Angela Robey
OXFORD READINGS IN GREEK RELIGION
Chapter 5: From Oedipus to Periander
“Lameness, Tyranny, Incest in Legend
and History”
J.-P. Vernant
I. Lameness
A. In a positive Light
1. ‘sign or a promise of a singular destiny’
2. liberates the walker ‘from the common necessity of advancing in
a straight line, within the limits of a single direction’ – circular
3. Hephaestus, the divine, is lame
B. Variations of Lameness
1. of the legs/feet – a man does not walk straight
2. of the tongue – a man drags discourse, ‘does not pursue his course
directly toward the listener’
3. of the mind – ‘a man cannot tie up inside himself the thread of
memories’
4. a bastard – descent not maintained in a straight line
C. Myth of Agis’ successor
1. son – Leotychidas – suspected of being another man’s son — nothos
2. brother – Agesilaus – physically lame — cholos
3. oracle warns Sparta to beware or one day the royalty may become
lame and they will be overcome by evils, which should be the successor?
4. the son, not descended of the royal line, would make the royal
house lame and thus cause the evils
II. The Labdacids of Legendary Thebes
A. Levi-Strauss’ Studies
1. Stressed importance of common trait of lameness in three generations
of Labdacids
a. Labdacus: the lame, legs are not alike, not of the same size or
strength
b. Laius: left-handed, asymmetrical, all left feet
c. Oedipus: swollen-foot
2. Linked the riddle of the Sphinx to the theme of walking
B. The Myth
1. The generations (in descending order) Labdacus, Laius, Oedipus,
and Eteocles and Polyneices
2. Labdacus dies while Laius is a baby, an outsider takes over the
throne, Laius is turned away from Thebes, lives with Pelops
3. Laius is unbalanced in sexual relations with Pelops, inflicts
violence on Pelops’ son, who kills himself, Pelops places a curse on Laius
condemning his line to extinction, he returns to Thebes, marries Jocasta,
and takes over the throne
4. Oracle warns Laius that he must not have a child because the child
will destroy Laius and sleep with his mother
5. They have a child, Oedipus, and they send him away to die, but
he ends up in Corinth and believes he is the couples true son
6. Oedipus learns of the oracle in a dream — that he will destroy
his parents, and leaves Corinth to prevent it
7. He meets strangers (in fact his real father) in the road and murders
his father
8. He returns to Thebes, answers the riddle of the Sphinx, and takes
over the throne, marrying his mother, Jocasta
9. Sphinx – illegitimate daughter of Laius – role is to test the
sons of the ruler to distinguish the bastard (nothos) from one of straight
descent (gnesios)
10. Laius revealed the oracle about his son to her, which only kings
would know, her brothers (from concubines) tried to argue their way into
the throne, but they didn’t know of the oracle – but Oedipus knew of it
11. The riddle — what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs
in the afternoon and three legs in the evening – answer = human — on all
fours as a baby (tetrapous – four feet), 2 legs as adult (dipous – two
feet), 2 legs + cane as old man (tripous – three feet) – Oedipus solves
it and becomes king and marries his mother, gives birth to Eteocles and
Polyneices
12. Oedipus curses his sons, saying they would die at each other’s
hands
13. Eteocles took throne, Polyneices was exiled and formed Seven
against Thebes, killed each other in war,
14. ‘the line of the Labdacids instead of continuing in a straight
line comes back to its point of origin, destroying itself’
C. The Cause: ‘If we are to believe Herodotus, it was to warn the
Lacedemonians and their allies against tyranny’
III. The Cypselids of Historical Corinth
A. The generations: A Bacchiad, Labda, Cypselus, Periander, and Lycophron
and his older brother
B. The Bacchiads – group of men who monopolized power in Corinth
– married among themselves to keep privileges of power (gave daughters
as wives to one another)
C. One lame daughter, Labda – her ‘child will inherit from his mother
a lame birth’
1. either lame physically, so no Bacchiad wanted to marry her, she
is thrust away from direct descent
2. or lame because she married against the rules
D. Labda married a descendent of Caeneus (Eetion), an androgyne (both
man and woman) which is seen as a form of lameness in itself
E. The son of Caeneus (Eetion), husband of Labda goes off to consult
oracle, the god tells him his wife is pregnant and she ‘will give birth
to a rolling stone who will swoop down on the rulers and will punish Corinth’
F. The Bacchiads know of the oracle and send 10 members to kill the
baby at its birth, none of them can kill the baby when they first hold
it, they step outside to discuss it and the mother hears there discussion
and hides the baby in a beehive (kypseli) (Cypselus is his name – from
kypseli)
G. Cypselus consults oracle, god urges him to seize Corinth, he establishes
himself as tyrant – god says ‘he and his sons, but not the sons of his
sons’
H. His son Periander becomes tyrant, possibly has secret relations
with his mother, Crateia (whose name means sovereignty) – he marries Melissa
I. Periander has two sons
1. oldest – close to Periander but slow mind, remembers nothing
2. youngest – Lycophron — like Periander, but refuses to communicate
with him
J. Periander beats Melissa to death, boys go to stay with Melissa’s
father, where Lycophron realizes Periander killed his mother, when they
go back he refuses to talk to him
K. Periander expels Lycophron from the palace and won’t let anyone
speak to him
L. Periander asks Lycophron to return to the palace b/c he needs
a successor, the oldest son is lame of mind, he declines and Periander
banishes him
M. Periander later, old and dying, offers to leave Corinth if Lycophron
would return and take over as ruler, Lycophron accepts
N. However the oracle had said ‘not the sons of your (Cypselus) sons’,
the Corcyrans were warned of the plan and killed Lycophron
O. Labda’s lineage ‘falls into nothingness instead of continuing
in the right order of successive generations’
IV. Compare/Contrast
A. How the lines became lame
1. Oedipus = Legitimate son, rejected after birth by his real parents
2. Cypselus = Rejected before birth, through rejection of his mother,
not by rejection of his parents
B. Names show their fate
1. Oedipus = swollen foot, his feet were bound together when he was
thrown in the wild
2. Cypselus = beehive, where he was hidden from the Bacchiads
C. How death was avoided (both from passing hand to hand)
1. Oedipus = shepherd couldn’t kill him and gave him to another shepherd
to carry him far away
2. Cypselus = none of the 10 Bacchiad members sent to kill him could
after they held him
3. neither the shepherd nor the 10 Bacchiads revealed they didn’t
kill the child
D. Parents hiding children
1. Jocasta and Laius hide Oedipus from those who might help him survive
2. Labda hides Cypselus from those who would hurt him
E. Both men as consult oracles which result in their becoming tyrants
and fulfilling past prophecies
F. Both might involve maternal incest
G. End of the lines
1. Labdacids — Eteocles and Polyneices kill each other
2. Cypselids — one brother is slow in mind and cannot rule, other
is murdered by outsiders, not a family member
V. Conclusion
A. Gernet: “tyranny could only be the result of a disruptive
marriage” (128)
B. ‘in rejecting all the rules which, for the Greeks, are the foundation
of communal life, the tyrant puts himself socially out of play’
C. Plato: “ready to kill his father, sleep with his mother, eat
the flesh of his own children, the tyrant.incarnates in his ambivalence
the mythic figure of the lame man.he transgresses the limitations to which
walking straight must submit.mutilated, unbalanced, vacillating, he advances,
limping in his singular fashion all the better to fall in the end.”
(129)
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