The third stasimon of Oedipus Rex (OT) is the climax of the play, separating the conversation with the Corinthian messenger from the interrogation of the shepherd, so crucial for the narrative. Indeed, the question τίς σε, τέκνον, τίς σ’ ἔτικτε, critical for the plot, comes right at the beginning of its antistrophe. Sophocles, however, offers no easy answer to it. Instead, he provides yet another narrative misdirection, one that—for the last time—suggests that the paths of the king of Thebes and of his predecessor may have been divergent: the possibility that Oedipus’ divine ancestry would question the prophecy of Apollo. After enumerating Pan, Hermes and Apollo himself as possible parents, the song also mentions Dionysus and the ‘Heliconian nymphs’. The reference to Helicon has perplexed the readers for many years, since the text seems to focus on Cithaeron as the ‘birthplace’.Footnote ² As a result, editions and translations prefer the conjecture ἑλικωπίδων (Νυμφᾶν) proposed by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in 1879, over Ἑλικωνί(α)δων, the form present in all manuscripts.Footnote ³ In this paper I argue that an analysis of our sources for Heliconian cults, an assessment of the performative context, and a close reading of the stasimon and its place in the narrative, all suggest that the manuscript reading should be retained.

The two principal arguments Wilamowitz presented to support the necessity of emending can be summarized as follows:Footnote ⁴

1. 1. Dionysus was worshipped on Cithaeron and was not associated with Helicon at all.

2. 2. Helicon is home not to nymphs but to the Muses, who are not related to Dionysus.

Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, as well as Finglass in his commentary, stress the contradiction between the key role Cithaeron plays throughout the entire song of the chorus and an unexpected reference to Helicon at its end.Footnote ⁵ R.D. Dawe's interpretation is a little different.Footnote ⁶ Although he accepted Wilamowitz's conjecture, he was not swayed by his arguments. He proposed his own explanation, based on the interpretation of the adjective ἑλίκωψ as ‘with dark eyes’ and on the similarity of the song's ending to a poem by Anacreon (fr. 357 PMG); however, there is no particular reason to posit a faithful repetition of Anacreon's work in the song of the chorus.

From the point of view of studies on Greek religion, it is not particularly hard to challenge Wilamowitz's arguments owing to the developments of our knowledge of Boeotian cults.Footnote ⁷ Today we can, for example, draw a clear link between Dionysus and Helicon and the nymphs, since his cult is well attested in the archaeological material from Thespiae.Footnote ⁸ Besides, our sources suggest that the cult of the Muses in that area developed after Sophocles’ time.Footnote ⁹ In the fifth century, the poet did not have to feel restricted in his references to Helicon by Hesiod's depiction of an encounter with the Muses; thus, the Heliconian nymphs did not have to be—and likely were not—identified as the Muses by an Athenian audience.Footnote ¹⁰ Such an image is the result of Helicon's later career as a metapoetical imagined place and of our modern diachronic perspective.Footnote ¹¹ Most importantly, however, the presence of nymphs is quite well—or, at times, as in the case of the of L(e)ibethrian cave, very well—attested in the area of the entire Heliconian range already in the Archaic period.Footnote ¹² Indeed, it is congruent with their general association with natural locations, which in the case of the cult of the Muses will only be, as it seems, a later development.Footnote ¹³

Wilamowitz's arguments may also be disputed from another angle. His interpretation blurs the distinction between the literary and mythological image of gods and their cult presence. References to real cults may appear in tragedies; however, such historical setting is not of particular importance for dramatic narratives, especially if the action takes place in mythical Thebes, far from the time and place where the play was being performed.Footnote ¹⁴ In light of this, it is more probable that the presence of nymphs in the third stasimon and their relation to Dionysus should be interpreted as stemming from the general vision of these deities in Greek imagination rather than from local cults of Boeotia. Dionysus, like other gods named in the song, is generally associated with mountains; so are the nymphs and other female associates who appear in his company in literary and iconographic sources.

A more important problem is the disparity between the role of Cithaeron and the appearance of Helicon at the end of the song: most scholars believe that Heliconian nymphs cannot be responsible—even in the fantasy of the chorus—for the birth of Oedipus. From this point of view, the proposal to replace the toponym with an adjective that only suggests physical features may seem justified. That interpretation, however, is based on a number of wrong assumptions. First, the interpretations wrongly extend the significance of Cithaeron from the first part of the song, where it is indisputable, to the antistrophe. From the point of view of the analysis of spatial references in the stasimon, the antistrophe is in clear opposition to the first part. It is most likely not accidental that the chorus does not mention a nymph of Cithaeron as a potential mother in the antistrophe, although that would be a proposition we could expect. What does appear, however, is the vague and impersonal τίς σ’ ἔτικτε | τᾶν μακραιώνων, ‘who [was it] of the race whose years are many [that is, nymphs] that bore you’ (transl. R. Jebb). Moreover, the gods listed as probable fathers are presented in a way that suggests their general ties to mountains (note the plural) and mobility, rather than an association with any specific place.Footnote ¹⁵ An image construed in this fashion would suggest to the listeners that Oedipus may have been conceived anywhere.

Here we approach the second problematic assumption. The stress placed on the meaning of Cithaeron in Oedipus’ story has diverted us from the necessity of distinguishing between his place of birth and the place of exposure. The discussion preceding the song (911–1085) clearly implies, however, that Cithaeron was merely his place of exposure (1026, 1039), while his place of birth (which is in reality Thebes, after all) and Oedipus’ true identity associated with it remain unstated. We find the exact same distinction in the stasimon as well, which is in many ways a mirror for the episode before it. The first part of the song of the chorus contains praise of Cithaeron as a place where the infant was found and possibly saved, the other, meanwhile, goes back in time and suggests a solution to the riddle of his birth and ancestry.Footnote ¹⁶ This division is marked in the first verse of the antistrophe, where the chorus asks τίς σε, τέκνον, τίς σ’ ἔτικτε.

The antistrophe does not, however, contain a simple answer to the question of who bore Oedipus. The potential scenarios it proposes revolve around his possible divine heritage. Nevertheless, the choice of words points to the supposed divinity of the king of Thebes being ‘gradual’. The starting point is a union between one of the nymphs and Pan. However, already in the case of Apollo it is worth considering that εὐνάτειρά τις (‘some bedfellow’) may have suggested a relationship with a mortal woman.Footnote ¹⁷ The most interesting sentence, however, is the last (1104–9), in which the child is presented here as εὕρημα, given by one of the nymphs (ἔκ του Νυμφᾶν) to either Hermes or Dionysus. This imagery represents the father being presented with his newborn divine offspring as a ‘lucky find’ (Lloyd-Jones) or ‘present’ (Taplin). There is, however, another possibility, given that for an Athenian audience in the fifth century the term εὕρημα also meant ‘foundling’, thus pointing to an ‘exposed child’. Considering the key role matters of Oedipus’ ancestry play in the drama, especially in the episode before the song, it seems justified to take these connotations of the word into account. The sentence would now point to the exposed child being found by one of the nymphs and given to Hermes or Dionysus. Although the custody of the gods over Oedipus would still be the focal point, this version stresses his unknown and probably low birth. Such an interpretation is confirmed in the play itself, which has several mentions of Oedipus being found, accepted or handed over as a child. The verb δέχομαι is used three times in this context;Footnote ¹⁸ the description of his ancestry also features the verb εὑρίσκω, which appears in the answer the Corinthian messenger gives just before the song of the chorus, as he explains to Oedipus where he found the child he later gave to Polybus: εὑρὼν ναπαίαις ἐν Κιθαιρῶνος πτυχαῖς (‘It was in the forest glens of Mount Cithaeron that I found you’, 1026). These words clearly point to a story of a foundling, a child of unknown lineage. It is also confirmed by the reaction of Oedipus, who, upon hearing them, starts to consider the possibility of himself being of low birth.Footnote ¹⁹ His last utterance, right before the song, begins (1076–7): τοὐμὸν δ’ ἐγώ, | κεἰ σμικρόν ἐστι, σπέρμ’ ἰδεῖν βουλήσομαι. This suspicion, much like the famous statement that he is a ‘child of Fortune’ (1080), will define the subject and scope of the following song.

Such a reading is supported by the pragmatic context of the piece, as one ought to consider that the background for the disputes over Oedipus’ ancestry is Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/450 and contemporary Athenian obsession over proven pedigree.Footnote ²⁰ Dugdale has shown that the play refers extensively to Athenian social practice tied to exposure, adoption of infants, ceremonies of legitimization and naming. This knowledge ‘helps us understand the actions, questions, and pronouncements of Oedipus from the contextual perspective of the original Athenian audience’.Footnote ²¹ That contextual perspective assists our understanding of Oedipus’ famous speech in which he declares himself ‘a child of Fortune’. Out of the many meanings of the phrase present in the text, Dugdale points to its literal sense, synonymous with ‘foundling’.Footnote ²² In this situation it is hard not to receive the impression that, when the chorus comment on his conversation with the Corinthian messenger, they take that remark literally and draw their own conclusions from it in both possible aspects—suggesting both a divine and an illegitimate birth. This ambiguity makes the expression in line 1080 parallel to the phrase (ὁ Βακχεῖος θεὸς) εὕρημα δέξατ’, featured in the song of the chorus.

We find a surprisingly similar image of an exposed and ‘found’ child in Euripides’ Ion.Footnote ²³ It features both an equivalent of the verb δέχομαι—σ’ ἔλαβον νεόγονον (1339)—and the same noun εὕρημα used to describe a found and saved child: in v. 1349, the Priestess explains to Ion that she intended σῶσαι τόδ’ εὕρημ’ ἐς τὸν ὄντα νῦν χρόνον (‘to keep to this time what I found’, transl. R. Potter). Born of Creusa in a cave on the north-western side of the Acropolis, he was abandoned by his mother there, but Apollo sent Hermes to look after the child and deliver it safely to Delphi. It was there that the priestess ‘found’ him, and the god inspired her to keep the baby. The plot of the story and the precise words used in it show plenty of similarities to the image from the song of the chorus as reconstructed here.

Therefore, even if in a more specific context of the antistrophe εὕρημα appears to mean a ‘lucky find’, in a more general context of the narrative of the play (the conversation between Oedipus and the Corinthian messenger), and in the context of the reception of the drama in Athenian theatre, the term had to be associated with the phenomenon of child abandonment and thus refer to the unknown and presumably low status of Oedipus’ ancestry. This, in turn, proves that the antistrophe would point to a wider range of possibilities of his origins and relation to the gods than is commonly believed. The possible scenarios would include a fully divine heritage, a possible union of a mortal woman with a god, or, finally, a fully mortal child, abandoned and looked after (for a time) by the gods. In the case of that last possibility, mountains, which are a recurring theme in the stasimon, are closely associated in Greek imagination and cult with the presence of nymphs. In light of this, any children left in this remote and unpopulated space are to an extent under their protection.Footnote ²⁴

To finish the answer to the original question about the disconnect between the role of Cithaeron and the appearance of Helicon at the end of the song, we must also consider why the antistrophe would refer to Helicon at all. The antistrophe suggests that Oedipus could have been born anywhere, and the nymphs and gods are presented in a generic way, as beings related to nature, particularly mountains; so the sudden appearance of a specific location seems a little strange. Second, since, as Taplin put it, ‘this whole song is so centrally focused on Cithaeron’, why are the nymphs of Cithaeron not mentioned in the antistrophe?Footnote ²⁵ The song begins with a praise of this mountain, including as Oedipus’ ‘mother’, and unexpectedly ends on a reference to another mountain range.

To start with, let us note that Helicon is one of two mountain ranges of Boeotia and a reference to it probably means simply ‘somewhere in Boeotia’ or ‘in the mountains of Boeotia, but not on Cithaeron’.Footnote ²⁶ After all, it was also Laius and Jocasta who picked such a place to abandon their child. But what reason could the chorus have to replace Cithaeron with Helicon? First of all, we must bear in mind that the image of an exposed child found on Cithaeron, built up consistently ever since the conversation with the Corinthian messenger, suggests the need to situate his place of birth outside. In turn, pointing to Helicon (and to divine parentage) reduces the probability that Oedipus will be identified with the child of Laius and Jocasta, and the chorus—likely the audience as well—wants exactly that to be true. This last dramatic attempt to reverse the fate of Oedipus could be the main reason for the song's sudden reference to Νυμφᾶν Ἑλικωνίδων.

On this basis, it seems justified to conclude that the charges put against the manuscript version (Ἑλικωνίδων) are not adequately supported, which should lead us to reject the conjecture. The analysis of the song of the chorus proves that both parts of the stasimon differ in the range of their spatial references and subject matter. Inasmuch as the first part focusses on Cithaeron as the place of exposing and later finding of the child, the second situates Oedipus’ place of birth somewhere in the mountain range. Noting this duality of the stasimon, as well as the need to separate the matter of birth and of exposing/finding, allows us to view the content of the antistrophe in a different light. Analysing the suggestions of Oedipus’ ancestry in it and placing them in a wider context of the narrative leads us to question the currently prevalent reading of vv. 1104–9. The claim made thus far that Oedipus cannot be the ‘offspring of a Heliconian nymph’ turns out to be unfounded inasmuch that the ending of the song is not so much an attempt to propose a nymph of Helicon as the mother of Oedipus as it is a way to point to his illegitimate and probably low birth. We can reach such conclusions particularly by starting with the phrase εὕρημα δέξατ’, featured in the song of the chorus, but also παῖς τῆς Τύχης from Oedipus’ speech before the stasimon (v. 1080). The narrative context, the contemporary Athenian practices and the parallels imply that such a reading of this passage is valid. In this interpretation, the reference to Heliconian nymphs at the end of the song should be considered a desperate attempt to place Oedipus away from Cithaeron and Thebes, and thus away from any link to the child of Laius and Jocasta. The attempt fails, naturally, or rather it was doomed to fail from the outset. But the poet himself suggests to us many times over the course of the stasimon that the chorus may be wrong. The passage begins with a surprising phrase: εἴπερ ἐγὼ μάντις εἰμί, suggesting that its content is similar to an oracular pronouncement. However, unlike the prophecies of Tiresias, the words of the chorus are nothing more than wishful thinking.Footnote ²⁷