Teiresias, the seer of Oedipus the King - Leeds International ...

HANNA M. ROISMAN, TEIRESIAS, THE SEER OF OEDIPUS THE KING
change it. Much the same rationale inheres in Teiresias’ subsequent explanations
of why he will not reveal all that he knows. I quote them again: ‘Of themselves
things will come’ (341) and, ‘It is not destined that you should fall by me, since
Apollo ... is sufficient’ (376f.). 15 The first says that there is no point in making
painful disclosures when the truth will emerge in due course—a rather strange
claim for a seer whose trade is in knowledge, but otherwise not unreasonable. The
second expands on the first with the claim that revelation is pointless because it
can do nothing to change fate.
In other words, Teiresias splits knowledge from revelation and highlights the
pointlessness of telling what he knows. This unseerlike conduct raises the
question of what value knowledge has in a world in which destiny is inexorable—
in a world where knowledge cannot change the course of events or even alleviate
suffering. 16 This inherent contradiction between a fixed and irrevocable destiny
and the idea of knowledge as a value seems to have exercised Sophocles and his
audience in much the same way that generations of Christian philosophers would
subsequently be wracked by the inherent contradiction between the omniscient
and omnipotent Christian God and man’s free will. 17
The play leaves the question deliberately unresolved. Knowledge is treated in
the play as a most ambiguous good. 18 Oedipus’ knowledge of the world,
exemplified in his solving the riddle of the Sphinx, saves Thebes from siege and
death, so it is clearly of benefit. Yet this same knowledge also leads directly to his
election as king and, with that, to his incestuous marriage with his mother, the
Theban queen, and all the terrible devastation that follows. Oedipus’ belatedly
acquired self-knowledge, his learning that he is the source of the plague in
Thebes, enables him to remove himself and thus put an end to his people’s
suffering. But it also leads to his self-blinding and the destruction of the House of
Labdacus. 19
The commonplace scholarly wisdom is that Oedipus’ self-knowledge came
too late and that his knowledge of the world was insufficient without self-
15 It is therefore no surprise that Oedipus declares at the end that ‘it was Apollo, friends, Apollo’
(1329), who caused his blinding. He was told by Teiresias that Apollo would be his ultimate bane.
See Parker (1999) 16f., who maintains that such attributions of divine involvement occur
especially in situations of extreme emotion, usually of anguish. He does not connect Oedipus’
exclamation with Teiresias’ statements but with the fact that ‘as no one could deny, what Apollo
had decreed had come to pass’. Winnington-Ingram (1980) 176-8 discusses the question: ‘Why
does Oedipus attribute the accomplishments of his evils including ... his own act of self-blinding to
Apollo?’ (178).
16 Lattimore (1975) 108f.: ‘It is not that the gods will not help or inform Oedipus—they cannot;
their knowledge and very existence are too alien from his ... Teiresias represents the gods of the
Oedipus Tyrannus and dramatizes this alienation.’
17 Cf. Winnington-Ingram (1980) 153f.
18 Cf. Socrates’ remark in the Apology that all ‘human knowledge is of little or no value’
(¢nqrwp…nh sof…a Ñl…gou tinÕj ¢x…a stˆn kaˆ oÙdenÒj, 23a). The idea that human
knowledge is imperfect was common in Greek thought long before Plato wrote down Socrates’
expression of it.
19 Cf. Hoey (1969) 298: ‘It seems to emerge that in the Oedipus Rex the two great annihilative
agencies are knowledge and generation.’
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