218 JOHANNES J.L. SMOLENAARS
—pro dolor!—et nostro iamdudum funere reges
insultant tenebris gemitusque odere paternos.
(Theb. 1.74–8)
Those I begot (no matter in what bed) did not try to guide me, bereft of
sight and sceptre, or sway my grieving with words. Nay behold (ah ag-
ony!), in their pride, kings this while by my calamity, they even mock
my darkness, impatient of their father’s groans. (tr. SB)Barth is certainly right in taking insultant tenebris (78) as a metaphor:
“mock my darkness”; “darkness” is part of the intricate play of words
in this episode, and throughout book 1, of light and dark, life and
death, Oedipus’ blindness and the “fierce daylight of his soul” (saeua
dies animi, 52). One would perhaps prefer a similar metaphorical in-
terpretation of calcauere oculos in Jupiter’s complaint (1.238f.
above), echoing Oedipus’ complaint here: at nati (facinus sine more!)
cadentes/ calcauere oculos (238 f.). This phrase may be interpreted as
a physical act, “trampled his eyes as they fell” (SB), or metaphori-
cally, “mock my blindness” (Mozley 1928).^7 The difficult choice be-
tween these interpretations of lines 78 and 238f. is even further com-
plicated by the ambiguous phrase oculos in matre reliqui (1.72). This
phrase is, in fact, the focus of my contribution.
From Oedipus’ sad account in lines 60–72 introducing his curse we
have learned the bare facts of his life:
- his feet were pierced directly after his birth (61f.);
- he killed his real father, unwittingly (62–6);
- he solved the riddle of the Sphinx (66–7);
- he married his mother and fathered [four] children on her (68–70);
- after he discovered the truth about his birth and marriage, he blinded
himself (71–2).
In this account, Statius’ Oedipus closely follows the outlines of
Sophocles’ version in OT. In the course of Sophocles’ play, the truth
about Laius’ death is brought to light: the king has unwittingly been
killed by his son Oedipus, with his staff, on the three-forked road in
Phocis (811); after the truth has been discovered about the death of
7 The verb is used in its literal sense in a similarly violent context by Jocasta: haec
sunt calcanda, nefande,/ ubera, perque uterum sonipes hic matris agendus (Theb.
11.341). In Sen. Con. 2.4.3 (cadentes iam oculos ... erexit) and Silv. 3.5.39 cadentes
oculos is used of eyes in the process of dying. In any case, I find it difficult to accept
Vessey’s explanation that Oedipus’ reasons for the curse “need be no more than bitter
phantasies”: Vessey 1973, 74; cf. Ganiban 2007, 27.