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105 Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, the last of the Athenian suppliant plays, dates to ca. 407/6 Bc1 and dramatizes the reception of the suppliant Oedipus by Theseus shortly before his death and heroization at the end of the play.2 Composed close to the end of the PeloponnesianWar that marked the empire’s defeat by Sparta and her allies, the play at once constitutes a panegyric of Athens and raises a host of questions pertaining to the character of this panegyric. At the heart of the play is the treatment of outsiders, a concern directly relevant to the praise of Athens’ piety. As we have seen, the reception of strangers was broadly regarded a measure of individual and collective piety, and the reception of the suppliant Oedipus tackles this issue from a variety of angles.3 The treatment of suppliants, for example, was relevant to the opening of the hostilities between Athens and Sparta. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, both Athens and Sparta used instances of the violation of asylum as negative propaganda to cast aspersions on their opponent’s morality and values.4 Similarly, Athens’ compassion toward the suppliant Oedipus furnished a strong argument in support of her conduct during the war and to justify her actions by claiming that Athenians had consistently offered their assistance to those who sought their protection. Oedipus fits the portrait of the suffering stranger probably more than any other character in tragedy.5 At the end of the Oedipus Tyrannus, following the revelation of his own identity and his crimes against his closest of kin— the murder of his father, Laius and his marriage with his mother, Jocasta— Oedipus blinds himself and decides to leave Thebes an exile.When he arrives at Colonus with Antigone at the beginning of the play, he first presents himself as a wanderer and beggar (1–2) and emphasizes his prolonged suffering. Oedipus, however, is no ordinary beggar and soon his identity begins to be drawn in accordance to the Athenian panegyric. Significantly, the progress of Oedipus’ integration in this play addresses   HEGEMONY IN CRISIS: SOPHOCLES’ OEDIPUS AT COLONUS CITY of SUPPLIANTS 106 Athens’ reputation as a pious city. Theseus’ portrait as a leader affirms the principles that underwrite Athens’ hegemony. His eagerness to protect the suppliant from suffering outrage at the hands of the Theban Creon endorses the ideal image of Athens as a city that helps the weak and punishes the insolent.6 Oedipus’ reception is similar to that of other foreigners in the other suppliant plays we have examined—Orestes, Eurystheus, and the Furies—whom Athens annexed in the capacity of allies, as he too offers the city benefits as a token of his loyalty and gratitude. Nevertheless, the image of the city’s openness toward foreigners is challenged in the course of the exile’s reception. The peripeteia of the suppliant plot, which begins when the chorus bid the exile to leave Colonus, thwarts the progress of asylum. The chorus next initiate a stringent procedure, to evaluate Oedipus’ supplication on account of his pollution , which is at odds with the city’s reputation for piety. Only after Oedipus reveals to Theseus the future benefits that lie in store for his city does the Athenian king offer Oedipus a home in Athens by making him a citizen. The negotiation of his reception relates his pollution, which hinders his reception and threatens to undermine Athens’ praise, to the requirements of admitting foreigners as naturalized citizens. As in the other suppliant plays, the dramatic crisis mobilizes a dialectic between the ideal of the city’s openness and the necessity of inscribing limits to foreigners’ reception.The chorus at first are not willing to accept the polluted stranger and instead take steps to guard themselves and the city against his defilement. The emerging crisis articulates from the outset specific limits to Oedipus’ integration that impede the enactment of Athens’ cherished ideals. The exigencies arising from pollution register a heightened tension between ideal and reality. The play also affords a closer look at the contradiction that underlies the collocation of democracy and empire in Athenian imperial ideology. As in Euripides’ suppliant plays, imperial ideology readily made use of democratic precepts such as justice and the law to justify Athens’ power and mitigate its enforcement, enabling in this way what we may call the manufacturing of consent. At the ideological level, the treatment of Oedipus as polluted foreigner points to the implicit contradiction between the two facets...

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