9. THE RITE

Music Score

Audio Sample

Featured Speaker

ANTIGONE, OEDIPUS

Reference

FC 105-107: cont. SCENE II

CHORUS:

On the far side of the wood, girl. If you need it,

You may get help from the attendant there.

ISMENE:

I am going now. Antigone, you will stay

And care for father. If it were difficult,

I should not think it so, since it is for him.

DISCOVER

THE RITE

This scene is cut from the 1985 recordings. It's also absent from the cast script published by Edinburg, but present in the TCG edition (see page below). 

"[Oedipus is changed by] a rite that lets him do the most simple yet most difficult of acts: tell his story. So too, in a subtle way, Lee Breuer, in his African American Holiness-Pentecostal rendering of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus, The Gospel at Colonus, tells a tale of African American life in America. The consequences in the rite done and the story told mark the differences between the settings and ultimate meanings of these plays, one Greek and tragic and the other, finally, Christian and transformed by joy."

"Oedipus at Colonus and The Gospel at Colonus: African American Experience and the Classical Text," LeBlanc, J.R., Medine, C.M.J. (2012). 

Ancient Greek Worship

Many Ancient Greek religious practices were rooted in the Bronze Age (3000–1050 B.C., Oedipus' time) or even earlier. 

The ancient Greeks had no single guiding work of scripture like the Torah, the Bible, or the Qu’ran. Nor did they have a strict priestly caste. The relationship between human beings and deities was based on the concept of exchange: gods and goddesses were expected to give gifts. Votive offerings from the suppliants, which have been excavated from sanctuaries by the thousands, were a physical expression of thanks on the part of individual worshippers.

Many smaller cults were exclusive to locals. For example, Colonus had a cult of the legendary horseman Colonus. 

Note that while many rituals involved animal (or even human) sacrifice, the rite Oedipus was asked to perform was humble and gentle.

Symbolism in the Rite

"chaplets"

a headdress made of leaves, grasses, flowers or branches. It is typically worn on festive occasions and holy days, in ancient pageants and ceremonies.

*Laurel wreath was worn as a crown representing masculine victory or authority, in contrast to the femininity and sensuality of floral wreath. 

Wilhem von Gloeden (1856-1931). Boy with laurel wreath (Ettore).
Goddess Flora wearing a floral chaplet (maybe myrtle?)

"myrtle"

Myrtle chaplets appear in wedding crowns for either the bride or the groom; sometimes presented to poets and athletic prizes, and were also worn to sacrifices and banquets. As opposed to laurel wreaths, myrtle signified victory from a bloodless battle.

It's also associated with the goddess of love: Venus is described by Ovid as emerging from the sea on her half-shell holding a sprig of myrtle.

In Christianity, losing its Greco-Roman association with female sexuality, myrtle came to be an emblematic symbol of the purity of the Virgin Mary.

Spring Nymph from the Birth of Venus: the myrtle around her neck symbolizes Venus.
Up: Myrtle growing in Sardinia, Villacidro. Sacred to Venus symbol of beauty and love, it is an evergreen plant; it is a bush growing till 3 meters high, rich of coriaceous, green, lanceolate leaves.Middle: Page from Henry Philips’ Floral Emblems (1825).Right: Queen Victoria, in her wedding dress, veil and what appears to be a chaplet of myrtle. This painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, in the Royal Collections, was an anniversary gift to Prince Albert, seven years into their marriage.

"fleece from a young lamb"

Featured in the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, fleece is a symbol of authority and kingship. 

Right: Roman silver mirror. The back depicts a flying, winged ram named Crius Chrysomallos, or "Golden-fleeced Ram" (end of 2nd century CE. Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome)

*JUBILEE means the horn of a young ram in Hebrew

"olive" and "wine"

Olives and grape vines are the staple crops of Greece (in reference to Greece's harsh landscape):

"The olive trees, spaced out in regular patterns among the furrows, produced the rich green oil that was and still is an indispensable ingredient of every Greek dish. But the olive gave more than food; the inferior oil from the second or third pressings served as a sort of soap, rubbed into the pores and scraped off with a bronze tool, and as fuel for the small clay lamps which were the ancient Greek's only resource against the darkness. The vine, though the Greek variety seems a frail and puny plant compared with that of Burgundy, produced the wine without which no Greek could live content. Though they drank it sparingly mixed one to three with water--it was essential to their communal and religious life." 

- Robert Fagles, Introduction to his translation of Sophocles' Trilogy

Olive Symbols: peace, victory, immortality

The Roman poet Virgil uses the olive branch as a signifier of peace in the Aeneid, and Roman envoys used olive branches as tokens of peace during the Pax Romana;