I have followed the text and commentary of Sir Richard C. Jebb,
Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus
(Amsterdam: Servio, 1963); my notes record the most important departures from his guidance. I have adopted many of the suggestions in Thomas Gould's
Oedipus The King: A Translation with Commentary
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970), and consulted also B. M. W. Knox,
Oedipus at Thebes
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).
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Kadmos
The legendary founder of Thebes and its first king.
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| 4
wool-strung boughs
Of laurel or olive, and wound with strips of wool, these branches were carried as emblems of supplication to a divinity. The branches were left on the altars, awaiting an answer to the appeal. What must have been highly unusual here is the use of suppliant boughs to seek help not from a god but from a mortal man.
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prayers . . . Healing God
Lit. ''paeans." A paean was a hymn to Apollo in his role as healer of disease.
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28
Ismenus' shrine . . . prophecy
Lit. "prophetic embers of Ismenos." The Ismenian temple was dedicated to Apollo and Melia, the source of the Ismenos, one of the two Theban rivers. The embers in the temple would be those under an animal recently burnt as a sacrifice whose remains could be read to interpret the will of a god, in this case Apollo's will.
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Plague
The plague that had struck Thebes was general, destroying crops, animals, and people. The fiery heat characteristic of the fever is referred to again at II. 23031. The resemblance between the plague in
Oedipus The King
and the Athenian plague of 430 as described by Thucydides has led some scholars to suggest a date for the play shortly after 429 B.C. See especially Bernard Knox, "The
Date
of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles" in
AJP
77, no. 2 (1956).
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A burning god
The assumption is that a general and devastating plague must have been caused by a divinity, as was the plague in the first book of
The Iliad.
In l. 227 the burning god is said by the Chorus to be Ares, by which they mean "violence" or "destructiveness."
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Hades
The god who presides over the underworld.
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43
We don't . . . confronting gods
The Priest explains why he, a man who himself has access to divinity, comes to Oedipus, a political leader, for help in this crisis. Oedipus has proven his ability to act effectively in situations requiring direct contact with a divinity.
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