In the “History of the Peloponnesian War”, Thucydides gives a factual account of the plague, highlighting the civic crisis and the breakdown of morality it brought about. Being a historian very much influenced by the sophistic movement, he sees the plague as a natural calamity determined by chance and expresses this view through Pericles’ speech: “In fact out of everything else this [the plague] has been the only case of something happening which we did not anticipate.”( 2.64). Completely relying himself on rationality, he gives no credit to the gods as a means of explaining the source of the plague, since “it seemed to be the same thing if one worshiped them or not, when one saw the good and the bad dying indiscriminately”(2.53). His underlying argument is that in times of crisis people are taken their rationality away, and by extrapolation, a society that is founded upon people’s self-interest collapses. In normal times democracy seems to serve well people’s self-interests, but it proves to be fallible when a catastrophe strikes. The purpose of his work was to give a realistic account of the Peloponnesian war, underlining the causes of its outbreak and those of the loss of the Athenian empire. He believes that the plague contributed to he defeat of Athens, because the willingness of people to endure suffering for the common-good was destroyed by the disease. Consequently, democracy could not work due to the disparity between each individual’s self-interest and that for the greater good, which led to a state of despair and hopelessness, bringing about the failure of democracy and the loss of Athens.
As opposed to Thucydides’ sole reliance on facts and physical emphasis, Sophocles dramatizes the decreasing role of the gods within the polis, stressing the idea that catastrophes are part of a larger story humans cannot know. Writing “Oedipus Rex” shortly after the plague and witnessing its devastating effects upon society, with people being completely indifferent towards law, custom and especially religion, Sophocles is very much concerned with the relationship between humans and gods. In “Oedipus Rex” the plague is mentioned from the beginning and serves as a motivating force of the play that determines its entire action. It is brought to Thebes by Oedipus, who carries a curse with him. The plague of Thebes consists of “a pollution grown ingrained within the land” (99), a moral pollution associated with Oedipus himself. Its source lies in Oedipus’ doomed fate, which is a supreme force that cannot be avoided by any means. The plague is fated, given by the gods and can only be eradicated with their help: Apollo “in plain words commanded us to drive out the pollution from our land…drive it out, said the God, not cherish it, till it’s past cure”(97-101). The god further predicts that “purification” can only be achieved “by banishing a man, or expiation of blood by blood, since it is murder which holds our city in this destroying storm” (100-102). Therefore, the plague, seen within the very context of the play, is a form of retribution brought by the gods, which flows over the entire polis due to Oedipus’ harmatia. As a dramatist, Sophocles employs the force of prediction as a solution to the problem. Furthermore, the transition from Jocasta’s initial disbelief in fate and oracles to her gradual discovery of the truth and Oedipus’ disbelief in Teiresias’ words (who was spreading the word of the gods), hints at the fact that there is a limit to human knowledge and understanding of the universe.
In spite of this divergence in the two authors’ treatment of the plague, they both associate it with two great and praised leaders - Pericles and Oedipus. Nevertheless their approaches still differ. Thucydides gives an account of the plague immediately after Pericles’ speech in the Funeral Oration, in which the general exclaims: “I have sung the praises of our city; but it was the courage and gallantry of these men, and of people like them, which made her splendid.” (2.42). In other words, there is no mention of the gods in the sources of Athenian grandeur. This ironic juxtaposition between the ideal view of Athens and the sad reality shaped by the plague, sends our thoughts to the instability of human nature when it has too much freedom. As argued, Thucydides criticizes democracy as the rule of the mob and its failure to be maintained in times of crisis, but he mentions that “in what was nominally a democracy, power was really in the hands of the first citizen.”(2.65). Nevertheless, he also criticizes the leaders who followed Pericles, who put personal interest and hubris above the greater good. These leaders aggravated the state of democracy, bringing about its fall and implicitly the fall of the Athenian empire. Consequently, all these imply that Thucydides supports democracy as long as there exists a wise authority, who can see through his personal interests, a kind of force that controls the people from the outside, but who also respects them.
On the other hand, Sophocles’ approach of the leader is different from Thucydides’ since the former employs drama in order to remind people of their limits. Initially, Oedipus is seen as “the noblest of men” (46) and “the first of men”(33). He becomes the king of Thebes for he saves it from the Sphinx by solving the riddle using wisdom. A good leader, he tries to be detached and is capable of sacrificing himself for the welfare of the city. Sophocles phrases this ironically at the beginning of the play: “If with my knowledge he lives at my heart I pray that I myself may feel my curse”(250-251). Being a praised king, Oedipus is given reasons to believe that his wisdom is superior, but he is blind to realize that his hubris will ultimately bring about his harmatia. He follows the path of an inner initiation, which leads him nowhere else but to the bare truth: he is the murderer of his own father and the husband of his own mother. His tragedy stems from his incapability of distinguishing between appearance and essence, between what he thinks he is and what he really is. In this respect, Sophocles uses blindness as a metaphor to suggest the ability to see the truth. The blind Teiresias represents the path that connects the humans to the gods, but Oedipus rejects his prophecies, and thus rejects the word of the gods. Tracing this rejection of the divine back into the fifth-century Athenian society, Sophocles dramatizes the acute indifference of people towards religion as a result of the war, which is intensified by the plague.
The tragedy of Oedipus is very much similar to the tragedy of Athens. Both of them are great, even hubristic: Oedipus’ hubris lies in his stubbornness of trying to surpass the limits of human knowledge and to fight against his fate, while Athens’ hubris can be seen as its greed to expand its empire, even though it was advised not to do so. They are both affected by blindness, they cannot distinguish between appearance and essence. The tragedy of Oedipus’ family evokes the tragedy of the internal struggles among the Greeks and, at the same time, the tragedy of Oedipus evokes the Athenian tragedy.
In sum, what is the role of the plague in the tragedy of Athens and how is his role employed by history and drama? Thucydides’ goal is to give a rational explanation to the causes of the war and to the loss of the Athenian empire. Consequently, he stresses the plague for he believed that it led to the fall of democracy, and ultimately to the fall of the empire that was built on it. Sophocles’ goal is to dramatize the socio-political chaos of Periclean Athens and to reinforce the idea that man is not the measure of all things and that catastrophes must be understood, through faith, as parts of the universe that man cannot entirely know. As a historian, Thucydides emphasizes the effects the plague had upon democracy due to the fact that people were given too much freedom under no constraints, whereas Sophocles, as a dramatist stresses the effects of the plague upon religion. While Oedipus tries to surpass the limits of human knowledge, the Athenians surpass their political, social, cultural and religious constraints. Their tragic fall suggests that there is a limit to human ability and reason, and at the same time, that people should keep their faith in the face of great misery.
Works Cited
Green, David and Lattimore, Richmond. Sophocles I – Three Tragedies, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Penguin Books, 1972.