TY - JOUR AU - Petraki, Zacharoula PY - 2018/10/19 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - The body of the hero: death and heroization in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Plato’s Phaedo JF - Ariadne JA - Ariadne VL - 22 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - 10.26248/ariadne.v22i0.189 UR - https://ejournals.lib.uoc.gr/Ariadne/article/view/189 SP - 127-162 AB - <p><em>OEDIPUS at Colonus</em>, Sophocles’ last tragedy produced after his death&nbsp;in 401 bc by his grandson, is a remarkable play. In his last play,&nbsp;Sophocles restores his most famous hero, the terrifying and miserable&nbsp;Oedipus, a polluted (<em>miaros</em>) man <em>par excellence</em>. The tortured old man&nbsp;now finds a peaceful death at Sophocles’ own home deme of Colonus at&nbsp;Athens. The play, which presents Oedipus’ last day alive, also stages the&nbsp;extraordinary process of his transformation from being a helpless and&nbsp;blind, old beggar to a powerful cult hero.<br>Almost two years after the play’s production in Athens, in 399 bc,&nbsp;Socrates, another famous historical figure, finds his own heroic death&nbsp;at the prison of Athens. In his dialogue <em>Phaedo</em>, Plato undertakes a task&nbsp;similar to that of Sophocles: he tries to restore the fame of the unjustly&nbsp;accused Socrates, and in doing so he portrays him as ascending to a&nbsp;truly heroic status.<br>In this paper I bring together the remarkable deaths of these two&nbsp;seminal figures, the mythical Oedipus and Socrates, and I seek to unearth&nbsp;possible affinities between the two heroizations. I will focus, in&nbsp;particular, on the central role of the physical bodies as a source of pollution&nbsp;(<em>miasma</em>) and seek to explain the way in which both Sophocles and&nbsp;Plato create glorious heroes out of hideous and polluted bodies.</p> ER -