Was Oedipus Culpable?
As I noted in an earlier post on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, I am (very slowly) working my way through the ancient Greek tragedies. I recently finished the sequel to Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus. One of the central questions in OC is the extent to which Oedipus was truly culpable for killing his father, King Laius, and sleeping with his mother, Queen Jocasta. And, indeed, to modern sensibilities (or at least my modern sensibilities), Oedipus suffers far in excess of his blameworthiness. After all, he did not know that Laius and Jocasta were his father and mother — he was raised by the King and Queen of Corinth, and they never told him that they were not his biological parents. The whole patricide and incest thing was an accident. So why should Oedipus suffer blindness, exile, and life as a wandering beggar — how he can deserve such a fate?
To be sure, Oedipus did massacre Laius and his attendants following a dispute over whose chariot had the right of way — what seems to be an ancient instance of road rage. Even if he did not know that Laius was his father, we might say Oedipus was culpable for a hyper-violent overreaction to a minor slight.