Classical Greek Beliefs

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how we can learn something about the key values of classical Greek society by looking at the "Oedipus" cycle, with its emphasis on honor, personal courage, and fate. It discusses how fate seems to be an especially important idea for the Greeks, an idea that seems, at first ,very different from our own 21st-century notions of freedom. It analyzes how, as we examine Oedipus's, and so, classical Greek, ideals, we may see that there are key connections to our own time and values.

From the Paper:

"One of the important things to consider in reading these plays is the nature of prophecy in ancient Greece. We are inclined to understand the prophecies in these plays as having perhaps more weight than they would actually have had in Greece (Myers 9). In fact, while the prophecies were supposed to be divinely inspired, they were also known to be highly symbolic and subject to various interpretations. Laius, like Oedipus, had the option, not perhaps of ignoring the oracles entirely, but at least of listening to them with some caution. They might have chosen to act otherwise, for the oracles were not the direct voices of the gods. Had the gods spoken directly to either of these men and ordered them to act the way that they did, we might say that Sophocles was indeed writing about the ways in which the lives of humans are determined by fate and the futility and naivete of believing in free will."

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