ABSTRACT
The character of Oedipus can be placed at the confluence of many types of discourse that intersect with and respond to one another, and each offers multiple ways of understanding the past. Three such types will be considered here, albeit in differing ways: first of all, the myth of Oedipus;2 secondly, one of Sophocles’ Theban plays, Oedipus Rex; and lastly, the historia of Herodotus.3 The approximation of the first two can be justified on thematic and genetic grounds: the tragedy depicts the character of Oedipus and builds upon his myth, repeating it on the one hand and transforming it on the other. The approximation of the latter two, for its part, rests upon reasons that are simultaneously temporal, thematic and epistemological. Although Sophocles and Herodotus may not have been members of a ‘Periclean Circle’,4 they were nevertheless contemporaries whose connections are attested.5 Moreover, each clearly provided an intense discussion in their works of the awareness of reality and the sensory perception of the world.
