Blindness In Aristophanes Oedipus The King

The conceit that Wealth is blind dates at least back to the complaints of Hipponax (6th cent.). The attempt to cure his blindness, though, occurs for the first time in extant literature in Aristophanes’ Wealth, produced in 388. This paper argues that Aristophanes’ innovative treatment of Wealth’s blindness echoes the transformation of Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, produced in 402. This is not to suggest that Wealth is an all-out parody of Oedipus at Colonus. Wealth’s engagement with Oedipus at Colonus operates on visual, situational, and thematic parallels, rather than direct verbal parody.

Wealth’s reworking of Oedipus at Colonus begins in the prologue. In Wealth, an old, blind man dressed in slovenly rags enters, followed

Apollo has instructed Chremylus never to let go of the one he first encounters as he leaves the temple, and to bring him home (Wealth 41-43). In lines 56-75 there is a brief altercation with the as-yet-unnamed blind man: Chremylus and Cario try to learn his identity, he responds angrily, they grab hold of him, and he protests vehemently. Given the attempted seizure of Oedipus himself by Creon in Oedipus at Colonus (lines 860 ff.), there is every reason for the audience of Wealth to think that this ragged, blind, and now physically beset old man is Oedipus, until he reveals—surprise—that he is Wealth. (See Revermann 2006: 262-63 on initial “visual misdirection” in

The metaphorical and ultimately mysterious transformation of Oedipus becomes in Wealth a much more literal curing of blindness through incubation at the Asclepieum. (The focus on Asclepius may be a nod to Sophocles as well, since ancient sources report that Sophocles was instrumental in establishing an Asclepieum in Athens.) Both Oedipus and Wealth change from their rags into clean clothes, and each is ritually washed of his squalor (OC 1597-1603; Wealth 625, 657-58). Ultimately, the transformed figure in each play is installed at a site advantageous to Athens and has continuing impact on the city