Lowell Edmunds - Oedipus

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published in the USA and Canada in 2006
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledges collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

2006 Lowell Edmunds

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Edmunds, Lowell.
Oedipus / Lowell Edmunds.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Oedipus (Greek mythology) I. Title.
BL820.O43E36 2006
809.93351dc22 2006016085

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN13: 978-1-134-33127-7 ePub ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-32934-5 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-415-32935-3 (pbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-39135-7 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-32934-7 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-32935-4 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-39135-8 (ebk)

For a person who is about to embark on any serious discourse or task, it is proper to begin first with the gods.

(Demosthenes, Letters 1.1)

The gods and heroes of classical antiquity are part of our culture. Many function as sources of creative inspiration for poets, novelists, artists, composers, filmmakers and designers. Greek tragedys enduring appeal has ensured an ongoing familiarity with its protagonists experiences and sufferings, while the choice of Minerva as the logo of one of the newest British universities, the University of Lincoln, demonstrates the ancient gods continued emblematic potential. Even the world of management has used them as representatives of different styles: Zeus and the club culture for example, and Apollo and the role culture: see C. Handy, The Gods of Management: who they are, how they work and why they fail (London, 1978).

This series is concerned with how and why these figures continue to fascinate and intrigue. But it has another aim too, namely to explore their strangeness. The familiarity of the gods and heroes risks obscuring a vital difference between modern meanings and ancient functions and purpose. With certain exceptions, people today do not worship them, yet to the Greeks and Romans they were real beings in a system comprising literally hundreds of divine powers. These range from the major gods, each of whom was worshipped in many guises via their epithets or surnames, to the heroes deceased individuals associated with local communities to other figures such as daimons and nymphs. The landscape was dotted with sanctuaries, while natural features such as mountains, trees and rivers were thought to be inhabited by religious beings. Studying ancient paganism involves finding strategies to comprehend a world where everything was, in the often quoted words of Thales, full of gods.

In order to get to grips with this world, it is necessary to set aside our preconceptions of the divine, shaped as they are in large part by Christianised notions of a transcendent, omnipotent God who is morally good. The Greeks and Romans worshipped numerous beings, both male and female, who looked, behaved and suffered like humans, but who, as immortals, were not bound by the human condition. Far from being omnipotent, each had limited powers: even the sovereign, Zeus/Jupiter, shared control of the universe with his brothers Poseidon/Neptune (the sea) and Hades/Pluto (the underworld). Lacking a creed or anything like an organised church, ancient paganism was open to continual reinterpretation, with the result that we should not expect to find figures with a uniform essence. It is common to begin accounts of the pantheon with a list of the major gods and their function(s) (Hephaistos/Vulcan: craft; Aphrodite/ Venus: love; and Artemis/Diana: the hunt and so on), but few are this straightforward. Aphrodite, for example, is much more than the goddess of love, vital though that function is. Her epithets include