THE THEBAN SAGA 387
The Chorus, speaking for ordinary citizens of Thebes (or of any Greek city
that honored the gods), is appalled. They (so they affirm) will not resist what is
fated, for its laws have been established by Zeus and never die, while human
beings grow old and die. The human being who dismisses the laws of Zeus com-
mits hubris (pride, leading to insolent violence) and becomes a tyrant, his world
one in which the proper order of things human and divine is thrown into dis-
order. Such insolence, so the Chorus sings, they never will display. In famous
lines they conclude (893-896):f
What man who lives his life like this [i.e., disregarding the divine law] can pro-
tect his soul from the shafts [of Zeus]? If deeds such as his are honored, why
should I dance in the Chorus?In the lines that follow these words they pray to Zeus to assert his power,
for if the prophecies of Apollo are disregarded, then religion (and with it, the
power of the gods) no longer has any meaning.
Immediately after this chorus, in a brilliant dramatic stroke, Sophocles brings
on Jocasta, the very person who had declared that the prophecies of Apollo were
useless. She has kept faith in the god but not in the prophecies she believes were
delivered by his false prophets. Jocasta sacrifices at the altar of Apollo but to no
avail. In bitter irony, her prayer is answered at once by the arrival of the
Corinthian messenger, who sets in motion events leading to her own death. The
inexorable progress of Oedipus' discovery continues to its fated climax.
Returning now to the last scene of the tragedy, we see that the power of
Zeus is confirmed, but with it comes the potential for the hero to assert
his dignity in the face of the worst that the will of Zeus can do to him. In
the final lines of the drama, the Chorus, in lines that appear repeatedly in
Sophocles (and in Herodotus' story of Croesus, as told in Chapter 6), sing
(1528-1530):S Call no man happy until he reaches the end of his life without suffering.The will of Zeus, as foretold by Apollo at Delphi, has triumphed, but so also
has Oedipus, who has asserted his greatness as a human being and has not given
in to despair.SOPHOCLES' OEDIPUS AT COLONUS
Sophocles died in 406-405 B.C. at about the age of ninety, and his final drama,
Oedipus at Colonus, was produced at Athens by his grandson in 401.^4 It is the
longest of Sophocles' tragedies, and it is a profound meditation upon the wis-
dom that old age brings after a lifetime of experience—success and failure, suf-
fering and happiness. It develops the themes of the Oedipus Tyrannus, produced
in about 428, bringing the hero to his mysterious yet glorious end near the vil-
lage of Colonus, the birthplace of Sophocles himself.