Oedipus the King by Sophocles Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Oedipus the King by Sophocles - Essay Example The passage tells readers that eternal laws were born in Heaven, Olympus alone is their father; they were not brought forth by the mortal nature of man, nor shall forgetfulness ever put them to sleep. A god is great in them, and he does not grow old.' The prayer of the chorus is for a life lived in accordance with these laws. Described as they are with beautiful and passionate emphasis, they are laws of divine origin, Olympian laws, comprehensive and universal. The stanzas following depict the sinner against these laws, the man full of hybris which 'begets the tyrant'. The chorus prays that the Polis may keep its old traditions. The god must remain the State's prostates, its guardian and leader. For if this is not so, if impiety takes hold of the city, then, the chorus sings, 'what need I dance (896). Then its service in honour of the gods has become senseless. In obvious retort to Iocaste's sceptical utterances on the value of Apollo's oracles, the chorus appeals to Zeus to show his power and the truth of the oracles: 'No longer Apollo is honoured, worship is dead' ( +). This passage reflects the features of a code of belief and behavior which is opposed to all only man-made beliefs and rules. The song does not repeat the striking mention of the unwritten laws, but their spirit could hardly be made more manifest. Not only does the poet stress, once more and with words of the most emphatic conviction, that the world in general as well as the Polis are ruled by eternal and divine laws, and that the political ruler who does not submit to them will become unjust and a tyrant. The eternal laws are the rules of a world, of a kosmos, of divine ordering and man's pious devotion, not of human morality and political common sense. When the Sophists discovered 'natural law', they denied the traditional (and Sophocles') divine order. For Sophocles there was only Oneness, unity: nature was divine, physis was nomos. In opposing the unwritten laws to Creon's decree Sophocles made what could perhaps be called a logical mistake. Not the slightest hint is given, and it is in itself entirely unlikely, that Creon's law was written law. It was a , a pronunciamento or proclamation. Taken quite literally, there was no conflict between written and unwritten laws. Sophocles uses the expression in a way suggesting that it was not a newly invented phrase. It is certain that in fifth-century Greece most laws were regarded as valid just because they were written. Creon's decree is fundamentally of the same kind, and Sophocles' mistake (if readers may call it so) is easily explained. He did not invent either the phrase or the matter, but he used the concept in his own way and to his own purposes; in fact, it was probably he who gave it its most forceful expression. Heraclitus was perhaps the first to speak of one divine law from which all human laws derive. He coined a striking phrase for the idea which, howev er vaguely, was generally held, that all law was of divine origin.