Theseus at Colonus

Abstract The previous chapter traced the influence of Athenian ideals on Euripides’ reinvention of the myth of Heracles’ madness. Theseus’ encounter with Heracles is almost certainly Euripides’ own extension of older traditions of Athenian hospitality to distressed suppliants, so as to include Greece’s greatest hero in the list of clients of Athens. In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles takes the process of Athenian reinvention even further. Although Oedipus, like Heracles, is a well-established figure in Greek mythology, he has no close or early connections with Attica, and the help Athens gives to him has no roots in mainstream Greek tradition. Sophocles’ account may instead be seen as a kind of local variant of the Oedipus story, whose primary interest is for Athenians. Moreover, Oedipus is a figure whose appalling crimes had perhaps previously made any help or resolution of his sufferings unthinkable. The daring of Sophocles in suggesting that he could be welcomed into the city is akin to the daring of Athens in the face of danger that is emphasized in the Athenian encomia. The mythological expansionism which claims for Athens a share in non-Athenian myths, and even resolution of their problems by a virtuous representative of the city is, perhaps, akin to Athenian territorial expansionism and its justification in terms of the justice and Tollµ,a of Athens (cf. Thuc. 2. 41. 4).