Fate vs Free Will: A Study of Ancient Greek Tragedies

When faced with the possibility of dying in war, Polynices, son of Oedipus, stoically replies, “That must be as Fate decides,” (OC, page 115). But is the future entirely up to fate? Do individuals have freedom in their destinies? Such questions have puzzled humans for millennia, and the playwrights of Ancient Greece are no exception. Three tragedians in particular, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Euripides, use their works to answer this great question of the cosmos.
When one thinks of an individual caught between fate and free will, Oedipus, king of Thebes, immediately comes to mind. In him lies the eye of the storm. He is a character prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother, but by trying with all his might to avoid this horrifying prospect, falls into that very trap. So where is that line? Where do Oedipus’s actions and the actions of fate separate?
For an example of this blurred line, the chorus admits that everyone, to some degree or another, has wisdom and therefore freedom in their lives (OT, page 38). Oedipus’s wife Jocasta continues the argument for free will by declaring, “For I can tell you [Oedipus], no man possesses the secret of divination,” (OT, page 45). She then proceeds to convince her husband that all the prophecies about his future had been proved false, and therefore fate, too, has also been disproved. In a textbook case of irony, however, the audience knows that the prophecy has indeed come true; Jocasta is Oedipus’s mother. Meanwhile, just a page later, Oedipus himself exclaims, “Ah wretch! Am I unwittingly self-cursed?” calling into question if it is his own actions that cause his destruction, or if it is fate itself that curses him (OT, page 46).