Oedipus at Colonus

To understand Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus, it is helpful to understand the context in which it was produced. The tragedy was first performed in 401 BC at a religious festival called the Great Dionysia, one of several fertility festivals held in fifth-century Athens to honor the gods of the city. Months in advance of the festival, the chief magistrate of Athens selected three tragic and five comic playwrights to present their work in a competitive format. Tragedians presented three tragedies and a satyr play, comedians one play, and a jury selected the winners in each category.

Though the English word “tragedy” comes from the ancient Greek tragodia, it inevitably held a different meaning in ancient Athens than it does in the modern world. According to Plato, tragodia generally referred to serious or grave poetry, which both contrasted with and complemented comedy, comodia. Tragedy was concerned with what is necessary and eternal, comedy with freedom and the temporal. Together, the two represented aspects of human experience that seem at odds but must function as a productive whole. Ritual events like the Great Dionysia provided an opportunity to acknowledge and unite them under the auspices of both the human community and the gods.