Oedipus the Lame: More notes on disability in ancient Greece

In their analysis of the figure of the scapegoat in ancient Greek tragedy in Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (1988), Jean-Paul Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet focus on the figure of Oedipus—-yes, the Oedipus of Greek mythology who killed his father and married his mother. We are overly familiar with Oedipus through Freud’s “Oedipus complex” and psychoanalysis (when I have taught Oedipus Rex to students their usual response is “that psychological stuff” and “sleeps with his mother! gross”). Vernant and Vidal-Naquet interpret the main features of the Oedipus myth—-his father Laius ordering him to be exposed, abandoned in the wilderness, nd his feet wounded; his solving of the riddle of the Sphinx; his unknowing killing of Laius at a crossroads and his marrying his mother Jocasta—as revealing Oedipus’ “double and contradictory nature” (p. 136):

he is above and also below human beings, a hero more powerful than man, the equal of the gods, and at the same time the brutish beast spurned and relegated to the wild solitude of the mountains. (p. 136)

He is both, one might say, aristos—the best (aristos is the root of the word “aristocracy”) and simultaneously kakistos—the worst, both godlike and supra-human, yet like some wild creature unknowing of civilization’s conventions and less than human. Thus do Vernant and Vidal-Naquel connect Oedipus, the king (rex in Latin, tyrannos in ancient Greek), with the pharmakos, the scapegoat: “…..in Sophocles, the superhuman and the subhuman meet and become confused within the same figure” 9P. 139). Vernant’s and Vidal-Naquet’s analysis of the pharmakos and of Oedipus as encompassing these contradictory characteristics recalls my description of Charlie’s disability being seen both as a “blessing” and as a “problem” in yesterday’s Scapegoats and Disability.

Due to the notion of the Oedipal complex, some might find it uncomfortable, or simply odd, to find discussion of Oedipus in reference to disability. But Oedipus is a fitting figure to consider in an investigation of disability in the ancient Greek world because Oedipus himself is disabled. Laius orders that his feet be pierced and wounded prior to exposing Oedipus the baby out in the wilds. Oedipus’ very name, Oidipous, means “swollen foot” in ancient Greek: oideo means “swollen” and pous is “foot.” Oedipus is lame.

And lameness, as Vernant and Vidal-Naquet show with reference to the seventh book of Plato’s Republic, was not just a physical disability, “a matter of feet” among the ancient Greeks, but also suggestive of one being “lame in spirit”: One who is physically lame was also seen to be “lame” in their spiritual, cognitive nature.

…those lame in spirit were opposed to those who were agile, quick, steady, on their two legs, bebaioi, and those who went straight, euthus, orthos. Plato makes a distinction between well-born souls, made for philosophy, and souls that are “defomed and lame.” In so doing, he assimilates, as if it were self-evident, intellectual lameness and bastardy of soul, for the cholos [lame, defective] is a nothos , a bastard, not a gnesios [geniune, lawfully begotten] of direct and legitimate descent like the son “who resembles the father” who has engendered him in a regular fashion, without deviation or deformity since he is born in a direct, unhalting line. (p 211)

Physical disability is indicative not only of intellectual or cognitive deficiency, but also of “bastardy of soul,” of spiritual and even moral and ethical failing. Further, the connection between lameness and illegitimacy suggests that there is something wrong—some moral failing—in the background of one who is lame, in their parents. The person’s lameness is understood as a sign of their parents or other ancestors having done something wrong—-in Greek mythology is usually in the form of some offense committed against the gods. As Vernant and Vidal-Naquet write, “ the cholos [lame, defective] is a nothos , a bastard”—-one who is lame or disabled is wrongfully born.