety about responding to the plague, solving he murder mystery, and assessing the accuracy and utility of prophecy throughout the drama these two warnings are not headed. Oedipus once again misses the mark. His ignorance of his identity is repeatedly underlined, and during his headlong investigations his demeanor is initially confident, but devolves into insults and threats, gives way to anxiety, vacillation, then eventually returns to refusal of sound advice, and coercive measures. The variety and rapidity of these changes speak to a lack of moderation. In a city emerging from plague brought on by war stemming from increasingly violent efforts at enforcing regional hegemony, I think it possible Sophocles wanted to remind his audience of these bits of divine wisdom. In case the audience didn’t pick it up from the action and dialogue of the play, he had the chorus sing it out for all to hear.
After Oedipus rashly threatens Creon’s life and places his fear of conspiracy over reasoned argument, rational investigation, and his duty to justice, Creon understandably makes a hasty exit, and the chorus offers the following lament:
But if any man walks haughtily in deed or word, with no fear of Justice, no reverence for the images of the gods, may an evil fate seize him for his ill-starred pride, if he will not get his profit with justice, or avoid unholy deeds, but seeks to lay profaning hands on things untouchable. Where such things occur, what mortal shall boast any more that he can ward off the arrow of the gods from his soul? If such deeds are held in honor, why should I be part of the chorus? (884-896)
Here Sophocles is breaking down the fourth wall by having a chorus made up of prominent Athenian citizens playing the role of the Elders of Thebes ask the audience of Athenians with the means to get into the show, if the immoderate and unjust, those who don’t recognize their place within the grand scheme of life, are honored, then why should we, any of us, be part of this? Why should we sing and dance along to the action of an individual or a society which ignores the shared foundational values that define our identity and ostensibly bind us together? Humans are indisputably self-interested beings with behavior driven by the biological imperatives to survive and reproduce. However the strategy that seems to have worked in our favor and allowed us to inhabit every landmass and even depart the planet is one involving social groups and cooperation. Balancing these realities which are not necessarily diametrically opposed, nor entirely aligned, sparks the deepest debates within our groups. Knowing who we are, our strengths, weaknesses, needs, and desires both individually and collectively are essential components of consensus or contention within these discussions. Keeping our attitudes and behaviors in balance, giving ideas and actions appropriate weight and proportion are other obvious sources of friction. If individuals or groups fail to perceive realities about themselves, delude themselves into false beliefs, or attitudes and behaviors go unchecked, then the most terrible events, the greatest tragedies of human history follow. Was Sophocles warning the sophists that they were straying too far from reverence for tradition? Was he questioning the wisdom of the war that, in its infancy, had already taken so much from the city and its citizens? Was he asking himself, a prominent citizen and artist, “If such deeds are held in honor, why should I be part of the chorus?”
The human point of view is often limited by time and experience. Bias and cognitive errors plague our judgment, and dozens of named fallacies, errors, and biases have been named. Many cognitive errors fall into just two main categories: the belief that our limited experience is representative of the whole (belief perseverance) and the belief that we appropriately and rationally use the information available to us (information processing bias). A Theban citizen could have been forgiven for harboring jealousy over the fortunate state Oedipus inhabits at the beginning of the play. He strolls into town, solves a single riddle, and is immediately lauded as a hero, presented with a wife, and made king. He rules and raises a family. He garners respect and deference to the point that he can threaten the life of citizens in the name of serving his own interest. His wife seems to genuinely love him despite the circumstances of their arranged union. This picture of a powerful man as master of his domain sharply contrasts with Oedipus’ fallen state. After Oedipus learns the truth of his identity he rushes offstage to find his wife/mother dead and to blind himself. The chorus laments to the audience:
Alas, generations of mortals, how mere a shadow I count your life! Where, where is the mortal who attains a happiness [eudaimoniā] which is more than apparent and doomed to fall away to nothing? The example [paradeigma] of your fortune [daimōn] warns me—yours, unhappy Oedipus—to call no earthly creature blessed.
Some of you are sure to recognize a word from that passage: eudaimonia. It is often translated as happiness, but I’m told it is best thought of as the type of happiness we experience as satisfaction and fulfillment, living well. It is the term Aristotle employed in his Nicomachean Ethics in which he argues Eudaimonia is the end to which all other behaviors and goals are, or at least should be, subordinated. To achieve this goal he proffers the “functional argument” and “the virtue of the mean”. The functional argument suggests that a thing is best used to perform the function it was designed to do. A knife cuts. A pen writes. He argues that humans seem uniquely proficient in our ability to think and employ reason. There has been some disagreement over this conclusion about the nature of humankind over the years, but it’s what Aristotle goes with. How should we employ our cognitive abilities in pursuing Eudaimonia? What should guide our decision making? The virtue of the mean. Aristotle suggests the virtues that lead to happiness and fulfillment lie somewhere between two vices. Courage is somewhere between cowardice and foolhardiness. Honesty occupies the ground between deceit and indiscretion. Humor is neither joyless nor boorish. Finally, he argues that we can never really judge if one has truly achieved eudaimonia because what appears to be a contented and happy life may be built upon a false foundation or may come crashing down. I said earlier that Aristotle cited Oedipus as the prototypical Greek tragedy in structural terms. He also appears to have constructed a well reasoned philosophy of life which seems to recapitulate its warnings. Was he such a great fan of the play he did so intentionally? Like a Star Wars fan adopting the creed of the Jedi? Maybe, but I don’t think we have any evidence to support such an assertion. What we do know is that his mentor Plato was initially interested in becoming a tragic poet, but was dissuaded from doing so by Socrates. In The Republic, Plato had Socrates argue that an ideal republic would employ censorship to ban poets from producing fictions which did not teach the ideals of society, and that it would be best to have philosophy and virtue taught through logos (rational argument) rather than mythos (story). What he’s done is argue for the same concepts, know thyself (the functional argument) and nothing in excess (the virtue of the mean) , in which Oedipus is deficient and that Sophocles develops as the cause of his tragedy and loss of Eudaimonia. Essentially Aristotle did exactly what Plato said Socrates said the ideal republic would do to teach traditional wisdom. Again there’s no direct evidence that was Aristotle’s motivation, but it is a striking coincidence to me.
The twin injunctions about self-knowledge and moderation aren’t unique to ancient Greece. I think there are several aspects that make this play relevant and captivating all these years later. It is well constructed and executed entertainment. Sophocles develops his ideas through cringe-inducing irony and the multi-layered, non-linear revelations of the truths which up-end Oedipus. On the surface Oedipus isn’t clearly charismatic, and his plight is wholly unrelatable, yet the plot structure and the irony made it so that I couldn’t help but feel his anxiety and pain as his world came crashing down. In turn, I was forced to reflect on my own self-perceptions, self-deceptions, and blindspots. It turns out blindspots are tricky things to see. In the weeks following this re-reading, I find myself taking more notice of my own immoderation.
It also offers insightful and challenging commentary on how humans navigate adversity. Dramatic moments of collapse, like a regional war and devastating plague, are obvious moments for reflection. When it seems everything has gone off the rails, humans can’t help but ask ourselves why did this happen? How do I make it stop? How do I prevent it from happening again? In the moment when life is coming at us quickly there may be only swirling chaos. A maelstrom we must simply endure. However, the human mind cannot help but look for, find, or impose patterns upon our existence. Much of the work of philosophy, religion, politics, science, and the social sciences like history has been aimed at answering these types of questions. There are libraries of self-help books on the subject. Humans often gravitate toward simple answers. A single, powerful principle from which all other consequences can be seen as falling dominoes has genuine appeal. Parsimony is satisfying. Answers based on universal laws or principles make our world comprehensible and offer a sense of control. Are our problems all a manifestation of declining virtue public or personal? A fraying of our moral fiber? Perhaps the effects of self-interest rule our lives? Did the polis fail in its duty to avenge the slain king? Our world may be influenced by nefarious elements. Conspiracies seeking to displace, or entrench those whose interests conflict with our own. The jealous regent seeking to maintain or regain the throne. Alternatively, the imperative of self-preservation or desire for advancement may prompt those around us to rational, benign appearing actions with unanticipated externalities. The blind seer refusing to share crucial information, or the parents sending the child to the mountains to subvert their own foretold fate. As our horizons broaden some perceive structural, geographic, demographic inevitabilities that drive the events of our lives. Natural forces that may lie beyond our control, but which can be understood, and deciphered with the appropriate forms of interrogation. The Moirai, the three weird sisters of fate, may draw out, measure, and cut the thread of fate, but surely Zeus, Apollo and those who serve them can inform us about what is coming and why? Perceiving our lives through deterministic mechanisms raises questions about our agency. There is a temptation to despair and nihilism on both ends of the causal spectrum. Chaos and determinism are deeply disturbing notions that fly in face of our notions of self. However, experience also teaches us about the failings of agency and our rational faculties. The temptation to embrace bias, error, false dichotomies, and simple answers that fail to account for the entirety of reality remains a plague in our lives. In Oedipus, Sophocles reboots a tale whose outcome almost every audience member knows before it begins, a slow motion train wreck described in intimate detail; yet he gives us a compelling examination of life that accepts both the external and personal forces that propel our lives and destinies, and offers up timeless insights on two of the principles that may either accelerate or mitigate a variety of those forces, and twenty-five hundred years later we still can’t turn away.
MaximumKungFu 