Gods in Euripides [1 ed.] 9783823369585, 382336958X

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Joan Josep Mussarra Roca

Gods in Euripides

Gods in Euripides

DRAMA

Neue Serie · Band 17

Studien zum antiken Drama und zu seiner Rezeption Herausgegeben von Bernhard Zimmermann in Zusammenarbeit mit Juan Antonio López Férez (Madrid), Giuseppe Mastromarco (Bari), Bernd Seidensticker (Berlin), N.W. Slater (Atlanta), Alan H. Sommerstein (Nottingham), Pascal Thiercy (Brest).

Joan Josep Mussarra Roca

Gods in Euripides

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar.

Gedruckt mit Unterstützung der Stiftung „Humanismus heute“.

© 2015 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: [email protected] Printed in Germany ISSN 1862-7005 ISBN 978-3-8233-6958-5

A la memòria de l’Andreu Bellès, metge òptim i millor amic

Contents Preface .................................................................................................... 9 1

Introduction: Poetry and Epistemic Shift ........................... 1.1 The Process of Epistemic Shift ........................................ 1.2 The Relevance of Poetry .................................................. 1.3 The Polycentric Character of Greek Cults ..................... 1.4 The Homeric-Hesiodic Paradigm ................................... 1.5 The Possibility of a Greek Enlightenment .....................

15 15 25 42 47 54

2

The Tragic Genre ..................................................................... 2.1 Tragedy in its context ....................................................... 2.2 Tragedy as Spectacle ........................................................ 2.3 Tragedy and Intertextuality ............................................ 2.4 Modalities of Discourse ................................................... 2.5 Some Specific Cases ..........................................................

59 59 71 76 82 87

3

First Exemplification: the Tragic Heracles ........................ 103 3.1 General Questions ........................................................... 103 3.2 Heracles the Character ................................................... 106 3.3 The Conflict Surrounding the Altar ............................. 114 3.4 The Importance of τύχη ................................................. 119 3.5 The Debate between Amphitryon and Lycus ............. 122 3.6 Heracles’ Return ............................................................. 131 3.7 The Catastrophe .............................................................. 136 3.8 A New Ethical Model ..................................................... 139

4

Second Exemplification: Hippolytus ................................. 4.1 Hippolytus and Cult ...................................................... 4.2 The ὁμιλία of Man and Goddess ................................... 4.3 Hippolytus’ Exceptional φύσις ..................................... 4.4 Phaedra’s rhesis ............................................................... 4.5 The Transformation into Cult Figure ........................... 4.6 The Gods ..........................................................................

149 149 154 163 167 177 180

Bibliography ...................................................................................... 187 Index Locorum .................................................................................. 229

Preface This is a book about the representation of gods (both as characters and as a subject for discourse) in Attic tragedy, and more specifically in two tragedies by Euripides: Heracles and Hippolytus. The goal is to establish a (necessarily partial) framework for the reading of Greek tragedy and for the analysis of the various ways in which the gods of the Greek religion appear in tragic drama, and to apply it to the aforementioned plays. The choice of the two tragedies for analysis is obviously not a matter of chance. Though Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ plays have been widely analyzed as real or supposed conveyors of religious meaning, their representations of gods have traditionally been considered less problematic than those of Euripides, not so apparently at odds with the religious framework of the Athenian polis. Our ultimate goal is to explore the relationship between Attic tragedy and Greek religious life. This relationship is not a trivial issue; in fact, its clarification would affect the global interpretation of the tragic genre. Both the relevance of the cultic setting for the comprehension of tragic drama and the value and meaning of its divine characters remain obscure, and are the subject of much debate. We know very little about many of the issues that would be essential for a correct understanding of the tragic works. We cannot aspire to an exhaustive reconstruction of the cultural assumptions through which a fifth century BC Athenian would have understood Greek tragedy. Obviously, the main reason for this is the scarcity of our material. Historical data are limited and our knowledge of the social organization and social life of Classical Athens is quite detailed in some ways, but sorely lacking in others. Most of the key texts are irretrievably lost, and probably the preserved tragic corpus is far from representative. Greek tragedy cannot be understood in isolation from the intellectual currents that existed in fifth century Athens, but at the same time our reconstruction of those currents is necessarily speculative. But of course a second obstacle – which is easily understood, although its consequences are not always so obvious – is the difficulty of establishing an adequate conceptual language to describe the cultural phenomena of a society with which we have no direct communication. The difference that separates us from Ancient

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Greeks is evident, but the real challenge lies in knowing how to deal with this distance. The mechanisms that govern interaction between human beings are hugely complex and cannot be reduced to an unambiguous set of principles. However refined our methodology, there is no way in which the description of the difference can be a merely mechanical one to which all the data can be indisputably reduced. We can only aspire to establish a provisional framework in which the different pieces of information make some sense. In this work we contend that such a framework should transcend the usual dichotomy made between a “religious” and a “nonreligious” reading of Greek tragedy, and more specifically of Euripidean tragedy. This dichotomy contains in itself a cultural assumption, that is, the possibility of establishing a clear-cut distinction between a domain of religious discourse and an autonomous, profane sphere in which the representations of gods would assume a different value and meaning. There is nothing in the discursive structures of Classical Greece that allows us to posit something of the kind. This does not mean that Greek thought as it has come down to us was uniformly governed by a “religious ideology”. Quite the opposite in fact: the religious practices of the Ancient Greeks lack an explicitly defined religious conception of the world and a set of unequivocally religious institutions, that is, institutions that have a distinct identity independent from political power. This absence is the correlate of a pervasive presence of what we would call religious components in virtually all spheres of discourse. The elements that appear to us as questioning the traditional representations of gods in Greek tragedy can be seen from this perspective. One of our main difficulties in understanding them stems from the fact that they are formulated not from outside the religious sphere, but from inside. An Ancient Greek who appears to challenge the standard representations of godhead would not be attacking a religious doctrine, a religious system that might be accepted or rejected as a whole – except, perhaps, in very extreme cases – but rather a set of traditional representations that may have an important role in worship, but are not unconditionally linked to it.

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11

Of course this is not new; the point is to elucidate the dynamics of the relationship between mortals and immortals, the exclusions and prohibitions, the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate discourse that would derive from religious patterns that are centered not upon a doctrine, but upon traditional patterns of cult, discourse and thought. We should ask ourselves about a social milieu in which religion is a virtually inescapable framework for action and thinking, but at the same time allows for a pluralism and freedom of thought that go much further than those guaranteed by organized, codified religions. It should be understood that this “freedom” is by no means incompatible with repression of individuals or collectives perceived as impious, atheists, and so on. But that is precisely our assumption: Greek society was undoubtedly repressive towards those who allegedly defied the predominant religious system, but at the same time Ancient Greeks were able to experiment with discourses about the gods without placing themselves “outside religion” to an extent that would be inconceivable in codified systems of belief like Christianity or Islam. The book is structured in four sections that develop the ideas sketched briefly here. The first endeavors to establish a set of hypotheses for the explanation of the relationship between the various discursive modes found in Archaic and Classical Greece, and the ensemble of tales that in time will be subsumed under the category of “myth”. Our main hypothesis is that narrative representations of the gods are considered valuable by themselves and might be used in cult, but at the same time have no normative truth value. Hence, they might be discussed as worthy, unworthy, and so on, with little or no consequence for the actual religious practice. Nonetheless we are not talking about a “free market” in which different forms of representation compete, but of complex ritual and societal structures in which certain paradigms for representation – basically the Homeric and Hesiodic models – predominate over other discursive patterns contained in their respective niches. The second section deals specifically with tragedy. Our main hypothesis is that the tragic genre belongs to cult and is composed and performed according to cultic practices. What is peculiar to tragedy is that the capacity of criticizing the various strategies for

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the representation of gods from inside the religious sphere is taken here into a dialogic form. The characters might discuss the action in which they themselves take part. This opens the way for the incorporation into the “world of drama” of a variety of discursive patterns that were to be found in the real world. The name of Euripides has been specifically associated with “Philosophy” (it should not be forgotten that “Philosophy” here is a category superimposed by a later era) but this is probably due to the simple fact that the issues with which Euripides deals in his plays are closer to those of later philosophical thought, but are not more “philosophical” in the broader sense of the word than those by Sophocles and Aeschylus. The third section deals with Euripides’ Heracles and with the themes featured in this play that touch upon the problem of the representation of gods. The central theme of Heracles appears to be the problematization, and at the same time the consolidation, of an evergetic Heracles as a paradigm for virtue. In our opinion this tragedy should be conceived as an extended allegory in which the much debated intervention of the gods does not undermine the play’s unity. Rather the opposite, in fact: it is the axis that articulates the two halves of this drama. The catastrophe motivates a crisis in the previous heroic model embodied by Heracles and in the conception of divine justice associated with it, and propitiates the emergence of a new ethical model. This crisis appears in the play as a problematization of the usual representations of gods, as they do not fit into this ethical model. The fourth section deals with Hippolytus. Though in a less direct way, this tragedy also entails a problematization of the usual representations of cult figures, perhaps without the playwright being fully conscious of it. Its basic plot might be considered a conflation of two very different models for the representation of a mortal who experiences an exceptional proximity to the gods: on the one hand, the traditional pattern of the mortal who attains cultic status after being destroyed by an angry god, and on the other, the representation of Hippolytus as an initiate who practices an unconventional form of worship that grants him privileged access to the godly sphere. We understand that this “initiate” is little more than a stereotype, without any anchorage in an existing cult. Equally,

Preface

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Hippolytus’ celibacy should be understood as a poetic representation of extreme, inborn virtue, without any aspiration to realism, or any pretension to serve as a role model. The problematization is to be found in the confrontation of this virtue with an opposite moral discourse by Phaedra, and with the pattern of heroization that implies that Hippolytus’ virtue and his proximity to the godly sphere do not protect him from suffering and death. It is unclear whether Euripides intended to defend a specific thesis with this play, and how it is related to the two Attic cults of Hippolytus, the etiologies of which are presented in considerable detail. But the problematization in itself is evident. Through the analysis of the two tragedies we hope to show that the hypotheses formulated in the first two sections of this book are a valid approach to the issues posed by the representation of gods in Greek tragedy, and that they may be useful for future study.

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Introduction: Poetry and Epistemic Shift

1.1

The Process of Epistemic Shift

Our starting point is the existence of an order of knowledge common to the Hellenistic and Imperial Roman worlds, a sum of knowledge paradigms accepted as authoritative by the elites, unified to some extent despite variations in different places and epochs, which can be considered as the end result of a process of change in epistemic structures. The chronological frame of this process cannot be precisely defined, but it corresponds roughly to the periods that we usually know as “Archaic” and “Classical Greece”. Tragic plays belong to this epoch and reflect its problems and challenges, and at the same time prefigure patterns of thought that will not become clearly established until later on. The process of epistemic change that led to the HellenisticRoman paradigms of knowledge can be seen as a consequence of the deep transformations experienced by the Greek world in its transition from an illiterate, non-monetary, agrarian, communityoriented society, to a new structure in which relevant knowledge resided in written texts (and in which, consequently, the elites were literate), a significant share of the total production was dependent upon established commercial practices, the still essentially agrarian economy ceased to be ruled at local level, and the predominant communicative structures were now on a broader scale. It was an era of development of the material culture among the Hellenes, and of commercial exchange with Eastern Mediterranean civilizations and other surrounding areas1. It was, above everything else, the time of the appearance and consolidation of the polis as a social and political system2, and, almost simultaneously, of the emergence of a common Panhellenic identity3. It was at the begin1 2 3

Cf. BURKERT [1984] 1992 pp. 9-40. See also HUSSEY 2006. For a sound and relatively recent synthesis, see LONIS 1994. The emergence of a Panhellenic identity is by itself a matter of debate. The stages through which it comes to exist are not clear – nor even is its definition. CARTLEDGE 1993, 1995 contends that it did not really exist until the Persian Wars. HAR-

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1 Introduction: Poetry and Epistemic Shift

ning of this period that the Greeks re-discovered and re-invented writing. Even if its initial applications seem to have been very restrictive, they gradually expanded to an ever greater range4. The reality of this transition is beyond dispute, and logically implies the emergence of a new framework for the production and circulation of discourse. Due to its complexity, the process has been perceived and researched from very diverse points of view at different times and in different fields of study. There has been much talk of “the transition from mythos to logos”5, “the transition from orality to writing”6, “the Greek Enlightenment”7, “forgetfulness of Being”8, and so on. The validity of the various approaches cannot be assessed in absolute terms, because all of them respond to the intellectual needs of their specific contexts9. The result of this process, which came to an end near the beginning of the Hellenistic period, was the consolidation of a series of knowledge paradigms based upon the codification of the various disciplines in writing. These paradigms constituted neither a closed and invariable system, nor a systematization of academic disciplines comparable to the one that later took place in modern Europe. The real degree of specialization amongst the elite mem[1980]1988 shares his basic assumptions. The precariousness of our knowledge of Archaic Greece makes this question virtually unanswerable. NAGY, esp. in 1979, 1980, 1996a, 1996b, sees the evolution of Greek poetry as dependent upon the emergence of a form of Panhellenism previous to the Persian Wars. A relatively recent work on this subject with extensive bibliography is ROSS 2005, who defends the existence of a Panhellenic conception at the time of the Homeric poems. Cf. also SNODGRASS 1971, HALL 1989, 1997, GRAZIOSI 2002. Cf. JOHNSON / PARKER Eds. 2009. See specially WERNER 2009 and THOMAS 2009. NESTLE 1940. See the essays in BUXTON Ed. 1999. See also the excellent FOWLER 2011 for an attempt to recover the distinction mythos / logos. The research into orality in Ancient Greece became established with the work of PARRY and LORD on the Homeric epos. The work of HAVELOCK has a foundational character with regard to the general understanding of the transition from orality to writing in Ancient Greece, though it has probably been superseded in some ways, cf. esp. 1963 and 1986. See also THOMAS 1992, WORTHINGTON Ed. 1996, YUNIS Ed. 2003, MACKIE Ed. 2004, COOPER Ed. 2007, JOHNSON / PARKER Eds. 2009. Here we should once again mention NESTLE. His work on Euripides NESTLE 1901 made a decisive contribution to the diffusion of this view. In the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, of course. See HUMPHREYS 2004 pp. 51-75. Though we do not agree with his notion of a “secularization” of the Greek world between c. 550 and 300 BC, it is undoubtedly an excellent, and relatively recent analysis of this process. TOG

4 5

6

7

8 9

1.1 The Process of Epistemic Shift

17

bers was very limited, and the modality of knowledge which might have been its unifying element, Philosophy, would always remain a framework in which various discursive forms coincided10. Nonetheless the Hellenistic-Roman world presented a certain stability in the organization of knowledge, guaranteed by the existence of institutions such as libraries and schools which were based upon and preserved a canon of texts11. The spread of literacy in Archaic Greece and the subsequent constitution of forms of knowledge based on corpora of written texts present certain specific features which have a vital bearing on our understanding of other phenomena. To begin with, probably due to the political fragmentation of the Greek-speaking world, we find no centers of knowledge constituted immediately upon the arrival of writing. Though reading and writing skills were almost undoubtedly restricted to a small number of individuals, they belonged neither to an exclusive caste nor to circles that were isolated from mainstream society12. What is more, the process which led to the establishment of writing as the basic vehicle of knowledge (something that may also occur in societies where the majority is illiterate13) was slow, possibly because there was no political center of power to which writing was distinctly associated. Contexts for 10 11

12

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Cf. INWOOD 2010 p. 131 et passim. BECK 1964, MORGAN 1998, 1999. For a compilation of sources on education in the Graeco-Roman world, see JOYAL / MCDOUGALL / YARDLEY Eds. 2009. The scope of literacy in Athens and in the whole of Greece, and the social processes involved, are still under debate. Cf. HARRIS 1989, THOMAS 1989, BOWMAN / WOOLF Eds. 1994, MORGAN 1998, YUNIS Ed. 2003. Though the spread of literacy is not his theme, FORD 2002 sheds important light on many aspects of the formation of a literate culture. A brief, but very interesting analysis in MACDONALD 2005. See p. 49: “I would define a „literate society‟ as one in which reading and writing have become essential to its functioning, either throughout the society (as in the Modern West) or in certain vital aspects, such as the bureaucracy, economic and commercial activities, or religious life. Thus, in this sense, a society can be literate, because it uses the written word in some of its vital functions, even when the vast majority of its members cannot read or write […]. I would regard a non-literate, or oral, society as one in which literacy is not essential to any of its activities, and memory and oral communication perform the functions which reading and writing have within a literate society. […] it is possible to have many people who can read and/or write in an oral society, without this changing its fundamentally oral nature.” THOMAS 1992 pp. 1-28 gives a broad, if not exhaustive, view of the different uses of writing. An interesting comparison of two very different cases in LLOYD 2003.

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the oral production and diffusion of discourse are still documented at a much later date; in fact they remained highly relevant for the Greek poleis, and would remain so until the Hellenistic age and beyond14. So we can say that written discourse developed in interaction with oral modalities of discourse that were still alive. This development allowed the reproduction by means of writing of discursive models that were strongly rooted in oral tradition. Undoubtedly, those same discursive models experienced decisive transformations as a result, with modifications of their respective modes of production, reproduction and circulation. Texts – in the broadest sense of this word – could reach a wider geographical context either in written form, or in an oral form mediated through writing. The potential separation of knowledge from the person and occasion from which it stems opens up the possibility of modifying the guidelines upon which the system of knowledge itself is constituted. A certain degree of specialization emerges15, and with it institutions that preserve the specific disciplines of knowledge as contained in writing. In the Archaic and Classical eras such institutions had not yet attained their full development, but they nonetheless existed16. The complexity of the process of epistemic shift itself is compounded by the interpretative bias of our written sources, mainly produced (or at least selected for transmission) in the time in which the ulterior organization of knowledge was already consolidated, and which (not without some hesitation) interpreted the past according to it. This is probably the main reason why it is very difficult for us to organize the texts surviving from Archaic and Classical Greece in a purely synchronous system. For instance: we do not really know the place of Heraclitus in the so-called “History of Philosophy”– that is, his real influence on Plato and the Stoics, the transmission of his texts, and so on – but it is even 14

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The question of performance and oral forms of communication during the Hellenistic period has not attracted as much attention in research. Cf. AUNE 1991. For oral structures in Roman literature: VOGT-SPIRA 1990. AZOULAY 2007. According to the author there emerges a certain distinction between “polis-oriented” (poets, orators), and “non polis-oriented” intellectuals (the latter being basically philosophers). Cf. HARRIS 1989, Ch. 3f., ROBB 1994, MORGAN 1999.

1.1 The Process of Epistemic Shift

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more difficult to explain the status of his work for his contemporaries, its intended audience, its relationship with organized and alternative forms of worship17. There are no traces of any terminology that can designate the different areas of knowledge in an unequivocal manner. The most ancient uses of terms like ἱστορία or φιλοσοφία speak volumes: we have to wait at least until the fourth century BC for their first use as names of specific disciplines rather than as designations of ways to approach general knowledge18. The researcher can access a variety of texts, but, as in the case of Heraclitus, it is impossible for us to assign them a definite place in structures and communication forms of which our knowledge is at best very defective19. Still in the fourth century BC, Plato could use Protagoras as a mouthpiece for a vision of the 17

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The problem can be treated in many different ways. See, for example, GRAHAM 2008 p. 169: “With Heraclitus a new type of thinker appears in archaic Greece. No longer satisfied with cosmological questions of the sort that drove the Milesians, he looks critically at the world, at society, and at how people know the world. He does not simply accept the framework of explanation developed by the Milesians, but questions it.” Under the guise of a historical narration, the author constructs a narrative based upon one among many possible syntheses of testimonia and fragmenta that are very disperse. There is nothing wrong with this – it is one possible way of analyzing the structure of Heraclitean thinking, and it is not altogether clear that the alternatives are better – but in any case Heraclitus‟ actual practices remain unknown. See GIGON 1935, KIRK 1954, VLASTOS 1955, BABUT 1975, KAHN 1979, DE GENNARO 2001. Cf. NIGHTINGALE 1995 p. 60. See AZOULAY 2007 about the sense of “Philosophy” in Isocrates. AZOULAY notes that Isoc. 7.45 places Philosophy on the same level with typically aristocratic pursuits like horsemanship, hunting and gymnastics, but 4.13 rather looks down upon physical exercise. Though of course there might be many reasons for both statements, they could point to the still indeterminate position of the discipline that Isocrates calls “Philosophy”. See also the use of ἱστορία in Alcid. Soph. 1. See also WARREN 2007 pp. 1-6. HARRIS 1989 pp. 63f.: “Anaximander and Anaximenes (not Thales) were the earliest philosophers whose ideas survived in writing, but it turns out to be most unclear what effects it had. No one before Aristotle refers to these men, still less to their writings. In fact the earliest philosopher whose writings are known to have had reverberations in and soon after his own time was Xenophanes of Colofon, who significantly wrote not in prose treatises but in accepted poetic forms. His chronology is disputed, but he is unlikely to have written much before the last quarter of the sixth century. That writing was still a quite subsidiary part of being a philosopher in the next generation (again there are chronological problems) is suggested by the fact that Heraclitus, whose book was in Aristotle‟s opinion very difficult to read, nonetheless obtained relatively extensive circulation for his ideas.” Of course it might still be questioned if Heraclitus‟ book was truly difficult for its intended audience.

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“Sophist” that corresponds to this generic idea of a wisdom which is to be found in various contexts (Pl. Prt. 316d-e)20: ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν σοφιστικὴν τέχνην φημὶ μὲν εἶναι παλαιάν, τοὺς δὲ μεταχειριζομένους αὐτὴν τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνδρῶν, φοβουμένους τὸ ἐπαχθὲς αὐτῆς, πρόσχημα ποιεῖσθαι καὶ προκαλύπτεσθαι, τοὺς μὲν ποίησιν, οἷον Ὅμηρόν τε καὶ Ἡσίοδον καὶ Σιμωνίδην, τοὺς δὲ αὖ τελετάς τε καὶ χρησμῳδίας, τοὺς ἀμφί τε Ὀρφέα καὶ Μουσαῖον· ἐνίους δέ τινας ᾔσθημαι καὶ γυμναστικήν, οἷον Ἴκκος τε ὁ Ταραντῖνος καὶ ὁ νῦν ἔτι ὢν οὐδενὸς ἥττων σοφιστὴς Ἡρόδικος ὁ Σηλυμβριανός, τὸ δὲ ἀρχαῖον Μεγαρεύς· μουσικὴν δὲ Ἀγαθοκλῆς τε ὁ ὑμέτερος πρόσχημα ἐποιήσατο, μέγας ὢν σοφιστής, καὶ Πυθοκλείδης ὁ Κεῖος καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοί. Certainly, “Protagoras” makes a distinction between the “Sophists” of his time and the ancient ones who did not dare to display their own wisdom. But he establishes this distinction only to subsequently dismiss it: he tries to prove that poets like Homer, Hesiod and Simonides, and founders of τελεταί like Orpheus and Musaeus21 were ultimately a previous form of the kind of wisdom that could be cultivated by men like Prodicus, Gorgias and Protagoras himself22.

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After the edition of BURNET. This is only one among many possible categorizations. It should be remembered that Orpheus and Musaeus are real poets for Ancient Greeks. In vindicating the poets‟ wisdom, Aristophanes‟ “Aeschylus” refers to Orpheus in Ra. 1030ff., without making any distinction between him and “recent” poets. Cf. KINGSLEY 1995, FORD 2002 pp. 46-66, BERNABÉ 2009. On the relationship between Orpheus and Homer, cf. NAGY 2001. Cf. also LONG 1999. On the evolution of the term τελετή before the Hellenistic era and the progressive restriction of its meaning, cf. SCHUDDEBOOM 2009 pp. 7-37. On p. 21, SCHUDDEBOOM quotes Aristophanes, Nu. 258, where the vocabulary used could imply that the initiation in Socrates‟ Phrontisterion is also a τελετή. Perhaps this fact is not very relevant in itself: Nubes is a comic play, so the intention with which the terms are used is not always evident. Nonetheless it is also possible to understand it as a reference to the initiatory and para-religious character of some associations which in retrospect we call “philosophical”.

1.1 The Process of Epistemic Shift

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We can list some of the traits of this period of epistemic shift, bearing in mind that a list of this kind will always remain tentative and should not be understood as an attempt at a systematic explanation: a) A mixed23, oral/written24 system of communication. Even if it does not work in the same way in all times and places, there are some common traits which are shared by practically the whole of the Archaic and the Classical period. Written texts are important for the transmission and codification of knowledge, but coexist with authoritative forms of oral communication of a very diverse nature25. b) Social recognition of a variety of figures of wisdom that do not share a common object of knowledge, but are also not properly split into specific disciplines. They are designated by a variety of terms like σοφός and σοφιστής. The latter will be used a posteriori to designate a group of characters mainly from the second half of the fifth century BC who question very radically the possibility of 23

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FOLEY 2004 makes a distinction between four different kinds of oral/written communication systems which should be considered “mixed”. We prefer not to apply this classification to the whole of Archaic and Classical periods. First, because the systems of communication appear to be subjected to continuous transformation during this period of epistemic shift – but even more so because FOLEY only refers to the modes of production and reception of texts. This restriction is justified in its original context, but, at the same time, is inevitably one-sided. The modes of production and reception do not clarify by themselves the authority of a certain text in a certain social context, the value of truth attributed to it, and so on. There is no consensus on the distinction between the roles of oral and written channels of communication in different times, or about their interaction. Cf. HERINGTON 1985, in which the author contends that writing had had a very important role since ancient times. On p. 41 he says: “although its performances were universally oral, it rested on a firm sub-structure of carefully meditated written texts”. On p. 45 he also argues in favor of the continuity of oral traditions in the areas in which writing had been consolidated as a means for communication. It is worth noting MORRISON 2004 pp. 110-5, where the author shows that Thucydides‟ prose simultaneously presents traits of a text conceived for reading and of a text conceived for recitation. In the same book: CURRIE 2004. Cf. also THOMAS 1992 pp. 61-5, 78-93, MELIA 2004, TEFFETELLER 2007, FINKELBERG 2007. We refer to YUNIS Ed. 2003 and the vision of alphabetization as a multiform phenomenon posited by its various authors. The Introduction by the Editor says on p. 13: “As a group, the chapters of this book demonstrate that reactions to writing differed from one context to another, and no single pattern or interpretation accounts for the variety of cultural change in ancient Greece.” On the use of writing by rhapsodes: X. Mem. 4.2.10.

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knowledge itself, of its communicability, and of finding guidance for human action26. But the term is much older, and its specific application to this group of thinkers is very probably retrospective. The terms σοφός and σοφία are applied in older texts to people with very diverse abilities, among them possessors of types of wisdom related to the use of spoken word like poets and seers27. They may have moral connotations, at least in some contexts28. As synthesized in KERFERD 1981 p. 24: From the fifth century B. C. onward the term „sophistês‟ is applied to many of these early „wise men‟ – to poets, including Homer and Hesiod, to musicians and rhapsodes, to diviners and seers, to the Seven Wise Men and other early wise men, to Presocratic philosophers, and to figures such as Prometheus with a suggestion of mysterious powers. So we are confronted with something that in our context seems rather paradoxical, but would have made some sense in Archaic Greece. Notions such as σοφός and σοφιστής could refer to very different abilities: a man (or a woman) is σοφός (or σοφή) about something29. But this evident fact has its counterpoint in the nonexistence of full-fledged autonomous discourses, and, even more importantly, in the recognition of what we could call a general notion of authority for the σοφός, or for a character designated through a more or less analogous term: he (or she) is not an au26

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Cf. LLOYD 1989 pp. 92-5, and also KERFERD 1981, RANKIN 1983, O‟GRADY Ed. 2008. Anyway it is doubtful that they were a real “group”. AZOULAY 2007 p. 177: “[…] il ne s‟agit nullement d‟un groupe unifié, mais plutôt d‟un assemblage hétéroclite dont la cohérence fut établie ex post , par un Platon en mal d‟ennemis.” Cf. MARTIN 1993 pp. 115f. σοφοί acquire this rank basically through recognition by the society to which they belong. Cf. O‟BRIEN 1967, p. 24: “The sophia of the Seven Wise Men is practical and moral. […] The word sophia keeps these ethical connotations in many passages of Pindar. Wise men, he says, bear nobly the power given by god; they praise moderation, and they do not aspire too high.” The absence of a truly autonomous ethical sphere in the archaic world seems evident to us, even though it is not easy to give a sound characterization of this fact. O‟GRADY 2008, p 9f.

1.1 The Process of Epistemic Shift

23

thoritative figure in a specific, well-defined field, but a generally authoritative figure, and different σοφοί might concur with each other in authority, even if their immediate object of knowledge is not the same30. This way of categorizing knowledge is still present even in an author like Plato, who, in theory at least, is already specifically “philosophical”31. So we could say that the characteristic that unifies the very diverse figures of σοφός or σοφιστής is the capacity (or legitimation) to utter an authoritative discourse32, and only secondarily his (or her) specific achievements or competence in a specific field. c) The existence, inside this mixed oral/written system, of a set of subsystems, some of them (though not all) of Panhellenic importance, for the production and circulation of poems33 and also prose texts34. The tragic genre is obviously one such subsystem,

30

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33 34

A very interesting treatment in AKRITIDOU 2013. P. 90f.: “In examining the particular nature of the kind of authority affirmed by the Presocratics it is important to remark that, as André Laks argues, there are two possible ways of establishing an authoritative status in connection with differentiation: either the individual differentiates his expertise from other dissimilar authorities (external differentiation) or he differentiates himself from other similar authorities, who appear to belong to the same group (inner-differentiation). It then becomes apparent that the authoritativeness of an enterprise may not be affirmed only in connection with other similar enterprises, for it is equally possible to register a particular area of concern as authoritative by contrasting it to othe dissimilar topics of investigation. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to accept that these two stages of differentiation are successive, and that in order for the second to appear the first has to have been to some extent developed. In order for inner differentiation to appear, that is, both the individuals and the audience have to be able to identify the content of the knowledge presented as the primary concern of a specific group.” This should be nuanced. Cf. BURKERT 1960. On the existence of a “sphere of wisdom” in which disciplines like those of the Hellenistic period are not yet separate, see DETIENNE 1967. Various studies have noted the impossibility of separating “Philosophy”, “Poetry”, etc., as clearly differentiated fields of discourse in Archaic Greece, from a variety of viewpoints: DODDS 1951, LLOYD-JONES 1971, VERNANT 1981, FORD 2002 pp. 46-66. The excellent FEENEY 1991 p. 48 says of the theologia tripertita that “it has its roots in the fracturing of the poets‟ monopoly on speaking about the divine which was begun by those such as Xenophanes”. Here once again we meet the a posteriori construction of Xenophanes as a “Philosopher” and again refer to FORD 2002 pp. 46-66 and the rest of the authors we have mentioned in this note. Cf. NAGY 1979, 1980. Cf. THOMAS 1992 p. 107 on the relationship between orality and the texts that we consider prose.

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1 Introduction: Poetry and Epistemic Shift

and a relatively late one. They are not limited to poetry35. The aspiration to an authoritative position seems to be implicit also in the discourses framed by these subsystems, even though the scarcity of the materials preserved leaves us in the dark regarding the manner in which such an aspiration is articulated within each modality of discourse. In any case the competition for a rank like that which is designated by the word σοφός among figures belonging to these subsystems remains36.

35

36

The limitations of the material at hand prevent us from systematizing the spheres of discourse in which such stories could be found. For a brilliant analysis centered on the character of Polyphemus, see CALAME 2000 pp. 193-238. NIGHTINGALE 2007 p. 174 “Although, in this period, different kinds of wise men were seen to be practicing different activities, there was nonetheless a generalized competition among the different groups for the title of „wise man‟. It was not until the late fifth century that intellectuals began to construct boundaries between disciplines such as philosophy, history, medicine, rhetoric, and various other technai.”

1.2

The Relevance of Poetry

Poetry, i.e., speech formalized according to meter, is particularly important in this period of epistemic shift, and as a mode (or set of modes) of discourse it is also relevant to the epistemic shift itself. Its evolution is closely related to the gradual adoption of writing. In all probability, poetic texts would have been received orally rather than in written form until the fourth century BC37. The history of the interaction between writing (which in the beginning was probably only used as a support for oral delivery) and orality itself must have been extremely complex38. We can safely assume that the poetic forms adopted by the Greek language – not just its metrical patterns, but also the dialects used, the formulaic systems, and so on – are among the traits of oral tradition that enter the written discourse39. But even if we can take it for granted that poetry had a very important role in the transition from oral to written discourse (and, at the same time, was deeply affected by it) its precise relationship with the sum of changes experienced by Greek paradigms of knowledge remains obscure. To begin with, there is no real proof that Archaic Greeks considered “poetry” as a single mode of discourse40. Although the distinction between metrical and non-metrical speech is obvious, the unity of function and relevance is not. The sheer diversity of meter and performance in Greek poetry bars us from assuming that there

37

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40

Even though they are rather late testimonies for the period we are discussing, X. Mem. 4.2.10, and perhaps also Pl. Phdr. 252b, contain references to the circulation of written texts. Here, too, the relation established by the Platonic Ion between his knowledge of Homer and various characters in the tradition of allegorical interpretation should be considered of utmost importance, because they probably presuppose that all these characters study poetry through written texts. For example, GRAF 1993 pp. 152f. speculates about the possibility that the expansion of writing in the fifth century BC contributed to the fossilization of myth. Perhaps it would be better to talk more generally about the fossilization of the traditional contents of poetry. For an excellent view of the oral and written elements of several texts and traditions of Archaic and Classical Greece, see the contributions to MACKAY Ed. 2008, with bibliography. See esp. pp. 1-141. An interesting hypothesis can be found in NAGY 2007b pp. 60f.: there is genre distinction between epic and lyric in terms of the mode of enunciation. The lyric poets “see”, whereas Homer “hears”.

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was a single “poetic ability” even at the merely formal level41. The Greeks classified poetry according to formal criteria42, but the formal classification itself is related to the context of enunciation, and almost unavoidably to the social function of each of these modes of discourse and their contents. Even the attribution of a specific patronage such as that of Apollo and the Muses does not have a clear value, because it seems to refer to the whole of the oral performance, and in the Hesiodic text (to quote just one example) the Muses are also associated with kings, who share in the gift of speech but obviously do not belong to what we would call the sphere of poetry43. Nonetheless, there are some transformations that we can almost certainly take for granted. Writing changed the scope for the diffusion of poems. Though it is highly probable that channels for the oral circulation of poetry in pre-Archaic Greece were not confined to small areas, the written form opened up the possibility of wider-ranging channels, and would not necessarily be tied to a tradition (or ensemble of traditions) of performance. Moreover, the ability to repeat a performance using an identical text, and the possibility of knowing the texts without the need to perform them, allowed access to (and study of) the poetic work in ways that would not have been possible through an exclusively oral tradition. The search for hidden meanings (ὑπόνοια) in poems apparently emerged at the latest in the sixth century BC44. It is impossible to know whether this search appeared with writing, or whether it had its roots in interpretative practices belonging to oral performance. In any case, what we know as allegorical interpretation (probably, the sum of originally independent practices) takes its final form in writing.

41

42 43 44

FORD 2003 pp. 26ff points to the possibility that the poems taught in schools were primarily the recited ones, not the sung ones. If this were the case, there would be an obvious difference in the way the two kinds of poetry were considered. For an excellent synthesis, see CAREY 2010. Hes. Th. 80-104. BUFFIÈRE 1956, PÉPIN 1958, RICHARDSON 1975, LAMBERTON 1986. There is a splendid synthesis in OBBINK 2010. We agree with LONG 2005 that “allegorical interpretation” is also an a posteriori construct superimposed on different kinds of interpretive procedures. In any case, we believe that for the purposes of this work it is not necessary to go into further distinctions.

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Inevitably, the status of the poems themselves changes, as does the status of the poets to whom they are attributed. Though it is impossible to establish the exact relationship that existed before the adoption of writing between a supposed “Homer” (assuming that the character already existed as such) and the continuously recomposed oral tradition, it could hardly have been identical to the one between the “Homer” character in the sixth century BC and the more or less fixed text that supposedly existed45 by then. In the first case, the authority that might be associated with the name of the poet46 would probably be invested in an authorized performer. In the second one a new form of authority will sooner or later appear that will reside in the written text, and secondarily in its material possessors, in the literate people who can read it, and obviously in a person qualified to interpret it in accordance with an exegetic tradition that requires reading. We should keep in mind that those distinctions are between roles, and not between people. It might very well be that the performer of the text and the person authorized to interpret it through writing are one and the same, as we can deduce from Plato‟s Ion47. But the system of production and diffusion has been altered nonetheless. 45

46

47

Assuming that the model for the constitution of the Homeric text implicit here is legitimate. The literature on the production of the Homeric text is enormous. A small selection thereof: SEVERYNS 1928, MURRAY 1934, MERKELBACH 1952, LORD 1960, KIRK 1962, KIRK 1965, DIHLE 1970, PARRY 1971, KIRK 1976, NAGY 1979, JENSEN 1980, JANKO 1982, LORD 1991, TAPLIN 1992, LORD 1995, WEST 1995, NAGY 1996a, NAGY 1996b, JANKO 1998, NAGY 2002, PÒRTULAS 2008, JENSEN 2011. Needless to say, our general points about the changes in the role of the “poet” character brought about by writing would not be substantially altered if it were proven that “Homer” was an individual who composed his works in written form: the shift would simply be pushed back to a previous stage in the evolution of Greek poetry. About the authority of poetry in various contexts, see: RÖSLER 1980, GENTILI 1984, MILLER 1994, GREENE Ed. 1996, LANZA 1997 Ch. 3, CALAME 1997, 2005. There have been attempts at trivialization. According to HEATH 1987a p. 47: “[…] when a Greek spoke of the poet as a teacher he meant something that is, from a modern point of view, rather disappointing: that one could find in the poets moral exemplars, cautionary tales and formulations in gnomic utterance of moral, and indeed of technical, wisdom.”. Cf. RUSSELL 1981 p. 86f. See 530c-d, where the rhapsode equates himself with Metrodorus of Lampsacus, Stesimbrotos of Thasos and Glaucon. The exegetic problems posed by this text are of some import, but, in any case, it seems that the notion of a rhapsode who interprets poetry according to “non-mythological” schemes – we would prefer to say “non-narrative” schemes – was acceptable. For context, two relatively recent, very

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Poetry is one of the media through which the gods might be represented, and the representation of gods is in itself a manifestation of poetic σοφία. The ability to portray Greek gods is not restricted to poetry: they also appear in prose, sculpture and painting. Nonetheless, their poetic representation has a certain paradigmatic character and is discussed at least from the sixth century BC onwards. The poetic representations of the gods may take very different forms (at least if we include in poetry forms of discourse that later will be classified as “Philosophy”, such as the poems attributed to Parmenides and Empedocles) but most of them belong to what we could call a narrative-anthropomorphic model. The adjective “anthropomorphic” might be questioned, but it is undoubtedly acceptable if we apply it to some (though not all) kinds of iconography48. Regarding poetry, we would rather talk about narrative-anthropomorphic, or simply narrative representations of the gods49. This term is preferable because it avoids both the discredited notion that the Greek gods were some kind of “su-

48

49

exhaustive studies about Plato and poetry: GIULIANO 2005, DESTRÉE – HERRMANN 2011. See also BARFIELD 2011. An interesting study of the relationship of cult with iconographic representation is GORDON 1979. See also ROBINSON 1985. In p. 158 the author states: “In speaking of art in this context we must make distinctions between different crafts and arts. Two in particular, architecture and sculpture, are almost confined, at first and for long, to this civic-religious public sphere. […] It may seem odd to speak of architecture as limited to the public sphere. People must have houses; but it does seem clear that domestic architecture in Greece was for a long time of the simplest kind, that architecture as an art, architectural style, is confined to temples and civic buildings.” P. 160: “Statues in early Greece are used for three purposes, to which they are for a long time confined: the cult-figure within the temple; figures dedicated as offerings to a deity […]; and figures to stand on graves.” BURKERT [1991] 2001 expounds the thesis of its author about the anthropomorphic representation of the gods in Homer. In p. 81 he summarizes them thus: “1. To present gods in an unheroic, all-too-human vein is a traditional form of narrative […]. 2. Even in Homer the unquestionable seriousness of religion is not based on such tales, but on traditional ritual, which is essentially non-anthropomorphic […]. 3. Homeric anthropomorphism is just slightly connected with the spreading use of anthropomorphic images in cult […]. WINNINGTON-INGRAM 1980 p. 151 attributes anthropomorphism to a “strong concrete imagination, reinforced by the work of poets (not least of Homer) and later of sculptors”. We are skeptical about the possibility of analyzing an “imagination” just inferred from its own supposed creations, but WINNINGTON-INGRAM is nonetheless right: the cultural products in which Hellenic gods adopt this form are fundamentally poetry and iconic representation.

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29

permen”, and the artificiality of denying that Greek gods, as represented in iconography and poetry, were anthropomorphic. As a matter of fact, they were anthropomorphic in representation, though the implications of this anthropomorphism might not be clear50. The narrative-anthropomorphic representation of the gods generally belongs to a class of narrative material which is not to be found exclusively in poetry, and which we usually designate by the Greek term “myth”. It is not easily defined, and it is also unclear that the modern definitions attempting to differentiate “myth” as a transcultural category are useful when applied to Ancient Greece51. The first definition of “myth” in the Merriam-Webster is just a dictionary definition, but more or less coincides with the conception which (with many variants) currently predominates in academia: “A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon”. No doubt we find stories of this kind in Ancient Greece, and many (if not most) of them appear in mythology handbooks. But the category “myth” as sketched above belongs to a conceptualization that is ours, and does not belong to Greek thought52. The Greek term μῦθος originally means “a thing which is said”, or, depending on the context, “tale”53. Departing from this initial 50

51

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On the tension between anthropomorphic representations of gods and nonanthropomorphic manifestations of those same gods in the Homeric corpus, see SNELL 1978 pp. 9-11. A good compendium of the debate on the definition of myth and the various perspectives through which it is studied, not centered on Greek mythology, is CSAPO 2005. See also CASSIRER 1923/1925, KERÉNYI 1966/1988, KIRK 1970, 1974, DETIENNE 1981, VEYNE 1983, EASTERLING 1985b, VERNANT / VIDAL-NAQUET 1986, DOWDEN 1992. CALAME Ed. 1988, CALAME 2000, CALAME [2000] 2009, CALAME 2007, PIRENNE-DELFORGE 2009. Of course there exists the term μυθώδης, as used in Th. 1.21.1, 1.22.4, Isoc. 4.28, Pl. R. 522a, e. a., and the category expressed by it. But obviously it does not mean “mythic” in the sense privileged by modern research, and emerges as a consequence of the establishment of discursive patterns that search the truth outside the “received stories”. FOWLER 2011 p. 45 n. 1 accepts that “myth” in the aforementioned sense doesn‟t exist in Ancient Greece. Cf. CALAME [2000] 2009, pp. 1-5. For a brief but interesting discussion about the character of Greek “myth”, see DALFEN 2002, pp. 214-7.

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1 Introduction: Poetry and Epistemic Shift

meaning, and in accordance with the evolution of Greek thinking, μῦθος finally came to mean a “marvelous, incredible tale”. It does not correspond, at any stage in its evolution, to the term “myth” as it is used in modern Anthropology, History of Religion, Philosophy, and so on. We are also unable to find in Ancient Greece a mode of discourse (not just a classification imposed from outside) that would unequivocally, rather than approximately, correspond to our “myth”54. The mere fact that the modern notion of “myth” has its roots in the study of Hellenic mythology is hardly relevant. The whole of pagan Greece certainly knew a great number of tales, which were transmitted through the most diverse means. The stories were of many different kinds, but many of them had in common the appearance of characters that were cult figures, or at least were related to the cult in some way: gods, heroes, nymphs, satyrs, and so on. Most of the stories were set in the remote past, and some of them were etiological, even if the notion of “etiology” itself has its own complexities and sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a story truly belongs to this category55. At the end of the Archaic period, a part of this “remote past” had been organized in narrative cycles56. This organization is preserved for later times in several epic poems, but it is virtually impossible to know whether it was generated by the epic poems themselves, or perhaps by a tradition that was previous to them57. For example, we cannot reconstruct in any reliable way the formation of the complex net of apparently intertextual allusions that are to be found in the Iliad or the Odyssey. The grouping of the principal cycles in an “Age of Heroes” in Works and Days implies a certain, or at least a presupposed narrative unity, but it is also very difficult to discern its real implications for Archaic Greeks.

54 55

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57

Cf. CALAME 1996. KOWALZIG 2007 p. 24 shows the difficulties that we still encounter when we try to deal with the question about etiological μῦθοι, and especially their relation with ritual, and quotes GRAF 1993 as a good treatment of this subject. Her own treatment of etiological μῦθοι in ibid. pp. 24-32 is especially interesting. A very limited “temporality”, of course. A brilliant analysis of the differences between mythic and historic temporality can be found in ERLER 2002. See also LANZA 1988. On the narrative framework that encompasses the Homeric and Cyclic poems, see KULLMANN 1960 pp. 58-168, et passim.

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This organization was still rather precarious in the first half of the fifth century BC. The corpus that we know as “Greek mythology” had not yet attained the form in which it would come to be known. In many cases there were still competing variants of the same story, which had not yet taken a canonical form (and indeed in many cases never would) and other tales that had not been successfully integrated, even very imperfectly, into the narrative framework which we find later in some mythographic works and in poems of Hellenistic and Roman times, and which presupposes the possibility of a general “handbook of mythology”58. It is also probable that many tales that would be important in later times did not yet exist, or existed in a very different form. For example a character as important for “canonical” Graeco-Roman mythology as Theseus was not fully developed at the start of the fifth century BC59 (and maybe even later), and the tragic genre had a central role in this process. There are many aspects of characters like Oedipus and Heracles that were also still in the making, at least if we take as a reference the form in which we know them. But these narrations cannot be seen as constituting, at least formally, a single mode of discourse. The “myths” appeared in very diverse contexts. We cannot even distinguish between a group of poetic genres specialized in myths and all the others. “Myths” often appeared in poetry in a 58

59

An expression like “mythology handbook” is obviously polysemic. We use it in connection with the emergence in Hellenistic times of a narrative framework that ideally encompasses all the Panhellenic “myths” and endeavors to structure them around an axis, to the point of establishing a kind of a (very precarious) “chronology” that might be reflected for example in Apollodorus‟ organization of “myths” through genealogies. The systematization undoubtedly begins with the epic tradition and makes it possible for epic poems to cross-reference other strands of “myth” – like the references to the Argonauts or to Heracles in Homer. But the miscellany of tales which had attained Panhellenic status, and had been intertwined with each other in various stages, comes to a relative closure during the Hellenistic period. The resulting narrative framework may adopt forms as different as the Marmor Parius, Apollodorus‟ Library, the Ovidian Metamorphoses, and others. The “mythology handbook” is simply any book that bears witness to the already systematized corpus of tales. Non anthropomorphic representations of gods have also influenced the formation of this narrative frame: BROADIE 1999, MOST 2003. Cf. WALKER 1995 pp. 9-24 mentions the transformation of a Theseus, who before the fifth century BC appears primarily as a womanizer and a killer of subhuman monsters, into a “prototype of the Athenians” (p. 16).

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form that is not strictly narrative, but presupposes narration: they were simply alluded to on the assumption that the audience would have previous knowledge of their plot, and this allusive practice also appeared in non-strictly narrative genres. It became even more systematic in Alexandrian poetry, and probably acquired very different connotations, but it is possible to trace it back to the older texts. The various genres of prose also took some elements of these “myths”, even if they sometimes adapted them to the requirements of a specific intellectual program, as is the case with the so-called Logographs and Herodotus60. At least until the end of the Classical period, and probably also later, it is not even possible to distinguish narrative patterns that clearly belong to the sphere of what we would call “myth”. An example is the Herodotean work, which can probably be seen as a representative of many other, long-lost texts. Herodotus not only “rationalizes” myths, but in his construction of the recent past he also uses narrative patterns that are found in the poetic traditions – for instance, in the case of Harpagus and Astyages, apparently a transposition of the story of Atreus and Thyestes61. The truth value that Herodotus attributed to such tales is not clear, nor even the extent to which he considered them as incidents that had really happened. But the use of “mythic” patterns62, even if we do not know the mechanisms at play, is quite obvious. One last case that we should mention, though it poses very different problems, is that of the biographical tradition. The mere fact that the biographies of the Ancients are not reliable cannot be interpreted simply in negative terms. The ancient biographies – and their contamination with other historiographical genres – are not simply an accumulation of doubtful, or clearly fabricated data, but follow their own patterns for establishing a character. In some cases

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So for example KOWALZIG 2007 pp. 26f.: “The distinction between Herodotean search for causes and „mythical‟ aetiology can of course not be clearly drawn.” Hdt. 1.119. FOWLER 2000 p. xxxii n. 8 points out that the transposition of “mythic” plots to the barbarian world seems to have been a frequent practice. Perhaps it would be better to say that there are no specifically “mythic” plots, but simply plot patterns that could be used in different contexts. There is a fragment of a tragedy about Gyges and Candaules in TrGF 2 Adesp. F 664 KANNICHT-SNELL. In this case, a tale that we could call “historical” – with all necessary reservations – enters the realm of tragedy.

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33

at least, these are transpositions of narrative models that we also find in “myth”63. It could be objected that the more or less special use of mythical patterns in contexts like those of historiography and biography points to the existence of a specific “mythical discourse”, insofar as such patterns are not simply transposed but also submitted to criteria of credibility – no matter how extravagant these criteria may sometimes appear to modern sensibilities – and inserted in a narrative frame that is constructed in a quite different way to those of the genres with “mythic” content like epic and tragedy. But this objection is also questionable, because it is probable that those genres were not born as an alternative to a previously established “mythic” discourse, but rather contributed to the constitution of a specifically “mythic” sphere through their own exclusion systems. In fact the distinction between the “contents of myth” and the “contents of history” is a gradual, often contradictory one. It is doubtful that Archaic Greece has truly known “non-mythical discourse”, i. e., forms of discourse that exclude the patterns that from our point of view belong to “myth”. A good example is again the Herodotean narrative of Harpagus and Astyages. In “mythology” we frequently find apparently unrelated tales that are, in fact, different versions of one and the same pattern. For example the theme of the father who unwittingly devours the flesh of his own children is found in the stories of both Thyestes and Tereus. We understand that the two aforementioned tales are mythological because of the context in which they appear. But we should not forget that the context itself is created in stages. So for example, the older Athenian kings – Cecrops, Erichthonius, Erechtheus, Pandion, and so on – are examples of a “myth” which seems to have been originally unrelated to Panhellenic mythology, and which is connected to other cycles only very weakly64. If the tradi63

64

Specifically on the biographies of the poets, see LEFKOWITZ 1978, 1981, 2007, COMPTON 2007, KIVILO 2010. On the biographies of philosophers, see GRAU GUIJARRO 2009. A more nuanced vision is found in CHITWOOD 2004 pp. 143-5, who defends the partial validity of the biographical information that has come down to us, especially through Diogenes Laertius. On the Vitae of Euripides, see CAMPOS DAROCA 2007. Cf. BURKERT [1988] 2001 for an explanation of Greek mythology as a synthesis of various traditions.

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tion had been structured in a different way, Harpagus and Astyages might have been incorporated into the “mythology”, in a manner similar to that of the Romans, who integrated in their historiography many stories which could be considered “mythic” from a modern point of view65. And ultimately it is not clear that the “tales about gods and heroes in remote times” were really considered in Archaic and even in Classical Greece as a true category distinct from other kinds of narrative. It is possible that they were just famous tales, or tales about famous characters, but if this is the case we should probably group them with other stories that clearly do not belong to our category of “myth”, or even to the “mythology” of an Apollodorus. Most probably, in the times previous to the development of historical writing there was no unequivocal distinction (at least not as an object of discourse) between what we would properly call a myth (for instance, the foundational tales about Erechtheus, Pandion and so on), legendary characters like Codrus who apparently lived in a world that is much nearer to archaic Athens, and fully historical persons who were accepted as cult heroes like Aristogeiton and Harmodius66. But the most important point is that in Ancient Greece no one variety of “mythic” discourse stood out over all the other narrative modalities. In contrast, there are many narrations and other representations of the Nativity of Jesus, but at least from a Christian point of view the things that “are to be believed” – with all necessary qualifications – are written in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. There was nothing of this kind in Ancient Greece, only a very heterogeneous miscellanea of stories about gods and heroes in remote epochs (plus other stories about gods and heroes in recent times) that might appear in practically any kind of source67.

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Cf. WISEMAN 1994 and 1998. About the development of historiographical discourse see esp. MOMIGLIANO 1978, 1990, and MARINCOLA 1997. This does not conflict with the practice of “rationalizing” myths. Quite the opposite: the “rationalization” as we find it in Palaephatus et al. has the aim of purging the stories of the elements that are deemed “incredible” or even “scandalous”, but at the same time confirm the necessity of perpetuating the validity of the stories themselves and the importance of their characters, and also of the foundational acts that may take place in the story.

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Some degree of authority was attributed to them, but this authority was always relative and in competition with other tales and versions of the same tale; it was not established by an institution, nor was it universally accepted68. So it is obvious that Homer had a greater reputation than, say, Stesichorus. But at the same time there is no ancient text that states in an unequivocal manner that the things which “are to be believed” about gods are in Homer, and not in Stesichorus. We have chosen Stesichorus as an example because his Palinode poses many questions about the workings of the poetic tradition and about Homer‟s authority69. It is a well-known fact that Stesichorus‟ poem of Helen of Troy may have circulated as an “alternative” to Homer that explicitly denounced the Homeric poems as impious, without being seen as a serious questioning of the role of Homer in the Greek world. Another illustration of this fact is to be found in the ainos70. Its characters were usually speaking animals, human stereotypes, and so on. We assume that Greeks did not “believe” in the Tortoise and the Hare, at least not in the same way they believed in Zeus or even Agamemnon. So we could discuss the truth value of the tale about Prometheus that is found in the Aesopean corpus71. We do not know whether an Ancient Greek might have seen it as a “relevant” story in parallel with similar tales in Hesiod et al., or simply as a moral tale in which Prometheus is a character of the same nature as, say, the Lion or the Deer. The immediate answer to this question – that Prometheus might be a character in an ainos like the Tortoise and the Hare, but that this does not prevent the 68

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This is obviously the main obstacle to determining what CALAME Ed. 1988 p. 10 called the “contrat fiduciaire qui lie le producteur du récit „mythique‟ à son destinataire”. We do not have a clear notion of this contrat fiduciaire. About the general problem of the truth value of myth see: CASSIRER 1923/1925, KIRK 1970, KIRK 1974, DETIENNE 1981, VEYNE 1983, DOWDEN 1992, DALFEN 2002 pp. 214-7, CSAPO 2005, STRUCK 2009, PIRENNE-DELFORGE 2009. Also HEIDEN 2007 about the problem of truth in Hesiod. NESTLE 1901 p. 89 “Die Erfindung des Stesichoros hatte bekanntlich eine religiöse Veranlassung, die mit der göttlichen Verehrung Helenas bei den Doriern (Herod. VI.61) aufs engste zusammenhing.” On this genre, see RODRÍGUEZ ADRADOS 1977/1987, VAN DIJK 1997. PERRY 515. This is not the only fable in which gods appear. See the exhaustive index in VAN DIJK 1997 pp. 611-83.

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Greeks from believing in him as a god – does not solve the real problem, because the Greeks did not have a “true” story of Prometheus, or a sphere of discourse in which the truths about Prometheus relevant to the cult were to be found. Works and Days poses us with an analogous problem, though in a way reversed. In his task of chiding his brother “Perses”, “Hesiod”72 narrates three stories: a variant of the Pandora tale, that of the Five Ages of Man73, and the Hawk and the Nightingale74. The last one is obviously a versified ainos, independently of the poetological and interpretive questions it might pose. The tales of Pandora and the Five Ages of Man are two (mutually exclusive?) stories about the origins of mankind. We might ask if they simply aim at moral edification, if they are supposed to have any kind of truth value, or if as a result they have a different status from the story of the Hawk and the Nightingale, and, if so, where exactly this difference resides75. In a later period, Plato presented new versions of the Prometheus story in Pl. Grg. 523 d-e, Phlb.16c and especially in Prt. 320c323c. At least at the level of plot they do not radically diverge from the ones we know through the sources that we would call “mythic”76. His depiction of the underworld also has “mythical” elements, some of which appear again in Virgil and other later poets. 72

73

74

75

76

The historical existence of the “Hesiod” who appears as the author of Works and Days, and even more that of Perses, is still debated. We tend to reject it. Cf. LAMBERTON 1988, ROUSSEAU 1996. A complete study of Works and Days, which maintains the difference between “mythological” and “non-mythological”, is BLÜMER 2001. On pp. 78-87 there is a harsh attack on NAGY and his interpretation of orality in Archaic Greece. Hes. Op. 42-105 (Pandora), 106-201 (The Ages of Man), 202-12 (The Hawk and the Nightingale). VAN DIJK 1997 pp. 128f., argues for the specificity of this tale, which, in his opinion, has textual marks that are regularly associated with the ainos genre. This is a difficult question and we will not address it here. In any case, we do not think that it solves the essential problem: two narratives about the origins of human world and one ainos are at the same level as a medium for admonition addressed to “Perses”, and the context prevents us from making distinctions between their respective truth values. See also ibid. pp. 82-90 on the uses of logos and mythos as terms to designate ainos. The literature on Platonic “myth” is enormous. FRUTIGER 1976, JANKA / SCHÄFER Eds. 2002 have been extremely useful, especially the article SCHÄFER 2002. Though it does not actually deal with Platonic “myth”, GOLDSCHMIDT 1969 has been very helpful.

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There is an obvious relation, even if we do not know the details, between the representation of the world of the dead in V. Aen. 6 and that of Pl. R. 614b-621d77. The presence of Orphic and Pythagorean elements in the “Platonic” world of the dead as depicted by Virgil shows the lack of a strict differentiation between genres of discourse78. Here again there is a lack of a boundary between the different modes of discourse and the ubiquity of what we would call “myths”. There are many other examples. Different versions of the same “myth” can coexist, not only in Greece, but inside one polis, and even as a part of one cultic celebration. An evident case is provided by the famous verses of Pindar in O. 1.51ff., where the poet rejects one version of the Tantalus story – because of its inadequate representation of godhead – and replaces it with another that he deems to be pious79. In another text that is important for the reconstruction of the μῦθος of Heracles (Pi. O. 9.35f.) the poet alludes to a tale where the hero fights against the gods, only to affirm immediately that talking about it would be impious. Of course the introduction of the “older” versions is deliberate, though the mechanisms involved are not altogether clear. This lack of a specific mode of discourse for the Greek tales that are generally considered “mythic” does not conform to what Anthropology and History of Religions usually look for in “myth”: a special sphere of enunciation, a context that allows for its identification as “truth”, or at the very least as a story that is relevant for the community80. The various poetic genres might be considered different kinds of marked discourse, but neither poetry taken as a whole nor any specific genres are unequivocally associated with only one sphere of enunciation.

77 78 79

80

Cf. FEENEY 1986, DALFEN 2002, EDMONDS 2004. Cf. BRAUND 1997 pp. 216-20. Euripides, interestingly, criticizes the same tale in IT 386-91. See a complex analysis of this Pindaric revision in NAGY 1980 pp. 116-33. A good summary of this question can be found in CSAPO 2005 Ch. 1. It would be very difficult to apply it to the sum of Greek narrations – not to mention the Latin ones – in which gods and heroes appear.

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Many forms of poetry – tragedy, comedy, dithyramb, epic, melic poetry, and so on – might be performed in a cultic setting81, but there are no taboos that limit their diffusion or their performance elsewhere. It seems that the psychagogic powers that are attributed to them inside and outside this frame are no different, and there is no indication that the textual marks that might relate the poem with the sphere of the divine – for example, the invocations to the Muses, or other gods, at the beginning of the performance – were omitted in the performances taking place outside a formalized ritual context. One consequence of the lack of a discursive or textual genre that might be considered canonical with respect to the rest is the non-existence of a corpus that might pose itself as the foundation of a doctrine, in the sense of an apparently complete, closed system of thought. This last affirmation may seem dubious: in fact in Homer and Hesiod there are several explanations of the world that have been considered “pre-philosophical”82, and in any case deserve our attention. And obviously, the very diverse modern interpretations of myth – structural, functional, psycho-analytical and so on – have tried more or less successfully to show that Greek “myths” (among others) might be considered as a mode of reflection about reality. But in any case they do not serve explicitly as a basis – not even a heavily mediated basis, as the Bible might be – for establishing religious truth. Because of this lack of a textual canon with foundational authority, it has very often been said that “Greek religion” has neither dogmas, nor sacred texts, nor revealed truths83. Beyond a triv81

82

83

Cf. PULLEYN 1997 p. 49. In an Ancient Greek context, the poem integrated in cult is not a speech act addressed to a god like prayer would be, but a precious object of a verbal character, which might be compared to a sculpture, or to another kind of work of art that is offered to the gods. We shall not go into the adequacy of this term; the meaning of “pre-philosophical” is far from clear. See GIGON 1945, GOTSHALK 2000. PARKER 1996 pp. 54f., HENRICHS 1998. EASTERLING 1985a p. 35: “The Greek situation was radically different. There was no universal sacred book telling religious stories in an „orthodox‟ version, no standard liturgy of festival holy days, ritual forms of words for different cults, and sacred texts associated with particular groups such as the Orphics.” For a more detailed study of the different moments in the evolution of the Greek cults and their relationship to writing, see HENRICHS 2003.

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ial acknowledgment of this fact, it is not clear how we should relate it to the sphere of the representations of the gods, and more specifically to the sphere of their narrative representations. In other words: it is not simply that the Ancient Greeks had a “religion” that “lacks” holy texts. The dynamics of the relationship between mortals and immortals, and of the representation of the gods in Hellenic paganism, are very different to those of the so-called “revealed” religions. Revealed religions possess textual canons that are considered authoritative sources and, even if they are not to be taken literally, or if their interpretation is deemed problematic84, theoretically at least they serve as a foundation of the cult. They provide a de jure justification for a unitary conception of godhead. The lack of a central, authoritative textual corpus in Greek polytheism – and in many other forms of religion – implies that the gods are ultimately not known. At the same time, their status as being deserving of worship is hardly ever questioned85. A proof of this lack of identification between the gods and their various forms of representation is the possibility of syncretism: the identification between Zeus and Ammon, Dionysus and Osiris, Aphrodite and Astarte, and so on, only makes sense in a context in which the representation of the gods does not fully coincide with the gods themselves86. But the practice of syncretism simply reflects something that was already common among the Greeks themselves: Hellenic gods might look very different, depending on the place and form of worship, and are easily decomposed into cult figures that are practically independent from each other87.

84

85

86

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A synthesis of the formation of the Biblical canon can be found in MCDONALD 1996. YUNIS 1988, for example, is a systematic, well-reasoned attempt to explain the gods of Euripides. YUNIS points to what he calls the three “fundamental beliefs” of Greek religion: 1) The gods exist; 2) The gods pay attention to the affairs of men; 3) There is a reciprocity between men and gods. But his starting point presupposes a direct identification between the gods that appear in the tragedies and the gods that the poet and his audience shared as objects of worship. Although in reference to a context that is not Classical Greece, there is an interesting treatment of this matter in FEENEY 1998 pp. 12-28. The author uses the expression “brain balkanization” to designate the coexistence of various belief systems and modalities of discourse in one and the same person. Cf. MIKALSON 1991 pp. 3-5 and 17f., 2005 pp. 32-53, DOWDEN 2007, pp. 41f., and especially MASTRONARDE 2005, 2010 pp 154-61.

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Protagoras affirmed that the gods are unknowable88. We cannot ascertain what he really meant, as the bulk of his writings are no longer extant, and know of him above all through the probably biased (or merely stylized) portrait left to us by Plato. We cannot go into this matter in detail, but it is plausible that Protagoras‟ agnosticism might also be considered as one possible logical consequence of the predominant forms of religiosity in Ancient Greece: in a time in which different strains of thought tried to infuse ontological consistency into the world – or questioned the possibility of doing so –, Greek cults offered gods that were not contained in an authoritative discourse and could not ground any kind of ontological consistency. A much-quoted example is Hdt. 2.50ff. The authorial voice distances itself somewhat from the ways of representing gods that were usual in his time, and makes an attempt at a historical explanation. Egyptians perform their customary role as wise people89. At the same time, Homer and Hesiod appear not simply as singers of tales in which gods are protagonists, but also as codifiers: it was they who established the denominations of gods, the elements that are typical in their representation, and so on.90 Leaving aside the historical truth, or rather the lack of historical truth91 in Herodotus‟ account, a remarkable fact stands out: the historian deconstructs in a very real sense the supposed process through which the Greek gods, and even the Greek religion, assumed their characteristic form, but at the same time does not deny the existence of the gods themselves or the necessity of worship92. He does not present himself as a religious reformer arguing for a new kind of religion: his position rather consists of placing 88 89

90

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D. L. 9.51. See the similar explanation of the arrival of Orphic cults and mystic initiations from Egypt in D. S. 1.96.5f. For example, he says οἱ πρότερον ποιηταί cannot be so remote in time, because it is impossible for them to have preceded Homer (Hdt. 2.53). MIKALSON 2005 pp. 35: “Herodotus‟ claim is exceptionally valuable in pointing us in the right direction […]”. But it is to be understood that the author just means that the Homeric and Hesiodic poems were decisive in establishing a Panhellenic representation of the gods. Be it as it may, the diffusion of the epic representations of gods predates a clear definition of what is Homeric and what is not. Cf. HARRISON 2000 about the religious nature of Herodotean thinking. Other points of view in BURKERT 1990 and SCULLION 2006.

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the current rites at the center of religious life, and relegates the representations of gods to a subsidiary role. So we could say that the ubiquitous presence of narrative representations of the gods seems to be accompanied by a distancing of common believers from these representations, which is implicit in the way in which they circulate and explicit in the authors who question in one way or another the forms of representation, but not the cults in themselves. Given that these narrative representations do not have the character of a canon, we cannot be entirely sure about the truth value that μῦθοι had for Greeks in different epochs. As μῦθοι often have foundational character with regard to the cults, their use as a tool for political claims or for other ends precludes us from thinking that they had no truth value. But at the same time it is impossible to find an obvious truth value applicable in all cases, or even an unfailing relation between μῦθος and the Greeks‟ cults and beliefs93.

93

MIKALSON 1991 p. 14 gives it an elegant formulation without elucidating the mechanisms in play: “When changes (sc. about gods) occur we should direct our attention not so much to the pre-change status or the reasons for the change as to the result of the change.” Or: in the tales about gods and heroes, the most important thing is not the veracity of what is being narrated, but the extent to which it conforms to the cult that exists in the real world.

1.3

The Polycentric Character of Greek Cults

The Greek cults, at least in the Late Archaic and Classical periods, were inextricably linked to the institutions and activities proper to the polis. It was a multi-layered system: individual devotion, oikos, the diverse political and administrative units included in the polis, obviously the polis itself, and the forms and institutions of worship that were common to several poleis, among them those of a Panhellenic character94. The importance of this Panhellenic dimension cannot be denied: throughout the Greek world, Hellenes worshiped a set of divinities that were basically the same, though with a great number of local variations. This relative unity dates back, at least in part, to the Helladic period and to the Indo-European tradition95. But again there is no central authority, no institution which, to the exclusion of all others, might dictate what the gods are like – beyond the limits of what must be asserted for the institution in itself to work. Nor is there an institution that is truly indispensable for worship. As we have seen, the poetic traditions, and more specifically the Panhellenic traditions represented by Homer and Hesiod, superimpose (along with the iconography) some kind of unity on the representations of the gods. They are essential for the continuity of a Greek identity and also contribute to shape the cults that we find in each of the poleis. But the limits of their influence are clear to see. The ultimate decisions regarding worship were taken by the poleis96 in question. In the case of syncretic cults, for example, even if a god or goddess was to be inducted into a cult system (into a pantheon, we might even say) which was not exclusively owned by a polis, the recognition of the new cult and its inclusion within the religious system was a matter for the polis itself.

94

95 96

For an overview of Greek “religion”: BRUIT ZAIDMAN / SCHMITT PANTEL 1989, SOURVINOU-INWOOD 1990, 2000a, BREMMER 2004, BURKERT 2011, and PARKER 1996, 2005 specifically for Athens. See also GOULD 2001 Ch. 7. KINDT 2012 is an attempt to depart from the “polis paradigm” (p. 6) for the study of Greek religion. It is an excellent book, but we think that the thesis espoused by KINDT are not fundamentally incompatible with an approach to Greek religion as a multi-layered system in which the polis has an obvious regulative role at least in some areas. HAUER 1937, DUMÉZIL 1986, WEST 2007. Cf. SOURVINOU-INWOOD 1990.

1.3 The Polycentric Character of Greek Cults

43

The way in which the cults themselves were organized practically ruled out the possibility of the emergence of a true sacerdotal caste, or of a body of religious experts with incontestable authority97, independent of the polis proper. The polis was an institution that did not specifically regulate “religion”, but rather the totality of the life of its members, which included acts of worship to the gods. The ἐξηγηταί worked for the polis; it was the polis that ultimately decided about cults, and shaped its own decisions according to practices that were considered traditional, ancestral, widely acknowledged, but not dependent on an authority clearly constituted outside the polis itself. The elements of cultic practices – taboos, rituals, oracles, and so on – might be restricted to a certain space and sphere of influence, but the sum of these institutions did not exert a clearly defined authority upon all the rest. We find an evident example in the oracles. The gods guided the lives of mortals through them, but not in a specific area: they gave counsel regarding worship, war, commerce, marriage, and all the aspects of human life. The various types of divination and sacrifice appeared in practically all spheres of public life, and in private life as well98. The ethical model that is associated with Greek cults was also an expression of this integration of religious and civic aspects in one global system. There was no difference between a moral system sanctioned by institutions that we could deem exclusively religious and the set of civic duties that were imposed upon citizens. Greek piety was inscribed in a continuum in which the central values, roughly summarized (though not unequivocally codified by the Greeks themselves) seem to have been the observance of recognized cultic practices, the fulfilling of familial duties to the living and the dead, and the observation of the citizen‟s obligations to the polis. There was no clear-cut distinction between religious and civic duties, even if certain actions might put the citizen 97

98

BREMMER 2004 p. 7: “Priests […] never developed into a class of their own because of the lack of an institutional framework. Consequently, they were unable to monopolize access to the divine or to develop esoteric systems, as happened with the Brahmans in India or the Druids among the Celts.” About sacrifice: BURKERT 1972a, BOWIE 1995, BREMMER 1996 pp. 248-83, BREMMER 2007, BURKERT 2011 pp. 93-107. About divination: BONNECHERE 2007, BURKERT 2011 pp. 174-84.

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in contact with the sphere of the sacred, while others did not. It is difficult to imagine that the society of Classical Athens would deem a man disrespectful towards the gods and simultaneously a good citizen at another level99: see, for example, the often quoted Lycurgus‟ Against Leocrates (Lycurg. 15, 92). The lack of a real separation between the religious and the civic spheres might also be exemplified through a particularly interesting subject: the prosecution of those accused of ἀσέβεια. This accusation was formulated in accordance with the judicial procedures of the city and there was no religious authority that might autonomously determine what it constituted100. Though we may suppose that in practice there would be little doubt about what constituted an act of ἀσέβεια against a statue or a temple, we have no precise and continuously maintained definition of what we could call a “crime of opinion”. It is impossible to dismiss altogether the stories that “philosophers” were condemned because of their untraditional ideas about godhead. Even if many of the processes of which we know may have been invented101, it is obvious that the accusation itself would have had to make sense to the Greeks. But, again, it seems impossible to establish what could and what could not be said about the gods – certainly not for the whole of the Hellenic peoples, and in fact not even inside one polis. On the other hand, cultic practices like those that are commonly designated as “Orphic” or “Pythagorean”102 did not belong to the 99

100 101

102

On the close relationship between the status of the citizen and participation in the worship of the polis: CONNOR 1988, SOURVINOU-INWOOD 1990, GEORGOUDI 1998, BLOK 2007. See BURKERT 2011 p. 151. The relevant information can be found in MARASCO 1976. Cf. SCHOFIELD 1991 on the relation between these trials and the cosmopolitan ideals held by several schools of Greek philosophy. KÖNIG / WHITMARSH 2007 pp. 18-20 take up this point; see the treatment of Socrates‟ trial in PARKER 1996 pp. 199-217, and CHITWOOD 2004. See also MOMIGLIANO 1973 and DOVER 1976. Needless to say, “Orphics” and “Pythagoreans” do not constitute organized sects. A classical, and extreme formulation about the Orphics in WEST 1983 p. 3: “These two scholars [sc. WILAMOWITZ and LINFORTH] emphasized the fact that while ancient authors frequently refer to poems by Orpheus or attributed to Orpheus, they seldom refer to Orphics, except in the sense of authors of Orphic books, and never to „Orphism‟. They mention various cults and rituals that Orpheus was supposed to have founded, and they apply the adjective „Orphic‟ to certain rites and religious practices, and to an ascetic way of life. But the name of Orpheus is the only

1.3 The Polycentric Character of Greek Cults

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polis. They do not seem to have interfered with the mainstream cults or to have been prosecuted in normal circumstances103, probably because the polis authorities saw them as specialized practices rather than as attempts to substitute a new and alternative “religious system” for an older one. Even though the Orphics and Pythagoreans might sometimes have aroused antipathy, they were not generally excluded from citizenship. In addition, τελεταί like those of Eleusis, in some ways analogous to minority cult forms104, were clearly accepted by the polis, though they probably implied certain theological conceptions which at face value might seem far removed from more usual representations of gods. So we are confronted with an apparent paradox: the Greeks had representations of gods and goddesses, both iconographic and poetic, which were traditional and generally accepted, but were not binding for those

103 104

consistently unifying factor. It is a fallacy to suppose that all „Orphic‟ poems and rituals are related to each other or that they are to be interpreted as different manifestations of a single religious movement.” WILAMOWITZ 1931 p. 202 also denies the existence of “Orphism” as a definite religious movement: “Es ist inkonsequent, wenn diejenigen anders denken, die doch Empedokles, Herakleitos, Pindar, die Tragiker von diesem Orpheus abhängen, und Platon seine Gedanken aus diesem Wüste entnehmen lassen. Aber war Orpheus bei den Modernen geworden ist, mag ich nicht verfolgen. Er hat heute seine Gläubigen, und der Qualm des Orphismus (das neue Wort haben sie sich erfunden) liegt schwer über dem Lichte der alten Götter wie zu Zeiten des Jamblichos. Salomon Reinach hat nach ihm ein Buch benannt, eine Art von Geschichte aller Religionen, weil in ihnen allen etwas Orphismus stecke. So baut die Kritik auf dem Grunde absoluter Kritiklosigkeit.” See also BURKERT 2006 pp. 191-216. About Pythagoreans: DELATTE 1915, DETIENNE 1962, BURKERT 1972b, CENTRONE 1996, ZHMUD 1997, KAHN 2001, CASADESÚS 2009b. See esp. BURKERT 1972b pp. 127f. about the affinity between Orphic and Pythagorean lore. KAHN 2001 p. 7 expresses that his positions are closer to those of ZHMUD, rather than those of BURKERT, as he does not consider Pythagoras “as essentially a religious and cultural leader, a guru rather than a scientist or philosopher” (ibid.). The essential problem is of course that we do not know if Archaic Greece knew of a “scientist or philosopher” that was not at the same time something akin to a “religious and cultural leader”. ZHMUD argues his skepticism especially in pp. 107-28. See also BURKERT 2006 pp. 191-216. About the probable coexistence of “Orphism”, “Pythagorism” and even of various modalities of “Pre-Socratic” discourse in the same discursive niches see the evidence in CASADESÚS 2009a, 2009b, MEGINO 2009, BERNABÉ 2009. See BURKERT 2006 p. 203 about sporadic persecutions. Though only to some extent. GRAF 2009 p. 687 holds that we cannot place the mysteries of Eleusis in the world of Orphism “salvo en la imprecisa y reactiva definición según la cual el orfismo es todo lo que tiene que ver con los poemas en hexámetros atribuidos a Orfeo. Tal definición nunca ha sido muy útil y ha caído definitivamente en desgracia hoy día”.

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taking part in worship. A second paradox, probably connected to the first one, is that the use of some of these representations in a cultic context does not imply that the representation in itself has a sacred character.

1.4

The Homeric-Hesiodic Paradigm

We have chosen to use the term “Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm” to refer to the models of narrative representation of gods that reached Panhellenic rank and were widely acknowledged in the Greek world – not as the “true”, but as the “standard” representations of gods. This designation is not immune to criticism. Many “nonHomeric”, “non-Hesiodic” poems, like the Theseis and the various ἔπη about Heracles, were probably very important to its constitution105. But the term is adequate insofar as this paradigm exerted its influence on the later tradition mainly through the poems attributed to Homer and Hesiod, and the Greeks themselves commonly believed that it had been established by these two poets. Of course, the Panhellenic importance of this Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm is related to the rank of Homer and Hesiod as the wise poets par excellence. The formation of this paradigm was gradual. At least in the case of Homer, the boundaries of the poetic corpus attributed to him seem to have been variable until the fourth century BC106. The date when Homeric poems acquired the form in which we read them now is also unknown. The process by which the Hesiodic corpus was constituted is also plagued with uncertainties and includes poems that we have lost – like the Catalogue of Women, probably as important for the fixation of “myth” as the poems that have been preserved, if not more107. Even so, the prominence of “Homer” and “Hesiod” – no matter what the reality hidden under those names might be – seems to have been well established by the end of the sixth century BC, and, at least in the case of Homer, it is supported by the presence of the corpus attributed to him in a 105 106

107

WEST Ed. 2003 pp. 172-219. See BURGESS 2001 pp. 8f. Cf. LANGE 2002, p. 21: „Homer‟ – das heißt vor allem Ilias und Odyssee, daneben sämtliche anderen Dichtungen, als deren Verfasser zu Euripides‟ Zeit „Homer‟ galt. Herodotus discusses the Homeric attribution of Cypria (2.116f.) and Epigonoi (4.132). Certain passages in Aristophanes and Hippocrates, and even in Xenophon and Plato, make us think that these authors considered some poems that later would be cataloged as cyclic as being Homeric – cf. ALLEN 1924 pp. 24970 –. On the other hand, it seems that Aristotle considered just the Iliad and the Odyssey as Homeric (Po. 1448b38-1449a1, 1459a37-b16). On Homer and Aristotle: RICHARDSON 1992. Cf. WEST 1985.

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large number of the poetic performances celebrated in the Greek poleis108. At the same time, it was not an exclusively oral paradigm. It was transposed into the medium of writing, in which Homer and Hesiod retained – and perhaps even increased – their authority. Their circulation in book form was solidly established by the latter half of the Classical period. There is an interesting testimony in Alexis (PCG 2 Alex. F 140 KASSEL-AUSTIN), which contains a short list of the books that could easily be found in the fourth century BC: works by Orpheus, Hesiod, tragedy (as a genre), Choirilos, Homer, and Epicharm. The fragment also adds συγγράμματα παντοδαπά to the list, but the authors quoted by name must have been of some importance. One effect of the prominence of “Homer” and “Hesiod” is the adoption of their poems as a source of authority by many of the discursive instances of this period of epistemic shift. To quote a few examples: Pherecydes of Syros DK B 5 interprets a Homeric quotation in a non-literal way to support his own representations of gods. Two testimonies in Thales of Miletus DK A 11-12 relate his doctrine about the origins of cosmos in water with the theogony implicit in the Iliad. Even in the case that these assertions would not come from Thales himself, it is interesting that someone could relate an apparently physicalist theory with an element in a Homeric tale. Allegorical interpretations of Homer and other poets are attested for the same period, and evidently presuppose some kind of wisdom in the poem, even if it needs to be deciphered. At the same time, the key roles of “Homer” and “Hesiod” in poetic tradition, and, more interestingly for us, the paradigm for the representation of gods usually attributed to them, were frequently criticized109. We should emphasize that these criticisms are not necessarily a late phenomenon. It is not clear that they are more recent than the preeminent position attributed to “Homer” and “Hesiod” themselves.

108

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See JENSEN 2011 pp. 156-61, and more generally Ch. 5. On the presence of Homer – or at the very least of the themes proper to the Homeric tradition; see JENSEN 2011 pp. 237-44 – in contemporary artistic representations: AHLBERG-CORNELL 1992, ANDERSON 1997, SNODGRASS 1998. See also BURGESS 2001. See MYRES 1958, FEENEY 1991 pp. 8-14, RICHARDSON 1993 pp. 25-49.

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Several people who are considered, or aspire to be considered, as wise seem to have treated Homeric and Hesiodic “myths” in this manner. When talking about “tales of gods and heroes”, they do not comment a systematic doctrine – for example, a general, codified depiction of godhead based upon the Homeric poems – but the tales themselves, as representations of divinity that are considered either wanting or simply non-literal110. The criticisms of Homeric and Hesiodic representations of godhead that we meet in Xenophanes111 and Heraclitus112, and later in Isocrates113 and Plato114, should not be confused with the heterogeneous Greek tradition of allegorical interpretation that recognized some truth value in the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm, even if such a value could be attained only through interpretation. However, both modalities of discourse (if we accept that there were effectively only two) point to the same reality. In Late Archaic Greece there were several kinds of discourse that questioned the narrative representations of godhead which were common at their time – be it with the goal of rebuking them, or of referring them to a “truth” that should be found outside the narrative form, or perhaps in a different narrative form115 – and perhaps show some continuity with the

110

111

112 113

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KEARNS 2010 p. 71: “The earliest passages to talk about myth do so to criticise it.” This is factually true, but we should take their discursive framework into account: some of the texts that have survived contain attacks, not simply on the “poets”, but also on other allegedly wise characters who cannot safely be located in the sphere of “myth”. Of course there are attacks on the representations of gods usual in poets, and this is logical, because the narratives about gods were usually in poetic form. But we do not find a solidly established category of “poetry” as distinct from other kinds of discourse. For example, Xenophanes criticizes the “gods of Homer and Hesiod”, but he himself is a poet and composes poems for symposia, a context in which at least some of the poems he condemns would have been found. DK 21 A 1, 21 A 11, 21 A 19, 21 A 35, 21 B 10, 21 B 11, and also 21 B 12, 21 B 14, 21 B 15, 21 B 16, 21 B 23. DK 22 A 22, 22 B 40, 22 B 42, and to some extent DK 22 B 56. There is a general condemnation of the “blasphemies” uttered by the poets in 11.38f., and a specific attack on Homer in 3.48f. But in 4.159 he attributes some value to Homeric poetry in education. The apparently specific element in Plato is that this author, in Ion and Republic, develops a systematic argument regarding not only the contents but also the epistemological status of poetry. Cf. DROZDEK 2007, a relatively recent work that analyses systematically the theological component of Greek Philosophy.

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criticisms of certain strands of poetic tradition that have been substantiated inside the poetic tradition itself116. Because of the scarcity of the preserved texts, we cannot establish whether these attacks were common in the Archaic and even in the Classical period, but at least they are relatively abundant in the fragments and testimonies that have come down to us, and have their continuation in later times in Plato and in minor authors like the infamous Zoilos of Amphipolis. Criticisms of allegedly wise men seem to have been common in Archaic-Classical Greece, and from this point of view the attacks on Hesiod and Homer and their representation of gods might be seen as an instance of a more general phenomenon. But the crucial difference is that the public role of figures like Xenophanes or Hecataeus cannot be compared to that of Homer. The content and implications of these attacks seem relatively easy to ascertain on a merely formal plane: the representations of gods that we find in Homer and Hesiod – especially in Homer – are neither adequate nor pious, as the gods appear in them as perpetrators of shameful acts, or simply as too human. Sometimes the emphasis seems to be explicitly on public performance. Xenoph. DK 21 B 1, for example, exhorts his listeners to sing pious songs rather than tales in which the gods fight each other117. Therefore – implicitly in some cases, explicitly in some others – it is said that poems of Homeric and Hesiodic character do not deserve to be used in celebrations related to a god, i.e. in virtually all celebrations of the polis. But the exact meaning and function of these criticisms in their original context remain unknown: we do not know if they should be understood, in some cases at least, as serious attempts to displace dominant forms of discourse, if they simply discredit such forms of discourse among circles that rebuke them from the beginning (say the Orphics, Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, be they what may be) or if they should be interpreted as an accepted form of assertion of the σοφία of the enunciating instance by proclaiming its superiority over previous, widely recognized σοφοί – an 116

117

PRATT 1993, esp. 115f., 131-56, notes that competition between poets expresses itself especially through reproaches of a moral character. FORD 2002 pp. 46-66 about Xenophanes‟ probable role in symposium.

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assertion of no consequence outside the sphere of the discourse itself. If differences should be made between different periods and contexts – and it is probable that they should – there are no valid criteria for establishing them. Again, it should be stressed that these criticisms of the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm, even if certain forms of this paradigm were used in cult, do not appear as attacks on the religious system as such. For example, in Ancient Greece there were many forms of discourse about the gods that were obviously related to existing cults, and at the same time criticized the Homeric and Hesiodic tradition. Empedocles elaborated a cosmology which, on the surface at least, has very little to do with Homer or Hesiod, but at the same time attributes the names of traditional divinities to each of its elements. One of them, Nestis, has no role in the main poetic traditions, but apparently stems from an existing cult118. Pherecydes composed a prose theogony that is very different from Hesiod‟s and apparently contradicts, in some elements at least, the Greeks‟ standard ideas about the gods119. Nonetheless, his primordial divinities – Zas, Khronos and Khthon – are clearly related to the mainstream mythology. The so-called Pythagoreans and Orphics constructed their own systems and included certain gods that were similar to those of Homer and Hesiod, even if they do not accept both poets as authorities. Their theological speculations referred to the gods that the Greeks revered, but they did not feel restrained by the commonest representations of those gods, not even by the ones which serve as Panhellenic referents120. Criticism of the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm seems to be a specific application of the principle established above: the various representations of the gods, even those used in worship, were not identified with the gods themselves, and criticism of them did not necessarily entail an attack on the commonly accepted religious system.

118

119 120

SABBATUCCI 1991 p. 73 n. 23, on Empedocles‟ relationship with Orphic and Pythagorean traditions. KIRK / RAVEN 1957 pp. 48-72, with standard commentary. On the “Orphics” and “Pythagoreans”: FARNELL 1921 pp. 373-401, GUTHRIE 1952, BURKERT 2011 pp. 432-53, MASARACCHIA Ed.1993, BRISSON 1995, BERNABÉ / CASADESÚS Eds. 2009, with extensive bibliographical references. On the so called mystery cults, see HENRICHS 2010, also with bibliography.

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There remains a problem that we cannot avoid: the expressions of atheism and enmity towards the gods themselves in certain texts that have come down to us from Classical Greece121. To the previously mentioned processes motivated by impiety – with all the necessary reservations about the historical reality of each one – we should add alleged “atheists” like Diagoras of Melos122. As with most of the biographical data on ancient philosophers and writers, the information is unreliable. But there is no doubt that the Ancient Greeks were able at some stage to formally conceive the rejection of the existing cults, and seem to have agreed that this rejection merited punishment. The real significance of these data is very difficult to establish. Besides their general unreliability, it is not clear whether a strict notion of “atheism”, or even the possibility of conceiving a religious system truly independent of the prevailing one, was fully developed by the time of Euripides. We tend to think that it was at least possible not to believe in the existence of the gods, as this possibility appears clearly enunciated in certain statements. But the lack of context prevents us from establishing whether the assertion of the non-existence of the gods is to be understood as purely theoretical, or as a form of condemnation of the world order – somewhat akin to other such condemnations that apparently indict but do not necessarily deny the existence of the gods123. This distinction is not as irrelevant as it might seem, because a condemnation of this kind might play very different roles in different rhetorical contexts. But we may safely accept a minimalistic hypothesis and suppose that Classical Greeks were at the very least aware of the pos121

122

123

See DRACHMANN 1922 for an overview of the existing evidence. In p. 13 there is a list of real or supposed atheists. But see WOODBURY 1965, WINIARCZYK 1980, for reasonable doubts about Diagoras‟ “atheism”. MASTRONARDE 2010 p. 155 n. 4 invokes the “reciprocity” that the gods should respect in their dealings with mortals, and the fact that Greeks sometimes complained precisely about this lack of reciprocity. He refers us to YUNIS 1988. MASTRONARDE also refers us to the work on Greek prayer and its efficacy by PULLEYN 1997. A similar point of view is found in MATTHIESEN 2004 p. 59, where the author makes a generalization (to which we would not necessarily subscribe) that criticism “of the gods” works in a systematic manner as a criticism of the workings of gods in the world of mortals, even if it does not imply rejecting their worship.

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sibility of constructing a discourse based upon the non-existence of gods, even if it is not clear that such a discourse might be taken as “true” in any likely sphere of discourse. The existence of this possibility and the uncertainties about the value that such forms of discourse might have in real life are certainly not irrelevant. Firstly, because sometimes it might not be clear whether certain modalities of discourse (especially intrapoetic discourse regarding the gods) should be understood as a criticism of the representation, or a discussion of the gods themselves – or rather of the world order attributed to the gods. But secondly and more importantly, because it is conceivable that an apparently clear-cut denial of the existence of the gods might be used, again, as a tool for the discussion of representations qua representations: “the gods do not exist” might simply mean “such gods do not exist”.

1.5

The Possibility of a Greek Enlightenment

One of the models that have been proposed in the interpretation of the attacks on Homer and Hesiod, and on the “gods of the poets” in general, is the idea of a “Greek Enlightenment”. This model consists in supposing that between the sixth and the fourth centuries BC Greece underwent a series of intellectual and cultural transformations analogous, at least to some extent, to those experienced by Europe in the eighteenth century. In order to avoid ambiguities, we define “Enlightenment” in the following way: a global criticism of the predominant notions about the world, nature, godhead, human life, and so on, from a discursive position grounded in the raw effort of human reason, or even in the nonmediated observation of reality, which questions all attempts at explanation based on traditional authority. It is obvious that this “Greek Enlightenment” would not be a movement conscious of itself. Rather it would be a sum of more or less independent discourses which, at least in part, moved in the same direction and could be grouped a posteriori under a common denomination. The main question is whether the epistemic shift in Archaic-Classical Greece consisted in the emergence of notions of rationality analogous to the modern ones. If this were the case, then we should understand that the criticisms of the HomericHesiodic paradigm of representation of gods are in some way analogous to the criticisms of Christianity by Enlightenment philosophers: they are subject to attack because they communicate non-rational notions about gods. Of course there are elements in this period of epistemic shift that could be labeled as “rationalization”. The confrontation between most of the texts by the so-called Presocratics and the contemporary poetic traditions – eminently the Homeric and Hesiodic poems – might be understood as a rational criticism of myth. For example, interpretation of gods as parts of cosmos, and of their quarrels as atmospheric phenomena, probably appears around this time and seems to us to be more rational than the Homeric narrative. The “physicalist” manner of thought, which consisted in describing the constitution of the cosmos through transformations of elements like water, air, etc., rejects all the genealogical elements, and, ultimately, all the narrative-anthropomorphic elements pre-

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sent in the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm, and starts from elements that are known – with all necessary reservations – through direct observation, or, in cases like Anaximander or Parmenides, through a supposedly rational analysis. The problem of this categorization is that it does not appear to correspond to the notions used by the Greeks themselves; nor can we be sure that it reflects the true dynamics of Greek thought. We return to a relatively simple example: the identification of Poseidon with “the water”, of Hera with “the air” and so on could be understood as rationalization, but this does not mean that this modality of allegorical interpretation emerges as an attempt to construct new paradigms of knowledge based upon the observation and analysis of the cosmos in accordance with modern ideas of rationality. The following points should be borne in mind: a) The criticism of the representations of the gods seems to come from discursive instances that in a more or less idiosyncratic manner also belong to the sphere of religious thought and usually are not explicitly situated per se against the cultic system. The cultic and initiatic aspects of the circles which a posteriori are called philosophical, the affinity between them and minority forms of cult like those of Pythagoreans, Orphics, etc., should not be left aside124. b) The criticisms leveled at some representations of gods are also to be found in poetry that might be used in acts presided over by divinities, as attested especially by Xenophon and Pindar. c) Sometimes, the heterogeneous ensembles of individuals that are known to us under labels like “Presocratic Philosophers”, “Sophists”, or “Allegorists”, do not ostensibly correspond in any way to what we would call “Enlightened intellectuals”. At least some “Presocratics” like Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Empedocles seem to have attributed to themselves a personal authority that apparently is not supported by reason, but by a privileged knowledge125. Their representations of the cosmos and the 124

125

See KINGSLEY 1995. See also BERNABÉ / CASADESÚS Eds. 2009 VIII Part: pp. 1053600. A recent, contrasting point of view in AKRITIDOU 2013.

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cosmic order, and of the corresponding gods might be considered more rational insofar as they abandon the narrative-anthropomorphic apparatus of Homer and Hesiod, but should not be confused with modern ideas of critical examination. d) They usually recur to certain notions – a Justice (Δίκη) that assigns to everything its place in the cosmos and the Erinyes that intervene to restore it when broken126, a νοῦς that guides the Universe127, Love and Discord128, and so on – which might be related to the later philosophical reflection but nonetheless correspond to paradigms of knowledge that cannot be reduced to the rational evaluation of data. At least in some cases, discursive instances which have been classified a posteriori as philosophical have a great deal in common with forms of wisdom that cannot be called Philosophy, and have been fragmentarily preserved for us under the names of Pherecydes, Epimenides, Orpheus and others129. Though everything we might say about Greek thought previous to the fourth century BC remains highly speculative, we are convinced that the ensemble of fragments and testimonies that have come down to us do not point to the emergence of rational thinking in the modern sense of the term, but rather to a proliferation of discourses regarding the cosmos and the gods. The results may be as diverse as the gods of Parmenides, in apparent subordination to an absolutized τὸ ὄν, the deified elements in Empedocles130, the narrative-theological speculation of Pherecydes, and so on. 126 127

128 129

130

See Heraclitus DK 22 B 94. See also Pythagoras DK 58 B 1a, C6. The identification between this notion and the divinity appears in a number of Presocratic fragments: Thales DK 11 A 23, Xenophanes DK 21 A 1, 21 A 34 (mens as quoted by Cicero), 21 B 25, Pythagoricians DK 58 B 15, Democritus DK 68 A 74, 68 B 112, Philolaos DK 44 A 12, Ecphantos DK 51 1, Anaxagoras DK 59 A 1, 59 A 2, 59 A 5, 59 A 15, 59 A 41, 59 A 42, 59 A 45, 59 A 46, 59 A 47, 59 A 48, 59 A 49 (again mens in Cicero), 59 A 55, 59 A 57, 59 A 58, 59 A 64, 59 A 100. Empedocles DK 31 B 16, 31 B 17, 31 B 20. About non anthropomorphic, non-narrative representations of gods in “PreSocratic” thought: LLOYD 1989 Ch. 4, MOST 1999, MORGAN 2000, NIGHTINGALE 2000, DROZDEK 2007, NIGHTINGALE 2007. CASADESÚS 2009a p. 1093 notes the coexistence of Heraclitus and Orpheus in the Derveni papyrus. See also CASADESÚS 2009b for Philolaus. MEGINO 2009 p. 1105 n. 1 refers to the alleged Pythagoreanism of Empedocles. Of course this is not the place to solve the hermeneutic problems posed by Parmenides‟ text. The fragments DK 28 B 8-19, esp. 12f., refer to certain gods that can-

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These discourses do not have a single foundation and cannot be reduced to one system of disciplines of knowledge. Most probably, this proliferation does not entail the concurrence of various thought patterns in a “market of ideas”, because Greek cults are strongly institutionalized and practically compulsory. Rather, Ancient Greek life is structured through a partially informal framework of rules and obligations that regulates religious practice and at the same time, at least during this period of epistemic shift, allows for the existence of a great number of discursive niches in which it is possible to talk about the gods in many different ways. What we have called the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm has a role in this quasi-system which might be qualified as prominent, even canonical, regarding the representations of gods, although it is not fully authoritative. There is no way of depicting all the social mechanisms involved, but we can safely assume that throughout this period – and for a long time afterward – the poems that sustain these paradigm were recognized as “wise” and might be a source of knowledge, but were not regarded as containing the ultimate truth; nor is there a canonical interpretation of them. Consequently their “knowledge” is always subject to criticism at different levels. It is probable that at least during this period of epistemic shift the non-equivalence between the representations of gods and the gods themselves is implicitly presupposed – so the Archaic Greeks, even if they do not criticize Homer, do not necessarily believe that the gods of the cult are literally as they appear in the Homeric poems – and the criticism is rather directed at their appropriateness. The mainstream poems depict gods and heroes performing evil deeds – for example, fighting each other or committing adultery – and because of this those poems are impious. An example which is Hellenistic, but probably reflects this point of view very well, is to be found in Callimachus‟ Hymn to Zeus, where the poet admits that he does not know what the gods are really like, but he accepts one of the stories about how Zeus was born, and rejects another one because the latter implies the notion of a mortal Zeus that is unacceptable to a pious man131. It does not

131

not be identified with τὸ ὄν, but undoubtedly have some role in what we could call the Parmenidean system. Call. Jov. 4-9.

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seem, however, that such criticisms and attacks have the serious goal of substituting a new religious cult for a previous one132. The impossibility of cataloging the various discursive instances in which the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm was discussed, or of knowing to what extent this discussion could be rooted in traditions previous to writing – and stemming from a period in which “Homer” and “Hesiod” were not exactly the same as in the fifth century BC – prevents us from attempting a true diachronic reconstruction of the transformations the paradigm underwent in its relationship with the various forms of knowledge. It is easy to assume an association between this proliferation of discursive instances and the general process of epistemic shift that was taking place at the same time, but it is also impossible to prove. We return to a previous example: allegorical interpretation, as we know it, seems to be associated with the analysis of the poetic text as a text, but we do not know whether it has its roots in previous, purely oral practices. In this intellectual framework, the “criticisms” of the μῦθοι and the representations of the gods in μῦθοι that we find in poetry and philosophy might take a different turn: they seem to be discursive constructions, restricted perhaps to certain cases and not designed (at least not in most instances) to modify a political and social organization in which the cults had a fundamental structuring role. One of the ways through which the various instances of knowledge seem to legitimate their own discourse is, as we have seen, the denigration of other instances, a denigration that is probably accepted as a matter of course, but is not regarded as a real challenge to established practices. So for example Heraclitus might assert that his knowledge is superior to that of Homer, Hesiod, Xenophanes, etc., and he was almost certainly considered superior to them in the circles he addressed, but there was probably no serious intention of replacing Homer and Hesiod in the spheres of performance, authority and transmission in which they were solidly established. At the same time, it is probable that their criticisms were restricted to what most Greeks saw, at least implicitly, as mere representation, rather than to matters that really affected the cult. 132

A very explicit formulation of this fact for the case of Euripides in GRUBE 1941 pp. 41-62.

2

The Tragic Genre

2.1

Tragedy in its Context

The problems that arise in the interpretation of Greek tragedy must be addressed within the broader set of questions that we have tried to outline in the previous section. The general lack of certainty about the specific functions of other poetic traditions makes this task extremely difficult. Epic and didactic poetry, iambus and elegy, monody and choral lyric are forms which undoubtedly belonged to specific contexts and fulfilled specific roles, but the modern researcher does not have direct access to those contexts1. Tragedy and the other theatrical genres seem to have been among the last to acquire the form in which we know them, and their basic structure is, at least in part, a complex articulation of previous types of performance with the aim of creating a new mimetic genre. Their position in the Athenian cult system of the fifth century BC was not radically different from that of the Homeric epos: both had a prominent role in the cultic celebrations of the Athenian polis which aspired to Panhellenic importance and constituted a display of power and opulence with regard to foreigners2. Nonetheless they present certain features of their own which we cannot overlook: a) The role of theater in the cult of Dionysus. The relevance of this cultic framework might be analyzed in various ways, and in fact it has received a great many different and sometimes mutually exclusive interpretations3. At least in the Athens of the fifth centu1 2

3

Cf. HARVEY 1955 on the difficulties of classification of the Greek archaic lyric. GRIFFITH 1995 contends that tragedy, together with other poetic forms, also served for the consolidation of the social structures and the power of the polis. In p. 111 he writes about the ―mutual mystification by elite and mass‖ – to the benefit of the first. His treatment is realistic and, in our opinion, correct. VERNANT / VIDAL-NAQUET 1972, SEGAL 1978/1979, SEGAL [1983] 1991, HERINGTON 1985, GOLDHILL 1986, VERNANT / VIDAL-NAQUET 1986, GOLDHILL 1987, WINKLER / ZEITLIN Eds. 1990, BIERL 1991, COFFIN Ed. 1991, PADEL 1992, REHM 1992, SEAFORD 1994, GOFF Ed. 1995, PADEL 1995, FRIEDRICH 1996, SEAFORD 1996,

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ry BC, there seems to have been a special connection between Dionysiac cult and theater4. There is no proof that Athenians saw this connection as automatic5, but it is a fact nonetheless. b) The presence in theatrical performances of certain elements which could have their roots in ritual6, while we have nothing of the kind for the recitation of Homeric poems. Even if the recitation of Homer in the Greater Panathenaea might have had some kind of ritual value, there are no formal signs in the poems themselves

4

5

6

EASTERLING Ed. 1997, EASTERLING 1997c, DALFEN 1998, HENRICHS 1998, MORETTI 2000, MOST 2000, DI BENEDETTO / MEDDA 2002, SCULLION 2002, HENRICHS 2003, SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003, SCULLION 2005, SEAFORD 2005, GRUBER 2008. SCULLION 2002 p. 113 argues that ancient tragedy is not exclusively connected to Dionysus, as various Greek cities represented tragedies to honor other gods. His assertion is supported especially by an inscription from the third century BC found in Tegea, Arcadia (SIG3 1080), in which a tragic actor gives a list of four of his victories: 1) In Athenian Dionysia; 2) In Delphic Soteria, a celebration in honor of Pythic Apollo, Zeus Soter and Nike; 3) In Argivan Heraia; 4) In Dodonian Naia, a celebration in honor of Zeus Naios. He also alludes to a victory in boxing and other triumphs in celebrations of other cities, honoring Dionysus or other gods. SCULLION also refers to other inscriptions from the Hellenistic period recording tragic representations honoring other gods. However, this argumentation is rather weak. Of course there was a moment in which tragedy was no longer tied to the Dionysian cult. Even though the performers were still called tekhnitai tou Dionisou (LE GUEN 1997, 2001, ANEZIRI 2003), the genre could be used in the cult of other gods. But this does not mean that tragedy was not clearly linked to the Dionysiac cult in the fifth century BC; the survival of a denomination like τεχνῖται τοῦ Διονύσου suggests that it was. Moreover, the information discussed by SCULLION underlines the cultic role of tragedy, even though the god of the cult was not always the same one. This cultic role endured when the Romans adapted tragedy. See BEACHAM 1991, pp. 21f., BOYLE 2006 p. 14. Hdt. 5.67 states that Cleisthenes of Sycion, as a part of a complicated political game, assigned certain ―tragic choruses‖, first to the hero Adrastus, and later to Dionysus. If a fifth-century Athenian considered that tragedies could be represented to honor a hero like Adrastus, it should be understood that tragedy was not unequivocally linked to Dionysus. But this information is too vague to allow any solid conclusions. We cannot safely assume that Herodotus is talking about actual tragedies; he may just be referring to some kind of choral performance which could be termed ―tragic‖ for some reason. It is even possible that they are called ―tragic‖ in a retrospective manner, simply because they were later associated with Dionysus. The debate proper began with the Cambridge Ritualists and continued along other channels. For a compilation of Dionysiac elements to be found in tragedies, see SEAFORD 2005.

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that appear to respond to such a role – except, perhaps, the invocation to the Muse. Nor were the poems composed for this specific occasion. c) The composition of ever newer plays in the context of the Dionysiac cult. In contrast to the uses of the Homeric epos in the Greater Panathenaea and on analogous occasions in Attica and elsewhere, we do have some knowledge of the original context in which plays were performed, and we can safely assume that the cultic elements which we might find in Greek theater pertain to the system in which it was produced. So we are confronted with two different models for the integration of poems in cultic celebrations. d) The widely held view that certain passages and plot elements in the preserved plays, and most especially in the tragedies by Euripides, seem to imply a problematization of gods, and of divine characters on stage, which has no parallel in other genres. Even though not everybody subscribes to this view, we should not dismiss it out of hand as a supposed ―misunderstanding‖ of the Ancient Greek cultural context, and the insistence with which this debate has been reopened is sufficient for us to take it seriously. The discussion of the relationship between theater and cult is not factual in nature, but interpretative. There is no denying that tragedies, comedies and satyr dramas of this era were composed and performed on the occasion of Dionysiac celebrations. But researchers have never attained a communis opinio about the full significance of this fact. It is not even possible to speak about a ―religious interpretation‖ of Greek theater as opposed to a ―non-religious‖ one. So, for example, among researchers who defend some kind of religious meaning for Greek tragedy, we find positions as diverse as those of SOURVINOU-INWOOD, MIKALSON7 and HEATH8. 7

8

The refutation of MIKALSON 1991 in SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003 pp. 5f. is open to question. MIKALSON does not radically separate Athenian tragedy from Athenian religion. He rather attributes a conventional character to the poetic representation of gods that makes them subsidiary to the real worship. See also PARKER 1997 for a more nuanced point of view. HEATH apparently denies that tragedy is a ―religious‖ play. But actually – if we have understood him correctly – he only denies that tragedy deliberately conveys religious thinking. On the other hand he contends that the representations of gods that are found in tragedy simply reproduce the common thinking

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The scarcity of our data and the inadequacy of our categories create a specific difficulty that systematically affects all the modern attempts to explain Greek tragedy: the fact that Greeks did not formulate an explicit motivation, publicly accepted by the social body, for the representation of tragedies and other theatrical forms. The discourses regarding tragedy that we actually find in the Greek world – for example, those of Plato and Aristotle – cannot fulfill this role, as they were not the expression of widely accepted notions but attempts to interpret an already existing reality. So we have no information about the value that common Athenians attached to tragedy, nor about the basic ideas that accompanied the tragic performance and were the backdrop to Plato‘s and Aristotle‘s attempts at exegesis9. This difficulty is not exceptional in itself. It is quite common for poetry, music, plays, and so on, to be performed without any need for a theoretical justification. Poetic performances were indeed an integral element of the collective life of the Hellenes, a practice that was deeply rooted in their cultural medium. But, without any better sources, our lack of familiarity with the communicative space in which Attic theater was performed prevents us from describing how it actually worked. So, for example, the attempts to describe tragedy as a framework for questioning, or even subverting the polis ideology10 can-

9

10

among Ancient Athenian believers regarding the gods. So, at least in a broad sense, the content of tragedies, according to HEATH, is religious: tragedy reproduces the ideas about gods and heroes that were common among the Greeks. We should also take pre-Aristotelic treatises about theater into account. We cannot say much about them because little material is preserved. But the testimonies and fragments we have suggest that they were aimed at the resolution of the practical problems posed by the performance, not at a theoretical analysis of tragedy as such. The evidence preserved is to be found in BAGORDO 1998. Of course there is also a dearth of critical discourse to be found in the scattered allusions to poetry that are to be found in non-critical texts. See HOLZHAUSEN 2000 about tragedy in Aristotle‘s Poetics and Aristophanes‘ Frogs, and the possibility of interpreting both texts as evidence for a nondidactic, non-political comprehension of tragedy. See WRIGHT 2010 for interesting insights about the views on poetry expressed in Euripidean tragedy. Cf. VERNANT / VIDAL-NAQUET 1972, 1986, GOLDHILL 1987, WINKLER / ZEITLIN Eds. 1990. An interesting reassessment in RHODES 2003.

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not be grounded in the existence of an obvious, explicit program. Proponents of this view are obliged to presuppose the existence of social mechanisms that cannot be documented. Of course mechanisms of this kind may have existed, but without any firm evidence for them there is a risk that we might be begging the question. In fact we lack a clear notion of the audience‘s reactions during the representation of tragedy; nor do we know how this audience would have verbalized the sense of the theatrical performance. All we know for sure is that the performances took place as a part of the celebrations honoring Dionysus; we do not know how this celebration was understood, or exactly what value was attributed to the stories enacted. Nor can we assess the pragmatic value of the etiological tales – and the corresponding speech acts – that were part of it. We do have some anecdotal evidence of the reactions of the audience to the representation, but they do not show us the whole context of the theatrical performance; moreover the testimony is generally unreliable and probably does not date from the fifth century BC. Usually they portray strong emotional responses during the performance, and, to some extent, they document the attribution of psychagogic power to drama, but little else11. Of course, the audience‘s reactions are important, but they are of little use unless we measure them against the effect that the performance of tragedy was supposed to exert. And here again the lack of an explanation of what tragedy meant for the average Athenian leaves us in the dark. Even if they had no explicit normative value, the assumptions of the average (and of the averagely educated) Classical Athenian regarding tragedy would be essential to an understanding of why the plays had their actual form. There are in the modern world (just as there would have been in the ancient world) many collective events which bear a certain cultural and social significance and which are very well attended, even though many or even the majority of those present may not be 11

A relatively recent, interesting attempt at reconstructing the experience of the audience through the study of the visual language of tragedy, centered on the formal description of their experience, rather than on their actual behavior: CHASTON 2010.

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fully aware of all the cultural values implied in them. Most of the audience at a Western classical music concert neither seeks nor attains the aesthetic experience that is presupposed by the academic importance of Bach or Beethoven. There are, at least in Southern Europe, celebrations of a theoretically religious character which are, if we are to judge by the conversations and behavior of a great number of attendants, little more than an excuse for revelry. But in spite of everything, the value of Bach and Beethoven in our cultural system endures, and the shaping of these religious celebrations may only be understandable under a religious prism. This would be our main objection to assertions like the following: For the Athenians the Great Dionysia was an occasion to stop work, drink a lot of wine, eat some meat, and witness or participate in the various ceremonials, processions and priestly doings which are part of such holidays the world over. It was also the occasion for tragedy and comedy; but I do not see any way in which the Dionysiac occasion invades or affects the entertainment […]. TAPLIN 1978 p. 162. Even if this were factually true, the tragedies might be shaped according to imperatives that are entirely dependent on the cult that supports them. Admittedly it is a very difficult thing to analyze in an Ancient Greek context, due also to the lack of canonical texts that serve as a foundation of the cult. For example, SCULLION compares Athenian theater of the fifth century BC with the panegûri of Modern Greece12, in the sense that both are popular shows externally related to religion, but without a properly religious value. This is rather unconvincing, first because Greek cults have no sacred texts with respect to which tragedy or comedy might be considered a divergence. Obviously the plays do not resemble prayers, but they are executed as a part of a cultic celebration and it seems necessary to look for a relationship between their 12

SCULLION 2005 p. 35.

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performance and the cult itself. Secondly, the sense of ―religious‖ might be very broad, and probably might also include the Modern Greek panegyri. These, like other similar performances, are not sacred in the proper sense of the term, but they are not free to represent at will matters related to godhead and cult. At least in the case of Euripides, one of the main questions debated in research is whether his tragedies might attack established ideas about gods, and so the difficulty of imagining the public exhibition of ―atheist‖ or ―impious‖ plays in a cultic framework is not trivial at all. So we will take as our starting point the question of the status of tragedy in the celebrations for Dionysus, with the caveat that this status may not have presupposed that all the members of the audience would pay the same attention to all the details in the play, and that possibly some elements of the tragic text were in fact addressed to a minority of spectators. This has nothing to do with the Verrallian tradition of finding hidden meanings in Euripides; rather it refers to the possibility that the conventions of a highly formalized genre like Greek tragedy permitted the formulation of complex discourses about the polis, the gods, etc., without assuming the interest, or even the understanding, of a large part of the audience13. This distinction should not be confused with another one that most probably was real and effective in Hellenistic and Roman poetry – that between spectators and readers14. Even if some fifth-century BC Athenians bought written tragedies in order 13

14

Cf. ARNOTT 1989 p. 27: ―[…] did the Greek audience hear a chorus perhaps as we hear an unfamiliar Verdi opera, catching two or three words out of every five? This suggestion might be near the truth. It is noticeable that the playwrights do not rely upon the choral lyrics to give information essential to the plot; or, if the lyrics do contain such information, it is repeated elsewhere.‖ This does not mean that there were no readers of tragedies in Euripides‘ time. Most probably there were, albeit very few. We mean rather that this audience was not numerous enough to determine that the intended public of the tragedies were readers. This circumstance clearly changes during the fourth century BC: Aris. Rh. 3.1413b already talks about ἀναγνωστικοί poets. We also have references to tragic poets in the Cynic tradition like Diogenes and Crates who composed ―philosophical‖ tragedies, most probably for readers, assuming that the corpus of Cynic tragedy known during the Roman period had really been written during the fourth century. For a different point of view, see MARSHALL 1996. The author presupposes a wide diffusion of reading and writing among Athenians of the fifth and fourth centuries BC.

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to read them, there is little evidence from this time to suggest that those readers were numerous enough to influence the way how tragedies were composed. So we will limit ourselves to the status of the tragic text in performance. This status is not an isolated issue, and it will probably affect our comprehension of the representation of gods in the tragic genre. Tragedy coexisted with both comedy and satyr-play, and each of these genres has its own strategies for the representation of gods. The tragic genre shapes its divine characters in accordance with specific strategies, obviously based upon what we have called the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm15. At the same time it belongs to an ensemble of spectacles in which that paradigm is adapted in different ways. The modalities of representation of gods proper to satyr-play and comedy pose even more complex problems, as our knowledge of these genres is even more limited than that of tragedy. In the case of satyr drama this is very obvious, because only one play has survived16. As for comedy, only eleven plays have come down to us, all of them by Aristophanes and composed in a time range that is much narrower than that of tragedy, probably making them less representative. For example, among the comedies by Aristophanes that we can still read there is not a single comic adaptation of a story stemming from the epic tradition, in spite of the fact that a third of the titles of Ancient Comedy that have come down to us point to themes that we would call ―mythological‖17.

15

16

17

The continuity between Homer and tragedy is explicit in Plato and Aristotle. GOLDHILL 1997 p. 130: ―Tragedy re-presents the tales of the Homeric, heroic past for the polis of the present: the way in which epic language constantly informs tragic language is integral to this process of rewriting, and this backward glance is a key element in the grandeur and heroic distance of tragic language‖. MASTRONARDE 2010 p. 56: ―The difference [sc. between tragedy and satyrplay] is not so much in the story-patterns as in the status of the dramatis personae. There is a relaxation or violation of decorum when the half-bestial satyrs and Silenus are introduced on stage and when other monstrous beings are seen rather than described in messenger speeches.‖ Cf. BOWIE 2007 p. 190f. The interpretation and meaning of Ancient Greek Comedy remains problematic. See DOVER 1972, HEATH 1987b, BOWIE 1996, LADA-RICHARDS 1999, RIU 1999, SOMMERSTEIN 2009.

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For most of the fifth century BC, tragedy and satyr-play were not two fully separate theatrical genres, but part of a single spectacle in which both genres were performed by the same company18. The excellent GRUBER 2008 insists on the unity between the tragic and satyric dimension denoted by the presence of the same performers19. On a single day, an ensemble comprising the poet and his performers would stage a succession of plays featuring gods and heroes which belonged to the same narrative framework inherited from the epic genre, first in a serious register, then in a comical one; and this change in register was in itself part of the show20. The serious representation, closely related to the epic, was followed by a farcical one that linked the whole with the god Dionysus, with Dionysiac creatures21 and a Dionysiac mood. So it is fair to talk about a system that is only fully realized in performance, in which the Dionysiac nature of tragedy is established by its belonging to a performative structure that culminates in an unequivocally Dionysiac play. The ties between genres became explicit at least in later times. The Ancient Greeks were aware of the notion – even though probably it was not universally accepted – that satyr-plays had been created to compensate for the loss of specifically Dionysiac elements in tragedy22. This idea might be false, but it reflects how the tragic genre was understood. 18 19

20

21

22

About the choregia: WILSON 2000. GRUBER 2008 p. 64: “Ein für die Wahrnehmung des Chores einer Tragödie und einer Trilogie durch den Zuschauer gewichtiger Faktor liegt in der Tatsache begründet, dass jeder der drei tragischen Chöre, egal welche akzidentielle Rolle er jeweils verkörpert, schließlich aufgeht und endet im immer gleichen, per se männlichen Satyr-Chor. Dies kann mit zum essentiellen Wesen des Tragödienchores gerechnet werden, der nach der Verwandlung in drei akzidentielle, in sich ganz heterogene Rollen sozusagen sein Telos im Rahmen des Festes für Dionysos erreicht und hierbei auch seine vermutlich ja aus dem Satyrwesen hervorgegangene „Genese” quasi rekapituliert.” PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE [1953] 1968 p. 180: ―It seems probable that one of the essentials of satyr play was that characters indistinguishable from the figures of tragedy were exposed to the disruptive incursion of a satyr chorus.‖ About the improbability of a satyr drama without a Chorus of Satyrs: SEIDENSTICKER 2003 p. 102f. Chameleon, F 38 WEHRLI. A recent synthesis of the information available about the origins of satyr-drama in NOGUERAS 2013. See SUTTON 1980 about the general character of satyr-drama. See also NIELSEN 2002 pp. 77f. about the possibility of satyr-drama being nearer the cultic roots of drama.

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The apparent complementarity between tragedy and satyrdrama points to a dramatic framework in which there is no single mode of presence for the gods. The representation of gods and heroes in two different registers in a single performance points to the fact that drama did not seek an absolute suspension of disbelief. Quite the opposite, in fact: together with the obviously nonnaturalistic character of Greek theater23, which in any case relied on a set of conventions that we do not really know, we should remember that Athenians could see, on one and the same day, serious and non-serious representations of gods and heroes which were potentially the same – at least, all of them belonged to the cult – and, in most cases, had their roots in the epic tradition. This tendency seems consistent with the distance between divinity and representation of divinity that we enunciated in a more general way with reference to the whole of the poetic tradition. The Chorus and the actors in a tragic-satyric spectacle do not intend to show the gods and heroes as they really are/were, but rather to perform stories in which they appear, in different registers, according to the function of each genre in the performance. This implies, of course, some kind of distancing from the story that is being enacted. The agonistic character of the theatrical show contributes to the distancing. The tragic representation as it is seen by its audience is not just a theatrical enactment, but also the display of the competition between three poets and three sets of performers who stage their respective sequences of three tragedies and one satyr-play. It is not a competition between products in a free market, but an institutionalized one; and we might even suppose that it was, at least partially, fictitious. The plays competing with each other were selected previously24, and the small number of poets who actually staged their plays rather puts us in mind of an unofficial, select circle of people who worked in drama and were recognized as such by the polis. Tragedies – and comedies, dithyrambs, etc. –

23

24

This non-naturalistic character is admirably depicted in GREENWOOD 1953 pp. 121-41. See also JENS 1971 pp. xi-xii. See PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE [1953] 1968 p. 84.

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were not programmed according to market needs25. But in any case, the agonistic context implies that in the representation of tragedies, comedies, and so on, there was an aspiration to a formal proclamation of their excellence, and that it was possible that this aspiration might not be fulfilled. The rivalry was not a mere principle of organization for the actual performance; it can be traced in the poetic tradition. A general agonistic quality was undoubtedly present in the characterization of the poetic activity in Hesiod Op. 26, and perhaps also in the famous Th. 28-30 about the possibility that the Muses inspire the poet to tell the truth, or to lie26. Even if the only actual text that has come down to us dates from much later, there is a tradition of rivalry between Homer and Hesiod: the two main Hellenic poets compete as poets (leaving aside the other questions posed by this tradition)27. In the so-called mythology, one prominent narrative pattern involves the rivalry between a performer, or a mortal skilled in some craft – Marsyas, Thamyris, Arakhne, and so on – and a god, which invariably finishes in disaster and punishment meted out to the mortal who has challenged the divinity28. The inability of the performer or skilled mortal to compare himself / herself with a god could be another side to a fully legitimate intent, which would not appear as a simply individual ambition but could be fully integrated in poetic discourse: the recognition of the excellence of an individual through competition and triumph sanctioned by the polis. The poetic performance by itself, and the creation of the text, was not a merely individual act, but a part of an institutional framework that shared several features with the agon in war transmitted through the epos29. 25

26

27 28 29

Probably the Choregoi, and even the poets, competed for the favor of the audience beyond the institutional framework of the Great Dionysia. It could even be hypothesized that the ulterior diffusion of the tragedies depended on demand. But we could hardly call ―market‖ a system for circulation in which the offer was strictly regulated. For an interesting discussion see PUCCI 1977 pp. 130-5, though the depiction of such rivalries in capitalistic terms seems rather anachronistic. See also GOULDNER 1974. See WEST 1967, RICHARDSON 1981, GRAZIOSI 2002, ROSEN 2004. Cf. COMPTON 2007. Cf. NAGY 1979 pp. 289-316.

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In terms of Aesthetics: the Athenians who attended the theater of Dionysus did not go to contemplate an already closed aesthetic object, but to see an open action – the agon – in which the ―aesthetic objects‖ were of an instrumental character. The competition between poets and performers was in itself a part of the show. It resulted in the proclamation of one set of plays as excellent, as the worthiest, and consequently the ones that took the central place in the cultic act – not because of a directly stated religious content, but because it had triumphed in an agon held to honor the god, analogous to other kinds of competition in a cultic framework. Though we lack texts with an obvious normative value to develop this idea of the competition for excellence and its role in cult, it is not impossible to relate it to other cult practices, and to suppose that it responded to a wider mindset30. In Archaic and Classical Greece there were many kinds of cultic action that involved this idea of an excellent, rather than a literal, representation – for example, the athletic competitions, which had a certain mimetic character and referred to an etiological act31. Obviously, the goal of athletic competitions was not to reproduce in detail the action being commemorated. But at the same time the excellence of the athlete might indeed aspire to present itself as a transposition of certain qualities that were attributed to the eponymous hero, to a character who appeared in the etiological act, and so on. It could be interpreted as a non-literal but effective ―re-presentation‖ in the cultic framework of an action that was supposed to be at the origins of the cult act.

30

31

See ROBINSON 1990 about the role of competition in the Athenian civicreligious sphere. In p. 25: ―It seems fair to conclude that by the end of the fifth century, at least, competition was a basic element in the worship of the gods at Athens, and that the more grand the worship offered the more likely it was to include something competitive.‖ Cf. NAGY 1980 Ch. 4 and 5.

2.2

Tragedy as Spectacle

Tragedy is a medium organized according to patterns that are not those of a naturalistic imitation of the world; they are not original to this genre but stem from diverse spheres of poetic performance. The structure of time, and probably also of space, seems to be imposed by the structure of the spectacle itself. An exhaustive description of the spatiality of Greek tragedy is beyond the scope of this study. Even if we had a general understanding of how the scenic space was organized, all attempts at reconstruction will necessarily be very approximate. But we can safely state that the transformation of the scenic space into the virtual place where the tragic action unfolds, at least from the point of view of a merely scenic mechanism, should not be understood as the constitution of a virtual space in an ―empty place‖. Quite the opposite: the various elements of the Theater of Dionysus, their spatial distribution, are preserved during the play32. It is the scenic space itself that determines the distribution of actors and the Chorus – despite all the uncertainties about their actual separation in the different periods – and hence their interaction during the play. Apparently the σκηνή, and its door or doors33, the entrances and exits, and so on, imposed constraints on the distribution of the scenic space that went far beyond than those of a mere empty stage. We should stress what we could call its ―spectacular‖ nature: Athenians went to the theater to see a performance where the Chorus and the actors would be distributed in a certain way, would take certain roles that were not only determined by the theme that was being treated, but also by the necessity to construct the action in accordance with certain patterns. Again, it was not simply a game of ―make-believe‖, but rather a show of recitation, song and dance, organized in the form of a dramatic action. The temporal structure of Greek tragedy goes in the same way, and in this case the preserved text allows for a better understanding of the various elements at play. There is no single dra32

33

It seems that the word χῶρος originally designated the space where the choral action took place – GRUBER 2008 pp. 28f. Cf. ARNOTT 1989 p. 143.

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matic time in which the different actions are presented in a more or less naturalistic way, but a succession of stereotyped forms – episodic structure, parodos, stasimon, agon, exodos, stichomythia, rhesis, and so on. These stereotyped forms are also not ―empty‖, in the sense that, at least to some degree, they determine the form that the action may adopt. That does not mean that the poet might not use a variety of resources to reinforce the continuity between the different Bauformen34 that constitute the action. An example is the complex structure of repetitions of certain key words in Heracles35, probably conceived (we will return to this point later) to help the audience to understand the ideas under discussion. But the basic structure is there nonetheless. Again, the various Bauformen of tragedy point to an understanding of the play not as the imitation of an action as it might happen in the real world, but as a show. A plot (sometimes very basic) is constructed in such a way as to make its different elements coincide with the structure of the performance itself. Obviously it might be compared with certain modern forms like opera, especially seventeenth – eighteenth century opera, though the latter has a freer form and is not associated with a regular celebration in a fixed space. Attic theater is a particularly complex product of an earlier performance culture rooted in the aforementioned oral/written system of knowledge. It has an array of elements – the form of the choral lyric, metrical forms for recitation, more primitive types of mimesis, competitions in which traditional tales are narrated to the audience, and so on – which apparently have their roots in the song culture36 of the Archaic period and are combined with the goal of enacting a mimetic performance37. But we should insist that this mimetic character does not entail a naturalistic imitation of the real world. The most obvious case is the choral performance. Choral poetry per se was obviously not conceived to be part of a dramatic action, 34 35 36

37

We owe this term to JENS 1971. Cf. PORTER 1987 pp. 85-112. As defined in KURKE 2000. GRUBER 2008 prefers ―song-and-dance culture‖, which is probably more accurate. Here we use the adjective ―mimetic‖ in its most basic sense: a poetic performance in which the performer fully assumes the identity of a character. We are conscious of the theoretical problems involved.

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and in its non-dramatic forms was not necessarily of a mimetic character. A previously existing form is, so to say, re-booted to act as a collective character in the tragic show38. The masks, and possibly also the dress39 of the actors might point to ritual, but also – without being mutually exclusive possibilities – to simpler, perhaps non-mimetic kinds of performance. It is plausible to say that both the Chorus and the actors predated drama to some extent, and that they, as not necessarily dramatic performers, ―play out‖ the story as a part of the festival. At a more general level, the Dionysiac mask makes it possible to combine in a single person the identity of the performer and the character that is being embodied40. The well-known notion that the actor‘s goal is to ―deceive‖ the audience does not necessarily mean that he should ―disappear‖ beneath his character. Probably it means that he should be able to convey the emotions implicit in the action with psychagogic force even if the action itself is not ―there‖41. If the Greeks had really thought that the stage and the actors should transform themselves into the characters, in a sense more suited to the theater of the nineteenth century, the results would probably have been very different. This distancing does not make the audience‘s responses any less emotional. In fact the few data available suggest the opposite42. But the manner in which gods and heroes appear on the stage, even if it is emotionally charged, makes it clear that it is a play, a show, not a literal reproduction of things that happened at some time and some place. When the gods do appear, they are not supposed to be a reproduction of ―real‖ gods, but simply a mode of performance that puts them on the stage without reproducing them in a literal way. The Chorus and the actors ―are‖ performers on the stage, and act ―as if‖ they were the characters in the play. The explicitly illusory character of the play is all the more evident 38 39

40

41 42

Cf. HENRICHS 1994/1995. See also CALAME 1997 and GRUBER 2008. Cf. ARNOTT 1989 pp. 72f. about dress in tragedy, and pp. 44-73 about the actors on the stage. See also NIELSEN 2002 pp. 82-4, esp. n. 41-5 with bibliography. This vision of tragedy naturally excludes those that see the Chorus as a mere residue of a previous era, like DI MARCO 2000 p. 171. See EASTERLING 1997a pp. 165ff. Cf. CSAPO / SLATER 1995 pp. 301-5.

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because its culmination is precisely the satyr-play, a genre which, through its comical character, shows the non-reality of what is being staged43. It is possible to make a comparison with comedy. In the latter, dramatic illusion is continuously disrupted. Or rather: it is never wholly established. The parabasis, the allusions to the audience, the jokes with the ἐκκύκλημα and the μηχανή, and even the parodies of tragic plays or language, the mocking of people who actually, or at least ideally (since they are members of the polis) belong to the audience, seem to share a common foundation: comedy consists in an interaction between the actors and the Chorus who ―act‖ as characters in a story and continuously show at the same time that it is a play, through references to things outside the play, at various levels. They might deconstruct the polis or some of its institutions and characters, or transpose onto it some ―mythic‖ material that undermines the play‘s internal consistency. The tragic genre does not work in the same way: the action that takes place in the scenic space is, to some extent, self-contained. There is no similar interplay with the audience. But again, there is a relative self-sufficiency of each of the Bauformen: the Chorus dances even if its dancing does not fit into the plot44, the characters that confront each other in the agon make a rhetorical exhibition of some sort, possibly the stichomythia also followed the pattern of some kind of verbal exhibition45, and so on. Such self-sufficiency cooperates in a dramatic show that does not work according to the unity of imagination typical of later Western theater, but rather as a succession of stereotyped forms46 constructed upon a relatively simple action. As we would expect in a theatrical form apparently rooted in oral performance, its structure, again, does not seem to be based upon a previous theorization, but upon the continuity of the theatrical practice of a community. It does not seem that the 43

44 45

46

WRIGHT 2005 uses the term metamythography in reference to Euripides. We understand that this ―metamythographic‖ tendency in Euripidean tragedy is an extreme form (or simply a form more visible to us) of tendencies that are to be found in the whole of the tragic genre. See HENRICHS 1994/1995. See THOMSON 1941 pp. 189-91. See also ARNOTT 1989 p. 101 and NIELSEN 2002 p. 81. Cf. HEATH 1989.

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permanence of these stereotyped forms responded to a prescriptive poetics like those of the Classicist modern European tragedy. Rather it seems that they were sustained by a continuity and a traditionalism in theatrical practice47. Certainly Attic tragedy does not always respect the boundaries between the genres in a strict manner. So for example the possibility of comic elements in Euripidean tragedy has been discussed48, and it is obvious that some of the Euripidean tragedies are not what we would usually understand by the term49. But the basic elements of theatrical dynamics do not change greatly over time, at least not in the Classical period.

47

48

49

Cf. MASTRONARDE 2010 pp. 64f. On p. 64 he talks about the ―descriptive rather than prescriptive poetics of drama‖. WRIGHT 2005 pp. 255f., with literature, for the opposite view: to WRIGHT, allegedly comic elements in Euripides stem from miscomprehension. So KITTO [1939] 1961 pp. 263-312 might write about ―New Tragedy‖ as a part of Euripides‘ work. Cf. MASTRONARDE 2000, WRIGHT 2005 pp. 67-72, MASTRONARDE 2010 pp. 44-62.

2.3

Tragedy and Intertextuality

Tragedy is also, in many ways, self-referential: although the scarcity of testimonies severely limits our knowledge, it seems that there were themes, motifs, and so on which were characteristic of the genre and were recognized as such by at least part of the audience. It is probable that the recurrence of these themes also contributed to the distancing of the audience from the action being performed on the stage. With regard to this self-referentiality, BURIAN50 and other authors51 speak of a mythic megatext. The case that is considered most representative is the parody of Aeschylus in the famous verses in Euripides‘ Electra52 – though, as BURIAN53 states, this may only be because most of the plays have been lost. We would rather talk about a tragic megatext in order to underline the specificity of intertextual self-referentiality in the tragic genre. A ―mythic megatext‖ will necessarily include many textual practices belonging to very diverse epochs and contexts. Even though those practices undoubtedly existed and were related to tragedy, it is also possible to talk about an intertextual framework

50 51

52 53

BURIAN 1997 p. 190. See BERNEK 2004 pp. 20-44. An older work that we might consider representative of a manner of conceiving the relation between tragedy and myth in SEGAL [1983] 1991 pp.303f.: ―Greek tragedy is a peculiar form of the megatext, the extended text of Greek myth regarded as a unified corpus. It is simultaneously a commentary on the megatext of the mythic system and the final text of the system; simultaneously the culmination of the system and its dissolution. […] The god of the carnivalesque in Greek culture is also the god of tragedy and comedy: Dionysus. The peculiar relation of Greek tragedy to its mythical material has undoubtedly much to do with the god at whose festival and under whose aegis the plays were performed. Greek tragedy, one might say, places the megatext of myth into the liminal, carnivalesque space occupied by its god. The mediations of opposites which occur in the myths are collapsed together in multiples paradoxes and ironies in the realm of the god whose very nature is a constellation of coexisting contradictions: male and female, young and adult, chtonic and olympian, human and bestial, Asian and Greek, creative and destructive.‖ E. El. 508-46. BURIAN 1997 pp. 183f.

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that is specific to this genre. Though it is not self-sufficient, it poses its own specific problems54. The term refers not to a closed system that was completed at some point in history, but to an intertextual framework continually renovated by theatrical practice. It is a specific area in the much wider megatext of ―myths‖, as it is bound to a certain performative situation in which certain elements (to use the broadest possible term) are conceived of as traditional. The gradual widening of this megatext and its continuous presence allow us to take the gods of tragedy as an object for study. The tragic gods are indeed an actualization of the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm, but in a way that is specific to tragedy. This megatext is constituted mainly through the selection and constant refashioning of a certain number of plots, most of which stem from the epic tradition and are considered typical of the tragic genre. The selection does not seem to follow any explicit norm. It is simply determined by dramatic practice, which might change over time. The number of standard themes tends to diminish: tragedies based on recent events, which we call ―historical‖, practically disappear; even the treatment of ―myths‖ loses its thematic variety, and some tragic themes are apparently reworked with increasing frequency55. The reason for this evolution is unknown to us, but we can suggest some hypotheses. Firstly, the disappearance of the themes we would call historical – which for the Greeks of the first part of the fifth century BC may simply have been recent events, which would have been familiar to the audience without the need to resort to the poetic tradition – might be tied to the appearance of the writers we know collectively as Logographers, plus Herodotus. They try to explain the past according to patterns that differ from those used by the poets, and in fact appropriate for themselves what we could term a ―region‖ of the past and make it known through a distinct narrative form. So it is possible that the content of plays like Aeschylus‘ Persae, or Phrynichus‘ The Sack of Miletus

54

55

EASTERLING 1993 p. 567 contends that intertextuality is an integral part of the tragic genre, and not of its decadence. Aristotle notes this in Po. 1453a16-23.

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and Phoenicians simply became associated with another modality of discourse56, and the tragic form became more specialized57. Moreover, we cannot separate the constitution of a specific tragic megatext from the mechanisms for the preservation and (in some cases) the diffusion of older plays. Neither the audience nor, probably, the poets58 had access to a library where they could read all the tragedies that had been represented. In the time of Sophocles and Euripides the tragic genre as we understand it already had several decades of history behind it, so it is probable that the repetition of certain themes was tied to recent re-performances of tragedies, or to the privileged place that these tragedies enjoyed in other channels of transmission59. Even if the poets had easy access to manuscripts of previous tragedies, their treatment of previous themes would have been subordinate to the audience‘s familiarity with earlier tragic plays. It is not possible to make a neat separation between the study of narrative patterns (which seems to have been the main interest of BURIAN, BERNEK, and other researchers who have followed a similar line60) and that of the specific content of the tragic plays. The task is further complicated by having to work with a narrow selection of plays, in which actually only a few examples of these patterns are to be found; sometimes it is necessary to refer to reconstructed plays in order to make generalizations and to recreate a diachrony of the transformations of this megatext.

56

57

58 59

60

Cf. Arist. Po. 1451b1-5. Though the ultimate sense of the Aristotelic text is not clear, it is obvious that in the fourth century BC it was possible to distinguish between Poetry and History independently of the distinction between meter and prose. It is not clear that such a distinction was possible in Aeschylus‘ time. It is true that in later times ―historical‖ tragedy reappears. Examples are Moschion‘s Themistocles (TrGF 1 Moschio Trag. 97 F1 KANNICHT-SNELL) and Pheraioi (TrGF 1 Moschio Trag. 97 F3 KANNICHT-SNELL) and Lycophron‘s Marathonioi (TrGF 1 Lyc. 100 F 1k KANNICHT-SNELL) and Kassandreis (TrGF 1 Lyc. 100 F 1h KANNICHT-SNELL). See FOWLER 2011 pp. 46-9. See PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE 1953 pp. 86f., 99f., esp. p. 99 n. 7. In p. 86 PICKARDCAMBRIDGE quotes the Aristophanean ―Aeschylus‖ saying that despite his own death his poetry lives on (Ra. 866ff.) See again the synthesis in BERNEK 2004 pp. 22-40.

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Certain forms of appropriation are very evident. We only need to think of the (non-systematic, but frequent) tension between the Panhellenic nature of the traditions appropriated by tragedy61 and the presence of the Athenian polis and, probably, of manners of thought and patterns for the distribution of the ―mythic‖ space that were clearly related to an Athenian point of view62. An example is the use of Theseus, which we mentioned above, to connect various ―mythical‖ strands with Athens. In this case at least, the tragic genre does not simply connect pre-existing tales but restructures them. The Theseus of tragedy is a character who was most probably still in formation at the time, and, as we have seen previously, was transformed from a simple warrior to an embodiment of the Athenian polis which, among its other roles, serves to connect the diverse epic cycles with Athens and establishes ―mythical‖ Athens as a place of justice and equity complementing the probably older traditions about Erechtheus, Pandion, and others. Unfortunately the only series of plays that allows us to study the dialogue of tragic poets with their preceding traditions in a certain amount of detail is the one comprising Aeschylus‘ Libation Bearers and Sophocles‘ and Euripides‘ Electra. The most noted individual instance of intertextual relationship is the aforementioned parody of the Aeschylean recognition of Orestes in Euripides. In other cases the intertextual connection is obvious, but it is not possible to establish how it appeared. Examples include the vexed question of the allusion to Oedipus in Colonus in the Euripidean

61

62

BOWIE 2007 p. 209, n. 12: ―Apart from Theseus, Attic myths are not very common in tragedy […]: we find, for instance, the Triptolemus by Sophocles, the Erechtheus of Euripides, and a ‗Pandion tetralogy‘ by Philocles (TrGF 24 T 6c, F 1); Cecrops, for instance, does not appear. Fragmentary plays about Medea may have concerned her time in Athens, but we cannot tell.‖ Curiously the only cases in which both the epic model and the tragic version have come down to us are the Euripidean Cyclops, which is not a tragedy but a satyr play, and the Rhesus, usually considered the work of a playwright of the fourth century BC. For a contrasting opinion, see RITCHIE 1964. Prometheus Bound and its Hesiodic precedent could be added, but obviously it is not the same case: the tragic action does not exactly correspond to the Hesiodic narrative. See ZEITLIN 1986.

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Phoenissae63, the insistence on the innocence of Phaedra in the Hippolytus (which probably point to previous versions of the same story) and, without any doubt, the repeated thematization of the role of Apollo in the death of Clytemnestra. If we are right about this network of intertextuality, the representations of gods must necessarily be affected. The gods that appear in tragedy are not a circumstantial presence. They are at one and the same time central characters in the epic tradition upon which tragedy is based, and the object of much of the tragic discourse. The consolidation of a repertoire of themes and characters which gradually become predominant in tragedy also includes them. The tragic representations of Apollo, Artemis, and Athena have as a backdrop the previous representations of the same divinities in the same stories, or in stories that are analogous, or related in some way to the one that is being staged. So it is possible to give some consistency to a tragic Athena, a tragic Apollo or a tragic Heracles, which are not fixed entities but the sum of the previous treatments that are present in one way or another in the work of the tragic poets and were present in the audience‘s memory. They are not monolithic representations – nor can we disassociate them from the representations they receive in other spheres, especially in epic, and epic-based traditions – but they contain a series of problems and typical representations which, without necessarily constituting a coherent whole, belong to the genre of tragedy. An obvious example: it seems that the death of Clytemnestra was not the object of a specific thematization in the Nostoi, and it certainly is not in the Odyssey. Perhaps it was in Stesichorus. In any case, it is not clear that the role of Apollo in her death has its roots in a previous tradition, and perhaps it developed inside the tragic genre. Of course we cannot talk of a ―plot‖ simply adapted to tragedy, nor of a monolithic representation of Apollo in the 63

If these verses in Phoenissae were indeed interpolated, to an extent they respond to generic expectations. However, there is no way of knowing whether the interpolation was conceived for reading (as a piece of mythographic erudition, we could say) or perhaps for performance, or for some other reason. Conversely, if they were written by Euripides, we cannot know which of the references that were shared between the poet and his audience he was alluding to.

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tragic genre. But it is indeed possible to see a continuity between the different treatments of this subject and a role that the god Apollo assumes in them, developed in different ways by each of the tragic poets. The reference to the previous treatments of the same theme on the stage, the implicit comparison between the various treatments, the possibility of portraying the characters and developing the various themes through discursive strategies that vary according to the epoch, author, and even the political context, is in itself another distancing element. The tragic audience – at least the part of the audience that truly followed the action on the stage – did not go to the theater in order to be, so to say, immersed in a story in an immediate manner, but rather the opposite: they went to see how the different tragic poets managed themes and characters which in many cases were long established, and associated with an already known poetic background.

2.4

Modalities of Discourse

Quite a few of the tragedies preserved seem to reproduce modalities of discourse belonging to the variety of spheres which retrospectively will be called ―Philosophy‖, and also to nonmainstream forms of cult. Our basic question is not about the degree of refinement with which the poets transpose such forms of discourse to the tragic genre, nor is it about the possibility that original, or highly complex, thought may appear in tragedy64. It is rather about the role of these discursive patterns and the reasons for their presence in tragic genre. These discursive patterns appear in tragedies indeed, but apparently do not conform them. At least among the few plays that have come down to us, there are none that are explicitly and exclusively structured upon one of these discursive forms, and we have no real reason to believe that this may happen in any of the plays by the three great tragic poets. Certainly we are aware of the existence of ―Philosophical‖ tragedies composed in later times, like those of the Cynic tradition attributed to Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes, Oenomaus of Gadara, and so on.65 None of those tragedies has been preserved, and their precise character is still open to discussion. It seems that they were not staged in theaters, and it is not even clear that their ancient readers considered them to be tragedies in the proper sense of the word66. On the other hand, they did not appear until the fourth century BC, when a specific sphere of Philosophy was being constituted and when it 64

65

66

The literature on this issue is very extensive. Below are some studies that have aided our comprehension of this matter: LLOYD-JONES 1971, NUSSBAUM 1986, HEATH 1987a, NIGHTINGALE 1995, CONACHER 1998, ALLAN 2000, ASSAEL 2001, EGLI 2003, ALLAN 2005. We know very little about this tradition. Cf. ROCA-FERRER 1974, TOSI 1995, LÓPEZ CRUCES 2003, NUSSIA 2006, LÓPEZ CRUCES 2008. Also MOTTO / CLARK 1988 p. 45 n. 6. The data preserved on ―Cynic tragedy‖ are too scarce to safely assert that it was a distinct genre. There have been attempts to find a link between Senecan tragedy and ―philosophical tragedy‖, eminently MARTI 1947. For a convincing refutation, see STALEY 2010 p. 143 n. 8. The use of the diminutive τραγῳδάρια in D. L. 6.80 to refer to Diogenes‘ tragedies might point in this direction. There is no way of knowing whether it alludes to the short extension of the plays, or whether the intention is derogatory.

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made more sense to talk about a specific genre of ―Philosophical tragedy‖. In Classical tragedy there seems to be a much more complex intertwining of poetic construction and various forms of contemporary discourse67. This phenomenon is more visible in Euripides68, perhaps because of the interests of this tragic poet, but also perhaps for extrinsic reasons: possibly the paths followed by the later Greek thought are much closer to Euripides than to Aeschylus and Sophocles, and because of this the ―Philosophical‖ elements – the transposition into drama of contemporaneous, extratheatrical topics of discussion and modes of discourse – in Euripides are more easily recognized69. In a context in which there was still no specific discipline called Philosophy, and poetic genres might have had very diverse and socially relevant functions, the reasons why the modalities of discourse later labeled as ―philosophical‖ appear in poetry – and hence in drama – could also be very heterogeneous. Many of such modalities appear in poetry previously to the emergence of drama, and in many cases they simply belong to poetry – or at least to discourse in meter – , as attested by the fragments attributed to Xenophanes, Empedocles, Parmenides, etc., that apparently are not mere transpositions of previous, extrapoetic patterns of discourse. The obvious difference between theater and other poetic forms is that in theater performers – and characters – confront each other 67

68

69

Arist. Po. 1450b states explicitly that the ―discourse‖ of the characters of tragedy could be based upon extratheatrical modalities of discourse. See HALLIWELL 1997 about the importance of Rhetoric for the configuration of tragic discourse. See esp. p. 125 about the importance of Rhetoric in Aeschylus‘ and Sophocles‘ plays, and p. 127 n. 10 about the difficult relationship between rhetoric and characterization. Of course the idea of Euripides as a ―philosopher on the stage‖ is well-known. See TrGF 5.1 T 166a-169 KANNICHT-SNELL. See also LEFKOWITZ 1981, KOVACS 1990 pp. 1-36, WRIGHT 2005 p. 249 n. 85. About Euripides‘ much-discussed ―atheism‖ see LEFKOWITZ 1987, 1989. About Euripides and the ―Sophists‖: CONACHER 1998, ALLAN 2000, WRIGHT 2005 pp. 235-60. For an overview of the ―Philosophical‖ elements in Aeschylus and Sophocles see ROISMAN Ed. 2013 pp. 78-81, 1328-30. WINNINGTON-INGRAM 2003a contends that Euripides is actually less philosophical than Aeschylus and Sophocles.

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in a conventional manner, as a part of the show, in a spectacle in which the action is presented with some measure of distancing. Tragedy, like comedy and satyr-play, is a synthesis of poetic and/or representational forms that in many cases are articulated as a confrontation of different points of view – agon, stichomythia – and in many others are a continuation of traditional forms that might include a moral admonition – for example, in choral lyric. This dialogic nature and the non-naturalistic character of Greek theater open up the possibility of a thematization of theatrical action by the characters themselves. Self-referentiality is obvious in Aristophanes, but it is also embedded in tragedy and may affect the whole scenic action. A plot that may be very simple advances fundamentally through the characters‘ discussion of what should be done, or of how the behavior of the different characters must be judged. This transposition of modalities of discourse makes it possible to discuss the μῦθοι of the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm through the very characters that apparently embody it, in a manner that is not to be found, for example, in Homer or in choral lyric. As the voices of tragedy are not the authorial voice, but at the same time neither the characters nor the Chorus are to be understood as attempts at naturalistic reproduction of human beings, the appearance on the tragic stage of ―Philosophical‖ discourse may relate in very different ways to the position of the character inside the story, and also to the playwright‘s points of view. It should be understood that the reproduction of these modalities of discourse in tragedy is probably not (or is not only intended as) an objective statement put forward for extratheatrical discussion, but rather the theatricalization of contemporary modalities of discourse as a part of the tragic show. Possibly part of the audience recognized the contemporary debates in their scenic transposition, and many other people simply ignored them. Of course, we have no means of knowing the degree of interest aroused by the ―philosophical‖ themes touched upon by tragedy. The questioning and open criticism of traditional representations of gods that were frequent in the various forms of discourse later integrated into ―Philosophy‖ also have a role in tragedy. This does not mean that such attacks had as their stated goal to replace

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the Homeric-Hesiodic construct which was at the base of the poetic tradition in which tragedy is included. The poet respects the validity of this tradition as a medium for the representation, and at the same time (re)shapes it with his own discourse. So it is possible to believe that a poetic genre destined for worship, for the celebration of a god, enacted in a naturally pious context, might apparently criticize ―the gods‖. It does not really criticize ―the gods‖ as an object of belief and cult, or ―religion‖, i.e., the cultic system, taken as a whole. Rather it is a criticism of forms of representation of the gods, and, in some cases, perhaps, an implicit declaration of incomprehension regarding the gods, a form of agnosticism that in the Classical Greek context – in which the gods are by definition unknown – does not interfere with the cult system. The reinterpretations of μῦθοι, substitutions of a μῦθος for another one, allegorical interpretations that are to be found in the plays themselves, belong to the same class. The main difference with respect to poems like those of Xenophanes and Pindar is the multiplicity of voices in tragedy70, whose complexities are sometimes not easily deciphered. This ―criticism of the forms of representation of the gods‖ is not to be understood as a specific procedure which tragic poets, or poets of any kind, decided to adopt, but rather the result of the establishment of a series of discursive practices that might have diverse roots, but come to work around a mutual axis: the poetic tradition offers by itself the possibility of clarifying that the usual representations of the gods are not satisfactory qua representations, and the presupposed difference between the gods and their representations makes possible certain forms of criticism of the latter that Classical Athenians considered acceptable in tragic plays. Tragedy apparently goes one step further by creating the possibility of discussing the representations of gods inside the performance, through the voice of a character, at least on occasion referring to the events in the plot.

70

FOLEY 1995 is a good example of how the problems of unity and multiplicity of tragedy might be analyzed in the specific case of Antigone.

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The tragic play may culminate in a supposedly more elevated representation of the gods. But it may also point indirectly to the necessity of a more elevated representation, without putting it on the stage. So for example Knox 1992 pp. 280f. asserts that Euripides renounces a task that his predecessors on the tragic stage had attempted: to reconcile gods and morals. We rather think that Euripides, at least in some cases, endeavors sometimes to express a moral conception of divinity through the gods of tragedy, and not in them. The distance between the communicative space occupied by tragedy, and that of ―Sophists‖ and ―Philosophers‖ (in the broadest sense of these words) is probably the distance between a very numerous audience and small groups that gathered around certain figures with an aspiration to be considered bearers of wisdom. But it is probable that the audience of the ―Philosophers‖ and/or ―Sophists‖ coincided to a large degree with the aristocratic circles71 which, despite the formation of democratic organization, were still the ruling class and at least to some extent imposed their values on the rest of the citizens72. So it is not implausible that there would have been exchanges between these contexts for discourse which on the surface appear to be so different.

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This is obvious in the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. We can safely assume that the mixed social extraction of the Aristophanic Pheidippides (halfpeasant, half-urbanite) responds rather to comedic patterns. GSCHNITZER [1981] 1987 pp. 171-82, CAREY 2000 Ch. 2.

2.5

Some Specific Cases

There are certain debated passages in the Euripidean corpus that can serve as an exemplification of the difficulties posed by the interpretation of Greek tragedy. Our intention in this section is to comment on some of them, before engaging in a systematic reading of Heracles and Hippolytus. There is a famous passage in Ba. 266-97 in which Tiresias formulates a discourse about Demeter and Dionysus that not only departs from the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm, but also applies certain patterns of explanation to both divinities that were current in Euripides‘ time: ὅταν λάβηι τις τῶν λόγων ἀνὴρ σοφὸς καλὰς ἀφορμάς, οὐ μέγ‘ ἔργον εὖ λέγειν· σὺ δ‘ εὔτροχον μὲν γλῶσσαν ὡς φρονῶν ἔχεις, ἐν τοῖς λόγοισι δ‘ οὐκ ἔνεισί σοι φρένες. θράσει δὲ δυνατὸς καὶ λέγειν οἷός τ‘ ἀνὴρ κακὸς πολίτης γίγνεται νοῦν οὐκ ἔχων. οὗτος δ‘ ὁ δαίμων ὁ νέος, ὃν σὺ διαγελᾶις, οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην μέγεθος ἐξειπεῖν ὅσος καθ‘ Ἑλλάδ‘ ἔσται. δύο γάρ, ὦ νεανία, τὰ πρῶτ‘ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι· Δημήτηρ θεά— Γῆ δ‘ ἐστίν, ὄνομα δ‘ ὁπότερον βούληι κάλει· αὕτη μὲν ἐν ξηροῖσιν ἐκτρέφει βροτούς· ὃς δ‘ ἦλθ‘ ἔπειτ‘, ἀντίπαλον ὁ Σεμέλης γόνος βότρυος ὑγρὸν πῶμ‘ ηὗρε κἀσηνέγκατο θνητοῖς, ὃ παύει τοὺς ταλαιπώρους βροτοὺς λύπης, ὅταν πλησθῶσιν ἀμπέλου ῥοῆς, ὕπνον τε λήθην τῶν καθ‘ ἡμέραν κακῶν δίδωσιν, οὐδ‘ ἔστ‘ ἄλλο φάρμακον πόνων. οὗτος θεοῖσι σπένδεται θεὸς γεγώς, ὥστε διὰ τοῦτον τἀγάθ‘ ἀνθρώπους ἔχειν. καὶ διαγελᾶις νιν ὡς ἐνερράφη Διὸς μηρῶι; διδάξω σ‘ ὡς καλῶς ἔχει τόδε. ἐπεί νιν ἥρπασ‘ ἐκ πυρὸς κεραυνίου Ζεύς, ἐς δ‘ Ὄλυμπον βρέφος ἀνήγαγεν νέον, Ἥρα νιν ἤθελ‘ ἐκβαλεῖν ἀπ‘ οὐρανοῦ, Ζεὺς δ‘ ἀντεμηχανήσαθ‘ οἷα δὴ θεός·

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Euripides preserves Tiresias‘ role as a sage and has him express his wisdom through argumentative patterns that belong to the variety of discursive modalities classified a posteriori as ―Philosophical‖, ―Allegorical‖ or ―Sophistic‖. Tiresias follows two procedures that are not logically related, nor have any connection with the events narrated in the rest of the play. The first (274-85) is a justification of the cult of Dionysus and Demeter as a necessary reverence to what he calls τὰ πρῶτ(α), two elements that have made human life possible. This interpretation of cult as a deification of elements that are useful for humans might stem from Prodicus‘ thought73. Afterward, Tiresias himself offers an alternative explanation of Dionysus‘ birth which, from a modern standpoint, would be equally ―mythical‖, but might be considered nonetheless a form of correction of the discourse about the gods: as an answer to Pentheus‘ mocking of the traditional tale according to which Dionysus was sewn inside Zeus‘ thigh, he explains a different, more decorous tale, supported by an etymological explanation similar to many others that are to be found in the allegorical tradition74. So here we have an apparently unitary discourse that actually intertwines two different expositions of Dionysus‘ origins and nature, in accordance with procedures that were common in Euripides‘ time. Tiresias‘ arguments aim to show, against Pentheus‘ objections, that Dionysus actually deserves to be revered as a god. But they have little to do with the specific situation in the play; it is 73

74

Prodicus DK 84 B 5. On the other hand, EGLI 2003 pp. 140f. argues in a convincing manner that it is a combination of notions stemming from the cosmological theories of the Presocratics and of the Orphic and Eleusinic models for the cult of bread and wine. Cf. MIRTO 2010, for the interesting idea that Tiresias‘ discourse seeks to express in an implicit manner the different ways in which ―intellectuals‖ and common folk saw Dionysus.

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rather a discussion about the general legitimacy of the Dionysiac cult. Even if the theme of Bacchae is the establishment of this cult in Thebes, Tiresias‘ discourse is a general proclamation of Dionysus‘ divinity, and goes beyond the immediate dramatic needs. We should note: 1) The position adopted by the character himself: in talking about Dionysus‘ birth he does not refer in any way to a probable knowledge of facts through direct experience, or at least through witnesses, and so on, though the proximity of the characters to the events in discussion would make this theoretically possible. He explains Dionysus‘ origin and importance in the same manner as a character absolutely alien to the god might do. He also avoids any reference to the time frame of the story staged, beyond the immediate requirement of worshiping Dionysus. The discursive position of Tiresias is analogous to that of a σοφός who might teach the necessity of the Dionysiac cult outside this dramatic context. 2) That the character does not explain in any way the relation between the aforementioned τὰ πρῶτ(α), which are believed to have accompanied human beings since remote times, and the supposedly recent establishment of Dionysus‘ cult. Tiresias‘ justification of the cult simply leaves out the essential fact that Dionysus is a new god, and does not seem to respond to events that are taking place in the present, but to a previous discourse about divinity that does not stem from Dionysus‘ arrival, but simply from his consideration as a god. 3) The etymological interpretation of the ―myth‖ about Dionysus‘ birth. Also in this case, there is no explanation – no dramatic context that justifies it. Tiresias uses his personal authority to interpret the story told about Dionysus – again, something which in theory happened quite recently and has affected the members of the Theban royal house – according to certain interpretive models that existed in Euripides‘ time75. 75

EGLI 2003 p. 144 parallels this etymological interpretation with Hdt. 1.122, Pderv. Col. XXVI [olim XXII], Pl. Phdr. 229cd. All the examples that she adduces are relevant and prove the continuity of these procedures (otherwise well attested by later sources). We stress that the commented text also has the goal of giving a more decorous, and hence, more exalted representation of the god.

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Apparently, Tiresias‘ discourse does not endeavor to give a unitary interpretation of Dionysus. Rather, the juxtaposition of different argumentative strategies evokes a kind of collage that combines notions which for an Athenian of the fifth century BC might perhaps have existed together in one and the same context, but is baffling to the modern reader: the deification of beneficial elements of the world, and the adoption of the etymological method as a means of offering a more dignified version of a story. Regarding the first of these points, it is very difficult for us (and not only here) to ascertain whether it is being implied that the gods are a mere allegory of certain elements of the φύσις, or whether it is a rhetorical strategy to stress that Dionysus and Demeter are venerable as they are associated with elements of the φύσις that are beneficial for humankind. It is very doubtful that this proclamation endeavors to establish an alternative ―theology‖, if only due to the heterogeneity of its discursive procedures. Though the intellectual framework for the interpretation of this rhesis is beyond our reach, we would rather think that it is also conceived as an exhibition of argumentative and verbal skill. This should not be misunderstood: we do not mean that Euripides does not take the proclamation of the Dionysiac cult seriously, or that his verses are simply ―rhetorical‖ in the sense that there is no real interest in what the character of Tiresias is proclaiming. We mean rather that the proclamation of Dionysus‘ divine nature is in itself a speech act that only has its full sense as a glorification of the god in front of the Athenian audience, not just as a part of a dramatic argument, and as such (because of its, at least in the broadest sense of the word, cultic role) is not simply a statement or a set of statements about the god, but also a demonstration of the poet‘s ability to exalt him. As such, he uses argumentative forms that might seem strange to a modern reader, but belong to the discursive framework still partially based upon oral performance and oral competition of the Athenian polis. Tiresias‘ arguments might seem non-traditional, and we cannot know how far the play‘s intended audience would have SUSANETTI 2010 p. 195 is right to see similarities between this passage and Pi. O. 1.30f.

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regarded them as shocking, unusual, or unexpected. But the context of performance practically rules out the possibility that they were seen as a criticism of a ―previous‖ theology (which actually did not exist in the proper sense of the word). They simply step outside the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm that predominated in tragedy, in order to glorify the god from different points of view: 1) Through naturalist doctrines that apparently equated gods with elements of nature. In a religious context that does not have the salvation of individuals at its center, the notion that an element of nature should be revered for its importance to daily human sustenance (and hence identified with / as a god) obviously has a different force. 2) Through etymological interpretation that might be used to establish more acceptable versions of ―myths‖. It is quite probable that the intended audience of this tragedy – even the people who were directly acquainted with the various debates about divinity – did not consider the identification between the two gods and τὰ πρῶτ(α) as an affirmation of atheism. There is an obvious historical problem related to the atheism attributed to Prodicus76. Both its true nature and its reception by Euripides‘ audience are difficult to ascertain. Nonetheless, the identification of the gods with τὰ πρῶτ(α) appears, at least in Bacchae, as a part of a discourse that has as its ultimate goal the vindication of the cult of Dionysus and Demeter. If Prodicus had been understood as a true atheist, the mere transposition of his analysis of godly characters to a context of vindication of a god rather suggests at the very least that transpositions of this kind were not so difficult. The substitution of a new, more acceptable version of Dionysus‘ birth for the older one probably goes in the same direction. Again, the goal is not to construct a coherent ―world of drama‖ in which one version is accepted and the others rejected, but rather to present the correction of ―myth‖ by itself as an act of piety, as a better way of representing the god as a part of the theatrical show. Possibly the term αἰθήρ was connoted because of its use in contemporary, ―naturalistic‖ discourse about the gods77, and thus estab76 77

Cf. DROZDEK 2006. Prodicus appears among the atheists in S. E. 9.51. Cf. EGLI 2003 p. 140f., SUSANETTI 2010 p. 196.

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lished some kind of link between this corrected ―myth‖ and the previous interpretation of Dionysus and Demeter. Nonetheless, this must remain as a mere hypothesis. A second example: the affirmation by Hecabe in Tr. 969-1007 that the Judgment of Paris is an invented story. It is obvious that this claim refutes a story that belongs to the tradition upon which the plot of Trojan Women is based78, and at the same time it is a case of the insertion in a tragic play of a discursive modality that indeed existed outside the poetic traditions: ταῖς θεαῖσι πρῶτα σύμμαχος γενήσομαι καὶ τήνδε δείξω μὴ λέγουσαν ἔνδικα. ἐγὼ γὰρ Ἥραν παρθένον τε Παλλάδα οὐκ ἐς τοσοῦτον ἀμαθίας ἐλθεῖν δοκῶ, ὥσθ‘ ἣ μὲν Ἄργος βαρβάροις ἀπημπόλα, Παλλὰς δ‘ Ἀθήνας Φρυξὶ δουλεύειν ποτέ. οὐ παιδιαῖσι καὶ χλιδῆι μορφῆς πέρι ἦλθον πρὸς Ἴδην· τοῦ γὰρ οὕνεκ‘ ἂν θεὰ Ἥρα τοσοῦτον ἔσχ‘ ἔρωτα καλλονῆς; πότερον ἀμείνον‘ ὡς λάβηι Διὸς πόσιν; ἢ γάμον Ἀθάνα θεῶν τίνος θηρωμένη, ἣ παρθενείαν πατρὸς ἐξηιτήσατο, φεύγουσα λέκτρα; μὴ ἀμαθεῖς ποίει θεὰς τὸ σὸν κακὸν κοσμοῦσα, μὴ πείσηις σοφούς. Κύπριν δ‘ ἔλεξας (ταῦτα γὰρ γέλως πολύς) ἐλθεῖν ἐμῶι ξὺν παιδὶ Μενέλεω δόμους. οὐκ ἂν μένουσ‘ ἂν ἥσυχός σ‘ ἐν οὐρανῶι αὐταῖς Ἀμύκλαις ἤγαγεν πρὸς Ἴλιον; ἦν οὑμὸς υἱὸς κάλλος ἐκπρεπέστατος, ὁ σὸς δ‘ ἰδών νιν νοῦς ἐποιήθη Κύπρις· τὰ μῶρα γὰρ πάντ‘ ἐστὶν Ἀφροδίτη βροτοῖς, καὶ τοὔνομ‘ ὀρθῶς ἀφροσύνης ἄρχει θεᾶς. ὃν εἰσιδοῦσα βαρβάροις ἐσθήμασιν χρυσῶι τε λαμπρὸν ἐξεμαργώθης φρένας. 78

Of course our understanding of the tragic argument is limited by the loss of the rest of the trilogy; but Euripides‘ treatment probably had many parallels in a number of lost plays. Cf. SCODEL 1980.

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ἐν μὲν γὰρ Ἄργει σμίκρ‘ ἔχουσ‘ ἀνεστρέφου, Σπάρτης δ‘ ἀπαλλαχθεῖσα τὴν Φρυγῶν πόλιν χρυσῶι ῥέουσαν ἤλπισας κατακλύσειν δαπάναισιν· οὐδ‘ ἦν ἱκανά σοι τὰ Μενέλεω μέλαθρα ταῖς σαῖς ἐγκαθυβρίζειν τρυφαῖς. εἶἑν· βίᾳ γὰρ παῖδα φήις ἄγειν ἐμόν· τίς Σπαρτιατῶν ἤισθετ‘; ἢ ποίαν βοὴν ἀνωλόλυξας, Κάστορος νεανίου τοῦ συζύγου τ‘ ἔτ‘ ὄντος, οὐ κατ‘ ἄστρα πω; ἐπεὶ δὲ Τροίαν ἦλθες Ἀργεῖοί τέ σου κατ‘ ἴχνος, ἦν δὲ δοριπετὴς ἀγωνία, εἰ μὲν τὰ τοῦδε κρείσσον‘ ἀγγέλλοιτό σοι, Μενέλαον ἤινεις, παῖς ὅπως λυποῖτ‘ ἐμὸς ἔχων ἔρωτος ἀνταγωνιστὴν μέγαν· εἰ δ‘ εὐτυχοῖεν Τρῶες, οὐδὲν ἦν ὅδε. In the agon Hecabe refutes the reality of the Judgment of Paris, and of the Aphrodite that Helen has used as an excuse for her own behavior (if not of Aphrodite altogether). Her line of argument is to show the absurdity of the whole story – which is presupposed to be the motive for Aphrodite‘s intervention in the Abduction of Helen – and contains the verses 989f.: τὰ μῶρα γὰρ πάντ‘ ἐστὶν Ἀφροδίτη βροτοῖς, / καὶ τοὔνομ‘ ὀρθῶς ἀφροσύνης ἄρχει θεᾶς, in which the interpretation of the goddess as a psychological and moral allegory comes together with the affirmation of the morally outrageous character of the drive that she represents, and again with an etymological, in this case derogatory, explanation of her name. The character obviously distances herself from the immediate dramatic action: Hecabe dismisses the tale of the Judgment of Paris as a μῦθος, without any allusion to concrete facts and proof which in a more realistic dramatic construction would be expected of a person who has lived close to Paris throughout the story. She simply states that the tale of the Judgment is ridiculous per se. If we depart from our previous assumptions, this statement is not problematic: Hecabe‘s discourse is pious, insofar as it simply asserts that a certain ―myth‖ does not represent the gods in the dignified manner that is due to them. A tale in which three goddesses com-

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pete to receive an award from mortal hands and attempt to bribe the judge is simply non-pious. The goddesses Hera and Athena are both portrayed favorably. The queen reminds the audience that they are the protectors of Argos and Athens, respectively, and that they could never betray these Hellenic cities for the benefit of a barbarian (973f.). This is obviously a surprising statement coming from a barbarian queen, but it is absolutely fitting as a part of an Athenian civic celebration. There follows a denunciation of the lack of coherence of the tale, but not a purely logical denunciation, because it has strong moralistic undertones (974-82). Neither Hera nor Athena would have much interest in being proclaimed the most beautiful, as neither needs the accolade: Hera is married to Zeus and Athena wishes to remain a virgin. The second part of the discourse is less problematic than it might seem. It apparently denies Aphrodite‘s godly character: the goddess becomes a personification of τὰ μῶρα, a term which according to BARRETT 1964 pp. 281f., denotes a ―culpable lack of intelligence‖. For BARRETT, its use in Euripides is idiosyncratic as it alludes to sexual intemperance79. The ultimate aims of this refutation of Aphrodite‘s godly character are to deny that Helen‘s behavior has had an extraneous cause and to express Hecabe‘s loathing of her. Probably the key to the interpretation of this passage lies in this fact: the denial of Aphrodite is not a theoretical development about the goddess taken as a whole, but the exclusion of a certain representation of hers that is central to the Trojan Cycle, and at the same time a psychological and moral allegorization whose goal is to deny legitimacy to a certain kind of behavior. It has its foundation in the allegorizing practice in which gods do not always represent qualities that are desirable for mortals80. This kind of alle79

80

According to BARRETT 1964 ad 642-4, the Euripidean passages in which terms of the μῶρος lexical family do appear with a sexual meaning are: Hipp. 644 and 966, Andr. 674, Ion 545, Tr. 1059 – the one we have just read – El. 1035, Hel. 1018, TrGF 5.1 E. Diktys F 331 KANNICHT-SNELL, Cf. Tr. 989. The use of representations of gods to represent non-positive moral qualities is also to be found in sources that are previous – at least conceptually – to the allegorical modes of interpretation. See SNELL 1978 p. 10, which recalls Hom. Od. 22.437-45 where Ulysses has the unfaithful servants killed so that they

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gorization might seem surprising, as it appears to condemn some traditional divinities. But it should be understood in a context in which the gods do not have a strict unity, nor always a positive role in μῦθος. In this context, Hecabe does not take Aphrodite as a whole: she does not say that the goddess does not exist at all and that her cult must be abandoned, but simply takes her in a certain role, as a representation of a certain kind of human behavior – illicit erotic love81 – in order to condemn it. The identification of Aphrodite and ἀφροσύνη (990) is a good example of an allegorical interpretation of the name of the goddess through a supposed etymology. But we should not forget that the ultimate goal of the search for ὑπόνοιαι does not seem to be – at least in all cases – the establishment of a permanent identification between a god (that is, the representation of a cult god in a certain μῦθος) and a notion, to the exclusion of other possibilities82. In this case, Hecabe condemns the notion of a goddess that promotes adultery, but this does not by itself imply an attack on the cult of Aphrodite. The goddess of the cult cannot be reduced to the Aphrodite of the Trojan War. It should again be stressed that Euripides is not formulating some kind of systematic theology: his Hecabe does not establish a new and coherent vision of the Olympian pantheon, but just emphasizes what is not right in the story which, so to say, she is living. In our opinion the goal is simply to produce, against the backdrop of tragedy, a more elevated vision of divinity, but a vision that does not imply the actual abandonment of the

81

82

―forget Aphrodite‖ ( 444). Leaving aside the (complex) problem of the status of gods in the Homeric epic, we think it is quite obvious that neither Homer nor Ulysses condemn the cult of Aphrodite, but simply relate an illegitimate activity with a goddess that is legitimate and also presides other legitimate activities. According to Schol. Hom. 20.67f. – which nonetheless is not entirely reliable – Theagenes of Rhegium had already interpreted Aphrodite as an incarnation of desire. See Schol. Hom. B Il. 20.67. See PÉPIN 1958 pp. 56f., where the author comments on what he considers an essential weakness of the allegorical interpretation, as formulated by SCHELLING: the allegorical interpretation of Classic poetry does not allow the establishment of a necessary relation between ―myth‖ and transcendent reality. We do not see this as a failure of Greek interpretive practices, but rather one of their constitutive elements.

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Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm as the basic representational model for the production of tragic plays. A third passage that might seem problematic is El. 737-46: λέγεται , τὰν δὲ πίστιν σμικρὰν παρ‘ ἔμοιγ‘ ἔχει, στρέψαι θερμὰν ἀέλιον χρυσωπὸν ἕδραν ἀλλάξαντα δυστυχίαι βροτείωι θνατᾶς ἕνεκεν δίκας. φοβεροὶ δὲ βροτοῖσι μῦθοι κέρδος πρὸς θεῶν θεραπείαν. ὧν οὐ μνασθεῖσα πόσιν κτείνεις, κλεινῶν συγγενέτειρ‘ ἀδελφῶν. Also in this case, the Chorus‘ statements are not especially problematic if we do not previously assume that Greeks understood their own ―myths‖ as literal truth about their gods. It is never said that the gods do not exist. It is simply stated that μῦθοι are useful to instill fear in mortals and compel them to observe certain moral standards that are seen as beneficial83. So the incredulity regarding the literal truth of the story is still there, and only the appreciation of the story itself is changed. The tales about the punishments that the gods impose on evil mortals are not ―false‖ in the sense that they misguide the person who listens to them; they are simply not literally true. What is interesting here is that a theory of this kind about ―myth‖ might also be proclaimed publicly. It shows a high level of self-reflexiveness in the poetic medium, which is not surprising in itself – it is in line with the discussion of specific ―myths‖ in the 83

Probably these verses refer back to a theory about the origins of human culture. They imply that ―myths‖ had a role in freeing humankind from a previous, more primitive state. On the possibility of an idea of progress in Ancient Greece, see DODDS 1973, UTZINGER 2003. EGLI 2003 pp. 151f. analyzes this passage and tries to relate it to the contemporary currents of thought. She finds the most evident parallel in a text that is also theatrical, the famous fragment of a satyr drama called Sisyphus which, because of its philosophical content and its attribution to Critias, is listed as DK 88 B 25. Cf. also KAHN 1997.

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poems – but in any case shows that the notion that ―myths‖ were a useful lie was not so much a belief of the elites as a trope that could be celebrated in front of a broad audience. A fragment which has been subject to a great deal of discussion and which superficially may bear some similarity to the one just mentioned – but which openly denies the existence of the gods, so it cannot be reduced to the same explanation – is the following: φησίν τις εἶναι δῆτ‘ ἐν οὐρανῷ θεούς; οὐκ εἰσίν, οὐκ εἴσ‘ εἴ τις ἀνθρώπων θέλει μὴ τῷ παλαιῷ μῶρος ὢν χρῆσθαι λόγῳ. σκέψασθε δ‘ αὐτοί, μὴ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐμοῖς λόγοις γνώμην ἔχοντες. φήμ‘ ἐγὼ τυραννίδα κτείνειν τε πλείστους κτημάτων τ‘ ἀποστερεῖν ὅρκους τε παραβαίνοντας ἐκπορθεῖν πόλεις· καὶ ταῦτα δρῶντες μᾶλλόν εἰσ‘ εὐδαίμονες τῶν εὐσεβούντων ἡσυχῇ καθ‘ ἡμέραν. πόλεις τε μικρὰς οἶδα τιμώσας θεούς, αἳ μειζόνων κλύουσι δυσσεβεστέρων λόγχης ἀριθμῷ πλείονος κρατούμεναι. οἶμαι δ‘ ἂν ὑμᾶς, εἴ τις ἀργὸς ὢν θεοῖς εὔχοιτο καὶ μὴ χειρὶ συλλέγοι βίον < > τὰ θεῖα πυργοῦσ‘ αἱ κακαί τε συμφοραί. TrGF 5.1 E. Bellerophontes F 286 KANNICHT-SNELL EGLI 2003 p. 148 criticizes those who simply believe that the dramatic action will by itself refute the words of the hero, as it would not make much sense to argue for the non-existence of the gods in such an articulate manner only to be rebuked by the intervention of the gods themselves – at least, not in a way that could be taken seriously by a reflexive audience84. Though EGLI‘s objections are 84

She refers to LEFKOWITZ 1989 pp. 80f., but it is the same criticism that might be leveled against SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003: every assertion by a tragic character that does not coincide with the assumptions of the author is simply explained away as an ―erroneous opinion‖.

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reasonable and well-founded, we do not agree with her conclusions. We agree that it is hardly possible for this statement to be refuted simply by Bellerophon‘s death, especially since the conventions of tragic genre do not prevent a character from distancing him/herself from the action and even from questioning the veracity of certain aspects. If we start from this assumption, it is difficult for a discourse to be simply refuted by the action, because the discourse has some autonomy. But we should not dismiss another possibility: that these statements might be refuted by the statements of another character. It is not inconceivable that this passage was the first part in an agon – or in a structure functionally equivalent to an agon85 – and that another character, perhaps his father Glaucus, answered him with an efficient discourse (efficient at least in the original context of representation) in which he defended the existence of the gods86. Possibly fr. 286 b points in that direction, though obviously it is not a decisive proof. The introduction of atheism as an argument in this tragedy might simply respond to the existence of such ideas in Euripides‘ intellectual surroundings, or even to popular stereotypes about the existence of such ideas. But it is highly probable that Bellerophon‘s atheism was disqualified not just by the outcome of the play, but also by its immediate context. As previously noted, it is true that in some cases the attacks on the godly figures are difficult to interpret as criticisms of mere representations, and not of the gods themselves, or rather against the cosmic order that is attributed to the gods. So for example in Sophocles: αἴρετ‘ ὀπαδοί, μεγάλην μὲν ἐμοὶ τούτων θέμενοι συγγνωμοσύνην, μεγάλην δὲ θεῶν ἀγνωμοσύνην εἰδότες ἔργων τῶν πρασσομένων, οἳ φύσαντες καὶ κλῃζόμενοι πατέρες τοιαῦτ‘ ἐφορῶσι πάθη. 85 86

See LLOYD 1992 pp. 10f. Though it has no true value as evidence, TrGF 5.2 E. Incertarum Fabularum F 991 KANNICHT-SNELL might be quoted as an example of a fragment in which a character defends the existence of gods.

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τὰ μὲν οὖν μέλλοντ‘ οὐδεὶς ἀφορᾷ, τὰ δὲ νῦν ἑστῶτ‘ οἰκτρὰ μὲν ἡμῖν, αἰσχρὰ δ‘ ἐκείνοις, χαλεπώτατα δ‘ οὖν ἀνδρῶν πάντων τῷ τήνδ‘ ἄτην ὑπέχοντι. λείπου μηδὲ σύ, παρθέν‘, ἀπ‘ οἴκων, μεγάλους μὲν ἰδοῦσα νέους θανάτους, πολλὰ δὲ πήματα καινοπαγῆ, κοὐδὲν τούτων ὅ τι μὴ Ζεύς. Tr. 1264-78. These criticisms exist, and they are a complex issue. They are not found only in tragedy; a classical example is to be found in the Theognidean corpus87: Ζεῦ φίλε, θαυμάζω σε· σὺ γὰρ πάντεσσιν ἀνάσσεις τιμὴν αὐτὸς ἔχων καὶ μεγάλην δύναμιν· ἀνθρώπων δ‘ εὖ οἶσθα νόον καὶ θυμὸν ἑκάστου· σὸν δὲ κράτος πάντων ἔσθ‘ ὕπατον, βασιλεῦ. πῶς δή σευ, Κρονίδη, τολμᾶι νόος ἄνδρας ἀλιτρούς ἐν ταὐτῆι μοίρηι τόν τε δίκαιον ἔχειν, ἤν τ‘ ἐπὶ σωφροσύνην τρεφθῆι νόος ἤν τε πρὸς ὕβριν ἀνθρώπων ἀδίκοισ‘ ἔργμασι πειθομένων; Thgn. 373-80. In the latter the poetic ―I‖ is not just another character whose affirmations might be refuted a posteriori; the verses show unequivocally that the criticism of the cosmic order (and hence of the gods) is neither idiosyncratic to tragedy nor restricted to ―Sophistic‖ Athens. The possibility of condemning the actions of a god as a guiding power in the world is conspicuous in these passages. Though the complaint might stem from specific circumstances, what is criticized here is not a specific intervention that could be justified in extremis by the dramatic situation without being understood as a general criticism of divinity – as Athena does at the end of the

87

We quote from the edition of YOUNG.

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Ion88, or the Dioscuri at the end of Euripides‘ Electra89 – but rather of the general way in which the gods govern the mortal world. As noted above, it is very difficult (perhaps even impossible) to find a true context for such statements in reconstructed Greek religiosity. Leaving aside the aforementioned question about the possibility of a true theoretical atheism in Classical Greece, the question of the legitimacy of atheistic statements in public discourse (and poetry is a form of public discourse) remains. Though our conclusions will always remain speculative, it is not impossible to try to fit utterances of this kind inside the general frame of Greek religion. To begin with, we should establish that the speech acts in which the gods are criticized as rulers of the cosmos are not acts of rebellion. So, for example, the exhortation λείπου μηδὲ σύ, παρθέν‘, ἀπ‘ οἴκων addressed to the Trachinian maidens has the obvious sense of reasserting the legitimacy of the authority of Zeus, whose name closes the play, in the face of the previous challenge. At least in such a dramatic context, there is no real tension between recognizing and not recognizing ―Zeus‖, but there is a tension between the impossibility of glimpsing some kind of order in the world – as happened to Theognis when considering the fate of evil men – and the necessity of worshiping the gods. It is not strictly a problem of representation (though it is certainly related to representation) and it may form part of a cluster of ideas that is also to be found in Euripides. What Hillos says in his desperation might be interpreted in a trivial way, as a simple reproach to Zeus, analogous to a reproach to a mortal man. But the role of the gods – more specifically of Zeus – as ruling power in the cosmos has much wider implications, and what we see here might be interpreted as the inability of Hillos (or of the poetic ―I‖ in Theognis‘ elegy) to reconstruct an adequate notion of divinity on the basis of the events in the world of mortals. Such an impossibility does not imply abandoning the cultic practices and obedience to Zeus90. 88 89 90

E. Ion 1555f. E. El. 1245f. Obviously it would be possible to change the sense of the final scene of Women of Trachis. Most probably the audience ―knew‖ that Heracles would come back to life a short time later. But the constitution of Heraclean ―biography‖ is a complex affair. We cannot understand the meaning of Heracles going to his

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What it does imply – and perhaps this has a great deal to do with many of the problems posed by the representation of gods in tragedy – is that the non-identity between the god and its poetic representation might be related to the impossibility of knowing what the gods are like, and not in a trivial sense: this impossibility is closely related to the inability to understand how the cosmos works for mortals. But this impossibility does not imply that the gods do not exist, or are not to be revered. Being one of the experiences that a pious individual might encounter, the public declaration of incomprehension, mixed with submission to the will of Zeus, might also have a place in the poetic performances. In the commentary on the passages above we have tried to show, albeit in a very partial way, some of the strategies used by Euripides in his treatment of the representation of the gods. Though there is not enough material for a true systematization, we have seen some examples in which the guiding lines seem to be the distance between mortals and gods91, and the attempts at a more dignified representation of the gods – not through a serious attempt to create a new set of ―myths‖, but through the discourses that accompany the staging of tales which, according to the conventions of the tragic genre, still belong to the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm. The following sections are an analysis of the role of gods in Heracles and Hippolytus grounded on the same assumptions.

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death on the stage without any reference to his future apotheosis, nor know how the intended audience might interpret it. This agrees to some extent with SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003 pp. 491f., according to which Euripides restricts the manifestation of gods on the stage to two basic modes: epiphany, and what she calls ―the empty stage‖ (i.e. a scene in which mortals are not present). Accordingly, the use of these two modalities emphasizes the distance between mortals and immortals, and simultaneously brings the mortal characters closer to the playwright‘s contemporaries, efficiently neutralizing the differences between everyday life and the ―world of heroes‖.

3

First Exemplification: the Tragic Heracles

3.1

General Questions

Heracles is a play in which the problems derived from the representation of the gods are posed with a special acuteness. The development of the plot is structured around the Olympian gods, who also have a strong presence in the discourses of the various characters. The problem of the representation of the gods in the play poses two main questions. The first is the matter of the play‟s unity (this is an issue that could also be raised in relation to other plays by Euripides)1. The second is the discussion of Heracles‟ folly, and the attempts to confer on it a purely human motivation2. In fact, both questions stem from the apparent arbitrariness of the twist in the plot induced by the gods. It is a tragedy that poses very serious problems of interpretation. Its meaning has been the object of much debate at least since 1

2

WILAMOWITZ [1895] 1959 p. 128 contends that the goddesses are just a pretext for showing Heracles‟ true colors, those of a ὑβριστής prone to violence, insanity and folly. The play‟s supposed lack of unity was criticized by KITTO [1939] 1961, by MURRAY 1946 p. 112, who famously qualified it as “broken-backed”, and by NORWOOD [1920] 1953 p. 229, among many others. SHEPPARD 1916, CHALK 1962 and KAMERBEEK 1966 recognize a certain unity in its structure. See also CONACHER 1955, BURNETT 1971 and FOLEY 1985. For an interesting attempt at a systematic search for the unity of this play through the repetition of key words and themes (which has perhaps not received the attention it deserves) see PORTER 1987. BOND 1981 pp. xix-xx had previously criticized the attempts of this kind on the grounds that these terms and motifs would not be perceptible to a theatrical audience. See MASTRONARDE 2010 pp. 167-9 regarding the change of the main characters in mid-play. See also MASTRONARDE 2010 p. 65f.: “In the past, critics who have approached the Greek plays with an inappropriate sense of individuality and a modern fascination with character have often engaged in fruitless struggles to define the one most important character […] and others have resorted to terms like „diptych structure‟, as if it is selfevident that a play should feature one central character from beginning to end.” See also HEATH 1989 about a general lack of a modern sense of “organic unity” in Ancient Greek poetry. On ancient conceptions of mental illness and the differences with respect to modern considerations of human psychology, PADEL 1992 and 1995 are always worth revisiting.

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WILAMOWITZ 1895. In his monumental commentary, the great German philologist proposed that the play presents an implicit opposition between an Attic heroic model, obviously embodied by Theseus, and a Doric (i. e. Lacedaemonic) model represented by Heracles, and that the play is a criticism of the perceived brutality and lack of measure of Doric heroism3. WILAMOWITZ argued that the scenic intervention of divinity was not essential for the plot‟s development, and that Heracles‟ folly was just a logical development of the violence that he had already exhibited in the first half of the play4. The first of these notions has been practically superseded, as we now have a much clearer notion of Heracles‟ Panhellenic character and the importance of his cult in Athens. Heracles has a special significance in the Athens previous to Euripides. His cult was important in Athens in the sixth century BC; the Cleisthenic regime apparently did nothing to undermine it despite its links to the tyranny of Peisistratus5. Our interpretation of Heracles starts from two principles: 1) The contextualization of this tragedy among the interpretations of Heracles in Euripides‟ time. Heracles came to be used as a paradigm of virtue at least from the beginning of the fifth century BC on; it would later form the basis of the philosophical interpretation of the hero according to the Cynic-Stoic tradition, and to others as well. This paradigm is found in choral poetry, and also in non-poetic discourses such as the allegorical interpretation of the hero‟s deeds in Herodorus6, and also in Prodicus‟ fable7. Of course there are other representations that do not present Heracles as a model of virtue, but his 3

4

5 6 7

A synthesis of this interpretation is to be found in WILAMOWITZ [1895] 1959 Vol. 1 p. 128: “Euripides bekennt wie Leo Tolstoi μισεῖ ὁ θεὸς τὴν βίαν: gewalt wird frieden nicht schaffen, am wenigsten im eigenen Herzen. er nimmt deshalb die ganze größe des Herakles der sage nur auf, um ihre unzulänglichkeit zu zeigen, den allsieger selbst zu einem bilde der menschlichen sündhaftigkeit und schwäche zu machen.” Ibid.: “[Euripides] hat vielmehr selbst die schickung Heras, die eine Begründung des wahnsinns gewesen war, um Herakles die verantwortung für die bluttat zu nehmen, zu einem äußerlichen mittel der veranschaulichung gemacht: die tat aber ist eine folge der herakleischen eignen natur geworden.” Cf. BOARDMAN 1972, 1975, 1989. Herodorus FGrHist 31 JACOBY. X. Mem. 2.1.21-34.

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consideration both as a model hero and as an object of cult in Athens and throughout Greece may help us to unravel some of the problems posed by this play. 2) The consideration of the much-debated dramatic structure of the play as an extreme development of some of the possibilities of the tragic genre that have been discussed in the previous section. More precisely, the adoption by the characters themselves of a distancing view of the action that allows them to comment on it. This aspect of Heracles is quite obvious in some passages, and less so in others, but we think it is of great importance throughout the play. The discussion of the dramatic action is continuous and its object is not a “story” constructed in realistic terms, but a narrative pattern that the characters themselves appear to doubt.

3.2

Heracles the Character

The history of Heracles as a character has been examined in detail elsewhere8. Nonetheless we would like to review the events that led to the appearance of a complex, multifaceted cult figure like Heracles as a paradigm of virtue in certain contexts. His transformation to evergetic hero and paradigm of ἀρετή in part of the poetry of the fifth century BC, and the allegorical interpretation of his deeds as representations of human virtues later in the same century, are known to us only through a few choral poems, fragments, and later testimonies. But what we have is enough for a partial contextualization of this tragedy. An analysis of Heracles‟ evolution during the fifth century BC must take into account the character‟s complexity and inner diversity. Unlike other characters in Greek mythology, Heracles lacks a basic motif or central story. The seeming unity of his mythic “biography” is the sum of abundant and highly diverse materials. If we take into account all the sources, we might well repeat GALINSKY 1972 pp. 1-2: Oedipus […] would lose his identity if he appeared in one century as the great, tragic sufferer, in another as the paragon of superhuman physical prowess and bravado, in another as the ideal nobleman and courtier, in another as the incarnation of rhetoric and intelligence and wisdom, in another as the divine mediator and a model of that way of life whose reward can only be heavenly, in another as a metaphysical struggler, and in yet another as a comic, lecherous, gluttonous monster or as a romantic lover, and in still another as the exemplar of virtue. Herakles, even in the same century, could assume all these roles which are heterogeneous but not out of character. 8

About Heracles as a character, see WILAMOWITZ-MOELLENDORFF [1895] 1959, BROMMER 1953, WOODFORD 1971, BOARDMAN 1972, GALINSKY 1972, BOARDMAN 1975, SHAPIRO 1983, STINTON 1987, BOARDMAN 1989, HUTTNER 1997, SCHMIDT 2008, STAFFORD 2010.

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The accumulation of stories and roles in Heracles has had as its consequence a hero without a clearly defined central motif (like parricide and incest for Oedipus, μῆτις / return to Ithaca for Ulysses, or matricide for Orestes), and also without a pivotal role such as the embodiment of the Athenian polis for Theseus. These latter characters are not the characters of single stories, but they have much better defined centers of gravity. The supposedly oldest relevant texts that might document the evolution of Heracles belong to the epic genre and allow only a very incomplete idea of the different elements that might concur in this character prior to the sixth century BC. The impossibility of establishing a chronology of the different poems, or even of the different passages inside one poem, prevents us from distinguishing between cases in which the character clearly evolves and cases in which there are simply different possible representations in the same epoch. Our knowledge of the evolution of his cult is also precarious, though it seems that the broad acceptance of his apotheosis and integration among the Olympians takes place relatively late, between the end of the seventh and the middle of the sixth century BC9. Perhaps it was promoted by Peisistratus for political goals, since the tyrant was associated with Heracles while in power10. We shall now briefly comment on these first appearances, as there are certain aspects that will be relevant to our later discussion. a) The Homeric Corpus Heracles is repeatedly named in the Homeric corpus as a great fighter of past times. His situation is analogous to that of so many other characters in Homer: he is repeatedly alluded to, as if he were known to the audience of the poem, but his story is never narrated in full. Heracles appears in Homer as a beloved son of Zeus, and also as the enemy of some of the gods, whom he is able to fight thanks to his incredible strength. Attempts have been made to interpret this “Heracles, enemy of the gods” as a model 9 10

Cf. SHAPIRO 1983 and STINTON 1987. Cf. BOARDMAN 1972, 1975, 1989. Cf. PARKER 1996 pp. 84f. on the discussion triggered by the hypothesis of BOARDMAN.

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for impiety, or at least as a warrior of older times when the aristocratic norms of the Achaean warlords of the Iliad were not yet in force11. We suspect that this reading is too one-sided. The lack of a true context for the Iliad and the Odyssey – our obvious ignorance of the oral traditions that presumably preceded them, the loss of the Epic Cycle, and so on – does not prevent us from formalizing a “Homeric morality”12, but makes it extremely difficult to interpret in a convincing manner all the characters and situations present in Homeric poems through such a formalization. Even the interpretation of his fights with certain gods – presumably under the protection of Zeus – are difficult to interpret without further context. For example, in Il. 5.381-404, Heracles appears as an enemy of Hera and Hades in parallel with the Aloadai, and Dione compares him with Diomedes, because the latter has dared to wound her daughter Aphrodite. She calls him σχέτλιος, ὀβριμοεργός, ὃς οὐκ ὄθετ‟ αἴσυλα ῥέζων (5.403)13. Certainly the comparison with the Aloadai has some weight, because these are unequivocally impious characters. But we should not forget the context: Diomedes has just wounded Aphrodite, not simply due to an innate lack of measure (even though this lack of measure might be in character) but thanks to the help of Athena, who intervenes with Zeus‟ authorization. Here the attack of a mortal on an immortal is instrumental in preserving the Olympian order, and the protestations by Aphrodite and Dione, like those of Ares, are of no avail against Diomedes. The comparison with the Aloadai should be seen in this context. The point of view from which it is formulated is not that of Zeus, and hence it does not come – at least in this context – from the supreme authority. We should nonetheless take into account the story of the death of Iphitos, that would certainly be paradigmatic of what is to be condemned in Heracles (Od. 21.22-30) 14. Here the narrator of the Odyssey undoubtedly expresses a negative moral judgment15. So it

11 12 13 14 15

Cf. GALINSKY 1972 p. 15. Cf. ALLAN 2006. We quote the ALLEN / MONRO edition. Cf. DAVIES 1991, pp. xxii-xxx. Od. 21.28f.: σχέτλιος, οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπιν αἰδέσατ‟ οὐδὲ τράπεζαν. There is certainly a similitude with the previously seen Il. 5.403.

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is possible that Heracles was presented as an impious character in some strands of the oldest traditions. Other passages depict Heracles as a hero deserving admiration. His link with Zeus is undeniable: in Il. 14.265f., he is mentioned as a son loved by Zeus, and in Il. 14.323f., Zeus himself alludes to the desire that he had felt for Alcmene. There is another passage in which the necessity to see the enmity of Heracles towards certain gods is obvious: in Il. 15.14-35 Zeus recalls that he had punished Hera in the past for the torment that she had inflicted on Heracles. Achilles himself takes Heracles as a reference (Il. 18.115-21). The only reference to Heracles‟ apotheosis in Homer is usually considered an interpolation, perhaps added to the Odyssey in the sixth century BC – the time when supposedly his apotheosis gains broad acceptance16. In the Od. 11.601-8, Ulysses meets the hero‟s shadow in Hades, and more specifically verses 11.602-4 formulate the rather odd notion that Heracles had combined a divine aspect and a mortal one during his human life and that they had separated after his death, his godly aspect now being in Olympus and the mortal one in Hades. Most probably these verses are not a reliable source of how Heracles was seen in the time of the formation of the Homeric poems, but they are very interesting nonetheless: first because of their intrinsic value for the reconstruction of the evolution of the character, and of the ideas of immortality among the Ancient Greeks, but also because the dual nature that is attributed to the demigod in this passage might be understood as an ontological transposition of the duality that is to be found in Hesiod between a “past”, mortal, suffering Heracles, and a “present”, divine Heracles who dispenses his blessings to the mortals from Olympus17. b) The Hesiodic corpus The contrast between a “past”, mortal Heracles who struggled in the world of the men, and the “present” Heracles who is an object of cult and lives happily forever in Olympus is prominent in Hesiod. For example in Th. 289, 314f., 526f., 950, Heracles appears as a 16 17

See WINIARCZYK 2013 pp. 29-31. But see HEUBECK / HOEKSTRA 1989 ad 601-27. About the discussion on this passage in Antiquity see PETZL 1969.

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destroyer of monsters – but without the sense of a “mission” that will appear later – and as a beloved son of Zeus. The death of the bird that tormented Prometheus appears here (526f.) as a device used by Zeus to exalt his son. A special case is that of the Shield, a poem of doubtful unity that might be an expansion of a passage in the Catalogue of Women18. In the proemium that seems to be the older part of the poem19, the notion that Zeus engendered the hero with the mission of protecting both gods and mortals against destruction is clearly stated (Sc. 27-9). Although the evergetic character of the hero is not linked to the moral traits which in other contexts will justify his description as a “paradigm of virtue”, at least his actions do have an evergetic character. It should be added that Heracles still appears in the Shield in full armor and bearing a spear and a bow, not with the unconventional apparel20 that would later be usual (Sc. 128-38). c) The Homeric Hymn to Heracles This hymn is unequivocally addressed to the demigod who lives in Olympus and dispenses ἀρετή and ὄλβος from there (9). Its datation is unknown, but at the very least it exhibits a certain continuity with the representations of Heracles in the aforementioned texts. Again, a contrast is established between this demigod who is an object of cult and Heracles‟ own past, in which: a) He traveled extensively following Eurystheus‟ orders (5); and b) He inflicted much suffering, and also suffered greatly (6). These motifs are not very different from those we found in the Hesiodic corpus. The mere existence of a Hymn to Heracles puts the character on a level analogous to that of the Olympian gods and reinforces the duality between the demigod and his own, unhappy past.

18 19

20

Cf. LAMBERTON 1988 pp. 137-9. It is probably better not to use an expression like “properly Hesiodic”, as its sense is not clear: it has not been proven that the whole of the Hesiodic corpus truly stems from one author. See WYLES 2013 for an interesting analysis of the symbolic role that this apparel will acquire through tragedy.

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There are certain motifs that will be essential for the later evolution of this character. The most interesting to us are the following: 1) The enmity of Hera and the protection of Zeus, an essential theme in Heracles. It is one of the many versions of a widely known narrative pattern: Zeus engenders a son outside marriage and Hera, in revenge, tortures either the mother or the son, or both. The usual outcome of the tale is the heroization or deification of the mortal who has suffered Hera‟s wrath. 2) Again, the contrast between the hero‟s suffering character and his ulterior apotheosis and happy life in Olympus. In the various traditions that have reached us through later sources, this suffering is linked to forms of quasi-moral degradation like the submission to Eurystheus or Omphale. In the later traditions, these motifs are connected to each other and to the evergetic character of the hero. Possibly this was already the case in the sixth century BC. For example, Heracles‟ constant toils are more or less explicitly associated with Hera‟s hatred, and his elevation to a paradigm of virtue is simultaneously related to his evergetic mission of exterminating the monsters of the earth21. At any event, we do not have solid proof of this elevation to paradigmatic status before the fifth century BC. It clearly emerges in the fifth century BC and coexists with other forms of representation, like the comic Heracles22, a very popular character in the Athens of the time23. Among the older testimonies, the most interesting corpus is undoubtedly offered by Pindar. The appearances of Heracles in Pindar – O. 2.3, 3.11, 6.68, 7.22, 9.30, 10.16, 10.24; P. 5.71, 9.87, 10.3, 11,3; N. 1.33, 4.24, 7.86, 10.17, 10.33, 10.53, 11.27; I. 5.37, 6.35, 7.7; fr. 29.4, 140a.51, 169a.5, 169a.42 – exclude the brutal and comical traits that we do find in other contexts, and focus on Heracles‟ glorifica21

22

23

It seems that the fixation of the Twelve Labors comes rather late. BROMMER 1953 pp. 53f. suggests that it took place around 460 BC, coinciding with the metopes of the temple of Zeus in Olympia. “Comic” is used here in both its ancient and its modern sense: Heracles as a character in comedy, and a Heracles that provokes laughter. Both are obviously related, but are not the same: a Heracles in satyr drama might be comic in the modern sense of the word, but is not subject to the generic conventions of comedy. Vid. JOUAN 1997. Cf. also GALINSKY 1972 pp. 81-100.

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tion as a deified mortal and as a model of a righteous man in his mortal life. He often appears as a founder of Games: O. 2.3, 3.11, 6.68, 10.24, N. 10.53, 11.27. In N. 1, the hero appears explicitly in his evergetic role. Tiresias formulates in an unequivocal manner Heracles‟ “mission”: Zeus has engendered him so that he might destroy monsters and evil men. Here and in other poems – cf. O. 10 – he is referred to with the cultic epithets καλλίνικος and ἀλεξίκακος. The earlier tales about him are also criticized. In O. 9.35f, Pindar swears himself to silence regarding a story in which the hero fought against Poseidon, Apollo and Hades. It is not unusual to find corrections of older tales in Pindar, and this should not be equated with a specific treatment of the hero. But they show that the Theban poet conceived Heracles as a pious hero during his mortal life and as a god afterward, and hence his actions should be pious. Pindar‟s Heracles has a moral dimension. But at least in Pindar his moral character and evergetic role are not yet openly associated with a trait that, as previously seen, has its roots in the Archaic period and will be of great importance in philosophical tradition: the renunciation of the pleasures of life and the acceptance of deprivations in fulfilling his tasks24. The texts previous or contemporary to Pindar that are usually quoted as evidence of the transformation of Heracles into a paradigm of virtue seem less relevant. The oldest document that has been used as proof of this elevation is EGF Peisander F 10 KINKEL, seemingly from the sixth century BC, but it has been denounced as spurious25. For completely different reasons, the Ep. 5 by Bacchylides is not convincing proof, simply because it only attests Heracles‟ good disposition toward Meleager, without any indication that he should be seen as a model. A text not very distant in time which explicitly presents Heracles as a model for virtue is the fable by Prodicus, which we know in a condensed form through Xenophon‟s Memorabilia 2.1.21-34 and the scholium to Aristophanes‟ Clouds 361. The fable apparently presupposes a representation of the hero which removes his “non-virtuous” aspects, and narrates in unequivocally allegorical 24 25

This is called “philanthropia through suffering” in HÖISTAD 1948 p. 27. Cf. DAVIES 1988 p. 135.

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terms the moment in which Heracles must choose between a life of pleasure and an existence devoted to service – to the gods, φίλοι, the city, Greece, the whole earth – which will require from him hard work and asceticism. The two options appear under the guise of two women named Arete and Kakia. Another sadly fragmentary text is attributed to Herodorus of Heraclea26, almost certainly a contemporary of Euripides, author of a prose Heracles in seventeen books. Herodorus‟ treatment of the character apparently followed procedures typical of the Logographs27. One fragment at the very least – Herodorus fr. 14, JACOBY FGrHist I 218 JACOBY – interprets the hero‟s deeds allegorically as representations of virtue. His interpretation of the character as an allegory of virtue has obvious affinities with that of Prodicus.Euripides‟ version of Heracles is not far removed in time from the allegories of Prodicus and Herodorus. At first sight it looks radically different from both of them: it is a “heroic” Heracles, which seems to address its audience to the rich epic tradition unfortunately lost to us, and, in a broad sense, to the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm we have referred to. We aim to show that Euripides‟ treatment of Heracles follows a path that is in many ways analogous to that of us and Prodicus, albeit following a very different discursive pattern.

26 27

Cf. HÖISTAD 1948 pp. 29-31. Heracles also played an important role in their works. The relevant fragments are: FGrHist Hecat. Abd. fr. 23f. JACOBY.; Acus. fr. 29f. JACOBY; Pherecyd. fr. 68f. JACOBY; Hellanic. fr. 102f. JACOBY.

3.3

The Conflict Surrounding the Altar

The scenic configuration at the beginning of the play, insofar as it can be reconstructed, is a visual representation of the basic conflict. Its spatial distribution is quite simple: at least judging from the text, its focal point is an altar to Zeus Soter previously dedicated by Heracles28. If we seek a strict spatial coherence with the data that appear throughout the play, the altar should be located in front of the king‟s palace, but the palace itself has no precise role in the drama. There is rather an implicit contrast between this altar and the Theban polis, which, until Heracles‟ arrival, consistently appears as a corrupt polity. The play uses the idiom στάσει νοσοῦσα (273), more appropriate for the civic conflicts of Archaic and Classical eras. Heracles‟ family – the elderly Amphitryon, Megara, and the hero‟s three children – are gathered around the altar as suppliants. It is their last haven as they try to protect themselves from the persecution of the Theban polis, now governed by their enemy Lycus. All the family members are helpless, because of their physical characteristics: Megara is a woman, Heracles‟ children are too young, Amphitryon is too old. Amphitryon‟s prologue explicitly states that none of Heracles‟ family might be rightly called an ἀνήρ – Heracles‟ children are not yet ἠνδρωμένοι (42), and Amphitryon himself is not a true man, as his old age disqualifies him from acting as such (41f.). They have no true allies, because all the people who might be considered φίλοι29 have not been σαφεῖς (55)30 and conversely the true φίλοι do not have the means to help them (55f.). The action that has brought them to this situation is explained in very generic terms. The previous king of Thebes, Creon, has been murdered by Lycus, the usurper. This Creon is apparently the one we find in Oedipus the King, Antigone, and other tragedies 28

29

30

See the splendid analysis of the spatial construction underlying this scene and the whole play in REHM 2002 pp. 100-13. Which, according to ADKINS 1966, cannot be translated by any of the modern terms with a meaning simply analogous to “friend”, but should be understood as the constitutive link of humans with each other that also allows for the existence of the polis. This adjective is the one that Megara will employ later in 62: […] οὐδὲν ἀνθρώποισι τῶν θείων σαφές.

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115

that are lost to us, and probably he was recognized as a traditional character by the Athenian audience, but here he is simply called “son of Menoeceus” and his political activity is not mentioned at all. His connection to Heracles, who is married to his daughter Megara, is obvious, but it is not elaborated upon. Lycus‟ usurpation and Creon‟s death were possible because Heracles had descended to Hades for his Twelfth Labor. Then a Chorus composed by elderly men loyal to Heracles take the stage31. HOSE 1990 p. 92 notes their rather atypical character: they do not embody a normal situation contrasting with the tragic one, but are part of the tragic situation itself. We might say that this Chorus of Old Men is of a quasi-symbolic nature32. More than a true character with a distinct role and precise motivations, they are a representation of the citizens who did not rebel against Creon and who consider themselves bound to Heracles‟ family, but at the same time have no way of confronting Lycus33. They never 31

32

33

KROEKER 1938 p. 28: “Diese Szene hat ihr Vorbild. In Aischylos’ Agamemnon nimmt der Chor der Greise dem Machthaber gegenüber Partei für den Ermordeten (1612ff.). Im Laufe der Auseinandersetzung kommt es beinahe bis zum tätlichen Handgemenge. […] Bei Euripides bleibt die Drohung leere Geste. Denn der Wille zur Tat zerbrach an der Erkenntnis der eigenen Schwäche.” We agree. This gives us an idea of how the various tragic models might acquire new values when their basic structure is modified. In contrast to Aeschylus‟ Agamemnon, Euripides stresses the absolute helplessness and dependence of Heracles‟ friends. See DHUGA 2011 pp. 75-97, esp. 83-8 (“Hercules Furens 107-37: Old Age and (In)effectuality”), p. 84: “[…] the Theban Elders in Hercules Furens are portrayed as ineffectual old men not only self-referentially and through choreographic technique on account of their old age, but furthermore on account of their distance, or their dislocation, from the center of politico-ritual decisionmaking.” CALAME 1997 stresses the “representative” character of the Chorus. So for example a Maidens‟ Chorus might enact a performance in representation of the maidens taken as a class. Though the analogy is rather forced, it is possible to imagine that the Chorus of Elderly Men acts perhaps not as a representative of the elders of Thebes, but rather of a rather artificially conceived class of citizens: the ones who favor the old royal house, but are too weak to intervene. DHUGA 2011 p. 96 points to “the apparent isolation of the chorus from, yet paradoxically within, the polis itself”. Later in pp. 117-9 he comments on the alternation between the belligerent attitude of the Chorus and its inability to act. PAPADOPOULOU 2005 p. 146 rightly notes that in 126-30 the members of the Chorus “try to find support in one another […] similar to the solidarity they

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allude to the specific events that have happened in Thebes, but this is hardly surprising, as those events remain imprecise throughout the play. They insist on the opposition and contrast between the citizens contrary to Lycus the usurper, who are unable to act due to their advanced age, and a wicked city in which apparently all able men have sided with the tyrant. The fundamental passages in which the Chorus laments their age are: 268f., 312-5, 436-41, 63772. Heracles‟ family and this Chorus of Old Men share the same sense of helplessness. The altar of Zeus Soter protects the suppliants, but at the same time is a scenic representation of their impotence: the only hope against the tyrant is divine intervention. In contrast to other tragedies, the altar where the supplication is made does not serve as a mediation between the helpless mortals and the political power of a polis or king. There is no political entity that might assist the suppliants, and for this reason the only power that can save them is Zeus Soter himself. The situation is compounded by the fact that Amphitryon speaks of himself as Zeus‟ σύλλεκτρον (1) and considers himself a relative not just of Heracles but also of the supreme god, as he has shared his wife with him and raised Zeus‟ child. This set of characters is confronted by the usurper Lycus. He appears as the leader of a wicked polis that is not directly represented on the stage, but is mentioned in the discourse. The aforementioned motif of the “ill city” (273) will reappear later34 when, upon his return, Heracles speaks of the Thebans that have betrayed him (560f.), and once again Lycus invokes the help of Cadmus‟ land (754) before dying. Megara also uses the term στάσις in 543. Lycus‟ comings and goings between the altar and an unspecified place (probably, although this is not explicitly stated, the king‟s palace) do not seem a realistic transposition of real movements within the city, but rather between the altar and the corrupt polis itself.

34

used to have in battle, which is described by means of an image of hoplite formation”. But that seems to be the point: the Chorus of Elders apparently embodies the inability of a conventional polis to make justice prevail. Megara uses the term stasis again in 543 to refer to Lycus‟ usurpation of power.

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117

This Lycus is probably Euripides‟ own invention. He does not appear in any other sources independent of this play and the detail in which Amphitryon describes him in the prologue (26-34) suggests that he was not known to the audience. It seems probable that the playwright conceived him as a replica of the other Lycus whom Amphitryon names as an ancestor of the tyrant: a tyrant who appears in the story of Antiope and who undoubtedly existed outside this tragedy35. The terms in which he is introduced reflect the realities of the fifth century BC: Euripides insists on his Euboean origins – a form of delegitimization that makes sense in the Periclean and post-Periclean Athenian democracy, but not in the Heroic Age when many characters of the Epic Cycle govern cities where they were not born36. The terms used are typical of the fifth century BC and are clearly derived from Athenian notions of tyranny. This organization of the scenic space is in crisis from the beginning of the play. A member of Heracles‟ family, his wife Megara, considers that the gesture of seeking refuge in Zeus Soter‟s altar is futile (70f.), while Amphitryon advocates it on the grounds that mortal affairs are subject to change and that the situation may improve (87f.). The basic scenic pattern – a group of helpless people seeking the protection of the gods – is questioned and discussed in the scenic space itself. BURNETT 1971 p. 160 points to its abnormal character: in their duplicated role as “leaders of the suppliants” Amphitryon and Megara discuss the efficacy of an invocation to Zeus Soter and compare views in which the saving power of Zeus himself is left aside. BURNETT is obviously right on this point, though we cannot agree with her general interpretation of this tragedy37. The entrance into the sacred space is accompanied by a discussion of the efficacy of its protection in which Zeus Soter is not named, the 35

36

37

Apollod. 3.40-4, 3.111, Paus. 2.6.2-3, 9.5-25. As a relative of Amphion and Zethus, he has some importance in the Theban mythic cycle. Cf. GREGORY 1991 pp. 123-8 on the importance of εὐγένεια in this play and for the questioning of it. It is (just) possible that Lycus‟ foreign origins might be a strategy to weaken his claim to be the representative of the “ordinary citizens” in the polis. BURNETT‟s later assertion that the death of Heracles‟ family is a punishment for this initial failure to adequately fulfill their role as suppliants seems excessively speculative to us.

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uncertainty of godly action is insisted upon and all hope is remitted to the possibility that the instability of mortal life might offer a solution by itself. It should not be forgotten that supplication is a stock scene38. It is not merely the transposition of something that might happen in real life, but a stereotyped scene of Greek tragedy, one of its frequent (if not standard) ingredients. The discussion of supplication should not be seen as a mere complication of the action, or as a dramatically unnecessary rhetorical exhibition: the scene might be understood as a new example of a commentary on the dramatic action inside the play itself. The discussion points to the specific theme of supplication, but also to the broader one of τύχη39 which will be developed throughout the play.

38 39

See especially BERNEK 2004. The term τύχη appears very frequently in this tragedy: 63, 203, 250, 309, 315, 480, 509, 921, 1116, 1141, 1314, 1321, 1357, 1393, 1396. Though the reiteration of this term is not unusual in Euripides, we think that it is especially relevant for the comprehension of this play. For a contrasting view, see MATTHIESEN 2004 pp. 85-8.

3.4

The Importance of τύχη

The uses of τύχη in this play have a complex background. The term was evolving in the period in which Euripides composed his plays and eventually came to designate general disorder and unreliability. The Hellenistic cult of τύχη is actually founded upon this conception40. But Amphitryon‟s speech about a τύχη that alternates good and evil suggests another direction and seems to incorporate another, more archaic conception, which could be summarized in two principles: a) The mortal condition is always frail and is not supported by any solid foundation. It is always subject to change, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. b) The precariousness of mortal life does not imply disorder, but is integrated inside an order of things that works by itself and does not have as its goal the satisfaction of the desires of human individuals41. This is an understanding of human life that accepts the inhumanity of the cosmic order in the strict sense of the term: the events of human life are organized according to a notion of equilibrium that has been instituted not for the benefit of humans, but for the stability of the cosmos itself. It is not a physicalist notion in the sense that the universe might be governed by physical laws indifferent to human suffering and struggle; rather this suffering and struggle is subject to an alternation of good and evil that makes sense as a whole, but is not beneficial to specific human beings.

40

41

Cf. MATHESON / POLLITT 1994. Despite being the catalog of an exhibition, it contains a good synthesis about the cults of Τύχη. An excellent, systematic exposition of this Archaic, and to some extent Classical notion of τύχη, and of its general importance in Euripides: LLOYD 2013. The author takes as representative, pre-tragic texts that deal with this notion: Solon 13.63-70 WEST, Archilochus 128.4-7, 130 WEST, Semonides 1.1-7 WEST, Hom. Od. 18.130-7. Though it is rather old, we find STROHM 1944 and his subtle and refined analysis of Pi. O. 12 extremely useful. See also BUSCH 1937, HERZOG-HAUSER 1948, GRASSBY 1969 pp. 261-78, WILLIAMS 1993 p. 150, PAPADOPOULOU 2005 pp. 84. Besides Pi. O. 12, another key passage for the interpretation of τύχη in Classical Greece is Hdt. 1.32.

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The discussion is rather theoretical42. The characters say little about specific aspects of their situation, but speak more of the general possibility that a desperate situation might be still redressed. Of course there is some discussion of the situation at hand, but it also remains at a very general level. For example, when they wonder whether Heracles might come from among the dead, here and in the later discussion about Lycus, they simply speak in general terms about Heracles‟ ability to come back, his status as the son of Zeus, etc., but do not address concrete questions such as where he might be, what dangers he might be enduring, and so on43. a) Megara declares the precariousness of human life. She explicitly names the gods (62): virtually identified with τύχη here, they offer no safety to human beings44. Megara understands that the logical attitude toward τύχη is the acknowledgment of one‟s own helplessness and a dignified acceptance of death. b) Amphitryon does not challenge her basic tenets, but believes that the possibility of a change in τύχη is in itself a reason to hope for a possible salvation. According to Amphytrion‟s words, this change in fortune would probably consist in Heracles‟ return to the world of the living (97). His argument is not exactly the one he will use later with Lycus; 42

43

44

CHALK 1962 pp. 9-11 suggests an interpretation of this passage as an opposition between two different ways of understanding ἀρετή. Certainly, Amphitryon and Megara adopt two different points of view about how to act in the certainty that a fatal course of events cannot be avoided. But in our opinion the two different points of view concern not only ἀρετή, but also the understanding of the whole mortal condition. See ADKINS 1966, and TARAGNA NOVO 1973. See also WOODARD 2007 pp. 13840 about the suffering of the just in Hellenic thought and its Oriental roots. We cannot agree with BURNETT 1971 pp. 161-5, who claims that Megara rejects the gods. We feel strongly that 62 cannot be interpreted as a denial of the existence of gods, or of the necessity of their cult, but rather as an affirmation of the existence of an order in the cosmos that does not offer solid grounds for human action. See 309f. Megara‟s viewpoint consists rather in the acceptance of human suffering as it has been preordained by gods, so she uses the term τύχη to contrast her previous state as Creon‟s daughter, and her current situation in which she has no alternative to dying. The acceptance of death has indeed an ethical dimension: it implies the idea of reaching a certain dignity in non-resistance, in clear contrast with the folly of revolting against the decisions of gods and prolonging one‟s agony.

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the discussion is still not focused on Zeus and Zeus‟ justice, but simply on the possibility that the situation might change for the better while they are still alive. Amphitryon explicitly lauds the man who does not submit to his present τύχη but maintains hope in front of great adversity. Nonetheless, he speaks from the perspective of an absolute dependence on help from outside. Megara, in 85f., urges Amphitryon to tell her what his plans are, and Amphitryon simply answers that he has none, and that he only intends to prolong their present situation in order to buy time (87: χρόνον δὲ μηκύνωμεν). The opinions expressed by both characters indicate a shared conception of human life: the lack of a solid grounding for mortal affairs and an absolute uncertainty about the gifts bestowed by the gods. Only their opinions about the right course of action differ.

3.5

The Debate between Amphitryon and Lycus

WILAMOWITZ45 considered the discussion between Amphitryon and Lycus46 as an example of a rhetoric, sophistic exercise disconnected from the rest of the play. Most probably his judgment is partially motivated by his overall interpretation of the Heracles47. His understanding of Heracles as an embodiment of Doric ἀρετή does not fit well with Amphitryon‟s depiction of the hero. Clearly, the discussions between the three characters in the first episodes of the play do not contribute to the progress of the dramatic action48. Previously we have seen that Heracles‟ family and the citizens of Thebes who had remained loyal to Creon longed for his return. Now the status of Heracles himself and the intrinsic value of his heroic persona are discussed49. In this debate, as in the rest of the play, τύχη and the way it relates to Heracles are of great importance. Lycus‟ speech (140-69) does not have an openly metapoetic character. But the contemporary discourses that question several aspects of the poetic tradition are lurking in the background. The tyrant speaks of Heracles‟ deeds, not as if they were events that have – or have not – recently taken place, and even in places that should be familiar to the characters, but as if they were simply 45 46

47 48

49

WILAMOWITZ [1895] 1959, II p. 139f. LLOYD 1992 pp. 10f. classifies the tirades between the two characters as epidictic discourses, as they lack the distinctive formal traits of an agon: rough equivalence in the length of the two discourses, choral comment, introductory dialog, later discussion, exit. But they are a functional equivalent of an agon nonetheless. The discourses explain each character‟s judgment of the dramatic situation, but they are not directly tied to the dramatic action. ROHDICH 1968, pp. 80f. A more modern criticism: REHM 2002 p. 101, in an otherwise excellent book, dismisses the debate as a “non sequitur”. We think he is wrong in this case. According to REHM, the most solid defense of this scene is to be found in ARROWSMITH 1954 p. 84, who sees the goal of this debate as the assignation to Heracles‟ bow of the symbolic role that it will maintain until the end of the play. We agree about the symbolic role of the bow, but also think that this debate has a more important, all-embracing function in the play. According to KITTO [1939] 1961, this discussion serves to dramatize “the absence of the great man”. We agree absolutely if this absence is understood not merely as the absence of a character from a place, but also as the absence of a character who has a structuring role.

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tales that might be rationalized. His words contain evident echoes of the rationalizing readings of “myth” which in Euripides‟ time were not new. He begins by denying Heracles‟ divine ascendance (140-50). The motif of Heracles‟ godly parentage is important in this play: it appeared in the first verses and is one of the reasons for Amphitryon‟s trusting in Heracles‟ return from Hades. There is an obvious – though most probably distorted – echo of the contemporary discourses which had as their goal, precisely, to dignify the representation of gods: Zeus would not father a mortal. Secondly, and more importantly, Lycus criticizes Heracles‟ fighting style, centered in this tragedy on the use of the bow50, with an exclusivity that does not strictly coincide with the representations of the hero that were usual in Euripides‟ time51. He compares it with the “right” way of fighting, which he depicts in a few strokes (162-4) that do not correspond to the Homeric model, but rather to the hoplite of the Classical era. Amphitryon himself uses the word ὁπλίτης in 190. Then, Lycus ridicules the heroic paradigm represented by Heracles through a rationalization of his deeds (153f.). Heracles‟ heroic prowess is debased by the presentation of his enemies as mere animals. If the previous attack was presented in relatively simple terms – according to Lycus, Heracles is a false son of Zeus – this one is more complex. Lycus does not actually deny that Heracles has fought against dangerous beasts, but simply trivializes such fights and transforms the “monsters” of a remote past into something that might be dangerous, but is not far removed from the world of ordinary mortals (implicitly, the world of the audience). An interesting point is his linguistic wordplay (βρόχοις / βραχίονος, used in this case to show that Heracles had fought against the lion

50

51

The condemnation of the bow and arrows as a non-virile weapon is indeed found in the epic tradition (see Il. 11.385), but it is far from universal. The Heracles of the μῦθοι does not fight just with this weapon; in Hes. Sc. 122f., and in archaic art he is equipped with the weapons of an ordinary warrior. Cf. BROMMER 1953, p. 64. PAPADOPOULOU 2005 pp. 138f. rightly notes that Heracles is also depicted as an hoplite in 48-50, and also in 1190-4, in direct contradiction with 177-80.

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not with his arms, but with knots52) which recalls the etymological wordplay usual in allegoric interpretations. Lycus‟ speech is not properly an argument, but a juxtaposition of criticisms that are variations upon one fundamental objection against Heracles: the hero does not correspond to the image of an ἄριστος φώς (see 150), the defender of the polis characterized by his εὐψυχία (see 157, 162) which Lycus considers to be the desirable model. He has attained his reputation through a fighting style that does not require what Lycus considers to be truly virtuous qualities. Lycus‟ attacks thematize the values associated with the various fighting techniques, not the techniques themselves. The unreal quality of the discussion is evident. Hoplites and archers fought in different contexts and both belonged to the Greek armies of the fifth century BC. Amphitryon‟s speech (170-235) is longer and more complex, and sometimes obscure. The aged hero practically repeats the facts stated by Lycus – that Heracles fights with a weapon that allows him not to expose his body, and so on – but judges them in a very different way. He contends that the model of heroism embodied by Heracles is valid and appropriate to a son of Zeus. The old man does not answer all Lycus‟ attacks, but makes a distinction between Διὸς […] μέρει (170), reserved for the supreme god, and his own speech, which aims to dispel Lycus‟ ἀμαθία53 about the hero (171-3). The distinction as such is not explained, but there are two main possibilities that might be easily reduced to two variations on the same motif: either Amphitryon asks Zeus to give practical help to Heracles, contrasting with his own inability to defend the hero by means other than words, or he simply urges the god to show by himself Heracles‟ godly parentage. Both possibilities are actually intertwined: the return of Heracles from the underworld is linked to his status as a son of Zeus.

52 53

Cf. MIRTO 1997 p. 113. WINNINGTON-INGRAM 2003a p. 48: “The tendency […] to state or re-state moral values in terms of sophia and amathia („ignorance‟) is likely to have characterized sophistic thinking […].”

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The main points of Amphitryon‟s speech are the following: 1) Heracles‟ deeds. Amphitryon explicitly mentions Heracles‟ victories over the Giants and the Centaurs (170-87)54. 2) A defense of Heracles‟ unconventional fighting style, associated again with the use of the bow (188-216). Amphitryon does not defend the reality of Heracles‟ previously mentioned deeds against the attempts at rationalization by Lycus, but simply alludes to other “myths”. He invokes Zeus‟ thunderbolt and chariot (177), since they were used by the hero against the Giants. He argues for the effective, physical presence of gods in the life of Heracles. Two verses clearly stress this relationship: 176 (σὺν μάρτυσιν θεοῖς δεῖ μ‟ ἀπαλλάξαι σέθεν), and especially 180 (τὸν καλλίνικον μετὰ θεῶν ἐκώμασεν). The epithet καλλίνικος appears in 180, and it is not impossible that 176 alludes to ἀλεξίκακος through ἀπαλλάξαι. As noted above, epithets of this kind are important in Heracles‟ cult, and their use here reinforces the association between the absent hero and the divine character that he will attain in the future. Heracles‟ proximity to the gods reaches the point of having fought for their salvation with the weapons of his father Zeus. In the second part of his speech Amphitryon defends Heracles‟ unconventional fighting style. He leaves aside the nature of Heracles‟ enemies and focuses on his individualistic manner of fighting, and more specifically on the use of the bow which symbolizes it. His style of argument has been compared to that of the Sophists55. It might seem that Amphitryon leaves aside all moral considerations and pays attention only to the criterion of efficiency, but actually he goes beyond this: his viewpoint is related to the issues previously dealt with. Amphitryon stresses that archery frees the fighter from the necessity of companions and of exposing his own body to peril (190-

54

55

Note that the victory over the giants already appeared in Pi. N. 1 as a landmark in the fulfillment of his destiny of liberating the earth from monsters. Cf. EGLI 2003 pp. 238f.

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203)56. He says in 203: σώιζειν τὸ σῶμα, μὴ „κ τύχης ὡρμισμένον. Taken literally, this assertion might be understood in the trivial sense that Heracles fights without being subject to what might be termed the hazards of battle. But both the previous and the subsequent appearances of τύχη rather suggest that its use here is not trivial, and that the hyperbolic affirmation by Amphitryon – that Heracles is free from τύχη – should be taken seriously: in front of his relatives and friends who are weak and helpless and abandoned to τύχη, Heracles himself is immune to the vagaries of fortune and demonstrates this through his fighting style. This freedom is obviously associated to his quasi-divine nature. We insist that it is not a realistic construction, but a continuous playing with words and situations in order to create an opposition between a self-confident, but wicked polis, and a helpless collective of “the good” who depend for their salvation on the intervention of a man that is not totally subject to the limitations of the mortal condition. Later, Megara will identify him with Zeus Soter (521f.). This affirmation is not simply a hyperbole, and probably not a blasphemy either. It is not only a comparison with a god that might have a paradigmatic character, but also a reference to the altar of Zeus Soter where the action unfolds, and to its function, as Heracles appears here as an answer to the supplication of his relatives. Probably this speech is better understood against the backdrop of Lycus‟ previous epidixis. The tyrant had defended the fighting style proper to the polis. This apparent paradox would probably have appeared to be less relevant to an ancient Athenian audience (at least in a context like this) than it might appear to us: we should not forget that the “polis ideology” implicitly criticized here is not an ideology in the strict sense of the word, a corpus of explicitly affirmed beliefs, but rather a sum of shared assumptions. Lycus has denigrated Heracles not because he does not follow an “ideology”, but simply because he does not conform to the prevailing notions of bravery. Of course the prevailing notions of bravery had a moral and civic content; but it is also plausible that they could be used as a foil by a morally perverse character in a

56

For an unusual vision of the implications of the bow, see PADILLA 1992.

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play, without being necessarily assumed that the play went against a “polis ideology”. As we have previously seen, the beginning of the play is marked by an opposition between, on the one hand, Lycus and the perverted Theban polis, and on the other, Heracles‟ relatives and friends, the latter reduced in an almost symbolic manner to the Chorus of Elderly Men. All of Heracles‟ φίλοι are weak and unable to fight against Lycus. The usurper‟s speech seems to reinforce this opposition and give it a kind of (also perverted) moral sense: his followers are the able men of the polis, the ones who might create by themselves the polis’ structures, and his enemies are, by contrast, the ones who cannot create or defend a polis. The supposed defender of the second group is also a warrior who does not conform to the schemata of a normal polis, but a solitary character who cannot be integrated into a hoplite phalanx and has an unconventional fighting style. His exceptional nature would be justified in a way by his status as a son of Zeus (and undoubtedly it was justified in the eyes of the audience by the shared assumption that Heracles is a god) and this is what Lycus tries to deny. Lycus rehashes the topos of the cowardice of archers57 in a manner that is in accordance with the rest of his speech, and at the same time serves as a foil for Amphitryon‟s reply. Lycus‟ pretensions should be contested by Amphitryon in his defense of the son of Zeus, and one way of doing so is precisely by equating Heracles‟ fighting style with σοφία58. It appears as τὸ πάνσοφον δ‟ εὕρημα (188) and the fighting style itself is qualified as σοφόν (202). Amphitryon tries to show that the extra safety provided by the bow is to be equated with aptitude, not with lack of heroic stature. At the same time, the affirmation that Heracles is free from τύχη, after the previous discussion, intimates that the

57

58

It is not impossible that the accumulation of apparently disconnected arguments – rationalization of Heracles‟ heroic deeds, denigration of his fighting style, incredulity as to his godly parentage – might have as its main goal an exhibition of rhetoric resources in the defense of a certain cause, as we had previously seen in Bacchae – even if in this case this “cause” might appear as perverse. For a good synthesis of the appearances and meanings of this term in Euripides, see ORIGA 2007.

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hero is free from the constraints to which Megara and Amphitryon, and all the Thebans loyal to Heracles, must bow. The social interpretation of the whole scene formulated by CERRI59 is valuable. Archers had an important role in the Athenian army and usually belonged to the lower strata of society (though their prestige appears to have grown during the Peloponnesian War60) and the opposition between the archer and the hoplite might have social, even political connotations. Nevertheless, it is probable that these connotations contribute to the meaning of this debate, but do not constitute it. Possibly there is in Lycus‟ speech an implicit association of Heracles with the unprivileged social strata as another means for the denigration of the hero. But that does not mean that this association should take a positive turn later, or that Heracles should effectively be seen as a “champion of the people”. Though the hero appears as the champion of those who are not able to defend themselves, this latter role is put forward without social overtones61. Heracles‟ φίλοι are obviously not plebeians and the ideal of justice evoked privileges loyalties based upon family bonds – inevitably associated with the aristocracy – and the legitimate exercise of power. The apparent, immediate failure of Amphitryon‟s hopes sparks off his reproach to Zeus which in a way confirms the basic notions formulated in the previous speech (339-47): ὦ Ζεῦ, μάτην ἄρ‟ ὁμόγαμόν σ‟ ἐκτησάμην, μάτην δὲ παιδὸς κοινεῶν‟ ἐκλήιζομεν· σὺ δ‟ ἦσθ‟ ἄρ‟ ἧσσων ἢ „δόκεις εἶναι φίλος. 59

60 61

CERRI 2003 p. 69: “È dunque evidente che di fronte al pubblico, costituito da soggetti de tutte le classi sociali, l’elogio dell’arciere in contrapposizione e al di sopra dell’oplita, nella persona di Eracle, non poteva non connotare quest’ultimo in senso nettamente demotico. Lo qualificava ipso facto come eroe degli arcieri presenti in teatro, come eroe più vicino agli strati inferiori della popolazione, quasi come loro nume tutelare o patrono.” Cf. SNODGRASS 1967 pp. 348-54. See also MICHELINI 1987 pp. 28-30. At least not as the distinction between “haves” and “have-nots”. Verses 58894 transform what could be initially termed a “social” conflict into a portrait of moral perversion that is based on the pretension of being ὄλβιος. Cf. BARLOW 1996 ad loc. for a contextualization.

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ἀρετῆι σε νικῶ θνητὸς ὢν θεὸν μέγαν· παῖδας γὰρ οὐ προύδωκα τοὺς Ἡρακλέους. σὺ δ‟ ἐς μὲν εὐνὰς κρύφιος ἠπίστω μολεῖν, τἀλλότρια λέκτρα δόντος οὐδενὸς λαβών, σώιζειν δὲ τοὺς σοὺς οὐκ ἐπίστασαι φίλους. ἀμαθής τις εἶ θεός ἢ δίκαιος οὐκ ἔφυς. Amphitryon‟s dependence on Heracles and Zeus is represented again (341) as a form of φιλία, in the already mentioned, nontrivial sense. The fault of Zeus appears precisely as a failure to observe this φιλία62. The moral superiority claimed by Amphitryon (342) also refers to it. Probably it is also linked to Amphitryon‟s reproach (345) to Zeus for having shared his wife‟s bed. Previously Amphitryon named himself as a man who had shared his bed with Zeus – a euphemism for having shared his wife – without seeing it as a dishonor, not only because a divine lover is not the same as a human lover, but also because it creates a link between himself and Zeus. If adultery has not established a φιλία between man and mortal, it is trivialized; we might say that it has lost the structuring role that Amphitryon had previously attributed to it. Now it is the god who appears as ἀμαθής, in the best of cases (347). In his commentary63 BOND argues that the radical amath- does not have the same value here as in 172, where Amphitryon referred to Lycus‟ ἀμαθία. He introduces a distinction between an ἀμαθία that might be called epistemic and another one that he translates as insensibility. But some skepticism is in order with regard to the possibility of distinguishing here between an epistemic and a purely moral ἀμαθία. This distinction should not be presupposed when dealing with a Greek poet of this epoch64; both ἀμαθία

62

63 64

The interpretation of the scene in YUNIS 1988 pp. 140-6 is unconvincing. In our opinion, what is at stake here is not just the reciprocity between gods and mortals, but something else: the possibility that Zeus might have a binding relationship with a mortal. See the discussion in BOND 1981 ad loc. Also DOVER 1974, p. 122. The problem of the relationship between knowledge and morality in Ancient Greece – and the existence or non-existence of a notion such as “will” – is extremely complex. The Socratic discussion of the relationship between knowledge and morality seems to presuppose a previous lack of differentia-

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and ἀμαθής as they appear in this play might point to the inability of cognitive powers to distinguish what kind of action should be undertaken, verbal action included. It is even possible that the opposition between ἀμαθής and δίκαιος οὐκ simply points to a gradation between different levels of moral incompetence. As ἀμαθής seems to refer to a mere inability, the negation of the presence of δίκη in Zeus would rather mean that the god is not the bearer of a just order in the world. It is important to read this passage not merely as a pathetic expression of Amphitryon‟s desperation, but as a turning-point in the way his speech articulates the situation of the characters65. The old hero had previously structured Heracles‟ role around ideas of σοφία and φιλία that supposedly put him above the polis. With these imprecations, Amphitryon destroys the structure that he himself had built. It is just a provisional rupture that will be eliminated by the return of the hero, which would be immediately understood as the fulfilling of Amphitryon‟s initial hopes.

65

tion, or at least an ongoing problem about the separation of the different spheres. MIKALSON 1986 is right that the relationship between Zeus and Heracles, and the sufferings of the latter are appropriate material for a problematization; the relationship between fathers and sons have a great importance in Greek world.

3.6

Heracles’ Return

On his first appearance on stage, Heracles does not mention his extraordinary journey in so many words; he merely speaks of his happiness in returning. However, he refers implicitly to his descent to Hades in his first words (524f.: ὦ χαῖρε μέλαθρον πρόπυλά θ‟ ἑστίας ἐμῆς, / ὡς ἄσμενός σ‟ ἐσεῖδον ἐς φάος μολών.). In 562-4 he mentions Hades when talking about the funeral attire of his own children. He speaks explicitly of his adventure in the world of the dead only when urged to do so by his father in 610. In the following stichomythia (610-21) he briefly narrates details of his journey: his violent capture of Cerberus, his initiation in the mysteries66, the current whereabouts of the dog of Hades, and the rescue of Theseus. None of this appears to have been invented by Euripides. The information about the deed seems to be structured around the alternation of apparently impious acts and others that demonstrate Heracles‟ ultimate piety. In 613, Heracles affirms that Cerberus‟ capture was violent, but at the same time mentions his initiation. Asked by Amphitryon if he has brought the dog to Eurystheus‟ house, Heracles answers that he has taken it to a sacred place (615). The hero‟s reluctance to talk about the descent points in the same direction: the world of the dead preserves its essentially sacred character, and Heracles, despite his partial victory, must respect it. This combination of brevity in narration and allusion to mythic elements that reinforce Heracles‟ pious character allows Euripides to maintain the fundamental elements of the mythic tradition and, at the same time, avoid the risk that the hero might appear in this tragedy as being insolent to the gods. Heracles‟ reservations can be interpreted as sacred awe at the things he has contemplated, or 66

Cf. PARKER 1996, pp. 98-100. According to STAFFORD 2010 p. 230, the reference in Isoc. 5.33 to an Athenian contribution to Heracles‟ immortality can be considered an allusion to this initiation. The initiation, and many other details, probably stem from a poem about Heracles‟ catabasis: LLOYD-JONES 1967. In any event the initiation is mentioned in Apollod. 2.5.12 and D. S. 4.25.1. See also BOARDMAN 1975. According to Diodorus of Sicily the goal of the initiation was to legitimize Heracles‟ descent into the Underworld. Apollodorus does not state this explicitly, but both events are clearly related in his text as well. It is possible that this legitimizing role belonged to the common previous knowledge of the poet and his audience, but this cannot be proved.

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merely as a reluctance to reveal the horrors of the world of the dead. Be this as it may, the result is the same: the hero does not boast of his victory over the underworld and his piety is emphasized67. So the frontier between the world of the living and the world of the dead is not broken down by Heracles‟ return. At the same time, the ties between Heracles and his family are stressed. The motif of φιλία, which had emerged previously, again comes to the fore. In 622-36 he reveals a paternal tenderness that leaves no doubt about his ties with his human family. The language used by the hero emphasizes his family‟s dependence on him and his own role as savior. He does not describe this role as exceptional; in 6346 he stresses the universal character of the relation between a father and his children. But implicitly he also underlines his own connection with Zeus; and in the background there is always the certainty that Heracles has returned from the world of the dead because he is Zeus‟ son. Verse 628 says: οὐδὲ φευξείω φίλους. Here the theme of φιλία is explicit. In contrast to the Chorus, Heracles appears here as a capable φίλος, a φίλος able to defend the people that are linked to him. In 575-82 he declares that his duty to defend his family is greater than the Twelve Labors, and that one of the cultic epithets associated with him in the real world (ὁ καλλίνικος) depends on his ability to defend his mortal father, wife, and sons (582). In 585f., Amphitryon urges him not to hasten in his vengeance, but simultaneously emphasizes his φιλία. The asymmetry in this φιλία is plain to see. Here for the first time the famous naval metaphor appears which will come up again at the end of the play (631f.). In 632 we read οὐκ ἀναίνομαι in reference to his own children, which is repeated in 1400 by Theseus when he allows Heracles to touch him with his bloodstained hands. Heracles‟ return from the world of the dead adopts the form of a reintegration in his mortal family, and it is no trivial matter – 67

Heracles appears as an enemy of Hades in Il. 5.381-404, and in Pi. O. 9.35f. A distinction should be made between the basic connection between Heracles and Zeus and the possibility that he might act impiously toward other gods, as for example Diomedes does toward Aphrodite and Ares in Iliad under the command of Athena – and implicitly of Zeus.

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quite the opposite, it is a necessary element in the Euripidean representation of the hero‟s triumph in this Twelfth Labor. Beyond the obvious pathos (the contrast between the exhibition of paternal love and the imminent slaughter) Heracles‟ return revives certain motifs that have appeared previously and will reappear later in the play. Whereas at the beginning of the play there were many different speeches regarding Heracles and τύχη, now the various voices converge in the connection between Heracles and Zeus, and in the interpretation of Heracles‟ return as a manifestation of divine justice. Now it is Megara who, as we noted above, openly equates Heracles with Zeus Soter (521f.); the verb form ἐσώθης (532) probably emphasizes this equivalence. The various characters reiterate, above all else, the notion that was formulated in a more or less explicit manner by Amphitryon in the previous scenes: Heracles, as a son of Zeus, is a bearer of justice. This justice has different levels. The first one has already been seen: the hero must fulfill his duty of protecting his own relatives, and in doing so shows that Zeus has also fulfilled his own obligations. The second one is to punish Lycus for his impiety, evident in his mistreatment of an elderly man who cannot defend himself. This act appears explicitly as something that offends the gods: it is said that Lycus has no αἰδώς (556), and αἰδώς is explicitly called godhead (557). The third level is political: Heracles‟ return implies the end of a στάσις depicted in eminently moral terms. In fact, Euripides does not give a detailed treatment of the change of government in the polis – nothing else is said about the political situation in Thebes after the death of Lycus – but nonetheless gives it some relevance: the polis as such has had an unjust government that persecuted Heracles‟ relatives and friends, and one of the consequences of Heracles‟ return is the destruction of this government68. The Chorus interprets the change of government in Thebes as μεταβολὰ κακῶν (735), an expression that might also be related to the notion of τύχη. So Heracles takes on a role that the previous construction of the discourse attributed sometimes to Zeus, sometimes to a favorable change of τύχη, and in any case to the ruling powers in the 68

See 568-73 in which Heracles states his intention of punishing those who have supported Lycus.

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cosmos: that of saving the righteous mortals who cannot save themselves. It is true that in some verses Heracles‟ return might appear as simply a change in fortune, as in 739: δίκα καὶ θεῶν παλίρρους πότμος. But this change in fortune is associated to the hero who is beyond the limitations of mere mortals. This is expressed in a peculiar manner in the stasimon that precedes the catastrophe. In this stasimon Heracles appears as a force that is above the blind vagaries of fortune and might impose a just order, as living proof that in the cosmos there is a just order decreed by the gods. There is a tension here between two different sets of ideas. On the one hand, the Chorus of Elderly Men celebrates Heracles, and exalts youth as a quality which implies self-sufficiency and which in this context can easily be associated with the hero. At the same time, the Elderly Men dream of a ξύνεσις καὶ σοφία (655f.) 69 of gods that would also manifest itself as justice: the just would be rejuvenated in their old age. But if this rejuvenation were a reality, the situation in which the members of the Chorus might not act against Lycus, or any other evil character, would simply disappear. What is significant here is not a discussion about what such a world would be like if we tried to represent it in a realistic manner, but the value of this utopia in the framework of this play. The advanced age of the Chorus members and Amphitryon, and more generally physical weakness, has from the beginning been the trait that united all the pious characters in the play in their dependence on Heracles. Though in a very artificial manner, the Chorus asks for an end to this dependence, and also calls for a divine justice that does not have as its sole foundation the specific φιλία between Heracles and Zeus, but the application of one and the same standard to all human beings. The first triad of this stasimon formulates the aspiration of superseding the situation that has been constituted in the first part of the play: what they are implicitly asking is that the model of ἀρετή embodied by Heracles should cease to be necessary in the mortal world. They state a desire for divine justice to the benefit of all mortals that would make unnecessary Heracles‟ role as an incarnation of divine justice and his φιλία to the good citizens of Thebes. 69

We understand κατ‟ ἄνδρας as “in the manner of men”, not as “among men”.

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This discourse is reinforced by the next triad. After stating its aspirations for youth and divine justice, the Chorus describes the situation of its members. Through a partial destruction of the dramatic illusion, the members of the Chorus present themselves as singers (676f.) and dancers (686); despite their advanced age, their role as producers of poetic voice allows them to participate in some form of beauty. As a part of this beauty, the Chorus will celebrate Heracles‟ deeds. The radical incapacity of the elderly members of the Chorus, which has a central role in tragedy, is compensated for by their actual performance: they are no longer young, but without being beautiful in themselves they are the origin of the beauty of singing. It is interesting to note the contrast between the γέρων ἀοιδός of 678 and 692 and the Charites which naturally embody youth and beauty. This stasimon prevents us from giving an excessively one-sided interpretation of the two first episodes in the tragedy. What we have seen is not simply a confrontation between “righteous” and “evil” people in which the “righteous” achieved victory (albeit only a transient victory) through the help of the gods, but the establishment of a model of justice through the φιλία of a protector invested by the gods that do not satisfy the ultimate wishes of the elderly men in the Chorus. We are not saying that this stasimon shows “what Euripides really thought”, but rather that the φιλία network which appears to be the framework where the justice of Zeus takes place, and which in its full realization seems to free Heracles‟ family from τύχη, is opposed here to a fantastic idea of divine justice that would indeed guarantee a happy existence in this world. In contrast with this fantasy, the world in which Heracles, free from τύχη, imparts justice is at the same time a world in which mortal life remains extremely precarious70.

70

Cf. GEORGE 1994.

3.7

The Catastrophe

In our opinion, the catastrophe in Heracles does not disrupt the dramatic unity of the play (if it really makes sense to apply such categories to a Greek tragedy), but actually constitutes it. The complex network of motifs – Heracles‟ evergetic role, his divine parentage, his dependence or independence with regard to the τύχη that governs other mortals, his ability to impose himself on the τύχη of his feeble and helpless φίλοι to defend them against evil, his individualistic fighting style which may be related to this lack of dependence on τύχη – takes on a new meaning in the light of the catastrophe. Both its significance and the discussion between Heracles and Theseus can be understood only upon the bases that have been established in the first part of the play. One might even say that the unpredictable irruption of gods in the life of mortals is the theme of this tragedy. The dramatic means that Euripides uses to explain the meaning of the catastrophe is the discussion between Iris and Lyssa. The possible comparisons with the dialog in Prometheus Bound71 do not hide the essential fact that in Aeschylus‟ play the reasons for the punishment meted out to the enemy of Zeus were discussed, while here the subject is precisely the lack of a solid reason for Heracles‟ suffering. The hero suffers, not because of a conflict with Zeus, but because the protection of the supreme god is limited and shelters him from harm only insofar he is fulfilling a certain role72. This last point may be central to the interpretation of the whole tragedy. Hera‟s alleged wickedness is not so relevant73. The role of punishing the lovers and illegitimate sons of her husband is an integral part of her μῦθος, and is one of the modes in which the goddess of marriage appears as such74. Hera‟s attack against Hera71 72 73

74

Cf. MULLENS 1939, JOUAN 1970. Cf. BOND 1981 ad 841f. So in HEATH 1987a p. 108. In our opinion it is important to understand that the representation of divinity implicit in the goddess‟s “jealousy” was an everyday reality for the play‟s intended audience, and, at the same time, this representation was probably not the foundation of their religious life. BOND 1981 p. xxv n. 28: “Modern scholars are perhaps over-influenced by the liberal attitudes to adultery, bastardy, and revenge fashionable during the present century.”

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cles is not mere revenge, but a specific enactment of a pattern. But this does not mean that the torments inflicted by Hera are trivial; they fit in the modes of thought of a society in which family relationships structure social persona and behavior. Heracles‟ mere existence is an offense against Hera and the goddess partially restores her rights before Zeus through the torments that she inflicts upon him. Of course the fact that the insult represented by his very existence is not a voluntary one is irrelevant in this context. What is truly significant is the way that Euripides thematizes this role, which appears to depend on his treatment of Heracles as evergete in the dialog between Iris and Lyssa. In the course of this dialog Heracles is actually confirmed in this role, but immediately afterward it is asserted that Zeus‟ protection of his son was circumscribed to his Labors, that is, to the time needed to fulfill his mission. So Lyssa, who in this scene takes the role of a goddess favorable to Heracles75 (at least at a verbal level) confirms that Alcmene‟s son has accomplished the task that had previously (20) been called ἐξημερῶσαι γαῖαν (in 852, Lyssa uses the term ἐξημερώσας) and has restored the cult of the gods when it was threatened by impious men (852f.). She does not argue specifically for Heracles‟ divine parentage, but bases her assertions on attributing to Heracles a role that, broadly speaking at least, is the one attributed to him by Pindar and appears to have become firmly established by the fifth century BC. Iris‟ speech, which actually precedes Lyssa‟s, neither discusses the causes of Hera‟s enmity toward Heracles (as previously noted, this is a traditional theme) nor doubts his evergetic role, but underlines that Zeus‟ protection does not mean that Heracles can escape evil, or that he is not subject to the radically precarious nature of human existence. For all the time in which he was performing the Twelve Labors, the hero was protected against Hera‟s animadversion. Though it is not made explicit here, 20 related the 75

On Lyssa, see DUCHEMIN 1967. See also the brief, but interesting treatment of Lyssa and insanity in FRANZINO 1995 pp. 62f. Lyssa does not appear in it as a goddess who simply “directs” Heracles, but rather inhabits his body and possesses him. On the conventional character of the symptoms of madness, see again PADEL 1995.

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Twelve Labors with Heracles‟ evergetic role. Once the labors have been accomplished, Zeus‟ protection ceases and Hera may impose horrible suffering upon Alcmene‟s son. In two enigmatic verses (841f.), Iris justifies Heracles‟ suffering by saying that the gods “would be nothing” if mortal man did not suffer a punishment (842: μὴ δόντος δίκην). Probably it just means that total indemnity for Heracles would de facto do away with the necessary hierarchical relationship between gods and mortals76. The meaning of Heracles‟ madness is to be found in the two first episodes of the play, in which Amphitryon has contended that Heracles is not an ordinary mortal, and consequently is not constrained by the limitations imposed on ordinary mortals. Iris‟ speech, beyond merely factual questions – whether Heracles is actually the son of Zeus or not, and so on – has a very precise content: the fall from happiness to misery associated with the strict mortal condition, the precarious nature of human existence and its helplessness in front of the divine, also apply to Heracles. The proof of Heracles‟ helplessness and dependence is put forward with tragic irony: Megara had dressed her children in funeral garments as they were to be executed by Lycus, and Heracles, who as a warrior independent from τύχη was the theoretical hope for their salvation, now kills them as a victim of τύχη.77 Beyond the probability that this death should be considered a perversion of the sacrificial act78, the underlying narrative structure should be stressed: Heracles‟ survival and his return to the world of the living, and the salvation of his family, are also the cause of their deaths, and so the conceptual network that had been previously constituted around Heracles and the possibility of his return from the world of the dead is revealed as utterly mistaken: not because of its inner structure, but because of its failure when confronted with the reality of the relationship between gods and mortals.

76

77

78

SILK 1993 p. 133 goes further: “The combination of god and man is unstable and must be blown apart […]”. Later we will see that Heracles himself alludes to the catastrophe as a manifestation of τύχη. Cf. FOLEY 1985 p. 147-204.

3.8

A New Ethical Model

This reversal of Heracles‟ status allows the two heroes to engage in a discussion about the gods in which the tendencies previously found throughout Attic tragedy, and especially in Euripides, are brought to the fore: two characters who apparently have directly experienced the presence of gods (even leaving aside other stories about the same characters that the Athenian audience might know) argue about the dramatic action and the representation of divinity implicit in it, as if this representation were that of the ἀοιδῶν […] λόγοι, and not something they know through direct experience79. Neither character actually expounds a conception of godhead that might be immediately termed traditional80; rather they judge what we have called the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm from their respective points of view in a manner which, despite their differences, might converge at some point and justify in a complementary manner Heracles‟ final decision Theseus‟ position about the gods of the ἀοιδῶν […] λόγοι has two well-defined sides. On the one hand, he points to the unsurmountable distance between gods and mortals that deprives Heracles of the chance to protest against divine action. But the manner in which he presents this point of view is not entirely traditional. Theseus urges Heracles to uncover his face, as a mortal μίασμα cannot affect the gods81. This exhortation is consistent with the rest of Theseus‟ intervention: he will purify the hero, but at the same time insists that his body and the blood that stains it lack the power to communicate illness. They are not a pollution that should be avoided. Even if the actual understanding of the hypothetical μιάσματα generated by the diverse manners of crime in Euripides‟ Athens poses sever79

80

81

Heracles‟ cooperation in the fight against the Giants has been mentioned in the play. Theseus has descended to the Underworld, supposedly along with Peirithous, to kidnap Persephone; Heracles has fought against Cerberus, and presumably both of them have met Hades. See MASTRONARDE 2010 pp. 214f., for a parallelism between Theseus‟ argument here and the Nurse‟s in Hipp. 453-61. According to MASTRONARDE, both share “a sophistic tinge” (p. 214). On μίασμα, see PARKER 1983. See also PADEL 1992 pp. 172-5. See WEBSTER 1967 p. 25 about the possibility of an implicit quotation of Protagoras.

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al problems of interpretation, Theseus‟ attitude here is obviously not what we would expect in a poem. Theseus‟ second principle does not appear to be wholly consistent with the first. Heracles should not protest at his misfortune, because both gods and mortals, despite the great distance that separates them, are subject to τύχαι (1314f., 1321) and the gods themselves are ἡματηκότες (1319); they are consequently subject to ἁμαρτία82. Theseus puts forward two examples that seem to have their origins in what we might call the “Xenophanean” tradition: the gods commit adultery and put their own father in chains, an act that is termed as tyrannical (1317: διὰ τυραννίδα). Of course both “faults” might be considered allusions to Zeus himself. Theseus goes on in 1320f.: if Heracles is a mortal (and this emphasis on mortality should be borne in mind) and the gods themselves are subject to error, it would be absurd for the hero not to accept his own guilt and suffering. Interestingly, Theseus reverses the terms of the initial debate: there, the submission to τύχη appeared as characteristic of mortal existence and Heracles‟ freedom from τύχη could be implicitly understood as a condition that brought him close to the gods83. Theseus bases his assertions on poetic tradition, on ἀοιδῶν […] λόγοι (1315). The Athenian hero considers the poetic representations of gods as a whole and applies to them a criterion that may not have had a strict equivalent in the contemporary debate: he takes the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm for the representation of the gods as if it strictly reflected reality, and at the same time applies to it criticisms that probably have their roots in conceptions that might be related to Xenophanes and Antiphon84, or to analogous 82

83 84

The terms belonging to the lexical field of ἁμαρτία do not make a precise distinction between “moral fault” and “mistake”. See BREMER 1969 and STINTON 1975. The various “meanings” of the Greek term give us an idea of the difficulties posed by their translation, and the lack of differentiation between “offense” and “error” which underlies the association between ignorance and moral evil, and inability to act correctly. Thus Theseus can establish an isotopy between Heracles‟ sufferings and the evil actions of the gods. Cf. DE ROMILLY 2003 p. 289. See Xenophanes DK 21 B 23: εἷς θεός, ἕν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρωποῖσι μέγιστος, / οὔτι δέμας θνητοῖσιν ὁμοίιος οὐδὲ νόημα (Cf. YUNIS 1988 pp. 163f. n. 46 about of the dubious character of this source) and esp. Antiphon DK 87 B 10: Suidi ἀδέητος· ὁ μηδενὸς δεόμενος καὶ πάντα ἔχων. Ἀντιφῶν ἐν α Ἀληθείας· διὰ

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forms of discourse. Consequently, the conduct of the gods is judged with the same norms as those applied to mortal behavior, and at the same time declared free of judgment, because obviously the gods could not actually be judged by mortals. The relationship with the gods is itself marked by τύχη, by the impossibility of stopping the changes in fortune that prevent human life from developing on solid ground. We cannot know if Theseus‟ statement is the scenic presentation of a “theology” that might have been taken seriously in Athens at the end of the fifth century BC, or rather a deliberate reduction ad absurdum of the representations of gods in the Homeric-Hesiodic tradition. Heracles responds with a general statement about the nature of the gods (1340-6): οἴμοι· πάρεργα τάδ‟ ἔστ‟ ἐμῶν κακῶν· ἐγὼ δὲ τοὺς θεοὺς οὔτε λέκτρ‟ ἃ μὴ θέμις στέργειν νομίζω δεσμά τ‟ ἐξάπτειν χεροῖν οὔτ‟ ἠξίωσα πώποτ‟ οὔτε πείσομαι οὐδ‟ ἄλλον ἄλλου δεσπότην πεφυκέναι. δεῖται γὰρ ὁ θεός, εἴπερ ἔστ‟ ὀρθῶς θεός, οὐδενός· ἀοιδῶν οἵδε δύστηνοι λόγοι. Heracles apparently proposes a notion of godhead that is alien to the Homeric-Hesiodic paradigm and actually incompatible with the tale being staged. According to this notion, the gods are selfsufficient85, and their actions must be moral. These verses were greatly appreciated by the later Stoic tradition that took Heracles as a model for virtue. They are among the most important passages for the debate between “traditionalist” and “rationalist” readings of Euripidean tragedy.

85

τοῦτο οὐδενὸς δεῖται οὐδὲ προσδέχεται οὐδενὸς τι, ἀλλ‟ ἄπειρος καὶ ἀδέητος. See WILAMOWITZ [1895] 1959 3.271. ROHDICH 1968 pp. 94f. interprets these verses in a different way: Heracles points to the fact that mortals do not need the gods either. This interpretation is at the very least consistent: the “better” gods posited by Heracles in 1340-6 are never mentioned again in the play, as if they were irrelevant. SILK 1993 interprets Heracles‟ stance as a renunciation not only of the anthropomorphic gods, but also of the hero‟s own godly character.

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Their interpretation has been heatedly discussed86; some scholars have tried to minimize their importance by considering them a mere expression of Heracles desperation87, or by explaining them away using procedures that we would rather consider sophistic in the modern sense of this word88. But again, it is hardly believable that a poet would introduce such a discourse in a play addressed to a wide audience under the presupposition that that audience would simply explain it away as “the rants of a madman”. In our opinion, the truth lies elsewhere. These verses were probably conceived, not as an expression of an individual‟s mental state, but as a pious discourse that presents a serious conception of godhead. The public assertion of that notion of godhead might be considered a fundamentally pious act, and its incompatibility with the story being staged would not be problematic for an audience that at least formally should be considered a religious one, but does not feel bound by a univocal representation of gods. It complements the previous statements by Theseus: Heracles is definitely a mortal, and the unsurpassable gulf between gods and mortals cannot be crossed. But the gods that are “on the other side” should not be described as ἡματηκότες, but as morally superior to mortal men. This speech act might be conceptually related to the ethical choices that Heracles will assume from now on, but does not es86

87

88

Cf. GRUBE 1941 p. 58, BURNETT 1971, BROWN 1978, MICHELINI 1987, pp. 272-6, 275 n. 194, YUNIS 1988, pp. 155-69, GREGORY 1991 141-9, 153 n. 51 EGLI 2003 pp. 122-4, SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003 pp. 372f., PAPADOPOULOU 2005 pp. 85f., 97, 176. Also WILAMOWITZ-MOELLENDORFF Ed. [1895] 1959, BOND Ed. 1981, BARLOW Ed. 1996 ad loc. Notably SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003, who in this case (in our opinion at least) somewhat forces the text to make it fit into her understanding of Greek tragedy. She does not go much further than BOND 1981 ad loc.: the necessity of dramatic coherence – which BOND does not question – might explain these words as a mere expression of the character‟s desperation. But from BOND‟s point of view that does not mean that they do not express Euripides‟ real viewpoint. PAPADOPOULOU 2005 p. 88 suggests that Heracles‟ words might be understood as an answer to Theseus‟ affirmation that the gods commit adultery with each other. So the adultery between Zeus and Alcmene – the latter being a mortal woman – would not be included in that category and would not interfere with the new representation of divinity conceived by Heracles. We believe that this stretches excessively the manipulation of the discourse to guarantee narrative coherence.

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tablish new facts in the world of drama. Rather the opposite: later, Heracles will again refer to Hera as a goddess who has made him suffer (1393). The mode of enunciation of these verses is definitely non-realistic. After his speech about the gods, Heracles reintroduces the motif of τύχη. He defines his new status in 1357 as a necessity to submit to τύχη, while in 1393 he explicitly says that it has been Hera who has afflicted him through τύχη, which appears here as an instrument. Obviously the repetition of this term in key passages is no accident. It is not impossible to talk about an allegorization of Hera, from the viewpoint of the audience but also of the main character, again without any aspiration to realism89: her intervention through Iris and Lyssa might be seen as a representation of the irruption of τύχη that puts an end to the persona that Heracles had assumed in the first episodes of the play. This is also reflected in 1264f., where Heracles says that he considers Amphitryon his true father. As in the rest of the play, we do not think it is really necessary to ask for the “true facts”, either through the information provided by the text itself (which clearly does not provide an answer) or through the assumptions shared by the poet and his audience90; rather it is another discursive strategy used to underline the strictly mortal character of the hero, and his immersion in the precariousness in which the rest of mortals live. Heracles‟ renunciation of suicide establishes a new ethical paradigm that supersedes his previous representation as an evergetic hero, and at the same time preserves evergetism in a new form that brings him closer to his later representation in the Cynic-Stoic

89

90

Hera has been interpreted as a merely allegorical creature in KITTO [1939] 1961 pp. 244-7, ARROWSMITH 1954, CHALK 1962 p. 16. We do not agree with YUNIS 1988 pp. 145f., who interprets the reactions of the various characters precisely as different viewpoints about the factual truth of Heracles‟ birth. As in 1340-6, the attempts to fit all the data enunciated by the character into a fully coherent “world of play” will only lead us to ever more subtleties that do not really contribute to the comprehension of the tragic genre.

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tradition91. A characterization of this new model is not easy92, but it is possible to interpret this tragedy as a moral allegory, and even to establish a certain parallelism with Prodicus‟ fable. In both narrative forms, the hero confronts in non-realistic terms the option between a good life and an evil one, and he confirms himself as a paradigm of virtue by taking the right decision. The terms in which Heracles renounces suicide might seem trivial on the first reading: the hero does not take his own life so as to avoid being branded as a coward. The links between this affirmation, the earlier speech in which he has formulated a “purer” conception of divinity and his later agreeing to travel to Athens may seem extremely weak. But nonetheless it is possible to find a global conception that governs the structure of 1340-93. Here as in other cases the text is supported by a solid conceptual structure, and at the same time is organized according to notions of textual cohesion and coherence which, from a modern point of view, might seem rather lax. Heracles‟ decision should be examined against the backdrop of the previous conceptual articulation: the transformation in his heroic status implies an unbridgeable distance between him and the gods. Heracles does not accept the traditional language of poetry as a means to explain this unbridgeable distance, but the distance itself is not eliminated. After the catastrophe, both the audience and Heracles have understood that he is subject to τύχη, and so Zeus no longer protects his son. The idea of divine justice centered upon the φιλία that was implied in Zeus‟ supposedly unconditional protection is thus destroyed. Heracles‟ acceptance of his new condition as a mortal subject to the vagaries of fortune (associated in the first two episodes of the play with the condition of mere mortals) implies in turn not the 91

92

An interesting analysis in YOSHITAKE 1994. Cf. CHALK 1962 and his criticism in ADKINS 1966, 209f. The latter virtually denies that there is a transformation in the hero‟s ethical standards. Cf. ARROWSMITH 1954, according to which Heracles‟ transformation does not invalidate the previous ethical model, but superimposes on it a new one that is understood as more appropriate in Euripides‟ time. We agree that the play does not discuss actual role models, but rather modalities of ethical discourse embodied in characters which, in the broadest sense at least, might be called allegorical.

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forsaking of the hero‟s evergetic role as represented by his past deeds, but rather its redefinition. This redefinition is closely tied to his earlier speech about the gods, and to the lack of a comprehensible relation between the gods and the catastrophe. The hypothesis adopted by Theseus – that the “gods of the poets” actually exist and live in ἁμαρτία – has been rejected, and an exalted conception of gods that does not offer a true answer to the misery of human condition has been put in its place. As a consequence, Heracles now speaks of the acceptance of the sorrows of mortal life and their incorporation in a heroic persona that is still closely related to his evergetic role. Here the parallelisms between this representation of Heracles and the one that appears in Prodicus‟ fable are more obvious. “Heracles” is an object of cult, but, at the same time, the character who, by the second half of the fifth century BC, can also be taken as a paradigm of virtue. In both cases he is given the option of accepting an evergetic role that is marked by suffering; it is essentially the ascetic model that the Cynic-Stoic tradition will develop later. In Prodicus, Heracles must simply choose between assuming this role or not. In Euripides he appears at the beginning as the bearer of an evergetic role that apparently does not entail suffering, and when confronted with the limitations of that model he has to decide whether simply to surrender it through suicide or to take it further through the acceptance of mortal misery as an inseparable part of his virtue. The integration between the evergetic role that is not abandoned and the suffering that will accompany it henceforth is made explicit through the decision to keep his weapons and implicitly his bow (1377-85), a weapon which has an obvious symbolic value in this play93. The bow represented Heracles‟ non-cooperative fighting style in the previous speech by Amphitryon and his independence from the limitations that afflict mortal people, and it is no coincidence that this self-same bow has been used as a tool for the killing, and hence for showing the submission to τύχη that now redefines the hero. As a consequence of the dual value that the 93

Cf. again HAMILTON 1985. An interesting suggestion in WYLES 2013 pp. 182-5: Heracles should keep his weapons in order to preserve his own scenic identity.

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weapon has acquired in the play, the decision to keep it is charged with significance. Then Theseus enacts an etiologic gesture which, in a sense, ignores the ulterior events in the “biography” of the main character. Though it does not flatly contradict other versions of Heracles‟ “life”, a decontextualized reading would suggest that the journey to Athens is the end of Heracles‟ adventures. Theseus will purify him and will grant him certain τεμένη that will be a part of his future cult (1326-38). The apotheosis of the hero is not mentioned – apparently Theseus presupposes that Heracles will die (1331) – nor is it necessary to know how Theseus, without any indication that he is predicting the future, could announce that Heracles will be revered in the τεμένη when both heroes are dead. Once more it is a speech act based upon the knowledge of the world shared not by the characters in the play, but by the poet and his audience. What seems more important is the attempt to link the acceptance of submission to τύχη with Theseus‟ friendship and the integration in the Athenian polis. This new conceptual system has both an ethical and a political reading, as it implies the establishment of φιλία links that entail reciprocity, not just dependence, and at the same time the effective enactment of such links in the polis par excellence which in Attic tragedy is, of course, Athens. Its sense is aptly represented by the repetition of the naval metaphor: previously the children appeared as dependent on Heracles, and now, after a new turn, it is Heracles himself who has been made dependent. The recurrence of this metaphor shows at the same time the precariousness of Heracles‟ evergetic role – with the implicit allusion to his failure to save his family – and the support that it will now receive from the Athenian polis and his friendship with Theseus, obviously marked by reciprocity, as they have both saved each other. The analogy is reinforced when Heracles presents himself as a child (1401). In pointing to a higher ethical idea embodied by the Athenian polis and its king, and indirectly to the criticism of the Homeric-Hesiodic representation of gods which is related to the constitution of this idea, the outcome of this play also gives a hint of the meaning of the whole tragic action94. 94

The double use of θάνατον in 581 and in the famous 1351 should be taken into consideration. Leaving aside the syntactic complications of the latter verse,

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Beyond the hypothesis that relates this play to historical events like the Peace of Nicias95 and the reform of the Theseion96 (worth considering, but at the same time impossible to prove or disprove), Heracles‟ incorporation into Athens is relevant from a structural viewpoint. One of the themes in the first two episodes of the play was the existence of a number of Heracles‟ φίλοι who were unable to fight evil by themselves. At the end of the tragedy this is reversed; and it is of course significant that the reversal takes place in the royal character who in tragedy usually represents democratic Athens97. Heracles‟ evergetic role is fully accomplished through the recognition of his own precariousness and his integration in the human community par excellence that is Athens. Before the catastrophe, a Heracles who was ultimately alien to the polis fought against a perverted version of it. Now the hero‟s full assumption of his mortal condition takes the form of his integration in a nonperverted, virtuous polis. This integration is explicitly related to the necessity of reciprocal ties between human beings. Only the direct protection of gods would make them unnecessary. This notion is condensed in the verses 1338f.: [θεοὶ δ‟ ὅταν τιμῶσιν οὐδὲν δεῖ φίλων· ἅλις γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ὠφελῶν ὅταν θέληι.] Even if these lines are actually an interpolation98, we understand that they respond to the content of the whole play: the establishment of collective life is necessary for mortals. The apparent banality of these verses is offset by the con-

95 96 97

98

the repetition of the term might be considered as an additional means (in a tragedy that is remarkable for its use of verbal echoes) to establish a continuity, and simultaneously a contrast between the Heracles who aspires to save his children, and the one who, after murdering them, accepts his new situation. See the case for accepting the wording of the manuscripts in GIBERT 1997b. See also BREMER 1972. See AVEZZÙ 2003 p. 189. Cf. THOMPSON 1966 p. 47. BRADEN 1993 p. 246 is right to compare this Heracles with the Sophoclean Oedipus: both heroes are caught in a μίασμα and go to Athens to be included in one way or another in the political community. From a very different viewpoint, MATTHIESEN 2002 p. 145 contrasts this Heracles with the Sophoclean heroes (esp. Aias) who according to MATTHIESEN are usually alone in their suffering. BARLOW 1996 ad loc.: “These clichés are inappropriate to the speech as a whole and Nauck rightly deleted them.”

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text in which they are spoken, in a play which in our opinion thematizes the notion of τύχη and of the submission of mortals to its vagaries, and points to the constitution of an ethical model that is founded upon this precarious condition. It does not negate the existence of gods or their cult, but takes them to another level.

4

Second Exemplification: Hippolytus

4.1

Hippolytus and Cult

The presence of metapoetic discourse in Hippolytus is far less obvious than in Heracles. There are no utterances in the play which, by themselves, might be classified as such. But in our opinion it is also a tragedy that reflects indirectly on the material being staged. Its plot structure is, at one level, a variation on the famous theme of Potiphar1, and at another a version of the heroization of a mortal through his destruction at the hands of a god2. We know next to nothing about the original form of the Hippolytus tale. It seems that the three Attic tragedies3 that dealt with this subject in a relatively short time span followed the same basic plot. In any case the character has its roots in two Athenian cults (and also in a Spartan cult, though it is probable that the latter had very little influence, if any, on Euripides‟ tragedy4). 1

2

3

4

An old, but very valuable work about the mythic and religious background of Hippolytus: FAUTH 1958. See also TSCHIEDEL 1969 pp. 9-21 for variations on the Potiphar theme. The various aspects of this pattern have been interpreted in many different ways. See BRELICH 1958 pp. 80-90 on the death of heroes in general, and on its necessity. More specifically: NAGY 1979 and LYONS 1996 Ch. 3. NAGY 2007a p. 34: “In the logic of myth […] a hero‟s identity at the moment of death can merge with a god‟s identity. In the logic of ritual, on the other hand, such a merger of identity leads only to a stylized death”, NAGY 1979 p. 295: “The requirement of the hero‟s death, however, is dictated not so much by the narrative traditions of epic but by the ritual traditions of cult. Death is fundamental to the essence of hero in cult”. NAGY takes as a model Neoptolemus and Apollo, and also Aesop and Apollo. See also NAGY 1979 pp. 289f. about the friendship between Apollo and the Muses. Obviously the two Euripidean Hippolytus and the Phaedra by Sophocles. About the reconstruction of the first Hippolytus see: LUPPE 1994, GIBERT 1997a, VAN ROSSUM-STEENBEEK 1998, JOUAN / VAN LOOY 2000 pp. 235-8, LUPPE 2003, MAGNANI 2003, MAGNANI 2004, HUTCHINSON 2004, ZWIERLEIN 2006. Also relevant: BARRETT 1964 pp. 30-45, DEVEREUX 1985 p. 4, GRIFFIN 1990, ROISMAN 1999, pp. 9f. About both the first Hippolytus and the Sophoclean Phaedra see KISO 1973, LEY 1986 and again ZWIERLEIN 2006. The Spartan cult is mentioned in Paus. 3.12.9. BARRETT 1964 p. 3 n. 2 doubts that it might be the same character.

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The relation of Euripides‟ Hippolytus with cult is special, firstly because the tragic poet deals with a specifically Athenian cult (leaving aside the Spartan cult which, as we said, probably had little to do with the genesis of this tragedy) and secondly because the organization of the plot is related to the organization of the Attic cults: the play presents not one etiological act but two, seemingly to reconcile two apparently incompatible traditions5. One of the etiologies corresponds to the cult of Hippolytus in the Attic town of Troezen. It is instituted by the dea ex machina and is extremely important in the unfolding of the dramatic action. The other one refers to the cult of Hippolytus in Athens. It is just narrated by Aphrodite in the prolog in a way that underlines that the place of cult is dedicated to the goddess6. On the slope of the Acropolis there was indeed a temple of Aphrodite, which included a mnema of the hero. Pausanias writes about this temple in 1.22.1, and places it in front of another one dedicated to Themis and near a sanctuary to Asclepius. Certain inscriptions also confirm its existence: IG2 324.69 and 310.280, where we read, respectively, Ἀφροδίτες ἐν hιππολ[υτείοι … / Ἀρ]τέμι[δος … ] and [Ἀφροδ]ίτες ἐ[πὶ Ἱπ]πολύτο, in a formulation that closely resembles the name of the temple of Aphrodite given in our tragedy. They are dated later than the Hippolytus, and it has been thought that they may have been influenced by the tragedy. The tragedy does not mention the mnema as such, so it seems unlikely that it was built simply as a response to it. Other testimonia on this cult are to be found in the scholium to Hipp. 30, which says that the Aphrodite worshiped ἐφ‟ Ἱππολύτῳ was also known as Ἱππολυτία, and the scholium to Od. 11.320 in which a sanctuary which is probably the same one receives the name of Hippolyteion. The scholium to 30 apparently tries to relate 5

6

Cf. DUNN 1992, also DUNN 1996 pp. 91-7. Though undeniably interesting and valuable, we cannot agree with DUNN‟S interpretation of Hippolytus. In 1996 pp. 98-100 he uses the probably superseded hypothesis of the scandal provoked by the first Hippolytus to give an ironic sense to the outcome – or, as DUNN says, the lack of an outcome – of the play. See SOURVINOU-INWOOD 2003 pp. 414-22. See also WILLINK 1999. Attempts have been made to athetize what we might call the indirect etiological act in the prolog – see WILSON 1968 and LOOY 1971. BARRETT 1964 ad loc. defends its authenticity, as does ERBSE 1984 pp. 36f.

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the two cults of Hippolytus to each other by reminding us that Troezen could be seen from the temple of Aphrodite Hippolytia. We do not know whether this remark was based upon direct observation, or was deduced from the Euripidean tragedy itself. We know far more about the Troezenian cult. Our information comes mainly from Pausanias (2.32.1-4), and it is very difficult to know how far the data this author provides can also be applied to the times of the Archidamian War. It was a cult of some importance, at least for the village of Troezen. Hippolytus had a τέμενος, the foundation of which was attributed to Diomedes. The τέμενος contained some buildings associated with the story narrated in this play, including a temple to Aphrodite Kataskopia, from where Phaedra had supposedly spied on Hippolytus while the young man rode his horses; a small stadium adjacent to this temple, where Hippolytus had apparently trained, a tomb of Phaedra and a mnema of Hippolytus. There was also a temple to Apollon Epibaterion, whose foundation was also attributed to Diomedes; a sanctuary of the two goddesses Damia and Auxesia, also worshiped in Epidaurus and Aegina; a statue that the Troezenians considered to be a representation of Hippolytus, but according to Pausanias was an Asclepius by Timotheus. Of course we cannot know if Pausanias was right, but in any case the famous traveler seems to point to a presence of the cult of Asclepius in the Troezenian sanctuary, perhaps relating it implicitly to the ancient version of the story of Hippolytus in which the hero was resurrected after death by the demi-god7. There was a lifelong sacerdotal post, and annual sacrifices were held. According to Pausanias, the Troezenians knew where the tomb of Hippolytus was, but kept it a secret; they would not accept that the hero was dead, and identified him with the Charioteer constellation. We cannot tell if Troezenians actually believed that Hippolytus was not dead (Pausanias, for reasons unknown, either does not believe them or pretends not to believe them) or if there was somewhere a tradition of a secret tomb. The presence of

7

According to Apollod. 3.10.3, Asclepius‟ raising of Hippolytus from the dead was narrated in Naupactia. See also Eratosth. Cat. 6; Phld. Piet. 52. Cf. BARRETT 1964 p. 5 n. 4.

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a mnema in the τέμενος of Hippolytos seems to point to the second possibility. There were other elements related to Hippolytus outside the τέμενος, but still in the village of Troezen: the house where he had lived, the tree that had occasioned his death and a temple to Artemis Lycaea in the Troezenian agora, allegedly established by Hippolytus himself. The three elements can be associated with the tale narrated in the tragedy. Euripides (Hipp. 1423-30), and also Pausanias8 and Lucian of Samosata9 attest to the existence of a certain ritual in which the maidens offered their hair and sang dirges in honor of Hippolytus before marrying10. There are similar rituals in other parts of the Greek world, in which tresses are offered to a

8 9 10

Paus. 2.32.2. See the previously mentioned synthesis in BARRETT 1964 pp. 3-6. Syr. D. 60. Cf. LIGHTFOOT 2003, esp. pp. 531-6. SCULLION 2000 p. 225 questions whether the maidens actually offered their hair to Hippolytus, as a part of a general argument to show that the cultic etiologies of tragedies usually refer either to non-existent cults or to cults that in real life are very different from those depicted on stage. His main points are: 1) All the gods and heroes to whom the maidens offered their hair in ancient Greece (with the exception of Hippolytus) are female. 2) Lucian and Pausanias are not reliable sources, as most probably they merely repeat Euripides. SCULLION‟s argument here does not seem particularly strong. We know of only a few cults in which the maidens offered their hair before marrying; they are presided over by different goddesses, and in any case are too few in number to allow for generalization. As for the sources, we can disregard Lucian, as he obviously parodies the Euripidean text. But it is less clear that we might ignore Pausanias, and SCULLION does not state a convincing argument for doing so. The consensus seems to be quite favorable to Pausanias as a reliable witness. HUTTON 2005 p. 67 considers that parts of the Pausanian periegesis are probably based upon secondary sources, but the sections that he sees as suspect are not in Books 1 and 2. Though he notes that the descriptions of Troezen do not follow a regular order and have some unusual features (see HUTTON 2005 pp. 111f.), he does not doubt that Pausanias had reliable information about that area. On the other hand, the depiction of Hippolytus‟ cult and the allusions to his μῦθος that are to be found in Pausanias contain many elements that lack any direct or indirect correlate in tragedy: Asclepius, the catasterism of Hippolytus, the temple of Artemis Lycaea, and so on. It is clear that he knew of the places of Hippolytus cult through sources other than Euripides‟ tragedy, and there is no need to think that he used Euripides exclusively in order to describe the ritual.

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heroine or goddess. The heroines are Iphinoe in Megara11, and Hekaerge and Opis (the Hyperborean maidens) in Delos12. In both cases the heroines are connected to Artemis13, so it is possible to establish a certain parallelism with Hippolytus. Similar offers were presented to Athena in Argos14 and, possibly, to Hera, Artemis and the Moirae in Athens15. There is a question that we cannot conclusively answer (regrettably, since knowing the right answer would help us greatly in the interpretation of this tragedy): we do not know if the Hippolytus worshiped in the fifth century BC in Troezen was a hero in the strict sense of the word, or rather a mortal who, presumably after having been resurrected by Asclepius16, experienced some kind of apotheosis17. Though recent literature tends to play down the distinction between hero and minor god, especially in Pre-Hellenistic Greece18, the problem persists and may affect our comprehension of the play: we do not know if the original audience of this tragedy thought that Asclepius would resurrect Hippolytus shortly afterward, or how this knowledge might have affected its perception of the play.

11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

Cf. Paus. 1.43.4. It is explicitly said that Iphinoe died a virgin, like Hippolytus. Cf. Paus. 1.43.4 and 5.7.7. Cf. FARNELL 1921, 2, „Artemis‟, R. 79a. Cf. Stat. Theb. 2.253f. Poll. 3.38. FAUTH 1958 p. 13: Der sterbende Gott von Troizen bedurfte nicht der fachkundigen Hilfe eines himmlischen Arztes, um wiederaufzuleben. FAUTH‟s conception of a “sterbender Gott” has probably been superseded, but in any case the possibility that a local god was related to Panhellenic myth through the intervention of a character like Asclepius remains open. See FARNELL 1921 pp. 64-70, esp. p. 65. Cf. EKROTH 2002, also 2007 pp. 106f.

4.2

The ὁμιλία of Man and Goddess

The central character of this tragedy has some traits that mark him as exceptional among the mortals. It is impossible to establish how far they proceed from pre-Euripidean sources, but they have a deep influence on his later evolution. His privileged relationship with Artemis does not follow the usual models19. It is not sexual; nor is it the relationship of favor and protection which is typical of epic, and which reappears in tragedy among other genres20. It works in at least three different planes: a) Hippolytus has frequent meetings with the goddess without seeing her.

19

20

A classical interpretation of this form of personal devotion as religious innovation in FESTUGIÈRE 1954. MIKALSON 1991 p. 45 understands that Hippolytus belongs to a new kind of cult hero which began to take shape in the Classical period: “The old-style hero, full of wrath and vengeance, a terror to be assuaged, became essentially civilized. The Hippolytus of both Hippolytus plays is more the fifth-century, new-style hero, no longer wrathful, no longer a warrior. Rhesos in turn represents the divinized man as he came to be viewed in the Hellenistic period.” It must be said that he also adds: “Given the scanty evidence available, this proposed development of Athenian hero cult is hypothetical, but, correct or not, the state heroes created for the Athenians in fifth-century tragedy appear much more fearful, malignant and dread-inspiring than those whose cult the Athenians actually practised.” This understanding of the Hippolytus character presupposes an evolutionist conception of Greek religion that may be correct, but, as the author himself admits, cannot be supported by texts. Nonetheless we agree in his consideration of Hippolytus as a character whose religious significance is not the same as in other, more typical heroes. He gives an interpretation of Hippolytus in pp. 144-7 that is curiously close to SOURVINOUINWOOD 2003, despite the latter‟s criticisms of MIKALSON. Cf. ibid. pp. 5f. Cf. SEAFORD 1994 Ch. 4 for a view that integrates Hippolytus with other tragic etiologies. See also WILDBERG 2000, and 2002 Ch. 5 and passim, on the notion of hyperesia, and on the author‟s use of this notion to explain the relationship between Hippolytus and Artemis. The other obvious term for comparison would be the interventions of divinities in the Homeric poems, and especially Athena in the Odyssey. But the Homeric poems show a “world of gods” and a “world of men” as two separate spheres (with gray areas like the relationship between Achilles and his mother Thetis) and the manifestations of gods before mortals have a specific purpose. Here we have a friendship between mortal and goddess without any stated goal.

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b) Hippolytus imitates the goddess‟ behavior: he hunts with her in the mountains and avoids sex. The play depicts his chastity in terms that might allude to both ritual and moral purity, with unequivocally positive connotations21. c) Hippolytus worships Artemis with special fervor and considers himself worthy to worship her due to his own chastity. It is obvious that the traits that distinguish Hippolytus in this play do not correspond to the models of piety that were usual in Archaic and Classical Greece. Unfortunately we do not know how far they are based upon the pre-Euripidean character, and how far they are innovations. It has been frequently considered that young Hippolytus‟ behavior, as it appears in this tragedy, would be shocking to a Greek of the time of Euripides22, in which it was conceivable for a polis to punish celibacy23. Therefore it has been frequent to interpret Hippolytus‟ way of life as a manifestation of ὕβρις which includes at the same time the exclusive cult of a divinity and the rejection of a fundamental element of human existence24. In some modern authors Hippolytus‟ 21

22

23 24

About abstinence of sexual pleasure and ἁγνεία see FEHRLE 1910. See MACÍAS 2009 pp. 1205-07. She adduces – correctly, in our opinion – Alexander Polyhistor apud D. L. 8.33 as a proof of the importance of celibacy in Orphism, and Ìambl. Protr. 38.17 for the Pythagoreans. She remits us to the useful LINFORTH 1941 p. 58 and LUCAS 1946 p. 67. See also CASADIO 1990. Hippolytus has been very often painted as an unsympathetic character. So for example WILAMOWITZ Ed. 1891 p. 51: “Das wesen des Hippolytos lässt sich auf griechisch mit einem wort bezeichnen: er ist ἀνεπαφρόδιτον. Aphrodite ist für ihn der teufel, nicht weil er das so gelernt hat, sondern weil das in seiner natur liegt : ihm geht alles aphrodisische ab. das gilt keinesweges bloss von seiner keuschheit an leib und seele ; Aphrodite verleiht dem menschen ja auch liebenswürdigkeit, innerliche und äusserliche. die fehlt dem Hippolytos ganz und gar.” See also pp. 221f. About the allegedly “abnormal” character of Hippolytus‟ chastity see also CONACHER 1967 pp. 27-46, TSCHIEDEL 1969 p. 237. See Poll. 3.48, 8.40, and also Plu. Lys. 30.7, Lyc. 15.1, Stob. 67.16 MEINEKE. WILDBERG 2002 p. 131: “Doch Hippolytos hatte einen schweren tragischen Fehler begangen, denn die Einseitigkeit seiner Hyperesie wurde zur Hybris. Aus seinem Götterkanon war die Liebesgöttin kategorisch ausgeschlossen. Dabei ist der Fehler eine unausweichliche und tragische Konsequenz seiner Tugend: Hippolytos wäre nicht das menschliche simulacrum der Artemis gewesen, wenn er gleichzeitig auch einen Sinn für die Werke der Aphrodite besessen hätte.” This is basically correct, although at the same time the term “Fehler” is unconvincing. Undoubtedly his rejection of Aphrodite‟s cult could be termed a “Fehler” from the viewpoint of

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one-dimensionality acquires an existential or political nature; he appears as a youth possessed by arrogance, as an adolescent who does not want to assume the responsibilities of adult life25 (though this idea is surely much more modern than Greek) and/or as an outsider who distances himself from the practices that are usual in the polis – among them, par excellence, marriage and procreation26. It must be said that 953f. might reinforce this idea. Underlying these interpretations is the idea that Hippolytus has chosen an inappropriate way of life, and that his rejection of Aphrodite is just another manifestation of this. Perhaps all these attempts at interpretation share a common root: the requirement, of an Aristotelian stamp, to find a fault in Hippolytus‟ ethos that might justify his death. There are good reasons for not applying this interpretive principle to many of the catastrophes in Greek tragedy. To begin with, the construction of tragic structure in Aristotle is a post factum, an analysis of the dramatic structures of the plays he knew in order to find patterns for a “good” tragedy, but not a model that can be equally applied to all the extant works27. Secondly, it remains to be proved that such ἁμαρτία should be understood as a moral fault in the modern sense28. In the tragedy itself there is no reference to a “shortcoming” in Hippolytus‟ character. Rather the opposite, in fact: he

25

26 27

28

Aphrodite herself; however Hippolytus‟ θεομαχία is not a “sin” in a moral system constructed in an unequivocal manner, but the consequence of a moral position which in this tragedy is at the same time a mark of superiority, and problematic. So ZEITLIN 1996 p. 231: “Hippolytos had refused to cross the boundary between child and adult, thereby also transgressing the line of temporality that divides human from divine.” EBBOTT 2003 pp. 85-111 links Hippolytus‟ way of life with his bastardy. It is an interesting suggestion, but we tend to agree with BARRETT 1964 ad 1083: bastardy does not seem to play an important role in this tragedy. See EASTERLING 1997b about the complex relationship between the tragic “world of drama” and the social structures of the real world. ZEITLIN 1985 p. 56 systematizes Hippolytus‟ behavior as rejection of the Other. We have referred above to BAGORDO 1998. This work gives an idea of the kind of writing about tragedy that had been usual in the fifth century BC, and shows that the theorizations by Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century took things to another level. Cf. SAÏD 1978.

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is explicitly called by Artemis a σώφρων (1402), a term which usually has unequivocally positive connotations29. The very few texts that might tell us something about the reception of this tragedy do not point to a condemnation of the character, or, at least, do not refer to Hippolytus‟ way of life as errant. So for example in Xenophon Cyn. 1.2.1130. Σ: Ἱππόλυτος δὲ ὑπὸ μὲν τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἐτιμᾶτο καὶ ἐν λόγοις ἦν, σωφροσύνῃ δὲ καὶ ὁσιότητι μακαρισθεὶς ἐτελεύτησε. Α: Ἱππόλυτος δὲ ὑπὸ μὲν Ἀρτέμιδος ἐτιμᾶτο καὶ ἐν λόγοις συνῆν, σωφροσύνῃ δὲ καὶ αὐτὸς μακαρισθεὶς ἐτελεύτησε. This text might be dependent on Euripides, as it reproduces the idea of a Hippolytus that converses with Artemis, and possibly there is a reminiscence of the Euripidean παρθένωι ξυνὼν αεὶ (17), σοὶ καὶ ξύνειμι καὶ λόγοις ἀμείβομαι (85) in ἐν λόγοις συνῆν (mss. A). The ὁμιλία with the goddess appears here, not only in unequivocally positive terms, but also associated with the sacred (ὁσιότης) and with the moral quality repeatedly referred to in Hippolytus (σώφρων31). The validity of this passage as a guide in the interpretation of the Hippolytus is not beyond dispute, but it should be taken into account nonetheless. Xenophon belongs to the last generation that, in their childhood at least, had the chance to attend the first representations of Euripidean tragedies. It is rather unlikely that he left 29

30

31

An extreme view about Hippolytus‟ innocence is to be found in DIMOCK 1977 p. 247: “Hippolytus‟ flaw, then, is essentially that he is too good.” We quote according to DELEBECQUE. The editor gives separately the text of manuscript A, and the other one that is based upon the rest of the manuscripts, and called S, because he considers that the two versions cannot be reduced to a single archetype. Cf. NORDEN [1915] 1974 pp. 431-4 on the manuscripts of this work. The nominalized verbal form τὸ σωφρονεῖν is used in this play as a substitute to σωφροσύνη, probably for metric reasons. We will use them as equivalent. See BARRETT 1964 p. 172f. Ad 79-81. About the general notion of σωφροσύνη see NORTH 1966.

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aside an understanding of Hippolytus‟ behavior as shocking or inappropriate, if it had been obvious to the intended, contemporary audience. The scholia also transmit an unequivocally positive vision of Hippolytus‟ chastity and try to separate it from the ἁμαρτία that will lead him to catastrophe. As they probably come from a much later tradition, and were undoubtedly written much later, they are not a reliable source for the perspective of the intended audience of the play; nonetheless we also recognize in them the absence of a tradition that simply considers Hippolytus‟ punishment as a deserved consequence for an antinatural celibate. So for example the Scholiast32 (ad 1) makes a distinction between the mistake that led Hippolytus to catastrophe, i.e. his unrespectful behavior toward Aphrodite, and his σωφρονεῖν, which is morally good and is explicitly connected with the ways of life of the φιλόσοφοι: […] εἰ γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι, θηριώδεις ὄντες τὴν φύσιν καὶ νόμων καὶ γραφῶν ἄπειροι, σέβουσιν ὅμως τὴν θεὸν, τὴν φύσιν δεξάμενοι διδάσκαλον, πόσης καταγνώσεως ἄξιος ὁ ἐν μέσῃ τῇ Ἑλλάδι τραφεὶς καὶ μέγιστον ἐπὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ φρονήσας. εἰ δὲ καὶ σωφρονεῖν ἀπὸ γάμων ἤθελεν, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἔδει πάλιν αὐτὸν σέβειν τὴν δαίμονα. […] In the scholia to 14 the question about Aphrodite‟s wrath for Hippolytus appears in two different forms, and in one of them the relation between sexual abstinence and φιλοσοφία is quite obvious: […] καὶ τί, φασὶν, ἐλύπει αὐτὴν τὸ τῆς φιλοσοφίας; καὶ λεκτέον ὅτι ὡς αὐτὴν ἀτιμάζων ἐδόκει καὶ τοῦτο ποιεῖν, ὡς καὶ αὐτῇ μὴ ποιῶν τὰ τερπνὰ, ἀγνοῶν ὅτι καὶ σωφροσύνης ἔρωτας αὐτὴ ἀποστέλλει, ὡς καὶ ἐν διηγήσει λέγει. […]

32

We quote the edition by DINDORF.

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The scholium to 601 presents explicitly Hippolytus as a philosopher: ὦ γαῖα μῆτερ : ὡς φιλόσοφος τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τῆν γῆν ἐπικαλεῖται, προσμαρτυροῦντας χάριν τῶν εἰρημένων. […] ὡς φιλόσοφος δὲ γῆν καὶ ἥλιον ἐπιβοᾷ, ἐπεὶ ἀρχὴ πάντων εἰσὶ, γῆ μὲν πάντων μήτηρ κατὰ Ἡσίοδον, ἥλιος δ‟, ἐπεὶ πάντ‟ ἐφορᾷ καὶ πάντ‟ ἐπακούει. Ἀναξαγόρας οὖν τὸν ἥλιον μύδρον ἔφησε, καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ πάντα γίνεσθαι. ᾧ ἀκολουθήσας ὁ Εὐριπίδης χρυσέαν βῶλον αὐτὸν εἴρηκεν. ἡλίου δὲ ἀναπτυχαὶ αἱ ἀκτῖνες, καθὸ τὸ σκότος ἀναπτύσσουσι, καὶ ἡμῖν τὰ πάντα δηλοῦσι διὰ τοῦ φωτός. Other scholia that comment on Hippolytus‟ “philosophical” cast are those to 79, 307, 616, 952, 953, 954, 1016. The scholium to 953 apparently takes at face value Theseus‟ assertion that Hippolytus follows an Orphic way of life, and relates it both with Philosophy and with Pythagoreanism. It also refers to the topos of a Euripides who makes his heroic characters philosophize: ἀντὶ τοῦ ἁγνεύετε, ὡς οἱ φιλόσοφοι μηδὲν κατὰ τῶν ἐσθιομένων ζώων ἢ ἑτέρων ἐσθίοντες, ἀλλὰ σῖτον μόνον, καὶ ἔχοντες τὸν ὆ρφέα βασιλέα ὡς σώφρονα. ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἔνδοξος ἦν ὁ Πυθαγόρας, ἤδη καὶ πολλοὶ ἐμψύχων ἀπέσχοντο. ἀνάγει δὲ τοὺς χρόνους· περὶ ἑαυτοῦ γὰρ βούλεται αἰνίξασθαι ὁ Εὐριπίδης. τοιοῦτος δέ ἐστιν, ἀεὶ τὰ ἡρωϊκὰ πρόσωπα εἰσάγων φιλοσοφοῦντα. Hippolytus‟ ὁμιλία with Artemis is problematized in the play nonetheless, and along with it Hippolytus‟ unusual way of life. This problematization takes place at two different levels. Firstly on the divine plane, in which Aphrodite denies that she is envious of the ὁμιλία and manifests that she only resents Hippolytus‟ denial of cult. But at the same time there is a problematization among the mortals. The confrontation between Hippolytus and Theseus is

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centered not on the veracity of Phaedra‟s accusations but on Hippolytus‟ religiosity. The main point is to be found in Theseus‟ famous verses 952-433: ἤδη νυν αὔχει καὶ δι‟ ἀψύχου βορᾶς σίτοις καπήλευ‟ ὆ρφέα τ‟ ἄνακτ‟ ἔχων βάκχευε πολλῶν γραμμάτων τιμῶν καπνούς· Hippolytus does not try to deny the four basic elements in his father‟s accusation: vegetarianism, veneration to Orpheus, Bacchic folly and the reading of (apparently Orphic) books. Nor does he try to defend this model of behavior. His answer consists in defending his own σωφροσύνη, without any further detail34. If these elements were to be explicitly considered serious accusations, with the aim of charging him with aberrant religious practices, we would expect further comment. But rather it seems that Theseus accuses Hippolytus of pretending to live according to a “higher” religious standard, and does so by attributing to him forms of behavior that point to the experience of the members of relatively marginal cult forms (markedly Orphism) but, at the same time, do not seem to have any role in the rest of the play. There is obviously no way of knowing whether the Orphic theme had a clear referent in a previous tragedy known to Euripides and his audience, through which the allusion would have had to be deciphered. It is also very difficult to relate Theseus‟ words to the rest of the play, with which they rather stand in contradiction: the hunter Hippolytus appears now as a vegetarian35. If there is a model known to us that might have something to do with these verses it might be Aeschylus‟ lost tragedy Bassarai, in which Orpheus apparently was torn apart by the followers of Dionysus for trying to worship Apollo to the exclusion of other gods36. Here 33 34

35

36

We quote according to BARRETT. The mere defense of σωφροσύνη may be very relevant. Cf. ORIGA 2007 pp. 405 on Hippolytus‟ rejection of perverse forms of σοφία possibly related to the contemporary debate about persuasion. Probably this incongruence does not go much further than the usual incongruences of Greek tragedy. Cf. GOULD 1978, ARNOTT 1989 pp. 162-92, esp. 1637. About Orphic vegetarianism: SABBATUCCI 1991 pp. 69-84. See DI MARCO 1993.

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we find an Orphic theme in combination with the exclusivity of cult, and it is possible that Theseus to some extent assimilates Hippolytus to a previously known pattern in which the character was Orpheus himself. Sadly we cannot prove that this specific play was in the mind of the Athenian audience to the point of being able to link it with Hippolytus. The disconnection of these verses from the rest of the play, and their positioning in what probably was a climactic moment of the performance, make us prefer the more economical solution and see them as a means for the characterization of the young hunter. This characterization does not seem to point to any specific data that we could find somewhere else – for example, a tradition in which Hippolytus is explicitly a follower of Orpheus and so on – so it rather seems a generic form of characterization: the peculiar style of worship practiced by Hippolytus, and more generally his way of life, appear as typical of the cult forms that were deemed unconventional: minority cults (or simply marginal to the polis cult), perhaps “philosophers” (i.e. models of wisdom such as those represented by the Pre-Socratics), and more generally individuals that searched a more intimate contact with divinity37. It is “higher” in the sense that it aspires to an exceptional proximity to godhead. It is not necessary to link this characterization with specific religious practices that the audience might be able to deduce from the play. Probably the verses uttered by Theseus confirm a stereotype that was in some way implicit in the previous presentation of Hippolytus as a young man who seeks celibacy because of a nonconventional cultic practice. Hippolytus‟ answer is a vindication of his practices through an argument that is difficult to reconcile with many modern readings of the play. He states in 1016f. that his aspiration is to triumph in the Hellenic Games and to excel in the polis together with his best φίλοι, who are enemies to tyranny. Even the frequently accepted 37

GRENE 1939 p. 54 interprets this identification in perhaps an excessively modern way. According to him: “Such personal traits as have been given him are designed to make him a satire on the intellectuals of the fifth century”. We do not agree that Hippolytus is a satire, or in general with GRENE‟S psychologizing interpretation. But in any case it is interesting that he also relates Hippolytus with the individuals whom retrospectively we might call “philosophers”.

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notion of a religious cult centered on just one goddess is not indisputable: in 996f., Hippolytus describes himself as a devotee of θεοί in general38. The terms he uses are not an attack on the polis, nor an exaltation of a marginal way of living, but apparently a variety of polis-centered, probably aristocratic39 morals. He does not reject his duties as a citizen40; rather he seems to downplay the importance of his peculiar devotion for Artemis, or simply to defend its legitimacy for a member of the polis. We do not know how far the intended audience of the play interpreted this tirade as a coherent self-defense. But in any case Hippolytus‟ discourse is never refuted throughout the play. The dea ex machina asserts that Hippolytus is εὐσεβής (1309, 1339). Probably the audience shared this point of view: not because the average Athenian of the fifth century BC simply considered that the denial of Aphrodite‟s cult and the rejection of marriage were by themselves desirable behavior, but because Hippolytus is about the heroization of an exceptional character and not about the real life of a young Athenian. Even if his form of σωφροσύνη was not operative in real life – or the audience considered it to be operative in reduced circles dedicated to special cults and the like – it was effectively a manifestation of virtue in the world where the action takes place nonetheless. The extraordinary σωφροσύνη shown by Hippolytus places him above common mortal men41 and is related to his future heroization.

38 39

40

41

A different interpretation in GOLDHILL 1986 p. 120. See GOLDHILL 1986 p. 127. Cf. KNOX 1952 p. 21, LLOYD 1992 p. 48 for “aristocratic” interpretations of Hippolytus‟ character. See HERRERO 2009, esp. 1621, for the relationship between aristocracy and Orphic cults, that might be relevant in this context. See LANZA 1997 p. 137 for an interpretation of Hippolytus‟ morality as problematic. GILL 1990 p. 80: “It seems clear […] that sôphrôsune is central to the informing dialectic of the play. Part of what this means is that we interpret the character of the dramatic figures in the light of what they say about sôphrôsune, and that we interpret what they say about sôphrôsune in the light of our impression of their character and of their understanding of what sôphrôsune is.”

4.3

Hippolytus’ Exceptional φύσις42

Hippolytus‟ cultic practices are not just ethical, but also ritual, perhaps quasi sacerdotal. This is apparent in the scene in which Hippolytus offers the garland to Artemis (73-87). In addition to his moral superiority, Hippolytus possesses a rank of purity that seems to be of ritual importance. His σωφροσύνη allows him to enter a space reserved to the goddess where he will perform a cultic act. This ritual function is tied to moral practice in a way that is unusual in Archaic and Classical Greece. The scene is well known: Hippolytus returns from hunting with a garland of flowers which he intends to offer to Artemis43. The manner of the offering is exceptional: the hero attributes to himself the capacity of picking flowers in a meadow (λειμών) of an unspecified nature. The identification of the meadow with a τέμενος seems valid to us, insofar it is understood as a generic τέμενος, depicted in terms of the poetic tradition, with no precise referent in the real world44. The name τέμενος is fully justified because it is governed by a set of taboos that are typical of a consecrated place45. Neither shepherds nor farmers could enter; Hippolytus contrasts them to the bee that visits the flowers46. We do not know whether the taboos are structured in such a manner that Hippolytus may enter the meadow after the hunt, if he has entered with the bodies of dead beasts, or if his companions have had to wait outside; we suspect that those questions are irrelevant, as the trag42

43 44

45 46

See GIGANTE 1956, HEINIMANN 1965, about φύσις and its problematic opposition to νόμος. See also DE ROMILLY 1971. For an excellent analysis see CAIRNS 1997. Cf. BARRETT 1964 ad 73-6 and 148-50, an attempt to anchor this τέμενος in the daily practice of the Athenian public. The possibility that Euripides is referring to the τέμενος of Artemis which actually existed by the Saronic lagoon alluded to in 148-50 should not be ignored. But BARRETT‟s idea is not overly relevant to our interpretation of the play. The spaces that appear in tragedy, even if they are inside the Athenian polis, are of a generic, sometimes symbolic character. Curiously the Scholiast insinuates ad loc. that a τέμενος of this kind would not make sense in the real world and is probably symbolic. Cf. HUNTER 2009. Cf. BARRETT 1964 ad 73-6. ROISMAN 1999 pp. 30-3 reminds us of the traditional association between bees and chastity, and quotes Semonides of Amorgos and Ael. NA 12.37. Though we do not agree with the rest of the book, this association is correct.

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ic genre does not attempt to structure time and place in a realistic manner47. The words with which Hippolytus expresses his own relation to this λειμών reinforce its unreality: the individuals that may enter are precisely those who enjoy that quality termed ἐν τῆι φύσει […] σωφρονεῖν (79f.), without any foundation in the practices associated with the typical sacred spaces of the Hellenes. BREMER 1975 gives solid proof of the intertextual relations between this passage and unequivocally erotic poems like Sapph. 2 LOBEL-PAGE and Ibyc. 5 PAGE. He also points to much weaker, but nonetheless interesting parallelisms with the first verses of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter – in which Persephone picks flowers from a meadow before being ravished by Hades48 – Archil. P. Colon. 7511, especially 23f., the amorous encounter between Zeus and Hera in Il. 14.346-351, and Calypso‟s cave in Od. 5.44. BREMER goes so far as to say that the recitation of Hippolytus‟ rhesis in theater would perplex the Athenian audience, as it conjoined Hippolytus and Artemis with an unequivocally erotic imagery49. The textual features pointed out by BREMER are undoubtedly true, but it is also possible to give an almost diametrically opposed interpretation of them. The unfolding of topoi with erotic connotations might also serve to paradoxically highlight their own deerotization. Their use in the depiction of the space where the young man picks flowers might be associated with the loss of virginity, but this loss presupposes a previous idyllic situation in which the girl is still a virgin and has a place in the meadow. Their appearance in 73f. implies a contrast between expectations awakened by the meadow imagery and the bee associated with purity. They culminate with the reference to the “gardener” of this meadow, who is none other than αἰδώς. The depiction of the meadow as a locus for purity does not culminate in a deflowering, but in an exaltation of αἰδώς, and it does not appear as a mere privation – that is, privation of sensual pleasure – but as a representation of

47

48 49

See the interesting considerations in CROALLY 1994 pp. 163-234, and also REHM 2002. See especially h. Cer. 5ff. For another reading of this meadow as a space that suggests eroticism, from a methodologically very different viewpoint, see SEGAL 1965 p. 122.

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companionship with the goddess that opens up the possibility of accessing a sacred space50. Speculating slightly, one might associate this kind of representation with the stories about Artemis in which the goddess appears as an object of erotic attraction, always conjoined with the impossibility of bringing this attraction to fruition. The most usual example is, of course, the myth of Actaeon51, but we know many other tales in which a man feels sexual attraction either for Artemis or for one of her maidens and suffers catastrophe: the Aloadai52, Bouphagos53, Orion54 at least in some versions of the story, and Sipriotes55. Another tale related to this pattern is the story of Aura as narrated by Nonnos of Panopolis, in which the beauty and femininity of Artemis are a reason for doubting her chastity56. All these stories point in the same direction: Artemis appears as the young, beautiful goddess that provokes erotic desire but will not satisfy it, and destroys her suitors. We cannot tell how far the intended audience of this play was aware of this pattern, but at least some of the tales themselves were undoubtedly known. It is even possible that Hippolytus was simply meant to appear as the reversal of this topos. Actaeon, Orion, and so on, did not have access to the beauty of Artemis, as sexual desire is bound to fail in the sphere of power of the goddess. Hippolytus, on the other hand, may achieve some intimacy with the goddess because his conviviality with her is devoid of eroticism; the fact that the hero cannot see her reinforces this, and establishes an implicit compari50

51

52 53 54 55 56

A vision of the meadow as a transposition of Hippolytus‟ essential traits: PIGEAUD 1976. The oldest source for this version of the myth is admittedly Call. Lav. Pall. 10716. But the legend itself might be much older. Oto courts Artemis in Apollod., 1.7.4. Paus. 8.27.17. In Palaeph. 51, Eratosth. Cat. 7, Call. fr. 570 PFEIFFER. Ant. Lib. 17. Aura incurs Artemis‟ wrath in Nonn. D. 48.351-69 when she says that Artemis‟ body is made for eroticism. This is a fine example of ironic representation of myth – the comparison between Artemis‟ full breasts and Athena‟s flat bosom is not just a vulgar joke, but also a reductio ad absurdum of the anthropomorphic representation of gods. Nemesis reminds Artemis in 48.392-413 that the Goddess of Hunting has been subjected to many attempted rapes, making apparent the repetition of narrative patterns in “myth”.

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son with other heroes who die precisely because they had seen her57. The σωφροσύνη inscribed in his φύσις, alien to common mortals, allows him to enter the sphere of divine things, through the specific sphere of Artemis. Hippolytus is ἁγνός58 and εὐσεβής59 and can meet the goddess in a conceptually determined space that is forbidden to the rest of mortal men.

57

58 59

The term “sublimation” could be applied here; however, we do not analyze the situation in psychoanalytical but in structural terms: Hippolytus‟ position is the reverse of Acteon‟s. Cf. Hipp. 11, 102, 138, 316f. Cf. Hipp. 79f., 83, 90, 102, 1100, 1364f.

4.4

Phaedra’s rhesis

Phaedra‟s rhesis in 373-430 is tied to the presentation of the garland through both an evident recurrence of a term – the queen thematizes αἰδώς60 – and the common question of the relationship between morality and knowledge. This rhesis shows the possibility that a person able to intellectually identify the course of action to be preferred in a certain circumstance (378: εὖ φρονεῖν; 380: τὰ χρήστ‟ ἐπιστάμεσθα καὶ γιγνώσκομεν) might be simultaneously unable to act in consequence. This question is probably related to that of the inborn moral knowledge that Hippolytus asserts as his own. On another level, it directs us to the contemporary debate about this matter, that we know only in a highly mediated manner. In contrast to certain stated opinions61, we do not believe that this rhesis is irrelevant to the dramatic context62. Despite many grave difficulties in interpretation, it offers an obvious counterpoint to the words of Hippolytus when offering the garland. The hero attributed to himself a φύσις in which the σωφροσύνη was inscribed, which did not require learning in order to act according to certain moral standards. Phaedra is deprived of the σωφρωνεῖν that she needs to overcome her erotic folly and she reflects on the dissociation between the knowledge of the preferable course of action (a knowledge that she attributes to herself) and the possibility of actually taking it, or more specifically, of achieving a control over herself sufficient to take the preferable course of action.

60

61 62

CRAIK 1993 and 1997 contends that αἰδώς should be understood as a euphemism for sexual desire. It is unclear if the word had this sense in Athenian popular language, but, in any case, we do not think this is a good assumption for the interpretation of a tragedy in which the term αἰδώς is used, most probably in a deliberate manner, in the discourses of both main characters. Cf. AVERY 1968. See specially SNELL 1948, 1967. We do not mean that this rhesis should be integrated in the dramatic action, as would be expected of a modern drama. We just mean that this rhesis is not merely parasitical: it is related to other elements in the play, just as Lycus‟ and Amphitryon‟s discourses in Heracles were related to the second half of the play.

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The beginning of the rhesis depicts a state of affairs that is the opposite of what Hippolytus has stated. So in 375-8: ἤδη ποτ‟ ἄλλως νυκτὸς ἐν μακρῶι χρόνωι θνητῶν ἐφρόντισ‟ ἧι διέφθαρται βίος. καί μοι δοκοῦσιν οὐ κατὰ γνώμης φύσιν πράσσειν κακίον‟· ἔστι γὰρ τό γ‟ εὖ φρονεῖν πολλοῖσιν· ἀλλὰ τῆιδ‟ ἀθρητέον τόδε· The reiteration of the word φύσις – and not only of αἰδώς – reinforces the relation between the passages. Here it is limited by the genitive γνώμης, but there is a continuity of meaning between the two appearances of this term. Hippolytus affirmed that his φύσις contained a σωφροσύνη which by itself implies correct behavior. The expression γνώμης φύσιν obviously refers to the presence in the φύσις of the faculty of distinguishing between what should and what should not be done. As WILLINK [1968] 2010, p. 5 says: “γνώμης φύσιν is the equivalent of ‟inborn, or natural γνώμη‟”. Γνώμη is defined in the same page as: “the intellectual faculty whereby one apprehends what one should do to achieve the good life […] difficult to render precisely, including as it does our „moral principles‟ in a much wider concept of „proper apprehension‟ (which may be purely practical and non-moral)”. Phaedra makes a general statement about human beings to the effect that they lack the quality that permitted Hippolytus to enter Artemis‟ λειμών: an inborn virtue, presumably perfect since the beginning, attained without effort. According to Phaedra, the factor that embitters human life (ἧι διέφθαρται βίος, 376)63 is precisely the need for this effort, the impossibility for the γνώμη to bring its own choices to fruition without encountering hindrances that are rooted in the individual. Though the moral problem developed in this rhesis is undoubtedly related to the contemporary moral debate, it would probably be anachronistic to interpret it in highly technical terms. The word γνώμη in itself does not seem to allow for the distinction between

63

Cf. WILLINK [1968] 2010 p. 4 about ᾗ.

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intellectual, volitive and moral faculties64, and it is even less likely that such a distinction should be understood in the context of a play addressed to a broad audience. More than the clash between two faculties as it will be understood in the later philosophic tradition, Phaedra rather refers to a general incapability of her mental powers, her γνώμη, to direct her action in order to reach her goals65. The following verses seem to point in this direction. They are not constructed around the election of possible ends, but of inner phenomena that prevent her from acting according to her own choices (380-7): τὰ χρήστ‟ ἐπιστάμεσθα καὶ γιγνώσκομεν, οὐκ ἐκπονοῦμεν δ‟, οἱ μὲν ἀργίας ὕπο, οἱ δ‟ ἡδονὴν προθέντες ἀντὶ τοῦ καλοῦ ἄλλην τιν‟· εἰσὶ δ‟ ἡδοναὶ πολλαὶ βίου, μακραί τε λέσχαι καὶ σχολή, τερπνὸν κακόν, αἰδώς τε· δισσαὶ δ‟ εἰσίν, ἡ μὲν οὐ κακή, ἡ δ‟ ἄχθος οἴκων· εἰ δ‟ ὁ καιρὸς ἦν σαφὴς οὐκ ἂν δύ‟ ἤστην ταὔτ‟ ἔχοντε γράμματα. The exact meaning of these verses has been much debated66. 64

65

66

See HUART 1973. The author says in his “Introduction” p. 12f.: “Nous partirons de la valeur la plus générale de γνώμη, celle de sentiment – précisons, tout de suite, que sentiment doit être pris au sens de état d‟esprit, mentalité (relevant de l’intelligence essentiellement, et non de la sensibilité), bien que, dans certains cas, une nuance affective ou morale puisse s’y ajouter. Nous arriverons alors au sens fort du mot, lorsque γνώμη implique intervention active de la pensée, de la réflexion et signifie, en fait, intelligence, faculté de juger, jugement. Ensuite nous étudierons comment on passe de l’idée de connaissance à celle de avis, opinion, motion, etc., puisque γνώμη ne s’applique pas à des spéculations abstraites, et marque, à la fois, l’acte même de penser et la pensée, l’idée qui en sont la conséquence pratique.” See also BARRETT 1964 ad loc. ASSAEL 2001 p. 214: “Euripide imagine des conflits tragiques dans lesquels cette nouvelle forme de fatalité semble si puissante que la lucidité, la conscience et le raisonnement demeurent inopérants.” This is true, though we do not agree with the author‟s interpretation of Hippolytus, as we do not think that Phaedra is acting here as a mouthpiece for Euripides himself. The literature on this issue is extensive. A short list of relevant works: SNELL 1948, WILLINK [1968] 2010, SEGAL 1970, DI BENEDETTO [1971] 1992, pp. 5-23, SOLMSEN 1973, KOVACS 1980, SOMMERSTEIN 1988, CAIRNS 1993 pp. 314-40,

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These are the basic points in conflict that hinder the understanding of the whole passage: 1) The term to which ἡδονὴν […] ἄλλην τιν‟ (382-3) refers. We do not know if the ἡδονή to which it is contrasted should be ἀργία or rather τὸ καλόν. 2) The adjective δισσαί, possibly referring to ἡδοναί or just to αἰδώς. 3) The syntactical relationship between the items listed in 383ff. 4) The seemingly illogical presence of αἰδώς among the ἡδοναί. These verses are complex and, in contrast to other cases, we are unable to see here an ambiguity that makes sense as such. If the text is not corrupt, we must suppose that the contextual knowledge of the intended audience was sufficient to understand it. As we lack this knowledge, any translation of this passage should be considered as provisional. Our interpretation follows HOLZHAUSEN 1995 in its general outline, even though we do not agree with all the details. For 381-3 he presupposes a structure that might be called chiastic67. According to this interpretation, Phaedra‟s discourse cites two kinds of obstacles for the attainment of the goals fixed by the individual‟s γνώμη: mere inactivity and the presence of distracting pleasures. In 381 the first obstacle is named, ἀργία, and in 382 the various ἡδοναί that are chosen instead of τὸ καλόν68. The 383 makes sense as a gloss of ἡδοναί (εἰσὶ δ‟ ἡδοναὶ πολλαὶ βίου); 384 makes its reference to μακραί τε λέσχαι καὶ σχολή, τερπνὸν κακόν which might be understood as a repetition of the notion of ἀργία, inactivity. But the real crux is the comprehension of αἰδώς, a third element that appears in the enumeration and has a double value: it might be profitable or harmful, according to καιρός, the right moment to do something.

67 68

CRAIK 1993, HOLZHAUSEN 1995, CRAIK 1997, WINNINGTON-INGRAM 2003b, EGLI 2003 pp. 157-85. KOVACS 1980 p. 293 n. 11, after praising the article by WILLINK (though he does not follow it in all its aspects) – says that it is “badly marred by a perverse ingenuity of interpretation” nonetheless. In any case it is a very solid attempt to find a solution for a very problematic passage. See HOLZHAUSEN 2003 pp. 250f. See again WILLINK [1968] 2010 p. 7.

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It is actually a double problem: the sense of the mention of αἰδώς in this context and the meaning of the double αἰδώς. Given our reading of the preceding verses, δισσαὶ δ‟ εἰσίν should obviously refer to αἰδώς69: it would not make sense to refer it to ἡδοναί if μακραί τε λέσχαι καὶ σχολή are not included in them. It does not really make sense for the construction ἡ μέν / ἡ δέ and the dual form ἔχοντε in 387 to refer to a multiplicity, and not to two elements. And, as already said, the appearance of αἰδώς in both Hippolytus‟ and Phaedra‟s discourses suggest that this term is relevant for the interpretation of the whole play, and this relevance by itself suggests that αἰδώς is the term that is being thematized. The consideration of αἰδώς among the obstacles that prevent Phaedra from following the right γνώμη has a certain tradition in Archaic-Classical Greece. Besides the evident resemblance with the duality of Eros that appears several times in Euripides70, it is a topos in the Greek poetic tradition. So in Hes. Op. 317-9, Hom. Il. 24.4571, and also in Euripides‟ Erectheus (TrGF 5.1 Erechtheus F 365 KANNICHT-SNELL)72. But the apparent simplicity of this double meaning of the term αἰδώς, or the double value of αἰδώς in itself (it is not clear that Euripides made the distinction) becomes complicated when we think that the Euripidean verses do not seem to express a trivial truth about “shame”, but also present through αἰδώς the difference between two characters. The question is what it means that the same αἰδώς that governed the meadow, and was identified with chaste 69 70

71

72

For the opposite opinion see WILLINK [1968] 2010 p. 9. Cf. BITTRICH 2005 p. 121f. She quotes: TrGF 5.2 Stheneboea F 661 22-5 KANNICHT-SNELL, TrGF 5.1 Theseus (?) F 388 KANNICHT-SNELL, IA 543-51. HOLZHAUSEN 1995 pp. 30f., following CLAUS 1972 p. 229, KOVACS 1980, argues that there is no double αἰδώς in Hesiod. Plutarch interprets the passage in this way (De virt. mor. 448): τὸ δ‟ αὐτὸ συμβαίνει καὶ πρὸς ἄρχοντας ἐν πόλεσι χρηστοὺς καὶ γείτονας καὶ κηδεστάς·ἀρξάμενοι γὰρ ὑπὸ χρείας τινὸς καθηκόντως ἀλλήλοις ὁμιλεῖν, ἔπειτα λανθάνουσιν εἰς τὸ φιλεῖν ὑποφερόμενοι συνεπισπασαμένου τοῦ λογισμοῦ καὶ συναναπείσαντος τὸ παθητικόν. ὇ δ‟ εἰπών· “αἰδώς τε· δισσαὶ δ‟ εἰσίν, ἡ μὲν οὐ κακή, ἡ δ‟ ἄχθος οἴκων”, ἆρ‟ οὐ δῆλός δ‟ εστι συνῃσθημένος ἐν ἑαυτῷ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος πολλάκις μὲν ἀκολουθοῦν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ συγκατακοσμούμενον, πολλάκις δὲ παρὰ τὸν λόγον ὄκνοις καὶ μελλήσεσι καιροὺς καὶ πράγματα λυμαινόμενον; At the very least it shows some continuity with the previous tradition. We quote by the edition of DUMORTIER / DEFRADAS.

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behavior in the young man, is here a hindrance for attaining a good life. This question is not easily answered, but the indirect confrontation of Hippolytus‟ and Phaedra‟s discourse about αἰδώς in this play enables us to formulate an hypothesis: what apparently counts here is that Phaedra, from her enunciative position (which is not the same as Hippolytus‟) shows that the univocal presentation of αἰδώς as a foundation for moral and religious action in the young hunter‟s discourse is not the only possible one. In other words: Phaedra indirectly questions the univocity of the αἰδώς that Hippolytus had posed as the ruling principle of his own behavior. The duplicity of αἰδώς would be linked to the inability of Phaedra‟s γνώμη to persevere in the action that she considers appropriate. We think that BITTRICH is right in relating this passage to contemporary Sophistic thought, and more specifically to Protagoras D. K. A 1 = D. L. 9.51 on the duplicity of all things73. Not because Sophistic thought might be necessary in the formulation of such duality (we have seen that there is a previous tradition in poetry) but because the formulation of the duality in this context rather seems to be an attempt to destabilize the meaning of the term as formulated by Hippolytus. Hippolytus‟ discourse in the presentation of the garland took αἰδώς as a reliable guide for action. It is inscribed in the young man‟s φύσις and, at the same time, it seems to be a simple option. Even if the duality stated by Phaedra might seem trivial (sometimes αἰδώς induces a timidity that does not allow us to do what we have to do, and so on) what is important here is that the notion of a solid guide for moral conduct is shaken. So this specific use of the topos of the double αἰδώς might be understood as a marker that directs the attention of the audience to Hippolytus‟ and Phaedra‟s different manners of presentation of αἰδώς. The queen shows that the γνώμης φύσιν of ordinary mortals does not offer any guarantee that they will follow preferable choices, in contrast to Hippolytus, for whom the right choice is already inscribed in his own φύσις. Then she explains that the αἰδώς that presided over the space shared by Hippolytus and Artemis is not of an unequivocal nature either; the queen constructs 73

Cf. BITTRICH 2005 pp. 121f.

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what we could call her moral life in opposition to that of Hippolytus by showing her inability to build this moral life upon solid foundations. The following explanation of the γνώμης ὁδός exemplifies the general principle. We are witness to a series of failed attempts by Phaedra at subjugating her own passion. In obvious contrast with Hippolytus, she must struggle to attain σωφροσύνη. The general structure of this passage is lax (the character does not even relate her failure to the presence of a “bad” αἰδώς) but the overall sense can be deciphered: the queen embodies the general difficulties of mortals in building a moral life, and in doing so presents a picture that is opposed to the one that Hippolytus presented of himself. The moral discourse of both characters is not refuted in the play. Hippolytus‟ σωφροσύνη is attested by Artemis at the end of the tragedy, and Phaedra‟s inability to attain a similar command over herself is also evident. At the same time, the two discourses about αἰδώς are never confronted, but each remains in its own sphere. It is virtually impossible to know if Phaedra‟s statements naturally obtained the assent of the audience as a true portrait of the mortal condition. But there is a contrast here between two characters that are on two different levels: Hippolytus‟ privileged nature reveals itself in the unequivocal adhesion to σωφροσύνη demonstrated by his chastity, while Phaedra seems to belong to a common human condition for whom virtue is not unconditionally present, but the result of a struggle to construct a moral life. The double discourse about αἰδώς is undoubtedly related to the fact that Aphrodite does not act directly upon Hippolytus‟ mind, but upon Phaedra‟s mind. Not that she cannot do this on the base of a clear set of rules about things that the gods “can do” and “cannot do”74; but the manner in which both characters depict themselves in the sphere of morality clearly corresponds to their respective roles in the story. Hippolytus will be heroized on account of his extraordinary (we could almost say: superhuman) σωφροσύνη, and so he cannot fall victim to the power of love in his own etiological tale. On the other hand, the goddess acts upon a φύσις characterized by a division in its γνώμη and an inability to act according to her own choices. Aphrodite acts upon a character 74

Another point of view in ZEITLIN 1985 p. 107.

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that is not wholly identified with τὸ σωφρωνεῖν and therefore might suffer because of the inability to wholly connect σωφροσύνη with her own path of action. Moreover, the difference between the φύσις of both characters is explicitly linked to two different modalities of relationship with the gods. Hippolytus‟ ability to enter in the sphere of gods, and to sustain a ὁμιλία with Artemis, is obviously tied to the unity of his γνώμη: those who may enter the meadow are precisely those who have not learned virtue, because it is inborn to them. On the other hand, Phaedra may build a moral life based upon τὸ σωφρωνεῖν, but precisely because it is not immediately given to her nature it will always be a frail one. So this play does not only stage a traditional pattern of heroization in which the hero dies in an exceptional manner and therefore is transformed into a cult figure; his superior φύσις also places him near the gods while he is still alive. Hippolytus distinguishes himself from the rest of the mortals through a σωφρωνεῖν that goes beyond common humanity, and because of this he has access to a privileged relation with a goddess. In contrast, Phaedra embodies common mortals. The manner in which she does so has been termed “anti-Socratic”75, and to some level this is true: it flatly contradicts the moral discourse that later will be attributed to Socrates by Plato. But we cannot judge whether Euripides‟ intention when writing this tragedy was really “antiSocratic”. We do not know what were his immediate referents for the kind of moral discourse that later will be attributed to Socrates (if indeed there were any) and, more importantly, we do not know how far the statements of Hippolytus and Phaedra about the φύσις of human beings are supposed to be taken seriously by the intended audience, or are simply a way to present the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra in the moral language used in many debates of his time76. This is probably the context in which Phaedra‟s εὐκλεής character (47), and her τρόπον τινὰ γενναιότητα (1300f.), should be understood. Despite all attempts at justifying her behavior as a sound 75 76

See especially DI BENEDETTO [1971] 1992 pp. 5-23. Of course it is possible to defend that Socratic philosophy is “anti-tragic” per se. Cf. BENEDETTO [1971] 1992 p. 13.

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defense of her own children, it is difficult to believe that her actions would be considered good by the intended audience77. Even the words used by Artemis rather allude to good and bad aspects in the queen‟s behavior (1301). But there is some goodness in Phaedra, and this goodness consists precisely in the actions she cannot perform. The queen is able to discern the right course of action and struggles to follow it, and probably this is sufficient to establish some distance from the previous stories about the character. Although we know very little about the pre-tragic Phaedra, this character is understood throughout Antiquity as a model for lust and impudence. So it makes sense that Euripides insists on Phaedra‟s relative innocence: she is no more than the tool of a goddess and, despite her impotence, she tries to orient her own behavior to moral good. There is another passage before Phaedra‟s rhesis in which the character depicts her own situation of sickness and folly in similar terms, even though the dramatic situation is not exactly the same (239-49): δύστηνος ἐγώ, τί ποτ‟ εἰργασάμην; ποῖ παρεπλάγχθην γνώμης ἀγαθῆς; ἐμάνην, ἔπεσον δαίμονος ἄτηι. φεῦ φεῦ τλήμων. μαῖα, πάλιν μου κρύψον κεφαλήν, αἰδούμεθα γὰρ τὰ λελεγμένα μοι. κρύπτε· κατ‟ ὄσσων δάκρυ μοι βαίνει, καὶ ἐπ‟ αἰσχύνην ὄμμα τέτραπται. τὸ γὰρ ὀρθοῦσθαι γνώμην ὀδυνᾶι, τὸ δὲ μαινόμενον κακόν· ἀλλὰ κρατεῖ μὴ γιγνώσκοντ‟ ἀπολέσθαι. Here we find: a) An αἰδούμεθα (244) that we cannot directly relate to the discourse that comes later, but is probably linked to it nonetheless78: it 77

78

More than a general attack on the idea of a shame culture, WILLIAMS 1993 is a criticism of some uses of this idea that are simplistic. DODDS 1925 p. 103 relates the discussion about αἰδώς both with this verse and with 335.

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emphasizes the importance of αἰδώς for Phaedra. Here, as in the main rhesis, it does not appear as a power in harmony with the mortal individual (in contrast to αἰδώς in the λειμών visited by Hippolytus) but rather as a cause for suffering. b) The notion of an ἄτη sent by a god79. Phaedra‟s point of view is determined by her lack of knowledge, her inability to know the origin of her suffering. c) The contrast between τὸ […] ὀρθοῦσθαι γνώμην and τὸ […] μαινόμενον. These are the same terms that will later appear when thematizing αἰδώς. Here the discourse is not about γνώμης φύσις, but directly about γνώμη. In the main rhesis, Phaedra will discuss a γνώμη that is able to distinguish good from evil, and here speaks simply of a γνώμη that needs to be reoriented. This passage presents Phaedra‟s illness at a time prior to the generalizing discourse about the disconnection between choosing the right course of action and having the ability to attain it. There is no psychological transition between the two discourses. But there is a continuity between the two representations of the character. The main rhesis is a generalization about the character‟s condition: the manifest impossibility of attaining the desired goals, despite her ability to ascertain them. Here the character simply expresses her suffering and an awareness of the weakness of her γνώμη in terms that are more direct, and familiar to a Greek: a god is provoking her folly (241: ἔπεσον δαίμονος ἄτηι). The lack of a solid distinction between cognitive and volitive faculties has as a probable consequence that, for a Hellene, even a Hellene who was aware of the contemporary debates, the two formulations were not as distant from each other as they would be for us. In both cases the character suffers because of an inability to apply her cognitive faculties to guide her own actions.

79

See DODDS 1951 pp. 64-101 about the role of gods in madness.

4.5

The Transformation into Cult Figure

Euripides combines here a pattern of heroization with a model of access to the godly sphere during mortal life. His Hippolytus is to some extent a hybrid. The traits that mark Hippolytus as an exceptional character are those that the general audience might relate to non-mainstream religious practice. The hero embodies in a lax, non-naturalistic way certain conceptions of piety that the intended audience would probably identify with a set of characters and modalities of discourse that distanced itself from the mere practice of the polis cults and searched for a closer relation to divinity, often based upon stricter patterns for cult and morality80. His φύσις raises him above the rest of the mortals and assigns him a role that might be deemed as para-sacerdotal81. In that sense he is a mortal that has a privileged access to the godly sphere. At the same time, the dramatic action is based upon a traditional pattern: the narrative of the destruction by godly design of an extraordinary individual who is raised to cult status after his death. Hippolytus is established as a cult figure only as a consequence of the unfolding of this traditional pattern. So Euripides conjoins a traditional pattern for heroization and a more specific characterization of the hero that relates him to unconventional cultic practices and presents him as an exceptional creature during his mortal life. A reading of Hippolytus that fails to take this into account will be irremediably one-sided. So for example the interpretation of the play as a mythical projection of the transition of the rites of passage of ephebia in MITCHELL-BOYASK 199982 is appropriate, in so far as it corresponds to the narrative 80

81

82

As reflected in the previously commented scholium to 953, the followers of Orphic and Pythagorean practices, and various individuals and groups who are called retrospectively “Philosophers” might be variously assimilated to this stereotype. Though formulated in a different way, it is a general notion (we think) analogous to that of WILDBERG 2000 and 2002. MACÍAS 2008 pp. 92-5, 210-8 competently summarizes the elements in tragedy that relate Hippolytus to the Orphics, but she leaves out the para-sacerdotal character of the hero which in our opinion is obvious in 73-87. In a well-documented and interesting work following methodological options that stem from VERNANT, VIDAL-NAQUET and WINKLER, MITCHELL-BOYASK 1999 interprets Hippolytus‟ celibacy as a rejection of polis life and, at the same

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patterns that are to be found in this story. But it is doubtful that a reading of this kind might exhaust the different levels of meaning that Hippolytus probably had for its intended audience. The presence of themes related to Orphic practices, τελεταί, etc., in tragedies that we have lost83, and the existence of at least one tragedy, the Bassarai mentioned above, which apparently contained a plot similar to that of Hippolytus on the basis of an OrphicDionysiac theme, suggests that Euripides did not radically innovate in this play, but rather reproduced, and perhaps modified pre-existing structures84. The fragmentary character of our evidence does not allow us to go much further. A comparison with Heracles is in order here: there the suffering of Heracles as such did not need a specific explanation insofar as it is a token of a narrative pattern. But at the same time his suffering paved the way for some reflection about the gods, and the representations of the gods, which could not be reduced to the mere narrative pattern. The possibility of finding something analogous in Hippolytus should be, at the very least, taken into account. Heracles is a tragedy with evident metapoetic elements. Hippolytus is not, but nonetheless its plot seems a deliberate problematization of the aforementioned narrative pattern for heroization. Not because the goddesses might appear as “threatening”, “indifferent to the suffering of mortals” (that would fit very easily in the traditional representations of the gods) but rather because the playwright seems to insist on making visible the pattern itself as a rupture of a different situation in which the mortal already could access to the godly sphere. The paradoxical elements in the narrative pattern of heroization that is applied to Hippolytus become explicit. Aphrodite proclaims Phaedra‟s innocence at the beginning of the play and specifies

83

84

time, a reversal of roles previous to the establishment of his cult. Hippolytus‟ death is here the inverted representation of the attainment of maturity that allows him to preside an initiatic cult. Artemis‟ distancing at the moment of Hippolytus‟ death is interpreted as a scenic representation of his departure from her sphere. For a detailed, systematic treatment of the presence of Orphic themes in Euripidean tragedy, see MACÍAS 2008. Cf. SEGAL 1978/1979, an interesting attempt at relating Hippolytus to Pentheus.

4.5 The Transformation Into Cult Figure

179

Hippolytus‟ guilt, and at the same time alludes to the foundation of one of the cultic places in which both Aphrodite and Hippolytus were revered by the Athenians. In the famous and much debated discussion with the Serf, the double use of σεμνός underlines the distance between gods and mortals that will assert itself at the end of the play85. Hippolytus‟ exceptional way of life is repeatedly discussed with the Serf, the Nurse and Theseus. Artemis seems to insist on all the contradictory aspects of the story: Aphrodite has destroyed Hippolytus because of his pious relationship with the goddess of hunting, and now Artemis will kill another innocent in order to avenge him (1420-2). The Troezenian cult established by Artemis will preserve the memory of Phaedra‟s love (1423-30). We do not believe that Euripides is seriously questioning the narrative pattern itself, at the very least in the strong sense of questioning or trying to undermine its right to exist. Euripides simply takes part in a tragic competition in which this narrative pattern, among others, was firmly established as a possible basis for the plot of the play. We rather think that the insistence on the paradoxical aspects of Hippolytus‟ heroization – or apotheosis – are another result of the application of the tendency toward distancing from the action and commenting on it that is to be recognized in the tragic genre as a whole. The excellence that drives Hippolytus to heroization in this play is of a moral and cultic character, with no clear-cut distinction between the two. Euripides shows the possibility of a privileged mortal nature, marked by exceptional virtue, implicit in some religious and intellectual currents of his time, and simultaneously the necessary death of the hero that leads to the foundation of a public cult. In this case, the tragic play does not constitute a new ethical paradigm, but shows the tensions implicit in some strains of Greek religious thought.

85

Cf. BARRETT 1964 and HALLERAN 1995 ad 88, and also WEST 1965 pp. 156, and 1966 p. 17, GLUCKER 1966, KOVACS 1987.

4.6

The Gods

The dramatic action is structured around Artemis and Aphrodite. It is neither possible to minimize their role86, nor to transform both goddesses into conventional figures in a plot supposedly organized around the mere “psychology” of the characters87. The Aphrodite of Hippolytus refers us to a wide tradition. She is the goddess of love, and of course she punishes her enemies through the power that is her own. Her right to punish mortals that do not worship her belongs to the tradition. Her general role as the inspirer of erotic folly is also traditional and usually has a negative role in the μῦθοι, at least in relation to mortals. But obviously we are not talking about an “evil” goddess. Aphrodite is a goddess with a certain sphere of power, and she has certain functions whose exercise promotes disorder among mortals88. Correspondingly, in some tales she acts in a destructive manner. This Aphrodite can be safely compared with the Aphrodite that Hecabe denounced as a false goddess and as a personification of

86

87 88

So TAPLIN 1978, though admitting in p. 36 that “Aphrodite and Artemis in Euripides‟ Hippolytus cannot be reduced to elemental forces, which people may indulge or suppress, for there they stand, visible and audible epiphanies”, minimizes the role of the goddesses on this page and on the one following. Cf. DEVEREUX 1985. KROEKER 1938 p. 101 expresses a similar notion about the Heracles, but with an evident intention of generalizing his point of view: “Der Mensch kann in seinem Schicksal nur den Widerspruch zwischen Wert und Dasein erkennen, und dieser Widersinn durchzieht als ein ungeheurer Riss die Weltordnung. Diesen Widerspruch aus einem Dualismus der Weltmächte, die als Göttliches und Widergöttliches die Welt durchdringen, zu erklären, ist dem Griechentum ein fremder Gedanke. So musste notwendig aller Widerstreit in der Welt zu einem Widerspruch im Wesen des Göttlichen selbst führen. Die Paradoxie dieser geistigen Situation ist dann bei Euripides zum Problem geworden, mit dem er ständig gerungen hat, ohne damit fertig zu werden. Das Göttliche nicht anders denken zu können als das absolute Gute und die absolute Vernunft, und es dennoch in der Wirklichkeit des geschichtlichen Lebens nicht anders als in der Gestalt einer widerspruchsvollen Gottheit zu erkennen, dieses ist die unlösbare Antinomie in der Weltanschauung des Euripides.” This contradiction in the essence of the divinity pointed out by KROEKER is one of the forms that the problem of the representation of gods may adopt.

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ἀφροσύνη in Trojan Women89. In both cases the goddess appears as a destructive power, as a godly correlate of a pernicious passion. But there are three important differences: Firstly, we cannot forget that this play is addressed to an audience that, at least in part, knew that the cult of Hippolytus was associated with that of Aphrodite90. Secondly, in Trojan Women, Aphrodite-ἀφροσύνη was an object of discourse, but in Hippolytus she is a character on stage. Thirdly, Trojan Women knew a distinction between acceptable representations of goddesses – in that case, an Athena and a Hera that had not participated in the non-existent Judgment of Paris – and an Aphrodite to whom a truly divine nature was denied. In Hippolytus, the godly quality of Aphrodite is rather reinforced by the dramatic action. The three differences are related to the discursive position from which the goddess is represented. The Hecabe of Trojan Women commented on a story “from the outside”, but Hippolytus stages the story to which the goddess herself belongs. This aspect of Aphrodite was isolated in Trojan Women with the goal of denying her divine character and condemning the uncontrolled passions induced by love. But in the Hippolytus, in what is perhaps a deliberate decision on the playwright‟s part, her destructive aspect is subordinated to another one that is implicit in the development of the action: Aphrodite is prominent in the cult of Hippolytus which, at least in Troezen, is closely related to marriage. The outcome of the play, which should not be interpreted only through the text, but also through the intended audience‟s knowledge of the world (which, at least potentially, included the cults of Hippolytus) implies the integration of both characters. This outcome does not deny Aphrodite. Quite the opposite: the tragic plot unfolds with the implicit allusion to a different aspect of

89

90

KOVACS 1987 p. 32f. contends that Hippolytus‟ Aphrodite is a true goddess, and not an allegory. As already stated, we do not think that “true” and “allegorical” are so easily opposed in the Greek mindset of the time. Aphrodite has a role in the play and we do not think it makes sense to search for a “psychological” cause of Phaedra‟s behavior. At the same time, we are convinced that neither Euripides nor his audience necessarily saw this “Aphrodite” as a literal reproduction of the goddess of cult to which they worshiped. On this question see HALLERAN 1991 p. 120. Interesting points of view can be found in GOFF 1990, 112f.

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the goddess, a non-destructive one, and related to Hippolytus. Both ἔρως and σωφροσύνη have their places in marriage91. This second role of Aphrodite implicit in the play allows the audience to retain her godly character and, at the same time, not to take literally her representation as a promoter of destruction, as this role is eventually superseded. The goddess that inspires erotic folly in Phaedra has a place in the Greek poetic tradition, but if we take into account only this aspect of the goddess we have a onesided representation that has no real correspondence with the goddess of the cult. The Hecabe of Trojan Women denied the Aphrodite associated with uncontrolled passion, or rather denied that uncontrolled passion by itself justified the worship of a goddess. Here the destructive character of Aphrodite is not negated as such, but it appears only as a moment in the constitution of the full cult figure. Artemis‟ actions in the play might be understood as an articulation of two different roles: on the one hand, an artificial cultic construction in which a series of topoi associated with her – her presence in uncultivated woods, chastity, the impossibility of being seen by male eyes – are the basis of a relationship between goddess and mortals that follows a generic model based upon non-mainstream cults. On the other hand, she assumes the mediating role in the elevation of Hippolytus to cult figure. This mediating role implies that the goddess should distance herself from the previous ὁμιλία, and hence from the privileged relationship between goddess and mortal implicit in the aforementioned cultic model. There must be a rupture in the previous devotional relationship that allowed Hippolytus access to the space that belongs to the goddess. Only thus might Hippolytus‟ cult be established. First comes the announcement that a favorite of the Goddess of Love will die92. With it, and with all the accompanying explana91

92

So we cannot agree with WILDBERG 2002 p. 129f.: “Euripides’ Aphrodite ist nicht die reizbare Göttin der Ilias; sie ist die abscheuliche Apotheose nachtragender Weiblichkeit, die nur auf den richtigen Zeitpunkt wartet, um sich Genugtuung verschaffen zu können.” The real question is not whether the future victim “is” Adonis, but whether the audience had any way of knowing to whom Artemis is alluding. It could

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tions, Artemis shows that the action of the play has simply followed a pattern that might be repeated indefinitely93. The second manifestation of this estrangement is to be found in the physical distance that is created between Hippolytus and Artemis immediately before the death of the young boy. According to a topos that is also found in Alcestis94, Artemis exits before Hippolytus‟ death so as not to be polluted by his corpse. The words with which Hippolytus greets her when departing (1440f.) betray some bitterness95, though this bitterness does not consolidate into actual enmity against the goddess. As previously said, Hippolytus‟ heroization appears explicitly in this tragedy as a rupture in a previous cultual relationship, and at the same time establishes a new one. There is still one god to be mentioned who has a pivotal role in the play, and at the same time might be dismissed as a mere mechanical device for the progression of the plot: Poseidon96. As one of the two fathers of Theseus mentioned in the play97, he is obviously linked to the king of Athens and to the young man. It is impossible to know whether the three oaths were created ad hoc for this play. His presence can be judged from two different points of view. Firstly, his intervention is significant as it also reflects the cultic reality: Poseidon had a key role in Troezen‟s cult system98. Secondly, the fact that it should be Poseidon who kills the young hunter

93

94

95

96

97

98

be an allusion to another play, but we have no way of proving this. See the preserved scholium to 1240 says: εἰς τὸν Ἄδωνιν δὲ αἰνίττεται, ὣς τινές φασιν. λῆρος δὲ τὸ τοιοῦτον. οὐ γὰρ τόξοις Ἀρτέμιδος ἀπώλετο ὁ Ἄδωνις, ἀλλ‟ ὑπ‟ Ἄρεως. ἄδηλον οὖν τίνα φησί. KNOX 1952 notes the parallelisms in the behavior of the two goddesses in this tragedy. E. Alc. 22. Cf. BARRETT 1964 > 1437-9 on this topos and Greek notions of ritual purity. BARRETT 1964 ad loc. is of the opposite opinion: “No word of rebuke in this: only his yearning for her and a resigned acceptance of his mortal lot.” We totally agree with YUNIS 1988 p. 121 n. 38. Cf. BURKERT 1979 pp. 111-8 on Poseidon‟s role and, more generally, about the interpretation of Hippolytus‟ myth and the name of the character. Artemis calls Theseus son of Aegeus in 1283f. and 1431, and Theseus himself invokes Poseidon as his father in 887. BARRETT 1964 p. 7 n. 1.

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has as a consequence that his death at the hands of Aphrodite is indirect and mediated99. Actually both questions converge in a single one: the construction of this tale on the basis of a cultic framework in which both gods are associated with Hippolytus. The basic relationship between Hippolytus and Poseidon is shown by the hero‟s death, with the appearance of the monstrous bull. The whole mechanism of death which includes Poseidon, the bull, and the horses100 prefigures Hippolytus‟ role in the Troezenian cult system and works in this play as the tool that allows Aphrodite to destroy the hero without acting directly upon him in any way. Hippolytus‟ σωφροσύνη might not be compromised, so the goddess remains in the background and Poseidon acts as the executioner of the young man. This is apparently the structure as presented by the playwright, though it is impossible to know how far it preexisted this tragedy and how far it was refashioned by Euripides himself. Poseidon belongs to the pattern of heroization that partially structures Hippolytus‟ tale, but apparently does not have a role in the problematization of this pattern. There remains one last divine presence associated with Hippolytus‟ cult: Asclepius. He had a role in Hippolytus‟ apotheosis. As noted above, we do not know if this apotheosis, or even his resurrection without apotheosis – if such thing existed indeed – were part of the Troezenian cult in Euripides‟ time. The play makes no reference to Hippolytus‟ tomb and does not mention the sema of the Acropolis, perhaps to insinuate that Hippolytus was never buried101. In any case, the play gives us no clues about Asclepius or his role in Hippolytus‟ story102.

99

100 101

102

BURKERT 1979 p. 112 ironically remarks that the method used by Aphrodite in her vengeance is quite complicated and relates it to the cultic background in the tragic play. He compares this case with that of Glaucus Potnieus where Aphrodite directly causes the death of the hero: Aeschylus fr. 439 METTE = Servius, In Vergilium, ad Georgicas 3.268. Cf. FARNELL 1921 pp. 64-70 , BURKERT 1979 pp. 111-8. DUNN 1996 p. 95 stresses the abnormality of this fact and makes it key to his interpretation of the play. Again, as in The Women of Trachis.

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The hypothetical presence of Asclepius in the traditions of Hippolytus previously known to the Athenian audience is relevant for the interpretation of this play. Again, we do not know whether the Athenian audience took for granted that Asclepius would resurrect Hippolytus. Though it is impossible to give a conclusive answer to this question, the complex treatment of Hippolytus‟ cults in this play (which does not seem typical of Greek tragedy) apparently aims to emphasize the importance of the Troezenian cult over the Acropolis and, at the same time, to suggest an etiology for the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the Acropolis that omits any mention of the sema that was the reason for its name. An explanation is sought for Ἱππολύτωι δ‟ἔπι that does not imply the presence of Hippolytus in Aphrodite‟s sanctuary, but links the hero with the goddess nonetheless. Perhaps it points to an implicit apotheosis, but of course this cannot be proved. In any case it is highly probable that Euripides is playing with etiologies to constitute a unitary view of Hippolytus in front of the dual character of his cult, and in any case his attempt at integration stresses the primacy of the Troezenian cult. He plays with the heroization patterns, but at the same time takes seriously the heroization / apotheosis and interprets it within the framework of the cultic act.

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WOODARD Ed. 2007 R. D. Woodard Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, Cambridge University Press, 2007. WOODBURY 1965 L. Woodbury, “The Date and Atheism of Diagoras of Melos”, Phoenix 19 (1965) 178-211. WOODFORD 1971 S. Woodford, “Cults of Heracles in Attica”, in MITTEN – PEDLEY – SCOTT Edd. 1971, 211-225. WORTHINGTON Ed. 1996 I. Worthington Ed., Voice Into Text: Orality & Literacy in Ancient Greece, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1996. WRIGHT 2005 M. Wright, Euripides‟ Escape-Tragedies: A Study of Helen, Andromeda and Iphigenia among the Taurians, Oxford University Press, 2005. WRIGHT 2010 M. Wright, “The Tragedian as Critic: Euripides and Early Greek Poetics”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 130 (2010) 165-184. WYLES 2013 R. Wyles, “Heracles‟ Costume from Euripides‟ Heracles to Pantomime Performance”, in HARRISON – LIAPIS Edd. 2013, 181-198. YOSHITAKE 1994 S. Yoshitake, “Disgrace, Grief and Other Ills: Heracles‟ Rejection of Suicide”, The Journal of Hellenic Studies 114 (1994) 135-153. YUNIS 1988 H. Yunis, A New Creed: Fundamental Beliefs in Athenian Polis and Euripidean Drama, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1988. YUNIS Ed. 2003 H. Yunis Ed., Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ZEITLIN 1985 F. I. Zeitlin, “The Power of Aphrodite: Eros and the Boundaries of the Self in the Hippolytus”, in BURIAN Ed. 1985, 52-111. ZEITLIN 1986 F. I. Zeitlin, “Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama”, in EUBEN Ed. 1986, 101-141. ZEITLIN 1996 F. I. Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, The University of Chicago Press, 1996. ZHMUD 1997 L. Zhmud, Wissenschaft, Philosophie und Religion im frühen Pythagoreismus, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 1997. ZWIERLEIN 2006 O. Zwierlein, Hippolytus und Phaidra: Von Euripides bis D‟Annunzio. Mit einem Anhang zum Jansenismus. Ferdinand Schöningh, Parderbon-Munich-ViennaZürich, 2006.

Index Locorum Acusilaus: FgrHist. F 29f.

p. 113, n. 27

Aelianus: NA 12.37

p. 163, n. 46

Aeschylus: F 439 METTE

p. 184, n. 99

Aesopus: PERRY 515

p. 35, n. 71

Alcidamas: Soph. 1.

p. 19, n. 18

Alexis: PCG 2 F 140 KA

p. 48

Anaxagoras: DK 59 A 1 DK 59 A 100 DK 59 A 15 DK 59 A 2 DK 59 A 41 DK 59 A 42 DK 59 A 45 DK 59 A 46 DK 59 A 47 DK 59 A 48 DK 59 A 49 DK 59 A 5 DK 59 A 55 DK 59 A 57 DK 59 A 58 DK 59 A 64

p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127

Antiphon: DK 87 B 10

p. 140, n. 84

Antoninus Liberalis: 17 p. 165, n. 55 Apollodorus: 1.7.4 2.5.12 3.10.3 3.111 3.40-4

p. 165, n. 52 p. 131, n. 66 p. 151, n. 7 p. 117, n. 35 p. 117, n. 35

Archilochus: P. Colon. 7511

p. 164

Aristophanes: Nu. 258 Ra. 1030ff. Ra. 361 Ra. 866ff.

p. 20, n. 22 p. 20, n. 21 p. 112 p. 78, n. 59

Aristoteles: Po. 1448b38-1449a1 Po. 1459a37-b16 Po. 1450b Po. 1451b1-5 Po. 1453A16-23 Rh. 3.1413b

p. 47, n. 106 p. 47, n. 106 p. 83, n. 67 p. 78, n. 56 p. 77, n. 55 p. 65, n. 14

Bacchylides: Ep. 5

p. 112

Callimachus: F 570 PFEIFFER Jov. vv. 4-9 Lav. Pall. 107-16

p. 165, n. 54 p. 57, n. 131 p. 165, n. 51

Chameleon: F 38 WEHRLI

p. 67, n. 22

Critias: DK 88 B 25

p. 96, n. 83

Democritus: DK 68 A 74 DK 68 B 112

p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127

Diodorus Siculus: 1.96.5f. 4.25.1

p. 40, n. 89 p. 131, n. 66

Diogenes Laertius: 6.80 8.33 9.51

p. 82, n. 66 p. 155, n. 21 p. 40, n. 88

Ecphantus: DK 51 1

p. 56, n. 127

Empedocles: DK 31 B 16 DK 31 B 17 DK 31 B 20

p. 56, n. 128 p. 56, n. 128 p. 56, n. 128

Eratosthenes: Cat. 6

p. 151, n. 7

230 Cat. 7 Euripides: Alc. 22 Andr. 674 Ba. 266-97 Bellerophontes: TrGF 5.1 F 286 KS Diktys: TrGF 5.1 F 331 KS El. 508-46 El. 737-46 El. 1035 El. 1245f. Erechtheus: TrGF 5.1 F 365 KS Hel. 1018 HF 1 HF 20 HF 26-34 HF 41f. HF 48-50 HF 55f. HF 62 HF 62 HF 63 HF 70f. HF 85f. HF 87 HF 87f. HF 97 HF 126-30 HF 140-69 HF 170-235 HF 177-80 HF 190 HF 203 HF 250 HF 268f. HF 273 HF 273 HF 309 HF 309f HF 312-5 HF 315 HF 339-47 HF 436-41 HF 480 HF 509 HF 521f. HF 521f. HF 524f. HF 532

Index Locorum p. 165, n. 54 p. 183, n. 94 p. 94, n. 79 p. 87 p. 97 p. 94, n. 79 p. 76, n. 52 p. 96 p. 94, n. 79 p. 100, n. 89 p. 171 p. 94, n. 79 p. 116 p. 137 p. 117 p. 114 p. 123, n. 51 p. 114 p. 120 p. 120, n. 44 p. 118, n. 39 p. 117 p. 121 p. 121 p. 117 p. 120 p. 115, n. 33 p. 122 p. 124 p. 123, n. 51 p. 123 p. 118, n. 39 p. 118, n. 39 p. 116 p. 114 p. 116 p. 118, n. 39 p. 120, n. 44 p. 116 p. 118, n. 39 p. 128f. p. 116 p. 118, n. 39 p. 118, n. 39 p. 126 p. 133 p. 131 p. 133

HF 543 HF 543 HF 556f. HF 560f. HF 562-4 HF 568-73 HF 575-582 HF 581 HF 585f. HF 588-94 HF 610-21 HF 622-36 HF 631f. HF 637-72 HF 655f. HF 676f. HF 678 HF 686 HF 692 HF 735 HF 739 HF 754 HF 841f. HF 852f. HF 921 HF 1116 HF 1141 HF 1190-4 HF 1264f. HF 1314 HF 1314f. HF 1315 HF 1317 HF 1319 HF 1320f. HF 1321 HF 1321 HF 1326-38 HF 1331 HF 1338f. HF 1340-6 HF 1340-6 HF 1340-6 HF 1340-93 HF 1351 HF 1357 HF 1357 HF 1377-85 HF 1393 HF 1393 HF 1396 HF 1400 HF 1401

p. 116 p. 116, n. 34 p. 133 p. 116 p. 131 p. 133, n. 68 p. 132 p. 146, n. 94 p. 132 p. 128, n. 61 p. 131. p. 132 p. 132 p. 116 p. 134 p. 135 p. 135 p. 135 p. 135 p. 133 p. 134 p. 116 p. 138 p. 137 p. 118, n. 39 p. 118, n. 39 p. 118, n. 39 p. 123, n. 51 p. 143 p. 118, n. 39 p. 140 p. 140 p. 140 p. 140 p. 140 p. 118, n. 39 p. 140 p. 146 p. 146 p. 147 p. 141 p. 141, n. 85 p. 143, n. 90 p. 144 p. 146, n. 94 p. 118, n. 39 p. 143 p. 145 p. 118, n. 39 p. 143 p. 118, n. 39 p. 132 p. 146

231

Index Locorum Hipp. 11 Hipp. 17 Hipp. 47 Hipp. 73f. Hipp. 73-87 Hipp. 73-87 Hipp. 79f. Hipp. 79f. Hipp. 83 Hipp. 85 Hipp. 90 Hipp. 102 Hipp. 102 Hipp. 138 Hipp. 148-50 Hipp. 239-49 Hipp. 244 Hipp. 316f. Hipp. 335 Hipp. 373-430 Hipp. 375-8 Hipp. 380-7 Hipp. 453-61 Hipp. 644 Hipp. 887 Hipp. 952-4 Hipp. 953f. Hipp. 966 Hipp. 996f. Hipp. 1016f. Hipp. 1100 Hipp. 1283f. Hipp. 1300f. Hipp. 1309 Hipp. 1339 Hipp. 1364f. Hipp. 1402 Hipp. 1420-2 Hipp. 1423-30 Hipp. 1423-30 Hipp. 1431 Hipp. 1440f. IA 543-551 Ion 545 Ion 1555f. IT 386-91 *Sthen.: TrGF 5.2 F 661 Theseus (?): TrGF F 388 5.1 KS Tr. 969-1007 Tr. 989 Tr. 1059

p. 166, n. 58 p. 157 p. 174 p. 164 p. 163 p. 177, n. 81 p. 164 p. 166, n. 59 p. 166, n. 59 p. 157 p. 166, n. 59 p. 166, n. 58 p. 166, n. 59 p. 166, n. 58 p. 163, n. 44 p. 175f. p. 175, n. 78 p. 166, n. 58 p. 175, n. 78 p. 167 p. 168 p. 169 p. 139, n. 80 p. 94, n. 79 p. 183, n. 97 p. 160 p. 156 p. 94, n. 79 p. 162 p. 161 p. 166, n. 59 p. 183, n. 97 p. 174 p. 162 p. 162 p. 166, n. 59 p. 157 p. 179 p. 152 p. 179 p. 183, n. 97 p. 183 p. 171, n. 70 p. 94, n. 79 p. 100, n. 88 p. 37, n. 79 p. 171, n. 70 p. 171, n. 70 p. 92 p. 94, n. 79 p. 94, n. 79

TrGF 5.1 T 166a-169 KS TrGF 5.2 I.F. F 991 KS

p. 98, n. 86

Hecataeus: FGrHist. F 23f.

p. 113, n. 27

Hellanicus: FGrHist. F 102f.

p. 113, n. 27

Heraclitus: DK 22 A 22 DK 22 B 40 DK 22 B 42 DK 22 B 56 DK 22 B 94

p. 49, n. 112 p. 49, n. 112 p. 49, n. 112 p. 4.9, n. 112 p. 56, n. 126

Herodorus: FGrHist 31 FGrHist 31 F 14

p. 104, n. 6 p. 113

Herodotus: 4.132 1.119. 1.122 2.116f. 2.50ff. 2.53 5.67

p. 47, n. 106 p. 32, n. 61 p. 89, n. 75 p. 47, n. 106 p. 40 p. 40, n. 90 p. 60, n. 5

Hesiodus: Op. 106-201 Op. 202-212 Op. 26 Op. 317-9 Op. 42-105 Sc. 122f. Sc. 128-38 Sc. 27-9 Th. 28-30 Th. 289 Th. 314f. Th. 526f. Th. 950

p. 36, n. 74 p. 36, n. 74 p. 69 p. 171 p. 36, n. 74 p. 123, n. 51 p. 110 p. 110 p. 69 p. 109 p. 109 p. 109 p. 109

Homerus: Il. 11.385 Il. 14.265f. Il. 14.323f. Il. 14.346-51 Il. 15.14-35 Il. 18.115-21

p. 123, n. 50 p. 109 p. 109 p. 164 p. 109 p. 109

p. 83. n. 68

232

Index Locorum

Il. 24.45 Il. 5.381-404 Il. 5.381-404 Od. 5.44 Od. 11.601-8 Od. 21.22-30 Od. 21.28f. n. 15 Od. 22.437-445

p. 171 p. 108 n. 67, p. 132 p. 164 p. 109 p. 108 p. 108 p. 94, n. 80

Hymni Homerici: h Hom. Cer. 5ff. h. Hom. 15.1-9

p. 164, n. 48 p. 110

Iamblichus: Protr. 38.17 Ibycus: 5 PAGE

Pausanias: 1.22.1 1.43.4 1.43.4 2.32.1-4 2.32.2 2.6.2-3 3.12.9 5.7.7 8.27.17 9.5-25

p. 150 p. 153, n. 11 p. 153, n. 12 p. 151 p. 152, n. 8 p. 117, n. 35 p. 149, n. 4 p. 153, n. 12 p. 165, n. 53 p. 117, n. 35

Pherecydes Lerius: FGrHist. F 68f.

p. 113, n. 27

Pherecydes Syrius: DK 7 B 5

p. 48

Philodemus: Piet. 52

p. 151, n. 7

Philolaus: DK 44 A 12

p. 56, n. 127

Pindarus: F 140a.51 pp. 111. F 169a.42 pp. 111 F 169a.5 pp. 111 F 29.4 I. 5.37 I. 6.35 I. 7.7 N. 1.33 N. 10.17 N. 10.33 N. 10.53 N. 11.27 N. 4.24 N. 7.86 N. 1 O. O. O. 2.3 O. 3.11 O. 6.68 O. 7.22 O. 9.30 O. 1.30f. O. 1.51ff. O. 12 O. 9.35f. O. 9.35f.

pp. 111. pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 p. 125, n. 54 10.16 pp. 111 10.24 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 pp. 111 p. 90, n. 75 p. 37 p. 119, n. 41 p. 37 p. 132, n. 67

p. 155, n. 21 p. 164

Isocrates: 11.38f. 3.48f. 4.1-3 4.159 4.28 5.33 7.45

p. 49, n. 113 p. 49, n. 113 p. 19, n. 18 p. 49, n. 113 p. 29, n. 52 p. 131, n. 66 p. 19, n. 18

Lucianus: Syr. D. 60

p. 152, n. 9

Lycophron: TrGF 1.100 F 1h KS p. 78, n. 57 TrGF 1.100 F 1k KS p. 78, n. 57 Lycurgus: 15.92

p. 44

Moschio: TrGF 1 97 F1 KS TrGF 1 97 F3 KS

p. 78, n. 57 p. 78, n. 57

Nonnus: D. 48.351-369 D. 48.392-413

p. 165, n. 56 p. 165, n. 56

Palaephatus: 51

p. 165, n. 54

Parmenides: DK 28 B 8-19

p. 56, n. 130

233

Index Locorum P. 10.3 P. 11.3 P. 5.71 P. 9.87

p. 111 p. 111 p. 111 p. 111

Pisander: EGF F 10 KINKEL

p. 112

Plato: Grg. 523 d-e Ion 530c-d Phdr. 229Cd Phdr. 252B Phlb.16c Prt. 316d-e Prt. 320c-323c R. 522a R. 614b-621d

p. 36 p. 27, n. 47 p. 89, n. 75 p. 25, n. 37 p. 36 p. 20 p. 36 p. 29, n. 52 p. 37

Plutarchus: De virt. mor. 448 Lyc. 15.1 Lys. 30.7

p. 171, n. 72 p. 155, n. 23 p. 155, n. 23

Pollux: 3.38 3.48 8.40

p. 153, n. 15 p. 155, n. 23 p. 155, n. 23

Prodicus: DK 84 B 5

p. 88, n. 73

Protagoras: DK A 1

p. 172

Pythagoras: DK 58 B 15 DK 58 B 1a DK 58 C6

p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 126 p. 56, n. 126

Sextus Empiricus: 9.51

p. 91, n. 76

Sappho: 2 LOBEL-PAGE

p. 164

Sophocles: Tr. 1264-1278

pp. 98f.

Statius: Theb. 2.253f.

p. 153, n. 14

Stobaeus: 67.16 MEINEKE

p. 155, n. 23

Thales: DK 11 A 23 DK 11 A 11-12

p. 56, n. 127 p. 48

Theognis: 373-80

p. 99

Thucydides: 1.21.1 1.22.4

p. 29, n. 52 p. 29, n. 52

Vergilius: Aen. 6

p. 37

Xenophanes: DK 21 B 23 DK 21 B 25 DK 21 A 1 DK 21 A 11 DK 21 A 19 DK 21 A 35 DK 21 B 10 DK 21 B 11 DK 21 B 12 DK 21 B 14 DK 21 B 15 DK 21 B 16 DK 21 B 23 DK 21 A 1 DK 21 A 34 DK 21 B 1

p. 140, n. 84 p. 56, n. 127 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 49, n. 111 p. 56, n. 127 p. 56, n. 127 p. 570

Xenophon: Cyn. 1.2.11 Mem. 2.1.21-34 Mem. 2.1.21-34. Mem. 4.2.10 Mem. 4.2.10

p. 157 p. 112 p. 104, n. 7 p. 21, n. 25 p. 25, n. 37

Inscriptiones Graecae: IG2 310.280 p. 150 IG2 324.69 p. 150 SIG3 1080 p. 60, n. 4 Papyrus Derveni: Col. XXVI

p. 89. n. 75

234 Scholia in Euripidem: Ad Hipp. 1 p. 158 Ad Hipp. 14 p. 158 Ad Hipp. 30 p. 150 Ad Hipp. 79 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 148-50 p. 163, n. 44 Ad Hipp. 307 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 601 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 616 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 952 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 953 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 953 p. 177, n. 80 Ad Hipp. 954 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 1016 p. 159 Ad Hipp. 1240 p. 183 n. 92 Scholia in Homerum: Ad Il. 20.67f. p. 95, n. 81 Ad B Il. 20.67 p. 95, n. 81 Ad Od. 11.320 p. 150 Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Adespota): II Adesp. F 664 p. 32, n. 62

Index Locorum

DRAMA – Studien zum antiken Drama und zu seiner Rezeption herausgegeben von Bernhard Zimmermann Bisher sind erschienen:

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DRAMA

Neue Serie · Band 17

Studien zum antiken Drama und zu seiner Rezeption Herausgegeben von Bernhard Zimmermann

This book is about the representation of gods (both as characters and as a subject for discourse) in two tragedies by Euripides: Heracles and Hippolytus. Its goal is to establish a framework for the reading of Greek tragedy and for the analysis of the various ways in which the gods of the Greek religion appear in tragic drama, and to apply it to the aforementioned plays. In this work we contend that such a framework should transcend the usual dichotomy made between a “religious” and a “non-religious” reading of Greek tragedy, and more specifically of Euripidean tragedy. This dichotomy contains in itself a cultural assumption, that is, the possibility of establishing a clear-cut distinction between a domain of religious discourse and an autonomous, profane sphere in which the representations of gods would assume a different value and meaning. There is nothing in the discursive structures of Classical Greece that allows us to posit something of the kind. The elements that appear to us as questioning the traditional representations of gods in Greek tragedy can be seen from this perspective.