Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

Tragedy was performed in Athens at the annual festival of Dionysus, the Great, or the City, Dionysia in late March. Competition was held on three successive mornings of the festival. Three tragic poets, who had been selected earlier in the year, each presented a tetralogy, consisting of three tragedies and a satyr play. Additional festivities included comic and dithyrambic contests, religious processions and rituals of various kinds. At the close of the festival ten judges …

…to grief. The final section (exodos, 308 lines) is essentially an epilogue to the main plot, for the tragedy is practically complete with Oedipus’ discovery of his identity. The messenger reveals the house is polluted with such ills that not even the great rivers of the Danube and the Rion (Phasis) could wash it clean, a simile that flows through Seneca to Macbeth (II, ii, 60). This report prepares for the shocking sight of the blinded Oedipus.