Unit 7

English 201:    Masterpieces of Western Literature

Polis: We might characterize earlier sections of the ODY as instructions or theory about how to organize & nurture a city.  In this section OD reaches home & begins to apply the theory, inauspiciously enough, as a tramp.  We think of homeless, jobless, moneyless people as the least citizens of a city, or sometimes not as citizens at all.  If we don't express the desire to ostracize street people, we silently wish they would go elsewhere.
     What  if OD came home with all the fanfare & acclaim that greeted AG?  Things would appear rosy.  How surprised AG was to be butchered by none other than his wife, the one person who had taken a vow to love & cherish him!  Consider AG as Aeschylus portrays him at his triumphant homecoming:
823      I understand society,
the fawning mirror of the proud
831      We must summon the city for a trial
           found a national tribunal.  Whatever's healthy,
           shore it up with law . . . .
           Wherever something calls for drastic cures . . .
           amputate or wield
           the healing iron, burn the cancer

AG conceives of the state as a mirror in which he can see reflected the image of his power & greatness.  He has no conception of service or paternal care or duty.  His first thought on arriving at home is punishment!  "Summon the city for a trial" to "amputate" those who didn't fawn on the great leader.  Doesn't this remind you of Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, Joe Stalin, Adolph Hitler or any other thug who set himself up as a cult icon?  They may succeed in setting up police states through terror, but these cannot be called cities on the model of Socrates' Athens -- the Greek polis that attracted the talented & ambitious, because they knew they could lead better, deeper lives in Athens than anywhere else.  In comparison, they thought the rest of the world was simply barbaric & inhospitable.
     Athena instructs OD to begin construction of the polis from the bottom.  He must experience the city from the point of view of the disenfranchised, from the point of view of the servant class, feeling the effects of casual brutality & thoughtless selfishness.  The death of the city, as well as of justice, is voiced by Klytemnestra, when she tells her fellow assassin:
1706     Let them [the people] howl--they're impotent.
            You & I have power now.

The task is not to seize power through violence in order to coerce slave labor.  The task is to make a place that attracts the best & brightest, a place that citizens will loyally defend because they feel that this city is their home.   If the powerless & enslaved discern that their lives could be improved in the polis, will the upper classes complain? It is Antinoos who asks:
17.434    Are we not plagued enough with beggars,
              foragers & such rats?
              You find the company [of suitors]
              too slow at eating up your lord's estate?

Antinoos & Aigisthos are pretenders & predators.  The city wants a father.

Click on the next section: Explication above.