The Immersion Library

A man’s homeland, it seems, is his most precious possession.

Oh tragedy, tragedy. Curses and lamentations. Violence and death.

Euripides names The Phoencian Women after the play’s chorus; a group of foreign women hailing from a land from where myth tells us Cadmus traveled and founded Thebes. They embody the mythical history and traditions of a people; concentrating mass identity into a single group and voice. They live in Thebes as foreigners, as if simultaneously existing in both the past – when foreigners founded Thebes – and present – when her citizenry live and flourish. Their role in the play dichomizes them from the play’s main characters – the house of Oedipus.

As events unfold, the reader identifies the dualism of Family and City. The conflict between Polyneices and Eteocles spawns from their unique positions: one a returning exile standing on moral nobility and the other as current king whose moral conscience centers around ambition and self-serving practicality. One would say, “I rightly compromised with you and honored our agreement” while the other would say, “Who in their right mind would give up what I have?” Jocasta blames juxtaposing services to Tyranny and Ambition and also to Equality for her son’s conflict. But she also chastises the one who serves Equality and Balance for attacking his homeland and city. While commending his motives, she condemns his methods. As in all wars, the masses slaughter each other on the whims of their leaders, and therefore suffer unjustly. As the family conflict ensues, the city stands not on any of these services. The family is not the city.

Euripedes interlaces divine oracle into this distinction between family and city. To save the city, the gods demand the sacrifice of a single innocent. In this epidode, we see another dichotomy between the good of all against the good of a powerful few; the separation of city and family, the innocent casualty and the guilty aggressor. Just as the man sacrifices himself, do not city’s also sacrifice themselves for propogandic ideas and loyalty to leaders? As the Christ-like figure executes his charge, credit for the city’s survival ought to go to this act. The sacrifice saves the city; not the power or righteousness of any single member of Oedipus’ family. Again, further alienating the family’s fate from the city; their ability to enjoy the fruits of victory, or comforts of home.

As the play ends, one gets the sense that the author tries to interconnect the play to others; as if in a Greek Theatrical Universe. We harken back to the sick roots of Oedipus’ history and, as characters go their separate ways into other plays, one begins to uncover the mythological postulations to the question of human suffering. In this case, an entire family lineage toils under the curse of a patriarch’s rejection of an oracle. The city survives, but the family falls. No matter their ambitions, remorse, or sacrifice, they cannot escape the consequences of “original sin”. In fact, their very attempts to thrive under this yoke seem to ensnare them more firmly under it, like trying to escape barbed wire or to bare healthy fruit from a diseased tree. As eyes close in death, Oedipus endeavors blindly through his remaining life. His family’s saga is guided down its fated path.