The Oedipus at Colonus opens with the tender picture of a fa-ther dependent upon his daughter and of a daughter who has herself come to embody the attentive responsiveness that makes her an excellent leader. Oedipus has come to depend upon An-tigone and, even if he does not yet recognize it as a blessing, he has acclimated to this dependence.29 He asks her where they
27 Sophocles, Sophoclis Fabulae, OC, 818–19 and 830. There Creon says: “I will not touch this man, but only her who’s mine.” The touch of Creon here has the violence of the grasp and the intent to possess. It is the touch of the patriarch.
28 See Darice Birge, “The Grove of the Eumenides: Refuge and Hero Shrine in Oedipus at Colonus,” The Classical Journal 80, no. 1 (1984): 11–17. Birge does not thematize the grove in political terms, emphasizing instead the relation between the human and the divine it seems to signify. However, given the parallel between Athena’s success persuading the Eumenides and Antigone’s ultimate failure to persuade Oedipus and Polyneices and given the manner in which Polyneices identifies Oedipus with the Furies at the end, the site of the grove may be heard to host a transformation in the opposite direction of the one Aeschylus articulates in the Oresteia.
29 Oedipus tells the chorus who asks who he is: “One not entirely to be called blessed for the first of destinies, you who are the guardians over this land.
But that’s clear. Otherwise I would not move thus with another’s eyes, or
are and she is his eyes.30 When he needs to sit, she anticipates, and guarding him, says “the need for this is something I have learned from time.”31 Living in intimate connection together, ex-iled and alone, pariahs, the relationship between them has culti-vated certain embodied habits of being-together that find their expression here in their interaction with the chorus at the sacred grove of the Eumenides.
These embodied habits articulate a set of excellences that be-long to the nuptial. Here the integrated corporeal relationship between Antigone and Oedipus point symbolically to the pos-sibilities that open when a father relinquishes his obsession with sovereignty and embraces an interdependent relation with his daughter.32 Symbolically, where father becomes brother, the pa-triarchal authority breaks down and a new possibility for being-together emerges.
Upon seeing them seated in the sacred grove, the chorus of noble men from Colonus demands they depart. Oedipus seeks the advice of his daughter and she wisely counsels him to lis-ten: “Father, it is necessary to care equally for the townspeople, yielding and listening to the things required.”33 Reaching out, she touches him as she leads him away and, now for a second time in the first scene of the drama, helps him to sit. The way
be anchored, great as I am, on the small.” See Sophocles, Sophoclis Fabulae, OC, 144–49. Oedipus, it seems, remains bound to a logic of grandeur that does not fit his position, but might ultimately be earned by the way he com-ports himself in it. That, however, remains an open question given the way he responds to his sons.
30 Ibid., OC, 1–20. See also 138: “I see by voice…” and 866, where Oedipus calls Antigone his “unarmed eye”.
31 Ibid., OC, 22.
32 Maurice Hamington, drawing on the work of Nel Noddings, identifies the mutual relationship thematized here as “integrated at the corporeal level”
and as a kind of “super-attentiveness.” See Maurice Hamington, “A Father’s Touch: Caring Embodiment and a Moral Revolution,” in Revealing Male Bodies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 274. That essay beau-tifully articulates the importance of the father’s touch for the ethical educa-tion of daughters.
33 Sophocles, Sophoclis Fabulae, OC, 171–72.
she settles him into place beautifully articulates the embodied reciprocity of their relationship:
Antigone: Father, this task is mine; in peace fit step with step…
Oedipus: Oh, alas, alas!
Antigone: … leaning your aged body into my loving arms.34
We are made here to feel something of the intimate connection that has grown between these two over time as she gently takes him into her arms, reversing the directionality of the relation-ship established in that first moment of embrace at the end of Oedipus’s life as king. Receiving something of his suffering as her own, she empowers him to sit. Thus, indeed, she has be-come his support, the source of his power — she has bebe-come his scepter. The Greek skēptron means both walking stick and scep-ter — the symbol of regal authority. Oedipus, indeed, assaulted his own father with just such a skēptron, thereby unknowingly winning for himself the authority that was his own demise.35 Now, however, Oedipus’s power lies with his daughters, for they have become the scepters that Creon will explicitly seek to take from him.36
The ambiguity of the skēptron points to the underlying po-litical significance of Oedipus’s relationship with his daughters.
With Antigone, the power of their nuptial union and the source of their ability to establish connections with others lies in her at-tentive responsiveness to his embodied suffering and her attuned ability to respond to the situation in which they find themselves.
He looks to her for advice; in giving it, she lends him courage to go on. With Ismene, on the other hand, the nuptial relation between them is shown to be conditioned by the excellences of
34 Ibid., OC, 198–201.
35 Ibid., OT, 810–11. For a discussion of the significance of the double mean-ing of the skēptron and the changmean-ing significance it takes in the Oedipus at Colonus, see Sophocles, The Theban Plays, 12.
36 Sophocles, Sophoclis Fabulae, OC, 848–50.
resourceful independence and the tenacious courage to speak in one’s own voice. These are the excellences that show themselves in the striking scene of her first appearance.
Catching sight of her, Antigone exclaims in shock. When Oedipus asks confusedly what is happening, Antigone resorts to description in a caring attempt to offer insight to her father: she sees a woman approaching on horseback with a wide-brimmed hat to protect her from the sun. Bright glances from her eyes meet Antigone confirming the presence of Ismene, her sister.
This is a compelling image of feminine independence and sis-terly connection. Arriving in the direction from Thebes, Ismene emphasizes how difficult it was to find them and how difficult it is now to see them through her tears of pain.37 The scene contin-ues to unfold this way:
Oedipus: Touch me, daughter. Ismene: I am touching you both.
Oedipus: Seed of the same blood. Ismene: Oh miserable nur-ture.
Oedipus: Of her and me? Ismene: And my miserable self as third.
Oedipus: Why did you come, child? Ismene: From concern [promēthia] for you.
Oedipus: Was it from a longing desire [pothoisi]? Ismene:
And to bring you these words myself
together with the only house-slave I could trust.38
Established by touch, this community of three is conditioned by caring forethought [promēthia], a yearning for connection and, indeed, a need to speak in one’s own voice news that will be dif-ficult to bear. Ismene appears as a figure of independent courage willing to risk her life for those she loves.
37 Ibid., OC, 310–26.
38 Ibid., OC, 329–34.