Oedipus at Colonus — who's who

The aged Oedipus, twenty years after the events of Oedipus Rex. Blind, exiled, dependent on his daughter, but unbroken. He arrives at Colonus quietly sure that this is the place he is meant to die. When Creon comes to take him by force he calls down a curse. When Polyneices begs his blessing he refuses it. When Theseus offers Athens's protection he accepts it gravely. At the end he walks into the grove on his own feet, attended only by Theseus, and is taken from the world without violence.

Oedipus's daughter, who left Thebes with him at the time of his blinding and has guided him in exile for twenty years. She settles him, fetches water, listens to his curses without flinching. Her tenderness is the play's domestic center. She pleads with him to hear Polyneices, and at the end she begs Theseus to let her see her father's tomb. Theseus refuses; Oedipus has forbidden it. The Antigone Sophocles wrote forty years earlier — burying her brother, dying for it — is the figure the audience already knew. The tenderness here is sharpened by what was coming.

Oedipus's younger daughter, who stayed in Thebes when Antigone left with their father. She arrives at Colonus on horseback, alone, with the loyal servant who is her only protection on the road. She brings the news from Thebes — the new oracle, the war between her brothers, the politics that have suddenly made her father valuable again. After Theseus's arrival she goes to perform the rites of atonement to the Eumenides. She is captured by Creon and rescued by Theseus.

Ruler of Athens and the play's model of just kingship. He arrives at the grove summoned by his people, recognizes Oedipus by his face, accepts him without making him recite his crimes, and grants him the protection of the city before knowing what he gains by it. When Creon abducts the daughters Theseus rides out and brings them back. When Polyneices comes as a suppliant Theseus protects his right to speak. He is the only mortal Oedipus permits to follow him to the place of his death. Sophocles wrote him while Athens was losing the war.

Oedipus's brother-in-law, arrived from Thebes with armed men hidden out of sight. He delivers a speech of soft persuasion — come back, Oedipus, your city wants you home. When Oedipus refuses, Creon has Antigone seized; when that fails to move him, he tries to take Ismene and then Oedipus himself. Theseus arrives in time to block him. The Creon of this play is recognizably the Creon of Sophocles's earlier Antigone — soft-voiced, ostensibly reasonable, willing to use force, and indifferent to the obligations he claims to honor.

Oedipus's elder son. He has been driven from Thebes by his younger brother Eteocles and has marched on the city with an army from Argos. Now, hearing the oracle, he has come to Colonus to beg his father's blessing on the campaign. The blessing he begs for is not freely offered; he had stood by while his father was driven into exile and never lifted a hand. Oedipus's response is the play's most terrible speech. Polyneices accepts the curse, asks his sisters to bury him properly when he falls, and goes back to the war. Antigone begs him to turn around. He refuses.

The elders of the village of Colonus, the small Attic settlement outside Athens. They are the guardians of the sacred grove and the play's collective conscience. They are frightened of Oedipus the moment they learn his name and begin by trying to drive him away. By the middle of the play they have accepted him; by the end they mourn him. They sing the great ode to Colonus in Scene 6 — a song Sophocles wrote, near the end of his life, in honor of the village where he had been born. They begin afraid and end mourning him.