Oedipus and the Stars

At OT 795 Oedipus’ recollection of measuring his fugitive course by the stars presents a double crux, concerning both the textual tradition’s dueling terms for that measurement and scholars’ related, opposed renderings of the phrase as literal or figurative. I argue Oedipus’ words can be taken literally to signify the techne of ancient celestial navigation, a metric of human knowhow versus the forces of fate and the divine. Midway through Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus one comes upon a textual crossroads — or, more precisely, upon the horns of a puzzling dilemma. At issue is Oedipus’ passing mention of the stars in recounting his anxious flight many years before from Delphi and its oracle’s prophecy of incest and parricide, driving him far from his homeland: κἀγὼ ‘πακούσας ταῦτα τὴν Κορινθίαv ἄστροις τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκμετρούμενος [corr. τεκμαρούμενος] χθόνα 795 ἔφευγον, ἔνθα μήποτ ̓ ὀψοίμην κακῶν χρησμῶν ὀνείδη τῶν ἐμῶν τελούμενα. (OT 794-97)1 And from then on I attended to the whereabouts of Corinth, By the stars thereafter measuring [judging] my course; 795 I fled to a place where I never would behold those evils The reproachful oracle foretold. As intimated by the above brackets, the initial predicament is to choose between alternative terms for Oedipus’ recollected use of the stars: between the codices’ extant but possibly corrupt ἐκμετρούμενος, “to measure distance [ἄστροις, by the stars],” and 1 Text from Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (LJ-W) 1990, Sophoclis Fabulae, supplemented by Jebb 1897 and Dawe 2006. Unless stated otherwise, translations are my own.