Oedipus at Colonus

In ancient Greek religion, the mythic hero was believed to have lived in the distant past and belonged to an earlier race of mortals who were descended from the gods. Part human and part god, these heroes were believed to have been larger and stronger than mortals of the present age. Though their lives were often short and their deaths violent (Oedipus is an important exception to both these norms), their stories made them immortal, and by sharing and honoring these stories, ancient Greeks took on a share of that immortality for themselves.

Because there was initially no written language to record these heroes’ stories, the stories were passed on orally from one generation to the next, a project in which tragedies like Oedipus at Colonus participated. What mattered about telling their stories was not recording facts, whose authenticity could not be fact-checked against existing sources, but preserving stories that were essential to collective and personal identity, to notions of community, and to the moral aspirations of those who told and heard these stories. Because they were descended from the gods, mythic heroes possessed eternal power that did not disappear from the world with the hero’s death. As such, they were seen as vital intermediaries between the mortal and divine worlds.