Second Stasimon

The Second Stasimon is unusually short. The chorus does not retreat into a full lyric meditation; it exchanges lines with the queen and the king, who are still on stage. The form itself signals that the play is too tight for a long pause. The investigation cannot afford a full reflective ode here, and Sophocles compresses the moment to a brief bridge between two episodes that need to land back-to-back without the audience catching its breath.

Jocasta turns to the chorus and asks them to tell her how the quarrel started. The elders answer cautiously. Rumors bred unjust suspicions, they say, and the city is sorely distressed; better to leave sleeping troubles at rest. Jocasta presses — were both men at fault? Both, the elders say. She presses again, and the chorus deflects: ask no more. Oedipus, still listening, complains that the chorus is well-meaning but is softening and blunting his zeal at the moment he can least afford it.

The chorus answers him directly. They would be witless, they say — insane — to cast aside the king who is the prop and stay of the country, the pilot who in her moment of danger brought the distressed state to a quiet haven. Who else could guide them now? It is an unmistakable affirmation of loyalty to the king and a refusal to side against him on what they have heard so far. But the verb in the line they use to defend him — guide, steer — is the same verb the play will turn ironic by the end. They are loyal to the helmsman, and the helmsman is the one who has driven the ship onto the rocks.