402 THE GREEK SAGAS: GREEK LOCAL LEGENDS
Oedipus still cannot believe Tiresias and goads him into telling him the truth
even more terribly (412^19):¥
TIRESIAS: These are my words, since you have reproached me with being
blind: you see, and you do not see the evil in which you are, nor where you
live, nor with whom you dwell. Do you know from whom you are sprung?
You do not know that you are hateful to your family below and above upon
the earth, and that the double curse from your mother and your father will
track you down and drive you from this land, now seeing clear, but then in
darkness.
The words of Tiresias powerfully express the horror of Oedipus' crimes.
Through the images of seeing and blindness, they bring before us the inevitability
of the justice of the gods.
Tiresias, in Sophocles' Antigone, also warned Creon of the disastrous mis-
takes he was making, only to be understood too late. Finally, before the attack
of the Epigoni, he advised the Thebans to abandon the city and migrate to found
the city of Hestiaea. Tiresias never reached the new city; on the way he drank
from the spring called Telphusa and died on the spot.SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bremmer, Jan. "Oedipus and the Greek Oedipus Complex," in J. Bremmer, éd., Interpre-
tations of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge, 1987.
Daniels, Charles B., and Sam Scully. What Really Goes on in Sophocles' Theban Plays. Lan-
ham: University Press of America, 1996. An examination of the characterization
of Oedipus, Antigone, and Creon in the context of the development of the plots of
Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone.
Dawe, R. D., ed. Sophocles; The Classical Heritage. New York: Garland, 1996. A selection
of writings from Italy, Germany, France and English-speaking countries that exam-
ine the lasting influence of Sophocles.
Edmunds, Lowell. Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Loraux, Nicole. The Experience of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man. Translated from
the French by Paula Wissing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998 [1995]. As-
sociations made include a discussion of Socrates, Heracles, Helen, and Athena.
Mullahy, Patrick. Oedipus, Myth and Complex: A Review of Psychoanalytic Theory. New York:
Grove Press, 1955.
Steiner, George. Antigones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. A discussion of the
many reinterpretations of the legend.NOTES- One of Laius' retainers escaped: in Sophocles' play he is the very servant who orig-
inally failed to expose Oedipus, and his story brings about the final discovery of Oedi-
pus' identity.