Monday, September 12, 2016

In the Odyssey, the myth of Oedipus is mentioned. How does the perspective on divine justice differ between the tale of Oedipus and the myth of Pandora in Hesiod’s Theogony?

There are three separate periods, attitudes, and genres encompassed by Homer's heroic epic, The Odyssey, Hesiod's two didactic epics (each of which treat Pandora slightly differently), and Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus Rex.
Odysseus meets two characters who form important parts of the story of Oedipus in the underworld: the prophet Tiresias and Jocasta. Both encounters are quite brief. Tiresias warns Odysseus not to harm the cattle of Helios and gives some warnings about what things lie ahead for Odysseus. Odysseus immediately and without argument accepts the prophecies as true. Jocasta mentions that her suffering was caused by not knowing that Oedipus was her son. The main difference between the stories involving the gods in the Homeric accounts of these two characters and in Sophocles's tragedy is that in Homer the gods are far more direct. They show up as characters, have affairs with human beings, and act out of anthropomorphized personal motivations, whereas Zeus in Sophocles's play takes on some aspects of impartial fate or justice and communicates in signs, which are usually interpreted by prophets. In Homer, prophets are believed immediately and serve as clear guides to action, whereas Oedipus and Creon are both "modern," rational men who want to rely on their own intellects and abilities; the plots of Oedipus Rex and Antigone show this to be a mistake. In Homer, divine justice consists of obedience to specific divine commands, but in the tragedies of Sophocles, it takes on a more complex sense of a blend of ethics and the inevitability of fate.
Hesiod's Works and Days takes an act of injustice as a starting point; Perses, the poet's brother, defrauds Hesiod of some of his inheritance. It explores the significance of just and unjust rulers, governments, and ways of conducting one's personal life. It emphasizes the virtues of hard work and honest labor and condemns fraud, unjust law suits, and selfishness. The gods, especially Zeus, are seen as approving of justice. In the Pandora story, Zeus is angry at Prometheus for stealing fire and creates Pandora as a form of revenge. The actual wording emphasizes that had humans listened to the works of Prometheus, they would have escaped the miseries released by Pandora. As a result, we see the gods as somewhat capricious, demanding obedience above all else in this story. According to Hesiod, Pandora and other parts of the account of the history of the gods and humanity show how evil and strife came into being, but the gods of the present enforce justice. In a sense, Hesiod marks a transition between Homeric and Sophoclean visions of theodicy.
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/classical-studies/oedipus-the-message-the-myth

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