Sofocle
Edipo a Colono

With the due reverence paid to the master who perfected the tools of the trade, but with the proud divergence of someone forging their own original path, it seems that Sophocles, engaging in a delicate balancing act, would say something like this about Aeschylus: "he always does the right thing, albeit unknowingly."

But are we sure he was referring solely to the noble art of the tragedian?

Sophocles, when presenting his works at the Dionysia, was one of the first to break away from the famous Aeschylean orthodoxy that favored the monolithic "connected trilogy," instead opting for three heterogeneous episodes, both in themes and heroes.

If in Aeschylus the gods often and willingly took the field to champion the causes of their protégés (like Apollo on behalf of Orestes in the "Eumenides") or to expose their cases directly (as in "Prometheus Bound"), in Sophocles the deities tended instead to a deaf indifference towards earthly affairs.

And what about the chorus? Where Aeschylus could even assign it a co-star role ("The Suppliants" being the most evident case), Sophocles decidedly relegated it to the background. Almost a counterpoint to the dialogues and a commentary on the stage action.

And it doesn't end there: if in Aeschylus' tragedies the spark that ignited the dramatic device was the human arrogance (the hybris) that violated the eternal laws set by the Celestials, in Sophocles the tragedy was inherent to human life which, weighed down by all its congenital flaws, bears within it this wretched and immutable destiny.

With a certain degree of approximation, one could say that Aeschylean tragedy is liturgical and solemn, while Sophoclean tragedy is primarily existential.

What then would be the "right," given the many differences, to which Sophocles refers when speaking of Aeschylus? Could it be meant as a philosophical "right"? A "right" that does not refer so much to dramaturgical technique, but rather to the intrinsic condition of human life on Earth?

In the "Agamemnon" Aeschylus has the chorus of elderly Argives declare that "Zeus has established this powerful law for men: knowledge through suffering."

And who is the most lonely, torn, tormented, cursed character in all of Greek Tragedy? That Oedipus to whom Sophocles "gives" the highest degree of knowledge precisely for all that unutterable journey of suffering he had to endure.

At the beginning of "Oedipus the King" our hero is spotless and fearless, a shrewd and beloved politician, a man in the prime of life endowed with a piercing ars oratoria and precise analytical logic capable of solving the most complicated of riddles, even if posed by the feared Sphinx.

He is indeed a wise man, but the point is that he knows only through the instrument of intelligence.

I won't summarise the well-known adventures of this titanic work, to which Aristotle, in his "Poetics," awarded the prize for the most perfect example of tragic composition according to the criteria of plausibility, necessity, and intimate sequence of events.

I will only say that if Oedipus’s journey begins when cynical and unfair fate dethrones him from the soil of Thebes, it is only in exile - in "Oedipus at Colonus" - that the Sophoclean creature will finally reach the end of his path, acquiring that higher form of knowledge through suffering previously enunciated by Aeschylus.

Arriving at the sacred grove of Colonus - near Athens - Oedipus is now a limping, malnourished, emaciated old man. A human wreck, who moreover is forced to rely entirely on his daughter Antigone due to the blindness self-inflicted in Thebes.

Devastated in body but not broken in spirit: "I ask for little and gain even less than little. Yet this suffices me: my sufferings and the long life lived teach me contentment. And finally pride."

At the extreme edge of life, Oedipus is now a man who knows, who intuits, who sees fragmentary yet very clear glimpses of the future. He infallibly captures the surrounding cosmic energies and prophesizes like a new Tiresias (once loathed by him) to whom he is now similar. And not only for complete visual infirmity.

He knows that the curse of his lineage will not end with his name. To his sons/brothers Eteocles and Polynices - guilty of having exiled him and now fighting to succeed him in Thebes - he predicts simultaneous fratricide, and that "they will have only as much of my land to die on," which Aeschylus will narrate in "The Seven Against Thebes."

No one will be spared. Neither the wicked brother-in-law/uncle Creon nor the sweet daughter/sister Antigone, who will meet their painful destinies in that "Antigone" which will close the Oedipal cycle: "in that land, my avenging spirit will dwell forever."

He prophesizes to Theseus, king of Athens, fortune and glory for having so benevolently welcomed him among his possessions and - interpreting the rumble of thunder as an unmistakable sign - he understands that it will be at Colonus he will find that end now felt as a blessing.

This is the most important thing he has come to understand: how to face death.

Sophocles shows Oedipus venturing into the depths of the woods with serene stoicism, a complete surrender to the impending cupio dissolvi that is about to engulf him, advocating Nietzsche's cause when he spoke of metaphysical consolation for the inevitability of death as the highest "educational function" of Greek Tragedy.

Who has ever suffered more than Oedipus? Who has ever known more (and more deeply) about life, the future, or the approach of death?

Yes, Oedipus's trajectory seems to be Sophocles’ demonstration of the "right" Aeschylean assertion.

"Oedipus at Colonus" was the last work written by our author when he was almost ninety years old, and legend has it that his son Iophontes (also a tragic poet) sued his father over financial disputes, accusing him of senile dementia. Sophocles, to confirm his lucidity, defended himself by reciting this final creation of his mind in its entirety.

But he never saw it staged: it was performed posthumously - a great and unusual honor at the time - five years after his death.

And with him, an unrepeatable era closed.

"The Frogs" presented in 405 B.C. - a few months after the nearly simultaneous demise of Sophocles and Euripides - announced that the great tragic tradition had ended, and with his sharp and irreverent tongue of a seasoned comedian, Aristophanes called the new tragedians "scraps," hack poets who quickly faded into anonymity "after having pissed only once on Tragedy."

The greatest had already ventured into the depths of the woods.