Poor Oedipus
Born in Thebes, Oedipus was left to die on a mountaintop because a seer told Laius and Jocasta, his parents, that this infant was a threat to the throne. In real life he would have just died of exposure, another unfortunate unwanted child statistic, but in Greek mythology, a shepherd saves him and takes him to Corinth, where he is raised to believe he is the son of the king. Later the Oracle at Delphi, without so much as a “spoiler alert,” tells him he will kill his father and marry his mother. He vows to never go home to Corinth – a problem avoided is a problem solved, right? Oops.
Back in Thebes, King Laius having removed what he’s been told is the only threat to his throne, becomes a blustery bully who picks fights with travelers. Enter young Oed, who takes crap from no one and kills Laius. Oops again, the first half of the prophecy was fulfilled. But before Fast Oedi can meet Jocasta, the love of his life, he hears of a monster wreaking havoc in Thebes. A Sphinx. a mean monster with the head and bust of a woman, and the body of a lion, has laid siege to the city. “Nobody gets in or out unless he answers my riddle,” she screams.
Apparently, ancient Greeks were not too good at riddle solving, because the Sphinx was murdering all who failed and there were a lot of bodies stacking up. So Oedipus stepped up. (This was in what the poet Hesiod called the Heroic Age after all, the only age which wasn’t worse than the previous one.)
“OK,” says the Sphinx, “what animal walks first on four legs, then on two, and later three?”
I don’t know if Oedipus gets it right away or has to think with the ancient Greek equivalent of the Jeopardy theme song playing in the background, but he answers,
“A man. He crawls as a baby, rises to walk on two legs, but must lean upon a cane when he is old.”
Evidently, the Sphinx didn’t have much time for disappointment at being outsmarted, because Fast Oedi kills her too and then goes off to shack up with his mom, blind himself, and become the subject of the Sophocles play and countless Freudian analyses.
The Riddle
One thing that intrigues me about the Sphinx’s riddle is that the Greeks cast a man as an animal. Contrast that with the Judeo-Christian tradition of man with “dominion over all animals, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea.”
Another is the unity of the stages of man’s growth, four legs two, and even aged leaning on a cane, he is one animal, a man. (This meant a “person,” but somehow for ancient Greeks man was less gender-specific than today.) I think as a child, I felt I was treated as somehow less than human. I was to “do as I was told,” not “talk back,” and accept what adults told me without question. These days there are times when my age makes me invisible. A colleague told me, “Stop telling people how old you are; no one will listen to you.” The Greeks seem to see a person, as one animal. He learns and his locomotion changes, but is one animal.
Aesop
The Greek fabulist (or Phrygian, which is in modern-day Turkey) told a story of the Man, the Horse, the Ox, and the Dog. Three animals a horse, an ox, and a dog walked in the winter mountains. They were starving and freezing when they came upon a cabin in the woods. The man who lived there invited them in and made a warm bed for each near the fire. The man gave oats to the horse, hay to the ox, and shared his own dinner with the dog. Grateful, the animals each gave some of their essence to the man. They divided his life between them. The horse gave to youth, high spirits and impatience with restraint. The Ox took gave strength to middle age, for hard work, steadiness, and focus. The dog took old age and gave loyalty and devotion to those who provided care, but peevishness and disdain for fools.
Aesop also made man one animal but noted the differing attitudes of man as he aged. I think of the Big Mama Thornton song, that Elvis Pressley made famous, “You ain’t nothin’, but a hound dog.”
Shakespeare
In As You Like It, there are two characters Touchstone and Jacques, who comment on the foibles of the other characters who behave foolishly and struggle to find or admit love. Touchstone the jester, is the optimist, the romantic who falls in love with love, whose humor is always rosy. Jacques is the failed idealist, the cynic who uses humor to mask his pain, upon discovering that the world is not ideal.
The Bard gives the description of the seven ages of man to the cynic Jaques. It has become one of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare, and the one that Richard Kindersley’s sculpture, pictured above, is meant to represent.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His Acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Old Will doesn’t give Jacques nice things to say about man, Babies are “mewling and puking.” Kids hate school, young lovers “sighing” and “woeful.” Soldiers are “quick to quarrel.” Justices were fat and pompous. Jacques reserves his worst criticisms for the old, the “slippered pantaloon” and “second childishness. . . sans everything.” Not sure whether this cynic would say I’m in the sixth or seventh stage, but I think I’d find his remarks offensive either way.
