From PeselyG@apsu.edu Sat Feb 16 18:18:06 2002 Received: from mailscan2.cac.washington.edu (mailscan2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.16]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g1H2I55S056226 for ; Sat, 16 Feb 2002 18:18:05 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan2.cac.washington.edu ; Sat Feb 16 18:18:05 2002 -0800 Received: from exchange.apsu.edu (exchange.apsu.edu [198.146.56.24]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g1H2I44u000803 for ; Sat, 16 Feb 2002 18:18:04 -0800 Received: by exchange.apsu.edu with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id <18T4QZSD>; Sat, 16 Feb 2002 20:12:55 -0600 Message-ID: <8C1D549B4324D51181010090277A49DE163E2B@exchange.apsu.edu> From: "Pesely, George" To: "'classics@u.washington.edu'" Subject: RE: riddle of the sphinx Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2002 20:12:54 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" The hypothesis to Sophocles's Oedipus Rex includes "to ainigma tEs sphingos" Aeschylus is known to have written a tetralogy which included a satyr-play _Sphinx_ The LSJ entry for "sphinx" cites for the riddle of the sphinx: Ath[enaeus] 10.456b; Arg.S._OT_; A[eschylus], Frr. 235-7; E[uripides], Ph[oenissae] 1507, etc. Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth, 494, says: ....Oidipous comes to Thebes. His encounter with the Sphinx is not actually attested before Aischylos, who mentions in the _Hepta_ that Oidipous overcame her and who presumably dramatized that event in the immediately following satyr play _Sphinx_; for the same time period we have the famous cup in the Vatican on which Oidipous contemplates the creature as she perches on a column [Vat 16541]. The local Boeotian form of the word is Phix (phi-iota-xi). I don't believe there is any connection with the name of the beer (from *Fuchs?). George Pesely, Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN 37044 USA peselyg@apsu.edu www.apsu.edu/~peselyg -----Original Message----- From: Diana Wright [mailto:dgw1@nyu.edu] Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 7:42 PM To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Seth Bernadete -- from today's NYTimes As a tangent to this theme, when do we first know of the riddle of the sphinx, any riddle, and the one about the assorted legs? DW ----- Original Message ----- From: David Lupher To: Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 8:33 PM Subject: Re: Seth Bernadete -- from today's NYTimes > [snip] > But even more I am baffled by Rothstein's account of Bernadete's > "Straussian" interpretation of Sophocles' "Oedipus the King." I gather > that he makes heavy weather of the chronological difficulty of OT 758ff > (for which see Dawe's discussion on pp.16f of his 1982 Cambridge > commentary), and he also makes much of the specfic content of the Sphinx's > riddle (which content is not specifically alluded to in the play itself), > but his interpretation of the play as a whole fails to emerge sharply for > me from Rothstein's comments, and I do not have access to Bernadete's essay > itself. Could some kind soul who knows and understands it please indicate > a little more clearly what he was arguing? > > David Lupher > Classics Dept. > Univ. of Puget Sound > > > .