We now come to the quantitative parts the separate parts into which Tragedy is divided namely, Prologue, Episode, Exode, Choric song; this last being divided into Parode and Stasimon. These are common to all plays: peculiar to some are the songs of actors from the stage and the Commoi.
Of the Choric part the Parode is the first undivided utterance of the Chorus: the Stasimon is a Choric ode without anapaests or trochaic tetrameters: the Commos is a joint lamentation of Chorus and actors.
Chorus do in the third
stasimon (975-1034), emphasize the oppressive
devastation invoked so poignantly in the play's first
stasimonIn Oedipus Rex, this dismay is depicted in the Chorus' alarmed response, as in the following
stasimon they break into a rush of short, agitated syllables.
The play itself is riddled with fear from the Chorus's first
stasimon onward, and no one feels it more intensely than Oedipus: "O dear Jocasta, I am full of fear" (767).
In the first
stasimon, following the famous dialogue between the prophet Teiresias and Oedipus, there is talk of the Delphic Oracle and the fleeing beast that cannot escape the pursuing "voice immortal".
Flattering the Athenian jurors with his afflatus, Sophocles read aloud the opening
stasimon of the yet-unpublished Oedipus at Colonus, including the ode to Athens.