Oedipus

“Now is the night banished. Doubtful Titan / Returns. This foul mist glooms his rising light. / His grim beams and melancholy flame / Will view homes gutted by our lusty plague. / The day will show the slaughter of the night.”

Oedipus delivers the opening lines of the play, describing the state of Thebes. His description establishes the dire situation in the city while also introducing the main character, establishing the continued paralleling of Oedipus with the state of the city. The mist reflects Oedipus’s metaphorical blindness. His ignorance, like the night, will soon be banished and the truth, like the light of day, will reveal Oedipus’s guilt.

“I’m ashamed to speak my fate.”

Oedipus has difficulty even reciting what the prophecy predicts for him, unaware that he has already fulfilled it by murdering his father and marrying his mother. His feelings of guilt and shame drive many of his actions throughout the play.

“In horror so deep / You think the impossible and dread it. / I fear all things and have no faith in me.”

Oedipus expresses his own ineffable feeling of guilt surrounding the state of Thebes. In contrast to Sophocles’s Oedipus, Seneca’s king immediately seems deeply concerned about the state of his own kingdom and his failure as a king to protect his citizens. These lines also foreshadow the upcoming tragedy that awaits him.