The oracle announces that the plague is a result of religious pollution and that the god Apollo requests that the people of Thebes exile the previously unknown “miasma” (a word of Greek origin with a sense of moral noxious pollution) away from the town (lines 96–98) ( 2, 3). The king has already taken some action to deal with this harm by sending his brother-in-law, Creon, to the oracle at Delphi to ask for a salvation plan (lines 68–72). The devastating plague that dominates Thebes is presented to the audience through the dialogue between Oedipus and the Priest (lines 1–67) ( 2, 3). In the first scene of the play, Sophocles presents the basic social and historical axes around which he will unfold the plot. The ultimate goals of our study were to clarify whether the plague described in Oedipus Rex could reflect an actual historical event, compare it with the plague of Athens, which was described by the historian Thucydides as occurring not long before the time that Sophocles’ work appeared ( 4), and propose the most likely causative pathogen. Given the potential medical interest of Oedipus Rex, we decided to adopt a critical perspective by analyzing the literary descriptions of the plague, unraveling its clinical features, defining the underlying cause, and discussing possible therapeutic options. The epidemic, in fact, is mostly a matter that serves the theatrical economy by forming a background for the evolution of the plot. Several sections, primarily in the first third of the play, refer to the aforementioned plague the epidemic, however, is not the primary topic of the tragedy. Oedipus Rex, apart from the undeniable literary and historic value, also presents significant medical interest because the play mentions a plague, an epidemic, which was devastating Thebes, the town of Oedipus’ hegemony. The play has been labeled an analytical tragedy, meaning that the crucial events which dominate the play have happened in the past ( 2, 3). The writing of the tragedy Oedipus the King (original Greek title Οιδίπους τύραννος, most commonly known as Oedipus Rex) is placed in the first half of the decade 430–420 bc.
Bust of Sophocles in the Colonnade of the Muses in the Achilleion, Corfu, Greece, July 2011.
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