The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy [Course Book ed.] 9781400861866

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THE ANCIENT QUARREL BETWEEN POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY

THE ANCIENT QUARREL BETWEEN POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY Thomas Gould

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRINCETON,

NEW

PRESS

JERSEY

COPYRIGHT © 1990 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION

DATA

GOULD, THOMAS THE ANCIENT QUARREL BETWEEN POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY / THOMAS GOULD. P.

CM.

INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 0-691-0737S-9 (ACID-FREE PAPER) 1. GREEK DRAMA (TRAGEDY)—HISTORY AND CRITICISM—THEORY, ETC. 2. SUFFERING IN LITERATURE. 3. SYMPATHY IN LITERATURE. 4. LITERATURE—PHILOSOPHY. 5. PATHOS IN LITERATURE. 6. PHILOSOPHY, ANCIENT 7. POETICS. I. TITLE. PA3131.G56

1991

882'. 0109—DC20

90-38557

CIP

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN LINOTRON SABON PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS BOOKS ARE PRINTED ON ACID-FREE PAPER, AND MEET THE GUIDELINES FOR PERMANENCE AND DURABILITY OF THE COMMITTEE ON PRODUCTION GUIDELINES FOR BOOK LONGEVITY OF THE COUNCIL ON LIBRARY RESOURCES PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 1 3 5 7 9

10

8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION

ix

PART I: THE ANCIENT QUARREL ι "Philosophy" in Socratism

1

4

2

Socratism in Plato

8

3

Socratism in Aristotle

13

4

Plato's First Attack: Republic II

19

5

Pathos in Greek Religion

22

6

Plato's Second Attack: Republic X

29

7

Pathos in Greek Tragedy

36

8

Pathos in Aristotle

49

9

Plato, Aristotle, and the "Shudder"

55

10

Pathos, pathos, passion, and Passion 11

The Quarrel Today

70

12

Two Case Histories

76

13

Plato/Aristotle and Freud/Jung

80

63

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CONTENTS

PART II: PATHOS AND THE APPEAL OF TRAGEDY 14

Justice and Injustice in Homer

90

is Justice and Injustice in the Oresteia

104

16

Aeschylus the Eleusinian

117

17

Pathos and the "Shudder" in Sophocles

130

18

The Anger of the Gods and Heroes

141

19

Sophocles or Socrates?

155

20

Euripides against the Myths

171

21

Our Euripides

189

PART III: HAVING IT BOTH WAYS

205

22

Was Plato Serious?

209

23

The True Dionysus

225

24

The Trouble with Psychological Explanations

241

25

The Trouble with Aristotle's Alternative 26

The Nature of Tragedy BIBLIOGRAPHY

268

300

Text and Commentaries 300 Secondary Sources 301 INDEX

311

258

87

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A

VERSION of the Introduction appeared in Themes in Drama: Drama and Philosophy, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). This and several other chapters were also given as papers: at the University of California, Riverside (at a conference on "Themes in Drama"), the University of Southern California, Boston University, the University of Cincinnati (the Louise Taft Semple Lectures), Cambridge, Oxford, and elsewhere. I am grateful for all of these invitations and for the helpful responses from the audiences, also for the responses from my own students at Yale. A number of people have read all or parts of this manuscript and have given me valuable suggestions. I must single out one in particular, Prof. Brian Fuchs of the University of Chicago. I am grateful for his patience, intelligence, and learning. I am truly in his debt.

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ATHOS IS our name for the power of some events to stir us to a mysteriously agreeable sadness. It is also our name for the emotions awakened by such an event, a mixture of tenderness and sympathy. When the occasion is some turn or observation in our own lives, pathos may be associated with a sense of loss; even then, however, it is thought to be of value and hardly painful at all. And when it is created by a drama or story, or by music or art, it may be esteemed for its ability to ennoble us or to deepen our understanding. Still, it is a minor pleasure, and we do not think about it much. The Greek pathos, distant ancestor of "pathos" (via Aristotle, Longinus, and Pope, among others), l was a very different sort of thing. The pathos was cherished by some Greeks as the most vital moment in religion and art, feared by others as an enticement to sacrilege and irrationality. When the term first gained currency (it is not found before the fifth century B.C.), it was the right name for the operative event in stories essential to popular religion and to tragedy: catastrophic suffering, undergone by some great figure, man or god, far in excess of the sufferer's deserts. Modern readers regularly miss this almost technical use of the word pathos. That failure then contributes to serious misunderstandings, not only in our interpretation of the tragedies and of key passages in them, but also in our attempt to evaluate the tradition of hostility to exploitation of the pathos, what Plato called "the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy." 2 1 The word's meaning in all modern languages was influenced in complicated ways by Longinus's unhistorical interpretations of Aristotle. See On the Sublime 9.15. Aristotle contrasted the Odyssey, which he called ethike, a story of "character," with the Iliad, which he described as pathetikon, full of pathe (catastrophes, terrible suffering). See the Poetics 1459 b 13—16. Longinus thought that a story of "character" must reveal profound and unchanging principles and that pathetikon meant wildly emotional, and therefore also transient and particular. Nevertheless, Longinus clearly preferred the Iliad, and had already (8.1) attributed to vehement and god-inspired pathos the power to lend sublimity to a story. In English an honorific use of pathos was reinforced by Pope's parody of Longinus, Peri Bathous: The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727). Pope contrasted "pathos" with "bathos" (depth) and defined the latter as a ludicrous collapse of dignity. It should be noted that in French, for instance, pathos still means roughly what Pope meant by "bathos." Yet Ie pathotique is often equivalent to the English pathos, and English "pathetic" is often equivalent to the French pathos. See Chapter 10 below. 2 Republic 10.607 b 5 and c 3. Plato supports his assertion that the "quarrel" is "ancient" by quoting abuses aimed by (unnamed) poets at philosophers. From Laws 12.967 c 7-d 1 we gather that the philosophers' materialistic astronomy was the chief reason for the poet's hostility. From the larger context of the argument in Republic X, however, we may define

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INTRODUCTION

The weight given the idea of pathos in the fifth and fourth centuries can be appreciated if we link the word, not with our "pathos," but with our "Passion." Paul and other writers of the New Testament tended to speak of Christ's god-caused unmerited suffering as his pathemata,3 a different nominal formation from the same verb, pathein, "to suffer." And the idea is still the same: a lamentable victimization by and for God and also for the benefit of mankind. Jerome translated pathemata by the Latin passtones, at that time a little-used noun but correctly formed from the verb patior, to have something done to one. 4 From passiones, of course, comes our "passion." So Greek popular religion and the biblical religions both concentrated on the same paradoxical spectacle, the pathos or pathemata, "passions" in the sense of the Passion of Christ. In the pagan as in the Christian tradition, the pious cherished the pathos and were grateful for it; but the Greeks worried about this strange phenomenon. As the dancers say in Oedipus the King, the revelation of a pathos makes one shudder and want to turn away, even as it makes one yearn to look, to feast one's eyes, and try to understand. 5 The dancers' aversion and abhorrence at the sight of the blinded Oedipus is almost as strong as their intense fascination. The same is true of the audience. This is very strange: we are taking a grim kind of pleasure in what horrifies us. Worse yet, as the dancers reason in Agamemnon, gods can give mortals a revelation through a pathos only if they are ca"poetry" as the enterprise of those who wish to move hearers with accounts of pathe, and "philosophy" as the mission of those who are hostile to this enterprise. See also Chapter 22, n. 6 below. 3 E.g., 2 Corinthians 1.5. The plural is preferred to the singular, but see Hebrews 2.9. Pathema was preferrable to pathos, since the latter now usually meant violent emotion (e.g. at Colossians 3.5), but both forms were known to be from paschein. Some learned Alexandrians speculated that pascha was also from paschein. See N.R.M. de Lange, Origin and the Jews (Cambridge, 1967) 94f. Pascha is actually a Greek transcription of the Aramaic phasha = pesach, "Passover": see the Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (Stuttgart, 1954), s.v. pascho; also Christine Mohrmann, "Pascho, passio, transitus," Ephem. Liturg. 66 (1952): 37—52. 4 The earliest of the very few occurrences of passio in pagan literature is in Varro, frag. 60 Goetz—Schoell, where it means "passion" in the sense of "emotion." In the Vulgate passiones Christt translates pathemata tou Christou (2. Corinthians 1.5), passibilis translates pathetos (Acts 26.23), and so on. 5 As the doors are about to open on the newly blinded Oedipus, the messenger says (1295) that the dancers will now see a spectacle {theama) that even those who hate will pity— meaning, not those who hate Oedipus, of course (all present love their king), but those who hate the terrible sight. The dancers respond by singing, "Fearful pathos for men to look at!" They then expand on the messenger's assertion of the double nature of this pathos. The shudder (1306) may be an element of the fascinating side of the experience, not of the abhorrent side only. (1 am following Jebb and Campbell in taking theama as the object of stygount'. Others, e.g. Kamerbeek, supply "him," Oedipus. That would reduce the line to a commonplace in tragedy, as at Ajax 924.)

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pable of perpetrating monstrously unjust events, which is surely what the sacrifice of Iphigeneia was. Should we be thankful to gods like that? the dancers ask.6 The Socratics are even more blunt. The first mark of true piety, they insist, is the realization that divinity never condones, and certainly does not perpetrate, injustice toward anyone, man or god. Instruction and revelation through the spectacle of a pathos, therefore, is not compatible with the nature of divinity, and any religion that moves its followers by pathe (the plural of pathos) is necessarily false and inimical to true piety. But we have lost the Greeks' clarity on this issue, especially in Christian theology. It rarely occurs to Christians that their theologians are playing a trick on them when they call the Passion an instance of justice, not injustice. It is probable, but not entirely certain, that pathein, from which pathos, pathema, and other new nouns were formed in the fifth century, meant, from the beginning, "to suffer," "to undergo a calamity." The verb's etymology is obscure. Relations to pema, "misery," talaipdros, "distressed," and penomai, "to toil," have been suggested, but all are rejected by Chantraine. 7 In any case; the etymologies of these words are also obscure. In favor of an original meaning "to be made miserable" is the fact that the first nominal form of the verb was penthos, which never lost its earliest attested meaning, "grief," "misery." Also, in the epic tradition pathein seems always to denote an experience the victim deplores. There are only two or three passages open to a different interpretation. 8 Shortly after the epic period, however, we get two instances, Archilochus 14.2 and Tyrtaeus 12.38, where pathein means experiencing something good. This may be a development from a common formula for reciprocal justice: do evil and you must expect to suffer evil. This formula, which appears in a Hesiodic fragment,9 may have suggested a corollary: do good and you may expect to experience good. Except for an occurrence in So6 Lines 176—83. I take the pou at 184 as an interrogative. See Maurice Pope, "Merciful Heavens? A Question in Aeschylus' Agamemnon" JHS 94 (1974): 110—13. I shall discuss this passage, also the passage in Oedipus the King, in Chapter 7 below. 7 Pierre Chantraine, Dtctionnaire otymologique de la langue Greque: Histoire des mots (Paris, 1968), s.v. pascho. 8 The peisetat at Odyssey 7.197 could well be neutral in meaning, but cf. Iliad 20.127, which suggests that a grim interpretation might be right in Odyssey 7 also. In the Theogony, hossa pathontes at 651 and anaelpta pathontes at 660 have sometimes been interpreted in a good sense. See M. L. West on both lines. But the usual Homeric usage makes perfectly good sense in both passages. Hesiod, frag. 286 (Merkelbach—West) sounds like a neutral formula: if what is done to a man (ei ke pathoi) is what he himself did, there will be true justice; but the preceding line says, if a man sows evil he will harvest evil. Pathoi therefore surely means "suffers." 9 Frag. 286 (Merkelbach—West). See previous note.

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Ion, however, in a line which may not be by Solon,10 and several occurrences in the Theognidea, a collection of verses from different periods, pathein as the experience of good does not appear again until the fifth century. The use of pathein so familiar to readers of classical literature and philosophy, to have something done to one, good, bad, or indifferent—its employment, in other words, as a functional passive for erdein and other words meaning "to do"—is surprisingly late, to judge from our records. This may be an accident, but it may indeed point to a late development, either from greater familiarity with pathein for good experiences, or from the Socratic habit of referring to emotions and sense experiences as pathe since such things were thought by them to be harmful as often as not. 11 This Socratic idiom is, of course, the origin of our other use of the Latinate "passion"—passions in the sense of rage, sexual arousal, and the like. Yet no Greek writer, not even Aristotle, forgot the use of pathos derived from what was once the most widely recognized meaning of pathein, to suffer a major catastrophe. 12 And Plato was very sensitive to the old belief that a holy pathos required a terrible injustice perpetrated by a god. 13 Is it an accident that we have no occurrence of pathos before Aeschylus? We cannot explain its absence from our record on metrical grounds. 14 Still, we cannot be sure that this formation is not older than it seems. We do have ainopathes, "suffering terrible things," at Odyssey 8.201. Yet the earlier record hardly prepares us for the many appearances of pathos in the fifth century. And unlike bathos, "depth," which also 10

24.4 = Theognidea 722. Pathos as emotion appears at Democritus B 31, but the text is uncertain; also at Thucydides 3.84.1, although the authenticity of the passage is disputed. Cf. pathema at Gorgias B 11.9 and at Xenophon, Cyropaedia 3.1.17. Otherwise the evidence points to a Platonic origin for this use of pathos. The idea that rage, sex, etc. are afflictions from without is, of course, common in Greek poetry from the Iliad on. At Phaedrus 265 b 6 to erotikon pathos is half way between "affliction" and "emotion." In Aristotle "affection" is often the appropriate translation, e.g. On the Soul 402 a 9, 403 a 3, Nicomachean Ethics 1109 b 30; yet "affliction" is often implied, e.g. Poetics 1455 a 31—32 and Rhetoric 1378 a 19. 12 See esp. the four definitions of pathos in Metaphysics Delta. 1022 b 15-21. The first two are developed from paschein as one of the Categories. The third, however, is regrettable alterations, especially very painful ones, and the fourth is misfortunes and pains of exceptional magnitudes: eti ta megethe ton symphoron kai lyperon pathe legetat. Alexander of Aphrodisias omits kai lyperon, so Jaeger brackets these words; Ross, however, accepts them. One of the best manuscripts has hedeon instead of lyperdn, which Jaeger thinks may preserve a variant tradition, symphoron hedeon kai lyperon, but that presumably resulted from puzzlement experienced by a generation that really had forgotten the technical use of pathos. 13 See esp. Republic 2.380 a 5, discussed below. 14 Ernst Risch, Homertsch Wortbildung una Flexion (Berlin, 1974), 84—87, lists words with the same metrical form as pathos. 11

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began appearing about the same time in place of benthos but with the same meaning as benthos, pathos was reserved for some uses not attested for penthos. Penthos continues to mean "grief" or "mourning"; pathos almost always means the occasion for grief, especially a god-caused catastrophe largely or entirely undeserved by the victim. It is certainly possible to find old uses of the verb pathein that could have led to the new technical meaning of pathos. Odysseus was often called polla pathon and the like, meaning that he suffered many calamities; and those calamities were, by and large, far beyond what he deserved. Also, ultimately his troubles were mostly god-caused; many were brought about by Poseidon, for instance.15 And at Callinus 1.17 pathein is used of the death of a great warrior, one on whom his fellow citizens should now gaze with wonder. But the fifth-century use of pathos in connection with initiatory and hero religions, enthusiasms only rarely referred to in our earlier records, may point to a different origin for the word's new popularity. It could be that new interest—or more articulate interest—in the special suffering of revered gods, like Dionysus and Demeter, or of heroes, like Ajax or Adrastus, required a term that would denote the victimization of the revered figure, not the grief that was an obvious consequence of the victimization. Perhaps penthos, "grief," was no longer universally known to be the nominal form of pathein, since the " n " in the noun appeared in guises no longer recognizable in most forms of the verb. But penthos would in any case have been inadequate as a name for the god-caused unmerited suffering of a god or hero. The use of pathos in talk about some of the initiatory religions can be seen in Herodotus. At 2.170-71 he refers cryptically to the sparagmos (dismemberment) of Dionysus as the god's secret pathos. He then likens it to a comparable secret about the suffering of Demeter and Persephone. Centuries later pathos reappears as a technical term for these Passions in the accounts of Plutarch, Pausanias, and others. 16 The use of pathos in explanations of hero religion can be seen in Herodotus and Pindar. At 15 Pathein is attached to Odysseus in several formulas, first in the invocation (1.4), then many times thereafter, in the mouth of Odysseus himself and as observed by others, both mortals and gods. Only Poseidon implies that the hero's suffering was richly deserved (5.377). 16 Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 156 n. 46, lists occurrences in Diodorus, Dionysius of Hahcarnassus, and Plutarch (three times). To this list should be added Aristotle, On Philosophy, frag. 15 Ross, mentioned briefly by Burkert, pp. 891 and 153 n. 13, also Pausanias 8.37.5 (the pathemata of Dionysus), Athenagoras, Legatio 32.1, the "Orphic Gold Leaves" A 4 (Zuntz), and possibly many more. Burkert (pp. 75—76) warns, quite sensibly, against the Frazarian belief in a single pattern to be found in all stories of "suffering" (and sometimes "resurrected") gods. In Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 260—64, he describes the power of initiatory religions without reference to sympathy for the gods' suffering; but see p. 277 of the same book.

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5.67 Herodotus describes the celebrations at Sicyon, early in the sixth century, of the pathea of the hero Adrastus. His claim that these pathe were celebrated by "tragic dances" is often dismissed as unhistorical, but some scholars defend the description as correct in one sense or another. 17 In any case it is easy enough to find phrases in the surviving tragedies that echo the use of pathos by Herodotus in this passage.18 There appears to be no great difference between the pathe of Demeter or Dionysus on the one hand, and those of Aj ax and Adrastus on the other. What is needed above all, as Pindar makes clear in the Seventh Netnean, is a genuine and obvious gap between the sufferer's deserts and what happens to him. A hero is entitled to veneration only if he is the victim of a genuine injustice. Odysseus, Pindar complains, was much too guilty (too unscrupulous and sophistic) to merit veneration. Ajax, however, was a true victim and so deserves his hero honors. 19 The pathos in a holy story can in fact be followed by a victory—as in the great compromise won by Demeter, the vindictive triumphs of Dionysus born again, the deification of Heracles, the heroization of Adrastus and Ajax, and so on. This pattern also appears in fifth-century tragedies: a fair number either end in the restitution of justice or hint at justice to come at some later date. And even those that end in bleak misery and complete defeat may allude to future benefits mankind will receive from all this suffering. The pathos need not be the final event in the story, therefore. All that is needed is a prominent and genuine pathos at an important moment in the drama; the ending can seem almost to cancel it out. Con17 See A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy2, revised by T.B.L. Webster (Oxford, 1962), 101-7; Albin Lesky, Die Tragtsche Dichtung der Hellenen3 (Gottingen, 1972), 43; Ettore Cingano, "Clistene di Sicione, Erodoto e i poemi del ciclo tebano," Quad. Urbtnati di Cult. Class. 20, no. 2 (1985): 31-40; and Emily Vermeule, "Baby Aigisthos and the Bronze Age", Proc. Cambr. Philol. Soc. 213 (1987): 122-52. 18 Some tragedies climax or end with what looks like a formula, e.g. Prometheus Bound 1093, eshorais m' hos ekdika pascho, and Antigone 940—42, leussete . . . hoia . . . pascho. Older writers, e.g., Carl Robert, Oidipus (Berlin, 1915), 1:142, occasionally went too far in equating the role of a hero's suffering with that of a god's, but that is still preferable to the more recent habit of interpreting Adrastus's pathea as his "experiences" rather than his calamities, e.g., J. A. Davidson, From Archilochus to Pindar (London, 1968), 5—6. 19 Nemean 7.20—21. Pindar complains that "for myself I hold that Odysseus's reputation [logos] exceeds his patha." As Kirkwood notes in his commentary, the patha is not the contest with Ajax for Achilles' armor, but the years of suffering described in the Odyssey. Pindar may have felt that it was an irritating paradox for Homer to emphasize the great victimizations (polla pathon . . .) of the one hero who was eventually given a rousing fulfillment of all his desires. Odysseus was in any case, as Pindar notes, famous for using language not to tell the truth but to achieve his own ends at any cost. Pindar contrasts him with Ajax, who, because he acted without recourse to clever language, suffered a genuine pathos, one that ought to earn him even more veneration than he has received. This passage is discussed more fully in Chapter 5; see esp. n. 25.

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sider the parallel in Christianity. Paul tells his readers to concentrate on the cross, the terrible and utterly undeserved suffering of the blameless Christ, a painful injustice ordered by God himself.20 This does not feel like blasphemy, because there is always the resurrection, whether it is mentioned or not. And in any case, mankind cannot but be grateful for the pathos. Nevertheless, the event itself is a monstrous injustice. Jews and Christians have lived for centuries with the idea that their deity benefits mankind by causing largely or entirely unjustified suffering for certain individuals or generations. However, few rely on that thought when they themselves suffer a loss. A mourner, if he is pious, will not assume that a victim of, say Auschwitz or leukemia, must have deserved his suffering. His grief may be quite terrible. Yet he may assume that some higher justice is being done, despite appearances. The thoughts with which he will comfort himself are in fact quite like those in some Greek tragedies: divinity's ways are not our ways, on a higher plane or in the distant future it may yet be possible to discern the true benevolence of divinity, the very incomprehensibility of the event shows that it is not the work of man alone, and so on. The Greeks, however, seem never to have been without thinkers who demanded that pathe cease to be the focal point of holy stories, and that intelligible justice be looked for in every event, whether in a holy story or in life. When the gods first came to be envisaged as human agents, greater and less vulnerable than we are yet ourselves as we should like to be, religionbased morality became hopelessly difficult. Are we required to venerate gods who act like human rulers, who are proud, competitive, vindictive, pleasure loving? Or do true gods act only as we would have our rulers act? Must we accept divine intervention according to a moral order that we would condemn in a purely human society? Or do gods act in strict conformity to an enlightened human code? The Greeks never reached a consensus until the triumph of Platonized theology in postclassical times. 21 The Iliad, for instance, gives us a universe in which the most splendid men and women can expect to experience terrible suffering at the hands of gods. The poet of the Odyssey, by contrast, insists that by and large 20

Paul and Timothy (Philipians 3.10) use the arresting phrase koinonia pathetnaton autou, translated in the Vulgate as societas passionum Mius. 21 The pious in postclassical times usually assume 1) ultimately God causes everything that happens, 2) pathe do in fact occur, yet 3) God causes only good. Only step 3 is Platonic. Cf. John Paul II in his letter to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in America: "With our hearts filled with this unyielding hope, we Christians approach with fearsome respect the terrifying experience of the extermination, the Shoah, suffered by the Jews during the Second World War, and we seek to grasp its most authentic, specific and universal meaning" (released to the press August 18, 1987). On June 25, 1988 the Pope called the extermination of the Jews (and others) "a gift to the world." He did not explain.

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justice is done and men who deserve happiness will experience it eventually.22 Solon suggests that apparent injustices in divine punishment can be explained by the absence of quick anger in the gods' decisions; as a consequence of Zeus's timeless composure there is often a delay in his actions, even into subsequent generations.23 Aeschylus dismisses this solution as inadequate. He insists that there is a difference between the old order and a new order. Once there was indeed a rule by Divine Injustice, as can be seen in the pathe of Iphigeneia, the children of Thyestes, Cassandra, Agamemnon, and so on; but now true justice prevails, even in individual lives. In the latter half of the fifth century, opinions about pathos religion were ever more sharply divided. Sophocles brought the thrilling pathe of hero religion right into the theater and evidently felt that no explanation or apology was needed. Meanwhile Socrates was going around Athens insisting that his fellow citizens reject as dangerously false any story that moves men with depictions of Divine Injustice. Sophocles would obviously have to be banned if Socrates had his way. It must make us pause that it was Sophocles who was revered as exceptionally pious and Socrates who was put to death for his rejection of the city's religion. Euripides, like Socrates, was also held in suspicion by some Athenians, perhaps in part because he made men think about the moral puzzle inherent in pathe. He tended to bring the peripheral victims of earlier tragedy, the women and children, into center stage—which underlined the innocence of the victims and therefore the guilt of their divine tormentors. He then made the gods explain themselves—but with such dubious logic and in such a flat-footed tone that many of the pious in the audience must surely have been annoyed or distressed. Plato accepted Socrates' evaluation of pathos religion. He obviously believed that his own view of gods and men was in harmony with that of his teacher. First, the gods are always good. As Plato has Socrates argue in the Euthyphro, "good" for divinity is not only the same as "good" for man, it is known to us solely through good for man. 24 Second, only if men 22 See Iliad 4.1—27, Odyssey 1.32-79. The exoneration of the gods in the Odyssey is not quite sweeping: what Zeus complains of is that mortals blame all their miseries on the gods even though, because of their own reckless insolence, they suffer more than is allotted to them. Odysseus is offered as a counterexample: a god has made him suffer far more than he deserves. Zeus is reassuring: Odysseus will now, at long last, get all the good he so richly deserves. This series of speeches reads like a complaint against the poet of the Iliad. See Wolfgang Kullmann, "Gods and Men in the Iliad and Odyssey," HSCP 89 (1985): 1-23, esp. 5—6 and n. 11, for the current state of thinking on the separate authorship of the two poems. 23 Frag. 13 (West) 25-42: sometimes "people who are not responsible pay, I either their children or a still later generation." 24 A thing is not holy because divinity approves of it, says Socrates: divinity approves

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are truly good do they approach the happiness of the gods. Men must therefore make themselves good like the gods in order that they will be blessed like them. It follows that excellence is not only a necessary condition, but also the sufficient condition for happiness. The gods see to it that this will always be so, in the life of every individual as well as in the long run for mankind as a whole. 25 Obviously, then, divinity could never teach through pathe as that idea was traditionally interpreted, genuine unhappiness suffered by genuinely good persons. In the Apology Plato does indeed have Socrates call his own unjust condemnation a pathos, but he then insists that Socrates, because he was good, experienced no diminution of his happiness whatsoever.26 A less good man does not even know how truly to harm a good man, he argues. If Plato's strictures against tragedy had not come down to us, only the essence of Socratic morality, we would have had to conclude nevertheless that he must surely have been bitterly opposed to Attic drama. In the Republic much is made of the fact that large-scale justice and injustice spring ultimately from justice and injustice within the citizens' individual personalities. Plato's theory of tragedy is therefore given in both an outer and an inner version. The public version comes first, in Book II. Here Plato treats tragedy as part of the religious tradition, as the tragedians and their audiences had also. The gods cause only good, "Socrates" complains. Stories that show gods acting otherwise ought long ago to have been declared impious. Plato's first examples come from the epics, then he moves on to tragedy. In a rational and truly pious society, he says, a dramatist would not be permitted to present "the pathe of Niobe," as Aeschylus had done, or "the pathe of the children of Pelops," or "the Trojan pathe."27 If the unhappiness is real, then the cause of the misforbecause it is holy. One cannot infer the will of the gods from the traditional holy stories, therefore, in the manner of fundamentalists like Euthyphro; the authority of the story must first be established—by demonstrating that it implies a known truth about the will of divinity. At 6 a—c Plato has Socrates say that his difference with other Athenians on this point is the essence of the charge against him. 25 E.g. Apology 41 c—d. Plato's fullest statement of this very basic Socratic idea is found at Theaeteus 176 a—177 a. 26 At Apology 4 1 b , Socrates looks forward to meeting Palamedes and Ajax in Hades, "or if there's anyone else who lost his life as a consequence of an unjust judgment": what a joy it might be, he says, to compare his own pathe with theirs! Pathe cannot mean "suffering," because Socrates, at least, has not and will not suffer. It could mean "experiences"; but the phrase to lose one's life as a consequence of an unjust judgment seems to define pathos here, and that meaning clearly fits the most common usage in the heroic stories as told by the tragedians. 27 Republic 2.380 a 5-7. Readers dependent on translations can hardly be blamed for failing to see what Plato is saying here. Not only is there no single word in any modern language that instantly communicates the sense of pathe, but translators regularly feel compelled for stylistic reasons to vary the word from example to example. (For once Allan

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INTRODUCTION

tunes must be shown to be not gods, but the sufferers themselves. Better yet, the cause should be gods but the sufferers must be seen to deserve and need their punishment. In the long run divine intervention is always for men's benefit; our holy stories must make this clear, Plato thought. A third plot is suggested in the description of the death of Socrates at the end of the Phaedo: a victim of real injustice is seen to die happily, whatever the world had intended for him, because he was truly good. But it was the plot Plato disapproved of, the traditional pathos, that fueled the greatest of the Attic plays. Plato was right about that. The interior analogue to this analysis must be postponed until Plato has given a full account of the tripartite psyche. He says as much at the very beginning of Book X: now that we have distinguished the parts of the psyche we have even clearer reasons for objecting to tragedy (559 a 5—b 1). A pathos may give pleasure, he says, but it does so by gratifying the lowest and most irrational part of our souls. This is the part that is in command in the behavior of dictators, madmen, and criminals, also of neurotic and compulsive people. Indeed, it is the part that is dominant in all of us whenever we are asleep and dreaming. In Book IX "Socrates" had explained that when we sleep a part that had formerly been asleep (i.e., unconscious) while we were awake now "awakens" (571 c 3). Plato's catalogue of phantasies, which this part then fulfills in dreams, is drawn from some of the best loved tragedies, especially the stories of Oedipus and Thyestes.28 In Book X he suggests that a moral citizen, when he permits himself to be moved by a tragedy, allows this same part of his soul to be "awakened" once again (605 b 3). That is the real reason why stories like those of Oedipus and Thyestes win prizes: they gratify a part of us that is denied all gratification, even in phantasy, when our reason is in full command. The lowest part of the psyche, Plato says (606 a 3), is normally held forcibly in check—that is, repressed: biai katechomenon. But except for the rare instances when the personality is very well trained and the intellect exceptionally strong, attendance at a tragic pathos will cause this darkest element to come unstuck again and exercise its strength. Strange things happen. We weep, yet we enjoy the experience profoundly. We think we are weeping for the hero undergoing the pathos down there on Bloom's notion of "literal" translation stands him in good stead.) The passage following this list of examples (380 a 7—c 3) offers, by implication, a full definition of pathos in the tragedies as Plato understood the term: pathe are god-caused catastrophes that are neither deserved nor therapeutic. 28 The third category of bad dreams, "refraining from no food," has puzzled readers, ancient and modern, because it seems to fit ill with incest and pollution-causing murder. If it refers to Thyestes unknowingly eating his own sons, however, it is indeed a dream of the same order as the other two.

INTRODUCTION

XIX

the stage, yet we are actually weeping for our own pathos, Plato insists. (We suffer with the wretched hero, sympathein, he says [605 d 3—4].) The experience is enjoyable, it seems, because the lowest part of the psyche is getting exactly what it wants. What it yearns to believe is just what Socrates insists we should never accept as the truth: that monstrous pathe, true victimizations, are not only possible in this universe, they are the essence of divine rule. A part of us is by its nature anti-Socratic, Plato concluded; it wants a universe full of genuinely good men and women who are made genuinely unhappy nevertheless, through no fault of their own. 29 What exhilarates us, then, when we watch a pathos of the traditional sort, is not the proof that the suffering is real and intense, although that is necessary too, but proof that this is a true injustice. That is, by suffering along with the hero we are able to accept his innocence as well. This is something we find difficult to believe of ourselves. However much we rail against enemies or bad luck, deep down we suspect that we would now have everything we want if only we were not so lazy, so morally weak, or so limited intellectually. By accepting a world ruled by Divine Injustice we can forgive ourselves—if only for the duration of the story. A pious person may well attribute his new sense of moral cleanness to the god whose presence he feels in the event. A vivid example of this kind of selfforgiveness, issuing in religious feelings of the strongest sort, may be found in Carl Jung's reminiscences about his boyhood struggles with the dark and unjust God of the Bible.30 But it is surely Freud who has the missing key to this puzzle. Plato's "middle part" of the psyche, which functions much like Freud's superego, is itself a major source of human misery, Freud discovered.31 Guilt, the 29 This is an interpretation, not a simple report, of what Plato says in Republic 10.605 e— 606 b. 1) The lowest part of the psyche, which is the part gratified by tragedy, by its nature desires to weep and gets its pleasure this way. 2) It is ostensibly reacting to the pathe of other people (allotria pathe, 606 b 1), namely those of the sufferers in the tragic story. In fact, however, pleasure in other people's pathe stimulates pleasure in one's own pathe—if one's own pathe were not indeed the real source of pleasure from the beginning. Therefore, 3) it is the nature of the lowest part of the psyche to take pleasure in the idea that we ourselves are all victims of pathe—an un-Socratic, even an anti-Socratic idea. See also Chapter 6 below. 30 Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston and ed. Aiela Jaffe (New York, 1973), chap. 2. When Jung first realized that he was a victim of God's incomprehensible cruelty ("I understood religion as something God did to me"), he "wept for happiness and gratitude." See Chapter 12 below. 31 Freud's developed theory can be found, for instance, in "Dissection of the Psychical Personality," lecture 31 in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), trans. James Strachey (New York, 1965). The function of the superego as censor can be found in Plato's analogy with the white horse in the Phaedrus. Its function as preserver of traditional social virtues can be seen in Republic 9.590 c—591 a.

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INTRODUCTION

pain inflicted on us by our own superegos, is not harmless, as Plato had supposed. The superego is often irrational, unrealistic, and life poisoning. A strong middle part is necessary—it encourages virtuous behavior, just as Plato had said—but it may also make inner peace impossible. Indeed, it is often the better kind of person who has the greatest sense of guilt. Saints have more, not less difficulty than the rest of us in achieving inner peace. 3 2 This paradox was never suspected by Plato. Had he understood it, he might not have been so uncompromising in his condemnation of activities, like attendance on a pathos, that cleanse us of such guilt. But of course, acceptance of religion and art based on the pathos would have necessitated the abandonment of Socratism. The latter is based, after all, on belief that there is no true injustice in the experiences of gods or mor­ tals. That Plato should have underestimated the danger of a strong superego is not really surprising. Freud came to this discovery by his study of para­ noia, a condition in which the tormenting superego is so imperious that it is not infrequently felt to exist as a hostile voice or voices from without. But the most dramatic example of paranoia among Plato's close associ­ ates was that of Socrates, who assumed that his always nay-saying "voice" was divine and wonderful. 33 Aristotle had a problem. On the one hand, he was still a Socratic: he thought that, by and large, true excellence brought genuine happiness. No truly happy man can ever be reduced to misery—although he might indeed be less than completely happy if he is made to suffer, say, the fate of Priam (Nicomachean Ethics I, chaps. 9-11). In any case a religion based on Divine Injustice would make no sense to Aristotle. He ought, therefore, to have gone along with Plato's rejection of tragedy. On the other hand, he eventually developed Plato's theory of erds into a thor­ oughgoing teleology. All events, human or cosmic, are explained as caused by good of various sorts being striven for, formal-final causes. Tragedy, he believed, was no exception. There is a form (the imitation of a serious action . . .), matter (direct speech, dance, spectacle . . .), and an agent (the good tragedian), also a function (the arousal of certain kinds of pain, especially pity and fear, in order to effect their very pleasurable 32

Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), trans. James Strachey (New York, 1960), chap.

4. 33

Down through the centuries there has been much speculation concerning this voice. See L.-F. Lelut, Du άέηιοη de Socrate: Spactmen d'une application de la science psychologique a celle de I'histoire (Pans, 1836). There are theories in Plutarch (De genio Socratis), Des­ cartes (letter to Princess Elizabeth, November 1646), Voltaire (Poetne sur a loi naturelle, 1752), Nietzsche ("Das Problem des Sokrates," 1888), and in many other writings. The idea that it is an abnormally strong "conscience" has recurred in several guises. I shall draw parallels from the experiences of other benign paranoiacs in Chapter 24 below.

INTRODUCTION

XXl

purgation). Tragedy must therefore be a source of good for mankind. It must be an aid, not a hindrance, in our pursuit of philosophy. Like Plato, Aristotle accepts the need for pathos in tragedy (Poetics 1452 b 10). "It is not tragic," he says of one possible plot, "because there is no pathos" (ou tragikos, apathes gar, 1453 b 39). He also accepts the fact that pity, our initial reaction to a pathos, comes from the perception of an injustice, not justice (1453 a 4). Although this is an unpleasant perception, he believes (Rhetoric 1385 b 13-14) it does lead to a pleasurable elimination. Plato was wrong to suppose that there was something in even a good man that took pleasure in victimizations; but a painful sight can trigger a reaction, which is itself quite pleasurable. There must be an element of injustice, then, because the cleansing cannot be engineered without first rousing pity; hence the need for a pathos. Yet there must also be some justice, Aristotle insists.34 The pleasure from the element of true justice in all good tragedies is in fact the true key. If there is no justice at all, there will be no pleasure at all. Still, Aristotle accepts the traditional place that pathos in the old sense had always had in tragedy, and he adds, quite correctly, that perpetrator and victim are usually related by blood in the most famous plays (Poetics 1453 b 19-20). The poet (efficient cause), if he is to achieve the pleasurable cleansing of pity and fear (final cause), cannot afford to neglect "pathe within the family circle," he says. This is helpful. Such pathe touch us all and at the point where our need for self-forgiveness is most acute. Aristotle also observes, correctly again, that the pathos need never actually occur; it is sometimes enough if the harm is intended or attempted. But whether the harm is actually carried out or is intended merely, the perpetrator must be ignorant of his or her blood kinship with the other victim. The discovery of their kinship should come later. In the cases where the subject of the pathos is really the perpetrator of the terrible act (Oedipus in the parricide, Thyestes eating his young sons, Iphigeneia about to sacrifice her brother), foreknowledge of the blood ties would obviously have turned the distressing event into a mere crime. A Socratic would hardly be expected to accept such a criminal as a person for whom we should feel compassion. The perpetrator-victim must therefore be entirely ignorant of the all-important blood ties as he or she does the deed. In one passage Aristotle praises as best of all the plot in which fulfillment of the polluting deed is prevented at the last moment (1454 a 4-8). More 34

We may conclude this from the fact that Aristotle rejected as polluted and therefore polluting the plot that has no reassuring justice at all: the story of the fall into wretchedness of a thoroughly deserving person. (On the word miaron, "polluting," 1452 b 36, see the next note.) Aristotle's theory will be discussed at greater length in Chapters 8, 9, and 25 below.

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INTRODUCTION

characteristically he praises plots in which the blood ties are discovered too late to prevent the violation (1453 a 14—15). Aristotle's hesitation on this last point may be traced to his impossible desire to reconcile tragedy and Socratism. In plays in which the discovery comes too late, Oedipus the King, for instance, the pleasurable elimination of pity and fear is thrilling. The pathos is allowed its full force and the play can end in an apparent defeat—a prominent peculiarity of tragedy. But plays like Iphigeneia among the Taurians, in which the gods refuse to permit innocent suffering, depict a world entirely congenial to a Socratic. Aristotle insists, however, that, at least in stories in which the pathos is carried out in full, the perpetrator-sufferer must not be entirely blameless, however far he may also have been from having had complete knowledge of the circumstances. Indeed, he must be responsible in some large and obvious way for the consequences of his ignorant act. Otherwise a good Socratic in the audience would feel "polluted." (Aristotle uses Plato's word, miaron.)35 This is in fact a major blunder on Aristotle's part, but it is understandable. Once more the explanation is to be found in Aristotle's need to keep Socratism and yet embrace the pathos of tragedy as well. The first depends on Divine Justice, the second on Divine Injustice. Pity and pathos require injustice; a hero partly responsible for his own downfall, and another virtue of good tragedy, to philanthropon ("pleasure in one's kinship with humanity"), 36 require justice. It is the idea that the best plays always show heroes acting in such a way that the play will not "pollute" a Socratic that makes this a blunder, Artistotle's insistence that the sufferer be at least partially responsible for his own catastrophe. The notion does terrible damage to our reading of the plays themselves. An appreciation of the technical use of the word pathos, and of the special phenomenon it denotes, helps us understand what is perhaps the 35

1452 b 36. Since Aristotle uses this word nowhere except here, in Poetics, chaps. 13 and 14, and since Plato uses it often (in a serious, semiliteral sense, not as a general insult only, as in comedy and oratory), we should probably assume that Aristotle has a Platonic discussion in mind. In passages like Republic 9.589 e 4 and 621 c 2, for instance, "polluted" means corrupt as opposed to being enlightened by Socratic truth. Aristotle's usage in chaps. 13 and 14, however, is also obviously influenced by the very common literal usage in tragedy. In any case, the word cannot reasonably be supposed to mean merely "upsetting." 36 E.g. at 1452 b 38. Liddel, Scott, and Jones (LSJ) define it as "appealing to human feelings" then add, "(less prob. satisfying the sense of poetic justice)." But at 1453 a 3, for instance, Aristotle says that the story of the fall of an abominable person does at least have to philanthropon. The term would therefore seem to mean satisfaction at proof of Socratic truth, the meaning tentatively rejected by LSJ. On the other hand, as John Moles observes, ("Philanthropia in the Poetics," Phoenix 38 [1984]: 328), "poetic justice" usually implies that the suffering is "particularly fitting." This is not an essential feature of Aristotle's philanthropon. See Chapter 8 below.

INTRODUCTION

XXlU

most important of all the ways in which tragedy developed from popular religion. Pleasure in pathe is vital to both. There is no doubt that the tragic poets themselves were aware of this special link with religion, and Socrates and Plato were also. Aristotle, on the other hand, approaches this famous idea as a philosophical problem, one to be solved, neatly and without emotion, by fitting it into the grand Aristotelian scheme of things. An intellectual crisis that had lasted more than a century was no longer considered important. Aristotle makes one reference to the function of pathos in mystery religion.37 He accepts it as akin to illumination in philosophy, but makes clear that it is not the highest philosophical illumination. So also in tragedy: the pathos has a function, but it needs to be balanced by an awareness of some genuine justice in the events depicted. And the benefit to be expected by the pleasurable "cleansing" of tragedy is really quite minor, according to Aristotle: potentially troublesome emotions are flushed out so that viewers can get back to more important things—philosophy, for instance. A sharp awareness of the significance of the pathos can help us isolate the features peculiar to the work of each of the three tragedians. Aeschylus will be seen to want it both ways, like Aristotle. He moves us with traditional pathe, those of Iphigeneia, Agamemnon, Cassandra, and so on; but he insists that this kind of religion has been superseded by a rational theology, ever since the famous acquittal of Orestes on the Areopagus. Only in the Seven against Thebes (among the surviving plays) does Aeschylus let the pathos work without further explanation. Sophocles' reputation for orthodoxy and extraordinary favor from divinity, we may suspect, derived from the success with which he produced, by his dramatic pathe, emotional responses recognizable from popular piety, especially the hero cults. Only in the Electra does he allow intellectual hesitation to complicate the response of the believers. Euripides constructs memorable dramas out of stark injustices, as Aristotle pointed out. He often chooses victims whose radical innocence is easy to believe. But he regularly permits wit and second thoughts to complicate the solemn enjoyment of the pious in the audience. He sometimes lets the gods explain their reasons for engineering the pathe of mortal heroes. Most of their speeches are not calculated to please the pious. The later tradition according to which Euripides and Socrates were good friends is not inherently improbable. Euripides may have set out to undermine literal belief in the old holy stories, just as Socrates was doing. Armed with our new understanding of pathos we' should be able to shed new light on certain notoriously ambiguous scenes in the surviving plays. Frag. 15 (Ross) of "On Philosophy." See Chapter 9 below.

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INTRODUCTION

We will no longer be tempted to sum up Aeschylus's wisdom and his contribution to the debate by the formulas for reciprocal justice (to him who does it shall be done, pathein), which the players and dancers in the Oresteia sometimes take comfort in, sometimes find ominous or depressing. Nor will we look for it in "illumination from a pathos" {pathei mathos), which was guaranteed to men by Zeus, according to the dancers in the Agamemnon. First, the formula will be seen to mean not that we learn from our own suffering (a traditional mark of the fool),38 but that the pious "learn" from the pathe of heroic figures like Iphigeneia. Second, the formula is not only the subject of agonized doubt on the part of the old men themselves; it is also rejected in favor of a new, just covenant at the end of the trilogy. When the newly self-blinded Oedipus steps forward in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, the dancers, like the dancers in the Agamemnon, are troubled by the fact that they do not find the pathos merely revolting and horrifying. The frisson caused by the sight of their blind king has two components, repulsion and a longing to stare and to "learn." But the moral question is quickly cut short. Oedipus insists that he had to put out his eyes; he had no choice. After those two far greater pathe engineered by Apollo himself, the parricide and the incest, what other course could he have taken (1329-35; cf. 1369-90)? The philosophers were understandably troubled by this latter scene. Plato identifies the play's plot as a whole as the most shocking and lawless of the archetypical wishes of the lowest part of the psyche {Republic 9.571 c 9). Aristotle, who regularly praises the play as an admirable producer of pleasurable cleansing of the right sort, nevertheless objects to this particular scene. The frisson ought to have been produced by the sequence of events, he says, not by a spectacle (Poetics 1453 b 1-11). Shocks produced by spectacles are troubling, perhaps, because they seem to be instances of mere suffering; the Socratic in the audience is not given a chance to find an element of justice in the event. It is almost certain that Aristotle was thinking of the spectacle of the newly blinded Oedipus in the passage where he denigrates visual pathe, not only because of the mention of this play in the context and by his concentration on pathos and frisson (phrike in the play, phrittein in the Poetics), but also because he switches from his usual words for "pity" and "fear" to the words used by the messenger and dancers in the Oedipus {oiktron instead of eleos, deinon instead oiphobos).39 38 Works and Days 218: "a fool understands only after he has first suffered the consequences of his former ignorance." See Heinrich Doerrie, Leid und Erfahrung: Die Wortund Sinn-Verbindung pathein-mathein (Wiesbaden, 1956), 13. 39 Aristotle speaks of being affected (haper an pathoi tis) by "hearing" (akouon) the mythos of Oedipus: on akouein meaning reading (aloud), see G. L. Hendrikson, "Ancient

INTRODUCTION

XXV

As happens in any tradition that invites poets to compete as individuals, the Greek poet often found himself struggling all his life against the power and achievements of his predecessors, or of some one great predecessor. Sophocles tells us that in his case it was Aeschylus. He had to free himself from the bulk and angularity of Aeschylean language, he says (Plutarch, Moralia 79 b-c), ultimately by learning to make a joke of these qualities. He also narrowed his vision from the epic sweep of his predecessor and concentrated on the presentation of simple pathe. From justice that must await another generation, as in Aeschylus, Sophocles turned to unexplained, mysterious justice to be felt, but not understood, in every suffering. He was obviously proud of the new direction he had given to tragedy. In the case of Euripides, the agonizing competition was not with Sophocles, as we might expect, but with Aeschylus once again. Allusions to Sophocles in Euripides' plays are few and problematical; those to Aeschylus are many and famous. But Euripides' quarrel with Aeschylus was quite different from Sophocles' with the same poet. Sophocles had reproduced the traditional pathe (with great enthusiasm for hero religion and less attention to the initiatory cults) but had then just left out the older poet's theological hedging. The pathe were allowed to work, unencumbered by any explanations. Euripides, by contrast, attacked the Aeschylean explanations head on. He made the gods explain themselves, as Aeschylus had, but in deliberately unsatisfactory ways, for the most part. Aeschylus said that he served up mere slices from Homer's great banquet (Athenaeus 8.347 e). There are in fact a number of different ways in which he is obviously in debt to Homer. None is more important, however, than his adoption of Homer's attitude toward the traditional holy stories. Both poets (or all three if the Iliad and Odyssey were shaped by different master poets) assume that deep wisdom can be found in these much-loved stories, but that it can be revealed clearly only if one suppresses false tales and erroneous versions, then uses one's own intelligence and genius to recreate the truth. Euripides, by contrast, characteristically chooses a particularly grotesque version of the story he is exploiting, one that would have been rejected by Homer or Aeschylus.40 He then shows his gods and heroes bravely trying to explain away the absurdities. He does not hesitate to show the most august of the gods behaving naively or sophistically. This must have been felt by many as a subversive program. Yet Euripides also had an ethusiastic following. His Reading," CJ 25 (1929-30): 182-90. Aristotle says that a thrill caused by a spectacle is dependent on the arts of production, not on poetic composition; but these arts are also the responsibility, after all, of the poet: direction, costume, mask making, etc. 40 Compare, for example the story of the Python in Eumenides 5 and in the Iphtgema among the Taurians 1234—83. See Chapter 20 below.

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INTRODUCTION

sharp, intellectual clarity about the pathos seems to have contributed to his dramatic power. As Aristotle said, he was, for all his failings, the most truly tragic of the three dramatists {Poetics 1453 a 30). In the postclassical centuries the "ancient quarrel" reverted to the form it took in Solon and Aeschylus: what are we to make of the well-attested Wrath of God? 41 This has obscured the urgency of the question for secular philosophers. And among the theologians themselves the controversy has been hopelessly complicated by the peculiar honor the biblical religions have accorded to their holy stories as written texts. Modern theologians accept one of Plato's demands but reject the other. They assume he is right when he insists that divinity is always just, toward every individual as well as toward mankind and the universe; but they refuse to pick and choose among their holy stories and keep only those that manifestly prove what they assume to be true about God. They start with the assumption that all ot the holy stories are true in one sense or another. A recovery of the ancients' clarity about the pathos might well bring more clarity to some of our own disputes about the nature and function of tragedy. There are, in particular, two current controversies that might be raised to a higher level if we won a sharper understanding of the ancient debate. One is a large problem that will surely never be completely settled; the other is a specific dispute that might even cease to be seen as a crisis once the Greeks' perspicacity is made our own again. The general dispute, which engages different critics in different ways, is over the ambition, current since Aristotle, to find a wholly satisfactory explanation for tragedy within the framework of rational behavior. We should start, I think, with Plato's insistence that rationality is one thing and the appeal of tragedy something entirely different, that the "ancient quarrel," in other words, is a permanent state of affairs. What we want is not a way to reconcile tragedy and rationality, which is impossible, but a psychological explanation of the counterrational pleasure we get from tragedy. We should accept the reasoning behind Plato's objections to pleasure induced by a pathos, therefore, but then add to his analysis more recent discoveries concerning the sources of life-poisoning guilt and the activities men indulge in to modify such guilt. The result will be a vindication of tragedy, although it will seem like a satisfactory vindication only to those who are already its partisans. The specific dispute concerns the function of violence in literature and in popular fiction. If the ancients prove to have been right—that the thrill of the pathos is vital, not only to many deeply cherished religious dramas, 41 See, for instance, Lactantius, De ira dei (ca. A.D. 314), although the controversy was already old by then: see Kittel and Friedrich, Theologische Worterbuch, 5, s.v. orge. This article is disappointing on the ancient period (by Kleinknecht), best on the BiUe itself.

INTRODUCTION

XXVH

but also to many of our most-admired literary stories—then we would do well to distinguish sharply between violence told or shown in such a way as to elicit sympathy only for the victims, true pathe, and violence that is depicted with sympathy only for the perpetrators, the staple of popular films and television.42 The investigation of the possible evil effects of violence could then concentrate on the latter formula, fully justified brutality. We will be able to follow the evidence wherever it leads us, in the secure knowledge that damaging conclusions would nevertheless permit us still to keep our Homer, Sophocles, and all true tragedians down through the centuries. 42

The plot preferred by the Greeks, in which the perpetrator is the real victim, hardly exists today. The stories of Othello and Macbeth may come to mind; but these sufferers are not kept in total darkness and there are other candidates for "the perpetrators."

PART I THE ANCIENT QUARREL

T

HERE IS only one thing more frightening than an unpredictable and unjust god: a god who is predictable and just. Most people, ancient as well as modern, turn to religion not for reassurance that divinity will help only those who are genuinely deserving, but for forgiveness—love and aid that does not require merit first. Strict justice is sought only in special circumstances. Paganism and the biblical religions are alike in this. There is also a major difference, however, between the expectation of a pious Greek and that of a believer in one of the biblical religions. Violence and partisanship among the gods were common, if not inevitable, features of the pious vision for a nonphilosophical Greek; biblical stories are assumed to be free of such ideas if they are interpreted correctly. Divine Injustice, therefore, a major source of consolation for the pagan, now seems foreign to us, even primitive. Plato says in Republic X that there had been an "ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy" (607 b-c). He means that long before his own attack on popular religion thoughtful men had often insisted on Socratic truth: that all gods are good, and we ourselves, not they, should be blamed for our ills. The vision of "poetry," which Plato was attacking, is put forward in the shocking theodicy of Iliad IV; that of "philosophy," which he approved of, is announced in Zeus's stern but reassuring speech at the beginning of the Odyssey. In truth, most believers, modern as well as ancient, have probably always drawn their comfort from evidence of frequent and serious injustice in divine judgments; but since Plato and the definitive triumph of "philosophy," most believers have nevertheless persuaded themselves that what they turn to their god for is pure justice.

1 "PHILOSOPHY" IN SOCRATISM

T

HE TRIAL and execution of Socrates was a consequence of several different kinds of crisis, political as well as religious; but it is likely that one of the issues was the one stated most prominently in the actual charge against him. Socrates was accused of holding and fostering a vision of divinity that was incompatible with Athenian piety. He was thought to honor novel divinities, literally "novel divine things," and to teach the young to do so also. In the Apology (31 d 1) and Euthyphro (3 b 5) Plato appears to interpret the mention of novel divinity as a contemptuous reference to Socrates' divine voice—a sign that came to him whenever he was about to do or say something that was not entirely right. But in the Euthyphro Plato also interprets the larger charge as a reference to Socrates' well-known insistence that gods are always just (6 a—c). We must begin by clarifying what "good" means for a human being, Socrates believed, then hold fast to the pious assumption that gods are always "good" in this sense. It is never possible to look first at the old stories, he thought, and to extrapolate from them what it is that the gods honor. That procedure would force us to conclude that there are two notions of "good," good for mortals and good for gods. In all too many of the traditional holy stories the "justice" imposed on us by divinity would qualify as terrible injustice were it to characterize the dealings of man with man.

The Socratic revolution is essentially an extreme and uncompromising formulation of the principle announced by Zeus at the beginning of the Odyssey: men should blame themselves, not the gods, for their unhappiness. A man becomes good when he has the prerequisites for happiness (eudaimonia, "god-blessedness"). That is what "good" means, being the kind of person you must be if you are to be happy. To be good is to have not only the necessary, but also the sufficient condition for happiness. It follows that all good men and only good men are happy; also that all bad men and only bad men are unhappy. The gods merely see to it that this is so. Stories purporting to show genuinely good men and women genuinely unhappy show an impossibility and cause audiences to draw disastrously incorrect conclusions. No one is bad of his own volition, Socrates always insists. Men fail to pursue happiness in the right way—by making themselves good—because

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they have never been taught the all important connection between goodness and happiness. We should pity bad men, therefore, not feel anger toward them. We should blame their teachers. Nor did Socrates have any doubt as to the identity of these teachers: they were the tellers of the old stories of unpredictable and unjust divinities. Socrates' primary target was popular religion. But since he was a fifth-century Athenian he naturally attacked, among others, the most honored and influential of the contemporary purveyors of corrupt religious visions, the Attic tragedians. There is a dark side to Socratism: Socrates was obviously convinced that unhappiness was almost universal. Most of the stories that are given the young, those revealed in holy enactments, in literature, and in the "little tales" told by nurses and mothers, teach listeners to accept the vision Plato called "poetry," a vision of monstrous god-caused injustices. Even when the tellers of these stories superimpose an interpretation from "philosophy," says Socrates in Republic II, they still teach the wrong lesson. This is because children are always more impressed by the story itself than they are by a theologian's allegorical explanation of it (378 d 7). It is little wonder, then, that most people are condemned to unhappiness throughout their lives, Socrates believed. It should be remembered that those offending stories were depicted everywhere in Greece, in religious performances, entertainment, on the walls of buildings, even on household objects like drinking cups, mixing bowls, and oil jars. Yet Socrates undoubtedly saw his mission as the announcement of good news. Mortals are not in fact prey to inscrutable, warring, and vindictive gods. Nor do the gods jealously exclude them from divine happiness, as was widely supposed. Immortal happiness is possible for mortals after all. It is in our own power to win supreme and permanent joy: we must make ourselves good and the rest will follow. We are not even really at the mercy of bad luck, malicious enemies, illness, old age, or death. None of these things can reduce the happiness of someone who has pursued happiness correctly. And everyone really knows this. The knowledge is in-born and never extinguished altogether by the discouraging lesson learned from those unholy stories. Socrates need only sting us, irritate us, make us see our inconsistencies, awaken us from our complacency, and we will begin to see the light. Plato has Socrates tell his jurors that he is beyond being harmed by his accusers. They have no power to harm him, he insists. It is not permitted by heaven for a better man to be harmed by a less-good man. Oh, his accusers may succeed in depriving him of his rights, or exiling him, or putting him to death, and they may believe, with the majority of mankind, that these are terrible fates. But Socrates does not agree (Apology

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30 c-d). Later, after the death penalty has been passed, Socrates reassures those who had voted for his acquitttal that they should take heart from his experience when they look forward to their own deaths. An extraordinary thing had happened to him that day. Not once—during his arrest, during the speeches for the prosecution and defense, nor now that he was about to go off to his death (as he believed)—did his warning sign come to him. He understood this to mean that he must therefore be approaching something good. This in turn he took for proof that nothing can ever reduce the happiness of a truly good man, either in life or in death, and that the gods see to it that this is so (Apology 41 c-d). The sign had been saying no to him from childhood on, many times a day, even in trivial matters (40 a—b). His unprecedented freedom from its interruptions was an exhilarating message from the gods. To be sure, his accusers had intended that his happiness be taken away, not enhanced. For that they should be censured, he says. But he pities them for the ignorance in which they had been brought up. Early in the morning on the day of execution Crito, an old, rather muddleheaded friend of Socrates, urges him to flee Athens rather than submit to his monstrously unjust sentence. Socrates refuses and explains why. The desperate Crito suggests that people will think that he and Socrates' other friends had failed to do everything that could be done for him. Why should you care what people think? asks Socrates. Well, says Crito, you see yourself what limitless power people have to harm you once they turn against you. Nonsense, Socrates replies: would that they did have limitless power to harm! They would then also have limitless power to do good. As it is, since they do not know how to increase or decrease a man's understanding, everything they do in order to help or harm someone they do at random, in the dark (Crito 44 c-d). If having the right kind of understanding (phronesis) is having the necessary and sufficient condition for happiness, then true harm, the reduction of one's happiness, can only be accomplished by making one aphron, without right understanding. But of course bad men are bad precisely because they have had their understanding molded by "poetry." They are without the true understanding of "philosophy," which is the revelation that happiness could only be reduced if true understanding were reduced. The "power" of bad men to harm the good is therefore very limited indeed. There are a number of important features of Platonism that are attributed by Plato to Socrates but never in the so-called "Socratic dialogues," the dialogues in which Plato appears to recreate the mind and manners of the historical Socrates. There is room for doubt, therefore, as to the strict truth of these attributions. Socrates' opposition to the poets, however, is not one of these ideas. Criticism of the poetic tradition appears in virtu-

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ally all of the early dialogues. On this basis alone we should have to assume a Socratic origin for this feature of Platonism. But beyond that, Socratism is in fact at odds with the poetic tradition in general and tragedy in particular. Socratism already included much of what is meant by "philosophy" in Plato's description of the "ancient quarrel."1 1 On the difficulty of recovering knowledge of the historical Socrates, see A. R. Lacey, "Our Knowledge of Socrates," in The Philosophy of Socrates, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 22—49, where further bibliography will be found. See also Vlastos, ibid., 1-21, W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), 3:323-507, and Laszlo Versenyi, Socratic Humanism (New Haven, 1963), 177—84. Cf. also Jaeger, quoted in Chapter 22, n. 6 below.

2 SOCRATISM IN PLATO

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LATO'S EARLIER dialogues are dramatic recreations of the effect Socrates had on those whom he met in the marketplace. Plato wanted the whole world to share that special experience. Socrates is shown in the act of embarrassing or irritating the great or notorious as well as the obscure or very young. The contests often end without a resolution, but we are made to understand that the distress caused by Socrates' unnerving questions can sometimes be the beginning of a new enlightenment. Republic I may well be the last Platonic dialogue of this sort. As we pass to Book II and beyond we are introduced to a new tone and a new manner. Plato shows us how much more can be accomplished if we turn away from confrontations with self-important adults and spend most of our time instead with puzzled but gifted and well-brought-up young people. No doubt this change was necessitated, in part, by a reluctance on Plato's part to imitate the daily routine of his beloved teacher. But at least as important was a new philosophical pessimism concerning the efficacy of Socratic irony and cross-examination. The Socratic technique is to make the interlocutor sense a deep and dangerous inconsistency in the way he is living. He is made aware of a conflict between the things he really wants—the things he would never willingly go against or be without— and the goals he is in fact pursuing. But what if the thing he really wants most of all is also an apparent good only, not the best thing he could be pursuing? How will the Socratic process help him then? Socrates did make people center their attention on their goals, as opposed to the means to what they wanted or the obstacles presently frustrating them. Men's unhappiness, he believed, came much more rarely from their inability to get what they wanted than from wanting the wrong things—things that cannot be won, or cannot last, or cannot satisfy them. But a Socratic conversation will help someone think more clearly about his highest values only if a true appreciation of genuine good lurks somewhere in his mind or instincts alongside the shabby values given him by a corrupt society. Socrates evidently assumed the existence of such an instinct. But Plato appears eventually to have come to doubt it. He doubted that a true understanding could be awakened in most people after they had been fully formed (or deformed) by a corrupt society. As a result, he concentrated more exclusively than Socrates had on eager but uncertain

SOCRATISM IN PLATO

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young people. Modern readers often lament the cessation of drama after Republic I. They regret the substitution of Glaucon's and Adeimantus's ever-repeated "Yes, Socrates," "No, Socrates," "Of course, Socrates." But we owe much of Platonism to this new emphasis. And we owe to it also the founding of the Academy and the idea of the university. Plato was appalled by the power of a corrupt society to corrupt its citizens completely. The first thing the philosopher kings will do once they have taken power is to banish to the countryside everyone above the age of ten (Republic 7.540 d-541 a). Presumably most people are assumed to be ineducable beyond that age, so deeply will their minds and characters have been formed (or rather, deformed) by their societies. Nor were his doubts limited to ordinary governments. Even after the ideal state has matured and the happiest possible society has been realized, not everyone will be as happy as man can be. Every citizen will be shaped only by religion, art, play, and music, designed by true philosophers; yet this will succeed in turning few of them into philosophers themselves. Most will still take the visible world for the real world. The "images" [eikones) they accept as ultimate reality will indeed be good images, images that point truly to true reality. Also, what these inferior citizens want is what they should want, what they would have wanted had they been gifted enough to be full philosophers. Yet they will be condemned, even with an ideal art and government, to remain all their lives at a level of understanding that true philosophers leave behind in their youth. Although they will be far happier than they could be in any other society, the limitations they were born with will exclude them forever from truly divine happiness {Republic 9.590 c-591 a; cf. 7.517 d-e and 3.401 a-d). There is little evidence that Socrates was so deeply pessimistic. Plato was as certain as Socrates had been that what all human beings always want most is their own true well-being. Happiness, eudaimonia, the state of being god-blessed, is defined as that which all men desire (Symposium 205 a). It is rarely the case, as both men saw, that what appears to be best to a person at any point in his life is what he really wants, eudaimonia. Both insist, nevertheless, that it would be wrong to say that what he really wants (boulesthai) is anything other than the best thing he could want (Gorgias 466-68). Where Plato departs from Socrates is in his perception of the need to investigate the causes, mostly social, of this gap between "what we really want" and "what seems best for us." As he puts it in the Timaeus, those of us whose minds and character make us unable to be completely happy have become that way as a consequence of one or both of two factors, both as contrary as they could be to what we choose for ourselves (dia dyo akousiotata, 87 b 4). One of these is what we were born with, a weak constitution, perhaps, or inferior intelligence. The other is all the things that have happened to us from our

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THE ANCIENT QUARREL

birth to the moment of decision making—the bad luck never to have met a Socrates, for instance, or to have read the right Platonic dialogue at the right moment in our youth. We are obviously morally responsible for neither factor. "But of course [men] all our strength must be directed toward the need to acquire good and avoid evil, by our training, habitual activities, and intellectual enlightenment" (87 b 6-8). In one sense, the individual is always "responsible" (aitios) for his own unhappiness. If all good men and only good men are happy, then it is always fair to infer from a person's unhappiness that he is imperfectly good in mind or character. In another sense, however, no one is "responsible" for having become the kind of person he is at any point in his life. Two quite different kinds of action are needed. We must improve the unhappy individual himself by adding new factors to his life—altering his upbringing, his habits, and his intellectual understanding. (These things will be required because he is indeed "responsible" in the first sense.) And we must improve society as a whole in order to alter anything seen now to have made him into someone who could not now be happy. (This is required because he is not "responsible" in the second sense.) For the most part, Socrates concentrated on the first kind of enterprise. Plato, because of his withdrawal from marketplace encounters and his gloomy assessment of the corrupting powers of society and tradition, shifted the emphasis to the second kind of enterprise. Plato concluded that corrupting processes begin in our infancy and early childhood. Everything that reaches a child through his senses will communicate to him his society's interpretation of reality—even the very architecture that surrounds him {Republic 3.401 b 6). The most complicated messages, however, and therefore the most dangerous, come with the learning of his society's language. Ordinary language must be used with care and suspicion. Socrates understood that. A Socratic paradox always carries with it an invitation to reinterpret at least one of the terms in the paradox. Plato has Socrates on several occasions point out the limitations of ordinary usage (e.g., at Symposium 205 b-c). Plato went much farther. He was appalled, he says, when he learned that the tyrant of Syracuse had written a book setting out the first principles of Platonism: he had never written about these things himself, he says, nor would he. Not only is the language of ordinary societies inadequate; such things cannot be put into words at all {Epistle 7.341 c). In Republic II (376 c N377c) Plato points out that the very young, in the ideal as in all societies, are made recognizable members of their groups above all by stories {logoi). These are of two sorts, the true (philosophy, science, history) and the false (fiction), of which the latter must always be made use of first. As he explains in Republic X (603 c), what imitative poets imitate is agents acting, or being acted on, and experienc-

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ing as a consequence an increase, or decrease, in happiness. Any story, therefore, necessarily implies a theory of reality—what happiness "really" is, what the prerequisites are for the highest happiness, how important it is to act morally, to be wellborn, to be loved by the gods, to be helped by good luck, to be guided by intelligence, and so on. It does not matter what the storyteller's motives are, how seriously he is taken, how seriously he takes himself: all stories, without exception, imply a vision of life. Obviously "false" stories (i.e., fiction) must be further subdivided into those that imply a true theory of life and those that imply a false theory (2.377 a). Plato suggests that there is evidently a consensus implicit in most "little stories," those told a child by a nurse or mother. Later, therefore, when the child grows up, he will admire and accept as true only stories that ratify those all-important infantile theories. (See Republic 3.402 a, on the hoped-for effects of "little stories" that are "true.") What had happened in Greece by Socrates' time was that a particularly dangerous understanding of life had been perpetuated for centuries by a radically false (i.e., radically un-Socratic) tradition: a vision of warring and partisan gods and of a world where excellence is neither sufficient nor necessary for the attainment of god-blessedness. Each generation was indoctrinated at the very beginning of life. All grew up to admire the truth implicit in the works of the famous poets. It is not surprising that Socrates' rejection of this "truth" had struck his fellow citizens as an act of impiety. In the last book of the Republic Plato has Socrates confess that he himself derives great pleasure from "Homer and the other tragedians" (605 c 11). Plato explains this at length. One of the three parts of the human psyche, the "lowest," by its nature desires to see itself as a victim of unmerited suffering (606 a 5). There is a part of us, even in true philosophers, that yearns to believe "poetry" rather than "philosophy." 1 That is the real reason why even the best people thrill with pleasure at tragic performances: they put themselves, somewhere in their imagination, in the place of the lamenting sufferer down there on the stage. But we ought never to indulge the part of the psyche that is being gratified at these moments. It will grow strong by such indulgence and will eventually wrest control from intelligence (605 b 5)—an event that Plato saw as a "polluting" of the psyche (making it miaron, 9.589 e 4, 10.621 c 2). This power to corrupt the psyches even of the best people is singled out by Plato as "the most serious of all the charges against poetry" (605 c 6). "False" stories, fiction, are necessary, but they must always imply Socratic truth, that all good men and only good men are happy. The pleasure derived from the Iliad and most tragedies, for instance, is obviously 1

See introduction, n. 29. This passage will be examined in detail in Chapters 6 and 22.

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THE ANCIENT QUARREL

of the forbidden sort. The philosopher kings will select for preservation and performance only a few of the works already current, things like hymns to the gods and praises of good men (607 a 4); for the rest they will compose or encourage the composition of new works. The Republic ends with an example of a philosopher's story, the Myth of Er.2 In Laws VII the Athenian suggests another kind of example: dialogues, like the Laws itself (811 c 7). No comfort can be drawn from the fact that Plato's own dialogues fall within the definition of "mimetic poetry." They are that, but they are permissible because they imply Socratic truth. In contrast, Homer and tragedy imply an anti-Socratic world and are therefore not permissible. Plato was wary of the limitations of any written text, a text unprotected by the author in live debate with his readers (Phaedrus 276 c). And, as we have seen, he believed that ultimate matters can never be expressed in language. But that does not mean that he would be forced to condemn his own Socratic dialogues along with the plays of Sophocles. One teaches truth, however precariously and inconclusively; the other teaches a dangerous falsehood. Nor can we draw comfort from the fact that Plato was attacking Greek literature, not literature in general. As we shall see, the removal of all that Plato found objectionable in Greek literature would take the heart out of Shakespeare, the Bible, Dostoevsky, and much of the best of the whole western tradition. 2 After telling the Myth of Er, Socrates says, "and that is how the mythos was saved, Glaucon . . . and it could save us if we accept it, and we shall cross the River Lethe safely and not be polluted [mtanthesometha] in soul" (Republic 10.621 b 8-c 2).

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LATO'S Socratism was tested, as it were, by the totally unjust con­ viction and execution of Socrates in 399. Plato records his own re­ vulsion at the event [Epistle 7.325 a—c) and describes the grief of those who were present at the drinking of the poison [Phaedo 116-17). And in 354 Plato had to endure the news that his much-loved student Dion, ruler of Syracuse, had been murdered at the instigation of one of his followers (a fellow member of Plato's Academy).1 In both cases the defeats were seen by Plato as Socratic victories. Socrates was not made unhappy in the slightest by his unjust fate; Dion proved the superiority of suffering injustice to perpetrating it [Epistle 7.351 c 6). Plato also turned his rehearsals of the two catastrophes into praises of true philosophic friendship. Aristotle's Socratism was tested above all by the crucifixion of his friend, student, and patron Hermias, prince of Atarneus. Hermias was a complex man. He was said to have been a eunuch and a slave.2 Somehow he gained his freedom and acquired considerable property, some of it on Mount Ida near Troy. His holdings grew, some say "by poison and . . ." (there the papyrus breaks off). Atarneus, a port in Asia Minor, near Pergamum and across from Lesbos, became the seat of his power. He won some autonomy from the Persian Empire, his powerful neighbor. Among his subjects were two well-born young men who had studied with Plato 1 The story of Dion is preserved not only in Plato's own account in the Seventh Epistle (the authenticity of which is still doubted by some; see Harold Cherniss, "Plato 1950— 1957," Lustrum 4 [1959]: 88-89, 92-93), but also in a full Life by Plutarch (paired with that of Brutus) and briefer narratives in Diogenes Laertius, Strabo, and others. Diogenes Laertius (3.30) preserves elegiacs by Plato which he says were inscribed on Dion's tomb. The last line reads, " O h Dion, who drove my heart to madness with eros," δ emon ekmenas thymon erbti Dion. 2 Our knowledge of Hermias was enriched early in this century by the discovery of a papyrus fragment of Didymus's commentary on the Philippics of Demosthenes: Didymus, De Demosthene commenta, ed. Hermann Diels and Walter Schubart (Leipzig, 1904). The reliability of some of Didymus's sources has been challenged: D.E.W. Wormell, "The Lit­ erary Tradition concerning Hermias of Atarneus," YCS 5 (1935) 57-92, and Ingemar Dur­ ing, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical Tradition (Goteborg, 1957), 272—83. Further bib­ liography will be found in A.-H. Chroust, Aristotle (London, 1973), 1:333, n. 16, and W.K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1981), 6:26-36. During consid­ ers the assertion that Hermias was a eunuch and a slave "sheer calumny," a product of antiMacedonian propaganda. Cf. the poem by Bryon quoted by During on p. 275.

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in the Academy, Erastus and Coriscus of the city of Scepsis. Plato's Epistle VI is addressed to the three of them together, Erastus, Coriscus, and Hermias. Plato urges them to continue their philosophical studies and to form a band of friends of the sort so necessary for good government. This time it worked. Hermias became a PIatonist, liberalized his rule, and as a result found neighboring states attaching themselves voluntarily to his rule. More Platonists came to Atarneus from the Academy, including Aristotle. Hermias gave them the city of Assos, a port opposite the northern tip of Lesbos, not far from Scepsis. He held Aristotle in the greatest honor and admiration. Aristotle married Hermias's niece, who was also his adopted daughter—or was she Hermias's sister? (Our sources do not agree.) Aristotle was by birth a member of the royal household of Macedonia. At one point he was tutor to Philip's son, Alexander. Philip of Macedon, like his son after him, saw Persia as his main rival and enemy. In Athens Demosthenes was arguing passionately that the Greek states should be seeking help from the Persians against Macedonia. But Hermias clearly sided with Macedonia, probably with the knowledge of Aristotle, possibly at his instigation and by means of his good offices. If Philip was already planning an attack on Persia, the lands held by Hermias would give him a valuable place to start from. Demosthenes held Hermias in the highest suspicion (Philippics 4.31-34). In 341 came the catastrophe. Mentor, a Greek mercenary hired by Persia as a general, attacked Atarneus. He enticed Hermias into a parley, but during the talks had Hermias seized and taken to Susa. There Hermias was tortured in an attempt to learn Philip's plans. Hermias refused to talk, so he was crucified.3 On the point of death he told his friends and companions that he had not weakened and had done nothing unworthy of philosophy. Aristotle later composed verses, which were inscribed on the base of a statue of Hermias at Delphi. The king of Persia, he said, killed this good man in violation of the pure laws of heaven—not by a spear in bloody battle, but by treachery, relying on one whom Hermias trusted {Carmina, frag. 3 Ross). These verses were bitterly resented by the Athenians and were cited in the charge of impiety brought against Aristotle in 323 when Alexander died (Diogenes Laertius 5.5). Aristotle left Athens for his mother's estate in Euboea, saying that he wanted "to prevent Athens from sinning a second time against philosophy," according to the ancient biographies.4 3

Didymus reports that his source was not certain about the nature of Hermias's death. The story of the crucifixion, however, may go back to the encomium by Callisthenes (Didymus 6.14—18). That Hermias was the victim of a pathos of some sort is guaranteed by Aristotle's poems discussed below (Carmina, frags. 3 and 4 Ross). In 4.12—14 Aristotle likens his death to the deaths of Achilles and Ajax. 4 See the vita Marciana 41, vita vulgata 19, vita Latina 43. Other authorities for this story

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Like Plato at the deaths of Socrates and Dion, Aristotle celebrated the crucifixion of his admired friend as a triumph for philosophy. He wrote a choral ode, which was apparently also included in the charge of impiety, in which he addressed "excellence [areta], won for mankind only with much painful effort [polymochthe], life's most beautiful prize." Even to die for the form of this maiden, Aristotle says, is a fate Greece envies, for excellence gives the mind immortal strength—better than gold, better than parents, better than sleep. The greatest of the heroes (Heracles, Castor, Pollux, Achilles, Ajax) suffered and died for you, "and for your dear shape did the child of Atarneus leave the sun's light destitute." Hermias's deeds will be the subject of song; the Muses raise him to immortality each time they exalt Zeus, protector of guests, or praise the prize bestowed by Zeus: "unwavering friendship" (Carmina, frag. 4). We have another, more famous, poem, in which Aristotle is even more explicit in his allegiance to what I have been calling Socratism. It is a fragment preserved by Olympiodorus (sixth century A.D.) in his commentary on the Gorgias. Olympiodorus tells us that Aristotle dedicated these elegiacs to Eudemus (we do not know which Eudemus) and that he was praising Plato. The lines he quotes (Carmina, hag. 2) say that someone (we do not know who), after arriving in Attica, piously set up an altar "of friendship I of the man whom it is not themis [right, lawful, pious] for bad men [?] even to praise." This may mean that the person who set up the altar had it inscribed, "To Friendship," and made clear that he meant Plato's "Friendship"—that is, the love celebrated by Plato and fostered among his students. 5 Plato is next described as he "who alone or first among men revealed [katedeixen, a word used of founders of a religion] clearly I in his own life and in his reasoned arguments I that a man becomes good and happy at one and the same time [hos agathos te kai eudaimon hatna ginetai aner]." But then he adds one final pentameter: "Yet now [since Plato's death?] it is not possible for anyone to achieve this, ever." Aristotle hedges, just a little. When he attempts to state in a single hexameter the most admirable and typical lesson to be learned from Plato's life and works, he gives a succinct statement of Socratism, that a man are listed by Chroust, Aristotle, 1:387, n. 29. It is possible, as several people have noted, that the remark was invented to defend Aristotle against a charge of cowardice. (His flight from Athens was, after all, a most un-Socratic act.) Or was this merely someone's cruel witticism? 5 This is Jaeger's interpretation: Artstoteles (Berlin, 1923), 108, also "Aristotle's Verses in Praise of Plato," CQ 21 (1927): 13—17. Wilamowitz accepts the story that the altar was actually dedicated to Plato: Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin, 1893), 2:413-16. During argues that it was Aristotle himself who set up the altar: Aristotle, 317. See also During, Aristoteles (Heidelberg, 1966), 15-16.

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becomes god-blessed when, and only when, he makes himself into a good man. 6 But then he says (apparently) that although Plato was indeed able to prove the truth of Socratism, nobody else could, now that Plato was gone. The last word suggests that maybe no one would ever again be able to do what Plato did. Aristotle also hedges in Nicomachean Ethics I, chapters 9—11, where he discusses the need to find permanence in the pursuit of true happiness. He subscribes to quite a strong version of Socratism, saying that no happy person, eudaimon, can ever become athlios (genuinely to be pitied—a Platonic word used nowhere in Aristotle except in these three chapters). But then he adds that neither can a happy man be called blessed (makarios) if he suffers a fate like Priam's (1101 a 6—9). Excellence (arete) is even more permanent than science, he had insisted (1101 b 11—14), but many kinds of crippling misfortune can occur in a long life. Still, even in the most crushing catastrophes a good man's nobility shines through {dialampei to kalon, 1100 b 30). He may well have been thinking of Hermias. The reason why no blessed man can ever, under any circumstances become athlios, someone whom a good Socratic would pity, is because a makarios person "will never do anything hateful or foul" (1100 b 35). Clearly Aristotle's qualifications of Socratism are not radical. What he appears to be objecting to is only the most extreme and uncompromising formulations by Plato. In the Gorgias Plato maintains that a man whose evil deeds go undetected and unpunished is worse off than one who has been caught and punished. He concedes that to call the second man "happy" would be inaccurate; he is merely less athlios than the first, since both are unhappy (473 e l ) . But Plato is not always so willing to avoid extreme paradoxes. In Republic II he has Glaucon challenge Socrates with the case of a just man who is believed by the whole world to be unjust in the extreme and who is therefore subjected to whipping, the rack, chains, having his eyes burned out, and finally, "after suffering every evil," impalement. 7 This is a fate closer to that suffered by Hermias than it is to that which Socrates had had to endure. It is hardly to be wondered at that Aristotle was a bit annoyed by Plato's assurance that such a victim, if he is genuinely good, will still be happy. It was not a sharp defection from Socratism, therefore, that caused Aristotle to defend the tragedians against the attacks of his predecessors. 6 At Laws 2 . 6 6 0 d l 1-e 6 the Athenian points out to his interlocutors that in both of their homelands (Crete and Sparta) it is the purpose of moral education (paideia and moustke) to force the poets to say that the good man (agathos), because he is enlightened (sophron) and on the side of good (dikaios), is happy and blessed (eudaimon and makarios); and that a bad man is necessarily wretched (athlios) whatever his wealth or political power. 7 361 e 4—362 a 2, with one textual uncertainty (see Adam). The phrase I quote directly is panta kaka pathon, having undergone all terrible pathe.

SOCRATISM IN ARISTOTLE

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Innovations he had introduced into the Platonic system as a whole forced him to defend as rational and beneficial any long-standing human goal, including the composition and hearing of epics and the writing of and attendance at tragedy. In Aristotle's system there is no genuinely random energy (Physics 1.9), the "lowest" part of the psyche is as natural and necessary as the higher parts (On the Soul 2.4), and the productions of human art replicate natural productions (Physics 2.7—8). Like all processes in the entire universe the realization of pleasure at a tragedy must be caused, ultimately, by a perfect (but not separate) form. This form must be divine, good, and desirable, and is pursued by a substratum that introduces no tendencies of its own. Aristotle had to make an about-face, therefore: tragedy must be defended as rational and good, an ally of "philosophy," not its enemy.8 As we have seen, the main reason for Socrates' and Plato's rejection of tragedy had been that a tragic story contradicted Socratic truth. Stories of genuinely admirable people experiencing genuine unhappiness were stories of an impossibility if Socratism was right. More than that, a nation of people who believed the vision implicit in such stories would never believe Socratism, and would therefore be condemned to life-long unhappiness. What was Aristotle to do in the face of this argument? What was he to do, that is, if he wished to defend tragedy as a source of good for mankind? He had two choices. He could abandon Socratism altogether, or he could deny that the best and most influential epics and tragedies in fact showed genuinely good men and women enduring genuine unhappiness. His Socratism was qualified, as we have seen, but it could not be dropped; so he chose the other alternative. The vision implicit in the greatest tragedies is not entirely irreconcilable with Socratism, he argues. Aristotle concedes, in chapters 13 and 14 of the Poetics, that a radically anti-Socratic plot, one showing a blameless man truly suffering, would indeed be miaron, polluted and so polluting. (Miaron is another Platonic word; it occurs nowhere in Aristotle except in these two chapters.) A good tragedy, he argues, always depicts the suffering of a man in whose actions we will be able to find a megale hamartia, a "major error" or "failing."9 Clearly, if the sufferer has failed in some way—some easily detectable way—we will not be faced with a vision of life that would undermine Socratism. The word miaron (in various forms) was used, as we have seen, in Republic IX and X to characterize a psyche in which 8

This will be explained more fully in Chapter 25 below. The interpretation of hamartia and megale hamaria has been the subject of much controversy. A brief bibliography will be found in Articles on Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield, and Richard Sorabji (London, 1979), 4:188-89. Further references will be found in the appendix on hamartia in the edition by D. W. Lucas (Oxford, 1968), 299— 307. 9

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THE ANCIENT QUARREL

intelligence has become slave rather than master. Plato's "most serious charge" against the poetic tradition was that it had the power to effect pollution of this sort even in good men's psyches. Aristotle is here conceding that a radically anti-Socratic plot would indeed "pollute" us; but he insists that good tragedies do not do so, since the sufferer does in fact deserve his suffering to some degree. Without a calamity that is to some degree ««merited, Aristotle concedes, there can be no true tragedy. Pity, what we feel when we witness suffering beyond the victim's deserts, is an absolute necessity. The formula he recommends is a mixture of justice and injustice. So long as there is some palpable justice, we need not be so concerned about a Socratic's pleasure at a non-Socratic play. Aristotle's word for our satisfaction at justice done is to philanthropon. It is a feeling of brotherhood with mankind but is evidently equated here with the delight we experience when all get what they have merited and Socratism is ratified after all.10 We might instance the pleasure we feel when Odysseus gets to kill the hateful suitors. Aristotle praised both Oedipus the King and Iphigeneia among the Taurians. The Oedipus has more injustice than justice, the Iphigeneia more justice than injustice; but both plays (he believes) have both. Forced to decide which has the best of all plots Aristotle chooses the Iphigeneia. Why? Because in the events in the last moments of the play the world is shown to be compatible with Socratism after all. 10 See Introduction, n. 36 above. Cf. Moles, "Philanthropia," 334: "The tragedian must take [to philanthropon] into account if he is successfully to arouse pity and fear. To philanthropon is not an independent criterion: its function, though indispensable, is subsidiary to the proper arousal of pity and fear." In fact to philanthropon works against the arousal of pity and fear; it is necessary despite its antithetical effect. I shall have more to say about to philanthropon in Chapter 8 below.

4 PLATO'S FIRST ATTACK: REPUBLIC II

A

LTHOUGH IT IS sometimes formulated without any reference to divinity, the basic principle of Socratism is really a theological premise or series of premises. Divinity is entirely good; all divine interventions in human affairs produce good and only good for the human beings; "good" means the same for mortals and for divinity; we must always start with our knowledge of "good" for mortals and infer from that which of the stories about gods and heroes are true holy stories and which are not. Plato's objections to tragedy are also essentially theological. They grow directly and naturally from his Socratic objections to a central tradition in Greek piety. Indeed, the Greeks did not have an entirely secular literature. At least they had not developed one by Plato's time. Even in the Persians, or in an erotic poem by Sappho, or the celebration of an athletic victory by Pindar, or a political satire by Aristophanes, an interpretation of divinity is never merely decorative and rarely even peripheral or of secondary importance. Plato therefore treats religion and literature as a continuum, even as one and the same thing. 1 Plato proposes as the main principle for deciding whether to accept or reject some story an explicitly theological formulation of Socratism. We must reject the assumption made by most people (hoi polloi) that divinity is responsible (aitios) for everything that happens. Divinity is responsible for very little, since there is much more evil in men's lives than good. For everything that is good, divinity and only divinity is responsible; but for the evil, things other than divinity must be held responsible (379 c). It should be noticed that this principle, if it were applied with complete consistency, would be as deleterious to traditional biblical piety as it was to pagan piety. Today as in antiquity "most people" assume that divinity is behind our defeats, catastrophes, and unhappiness, not our good mo1 See P. E. Easterling, "Greek Poetry and Greek Religion," in Greek Religion and Society, ed. P. E. Easterling and J. V. Muir (Cambridge, 1985), 34—49. K. J. Dover demonstrates "the Greek tendency to fuse patriotism and piety," in "The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society," Talanta 7 (1975): 26. Walter Kranz gives a moving account of ordinary activities, secular in our own world, that were god-soaked for the Greeks; see Stasimon (Berlin, 1933), 37—38. John Herington captures the religious character of the Aeschylean vision, although he fails to find anything comparable in Sophocles and Euripides, in Poetry into Drama (Berkeley, 1985), 131—33. I shall argue in Chapter 20 that even Thucydides— the most secular of the great fifth-century writers—conceived of his work as a negative contribution to what was essentially a theological debate.

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ments only. The illness and death of a small child, for instance, might be thought of by the child's parents as a test of their faith. Or they might attribute it to a mysterious difference between "good" for mortals and "good" for God. And nations or individuals are still believed to be singled out from time to time for spectacular, quite unmerited suffering, in order to enhance life for the rest of us in some mysterious way. If Christians were told to reject any holy story that showed God to be the cause of the unmerited suffering of any individual whatever, what would be left of the New Testament for them? Or of their traditional reverence for the martyrs? A modern Socratic reformer would have few followers among pious Christians. Socrates and Plato got as far as they did in antiquity because no body of texts ever achieved the privileged status accorded to the Bible—that and the fact that less precise versions of Socratic theology had already been formulated many times in earlier Greek traditions. In Republic II Plato has Socrates aim his criticisms at the closest thing the Greeks had to revered texts, those of Homer, Aeschylus, and a few others. After formulating this principle, Socrates says that we must therefore "refuse to accept Homer's or any other poet's error [hamartia] concerning the gods when they err [hamartanein] without understanding and say that 'two urns stand on Zeus's threshold I filled with fates, one with good, the other miserable.' " (Homer spelled out the implications in full, Iliad 24.527—33: mortals who receive allotments from both urns are now happy, now unhappy; others, who receive lots only from one urn, are outcasts, driven across the face of the earth in utter misery.)2 Socrates then quotes from another poet a sentiment paralleled in Hesiod and Pindar— that Zeus himself distributes both the good and the evil that occur in our lives. The unacknowledged logic behind this kind of piety has obvious modern parallels. At that small child's illness and death, for instance, the parents' belief and reverence for divinity might well increase rather than decrease. Nor would they necessarily feel God to be cruel. They have impressive evidence that their child did not merit such suffering. Might that not mean that they themselves will fail to suffer everything they deserve? Such moments make some people feel close to their divinity and very grateful. But this is not logic a Socratic would accept, of course. Next Socrates turns to Iliad IV, the most explicit statement of a theodicy in the poem. This is the debate among the gods concerning their interventions in mortal lives. Zeus reluctantly condones the continuation of the war that will destroy Troy even though he has said that the city and its king were pious and deserved only good. Plato has Socrates focus on 2

Plato's quotations from Homer, unlike Aristotle's (see Chapter 25 below), almost always accord with our best manuscript tradition of Homer. This passage, however, is an exception. Plato's reading, which is unique, makes the meaning unambiguous; the Homer manuscripts leave room for some doubt (are there three jars? or only two?).

PLATO'S FIRST ATTACK: REPUBLIC

II

21

the immediate consequence of Zeus's decision, the fact that Pandarus's violation of the god-sponsored truce was itself therefore god-caused. We shall accept no such story, says Socrates, nor shall we approve of the moves initiated by Themis and Zeus that caused the strife among the gods. Nor shall we permit the young to hear from Aeschylus, he says, that "divinity plants responsibility [aitia] in mortals I whenever it wishes to destroy a house completely." There follows a paragraph of great importance (380 a 5-c 3). "No, if someone composes the pathe [calamities] of Niobe, from which these iambs come, or the pathe of the children of Pelops, or the Trojan pathe" or the like, we shall insist either that these pathe are not the work of divinity, or, if they are, that the poet find some explanation {logos) such as the one we are looking for.3 He must say that divinity produces only justice and good. Those who were punished must have profited from the experience. If it was divinity that caused the suffering, then the punished must on no account be called athlioi (truly unhappy) for undergoing the punishment. What we may say is that these people were athlioi when they were in need of punishment but were then much benefited by the punishment inflicted on them by the gods. Divinity is good, so no one in a well-governed state can be permitted to say, or to hear another say, that a god is responsible {aitios) for evil of any kind. This may be permitted neither the young nor the old, neither in verse nor in prose tellings of the tnythoi. It would be inconsistent, harmful, and impious. The word pathe is variously translated in this passage as "fate," "tale," "sorrows," "sufferings," and "calamities." It can mean any of these things. It was also, as I argued in the Introduction, a sort of technical term in some hero and initiatory religions for the "Passion" of the hero or god. It is therefore a succinct way to refer to what the Socratics objected to most, both in popular religion and in literature. 3

See the Introduction, n. 27.

5 PATHOS

N

I N GREEK R E L I G I O N

ONE OF THE numerous occurrences of paschein/pathein in the Iliad or Odyssey requires us to assume that anything but bad is being endured. 1 Yet the occurrences in Homer do exhibit two contrasting uses: the speaker may believe that the suffering was brought on by the sufferer himself—that is, that it was punishment he deserved; or he might believe that the suffering was wholly unmerited. As we might expect from their dramatically different theodicies, the two epics give different weight to the two uses. In the Odyssey it is typically assumed that god-sent suffering is deserved. Menelaus, for instance, has suffered pains (cf. algea paschbn at 4.372) but does not know why. The captured Proteus, on being asked about it, explains that Menelaus had not sacrificed to Zeus and the other gods before leaving Troy (4.472). In the Iliad it is more often assumed that all mortals are liable to become the victims of unfriendly forces larger than themselves, whether they merit suffering or not. The formulas are mostly common to both epics: the hero suffers "pains" [algea), "calamities" (pemata), "evils" (kaka), and so on. The Odyssey, as I have said, presents a thoughtful, ostensibly reassuring, theodicy that had much in common with what Plato called "philosophy." The central action of the epic is the fulfillment of a long-delayed reward for excellence. After suffering many terrible things, Odysseus is at last restored to his kingdom and given a chance to kill his enemies. The poet's explanation for the delay must have seemed primitive to Plato, of course. Poseidon alone felt justified in causing Odysseus pain; the other gods agreed that Odysseus was deserving of good. The solution was to permit Poseidon to have his way for ten years, then overrule him. Still, this was a correction of the even more disturbing theodicy of the Iliad. The "ancient quarrel" that would someday lead to the Republic and the Poetics starts here, in the argument that the Odyssey offers in opposition to the Iliad. The poet of the Odyssey uses the verb paschein/pathein to formulate his theodicy. Of all the heroes in the two epics who are said to "suffer pains," "evils," or "calamities," none is said to do so as regularly as Odysseus. The word is used to characterize him in the invocation itself, at the 1

See the Introduction, n. 8.

PATHOS IN GREEK RELIGION

23

very beginning of the poem (1.4), and is used of him frequently thereafter, both by Odysseus himself (e.g., 5.223, 7.152, 7.224, 13.310) and others, mortals (2.174, 7.195, 197) and gods (1.49, 5.33). Usually the formula refers to the ten years of wandering (14.362, 15.176, 16.205); less often the ten years at Troy are explicitly included also (13.90). But it is only when Poseidon uses the formula that it carries the meaning "deserved suffering," "punishment." He causes a storm that almost drowns Odysseus off the Phaeacians' shore. He watches the hero in his desperation and says he hopes he will suffer many evils (kaka polla pathdn) before he reaches shore (5.377). Later, when he sees that the Phaeacians will bring him home safely, Poseidon says to Zeus, bitterly, that he had thought this would happen only after Odysseus had suffered many things (kaka polla pathonta, 13.131). A Socratic might see in the Odyssey more support for "poetry" (the celebration of Divine Injustice) than for "philosophy" (the proto-Socratic vision). Fifth-century champions of "poetry" might agree, that it is their world view that is ratified in the Odyssey. It chanced that Odysseus, not Achilles, had pathein attached to him in one of his characterizing formulas. And, despite the triumphant ending in which spectacular justice is seen to be done, Odysseus's suffering throughout the body of the poem is largely unjust. On top of that, our verb is almost always used in an unaugmented aorist form (pathen, pathon, pathdn, etc.)—that is, the forms that look and sound like the later noun, pathos. Nevertheless, both in religion and literature, the vision Plato calls "poetry" is really an extension of the Iliadic, not the Odyssean world view. The Odysseus belongs mainly to "philosophy." The clumsy theodicies of the next few centuries are clearly more Odyssean than Iliadic. Hesiod, Solon, "Theognis," Simonides, and others all agree: mortals are not made to suffer for no reason at all. Look far enough and you will always find a reason for it. No pure injustices occur. Sometimes there is a delay, because the gods are not hotheads like you and me. Sometimes a descendant of the wrongdoer, not the wrongdoer himself, must suffer. Reciprocal justice is achieved nevertheless: every suffering is caused by somebody's mistake. (See Solon, frag. 13 West, lines 25—32, also Theognidea 203—6.) It was common to use the verb pathein in formulations of reciprocal justice. We shall see this in "Theognis" in a minute, and in the Oresteia in Part II. The earliest example is from Hesiod: "If a man sows evils he will reap evil cares; I if he suffers what he did [pathoi ta t' erexa], straight justice will have been done" (frag. 286 Merkelbach-West). Solon also testifies to his debt to the Odyssey. He borrows the formula from the invocation, polla . . . pathen algea (Odyssey 1.4), and uses it for the richly deserved punishment of those who are guilty of great hybris: algea polla pathein (4.8).

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The earliest text to illustrate the many uses of pathein in the classical writers is the fourteen hundred elegiac lines that have come down to us under the name Theognis. Over the course of time verses by several poets, perhaps a fairly large number, were attached to those of the real Theognis. They range in their historical references from the 580s (lines 894) to a time close to the Persian invasion in 490 (773-82). 2 What made these attributions to a single poet seem right, no doubt, was the conservative, rather aristocratic morality advocated in a great many of the verses. We have access to a tradition here, then, not to ideas peculiar to one man's reactions. The verb pathein is used in "Theognis" in a consciously Odyssean sense: "I have endured things similar to those endured by Odysseus," pepontha toi hoia t' Odysseus (1123; cf. 276, 361, 655, 811, 817-18, 991, 1029, and 1108—1318b). It is also used in the expression of hopes and fears concerning reciprocal justice. The poets in this tradition do not dwell very much on the cares they may suffer because of evils they have done; but there is a formula for the good we may "suffer" {pathein) as a reward for good done (573). Pathein was used of good experiences only very rarely by the older poets (Archilochus 14.2, Tyrtaeus 12.38; cf. Solon 24.4), 3 but this is a common use here (342, 474, 957, 977, 1009). The idea that we "suffer" good {eu pathein) in return for acting well or doing good occurs occasionally in later writings also (e.g., Eumenides 868, Apology 36 b 5); but it is a new sense, not attested with any certainty before the fifth century, that becomes most common, the use of pathein for anything done to one, good, bad, or indifferent, pathein as the passive (or should we say the "reverse"?) of erdein or some other word for "to do" or "act": "to be done t o " or "acted upon." In the very late fifth or early fourth century it also came to mean "happen," "feel bad," "be filled with passion," "have a sense experience," and more. These are developments, due in some cases to Plato and Aristotle, sometimes from the newer neutral sense, but more often from the original bad sense.4 The original nominal form of pathein, penthos, still retained its earliest sense, "grief," and never took on the new complex of uses found for the verb. Quite suddenly, in the writings of Aeschylus, Pindar, and Herodotus, we find our new noun, pathos, obviously derived from pathein, ready to take on any of the many uses of that verb. (There were also other new formations, pathe, patha, and pathema, as I noted in the introduction; but pathos was the most common, even in some non-Attic writing.) Why 2 This is Bowra's analysis, Early Greek Elegists (Oxford, 1938), 139ff. A brief list of works advocating the separatist and unitarian theories will be found in D. A. Campbell, Greek Lyric Poetry (New York, 1967), 347. 3 See the discussion of these passages in the Introduction. 4 See the Introduction, n. 11.

PATHOS

IN GREEK RELIGION

25

suddenly these apparently new nouns? We must always reckon on the possibility that our notoriously incomplete record is simply misleading. Then too, the appearance of new genres and new dialects, above all the development of prose, may have brought into literature nouns that had in fact existed for centuries. But there is also evidence, slender but valuable, that the word pathos (and the rest) got attached to the solemn event celebrated in a hero or initiatory religion, the "Passion" of the hero or god. We have already seen that pathein was used in the seventh century for the death of a great warrior. 5 This use of the term would then have become more important as these religious celebrations became more important. It was a use of pathos that paralleled an Iliadic use of pathein, calamity from the gods the sufferer did not deserve as simple punishment. Events of this sort were now focused on as events of supreme moment, the object of holy, sometimes secret knowledge. Adrastus was one of many warrior kings from the epic cycles who became the object of a famous hero cult. An Argive by birth he was exiled and was eventually made king of Sicyon in the northern Peloponnese. (He inherited the throne from Polybus, his maternal grandfather, by marrying one of Polybus's other daughters.) Adrastus was also the leader of the illfated Seven against Thebes, and of their more successful sons ten years later, the Epigoni. He was buried in Sicyon. Herodotus says that he had a prominent heroion in the middle of the city (5.67). A heroion is not only a hero's tomb, it is the center of his continuing power to help his friends and hurt his enemies. It was therefore the focus of his cult. In the early sixth century the king of Sicyon was Cleisthenes, grandfather of the Athenian statesman. Cleisthenes was at war with Argos, birthplace of Adrastus. Indeed, Cleisthenes hated all things Argive. Herodotus tells us that he wished to throw out the bones of Adrastus, as Khrushchev removed the remains of Stalin, in much the same spirit. Delphi, however, would not permit this desecration. Cleisthenes did the next best thing. He imported the bones of the Theban Melanippus, Adrastus's bittererst enemy during the war of the Seven. A new hero tomb was built for Melanippus, near the tomb of Adrastus. Adrastus's power was thereby much reduced. Now, the honors that had been given Adrastus, Herodotus tells us, included "tragic choruses" in connection with the hero's pathe (pros ta pathea autou tragikoisi choroisi egerairon, 5.67.5). These Cleisthenes gave to Dionysus, not to Melanippus. (This event is said by one authority to be the original occasion for the mysterious saying, "Nothing to do with Dionysus." 6 5

Callinus 1.17-21. The Suda s.v. ouden pros ton Dionyson. Other mentions of this phrase are listed by Lesley, Tragtsche Dtchtung, 42, n. 105. 6

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It is of great interest, of course, that "tragic choruses" were apparently awarded to heroes even before they were awarded to Dionysus. Herodotus may have been misinformed, but at least we know he is not being merely unhistorical: he expresses surprise that such "choruses" had ever been given to heroes. Even Cleisthenes' decision to give the "choruses" to Dionysus is a bit startling, given the date of the event, a hundred years before Aeschylus. But modern scholars give less weight to this passage than did some scholars two or three generations ago. 7 The reason for this is the absence of corroboration from other sources. Careful scholars grow impatient in such a situation. What most deserves our attention now, however, is Herodotus's assumption (or report?) that it was not the hero's victories, or his benefactions, that would have been the subject of those "tragic choruses," but his pathe.8 On this point we do get corroboration, from Herodotus's older contemporary, Pindar. In the Seventh Nemean, Pindar sings of the equality and inequality of men. They are equal in being subject to birth, youth, and death; unequal in their deeds and their fortune. But there is one ingredient that complicates this picture. Great deeds can sink into darkness if they have never become the occasion for some great poet's song. Or subtle and overwhelmingly persuasive language can be used with bad judgment, causing men to venerate the wrong heroes. Pindar then gives a kind of double example of this latter phenomenon: the persuasiveness of Odysseus that gave him the power to destroy Aj ax, and the smooth lies of Homer by which he persuaded men to venerate Odysseus more than his much greater victim, Ajax. Pindar is offended on two counts. The misused eloquence of Odysseus and Homer has unfairly reduced the fame of great Ajax; and it has led men to honor Odyssean brilliance much too uncritically. "For myself," says Pindar, "I hold that Odysseus's glory exceeds his patha" (ego de pleon' elpomaillogon Odysseos epathan, 20-21). 9 Up to 7

Especially William Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy (Cambridge, 1910). Lesley, Tragische Dicbtung, 44, n. 113, lists others who agree with Ridgeway in part, as Lesley does himself. 8 Lesky, Tragische Dtchtung, 45, paraphrases pathe as "Schicksale," but he equates this celebration in Sicyon with the performance of a dirge (Totenklage), 44, n. 113 (where he gives further bibliography). Dirges can surely be sung when someone prominent dies by accident, disease, or old age. Heroic pathe, if I am right, imply rather more: that the death or suffering was ultimately god-caused and bitterly unfair. The death of Adrastus certainly qualifies, whether we accept the version at Apollodorus 3.85 (Wagner) or that in Hyginus (71 Rose). According to the first version he died of grief on the way back from Thebes because his own son was the only one of the Epigoni to be killed; according to the second he and one of his sons threw themselves into a fire as a consequence of an oracle from Apollo. 9 Logos and patha ate both subject to more than one interpretation. Patha first. WiIamowitz understood the phrase, "than his patha" to be equivalent to "than what he (really) experienced," "als er wicklich durchgemacht hat." "Pindars Siebentes Nemeisches Ge-

PATHOS

IN GREEK RELIGION

27

this point, Pindar had been making his judgments on the basis of "acts of great prowess" (megalai. . . alkai, 12) or "noble deeds" {ergots de kalois, 14). Ajax was the "mightiest in battle after Achilles," he says later (27). But he also demands a true patha if the hero is to be given the highest honor. Odysseus was the Homeric hero most closely identified with pathein. As I have already suggested, Pindar may have thought it an irritating paradox to emphasize the great victimization of a hero given such a rousing fulfillment of his desires. It is implied that Ajax's pathe were indeed equal to—or greater than—his fame. We may well be dealing here with a special language from hero religion. From the same period we have evidence that initiatory religions also centered on pathe, and that they, too, may have used the word almost as a technical term. Herodotus tells us of a round lake at Sai's in Egypt, near the Temple of "Athena," which housed the burial place "of him whom piety forbids me to name in such a circumstance"—that is, Osiris, whom Herodotus identifies with Dionysus (2.170—71). On this lake, during the night, the Egyptians perform "the revelation of [Dionysus's] pathe''' (ta deikela ton patheon autou, 2.171.1). The Egyptians, he says, call these mysteria. He knows all there is to be known about them, but keeps his silence as religion requires (eustoma keistho). Then he adds that he also knows the secret rites of "Demeter," that is, Isis, rites known to the Greeks as "Thesmophoria"; but of these, too, he will tell no more than piety permits. As in the case of the hero Adrastus, then, so also in the case of gods like Dionysus and Demeter, the most solemn holy stories are depictions or enactments of their pathe. The triumphs and benefactions of these gods are great and famous, and these, too, figured importantly in the rites. But the secret at the heart of the most thrilling event was neither a triumph nor a benefaction, but the god's pathos, his god-caused calamity. Herodotus's word "revelations," ta deikela, surely comes from the dicht," Abb. Berl. Akad. 15 (1908) 328, n. 8. "Durchmachen" is as ambiguous as pathein. Some recent scholars have adopted a meaning for patha derived from the later, neutral use of pathein, "what (really) happened": "the fact" (Ruck and Matheson), "his deeds" (Lattimore), and "his worth" (Nisetich; cf. Wilamowitz, Pmdaros [Berlin, 1922], 165). Others stay closer to the Homeric meaning of pathein: "his sufferings" (Bury and Bowra), "his plight" (John Finley), "seinem Leiden" (Kohnken), "the sum of his sufferings" (Huxley), "the toils he suffered" (Carne-Ross). Now logos. Wilamowitz supposed that "his logos was" meant "man erzahit von O." Similarly Bury, Finley, Lattimore, and Carne-Ross gloss logos as O.'s "tale" ("O.'s history," Ruck and Matheson). Bowra and Huxley improve the sense with "O.'s name." Kohnken and Nisetich do better still with "Ruhm" and "fame." "But I hold that the logos of Odysseus is greater than his pathos, as a consequence of . . ." can be legitimately understood to mean any of these things—or rather it could if it made strong, clear sense in the context. Only one combination is entirely satisfactory, surely: logos means "fame" in the sense that the bearer is given heroic honors, and pathos is used in the sense defined in full by Plato in his attack on the poetic tradition in Republic II: great god-caused unmerited suffering.

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language of religious secrets. As we shall see, words like opsis and thea or theatna (vision, spectacle), phrittein (to shudder), and deinon or phoberon (wonderful, terrible) are often found in close proximity with pathos in tragedy, at precisely those moments when the thrill experienced by the audience is most likely to have been akin to that which they knew from their initiatory rites. We can now return to Republic II. Plato has Socrates illustrate the greatest error of the poets by citing the pathe of Niobe, the pathe of the House of Atreus, and the Trojan pathe. He insists that the god-sent suffering in every case be justified suffering, true punishment, or that the suffering be shown not to come from divinity at all but as a consequence of the sufferers' own errors. In other words, there should be no pathe in the sense used by Pindar and Herodotus. The reason why Odysseus's pathe were not good enough to merit his logos, fame, was that Odysseus was tricky and a liar. His suffering could not be unmerited. The suffering of Aj ax was indeed unmerited. He deserves even more fame than the lying Homer has granted him. So also with Adrastus and the gods Dionysus and Demeter, presumably. If their suffering had been punishment, nothing more, why should the "revelation" of their pathe be so important for the initiates? So Plato's attack on pathe is in fact a complaint that epic and tragic poetry rest on the very element in popular religion that Socratics must object to most strenuously, the anti-Socratic vision of Divine Injustice.

6 PLATO'S SECOND ATTACK: REPUBLIC

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HY PLATO had to return to the question of the poets at the end of the Republic he himself makes clear. All had not been said yet, and besides, "it is clearer now" why the poets must be banished, "now that the various kinds of psyche have been distinguished" (595a 6-7). Plato's moral and theological objections were set forth in Books II and III, but at that point in his argument he could not explain why even good men find tragedy and its anti-Socratic vision so appealing, a source of such pleasure.1 Nor had he hit yet on the most insidious danger we incur from tragedy: its power to corrupt our souls. Now that he has defined the three parts of the psyche, however, the intelligent and ruling part, the angry or passionate part, and the appetitive part, he can at last explain the seductiveness, also the apparent profundity, of tragedy, and give an account of the mechanics of its power to corrupt. In Republic IX Plato had offered a vivid picture of a psyche (and society) in which the lowest part is in command. The appetites [epithymiai) and pleasures (hedonai) that characterize the yearnings of this lowest part (to epithymetikon), and which therefore exist in all men however completely good men may have subdued or controlled them by higher forces, can best be seen during those hours when the lowest part always takes over, in our dreams. It is in dreams that the intelligent and gentle and ruling element in us is forced to relax its command and an "animallike" and "untamed" energy is "awakened" (egeiresthai)—stuffed, it may be, with food and strong drink. It lopes to the fore, pushes aside its former sleep, and attempts to satisfy (in phantasy) the most imperious of the desires that characterize it. 1

1 agree with Rudolf Hirzel and others {Der Dialog [Leipzig, 1895], l:237n.) that the new discussion in Republic X is hinted at already at the end of the earlier discussion, 3.392 c 1—4. Socrates says there that they shall agree that these are the sorts of logos that must be said about men when they have discovered the true and essential value of justice even for one thought by the world to be unjust—i.e., after the conclusion of the main argument has been reached in Republic IX. Cornford's conjecture, that the attack in Book X was added as a sort of "appendix" after the attack in Books II and III had been circulated and criticized (trans, of Republic [Oxford, 1941], 314), is unnecessary and destructive. (Else, "The Structure and Date of Book X of Plato's Republic," Abb. Heidelberger Akad. 3 [1972]: 26, even thinks he knows who one of these critics must have been—young Aristotle, whose Poetics was then being attacked by Plato.)

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When we sleep, in other words, we become aware of desires that had "slept" while we were awake. Plato has Socrates give us a list of dreamfulfillments that is actually a list of the plots of some of the best-loved and most-admired tragedies. First comes sexual crimes, and first among these intercourse with one's own mother (571 c 9); second are "pollution-causing murder stopping at nothing in the choice of victims" (miaiphonein te hotioun, d 2); and third, the eating of the most forbidden food. That is, we find ourselves dreaming the stories of Oedipus, Orestes, Thyestes, and so on. That Plato is identifying our most terrible dreams with the plots of the most famous tragedies is made certain, not only by the third class of dreams (which would otherwise be virtually unintelligible in this list), but also by the recurrence in Book X of the same metaphor, to awaken (egeirein, 605 b 3), when Plato describes the power of poets' mythoi to stir our epithymetikon. Plato anticipates psychoanalysis in three respects: in his emphasis on unconscious desires, in his use of dreams to read these desires, and in the connection he draws between these desires and the visions of art and religion. In two respects, however, Plato differs from Freud. Plato's discovery of the sinister connection linking dreams, madness, religion, and art deepened the distrust of literature he had already learned from Socrates; Freud is often patronizing about literature (he sometimes prefers it decoded by psychoanalysis), but would never have contemplated a plan like Plato's to ban an entire religious/literary tradition. Second, Plato assumed that the middle part of the psyche, which functions much like Freud's superego, should always be strengthened as much as possible; Freud, however, saw in the superego a force that could become, in some people, as irrational and life-poisoning as the lowest part. In Part III of this study, I shall argue that Freud's analysis of the superego should be preferred to Plato's, and that that decision will enable us to avoid Plato's condemnation of pathe in the arts. The remarks with which Socrates reopens his case against the poets at the beginning of Book X lead us to expect a psychological explanation for the poets' banishment. In fact this is postponed for a number of pages. In addition to the theory of the tripartite psyche, one other major Platonic theory has been developed in the books between the two attacks, his theory of the four levels of reality. Plato attempts to exploit this scheme in his analysis of poetry in these first pages of Book X. In Book III he had characterized traditional poetry as largely "imitative." In Books VI and VII the theory of the four levels of reality was worked out in terms of the relation between "image" and original. Now the two ideas are put together, somewhat tenuously. Poets, it is suggested, since they fashion "imitations," must be stuck on a level of "images," far from reality. Plato hits on an unfortunate illustration from the graphic arts. A

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painter in order to paint a picture of a bed does not have to know the essence of bed—or its function, or how to construct one. The painter is therefore surely a good example of someone who is satisfied with the most superficial appearances of reality. Plato even suggests that a painter's notion of perfection in his art would be a reproduction as perfect as one made by a mirror (596 d-e). This is the key to tragic "imitation," he suggests (597 e 6, 598 d 7-e 4). But the analogy does not work. It is an absurd idea and has been easily brushed aside, by Aristotle and many writers since. There is indeed a sense in which Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky sometimes fool us with false information about morality or the human heart because they can mimic human thought, speech, and action so cunningly. And since an ancient admirer of Aeschylus was apt to take him seriously as a moral teacher, to a degree unparalleled among admirers of Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, this was not a trivial problem for a Greek philosopher. The problem is peripheral in the context of Plato's second attack, however, and it should not be allowed to deflect us from the main challenge, which is psychological rather than ontological.2 The psychological argument begins in earnest at 602 c 4. The truth is that poets have nothing to say to the rational element in our souls, or to its angry ally, the middle part. They appeal only to the lowest element in our beings. At 603 c Plato gives the definition of a plot that I alluded to earlier. "Mimetic poetry imitates men doing voluntary and involuntary things, and as a result of these actions thinking themselves to have done well or poorly, and weeping or rejoicing as the case may be." The reference to "involuntary acts" {biaious . . . praxeis, acts done under compulsion, against the will) may be a paraphrase for pathe. As we shall see later, the pathe of tragedy are more often the horrible things one does, tricked by the gods, perhaps, and deprived of vital information, than things literally done to one. But Plato's example here is the death of one's son. If such a thing happens in life, he points out, we become aware of opposing forces within us. Reason, the logic of Socratism, urges us to moderate our despair, preserve our dignity, continue to function as we must, and so 2 Guthrie is typical (Greek Philosophy, 4:545-54) in giving eight times as much room to "arguments from the degree of reality" as to "psychological and moral objections to poetry." There is a similar emphasis in W. J. Verdenius, Mimesis: Plato's Doctrine of Artistic Imitation and Its Meaning to Us (Leiden, 1949); E. A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Oxford, 1963); and Eva Schaper, Prelude to Aesthetics (London, 1968). Plato's moral and psychological objections have not been given the emphasis Plato himself accords them, for two reasons: (1) because of the never-ending interest in the problems raised by Plato's shifting uses of mimesis, and (2) because of the distaste regularly felt by lovers of literature for any psychological explanation for that love. The case for basing our analysis on Plato's understanding of mimesis is made most persuasively by Hans-Georg Gadamer in a 1934 talk now included as chap. 2 in Dialogue and Dialectic, trans. P. C. Smith (New Haven, 1980). Further bibliography will be found at Chapter 22, n. 11 below.

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forth; but "the pathos itself," auto to pathos (604 b 1), draws us to an agreeable self-pity.3 "The part leading us to recollection of the pathos [pros tas anatnneseis te tou pathous . . . agon] and to expressions of grief, the part that is insatiable, shall we not say that this is the part that is without reason, ambition, or bravery?" (604 d 8—10). This is the element within us to which the imitations of imitative poets appeal. Hence imitative poetry, like painting, is indeed superficial, for it appeals to the part of us that is drawn to images only. "So we would be justified in refusing to admit it into a state that is to be well governed, since it awakens [egeirein], nourishes, and strengthens this [lowest] part of the psyche and destroys the rational part" (605 b 1—6). Plato's use of the verb "to awaken," egeirein, is a pointed reminder of his discussion of terrible dreams at the beginning of Book IX. Plato is inviting us to see that a good man, one who insists on rational control in the misfortunes that occur in his own life, may file into the Theater of Dionysus, take his seat among rows and rows of people all sitting silently, all turned in the same direction, then switch off his intelligence and give free rein to a part that is normally in command only in his dreaming. No wonder we find ourselves enjoying scenarios in tragedy that we could never contemplate with pleasure in our own lives! Plato tells us, moreover, that the experience is addictive, that we risk making this inversion permanent. We would then have a state of affairs exactly analogous to a city governed wholly by its worst element. "But we still have not made the most important of all our charges" against poetry of the traditional sort (605 c 6). The most frightening thing about it [pandeinon) is its ability to harm even the best men (epieikeis)— all but a few, anyhow. It has this power, he says, because when the best of us hear (i.e., read) 4 Homer "or some other tragedian" imitate a grieving hero lamenting at great length, we enjoy it [chairomen), we surrender control (endontes hemas autous), and "we follow along, experiencing the 3

Pathos might mean "suffering" (or "affliction" or "feeling") here, as most interpreters have supposed (see Adam, ad loc). Misery does "draw" us to grief (lypai), in a way, and this would fit the context. When Aristotle uses the same phrase in the Poetics (1453 b 18), however, to pathos is a synonym for to demon, "the fearful event." It is likely, therefore, that here, as in Republic 2.380 a, pathos means the pitiable event, not the pity we are made to feel as a consequence. The word lypai is given a complicated meaning: it must mean "grief" but not "anguish," which most people would take to be a synonym. Lypai here is pleasurable grieving, pleasurable to the lowest part of the psyche, at least. 4 Akouetn, "to hear," was commonly used "to read," since the ancients always read aloud. Cf. the discussion of Poetics 1453 b 2-7 in Chapter 8 below. Passages of this sort are collected by Hendnkson, "Ancient Reading." References to works concerning the prevalence of reading aloud in antiquity will be found in W. B. Stanford, The Sound of Greek (Berkeley, 1967), 20, n. 4. To be sure, akouetn would also be appropriate for the experience of an audience at a performance by a rhapsode or actors.

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pathos with him" (hepometha sympaschontes). We take it all very seriously and praise various poets according to their ability to do this for us. Obviously we have two, contradictory standards for judging the admirableness of human behavior, one for tragedy and another for our own lives. Socrates' interlocutor suggests that this is an inexplicable puzzle. Not really, Socrates replies, when we consider that the part of the psyche that is satisfied and delighted by the poets is the part that was "suppressed by force" (bidi katechomenon) in our own misfortunes even though it had "hungered to lament and to get enough grieving and to be satiated, it being its nature to yearn for these things," physei on toiouton hoion teuton epithymein (606 a 5). That is, the ruling appetite [epithymia) of the appetitive part {epithymetikon) is to see itself (ourselves) as victim(s) of a pathos. Socrates continues. If our best part has not been very well trained by reason and order, it will, at a tragic performance, let down the guard it keeps against the part that loves grieving, "since it is witnessing other people's pathe," hate allotria pathe theoroun. In this circumstance it seems not to be shameful at all if another person, one claiming to be good, grieves when he should not. So we simultaneously praise the man for being good and pity him (eleein) for being unhappy, a conjunction that Socratism has taught us is impossible. The experience is a pleasure {hedone) that we value. We would hate to be deprived of the tradition that brings it to us. This is because few people are able to figure out that enjoyment in "other people's pathe" necessarily leads to enjoyment of our own pathe {allotria . . . oikeia). He who nurtures pity and makes it strong in his response to other people's pathe will not find it easy to restrain pity when he is himself the victim of pathe {ou rhdidion en tois hautou pathesi katechein, 606 b 8).5 Plato does not deny that a genuinely good man can be the victim of a pathos. But there are two sorts. First, he might become the subject of an unjust decision, as Socrates was in 399. Plato has Socrates call the event a pathos {Apology 41 b 4), but insists that no unhappiness at all should be associated with such cases. Would it not be pleasant, he asks, to be able to compare his own pathe with those of others who had been subjected to similar pathe, Palamedes, Ajax, and the rest? Or, as here, a good man can be deprived of a much-loved son. Socrates shows himself to be a true forerunner of the Stoics. "The pathos itself," auto to pathos, might draw the bereaved father toward the contemplation of himself as victim; but a well-trained intelligence will effectively cancel this out as a false 5 Or does this last clause mean "it will not be easy to hold back pity for his own pathe" meaning pity for his whole life, assumed (falsely) to be a series of pathe analogous to those experienced by the hero on stage? See Introduction, n. 29.

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conclusion. The wrong desire is forcefully suppressed, so grief is not yielded to. At the end of the Phaedo, Plato reenacts the death of Socrates. He depicts it as a pathos experienced by his adoring disciples. The friends grieve, but are reprimanded for it by Socrates, who reminds them that nothing bad has happened. The pleasure promised by Socratism is pleasure of the intelligence. This is the highest and most permanent happiness open to us, Plato argues. We need to make ourselves good, because being good means having the prerequisites for god-blessedness. The gods are capable and good, so they will guarantee that there be no exceptions. The pleasure promised by tragedy and popular religion, however, the institutions that ask us to contemplate instances of god-caused injustice, is the pleasure experienced by something anti-Socrate, antirational in us. What is the nature of this latter pleasure? Plato simply says that it is the fulfillment of a yearning to see ourselves as victims. Why that vision should appeal to us, and why it does in fact produce powerful and seductive pleasure, Plato does not say. It is not too hard, however, to provide a commonsense explanation. No one who is conscious of failure or bitter disappointment can accept with joy Socrates' good news—namely that he would now have everything he wanted if only he were not so weak, so lazy, or so unintelligent. He will much prefer to be told that it is not his fault, he need not blame himself, that far better people than he have suffered far worse fates—it is just the way things are. In order to give this idea a full psychological explanation, however, we would need to posit an internal source of unhappiness, the internalization of the voice of authority, a cruel conscience, in other words Freud's superego, a much less benign version of Plato's "middle part," the angry and spirited element in our personality. In Part III I shall suggest reasons why we should prefer Freud to Plato on this matter, but for the present let us give Plato full credit for what he has uncovered. There is both a Socratic and an anti-Socratic element in us all, he has said. If he is right, then we should expect to find in all human societies (except Plato's ideal state) two sets of institutions: one catering to a yearning to believe in justice, and one catering to a yearning to believe in injustice. And this is indeed what we do find. Parents, rulers, moral teachers, even established religions insofar as they have assumed the role of guarantors of morality and order, must appeal to the Socratic hunger. They must teach us to blame not luck, not enemies, not fate—certainly not divinity—for our failures, but ourselves alone, our weaknesses, our laziness, and our stupidity. It is only by learning to blame ourselves that we stand a chance of altering our understanding and personality and so improving our chances to do better in the future. But appealing to the anti-Socratic hunger, the yearning to believe that it is not our fault at all, are certain kinds of sci-

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ence (psychiatrists who tell us how common or unavoidable our misconceptions were, social scientists who point out why it was not our doing that we became what we are, etc.), serious art (artists who depict suffering in such a way as to elicit strong sympathy for the sufferers), and religion insofar as it forgives and does not warn and reprimand only. Plato is right to this extent: the latter institutions all appeal to a yearning to see ourselves as victims of pathe.

7 PATHOS IN GREEK TRAGEDY

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E SHALL HAVE many opportunities in Part II to examine the language of pathos in the surviving tragedies. For the present I shall confine myself to two passages, passages in which the poet appears to address himself to the central question: why do we take such profound pleasure in pathP. The first passage occurs in the parodos of the Agamemnon. The dancers, respected elders of Argos, dread a new pathos, the murder of their king by his wife, Queen Clytemnestra, when he returns from Troy. (This event is called a pathos at Libation Bearers 1070, for instance.) They know it must come, because another pathos had been suffered years before, that of Iphigeneia, the king's daughter. Clytemnestra will use this sacrifice of her daughter as an excuse to kill her husband. The dancers are depressed and horrified. They dwell for some time on that earlier pathos. They recall the sign from Zeus: two eagles kill a pregnant hare and her nine unborn young. They remember the seer's interpretation: that Agamemnon and Menelaus would destroy Troy after nine years of war. But the seer also warned that Artemis grieved for the hare and her young. He hints that the goddess may prevent the expedition unless Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter—thereby setting in motion forces that would end in Agamemnon's murder by Clytemnestra (cf. ou deisenora, 153, rightly construed in Fraenkel's note ad loc). The dancers then ask, in effect, why such things must be. "Zeus," they sing, "whoever he may be, if it I pleases him to be so named, 11 use that name: I know nothing I could compare [with him], 1 I not if I weighed all in the balance— I there is only Zeus, if I'm to cast this futile anguish / from my mind without violating truth" (160-66). The last word, etetymos, "truthfully," is often construed, "if I'm truly to cast (it) out." But the antistrophe, which follows immediately, is an anguished attempt to face terrible truths about the nature of the universe; so the final

1 P. F. Smith makes much of the fact that proseikasai (163) is without an object, direct or indirect (On the Hymn to Zeus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon [Ann Arbor, 1980], 1-18), but see the notes ad loc. by Fraenkel and by Denniston and Page. Sometimes, especially in tragedy, we are forced to accept anomalies of this sort. Cf. Oedipus the King 1299 (prosekyrs' with an unprecedented accusative) and comments by Jebb, Kamerbeek, and Dawe ad loc.

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adverb surely means something like "without just turning away from truth and reality."2 In the antistrophe the dancers recall the grim story of violence in the seats of power in the universe. Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus, who was in turn violently deposed by his son Zeus. Will the violence end there? Yes, they insist. Then they amplify their reasons for honoring Zeus. First, they say, he "set men on the road to adult awareness," phronein (176). Phronein has many uses, but here it probably means something like "knowledge of good and evil" (cf. Ajax 554). Then they say he made pathei mathos the rule of human life, "revelation [mathos] by means of a pathos" (177-78). The phrase pathei mathos must surely have had dignity, religious solemnity, and a sense of profound truth for Aeschylus's audience. For modern readers and commentators it is little more than a famous puzzle. There are three problems. First, the most obvious meaning, "learning a lesson as a consequence of having suffered" (Shakespeare's "uses of adversity" at best) does not seem like a gift from Zeus so wonderful that his victory in the universe can be trusted to be permanent; nor does the thought seem one that would cast fruitless anxiety from our minds. The second problem is the fact that the need to suffer before one had learned one's lesson had always been the mark of a fool in Greek folk wisdom. Pathon de te nepios egno, says Hesiod {Works and Days 218): "but the fool knows only after he has suffered" (or "been punished"). And third is the fact, observed by many commentators, that no one in the Oresteia learns anything of value as a consequence of his suffering—neither Clytemnestra nor Agamemnon, certainly not Cassandra, the children of Thyestes, or Iphigeneia (whose pathos is the occasion for this prayer to Zeus). Orestes and Electra receive enlightenment, to be sure, but it would be difficult to argue that Zeus in his wisdom had there2

At Agamemnon 681 the dancers ask, "who named [Helen] so entirely (hod' es to pan) truly, etetymos}" They do not mean that the person "really did" name her, but that the name was given in complete conformity with reality and truth. At Eumentdes 488 Athena says that she will return and render a judgment on the matter etetymos, meaning not that she will "truly" return or that she will "truly" render a judgment, but that her judgment will be in accordance with truth and reality. Etetymos is like "truthfully" and treulich, not like "really," "truly," vere, vraiment, and veramente. Pfeiffer points out that in passages parallel to Agamemnon 68Iff., etetymos is sometimes replaced by alethds, orthos, or eulogos (cited by Fraenkel on Agamemnon 682). See also Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986), 19-20. Anne Lebeck, The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 23-24, suggests that "truthfully" in our passage be linked with "if it pleases him to be so named": "except 'Dios', were I word-true to cast out the vain weight from my thought." For the explanation of Zeus/Dios as coming from dia, see Fraenkel's note on Agamemnon 1485f., and Eduard Norden there cited. This word play, however, is not very meaningful here, unless, as Lebeck says, "the chorus seeks solace . . . in the name Dios which teaches that through him all comes to pass." The logic is a little like that of John Paul II (see Introduction, n. 21).

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fore engineered the whole grisly sequence of pathe for the education of this brother and sister. That would in any case be an inappropriate kind of mathos (revelation) for these wretched dancers to be celebrating here. 3 Now, suppose we assumed that pathos is used here with a reference to its technical sense as the "Passion" of a god or hero. Iphigeneia will still be the victim of the pathos, but it will be the dancers themselves, not she, who experience the mathos. They are saying, in effect, that the logic of Iphigeneia's pathos is well known. It is an event like those in the most solemn religious dramas. It requires gods who engineer monstrous injustices—from time to time, at least—not justice only and on every occasion. Yet these pathe are the source of mathe, insight, instruction, revelations, mathe that cleanse us of fruitless anguish (guilt?), mathe that are worth praising Zeus for. (Like pathos, mathos is virtually a neologism [from mathein, to learn]; unlike pathos, mathos remains very rare [as opposed to mathemata]—except in talk about Eleusinian visions.) It must be admitted that Aeschylus's phrase is misleading if this is what he intended. The rhetoric makes it sound as though the recipient of the mathos must also have first undergone a pathos himself. It may well be that the word pathos sometimes indicated not only the hero's suffering, or the god's, but also the mysterious experience undergone by the worshipers or initiates themselves. Here is the evidence. First, there is the use of pathos for any possession by a god (e.g., Apology 22 c 4: toiouton ti . . . pathos [i.e., like that experienced by inspired priests] kai hoi poietai peponthotes; cf. Phaedrus 252 b 2). Pathe is therefore an appropriate term for various different kinds of religious experience. Then there is the passage we just examined in Republic X where we are warned that, unbeknownst to themselves, the members of an audience at a tragedy transfer the hero's pathos to their own lives. There is also a fragment of Aris3 See, for instance, the appendices on pathei mathos in Michael Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama (Berkeley, 1976), 139-50 and in D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus' Oresteia: A Literary Commentary (Toronto, 1987), 83—85, also the other works cited by these authors. There are five basic interpretations. (1) There is an (unspecified) "wisdom" that is more valuable than that learned by fools from their mistakes, although men, unlike gods, can acquire it only through suffering. (2) The "wisdom" learned through suffering is that crime is always punished, "the doer is done to [pathein]," as Paris and the other Trojans (fools) found out too late, although we, the avengers of wrong done to us, can thank the gods for this grim law. (3) This "wisdom" is merely the sorrow we must experience as we watch the suffering of Iphigeneia, Agamemnon, and so many others. (4) The "wisdom" is not the purpose of the suffering, merely its consequence, and it consists in the (consoling) revelation that the gods, in their grimness and their greatness, had everything in their control from the start. And (5) "learning through suffering" has no general significance in the trilogy; it is applicable only to the dancers at this moment in this play, old men who are either bitter and bewildered or indulging in a bit of wishful thinking. As with patha in the Seventh Nemean, we are reduced to a choice among very disappointing interpretations—unless we assume that pathos is used in a technical sense.

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totle's On Philosophy (which we shall examine later) in which he appears to object, presumably against a Platonist, that mathos and pathos are not to be confused. Pathos, he says, is what the initiate experiences in the Eleusinian rites, an emotional preparation and illumination; but this is not really an intellectual elucidation, he maintains. Finally there are passages in the Phaedrus and in Plutarch (which we shall examine shortly) in which we are given the Platonic theory objected to by Aristotle in On Philosophy, the highest revelation experienced by the Platonic philosopher (called the megista mathemata at Republic 6.503 e 4) is indeed equated with the initiation at the mysteries, a mathos and a pathos at the same time. Plato's language is presumably closer to that of the mysteries than Aristotle's is. The revelation is a pathos, something undergone in ecstatic imitation of the god's pathos. It is an idea not unfamiliar in the Christian tradition. We need only think of St. Francis and his stigmata. The singers in the Agamemnon say two things about this mathos. First, it is equivalent to the recollection of a very painful event in the past. They are puzzled. They were appalled by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia ten years before; why should they feel differently now? Second, it is an understanding that comes "even against the will." A pathos is by definition an event we would have tried to prevent had we been able to. No good person would actually will a pathos. The dancers ask in bewilderment, "how is it that we must be grateful to gods who by violent means I took their places in the august helmsman's seat?" 4 Look with complete honesty, etetymos, at the central power in the universe. What you will see is that violence is of its essence. Indeed, this is a necessary precondition for pathe. This revelation ought to be depressing, horrible; yet it is not. It is wonderful, something for which we are sincerely grateful to Zeus, the only cure for depression (or release from guilt). Why should this be so? The dancers do not know. Does Aeschylus 4 182—83, reading pou interrogative and biaios, with Maurice Pope, "Merciful Heavens?," 100—13. This is not a "radical" reading, pace Conacher, Oresteia, 85. On the other hand, I do not agree with the interpretation given to these readings by Pope himself and by Heinz Nietzel, "Pathei mathos—Leitwort der aischyleischen Tragodie?" Gymnasium 87 (1980): 283—93. Pou interrogative need not imply that the dancers are unable to find anything to be grateful for. They may be asking how they can believe in "kindness" of this sort—whether they can really accept such an idea. They want reassurance, an explanation. There is no exact parallel for this use of pou in Aeschylus, but at Suppliants 505 the dancers ask Pelasgus "Where is the [reason for] courage you give me?" and repeat the idea at 509: "How could a public grove protect me?" Similarly at Prometheus Bound 545—46 two equivalent questions are introduced by pos, then by pou. Still, "where is there anything to thank the gods for in a rule so essentially violent and unjust" is possible and would be compatible with my wider interpretation. For further criticisms of Pope's readings, see Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama, 209, n. 9, D. J. Conacher, "Comments on an Interpretation of Aeschylus' Agamemnon 182-3," Phoenix 30 (1976): 328-36, and R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1983), 157-58.

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know? Only after a fashion. At the end of the trilogy, after many more pathe have been movingly described or shown, a new covenant will be concluded between man and god: there will be no more pathe. As we shall see, versions of this "solution" are repeated many times in serious literature, from antiquity to the present: move the reader or audience with antiSocratic pathe, but set the story as a whole in a Socratic framework that promises justice. One phrase needs further comment. When the dancers singjline 181), "understanding comes against the will," their word for "understanding" is a compound form of the word they had used five lines earlier (176) and which I translated "adult awareness": Zeus who "set men on the road to adult awareness." The earlier verb is phronein, and it is to be understood in light of passages like Ajax 554, where it is used for Ajax's own painful awareness of all that has happened (including his own responsibility, perhaps), in contrast to his small son's enviable ignorance. (Aeschylus, too, uses phronein for adult understanding in general; see the Libation Bearers 753, Persians 787.) The verb at 181, sdphronein, is developed from a compound adjective, sophron, "having his wits about him," which combines phrenes, "intelligence," and soos, "safe and sound." It is an old combination, found in both the Iliad (21.462) and the Odyssey (4.158, 23.13). From one of the occurrences (Odyssey 23.13) we may conclude that the "saving" part of the compound emphasizes the critical importance of the "understanding." Not surprisingly, when the word is used by the brutal and insensitive (Clytemnestra at Agamemnon 1425, Aegisthus at 1620), it means no more than prudence, a healthy fear of the unpleasant consequences of crossing the will of the powerful. But it can also be a term for a most exalted, god-given wisdom (as at Eumenides 1000) and was soon to be elevated by the Socratics to a very high excellence indeed.5 The reason why Aeschylus has the dancers brood on the darker side of sdphronein (sleep destroying memories, grief, our strong resistance to the lesson to be learned) can be found above all in the Furies' words at Eumenides 517-25. 6 Dread, they say, oversees wisdom [phrenes); the sdphronein we learn from duress or distress (stenos) is something we need very much. The Furies are not merely advocating fear of the consequences of disobedience; they stand for fully internalized horror at the thought of acting violently, immorally. So also in the song of the dancers in the Ag5 See Helen North, Sopbrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, 1966), and A.W.H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960), 246-48. The word is usually understood at Agamemnon 181 to mean "to be circumspect," see Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama, 184, also Fraenkel in his note on phronein in Agamemnon 176. 6 On the way to read this second stasimon of the Eumenides, see Conacher, Oresteta, 156—57, and works by Kranz, Dover, Rosenmeyer, Taplin, and Lebeck referred to in Conacher's n. 48-52 (pp. 183-85).

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41

amemnon. These dancers are not likely to be thanking Zeus for sophronein in the sense in which Aegisthus and Clytemnestra use the word, fear of external consequences. They are thanking him for a much more valuable kind of understanding, wisdom that they assume can come to them only from a pathos, an event that must always be dreaded before it occurs. (No one learns prudence from the pathos of Iphigeneia, neither the dancers nor Iphigeneia herself.) What we are offered in the final play of the trilogy is a radical refinement of the idea invoked in the Agamemnon. The Furies make no mention of learning through a pathos (although they do complain bitterly about their own pathe and that of Clytemnestra, 143-45; cf. 100, 121); instead they warn the Olympians, who are about to introduce a new version of Divine Justice—one that works without god-caused pathe—that they must not leave dread and duress (or distress) out altogether, to deinon and stenos (517, 521). Like the old men in the Agamemnon, the Furies, too, use both the simple and the compound word for understanding, phrenes and sophronein. The sdphronein that is brought about by distress, especially distress caused by a strong conscience, is something civilization cannot do without, they say.7 This is not an impenetrable idea. Civilization depends on bitter resignations, the awareness of appalling limitations, the painful knowledge that some of our dearest desires must be curtailed or given up. Plato insists (most directly at Theaetetus 176 a) that a prerequisite for higher, liberating visions is the recognition of pervasive, ineradicable injustice in our temporal lives. Our eyes must be opened to news that is necessarily very unwelcome at first. In the Allegory of the Cave, therefore, Plato has the prisoners resist strenuously before each new step upward. The acceptance of injustice is unwelcome, but only before the acceptance, he insists. 7 Hugh Lloyd-Jones understands "to learn wisdom [sophronein] under constraint [stenos]" to be a repetition of pathei mathos; see The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley, 1971), 92. Like many others (including LSJ) he sees no difference between a pathos and a stenos. The meaning of pathos I have attempted to explain already. Stenos (steinos in Homer) is more difficult because it is so much rarer. (The noun is found only here in all surviving tragedy, although the adjective from which it comes appears once in the works of each of the three poets.) Steinos has two meanings in Homer: a place where the room (to fight) is (distressingly) confined, from the original meaning of the adjective; or it can mean a dangerous situation that is like a confined space, a distressing limitation of choices, the vivid possibility of defeat. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the literal or the metaphorical use was uppermost in the poet's mind, e.g. at Iliad 15.426. So also in the Eumenides. Stenos at 521 must refer in part to the regrettable narrowing of life, the need to recognize very unpleasant truths, which is one part of the sophrosyne of a responsible adult. On the other hand, since the clause occurs in a pronouncement that also emphasizes the necessity of fear (to demon) occupying its rightful place in us (so that we will act as we must if there is to be civilization), stenos must also include the inhibiting force of conscience, deep internal dread of doing wrong, which is exactly what the Furies give us.

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If the step has been made with honesty, our reward is a paradoxical new joy. Growing up (if we may extrapolate from this idea) means, first, learning to understand how much of our world is hostile or indifferent to us and how little we can rely on simple justice from man or god. This is understanding, sophronein, from a distressing shrinkage, stenos, in our freedom to do what we want. Second, adulthood is reached only if we internalize society's sternest commands. We must learn to fear that element within us that would take a terrible revenge were we even to contemplate a major transgression. This is a stenos, too. Painful as these lessons seem at first, however, the reward is civilization and a higher happiness for the individual. Few adults would willingly slip back into childlike unawareness for the rest of their lives. The new role of distress in men's lives is adopted immediately and enthusiastically by Athena (Eumenides 691). She speaks for the present Olympian arbiters of human morality. Aeschylus clearly approves of the new interpretation. Philosophers, moral teachers, and psychologists have often given similar advice. In psychoanalytic terms, for instance, civilization requires that participating citizens substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle. The mechanism by which this (bitterly resented) move is effected is repression, which is mainly subjection to the superego, internal spokesman for the restrictions imposed on us by society. The Furies' formula in full goes as follows (517-25); "There is a place where dread is good—it must take its place and stay [accepting a necessary correction of the manuscripts] as that which oversees understanding—there's benefit to be had from understanding under[?] constraint." They then go on to say that such dread and duress is necessary both for city and for individual, polis brotos th'; and that too much of it (despotism in the polis) is just as bad as no dread and duress at all (anarchy in the polis). There is no part of the vision offered by Aeschylus in the Eumenides that is hopelessly obscure or of antiquarian interest only. The old order, however, the rule of the gods in the time before Orestes' trial, when the transition to adult understanding was effected by godcaused pathe, is another matter. It is a scheme that is much more difficult for us to understand—except, perhaps for those whose lives have been changed by a pathos religion still functioning in the modern world. Like the plan revealed at the end of the Eumenides, the old revelation of Divine Injustice, too, taught men to live with contentment and deep pleasure in a world full of disappointment, suffering, and renunciation. Nevertheless, most of us surely welcome the Oresteia as a move in the right direction, an advance toward a more defensible analysis. This is, however, an abandonment of "poetry" in favor of "philosophy." Like Socrates, Aeschylus in effect recommends the abandonment of the most cherished holy stories, those that depend on stark pathe. Unlike Soc-

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rates, however, Aeschylus never came under any suspicion (so far as we know) of advocating a novel religious view, one not compatible with the city's religion. The condemnation of Socrates was in fact an anomaly. 8 It was truly subversive for Socrates to say that we ought never to tell or hear the stories of divine and heroic pathe; much less subversive for Aeschylus to fit the pathe stories into a grand Hesiodic progression toward a higher justice both in heaven and in Athenian democracy itself. And besides, how could the Athenians not notice that, throughout most of the trilogy, Aeschylus was instructing them by giving them thrilling examples of their beloved pathos stories? Plato, even when he is dramatizing the pathos of the innocent Socrates, allows himself no such strategem. At 184 the dancers in the Agamemnon return to the pathos of Iphigeneia, which they consider this time in purely human terms—the seer's pronouncement, Agamemnon's wretched decision, and finally a picture of the slaughter of Agamemnon's child. This picture is given in great detail, and is designed to provoke the most profound pity for the victim. She "stands out" like the central figure in a real painting, prepousa tds en graphais (242).9 The dancers' phrase helps the audience associate the pathos of Iphigeneia with all those pathe in the already venerable tradition of Greek painting, a tradition still available to us in sixth- and fifth-century pottery. The dancers bring their brooding on this pathos to a close by singing, "What happened next [i.e., after Iphigeneia was raised, face down, over the altar, ready to have her throat cut] I did not see, I do not say;10 I but the skills of Calchas [the seer] do not go unfulfilled. I On the one hand, Justice does weigh out mathos for those experiencing a pathos; I but what will be, I when it comes, you'll hear. Until then, let it be. I [Knowing beforehand] would be the same as weeping before one had to. I For it will come. It will be clear when the dawn's rays come" (247—54, with several textual uncertainties). These lines are very obscure. Perhaps they mean something like this. Assume that the sacrifice did indeed take place, but I'll not say as much. (We might remember Herodotus's reticence about the "death" of Dionysus.)11 True, we who suffer a pathos along with Iphi8

Dover, "Freedom," argues that the ferocity of Athenian intolerance is generally exaggerated by modern interpreters, due in part to the notorious injustice done to Socrates. 9 See Fraenkel's note on prepousa, Agamemnon 242. 10 On the difficulty about "I did not see" (did they cover their heads?), see Gagarin, Aeschylean Drama, 146—47. Gagarin, like Fraenkel and others, takes "what happened next" to mean "the consequences of the sacrifice" (Fraenkel), which would be consistent with their having witnessed the sacrifice in full. 11 That is, Iphigeneia has experienced the fate of figures like Demeter and Dionysus, whose pathe are secret. But see Diskin Clay, "Unspeakable Words in Greek Tragedy," AJ Ph 103 (1972): 277—98, who gives a more secular explanation for passages like this. Most pedestrian of all is the interpretation of Fraenkel et al. (see previous note): the dancers have

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geneia (and with the next victim to come) are rewarded with a mathos. (Here pathos seems to apply more emphatically to the viewer/initiate's experience.) But we can hardly be expected to look forward to the next pathos or even take comfort from pathe in our past. (A pathos, as I have said, is an event any good man would have prevented if he could.) The next pathos, that oi Agamemnon, is something we dread with all our hearts. The doubts raised by Aeschylus's dancers are moral and theological: what does it mean about the nature of the gods that our most valued religious insights are tied to the contemplation of fearful and pitiable pathe? The dancers in Sophocles' Oedipus the King raise a related ques­ tion, obliquely and with a different emphasis: what is there about pathe that makes them wonderful and horrible at the same time—especially pathe we see and watch? Sophocles shows his dancers undergoing one of these moments and has them express deep bewilderment at its power to attract and repel at one and the same time. They draw some tentative conclusions, but the king himself, the victim of the pathos, emphatically rejects their inferences, in part at least. Oedipus has just been brought to a full realization of his intolerable situation. He does not want to kill himself, for fear that he would come face to face with his parents, whom he had unwittingly defiled. But nei­ ther can he remain alive if he must look at his children, whose defilement is also his doing. 1 2 He is reduced to an appalling act: he puts out his eyes with the brooch that had held his mother's dress together. The messenger spares us no detail in his description of this latest horror. Then he says that the newly blinded king is coming out. "He'll show you, too. Look, 13 the bars of the gate I are opening! You'll soon see a vision [theama] that one must pity even if he also hates it," toiouton hoion kai stygount' epoiktisai (1293-96). Oedipus steps into view with a new mask, bloody sockets where his eyes had been. "Terrible pathos for men to look at," cry the dancers, δ deinon idein pathos anthrbpois, "the most terrible of all I've ever / come upon." Oedipus had always had plenty of reasons to believe that he was eudaimbn, "god-blessed." His qualities as a warrior king—shrewdness, en­ ergy, vigor, honesty, care—were matched by many spectacular proofs of not yet witnessed to the end all the consequences of the sacrifice, so how could they speak of them? 12 Oedipus says that he wanted to avoid the sight of anything decent, not only his chil­ dren, but also the city, tower, and the holy statues of the gods (1378—79). Wherever he would look, he would see things his acts had defiled. 13 As Dawe points out, with the words theama opseis "the messenger ends as he began, with a conscious allusion to the power of opsts."

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divine favor. Oedipus even knew who his daimon was: Apollo (e.g., 2 4 4 45). But at the first hint that he may have been spectacularly ««lucky he concludes that maybe he had been the victim "of some savage daimon" (828). The messenger gives the dancers a vivid sense of the presence of "some daimon" (daimondn . . . tis, 1258) in the frantic movements that preceded the king's discovery of Jocasta's body and his subsequent selfblinding. So now, as the anapests continue, the dancers ask Oedipus about the mad possession (mania) that made him put out his eyes. What daimon, they ask, leaping a distance quite unprecedented in their experi­ ence, pounced on the king's fate, making him "god-cursed," dysdaimon} That is, since it is now known that Oedipus's daimon was his bitter en­ emy, the king could have prospered as he had for all those years only if that daimon had been far away. Suddenly it has pounced and is here, and what a spectacular change of fortune has followed! The dancers continue their anapests. They pity their wretched king. "Yet I can't even look at you [eisidein], however much I want I to ask you many questions, learn many things— I much as my gaze is drawn to you [polla d' athresai], I such a shuddering [phrike] do you cause in me" (1303—6). They do and they do not want to stare at the self-maimed king in his pitiful state. They want to know all, yet they also want to flee this sight. As the messenger had said, pity draws one forward even as horror makes one pull away. The experience is characterized by a "shudder" or "shiver," phrike, cognate with the French frisson: a special kind of thrill, desirable even though it operates by revealing something one dreads. The dancers' mention of a daimon leaping on Oedipus from a great distance is taken up by the king himself. "Alas, daimon, where have you leaped out to?" bin exhelou (1311; the verb is the same as that used at 263 and 1261). "To a terrifying place" (deinon), they reply, "not to be heard [not to be put into words?], not to be looked at" (oud' epopsi14 mon). A little later (1327-28) they ask their ruined king about his hor­ rifying act (δ deina drasas); how could he find the daring to quench his sight (opsis) ? Which of the daimones was it that swept him up and made him do it (epairein) ? Oedipus corrects them. The dancers were consider­ ing the crisis in terms of things Oedipus had done [dran); he himself would rather speak of it as things that had been done to him (pathe). These famous lines (1329-35), by their meter and diction, force us to remember the already famous cry of another of Apollo's victims, Cassan­ dra (Agamemnon 1080-82). In both lyrics (both in dochmiacs), there is a grim pun on Apollo's name and the verb apollymi, " I destroy." Oedipus sings, "It was Apollo, these things, Apollo, friends I the one who perfected [telon] these evil evils, my things, my pathe [ema tad' ema pathea]." OeSee n. 11 above.

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dipus admits that it was his own hand that directed the blow to "this" (or "them"), 15 "for why should I see, I for whom there is nothing that could be looked at with pleasure." The messenger had suggested that acts like the self-blinding, because they were done "willingly" (i.e., with full knowledge of the consequences), are more painful than one's god-sent pathe (1230—31). The chorus may agree, for it focuses almost exclusively on the self-mutilation. But Oedipus apparently disagrees. Remember the pathe engineered by Apollo, he says, the parricide and the incestuous marriage. After that, what choice was left him? And indeed the blinding was part of his fate as foreseen by Teiresias (372-73, 419). He had no choice at all (1369-90). Oedipus is instructing us to let the /nsson-causing spectacle of his ruined face stand for all the pathe he had suffered all his life.16 Given the nature of the spectacle we are forced to look at in this scene, it is hardly surprising that there should be so many references to eyes, sight, seeing, looking, and so on. But this may not be all that there is to it. As we shall see in Part II, seeing and looking are regularly mentioned in the revelations of the tragedies' climactic pathe. Many of the words in our scene—not only those actually referring to sight, such as theatna (1295), eisopsei (1297), esidein (1303), athresai (1305), epopsimon (1312), opseis (1328), horan (1334), horonti (1335), idein (1335), blepton (1337), but also pathos (1297, 1330), deinon, "horrible," "terrible," "frightful" (1297, 1298, 1312, 1327), and phrike, "shuddering" (1306; cf. 1296, 1303ff.), even daimon, "divinity" (1301, 1302, 1311, 1328) 15 The prounoun run is marvelously ambiguous, but considering the question Oedipus asks (with a gar, "because") immediately after this admission, we must assume that he meant his eyes only. 16 Karl Reinhardt was surely right when he said, "The question of responsibility for what happened . . . without which the greatest tragedies of Euripides and Aeschylus are unthinkable, just does not arise in Sophocles. . . . Nothing would be more misguided than to regard Oedipus' blinding as [an event that concerns] freedom and necessity." Sophokles (Frankfurt, 1947), 144, and Sophocles, trans. Hazel Harvey and David Harvey (Oxford, 1979), 134. Reinhardt traces this idea to Schiller and cites Pohlenz as an egregious example: "In Oedipus' act [the self-blinding], in his attitude toward his fate, there is a greatness that can lift us up." Max Pohlenz, Die Griechische Tragodie (Leipzig and Berlin, 1930), 1:224. By such an act man becomes greater than his fate, Pohlenz argues: he thereby takes his fate triumphantly in his own hands. This is a vision that seems profoundly right to some people. It has reappeared as recently as 1982, in an excerpt from William Arrowsmith's "The Criticism of Greek Tragedy," Tulane Drama Review 3 (1959): 50, in Oedipus Rex: A Mirror for Greek Drama, ed. Albert Cook (Prospect Heights, Ul., 1982), 155-69 (see 164-65). "The single pertinent fact about the Oedipus" is the hero's "refusal to accept a ready-made fate: he wants his own fate, not the gods'." Oedipus "insists upon distinguishing his own responsibility by blinding himself. It is the magnificence of his own responsibility that makes him so heroic: his life is his, and no one else's." It has been said that noble ideas, when they die, go west—to America.

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and teldn, "completing," "perfecting" (1330)—may bring with them solemn reminders of popular religious rites. As we shall see, Plato uses theama, opsis, and phrike in the Phaedrus when he compares the Platonists' glorious vision of the highest truth with the experience of an initiate at Eleusis. Plutarch speaks of fear during the initiation and the awe-inspiring sight of a "great light." The third and climactic ceremony at the mysteries was called deiknymena, "things revealed to sight." In both of these plays, Agamemnon and Oedipus the King, the tragedian puts the dancers in the position of worshipers or initiates at a holy pathos. In both plays he has the dancers fret and brood over this valued but extremely puzzling experience. And in both the poet appears to wish to correct his dancers' interpretation of their own response. But here the resemblance ends. Aeschylus agrees with his dancers that the moral problem of holy pathe is intolerable; his solution will be revealed two plays later.17 That solution, as we have seen, comes in the announcement that a wholly new, much more rational and morally defensible religion in fact replaced the holy pathe long ago, at the trial of Orestes on the Areopagus. Sophocles' interpretation is very different. The holy pathos is still the center of religion for him. The Divine Injustice needed for pathos religion appears to cause him no trouble or doubt. Indeed, where his dancers have gone wrong is in their attempt to assign a modicum of moral responsibility to the victim himself. As we shall see in Part II, this is a major Sophoclean concern. It becomes ever more important as Sophocles grows older and gets the closest attention in his last play, Oedipus at Colonus. The victim of a divinely engineered pathos must be just that, a victim. Whatever sexual passion, anger, violence, misjudgment, or even criminal intentions may characterize the great hero or heroine, these faults must not be used to soften the victimization. 17 There have been two ways to understand the postponement of a "solution" until the last play. It is either a clarification of a truth that had obtained—for divinity, if not yet for mortals—from the beginning (as the "higher criticism" of God in the Old and New Testament has long insisted); or a radical change has indeed taken place on the divine level itself. Lloyd-Jones has been our most indefatigable champion of the first position; those who feel a Hesiodic vision behind the Oresteia (see Freidrich Solmsen, Hesiod and Aeschylus [Ithaca, 1949]) are more inclined to accept the latter interpretation. The debate has been useful, as it has made scholars very cautious. Cf. Winnington-Ingram, Aeschylus, 100 and 169; also C. J. Herington, Aeschylus (New Haven, 1986), 122: "The main significance of the Hymn to Zeus is that . . . even the gods may, if not change, at least ultimately reveal a different fate." Most extraordinary of all is GoldhilPs interpretation {Tragedy, chap. 2). Goldhill credits Aeschylus (persuasively, for the most part) with dramatizing an idea far more interesting and permanently true than those usually attributed to him: "the language of appropriation," he calls it. Yet this is hardly as essential to the trilogy as Goldhill supposes. It is almost incidental, not the heart and soul of Aeschylus's solution for the moral dilemmas posed in the first play.

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There is little danger, therefore, that a concentration on the importance of pathos to Greek tragedy will "reduce" all tragic plots to one plot. On the contrary, attention paid to the many different attitudes toward pathe will be rewarded with new insights into the differences that characterize Aeschylean, Sophoclean, and Euripidean tragedy, and even the unique characteristics of individual plays. Nor does the idea cease to be of use when we pass on to postclassical literature. Today, for instance, there is much concern about violence in literature. If we were to take our cue from the Greeks, we might distinguish between violence told with sympathy for the perpetrator and violence told with sympathy for the victim. What is the latter if not a pathos}

8 PATHOS IN ARISTOTLE

O

NLY ONCE does Aristotle say what the function of tragedy is, its final cause, its that-for-the-sake-of-which: through pity (eleos) and fear (phobos) it achieves a cleansing (katharsis) of pathemata corresponding to these (Poetics 1449 b 27-28). 1 The most important means for achieving this goal is the plot (mythos), especially plots that have reversals, recognitions, and pathe (1452 b 10). Pathe are defined as fatal or painful acts, "such as deaths in full view,2 violent pains, woundings, things like that." Pity and fear are carefully defined (1453 a 4—5; cf. Rhetoric 1385 b 13). Pity is what we feel when we witness some1 1449 b 27—28. See also Philoponus, commentary on On the Soul 269.28 Haydruck. Following Bernays and others I take katharsis in a mainly medical sense. (Jacob Bernays, Zwei Abhandlungen Uber die artstotelische Theorie des Drama [Berlin, 1880, originally published in Breslau, 1857], available in part in Barnes, Schofield, Sorabji, Aristotle, 4:154— 65; bibliography on katharsis, 187—88.) The interpretation of toiouton is more difficult. Bernays showed that pity and fear alone are involved, no other emotions. Bonitz showed that Aristotle uses pathos and pathema without distinction, even substituting pathema for pathos as one of the indispensable ingredients of tragedy, 1459 b 11, and using pathe to mean "modifications" (of language) 1460 b 12, a few pages after having stipulated the Platonic meaning, 1452 b 11—13; cf. Metaphysics 5.12, which I discussed in the introduction (Hermann Bonitz, "Aristotelische Studien 5," Wien. Sttzb. 55 [1867]: 13—55). Everyone agrees, however, that "such pathemata" cannot mean merely "these pathemata." Bernays suggests that Aristotle meant the tendencies or dispositions toward pity and fear in the members of the audience. Franz Susemihl and R. D. Hicks argue, in their commentary on the Politics (London, 1894), "Note on Katharsis," 641—56, that Aristotle is attempting "to discriminate between the emotions relieved, i. e. the pity and fear of real life, and the emotions that effect this relief, viz., those artificially excited by the actions of the drama" (p. 652). Susemihl and Hicks note that this idea goes back to Edward Miiller. Versions of it can be found also in J. H. Reinkens, Aristoteles uber Kunst (Vienna, 1870), 161, and S. H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London, 1907), 240—41, n. 3. I would suggest only a slight improvement. Aristotle remembers Plato's distinction (Republic 10.606 b) between allotria and oikeia pathe, other people's pathe and our own, meaning the pitiable and fearful experiences undergone by the heroes on stage and pathe corresponding to these that the audience (wrongly) assumes also characterize their own lives. In chaps. 11 and 14 he will introduce the term pathos and restrict it to allotria pathe, the pitiable and fearful suffering of the dramatic heroes. Here he uses "such" to mean the audience's own pathe but uses a different formation of the noun in order to preserve pathos for an ingredient of the tragedy itself. 2 I have accepted the most obvious meaning of en tot phaneroi, "in full view." See the commentary ad loc. by Lucas. On the difficulties raised by Rostagni and Else, see B. R. Rees, "Pathos in the Poetics of Aristotle," Greece and Rome 19 (1972) 6—10.

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one experiencing misfortunes beyond what he deserves. Fear is what we feel when we also notice a resemblance between the victim and ourselves.3 Pity and fear may be produced by an opsis, Aristotle says, a visual event (1453 b 1). That is, tragedians do indeed do this sometimes. But Aristotle disapproves. The same thing can be achieved, he argues, merely by the way the events of the plot fit together—the sign of the better poet, he insists. "The mythos should be so constructed that a person who does not see but merely hears [akouein] the events as they occur will shudder [phrittein] and feel pity at what is happening, which is what happens [pathein] to someone who hears [akouein] the mythos of Oedipus" (1453 b 2-7). There can be little doubt that Aristotle is here describing the experience of listening to another person (a servant, perhaps) reading Sophocles' Oedipus the King (expertly and dramatically, in all probability). He cannot be describing someone just chancing to overhear the story.4 Nor can he be thinking of hearing someone read an artless story, or any version other than Sophocles'. There are too many verbal echoes from Oedipus the King, indeed from the very scene we just examined, where the king reenters and shows his blind eyes to dancers and audience. Above all there is phrittein, "to shudder," "shiver," the verbal form of phrike at Oedipus the King 1306. Aristotle uses this word nowhere else in the Poetics. Then too, a few lines farther down Aristotle substitutes Sophocles' words for the "pitiable" and "fearful" for his own terms. After arguing that pity and fear should be stirred by the poet's cunning, not the stagers'—that is, by the way the events are made to fit together—he says, "Let us consider what kind of pitiable things and what kind of fearful things are revealed in the events" (1453 b 14—15). Instead of using eleeina for "pitiable," as everywhere else in the Poetics, he uses oiktra, as at Oedipus 1296. Instead of using phobera for "fearful," he uses deina, as at Oedipus 1297 and 1298. Deinon is then used several times more, as a substitute for pathos, "the fearful deed" 5 but oiktra never appears again. Why did Aristotle's mind move to this scene out of all the possible "spectacles" in Greek tragedy? He is leading into his one extended analysis of the uses of pathos in tragedy. The dancers in the Oedipus, at the moment Oedipus returns, cry "fearful pathos for men to look at." They 3 Difficulties have also been felt concerning the word homoios, "like (ourselves)." See John Moles, "Notes on Aristotle's Poetics 13 and 14," CQ 29 [73] (1979): 92-93. 4 On akouein "to hear" meaning "to read" see esp. the reference to Hendrikson in the discussion of Republic 10.605 c 10, chapter 6, n. 4 above. 5 As Moles says ("Notes," 87), the same word can emphasize now the fearful deed itself, now the fear experienced by the audience watching the deed, now both at once. See the discussions of the initiate's pathos in the Mysteries, in Chapter 7 above.

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then go on to describe the ambiguous nature of their feelings about the pathos. This, and the fact that pity and revulsion are also spoken of and analyzed, may account for the turn of Aristotle's mind. He remembers being moved by the scene even without the powerful opsis possible only in a staged performance. He seems actually to have preferred it without the opsis—hence the aside about pity evoked by spectacle.6 (We shall examine later why Aristotle felt as he did about a strong opsis.) The events that are to stir pity and fear must occur between people who are philoi (what Aristotle means by philoi will be clear in a moment), or between people who are enemies, or between people who are neither philoi nor enemies (1453 b 15-17). The first possibility he considers is "an enemy against (or to) an enemy." There is no verb, but we would not be wrong to supply one or more from the examples of pathe Aristotle gave at 1452 b 11-13, fatal or painful acts "such as deaths . . . pains . . . woundings." If an enemy kills or wounds an enemy, says Aristotle, no pity will be stirred, whether the act is consummated or merely intended, "except insofar as the pathos itself" (is pitiable), plen kat' auto to pathos. This curious phrase is presumably a memory of Republic 10.604 b 1, which we have already examined. "The pathos itself," Plato had said, draws us to (self-) pity. Any pathos then, will by its nature move us to pity; but when the victim hates the perpetrator and is hated by him (as in the killing of the suitors in the Odyssey) the pity has very little strength. But neither is there pity of the right sort if perpetrator and victim mean nothing to one another one way or the other. What the poet engineers in a good tragedy is "pathe within the family circle," hotan en tais philiais eggenetai ta pathe (1453 b 19-20). Nor does Aristotle leave us to guess what he means by this phrase: "as when a brother kills, or intends to kill or do something of the sort, to his brother, or a son to his father, or a mother to her son, or a son to his mother." This formula does quite well as a description of the mythoi of our best tragedies. Pollution from blood guilt is an ever recurring theme. As we shall see in Part II, the Greek tragedians tended to dramatize even the crises of politics and war in terms of strains "within the family circle." There is another aspect of Aristotle's recommendation that is also very telling. Pathos, he had said at 1452 b 11, is "action," praxis, "a fatal or painful act," praxis phthartike e odynera. We may recall that Plato, too, defined a mythos as the imitation of "men doing . . . forced or voluntary actions," prattontas . . . anthrdpous . . . biaious e hekousias praxeis (603 c 4-5). Both philosophers thought first of the perpetrator, not the victim in the most obvious sense, when they described the pathe of tragedy: 6

See also Chapter 7, n. 13 above concerning Sophocles' own emphasis on opsis, the word as well as the phenomenon.

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Orestes, not his mother; Oedipus, not his father; Medea, not her children. And this, too, is quite just as a description of the plays we have. After all, it is the wretched perpetrator of a pathos who lives on in unhappiness and pollution. A few lines farther down (1453 b 27-1454 a 9) Aristotle classifies violent acts of this sort on the basis of two, quite separate dichotomies. Is the act done with full knowledge of the blood ties or in ignorance? And does the perpetrator intend the act only or does he carry it out? First, the act, praxis, can be consummated in full knowledge of the blood ties, as in Medea's killing of her young sons. Second, the fearful act (to demon) can be consummated but in ignorance of the blood ties (pbilia), which are then discovered when it is too late, as in the case of Oedipus in Sophocles' play. In this example, Aristotle says, the deinon act is "outside" the events dramatized on stage; but there are other plays, he says, where it is included in the staged events. Third is the case of the agent who intends "to do one of these incurable things" (35, poiein ti ton anekeston) while ignorant of the blood kinship, but discovers the kinship in time to avoid consummating the act. This exhausts the possibilities, Aristotle says. Yet the worst case, he then decides, is one that has not in fact been mentioned: where the agent intends to do the deed in full knowledge of the kinship but does not consummate the act after all, as when Haemon tries to kill his father in Sophocles' Antigone but fails in his attempt. Aristotle's reasons for calling this last possibility the worst are extremely interesting. First, "it has the quality of being polluted/polluting," to . . . miaron echei. As we have seen, miaron is a word used by Plato to characterize the triumph of the anti-Socratic element in our psyches. The word occurs only in this passage in the whole of the Aristotelian corpus. At 1452 b 36 it was said that the story of a good man (epieikes) suffering genuine unhappiness would be miaron. Now he adds that this quality is also present in a story of a supposedly good man, like Baemon, consciously attempting to do an unforgivable thing, like killing his own father. Both visions would "pollute" a Socratic if they succeeded in convincing (a part of) him that such things were even possible.7 Worse yet, a deinon like Haemon's in the Antigone "is not tragic," Aristotle insists, for the simple reason that "it is without a pathos," ou tragikon, apathes gar. Here Aristotle exaggerates a bit.8 He has already implied that the dei7 Moles, "Philanthropia," has a moral interpretation of to miaron similar to mine, although he does not connect it either with Plato or with Socratism. See also the contributions by Stinton and Hubbard referred to by Moles. On the need to remember Plato when reading the Poetics, see Georg Finsler, Platon und die aristotehsche Poetik (Leipzig, 1900), and Stephen Halhwell, Aristotle's Poetics (Chapel Hill, 1986), 331-36. 8 It is not necessary to infer from Aristotle's fairly minor inconsistency here that apathes therefore cannot mean "withough a pathos," as Moles does ("Notes," 87).

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non act need not be consummated in every circumstance; a pathos can be an intended act, he has said. What he must mean is that the murder of Creon by Haemon would have had some of the right power, despite the anti-Socratic implications, if only because "the pathos itself," auto to pathos, is always moving. Because Haemon misses, however, we have the undesirable quality, "the miaron" (a supposedly good man intending to do a bad act), and do not even compensate for that with a pathos of the most powerful sort. It should be noted that Aristotle cannot be using miaron in the sense most common in the tragedies, a religious uncleanness caused by blood guilt, since he is describing an event in which the miaron in that sense is not realized after all. Better, he says, is the pattern we find in the Oedipus: the perpetrator consummates the fearful act in ignorance of the blood ties and then discovers these when it is too late. "There is no miaron" he says (1454 a 3— 4) "and the discovery is thrilling," ekplektikon. There is no miaron, not because son avoids killing father or marrying mother (the son does both, after all), but because Oedipus (a good man) perpetrates these terrible deeds in complete ignorance of his kingship with either parent. Socratism is upheld, first, because divinity is seen to be the author only in part of this good man's genuine unhappiness (according to Aristotle): there must have been a large hamartia in Oedipus's actions as well. That much was established already. And Socratism is also upheld because we are not treated to a spectacle like the one in the Antigone, in which a supposedly good man is seen to be knowingly pursuing an evil end. Then comes a stunning surprise. The pathos of the Oedipus is not in fact the best of all. There is one better still: that in which the incurable and fearful deed is avoided at the last minute by the revelation of the blood kinship, as when Iphigeneia, on discovering who Orestes is, does not go through with the sacrifice she had intended. This is a surprise because a very short time before, at 1453 a 13—15, Aristotle had insisted that the pleasure experienced by an audience at the triumph of the good was not proper to tragedy, not characteristic of the best tragic dramas. But here we have an especially attractive exception. The Iphigeneia is full of unhappiness, near approaches to "incurable deeds" "within the family circle," and so on, yet heaven will not let the most horrible deed take place. We have both at the same time, pathe and a Socratic universe. Aristotle had a dilemma. In the earlier passage, when he first ranked the various plots from the worst to the best (1452 b 34-1453 a 23), he tried, as we saw, to find the right balance between injustice (required for "pity" and for a pathos) and justice (necessary if we are to avoid the miaron and have to philanthropon, ratification of Socratism).9 He came up 9

Moles's interpretation of to philanthropon is moral, like mine. He gives reference to other interpretations, "Philanthropia," nn. 12-17, pp. 328-29.

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with a compromise. There would be injustice, insofar as we see a good man come to grief, but also justice, insofar as some significant blame could be traced to the (imperfectly) good man's own actions. So also in our present passage, a compromise is what Aristotle would presumably have liked best. But this time there is nothing that might function as the "large hamartia" did in the earlier ranking. Either it is better for the familial horror to be consummated, then recognized, as in the Oedipus, or it is better to let the truth come out in time to prevent the horror, as in the Iphigeneia. The first has more pity and a better pathos, but it has some miaron and not very much philanthrdpon. The second has a weaker pathos and less pity, but wonderful philanthrdpon and no miaron at all. The fact that Aristotle gave his highest approval to the second plot is testimony to the strength of his loyalty to "philosophy" and Socratism.

9 PLATO, ARISTOTLE, AND THE "SHUDDER"

A

RISTOTLE SEEMS to have gone quite far toward an accommodation with the traditions that emphasized pathe. Still, his admiration for popular religion is that of an outsider. On the whole, he found less to praise or imitate than Plato had. This is especially true of his references to the mysteries. We have two accounts of Aristotle's attitude toward the mysteries; both probably refer to the same passage from his lost popular work On Philosophy.1 Synesius, a learned Neoplatonist from Libya who was nevertheless a Christian bishop during the last five years of his life (he died about A. D. 414), tells us in his Dio that, according to Aristotle, the initiates (the Greek word actually means those who are perfected) are not required to learn anything, mathein ti, only to be altered, pathein, to be put into a certain state of mind, diatethenai "viz., having been made ready," delonhoti genomenous epitedeious. Werner Jaeger translates this last phrase, "vorausgesetzt, dass es dieses Zustands iiberhaupt fahig ist," that is, "presuming that they are capable of this frame of mind in the first place." 2 This interpretation was made less probable, however, when a second testimony to Aristotle's remark was spotted in Michael Psellus's scholium to John Climax (see the collections by Walzer and Ross): What I agreed to instruct you in was what I had learned [ho mematheka], not what I had undergone [ho pepontha] . . . the former being that which can be taught [to didaktikon], the latter that into which one is initiated [to telestikoti]. The former, therefore, comes to men through listening [akoet], the latter occurs when the intelligence itself has been made to undergo [pathein] an illumination [autou panthontos ton nou ellamphin]—which is what Aristotle meant when he used the terms "mystery-like" [mysteriddes], and "similar to the Eleusinian [celebrations]" [eoikos tais Eleusiniais], since in these [celebrations] the one who is being initiated [perfected] into the vision [thedria], is not instructed but molded [typoumenos, as in the stamping of a coin]. 1

Frag. 15 Rose2, Walzer, and Ross, frag. 20 Untersteiner. Rose knew only one of the testimonies. In addition, see Jaeger, Aristoteles, 164; During, Aristotles, 85—89; and Chroust, Aristotle, 2: chaps. 12—16, with further references in all three works. 2 Jaeger, Aristoteles, 164. The translation is by Richard Robinson, Aristotle (Oxford, 1948), 160.

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What Aristotle may have said, therefore, was not that initiates must be properly disposed before they experience the pathos, but that the pathos itself should be regarded as a preliminary preparation. 3 Albin Lesley infers from this fragment that the Greeks made a clear distinction between tragedy and the mysteries: tragedy attempted to instruct men, the mysteries required only submission to an experience.4 But did the tragedians characteristically eschew pathos in favor of mathos} And did the defenders of the mysteries insist on pathos in such a way as to exclude a mathos} We must be careful: Aristotle is an odd person to turn to for a statement of traditional Greek beliefs. On Philosophy was a large, important dialogue on the first principles of philosophy. It contained a famous attack on a late version of the Theory of Forms and memorable comparisons between popular piety and the sort of piety Aristotle recommended. What was the context of the remark about the initiates at Eleusis? It may well have come (as the usual placement among the fragments suggests) in one of Aristotle's colorful, but slightly patronizing, comparisons between true philosophy and popular piety. But it may also have been part of Aristotle's criticism of the Platonists. Or, since Plato had made much of the parallel between Platonic vision and the revelations at the mysteries, the context may have involved both enterprises. "Instruction" {ta legomena, "things explained") came in the preliminary part of the sacred rites.5 The climactic event, the experience that "perfected" the worshiper and made him epoptikos, a person who had "seen" the secrets, came a year later, in the deiknymena, "things revealed." Now this was the aspect of the Eleusinian experience that pleased Plato most. Despite their reprehensible use of stories implying Divine Injustice, the Eleusinians did surely glimpse Platonic vision when they described the final "finishing" as a gazing upon divine illumination. Consider, not only passages like Symposium 210-11 and Phaedrus 2 4 9 50, where the mysteries are openly referred to, but also the terms used to describe the form of the Good, the Sea of Beauty, and so on. In many dialogues Plato reminds his readers of experiences of ecstatic joy in ordinary life. He does so in order to allow them to understand the upper 3 Chroust, Aristotle, 2:263, has a very different interpretation. See 381, n. 12: "We are told that true religion is really a matter of some 'inner experience', something akin to the 'gift of faith' "! 4 Lesky, Tragische Dichtung, 20. 5 Reconstructions (all conjectural) of these famous secret rites can be found, for instance, in Burkert, Cults, chap. 4; Erwin Rohde, Psyche (Freiburg, 1894), trans. W. B. Hillis (London, 1925), 217—35; Martin Nilsson, Geschichte der griechetschen Religion (Munich, 1941), 1:619-42; W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston, 1950), 282-94; and George Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton, 1961). See also Burkert, Greek Religion, 285-90; and Erika Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Madison, 1983), 24—35.

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realm, visionary truth. Among these nonphilosophical experiences of intense joy are love, inebriation, mathematical insights, and the satisfaction of knowing that one has done a good and brave thing. To this list we should add the experiences of an initiate at Eleusis. The fact that a great gulf separates a simple initiate's emotional vision from the achievement of laboriously earned intellectual "enlightenment" in the Academy did not prevent Plato from describing the latter in terms borrowed from the former. True, the highest theama in initiatory religion cannot be translated into science, morality, and politics of the sort required by the philosopher king. But there is a serious discontinuity in the Platonist's visionary climb as well. At the highest moment, the moment at which the most divine of all truths are revealed to Platonic initiates, when they are "admitted to the secrets and granted the sight," myomenoi te kai epopteuontes {Phaedrus 250 c 4), ordinary language breaks down. Plato insists (Epistle 7.341 c) that he has never put ultimate things into words, that it cannot be done. Communication at that level is completed at an unpredictable moment and is like a spark jumping a gap, after which the new flame is self-sustaining. Secrecy, so important to the mysteries, is given a new interpretation by Plato.6 It is now admission to a level of vision not capable of being articulated in rational argument. Aristotle, by contrast, emphasized the continuity, rather than the discontinuity in the transition from ordinary to the highest philosophy (On the Soul 3.5). In his second, long, formal speech in the Phaedrus, Socrates describes the flight of the happy psyche, freed at last from the body and able once more to see reality in all its glory. The philosopher's soul, by using rightly its recollection of divine things, "perfected in perfect and immortal perfections," teleous aei teletas teloumenas, "becomes the only truly perfected one," teleos ontos monos gingnetai (249 c 6-8). These are, of course, the technical terms usually translated by the Latinate "initiate," "initiated," and so on. The soul of the incarnate philosopher turns away from human matters. The world takes him for mad, but he is "god-possessed," enthousiazon. His real home is now with divinity, in a realm 6 In Plato, at least, mysteria and myein are used with an allusion to the holy secrecy of these rites, which is etymologically correct. The secrecy of the Dionysian rites is given a prosaic explanation by Burkert, Greek Religion, 64—65: "This myth is supressed and kept secret since it is scarcely compatible with the public image of the divine." Sissela Bok, however (Secrets [New York, 1982], 45—58), argues that one can become an insider only if one shares carefully kept secrets to which no outsider has access, and that becoming an insider in this fashion can bring a heady sense of power and Tightness. When ceremonies for insiders only also result in a group conviction that a god is present, a thrill of momentarily transcending mortality can be experienced. That, surely, is what Plato wanted his readers to recall.

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untouched by human change. We think of Socrates and his famous protracted withdrawals into unearthly contemplation. In the version of ultimate reality that Plato favors in the Phaedrus, what we "see" up there is the types of human excellence, "justice" and the rest. One of these, he tells us, "beauty," kallos, was "brilliant to look at," when our soul was disembodied—when it enjoyed "the blessed sight and vision," makarian opsin te kai thean (250 b 7). Thea, "vision," is found in various forms in our passages. This word gives us technical terms in Greek for those who gaze with wonder at religious ceremonies, also for those who do their gazing in the "theater." It gives us "theory" as well, Aristotle's word for the highest philosophical vision (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics 10.7). And it is also the word Aristotle uses for what the mind sees when initiated at Eleusis {On Philosophy, frag. 15). And we may remember that the messenger in the Oedipus announced the reentry of the newly blinded king by warning the dancers that they are about to see a theama that they will pity and hate at one and the same time, a theama that brings them a holy shiver, phrike. Plato contrasts the experiences of spirits encased once more in their bodies and those of spirits free of body. The soul that is imprisoned once again (like an oyster in its shell, he says, 250 c 6) has trouble discerning instances of "justice" and the like, the ultimate realities that shone with immortal beauty before its reincarnation. It is not easily excited, except in one case, "beauty," kallos. Beauty was almost light itself in its own realm and shines so brightly even down here that the dullest wits yearn for it and find themselves acting strangely in its presence. In the disembodied state, our souls were pure and without imperfections and we were admitted to the secrets and granted the sights of eudaimona phasmata, "god-blessed visions." Then all the realities were clear, immortally beautiful, and filled us with peace. The phasmata were "untrembling," atreme (250 c 3). We were pure ourselves (katharoi ontes) and saw reality bathed in pure light {en augei katharai, 250 c 2-5). Such a psyche can be called "perfected" and "god-blessed" in the true and pious use of those terms (250 b 8-c 1). But nothing is clear down here among bodies. No wonder we "shiver" when we discern beauty down here and hardly know how to act! The phasmata are no longer "untrembling." If a long time has passed since a man's incarnate soul was initiated {me neoteles) into that untrembling vision outside of time and space, he will gaze at beauty {theomenos) without understanding what is happening (250 e). But if his initiation was recent [artiteles) and full {ton tote polytheamon), the sight of beauty will spark religious awe and terror in him. "First he will experience a sudden shudder," proton men ephrixe (251 a 4), also something of the terror {deimata) of the original sight. Plato describes this man's behavior in terms that recall extreme superstition, also

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in terms that call to mind Sappho's crippling response when she saw the girl she loved. "When the shuddering has passed," ek tes phrikes metabole (251 a 7), says Plato, he will begin to sweat, and so on (cf. Sappho 31.13). Then begins the ascent to the true, untrembling vision. Plutarch equates the shuddering and sweating of the incipient philosopher with the experiences familiar to those who have undergone the preliminary ceremonies at Eleusis. In an essay called "How to Keep Track of Your Own Moral Progress" (Moralia 81 d-f) he actually quotes from Sappho's poem (lines 9-10). The young Platonist, he says, when he begins to make progress, will, like Sappho, lose his ability to speak. "My tongue breaks down," is what Sappho said, if the text is sound. A subtle fire will run suddenly beneath his skin. Later, however, he will have progressed to the point where we can see from his eyes that he is serene, without turbulence {athorybon); his speech will be wonderful to hear. It is in this way that initiates come together, Plutarch says, in the first rites, amidst turbulence (thoryboi) and shouting, pushing, and shoving. But then, when the priests begin the drdmena, "things performed" or "acted out," and the deiknymena, "things revealed" (the former for firstyear initiates, the latter for second-year initiates), "they suddenly pay attention in fear [meta phobou] and silence." The same thing happens in one's progress in philosophy, says Plutarch. At the doorway, as it were, one finds chatter and temerity as some push forward boorishly and violently to win the esteem accorded to philosophers. "But when one gets inside and sees a great light [mega phds] as though a temple ["a lord's place"] had been opened, he will assume a different conduct, silence and amazement [sidpen kai thambos]." Plutarch then adapts a famous phrase from Plato's Laws (4.716 a 4), saying that the initiates to philosophy will serve reason as though it were divinity, "in humility and perfect order." Plato and Plutarch both distinguish between two kinds of religious fear, a fear that temporarily disrupts rational control and a fear that is compatible with profound and elevated serenity. Plato had always found a place for religious experiences that were characterized by violent turbulence. Above all there are his many borrowings from Dionysian excitement. 7 And Plato also sometimes made his own the homeopathic excitement of Corybantic rites.8 But he obviously preferred the higher awe, fear that is identical with intelligence, motionless like eternal reality itself, the object of intelligence. If both kinds of fear were stirred in the Eleusinian rites, as Plato and Plutarch appear to suggest, the kind that stirred the shattering dread, the sweat, the phrike, and so on, may possibly have 7

See esp. Phaedrus 253 a, and cf. Aeschines Socraticus, frag. 11 Dittmar, 3—4 Krauss. See Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford, 1983), 288, n. 38. 8

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involved a deinon idein pathos and therefore Divine Injustice (the pathe of Demeter and Persephone); the kind that was akin to eternity would then involve a vision of Return and Justice. (Notice that Aeschylus reproduces this sequence in the course of the Oresteia, as do Christians still, in Holy Week.) What Plato has done, if this is right, is to accept the higher kind of fear pretty much intact; the less perfect fear, however, he has reinterpreted, quite drastically. He has removed the depiction of a pathos. In Plato's analysis, the disrupting kinds of dread and shiver are a consequence, in part, of incomplete understanding, incomplete recollection. This in turn is due, in part at least, to the unfortunate participation of the lowest part of the psyche, the misshapen black horse of the soul, the part that of its own nature yearns for un-Socratic truth. Nothing as disruptive to reason as this lesser awe can be the unaided work of true divinity. As we shall see, Plato subjects Dionysus, god of religious ecstasy, to a radical redefinition in the Symposium. The true Dionysus is to be equated with philosophy and Socrates, not irrationality and Alcibiades. Where does Aristotle stand? He clearly had no objection to the comparison of philosophical thebria with religious awe of the most orderly sort (see On Philosophy, frags. 12-14 Ross). But his attitude toward the other kind of fear is complex. Fear is often disruptive, but for that very reason a rational man needs to have fear stirred periodically by a strong pathos so that it can be flushed out. His theory of katharsis may even owe something to the homeopathic shake-ups offered by the Corybantics. 9 Phrike in the audience is therefore a sign of a well-made play. Indeed, Aristotle would seem to have far more reason than Plato to find a place for the shudder-filled and fear-filled outer mysteries. After all, the lowest part of the psyche harbors no anti-Socratic yearnings, according to Aristotle (e.g., On the Soul 2.1-4), so he would surely have been less anxious than Plato about the permanent damage that might be done by catering to it. Iamblichus {On the Mysteries 1.11), in a passage very similar in language to Proclus's paraphrase of Aristotle on katharsis {Commentary on Republic I, p. 50 Kroll), says that "in comedy and tragedy alike, by watching other people's pathe [allotria pathe thedrountes], we bring our own pathe to a halt [histamen ta oikeia pathe]." If, as seems probable, Iamblichus is quoting from the Poetics (the lost second book, on comedy),10 then Aristotle alluded to Plato's condemnation of pathe at Repub9

See Jeanne Croissant, Aristotle et les Mysteres (Paris, 1932). See 286—89 of the appendix on "Pity, Fear, and Katharsis" in the commentary by Lucas. On p. 157 of his commentary (Oxford, 1909), Ingram Bywater adds other post-Aristotelian echoes. Of particular interest is Plutarch, Moralia 657. There is a papyrus (Here. 1581), badly preserved and of uncertain date, that appears to use the idea of katharsis in a 10

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lie 10.606 a, but stood Plato's conclusion on its head. Pathe stir us to pity, but the net result is a cessation of "our own pathe." That is, theatrical pathe cause a cessation of tendencies to believe that we ourselves are victims. Yet despite all these new reasons for accepting as natural and benign the lower kinds of fear and pity, Aristotle actually assigns them an even humbler role in the rational life than Plato did. Pitiable and fearful events are to be shown in the theater only that we may be cleansed of the corresponding pathemata in ourselves.11 Also, the pathe we watch in the theater must be very imperfect pathe, spoiled by large and obvious errors on the part of the victims. The pity and fear they arouse is therefore qualified. The plot should contain elements of to philanthrdpon, satisfaction in the justice of man's lot, and it must as far as possible avoid to miaron, the undermining of our faith in Socratism and "philosophy." The net result is that the pathe we watch, far from making us fearful, drain off any tendencies we may harbor to see ourselves as victims; they buoy our optimism and confidence. Furthermore, the phrike must not be engineered by visual effects. Why? Perhaps a scene of this sort is too sudden, too pity-provoking. It gives the philosopher in the audience no leisure to look for the hamartia and elements of Socratic justice. Above all, the phrike must not be caused by "religious shock," to teratddes. That really upsets a Socratic philosopher. Pity and fear must be stirred, in any case, only because this arousal is a means to the final cause for tragedy, the pleasurable cleansing from the corresponding emotions in ourselves. Pity and fear are not good in themselves. We are better off without them. They hinder intellectual joy. What Homer, Aeschylus, and the rest are really good for, then, is to flush out such annoying signs of weakness in order that the serious business of the intellect can begin. When Aristotle drew a sharp distinction between mathos, instruction, and pathos, the kind of thing experienced in the deiknymena, he was surely criticizing both the Eleusinians and the Platonists, as I have said. The Eleusinians put verbal instruction in the preliminary ceremonies and assumed that the climactic illumination was of a different sort, something experienced by the mind as a pathos. And the Platonists agreed with them on that point. Their ultimate vision was like looking at the sun. It could never be experienced merely by extending verbal arguments until a logical proof was reached. In On the Soul 3.5, Aristotle describes the attainment of the highest knowledge in terms reminiscent of Plato's sun, but he insists moral context; see M. L. Nardelli, Cronache Ercolanese 8 (1978): 96-103, and D. F. Sutton, "P. Here. 1581: The Argument," Philosophta 12 (1982): 270-76. 11 See my analysis of ton toiouton pathematon, 1449b 27—28 in Chapter 8, n. 1 above.

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that it is the productive part of the intellect itself that is "like light," hoion to phos (430 a 15). Actual knowledge must precede potential knowledge as light precedes sight. The part of the intellect that can become all things (when it actually knows them) necessarily accomplishes this passively (pathein), but the productive part (which may be equivalent to all knowable things but is an immortal part of ourselves nevertheless) is incapable of being acted on, apathes (430 a 24). An emotional conditioning of the soul is indeed of great importance, but it is temporally prior to true intellectual enlightenment. It is the acquisition of the proper habits in youth (Nicomachean Ethics 1.1095 a 30-68). Eleusinians and Platonists had it backward. Verbal reasoning is climactic, not a preliminary stage (see Posterior Analytics 2.19, esp. 100 b 3-17). The discovery of the ultimate premises cannot be made by using evidence and inference, to be sure. It is done by direct, unmediated intellection, noesis. But the illumination is not a pathos. The active agent is the highest part of our own intellects.

10 Pathos, pathos, passion, and Passion

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HE THEOLOGICAL crisis called by Plato "the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy" seemed less and less urgent as the fourth century progressed. The main reason for this appears to have been the resounding triumph (among the literate, at least) of Plato's arguments in favor of "philosophy." When one reasons, whether as theologian, moral teacher, or literary critic, one is employing the part of the psyche that "philosophy" appeals to. When we think rationally, "philosophy" seems merely right. How can we get people to improve their minds and character if we do not train them always to hold themselves responsible for their own failures and unhappiness? And how can we get them to blame themselves if we also permit the dissemination of holy stories about god-caused injustice of all sorts? Indeed, what kind of reverence are we showing toward divinity if we suppose it to be characterized by this kind of interference in men's lives? Should we worship beings who act with violence, partisanship, and a high-handed disregard for justice in individual cases? Surely we must either declare the revered old stories of divinely engineered pathe to be false, as Plato did, or we must, like Aristotle, find a way to understand them that will emphasize a strong element of justice concealed in the apparent injustice. What had been a minority tradition in earlier centuries became the orthodox position among philosophers from Plato onward. Pathos (in the technical sense) was either the sign of a false story or it was reinterpreted as of minor importance and not seriously at odds with rationality anyhow. Although pathos religion continued to flourish, the special use of the noun pathos gradually faded from philosophical discussions. Other uses of pathos now take its place. Even before Plato, it was used for any state induced by an outside agent; starting above all with Plato himself, it was used especially for a state induced by a strong feeling, like rage or sexual infatuation. We no longer think of strong emotions as outside agents, but the Greeks had always done so. We might recall Achilles' description of rage as "sweeter than oozing honey" and "rising like a mist" to usurp a man's good judgment (Iliad 18.108-11). Or Helen's angry contempt for Aphrodite even as the goddess overwhelms her once more with sexual infatuation for Paris (Iliad 3.383-447). In Part II we shall examine a brilliant scene in the Seven against Thebes in the course of which ancestral rage enters into Eteocles even as we watch and listen.

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Euripides dramatizes the terrible triumphs of Dionysian and Aphrodisian passions, although he also sometimes satirizes the fatalism with which some men and women interpret occasions of this sort (see Trojan Women 940-50 and 987-90). Because the verb pathein had become almost neutral by Plato's time, in itself implying nothing as to the fortunate or unfortunate nature of what has "happened," it is not surprising that the noun, too, is neutral on occasion. It can also be used for happy experiences. Eros, also poetic inspiration, are things that happen to us, not things we do, and they can be fortunate experiences, as even Plato agrees. Still, life being what it is, most events that we do not initiate ourselves are defeats, especially the kind of events that make good dramas. Pathos (and other forms of the noun) therefore continue in the sense of capitulations to emotions that will make us irrational—and therefore deeply miserable, at least in the long run. Like our "suffering," pathos is often quite ambiguous: is it so called because it is something we "suffer" (i.e., permit to happen), or does it also involve "suffering" (i.e., deep unhappiness) ? The various nominal forms continue side by side. Some formations were favored by certain authors or in certain generations, but no systematic sorting out was achieved. Herodotus uses pathemata for a naval catastrophe (8.135.2). The same word can be used in the religious sense, an exact synonym for pathos in the technical sense, as at Poetics 1459 b 11 and regularly in the New Testament. The New Testament reserves pathos for things like illicit passions (cf. Romans 1.26). When the verb pascheinl pathein is used of the crucifixion, the scribes sometimes change epathen, "he underwent a pathos," to ethanen, "he was put to death" (e.g., 1 Peter 2.21 and 3.18), presumably because they were no longer familiar with the pagans' technical use of pathein.1 Pindar, as we saw, uses patha [pathe in Attic) for pathos in the technical sense. Plato uses the same noun for affection, punishment, or disease. In the Poetics (1455 a 31) Aristotle can use pathos of a strong emotion, even though he normally uses pathema in that sense. The adjective pathetikos can mean passive, capable of experiencing emotion, characterized by strong emotions, susceptible to devastating passions, dependent on dramatic pathe in the technical sense, destined to become the victim of a pathos, or able to elicit great pity in other people or in an audience. English and other European languages have naturalized pathe in many different senses, there is "pathology" from pathe (diseases), "sympathy" from pathe (feelings or suffering), and so on. And English, somewhat more than other European languages, has also naturalized pathos as it was understood in the Poetics, the Rhetoric, and in works on rhetoric by other writers, especially Longinus. 1

On paschein and pascha (Pesach), see the Introduction, n. 3.

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Longinus lists five sources for "sublimity," hypsos; two are inborn, three acquired. The second of the two inborn sources is "vehement and god-possessed pathos," to sphodron kai enthousiastikon pathos (8.1). Pathos here means passion, high feelings. Longinus says, however, that many pathe are not compatible with hypsos, "for example pity, grief, and fear." Aristotle, it will be remembered, argued that we need cleansing from pathemata corresponding to the pitiable and fearful events of tragedy (1449 b 27). In the Rhetoric he lists pity, fear, anger, "and their opposites" as examples of pathe that alter people in unfortunate ways, affecting their judgment (3.1378 a 20). Even before Longinus, therefore, there was a precedent for excluding as far as possible from our own lives the pathe characteristically stirred by tragedy. What Longinus has added is that there are nevertheless more noble pathe than these, pathe that should indeed characterize the poet: pathe that will lend sublimity to his poetry. (Contrast Poetics 1455 a 31.) Later (9.15) Longinus gives us just a little help toward identifying this "vehement and god-possessed pathos." It comes in the context of his famous comparison between the Iliad and the Odyssey. As with other poets and prose writers, he says, "the decline of their pathos," he apakme tou pathous, results in a new interest in ethos, "character." The Odyssey, especially the second half, is an example of a story characterized by ethos. The Iliad, then, which Longinus thought was written in Homer's prime, must be an example of a poem characterized by noble pathos. We still need more clues, however. In the Poetics Aristotle singled out Polygnotus as a sculptor who portrayed ethos especially well (1450 a 27). Earlier (1448 a 5) Polygnotus had been included in a list of artists who represented men as greater than they really are. Conclusion: ethos must refer to a hero's ideal character, that which revealed mankind at its best through individual examples. Now if pathos and ethos are polar opposites among the great virtues in poetry, and ethos means a hero's ideal qualities, then pathos must mean a hero's unique qualities or his passionate responses to his unique situation. Ethos is the representation of serene and godlike stances and actions; pathos angry, turbulent, energetic actions, like those of Achilles in the Iliad. (Yet Longinus himself much prefers the Iliad.) "Pathos" remained a rare and learned word for a long time and was not used in precisely the same way by those who did employ it. Then in 1717 Pope published a heavy-handed travesty of Longinus's Peri hypsous, called Peri Bathous: The Art of Sinking in Poetry. Bathos, "depth," had not previously been used in literary criticism, as a term either of praise or of censure. Pope's essay gave it one of its present meanings, a ludicrous drop from dignity to an absurd commonplace. (In the nineteenth century "bathetic" came into existence in a false analogy with "pa-

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thetic," as though "pathetic" were from pathos, not from pathetikos.) Now if "bathos" is a fault and "pathos" the virtue that has to do with the same kind of situation or event, then "pathos" is a dignified and ennobling sadness or sense of loss, the feeling one has at a fall from great heights when there is no absurdity, no bombast, no invitation to respond with misplaced or sentimental pity. Obviously "pity, grief, and fear" have crept back into "pathos." Those derogatory remarks by Aristotle and Longinus were forgotten and the English word took on a life of its own. The inevitable Latin translation of pascheinlpathein was patior, pati, passus, to have something done to one, to endure, to suffer, giving us our "passive," "patience," and so on. Pati and pathein are not from the same root, but the two verbs were so close in meaning during the centuries that saw the rise of Rome that no difference was felt. The noun passio, on the other hand, was extremely rare in classical times. It is correctly formed, and it did exist in the first century B.C., for Varro uses it (frag. 60 Goetz Schoell, generat animi passionem—i.e., passion, emotion). But it gained general currency only in the Christian centuries. The Vulgate has Christus passus est pro nobis for Christos epathen hyper hymon [hemon?] (1 Peter 2.21), and pati translates pathein also in the Nicene Creed and the Latin Mass. So passiones Christi was inevitable for pathemata tou Christou (2 Corinthians 1.5), passio mortis for to pathema tou thanatou (Hebrews 2.9), passibilis (destined to undergo the Passion) for pathetos (Acts 26.23), and so on. (But passio also translates pathos, violent emotion, Colossians 3.5.) From this tradition, of course, come our phrases "the Passion of Christ" and "the Passion of Our Lord." As with our word "pathos," however, an emphasis and importance has been given to "Passion" in English that is not paralleled in the other European languages. For centuries it was possible to speak of the "Passion of the Martyrs" or the "Martyrdom of Christ." Later, probably as a consequence of English contempt for popery, "martyrdom" no longer seemed to be the right word for Christ's pathos. One can still say Gottes Marter or Ie martyre de Dieu, but the equivalent phrase in English would sound odd now. In other words, "Passion" no longer means any god-approved unmerited suffering. It refers to a unique event. It has taken on the special meaning Herodotus recognized in pathos but is reserved for one event only. The verse "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust" (hoti kai Christos hapax peri hamartion epathen, dikaios hyper adikon, 1 Peter 3.18) could be cited in support of our usage in English. Christ underwent a pathos once and for all, hapax. Other pathe are not to be equated with this one. 2 2

On Christ as "martyr," see e.g. Revelation 1.5 = LXX Psalm 89 (= 88) 37. On pathe-

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One of the postclassical versions of the "ancient quarrel" has centered on the right way to interpret this unique pathos. Paul, in the tradition of the champions of "poetry" in popular paganism, calls believers to concentrate on the cross. He expects salvation from Christians' personal involvement with the Passion (e.g. koinonia pathetnatdn autou, Philippians 3.10, societas passionutn illius in the Vulgate, "the fellowship of his sufferings," in the King James version). His only quarrel with the pathe of pagan hero and initiatory religions concerns the identity of the victim whose pathos is truly a divine event, a way to make contact with divinity, and the subject of the drama that can cleanse us of guilt. But there have been many thinkers for whom passio in this sense was puzzling, upsetting, illogical. The Eastern Church has traditionally been loath to give too much emphasis to the icon of the crucifixion. And in the West, the Injustice was often shown really to be Divine Justice after all. The argument becomes discouragingly complex when theologians try to defend the crucifixion, also believers' association with it, as explicable in terms of redemption, ransom, or atonement. These concepts are capable of various interpretations, including very legalistic ones. Even Anselm, in Cur Deus Homo (1097), insisted on various kinds of quid pro quo, and divinity always ended up victorious and the author of divine justice. But Anselm also emphasized the imitatio Christi and the societas passionutn. He insisted on the reality of Christ's suffering. (Earlier theologians had often turned the idea of ransoming into a version of the archaic reciprocal justice on a history-long scale. As usual, injustice all but disappears in this scheme.) After Anselm, the idea that every Christian must undergo Christ's Passion in his own person (never a heretical doctrine) became more acceptable to the doctors of the Church. There was always uneasiness about it, however, as can be seen in the periodic controversies concerning the Franciscan order. Protestants at first embraced the societas passionum as central, since it was an important element in the personal piety of the simple; but even in Protestantism theologians have repeatedly tried to escape from the theodicy implicit in this notion—the assumption that Christ must be a victim of a true injustice. mata k.t.l. see Kittel and Friedrich, theologische Worterbuch, vol. 5, s.v. pascho. A hundred years ago it may have been appropriate for Wilamowitz to warn against drawing analogies (unbewusst oder bewusst) between the Dionysian pathos and the Christian Passion; see his edition of Eurtpedes' Heracles (Berlin, 1889), 1: chap. 2,"Was ist eine attische Tragodie?" But one can go too far. If we assume no more truth value for Christianity than for paganism, it is safe, indeed imperative, to be alert to similarities and continuities. Freud believed that he could make connections denied to others precisely because he was a good clean atheist. See Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis (New Haven, 1987). Too few have followed Freud's example.

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That the societas passionum works for ordinary pious believers is borne out by the persistent popularity of gruesome realism in depictions of the stations of the cross, the crucifixion, the entombment, and so on. This tradition, which spread widely from the twelfth century on, 3 often includes the sympathetic depiction of a griever present at the pathos. This may help some of the pious overcome a resistance to the idea of identifying with divinity. Or perhaps it helps transform a potentially painful identification into one capable of being felt as a thrill. The astonishing popularity of the "Stabat Mater" (attributed to the Franciscan monk Jacopone da Todi, who died in 1306), sung at the Feast of the Seven Dolors and set to new music generation after generation (by Josquin des Pres, PaIestrina, both Scarlattis, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Haydn, Schubert, Rossini, Dvorak, Verdi, Poulenc, Part, and more) is evidence for the universal availability of this thrill. "Stabat mater dolorosa," it begins, "juxta crucem lacrymosa, I dum pendebat filius." We are invited to imagine ourselves as present at the darkest possible moment. The singers concentrate on the mother's suffering: "o quam tristis et afflicta I fuit ilia benedicta I mater unigeniti." It is her suffering we are asked to join: "quis est homo qui non fleret / matrem Christi si videret I in tanto supplicio?" The singers pray that the experience may be theirs, as strongly as possible: "me sentire vim doloris I fac ut tecum lugeam." They want the experience to last all their lives: "fac me tecum pie flere I crucifixo condolere, I donee ego vixero." They want to be by the cross, not on it: "juxta crucem tecum stare, I et me tibi sociare I in planctu desidero." Even so, it is truly a "societas passionum: fac ut portem Christi mortem, I passionis fac consortem, I et plagas recolere." From Grunewaldt and Rembrandt to Francis Bacon in our own time, painters, both Catholic and Protestant, have exploited this source of dolorous (yet thrilling) emotion. They have not wanted for popularity or fame. Although the persistence of the "ancient quarrel" in literary criticism is our main concern, it seems to be impossible to separate such an inquiry altogether from a study of the theological debate that it was in the beginning, and which also persists. What the theological and literary versions of the "quarrel" have in common is an anxious muddle concerning the divided soul of man. The discipline we must appeal to in order to under3 The eloquent writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090—1153) were especially important in the development of a new Christian explanation of pleasure from pathos. See the "Anhang: Gloria Passionis" in Erich Auerbach's Literatursprache und Publikum in der Iatetnische Spatantike und im Mittelalter (Bern, 1958), 54—63, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York, 1965), 67-81. Auerback analyzes the Dialekttk between Leiden and Leidenscbaft in Christian thought (56, 70) and their mergence with ekstatische Liebesleidenschaft under Bernard's influence (58, 74).

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stand the "quarrel," therefore, is neither theology nor literary criticism, but psychology. Plato saw that much, and we should be grateful for his insight. Nevertheless, Plato did not see everything, for which we should also be grateful. It means that we do not have to follow him all the way to his most unwelcome conclusions.

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N REPUBLIC X Socrates expresses what seems to be a sincere hope on Plato's part that partisans of poetry will be able to counter his arguments with a sound defense. Socrates warns his companions, however, that, if the defense proves inadequate, they will have to renounce their love for poetry, however distressing that renunciation may be. For the real contest is truly momentous, he says {megas . . .bo agon . . . megas, Republic 10.608 b 4), much more so than people realize. The question whether to be a good or bad man is much too important to allow consideration for material well-being, reputation, or even poetry to influence us. Justice and personal excellence alone are vital. The prize is happiness. "Poetry" teaches us to believe that even the genuinely just and good may be genuinely unhappy; "philosophy" teaches us that this is impossible. They cannot both be right. If we come under the influence of the wrong one the penalty is unhappiness in our lives as wholes. Plato thought that the pathos of Socrates showed once and for all that our highest happiness did not depend on things that could be taken from us by time, enemies, bad luck, or even death. None of these things exists on the level of reality where the mind finds its true joy. The philosopher, says Plato, is in love with true reality (tou ontos te kai aletheias erastas . . . tous philosophous, Republic 6.501 d 1—2). Most people think of "reality" as a grim and limiting thing—as in Freud's "reality principle": the hard facts of life, the heartless impartiality of nature, the sum of all the regrettable factors that force us to shrink our daydreams and settle for much less than we would have liked. But this notion of "reality" is necessarily unintelligible for one who is aware of no imperfections in his happiness. And it is a fact that numerous people down through the centuries have reported that they have experienced—or glimpsed, at least—flawless happiness. This realization of a perfect joy has been attributed to the approach of divinity, or to a deep, requited love, to a great triumph over enemies or obstacles, to the satisfaction of having done something supremely unselfish, or even to the intake of some Dionysian substance. It is almost always claimed that "reality" is not what most people take it to be, and that true reality is divine and beautiful. Plato may be in the minority, but he is not alone. Man is a motivated being; he is always pursuing something. Usually he is pursuing something far more important to him than mere survival or

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moment-to-moment pleasure. Let us go along with the ancient procedure and identify happiness as "that which every human being desires most" (Symposium 205 a 2 - 3 ; Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097 a 34). It is a notorious fact that people disagree sincerely and profoundly concerning the most necessary prerequisites for happiness. People picture happiness in ways that cannot be reconciled, one with another. Yet "that which we all want most of all" must be the conviction—profound and unshakable— that in spite of everything, life is wonderful and very worth the living. "Happiness" is the opposite of depression, anxiety, regret, jealousy, rage, self-loathing, or the belief that man is vile or life a vale of tears. It is the conviction that, come what may, what counts most ("true" reality) is splendid and utterly reliable. Plato urges us to accept as a fact that such happiness is possible, at least for some people, and that it can be approximated by anyone. But most people doubt that even the strongest and most gifted can sustain deep euphoria through things like illness, humiliation, old age, or the approach of death. Such a doubt will itself prevent us from seeking happiness by making ourselves "good" (the kind of person who will be happy). So if Plato is right, that there is only this one way to happiness, call it "goodness," gloomy doubts about the existence of "goodness" will guarantee our unhappiness. Indeed, this pessimistic vision is unhappiness—or an important ingredient in unhappiness, at least. Now, nobody can seek his own unhappiness voluntarily. That follows from our definition of happiness. The poisonous vision of reality, therefore, must have been forced on us from without. Plato identifies as the carriers of the poisoned vision not only the tellers of the "great" mythoi, Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, and the rest, but also the tellers of the "lesser" mythoi, nurses, mothers, and so on (Republic 2.377 b 11-d 6). In the modern world we do not have a different problem; merely a different list of villains. Few are those whose life view has been shaped primarily by great poets, even indirectly. We would have to concentrate on the "lesser" myth tellers: the distributors of news, entertainment, political interpretations, religious teachings, education; the bestowers of social aid, psychiatric help, police protection, advertisers' advice; and all who are eager to exchange wisdom in bars, at home, in boardrooms, on committees, in locker rooms, in beauty parlors. There are aspects of our popular world views that are still attributable to "poetry"—minds encountered in books, both ancient and more recent, that we are taught to admire. But, except as moments when explosive political or religious movements sweep the multitudes, influences of this sort touch only small elites. Today, as in antiquity, almost everyone agrees: reality is grim, not something a realist would be "in love with." Now as then, even theologians, lawmakers, literary critics, and professional philosophers are rarely

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true Platonists. People who insist that reality is actually beautiful are dismissed as dotty (the lovers), cranks (religious evangelists), or outlaws (those who achieve their vision chemically). It is no wonder that Platonism gets little serious consideration, even in our universities. "Reality," like "happiness," is something people disagree about so fundamentally that rational argument hardly seems possible. But as with "happiness," it is at least possible to understand with some precision what it is that people disagree about. First, we must be careful not to think of reality as things, for that weights the argument in favor of those who equate "reality" with sensed objects or atoms and void. We would do better to settle for the adverb "really," as in what is "really" the case. When two persons disagree as to "what really is the case" concerning the prerequisites for happiness, they may be said to be arguing over two rival interpretations of reality. What "really" is the case about material wellbeing, for instance, or a lasting love, or the effort always to act morally? Ought one to act legally, or in conformity with public notions, or according to one's feelings, or according to one's rational conclusions? In disagreements of this sort each person is warning the other that if he builds his life on his mistaken assumptions, he will be sorry: he will miss one of life's important rewards. "Reality," then, is what is out there, "objective"—what we are not at liberty to ignore or interpret just as we please. It is whatever we must get right if we are going to succeed in our pursuit of happiness. If two people have based their lives on radically different assumptions about reality in this sense, and one of the two has achieved much greater happiness than the other, we would be foolish not to give more credence to the happier person's description than to that of his opponent—provided, of course, that both people have lived long, varied lives, lives vulnerable to all the usual hazards. Platonists are merely more consistent than most of mankind: if "happiness," what we all want, is a deep and lasting conviction that "reality" is beautiful, and only the happy person can be believed on the matter, then reality must be beautiful. The minority has a better case than the majority. Of course, none of this holds if there are circumstances in which no human being, however wise, can ever be truly happy—defeat of friends, pain, disease, the humiliating disabilities of old age, or the death of loved ones, to name only a few possibilities. But that is precisely why the example of Socrates was so important for Plato. Socrates had not been forced to revise his theory of reality even when he had to undergo a pathos that would have made a non-Socratic very unhappy indeed. At the very least, the example of Socrates must make us wonder. And yet, it cannot make us do much more than wonder. As Plato knew well, if one is to be made into a Platonist, it requires not only a very long time, but

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also a basic sympathy with the optimistic view right from the start. There is no well-defined sequence of rational demonstrations that can convert the nonbeliever in a single session or series of sessions. The most that nonbelievers can concede is that it would be exceedingly fortunate for mankind if the Platonists were right and the rest of us mistaken. We can hardly wish Plato to be wrong, it would seem. We might accept Freud's distinction between two kinds of unproved and unprovable theories. It is commonly agreed, for instance, that the core of the earth is probably molten metal. If someone were to come along and say that that was wrong, that the earth's core was actually carbonated water, we might not believe him, but we might let him have his say nevertheless. We would want to question him about his dismissal of the molten metal theory. If he suggested a feasible experiment that could corroborate his own theory, we would probably try it. But if another person came along and asserted that the earth's core was made of jam, our attitude would be significantly different. Jam requires fruit and cooking, we would object, and we are unable to see where the orchard or the kitchen could be for the preparation of so much jam so many millennia ago. We would not investigate this person's theory—we would investigate him. Clearly, the Platonic description of reality does not deserve the jam treatment. If someone were able to devise a feasible experiment we would be most happy to try it. It is illogical to hope that Plato is wrong. Nevertheless, illogical as it may be, most of us do hope he is wrong. Suppose a good clean atheist had been forced to accept as a fact that the Turin shroud was indeed a miraculous confirmation of Christ's divinity. He would have been cast into angry gloom, not joy at all. We do not always receive with pleasure the news that someone else has found a sure way to what we all want most, true happiness. The atheist faced with such evidence about the Turin shroud might well have reacted with deep distaste to the most obvious advice implicit in the demonstration, that he make himself into a Christian after all. There is almost always a sting in the evangelist's message: we will get our reward only if we agree to make over our lives and our minds. And that project will appeal only to those who are currently deeply unhappy with their lives and their selves. Even the first step toward Platonic happiness is profoundly disagreeable: the willingness to blame ourselves for our present unhappiness. Even on Plato's own analysis it is precisely here that we can explain the paradoxical attractiveness of the dark view of reality. If life is deeply unfair, the universe guaranteed to be in the control of forces that none of us can be expected to understand or influence, the world no safe place even for the gifted and the good, and no one even lucky for long, we ought to pity ourselves, not blame ourselves. We need not trace our unhappiness to our own laziness, moral weakness, or lack of intelligence. And that

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discovery is a cleansing one, an idea that has great power and attractiveness. In our surface lives we may complain bitterly about bad luck, unscrupulous competitors, or the unfairness of nature or of society, but at a deeper level we have accepted the moralists' prescription: we cannot believe that all would not now be well if only we were not so weak or stupid. There is that within us that longs for reassurance that there is nothing we ourselves could have done, that we may cease this painful self-laceration. But such absolution is not ours just for the asking: it has to come from without, and it has to come with impressive authority. Its reassurance must also be repeated frequently. The most common source for such repeatedly renewed absolution is the pathe of popular religion. Other possible sources are psychotherapy (everybody has your problem, you were too young to understand, it was only a phantasy, etc.) or tragedy (which operates with pathe, like religion, but can function, for some, even when accepted as fiction). But less concentrated and defined reassurance can be found in the theory of reality implicit in newspapers and gossip (all politicians are crooked, the big corporations make the real decisions, the media manipulate the rest of us, etc.). Plato thought that the pathe of tragedy and religion appealed directly to an element in our souls that was by nature inclined to weep for itself (Republic 10.606 a-b). This is not an idea that would attract many today. It takes very little adjustment, however, to make Plato's suggestion fit a theory still taken very seriously indeed. We need to include in our consideration both of Plato's two lower parts of the psyche. The nonrational and often antisocial phantasies of the lowest part of the psyche surely do, as Plato suggested, shape the grim and violent stories loved by mankind; but the cleansings offered by pathe must be explained with reference also to the "middle" part, the superego. This force within our personalities is indeed the thing that makes civilization possible, as Plato said. It is that which imposes the restrictions of society's rationality on us and denies direct and undisguised fulfillment to the criminal "lowest" part. But psychoanalysts agree with the ordinary opinion in antiquity, that these lower drives are nevertheless our true wills. The suppression is necessary, yet "unnatural" in the sense that it represents an unhappy compromise, a curtailment that a vital part of us will never accept gladly. That in turn means that the middle part, the superego, is an enemy, a scourge, a scold, a hated dictator, a major source of unhappiness. Plato and the psychoanalysts came to the superego from different directions, as it were. Plato did not, like the analysts, begin with the evidence that it can sometimes be cruel and irrational, that which itself prevents a person from achieving happiness. Plato was merely grateful for its existence, since it made an approximation to philosophical happiness possible even for people not sufficiently gifted to become philosophers.

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They could borrow intelligence from the rulers and the laws. The carrier of borrowed intelligence is clearly the superego. But Freud and his colleagues started with cases where this internal representative of society's authority was so alarmingly strong that philosophical happiness was impossible. Paranoiacs experience the superego as the painful and alarming conviction that people are talking about them, criticizing them, even plotting against them. In extreme cases these censors are heard as voices, human or divine. Not only did Plato not begin with clinical concern for such extreme cases of unhappiness, his one experience of a person who heard voices telling him what he should not be doing was Socrates. If Socrates was a paranoiac, he was a very fortunate one indeed; he never doubted that the speakers were immortal and entirely benign. Although he seems to have been exhilarated on the day of the trial when his voice finally ceased for the first time, he was clearly grateful that he had been chosen in this special way.1 If the psychoanalysts are right, Plato came very near to the mark indeed. The need to believe that we are victims, not responsible agents, is easily understood as a need to escape from the lashing of the superego, the middle part of the psyche. For it is not only paranoiacs who suffer from this internal scourge: we all do, at least part of the time. Depression is very commonly nothing but the acceptance of the judgment passed on us by our superegos. In manic-depressive cycles what happens is that we periodically triumph over the superego and then once more fall under its cruel contempt. There is indeed, therefore, a hunger to escape from our internal moralist's voice. And this is accomplished, as Plato said, by convincing ourselves that it is not really we ourselves who are to blame. Religion and literature work just like psychoanalysis itself—as reassurance that "reality" is grim, unfair, that which undoes all men, the brave and good as well, not the weak and self-indulgent only. However, if the psychoanalysts are right about the universality of the unhappiness induced by the middle part—and in the discovery that the most saintly people are the most susceptible to this kind of misery2—then we can make a good case for retaining the pathe of religion and tragedy, however irreconcilable they may be with the equally necessary admonition of reason and morality. 1 2

See the Introduction, n. 33 and Chapter 24 below. See the Introduction, nn. 31 and 32.

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HE FUNCTION of "great literature," says Yeats, is "the Forgiveness of Sins."1 He means, it turns out, that the readers or audience are forgiven their sins, much as believers are by holy stories. In Part II we shall examine Yeats's "Easter 1916" as an example of a political pathos transformed into literature, in a tradition at least as old as Euripidies. Yeats argues in this poem that even lives otherwise wasted in meaningless activity, or marred by failure, or disfigured by brutishness, can be transformed by the right kind of pathos, "Transformed utterly: I A terrible beauty is born." He knew that the effect was much like that of Christianity, perhaps precisely like it. He valued the experience so much that he was willing, in some of his most ambitious poems, to switch from his own mythology, which he believed, to Christian mythology, about which he was less earnest. Apparently "forgiveness of sins" came to Yeats unbidden sometimes, at moments of boredom or depression. When he was fifty he was sitting alone one day in a London coffee shop: "While on the shop and street I gazed I My body of a sudden blazed; I And twenty minutes more or less I It seemed, so great my happiness, I That I was blessed and could bless" ("Vacillation"). More often the feeling that he was blest came as a consequence of a deliberate effort to face and accept the dark vision of reality. "A Dialogue oi Self and Soul" is a personal version oi the "ancient quarrel." "Soul" is one of the guises of "philosophy," the assurance that true reality is friendly, free of injustice; "Self" is "poetry," the insistence that life and the universe are bitterly unfair. The poem ends with the triumph of "poetry." "Self" declares its independence from the censures of the philosophic vision, and insists that human life is good not despite, but because of its impurity, distress, ignominy, and "that defiling and disfigured shape I The mirror of malicious eyes I Casts upon his eyes until at last I He thinks that shape must be his shape." He would be "content," he says, to live again through the humiliations and defeats peculiar to each stage of our lives, and even his most painful memory, his disastrous love for Maude Gonne. "I am content to follow to its source I Every event in action or in thought; I Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!" He knows that "the Forgiveness of Sins" is the key. "When such as I cast out 1

W. B. Yeats, Essays (New York, 1924), 125.

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remorse I So great a sweetness flows into the breast I We must laugh and we must sing, I We are blest by everything, I Everything we look upon is blest." Nor did it escape Yeats that he had a theory of tragedy in this vision. In "Lapis Lazuli," written on the eve of World War II, he strikes out at the silly people who think that poets should not be joyful in dark times. They do not realize, he says, that the grimmest of tragedies are gloriously joyful. "There struts Hamlet, there is Lear, I That's Ophelia, that Cordelia," but if these plays are rightly interpreted, he insists, everyone, even the actors, are exhilarated, "gaiety transfiguring all that dread." 2 Once again, although somewhat more cryptically, he points to the dark vision of reality as the source of "gaiety." "All men have aimed at, found and lost; / Black out; Heaven blazing into the head: I Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. I Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, I And all the dropscenes drop at once I Upon a hundred thousand stages, I It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce." The "it" in the last line seems to refer to "tragedy wrought to its uttermost." Things do not get worse, things are always as black as they can be, and somehow a brave acceptance of this fact transfigures dread, a "terrible beauty" is born, there is tnathos won through contemplation of a pathos. "Neither scholars nor populace have sung or read anything generation after generation because of its pain," says Yeats elsewhere.3 "Imagination must dance, must be carried beyond feeling into the aboriginal ice. Is ice the correct word? I once boasted . . . that I would write a poem 'cold and passionate as the dawn.' " One of the most striking things about the "ancient quarrel" today is the difficulty people have in seeing that it is there at all. Yeats is unusual among literary critics; most continue to follow Aristotle's lead and assume that at bottom "poetry" and "philosophy" must be reconcilable. The resistance of theologians is even fiercer. As we have seen, religious pathe, the pathos of Christ, for instance, function by offering forgiveness, not to the intelligence (which insists that only good be attributed to divinity), or to our moral sense (which demands that we ourselves be held morally responsible for our failure to achieve happiness), but to a darker 2 "The gaiety of Lear is of course non-existent," says Harold Bloom, Yeats (New York, 1970), 439. It is one of Nietzsches's more extravagant fictions. The gaiety is ours, as we live through his pathos with him. It may also belong to the actor, as opposed to Lear himself. Bloom rightly scolds Yeats for failing to be moved as he should have been by the fine pathe in Wilfred Owen's war poems. (Owen "is all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar sticks," says Yeats.) In the preface to the Oxford Modem Verse (Oxford, 1937), xxxv, Yeats says, in connection with Owen, "Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry. In all great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies." One does wish that Yeats had not said that. 3 W. E. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York, 1961), 523.

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force familiar from our dreams and from our hunger for violent stories— a force that harbors pollution causing phantasies ("within the family circle") for which we desperately need that forgiveness. Rarely, either in criticism or in theology, does that lowest force rise to its own defense: thinking is almost always done by its enemy and chastiser, the ego, helped by the superego. C. G. Jung is as unusual among Christians as Yeats is among critics: he insists on the centrality to his religion of a reality that is bitterly unfair. In extreme old age Jung recalled his original discovery of this fact, when he was still a boy. He remembers that once, at a moment of religious exhilaration and self-satisfaction, he involuntarily conceived the obscene image of God serenely defecating on the shiny roof of the town's beautiful new cathedral. 4 He did not actually experience the vision consciously; he was able to stop it just short of that. But then for days and nights he went through terrible torments, choking the vision back, wondering why a blasphemous conception was forcing itself on him so insistently. It did not seem to be he who was the author; the obscene image was being thrust on him against his will. Were his parents the instigators? Surely not. His parents' parents? He thought of the first sin, that committed by Adam and Eve. He reconstructs his reasoning as a boy. Adam and Eve "had no choice but to be exactly the way God created them." Since God is omnipotent, he clearly wanted them to be as they were. And yet they sinned almost immediately. That is, they did something God did not want them to do. "How was that possible? They could not have done it if God had not placed within them the possibility of doing it." The more Jung thinks about it the more certain he is. God was responsible for the nature of the serpent, too, and for its presence in the garden. "God in his omniscience," he concludes, "had arranged everything so that the first parents would have to sin." That is, God wanted them to sin and wanted them also to suffer for it. But this thought instantly releases Jung from his torment. He permits the blasphemous image to come into his head. He had expected damnation for this capitulation but feels "grace" instead, and "unutterable bliss." What transformed the dread, of course, was the acceptance of the vision of mankind as God's victims. Jung's father, a dour Lutheran minister, had a library full of theological writings. Jung searches it earnestly for some account of God as the author of our suffering. He is amazed to find that theologians seem unaware of this aspect of God. Yet the Bible is full of evidence, he thinks. What other explanation could there be for God's pleasure at Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac? Or God's sacrifice of his own son—the most innocent possible victim, doomed by his father to undergo the most bitter 4

Jung, Memories, chap. 2.

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suffering? Christ "had despaired in Gethsemane and on the cross after having taught that God was a kind and loving father," Jung points out. Christ, therefore, must have experienced God as Jung himself had—as the real author of his suffering. Jung would listen to his father's sermons: the goodness of God was always praised, and it was inevitably concluded from this goodness that we must therefore return God's love out of deep gratitude. His father had missed the main point, Jung decides, just as the theologians had. "Could he have me, his son, put to the knife as a human sacrifice, like Isaac," he asks himself, "or deliver me to an unjust court which would have me crucified like Jesus?" He could not, Jung concludes. Therefore his father did not understand God's true will at all. He did not understand what Jung calls God's "vindictiveness, his dangerous wrathfulness, his incomprehensible conduct toward creatures his omnipotence had made." In the New Testament, just as in the Old, he thinks, grace and absolution are offered us, not by convincing us that we are free not to sin, but by convincing us that it was God's plan for us to sin and therefore not our own doing at all. Like Yeats, Jung correctly attributed to these darkest visions his occasional personal experience of high blessedness. Some time after the crisis precipitated by the obscene image, Jung experienced a moment of terrible injustice at school. He had written an essay so brilliant that the teacher could not believe he had not stolen it from a book. The teacher humiliated him cruelly before the class, and the other boys glared gleefully at the horrified Jung with previously hidden malice. No amount of protest has any effect: the teacher and the boys believe the worst of him. Jung is consumed with bitterness at the thought that he is "powerless, the sport of blind and stupid fate." Suddenly the pain is gone—as sometimes happened at such moments: "there was a sudden inner silence, as though a soundproof door had been closed on a noisy room." "I was struck," Jung says, "by the analogy with that other train of ideas which impressed itself on me so forcefully when I did not want to think the forbidden thought." That train of ideas, as we saw, led to the conclusion that divinity itself was wrathful, vindictive, and unjust. "There was deep in the background the feeling that something other than myself was involved. It was as though a breath of the great world of stars and endless space had touched me." We might compare Yeats's "aboriginal ice." "Denouements of this sort," says Jung, "were wreathed with the halo of a numen." To a much greater extent than in Yeats's case, Jung counted on the experience as a religious joy, not one that was merely analogous to religion.

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NLIKE YEATS, Jung failed to connect his dark vision of reality with the power of myth and literature in general. This is presumably a consequence of his piety: a person who puts supreme value on religion—not a religious-like experience, but the assurance of the literal reality of an actual god—will usually balk at the thought that what he cherishes is the satisfaction of a psychological need, a need that could just as well have been satisfied by another of the world's religions, or even by literature, had his sensibilities been trained correctly.1 It is not too surprising therefore to find Jung making no use of his response to the biblical mythoi when he constructs a general theory of myth and religion. In fact, Jung's theories of the archetypes, collective unconscious, "integration," and the animus ana anima are efforts in the direction of "philosophy," not of "poetry." That is, they are part of a campaign (against Freud) to reinstate the holy stories of religion and literature as allies, not enemies, of morality and rationality. Jung's break from his teacher, Freud, parallels that of Aristotle from his teacher, Plato, in several striking ways. The younger philosopher in each case eventually backed off from the older philosopher's belief that things like dreams, myth, and tragedy were expressions of counterrational forces in the dark recesses of our psyches. In both cases, what lay behind this revision was a refusal to go along with the older philosopher's analysis of the lowest part of the psyche. And the modern and the ancient revisions were even expressed as disagreements concerning one and the same play, Sophocles' Oedipus the King. The " I " or ego, according to Freud, "is observed at every step it takes by the strict superego, which lays down definite standards for its conduct without taking any account of its difficulties from the id and the external world, and which, if those standards are not obeyed, punishes it with tense feelings of inferiority and guilt."2 It is no wonder, therefore, that the 1 Jung was too interested in psychological explanations (instead of "faith") and too respectful of other religions (Buddhism, for instance) to be welcomed by Christian theologians in his own lifetime; but this fact grieved him. In 1952 (he died in 1961) he wrote to a young minister, "I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force." 2 "Dissection of the Psychical Personality," 78.

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" I " wants relief—"driven by the id, confined by the superego, repulsed by reality." When Freud explains the power of myth and tragedy he generally emphasizes the peculiar contents of the well-loved stories, the fact that the best of them dwell so insistently on "pathe within the family circle." He contemptuously rejects the idea that what moves us is the revelation that we must submit to divinity and accept our own impotence in the face of destiny. Nevertheless, he leaves room for an interesting version of this idea. Of Oedipus the King he says that the hero's destiny "moves us only because it might have been our own—because the oracle laid the same curse on us before birth as upon him." 3 Ergreift uns, like "moves us," is ambiguous; but the phrase "Laid the same curse on us" (denselben Fluch iiber uns verhangt hat) makes it clear that Freud did not imagine us experiencing release or cleansing or anything pleasant. Had he done so, however, he would have been in harmony with other psychoanalytic ideas. If we discover that our predicament is universal and inescapable, we are innocent despite our guilty phantasies. It is not we ourselves who are the authors of the bad dreams. The superego can stop punishing us for a moment. Jung, like Aristotle, could not believe that the lowest part of the psyche was dangerous, irrational, and the ego's eternal enemy. The conscious and the unconscious forces cooperate, he thought, and both are vital for health and wholeness. The lowest part contains forms and dispositions inherited from our ancestors. He devised a therapy that concentrated not on the patient's infantile fantasies of "pathe within the family circle," but on his current, rational, and adult perplexities. Like Plato, Freud had identified the lowest common denominator in all human drives as essentially erotic. Jung, like Aristotle, believed that even at the level where man was part of nature, the blind drive was toward life and health, not sexual fulfillment. Also like Aristotle, he found that this shift enabled him to accept things like dreams, myth, and tragedy as expressions of natural, and therefore entirely benign, energies. Aristotle concluded that divination based on dreams cannot lightly be dismissed out of hand, or given our complete confidence. Dreams are divine, daimonia, but only in the sense that nature is divine, he gar physis daimonia: they are not actually sent by gods, all' ou theia (On Prophesying by Dreams 463 b 13—15). Even animals dream, after all (History of Animals 4. 536 b 27-30). 4 Neither nature nor the movements at the bot3

The Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1900, trans. James Strachey (New York, 1961), chap. 5, sec. D ("Typical Dreams"), subsec. B ("Dreams of the Death of Persons of Whom the Dreamer is Fond"), 260—65. 4 Cf. Lucretius 4.986—1010, where he gives a vivid, slightly comic picture of horses, dogs, and birds making easily decipherable movements in their sleep—proof (against some Stoic) that dreaming is a perfectly ordinary, easily explained phenomenon.

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torn of our souls are tricky, sinister, or inimical to morality. Jung draws the same conclusion. "To me dreams are part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can, just as a plant grows or an animal seeks its food as best it can." 5 Aristotle's break from Plato may well have been painful. We have little evidence. There is, however, that famous remark with which Aristotle opens his criticism of Plato's reduction of all knowledge to knowledge of the Good. The need to examine this notion is disagreeable (literally "uphill"), he says, because the author is a philos. "Yet it may seem better, even necessary, to destroy our relations [ta oikeia] if that is how truth will be preserved—especially since we are 'lovers of wisdom.' Both things are philoi, but piety directs that we give the greater honor to truth." 6 Jung's break from Freud was painful indeed. There is a great deal of evidence; all of the parties have left accounts, either during the struggle or long afterward. Those reminiscences by Jung in his eighties, although onesided and long removed, are especially poignant and revealing. The actual break came over a period of about three years, from 1911 to 1913, and only became final with the publication of Jung's heretical Symbols of Transformation, followed by his Fordham lectures. But Jung had declared his independence within his own mind as early as 1909, when he was first formulating Symbols of Transformation. In that year Freud and Jung analyzed each other's dreams during their crossing from Bremen to New York. Neither was successful with a crucial dream told to him by the other. Jung, when he was stuck, asked Freud for more information of a personal sort; Freud gave him a suspicious look and refused, saying that he did not want to risk losing his authority. By that statement, says Jung, Freud lost his authority. Jung was emboldened by this turn of events to cling to his new way of interpreting his own dreams, especially the one Freud had just failed to analyze satisfactorily. The open break was still in the future, however, so Jung kept his new theories to himself. As Jung remembered it, his new conception of our unconscious drives as benign and wise appeared to him first in a series of dreams. In the most important of them he found himself in a multistoried house—his own home, he realized. He was in the upper story, an elegantly furnished sa5

Jung, Memories, chap. 5. Ntcomachean Ethics 1.6.1096 a 11—17. According to Proclus, Aristotle declared "in his dialogues" (i. e., in On Philosophy) his inability to sympathize (sympathem) with Plato's Theory of Forms "even if someone were to think that he opposed it merely because of his love of disputation [antilegein]" On Philosophy, frag. 10 (Ross). Some philosopher had clearly put Aristotle on the defensive. During, Biographical Traditoin, 318-22, collects the ancient anecdotes concerning Aristotle's opposition to Plato during the latter's lifetime. On the quotation (by Philoponus) from Proclus, see 329-31. 6

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Ion. He became curious about the lower floors and descended level by level. One level down there was a darker set of rooms furnished with objects from the sixteenth century back to medieval times. In the cellar he found a beautiful vault from Roman times. Below that was a cave cut into the bedrock, covered with dust, and containing, among other things, some human bones. Freud asked about those bones. Whose were they? Jung seems to have had a compulsion to talk about death and corpses in Freud's presence, which Freud usually interpreted (correctly, no doubt) as an unconscious wish on Jung's part that his "father," Freud, were dead. This time Jung himself was unnerved. He had conceived a completely benign interpretation of his own dream, but was unwilling to provoke Freud's hostility by expanding on it; so he told Freud what he thought he wanted to hear: " 'My wife and my sister-in-law'—after all, I had to name someone whose death was worth the wishing!" According to Jung's own heretical interpretation of the dream, this was a true image of the levels of consciousness in the human psyche. There was nothing evil or irrational in the lowest regions: indeed, it was there, Jung thought, that each of us makes contact with impersonal reality, the archetypes waiting in the "collective unconscious," ready to be quickened into ordering powers by our individual experiences. It is at this point that Jung confesses he never had believed Freud on dreams and the part of us that generates dreams. We may be deceived by dreams, but there is nothing in our psyches working deliberately to deceive us. Nature is not out to trip us up. We may be deceived by plants and animals, he says, but not because they willfully try to trick us. In Jung, as in Aristotle, nature, dreams, and the "lowest" part of the psyche are no longer considered the enemies of morality and rationality; they are expressions of nature at its most unerringly rational. Plato and Freud both emphasized the mythos of Oedipus as an especially revealing expression of our "lowest" desires. Aristotle, by contrast, diminished its significance by suggesting that its power really came from the way it indirectly supported rational morality. Similarly, Jung thought that the myth was capable of aiding us in our attainment of adult moral understanding. There is nothing sinister in the so-called "Oedipus complex," he argues. "All it means, in effect, is that the childish demands for love are directed to mother and father, and to the extent that these demands have already attained a certain degree of intensity, so that the chosen object is jealously defended, we can speak of an Oedipus complex.' " 7 In Symbols of Transformation he says that Oedipus, in addition to being the dreamer or the member of the audience, is also the archetyp7 C. G. Jung, "The Oedipus Complex," in Collected Works, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, 1961),4:151-56.

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ical Hero (or "archetypal" as Jungians always say), the timeless symbol of our need to "integrate" all the elements of the psyche. The Sphinx and Jocasta are both images of the archetypical Mother: the Sphinx tricks Oedipus and hands him over to Jocasta, who devours him. "The so-called Oedipus complex with its famous incest tendency changes at this level into a 'Jonah-and-the-Whale' complex," he argues.8 The libido (which Jung no longer thinks of as a sexual drive, as Freud always did) regresses to a presexual stage, where eating, not sex, is the infant's primary concern. "Even there it does not make a halt, but in a manner of speaking continues right back to the intra-uterine, pre-natal condition and, leaving the sphere of personal psychology altogether, irrupts into the collective psyche where Jonah saw the 'mysteria'. . . in the whale's belly." The story is actually the same as the Descent into the Underworld (by Theseus, Heracles, Odysseus, Aeneas, and Dante), a return to our origins so that we may be reborn, separate and "integrated." There are really only two interpretations of the Oedipus: that offered by both Plato and Freud—and all the rest. Plato and Freud differed in many of the inferences they drew, but both stuck to the myth's manifest content as the key to its meaning. The story is that of a man who had killed his father and married his mother. All other interpretations are attempts to say that the story is really about something else, not incest and parricide at all. Thus Levi-Strauss, for instance, shifts our attention to Oedipus's "limp" and his father's name, which means "left-handed": both, he argues, point to autochthonous birth. "The myth has to do with the inability, for a culture which holds the belief that mankind is autochthonous . . . to find a satisfactory transition between this theory and the knowledge that human beings are actually born from the union of men and women." 9 As in all myths, he believes, this one hides its real meaning in its structure, not its manifest content. As in Jung's interpretation, the myth is not the expression of unnatural desires, but a means to the solution of problems, a "mediation" between things apparently irreconcilable. "Although experience contradicts theory, social value validates cosmology by its similarity in structure. Hence cosmology is true." Today classicists are divided between those who accept Aristotle's reduction of the myth to a reaffirmation of rational morality (Webster, Bowra, Meautis, Letters, Lloyd-Jones. . .) and those whose starting point is a rejection of Aristotle's moralization of the myth. But these latter, also (Pohlenz, Whitman, Knox, Dodds, Arrowsmith, Segal . . .), almost al8 C. G. Jung, "The Sacrifice," in Symbols of Transformation2, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, 1956), 420-21. 9 "The Structural Study of Myth," in "Myth, A Symposium," Journal of American Folklore 78 (1955): 428—44, reproduced as chap. 11 of Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963).

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ways insist, just as strenuously, that more important things are going on in the play than parricide and incest.10 There is heroic courage, for instance, or the search for one's identity, or the impossibility of discovering objective truth. The main conclusion arrived at by Plato and Freud, that this myth and this tragedy reveal with unusual clarity the nature of the psychic force that throws up all myth (and dream, and religion, and art, and madness), is still vigorously opposed by most readers and probably always will be. It is not all that surprising, therefore, that Jung's break from Freud resembled Aristotle's from Plato. There is no hope that the controversy between Plato and Aristotle over the Oedipus will be resolved by repeated examinations, either of the myth or of the tragedy, or by careful and objective examinations of the terms used by the two philosophers in their analyses. The two interpretations will make sense according to each reader's presuppositions concerning the "lower" parts of the human psyche. To the Platonist or Freudian the account given by Aristotle or Jung will inevitably seem arbitrary, evasive, and naive; to the Aristotelian or Jungian the account given by Plato or Freud will seem obnoxious, "reductionist," and anti-art. Behind the mutual contempt lie differences far more serious than could be accounted for by differences in literary perceptiveness or the ability to reason from evidence. As Plato argued, the "ancient quarrel" is the manifestation of an eternal quarrel within the psyche itself. I would argue that the most permanently valuable aspect of Plato's poetics is his discovery that there has always been and must always be an irreconcilable difference between two drives within the human psyche: the rage to believe in justice, fed by philosophy, morality, theology, criti10

Even some who insist that Oedipus was destroyed by the gods manage to metamorphose his parricide and incest into god-forced crimes in general, e.g. Gilberte Ronnet, Sophocle poete tragique (Paris, 1969), 195—98, and G. H. Gellie, Sophocles: A Reading (Melbourne, 1972), 102-5; cf. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), 203—4. They want to find thrilling greatness in Oedipus's response to his crises, so they turn their attention and that of their readers away from the father-murder and mother-sex. See Charles Segal's sensible remarks, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 460, n. 100. See also the quotations from Reinhardt in criticism of Pohlenz, chap. 7, n. 16 above. More recently another way to find the "true" subject of Oedipus the Ktng has come into favor. Consider Goldhill, Tragedy, 221: "In the interplays of speaking out and reticence, of arbitrary interpretion and ironic hidden truths, on insight and blindness, the O. T. offers a paradoxical paradigm of man and his knowledge that challenges . . . the security of the reading process itself with its aim of finding, and delimiting, the precise, fixed and absolute sense of a text, a word. . . . It is as readers and writers that we fulfill the potential of Oedipus' paradigm of transgression." Alert, anxious attention to the shifting meaning of words (by Knox, Lebeck, Segal, Vernant, and others), which had so often yielded valuable insights but had never in itself led to explanations for the power of whole plays, is now discovered, thanks to Deconstruction, to be itself the thing that moves us most, the very essence of tragedy.

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cism, and other rational endeavors; and a rage to believe in injustice, fed by poetry, myth, religion, and other expressions of our dreamer selves. Literary criticism should begin with the assumption that this "ancient quarrel" is real and not susceptible to easy reconciliations. Critics who do not understand that we are not responding to the same reality when we are watching a tragedy and later when we attempt to account for our pleasure ought to be treated as deeply suspect. But we might amend Plato's analysis of the quarrel by observing that great poets regularly try to satisfy both warring appetites at the same time. And we might also bring to bear Freud's discoveries concerning the irrational aspects of the internal censor, the leonine rage for justice, our private tormentor. We might conclude from his new discovery that it would be too much to ask that we do without "poetry" altogether. More on this later.

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RISTOTLE was surely right when he argued that tragedy was not life poisoning, as Plato had said, but life enhancing; however, by trying to show in his defense of tragedy how tragedy was in essential conformity with Socratic morality, he was surely wrong. Aristotle did not comprehend, as Plato clearly did, that the arousal of pity by the poets is not just a mechanical means to bring about a state where pity would bother us no more: it is a profound world view in itself. From Homer to the present, poets have rarely tried to teach us to see perfect justice in every event. Quite the reverse: it has been customary in the main literary tradition to assume that life has many victims and to try to move the reader with compassion for the sufferers. This is, first and foremost, a task for popular religion. "Piety" and "pity" are the same word, also "pieta," the technical term for a depiction of the dead Christ mourned by his mother. Piety is the ability to pity. But as far back as we have any record in the West, this has also been a central task for the poets. The great storytellers have regularly assumed that the good man is one who does not automatically blame the sufferer himself, who can be moved by life's terrible injustices. Virgil gave the idea its most famous formulation. "Pious" Aeneas gratefully recognizes a people kindred to himself when he sees the pity and compassion with which its artists had depicted the Trojan War on the walls of one of its buildings. Sunt lacrimae rerum, he concludes: these people are able to weep for the suffering of strangers—I am among good people. But the idea is just as prominent in the Odyssey. Odysseus judges the goodness of each nation he visits according to the people's sensitivity to the misfortunes of strangers. The Cyclopes and Laestrygonians get the lowest marks; the civilized Phaeacians get the highest.

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HE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY bequeathed to tragedy two patterns. The action of the Iliad takes place in a world that guarantees little justice for individual human beings. This allows us to enjoy what might otherwise have been painful instances of true justice. The Odyssey gives us a world of general and long-range justice. And this allows us to enjoy what might otherwise have been painful instances of injustice. Let us take the Odyssey first. The poet has Zeus himself, at the very beginning of the poem, object to the way mortals so often blame the gods for the catastrophes they must endure. Zeus admits that the gods do indeed allot men some of their unhappiness, but he says that, by their own rashness, men suffer more than was measured out for them. Zeus's example is Aegisthus, who had just been killed by Orestes, son of Agamemnon. While Agamemnon was away at Troy, Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's queen. When Agamemnon returned after the sacking of Troy, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra murdered him treacherously. Aegisthus had ignored the gods' warnings against both actions. Now Agamemnon's son has returned and avenged his father, just as the gods had predicted. Athena, who is present with the other gods, approves wholeheartedly of Zeus's moral: may everyone who does what Aegisthus did get what Aegisthus got, she says. But then she takes the opportunity to ask Zeus about her protege, the wretched Odysseus. For ten years he has been suffering, yet he is a good man, she says: will he never get his just deserts? Of course, says Zeus. In fact, the time was now at hand for the end of his god-caused suffering. Athena is free to arrange the hero's homecoming. 1 She can then engineer a thumping triumph over Odysseus's enemies, a group of boorish and selfish men who have been wooing Odysseus's wife while he was away and presumed dead. At the climax of the Odyssey the worthy Odysseus and his virtuous son—with Athena at their side—eliminate those hateful rivals in a satisfying act of mass murder. 1

Kullman, "Gods and Men," n. 11, lists places where this passage has been discussed in modern times. Jaeger appears to have been the first to protest that something quite new was being argued for here; see "Solons Eunomie," BeW. Sttzb. (1926): 69—85, esp. 73ff. Reinhardt, Jacoby, and others followed. So also Dodds: "I cannot agree with Wilamowitz (Glaube II 118) that 'der Dichter des a hat nichts neues gesagt' "; see The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 1951), 52, n. 2 1 . See nn. 3, 4, and 5 below.

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Before this triumph of justice, however, terrible instances of injustice take place—to Penelope, Telemachus, the swineherd, Odysseus's men, and, above all, Odysseus himself. And the present is always being enriched by the sufferings of the past. In Book VIII, for instance, Odysseus praises the Phaeacian bard for the wonderful way he had sung of the suffering of the Greeks at Troy. Whenever the bard sings of events that involved Odysseus himself, however, the hero is moved unpleasantly. He weeps in distress. The rest of the listeners are moved only with delight, so the king, when he notices Odysseus crying secretly, asks him about his eccentric response. When he eventually explains, they of course understand completely. Stories of terrible suffering are favorites with everyone—unless they strike too close to home. Today stories of terrible suffering are still central to serious literature and popular religion, but we seldom think of our response to the suffering itself as "pleasure," hedone, as the ancients regularly did. Also—and this is a much larger difference separating ancient from modern traditions— we have another pattern altogether in the secular stories most loved by the multitude. There the pleasure we seek is akin to philanthropon, satisfaction in man's lot, the joy of seeing the good triumph over their enemies. This vision, prominent, of course, in the climactic events of the Odyssey and central to comedy and romance even in antiquity, never pushed out the popular Greek taste for more urgent "pleasure" in dark stories of waste and defeat. In the "Homeric" hymm to Apollo the poet tells how the newborn god went almost immediately to Olympus and made the other gods and goddesses think only of song and lyre playing. "And all the Muses sang with him, answering with beautiful voices." And what was the subject of this most wonderful of all music? "Men's unhappiness, the miseries they have at the hands of the deathless gods, I living as they do without understanding, helpless, unable I to find a cure for death or a remedy for old age" (189-93). 2 The Odyssey moves close to "philosophy" by its insistence that, on the whole, gods realize justice among men.3 Yet this turns out to be but one 2 Easterhng, "Poetry and Religion," 46, quotes this passage at length—except that she puts a dash in the place of "which they have at the hands of the deathless gods," hos' echontes hyp' athanatoisi theotsi, 191. Since she stops the sentence at the same point twice again, pp. 46 and 47, it is obviously an omission she has thought about carefully. She quotes the hymn to show that the gods' activities were "conceived in human terms": perhaps she thought that in this one detail the songs enjoyed by mortals would have differed from those enjoyed by the gods. The real surprise, however, is that the gods' enjoyment is imagined as being like that of human beings even in this respect. 3 Lloyd-Jones, Justice, defends the older assumption that there is no great difference between the two poems in their notions of justice: "The Odyssean modification of the doctrine exemplified by the Iliad is of strictly limited significance," 32. See also Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena (Princeton, 1983), 215-20.

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part of a split vision: the rational theodicy is really used to let us indulge ourselves in our old taste for stories of "the unhappiness of men . . . at the hands of the deathless gods." The Iliad takes the opposite tack. 4 Not only in the larger view of gods' ways to man, but also in numerous examples in the course of the story, we are reassured that unfairness and bitter injustice are the rule of human life. This then permits the hearers to contemplate what would otherwise have been intolerably painful guilt in the actions of their much admired protagonist, Achilles. In Iliad IV we are shown the gods and goddesses assembled on Olympus arguing tensely about the rights and wrongs of the ways in which they have been interfering in men's lives. In the previous book we saw Paris and Menelaus, the two husbands of Helen, battling it out in single combat. Paris escaped a violent defeat at the hands of Menelaus only by the magic of the god who favored him, Aphrodite. Everyone understands the unfairness of this intervention. Helen is appalled and cruelly taunts Paris about his real inferiority to Menelaus. Now Zeus, in solemn address to the assembled gods, points out that the Trojan War need not continue, since Menelaus has surely won the right to take Helen back to Greece with him. Peace can return to the land of Troy at long last. Hera and Athena are enraged by the suggestion. They demand that the war continue until Troy is utterly destroyed. Zeus is dismayed. He says to Hera: you would be satisfied only if you could eat the Trojans raw. Yet he gives in, bitterly. He loves Troy, Zeus says, and he loves King Priam; the Trojans and their king had always lived in piety and had never neglected the gods. He will permit Hera and Athena to rekindle the war that will destroy these good people; but only if they agree to his condition. Someday Zeus will want to destroy a city that has been faithful to the two goddesses. When that happens the goddesses must stand aside and let Zeus wipe their beloved city from the face of the earth. Hera and Athena agree instantly. They initiate an act of treachery that will rekindle the terrible war and eventually destroy the pious Trojans. As we have seen, Plato cites this very scene as an example of the kind 4

Versions of Jaeger's notion (see n. 1) appear to be gaining acceptance. "The poet of the Iliad and the poet of the Odyssey both, with the utmost consistency, base their works on a single aspect of the divine and relate it to their respective views of man"; Kullman, "Gods and Men," 19. E. A. Havelock, The Greek Concept of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), chaps. 7—10, working from a very different starting point, also finds sharp differences in the notions of justice in the two epics. Pietro Pucci, Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings tn the Odyssey and the Iliad (Ithaca, 1987), 41, describes the situation in terms of traditions, rather than master poets: "It is most probable that both texts—as they now stand—were composed with knowledge of the tradition that precedes each of them and were therefore produced while they were, so to speak, simultaneously looking at each other." Cf. Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore, 1979), 113: "Our Odyssey treats Iiiadic traditions as if it were referring to other poetic traditions."

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of story that causes men to draw dangerously incorrect conclusions about divinity (Republic 2.379 e). His objection seems sensible enough. A belief in angry and unjust gods not only weakens men's veneration and respect for the gods, it also undermines their will to be good. If the gods are not looked to as guarantors that good men are rewarded eventually for their goodness and that bad men are punished, however long that punishment may be delayed, then it will be difficult or impossible to persuade men that their only hope for happiness lies in making themselves good. Plato suggests that the part of us that is gratified by the myths of literature and popular religion is the part that is also at work in nightmares, compulsive behavior, and insanity. The fact that Homer's stories are beautiful and compelling need not mean that they are wise. They may be "profound" only in a topographical sense: they stir something deep down in us, some­ thing dark and counterrational. Clearly, in its formal theodicy, the Iliad was much more dangerous than the Odyssey. There are a number of reasons for doubting that the Iliad and the Od­ yssey could be the work of the same poet; 5 but perhaps none is so im­ pressive as this—the fact that the theodicies of the two poems are so re­ markably different. In the Odyssey divinity is seen as mainly just. In that poem we can expect, and we get, a story of the triumph of good over evil. We can count on significant help from the gods for those who need and deserve it, even if that help sometimes comes rather late. In the Iliad, we find a discouraging admixture of selfishness, partisanship, and shortsight­ edness in the actions of the gods, and not very much agreement in their goals. Few mortals are therefore seen to suffer only because they deserve their fates. In the Iliad, suffering is regularly perceived from the point of 5

The ancients often questioned the traditional assumption that "Homer" composed not only the Iliad and Odyssey but also other epics attributed to him and then still extant. That the Iliad and Odyssey (poems of equal quality and both far superior to the other epics) had separate authors apparently did not occur to anyone until Alexandrine times. Proclus (fifth century A.D.), in his life of Homer, mentions two Alexandrine scholars, Xenon and Hellanicus, who insisted that the epics had different authors. See. T. W. Allen, Homer: The Origins and the Transmission (Oxford, 1924), 28. Anstarchus (second century B.C.) dismissed the Chorizontes (the "separators") as absurd. See Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholar­ ship (Oxford, 1968), 230, n. 7. The fragments have been published in a dissertation by J. W. Kohl, "De chorisontibus" (diss., Giessen, 1917). See Albin Lesky, History of Greek Literature, trans. James Willis and Cornells de Heer (London, 1966), 48, n. 1, for further references. More recently Richard Janko, in Homer, Hestod and the Hymns (Cambridge, 1982), has scrutinized the two epics on matters such as contracted genitive singulars in -ou and o-stem genitive singulars not in οίο. He finds that the diction of the Odyssey has "ad­ vanced" on every criterion. The same is true, however, of the diction of the Works when compared to the Theogony, so he concludes that "nothing contradicts the hypothesis that the Iliad and Odyssey are also the work of one man whose diction advanced with his age" (p. 82). This is also the opinion of G. S. Kirk, The Iliad, A Commentary (Cambridge, 1985), 1:5.

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view of the victims; in the Odyssey we side with the perpetrators at the most thrilling moment in the story. The difference between the two poems can probably be traced to the time when Greek religion first became anthropomorphic. If the gods are essentially like us and differ only in being free of our weaknesses and vulnerability, then we ought to be able to imagine what it is to be a god by envisaging how we ourselves would act if we had their freedom and strength. But this can be done in either of two ways. We might picture ourselves as eating the most wonderful food, drinking the most delicious drink, coupling with the most desirable partners, all in the finest palaces, accompanied by the most divine music, and so on. Such gods could then be imagined as taking zestful and selfish pleasure helping those they loved and working soul-satisfying revenge on their enemies. But we might also imagine the life of the gods by seeing ourselves as more intelligent, stronger morally, and more courageous and dependable than any human being. Such gods would be dedicated to righting injustices of all sorts. On the whole, the Iliad accepts the first of these visions; the Odyssey, the second. We should not exaggerate this difference. In the Odyssey, Zeus's defense of Olympian justice is not very satisfactory. It is monstrous that Odysseus's suffering should be prolonged for ten years. Zeus explains that Poseidon was angry at the hero and he, Zeus, had no right to interfere. Furthermore, the circumstances that led to Poseidon's ill will were far from simple, and not really very discreditable to Odysseus. Certainly this splendid hero does not deserve ten years of horror and loss. And his men die in ways that evoke our pity, not moral gratification.6 The theodicy of the Iliad is also complex. Zeus is constantly at pains to see that fairness of sorts be achieved. The most worthy heroes are at least honored by his tears when the day of their destined death arrives. Also, fame and esteem are assigned with meticulous accuracy. This is not a world where excellence is never rewarded or moral failure never a major cause of welldeserved suffering. It is possible to detect at least partially justified selfblame in the bitterest suffering of both Hector and Achilles. If Plato is right that we have two incompatible yearnings, a rage to believe that life is just and another to believe that it is deeply unjust, both needs are catered to simultaneously even in the general theodicies of the two poems. Nevertheless the difference between the two epics is real. The Odyssey, on the one hand, has a plot familiar to us from our own popular fiction. There exist evil people who are able to do terrible things to the good; in 6 On the injustice done, not only to some of Odysseus's men, but also to some of the suitors, see Sheila Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1989), 67 and n. 13.

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the end, however, we shall see these evildoers suffer violently at the hands of the victims or their friends. If we believe that divinity eventually rewards all good men and eventually punishes all evil men, this is about the only plot we can have. The climactic violence will be experienced by us with full sympathy for the perpetrators of the mayhem and little or none for the new victims. The plot of the Iliad, on the other hand, is known to us from religious stories and from a tradition in our serious literature that can be traced back to the Greeks themselves. All violence, both large and small, the incidental scenes and the great set pieces at the various climaxes of the Iliad, are experienced by us with deep sympathy for the victims and little for the perpetrators. We have almost no trouble explaining our pleasure in the Odyssean plot. All our lives we have known injustices large and small, and we know how painful it is to be wrongly accused, or to see our just reward go to someone else. It is obvious, therefore, why we should thrill to the promise, in fiction or in religion, that ultimately justice triumphs every time. When our reason is in control, as Plato says, we know we are safe only if the rulers of the universe are sane and competent. We all suffer—not only from enemies, but also from chance, time, and the large, impersonal forces at work in nature and society. We need the reassurance that all will be made right someday. Yet when reason sleeps—in dreams, or in our attendance at stories of the Iliadic sort—a need is catered to that may baffle reason. There is that within us, Plato says, that does not welcome the assurance that everyone will eventually get exactly what he deserves. As Hamlet says, "Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?" If justice is perfect, we must assume that we would now be perfectly happy if only we were not so lazy, so morally weak, or so unintelligent. But that can be a very disagreeable thought. If life is unfair, however, we need not add this painful self-blame to our awareness of failure. People who turn to religion do so far more often for release from guilt and shame than for reminders that they alone are to blame for their unhappiness, that they alone therefore hold the key to their success in the future. The plot of the Iliad may be harder than that of the Odyssey to reconcile with a rational theology like Plato's, but it is a vision closer to that of the world's religions. The fact that the universe is full of angry and partisan divinities is central to the story of the Iliad. The actions and intentions of human agents are often thwarted in such a world and it is therefore impossible to infer instantly and automatically from a warrior's fate what kind of person he had been or what kind of life he had led. The poet is able nevertheless to reveal both character and true worth in his portraits, and to do so with subtlety and clarity. Indeed, it is precisely in the ways in which the several mortals react to a universe of powerful and unpredictable gods that each

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is known and judged. Paris is condemned for his shallow fatalism; Helen is pitied for her tendency to blame herself instead of the gods; Hector is admired for his ability to fight joyfully despite his overwhelming clarity concerning his eventual defeat. But the most interesting response is that of Achilles. Achilles alone succeeds in influencing divinity in large and life-changing ways. His mother is a goddess and she can influence Zeus. Achilles also has Athena for an ally; she advises him and he accepts her advice. All three gods are strongly partisan to Achilles and respond to his needs. And yet their actions on his behalf, far from rescuing him from harm, lead straight to his most painful defeat. It is a very complex story. Achilles starts the grim sequence of events; he also makes some fateful decisions later on that are decisive for the final development. In other words, to a significant degree he is indeed the author of his own unhappiness. But the obtuseness and inhumanity of the gods are also part of the equation. The gods are cruelly selective in what they tell Achilles about his future. They do not really understand. The story is prevented by this from being merely painful. Had Achilles inhabited a world ruled by an all-good, all-powerful god, a world where all sufferers can be presumed to deserve all of their suffering, Achilles' responsibility for his own unhappiness would have cost him much of our sympathy. As it is, we can forgive Achilles easily and sympathize with him in his terrible grief. Not that Achilles can forgive himself. The violence of his self-condemnation and a profound readiness to die fill the last third of the epic. He makes decisions he cannot live with later. First there is the way he chooses to right the wrong done him by Agamemnon. His comrades are to see with their own eyes that Achilles is the indispensable warrior, the hero who least of all deserved Agamemnon's humiliating rejection. But this objective can be realized only if Achilles' comrades are wounded and killed in large numbers. Achilles taunts Agamemnon with this thought (1.242-43). Zeus agrees to let it happen. Then when that vindication has been realized, Achilles makes another remarkable decision. Agamemnon had capitulated and had offered the restitution that should have permitted Achilles to reenter the war with full honor. 7 But by this time Achilles 7 Iliad IX, the story of the Embassy, has anomalies that have led some scholars to believe it was a later addition, e.g., D. L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley, 1963), 297-315 and G. P. Goold, "The Nature of Homeric Composition," ///. Cl. Studies 1 (1977): 1—34. But there are modern parallels (e.g., the manuscript of Forster's Passage to India in the library at the University of Texas) that show how an author's last addition to his text may be not an "after thought" in the usual sense, but the consequence of an uneasiness, an awareness that the intended effect had not yet been achieved or assured. We should therefore pay the closest attention to such a late addition—if it is by the original author himself, which is the most likely assumption in this case.

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had reassessed the hurt he had suffered from Agamemnon. It had caused him to lose completely his joy in living, his satisfaction in the only life he could imagine with pleasure. His anger, far from being appeased, had become generalized and paralyzing. So he rejects the restitution, to the astonishment and horror of the Greeks. The death of his friends must continue. Yet Achilles was vulnerable on this point. He did not really want his friends to die. Odysseus closes his entreaty in Book IX with a moving plea that Achilles take pity on his comrades. Odysseus is clever: he knows that this is the argument most likely to upset Achilles. Phoenix and Ajax then make the same point. In fact, it is really the only point made by Ajax: you cannot really want your comrades to die! Achilles alters his reply after each speech. To Odysseus he says he will sail home the following day. But he adds earnest advice that the Greek chieftains sit down and find some other way to save themselves. To Phoenix he says he will decide the following morning whether he will sail home. To Ajax he says he will not fight until Hector reaches Achilles' own ships. Obviously Odysseus is right: Achilles was very vulnerable when it came to the direct and necessary consequence of his plan,the fact that some friends have to die. In Book XI the poet makes the point again. Achilles sees Nestor bringing back yet another wounded hero. He is moved. He cares enough to send Patroclus over to find out who the wounded man is. It is to this moment of compassion, indeed, that the poet traces Achilles' final suffering (see lines 603-04). It is not until Book XVI that Patroclus returns from the errand Achilles sent him on. Patroclus is in tears and begs Achilles to let him enter the battle dressed in Achilles' armor. Achilles acquiesces immediately. Nevertheless he evidently suffers new, painful doubts. His warning to Patroclus is a bit strange. Patroclus is to return to camp the moment he has succeeded in relieving the pressure on their friends—because it would take away from Achilles' honor if Patroclus conquered Troy without any help from Achilles. Then, in a prayer to a trio of the great gods Achilles expresses the wish that the other Greeks were all dead, as well as the Trojans, leaving only the two of them to storm Troy. A bizarre idea. What is really on Achilles' mind, of course, is the all too realistic fear that Patroclus will be killed by Hector. That in turn is the only conceivable event now that would force Achilles back into the war. Achilles could not plan such a thing in cold blood, of course. He takes an obvious precaution: he prays to Zeus that Patroclus not be killed. This is far and away the most elaborate and solemn prayer made by any hero in the Iliad (16.220-48). Achilles opens a chest given him by his goddess mother and removes a very special goblet—one from which no one drank but Achilles, and one with which Achilles prayed to no god but

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Zeus. He purines the goblet with sulphur and his own hands with running water. Then he stands in the open courtyard and looks upward. He addresses Zeus with several archaic phrases and with ancient epithets and associations. Zeu ana, he begins. Ana is an archaic vocative meaning Lord or King, but it sounds like "up!" Achilles then identifies Zeus as god of Dodona. Dodona was the most ancient and sacred home of the chief god of the Pelasgians, the pre-Greek inhabitants of the Greek peninsula. It is a very remote place in the mountains of what is now the Albanian frontier. "Dodonian, Pelasgian, you who dwell far away," says Achilles, "the god who protects Dodona of the terrible winters—and around you the Selloi I live, priests who never wash their feet and sleep on the ground." The ancients themselves puzzled over the title "Selloi," and knew the epithets about their feet and their sleeping on the ground only from this passage. (The priests presumably had to maintain constant contact with Earth, but many rather puzzling parallels in other religions have been noted.) One uses obscure old bits of information like these when one wants to make very sure that the right god is being reached. This is a solemn moment indeed. The prayer continues with one of the usual formulas. Zeus has helped him before, so Achilles may reasonably expect him to help again. You restored my honor, he says, when you "struck" my fellow Achaeans. Although I shall remain here by the ships, I am now sending out my companion. Give him glory; make his heart brave. I want Hector himself to see that alone and unaided, without me fighting by his side, Patroclus is still a great warrior. The prayer is full of contradictions. Achilles is grateful that Zeus has made the Greeks suffer, but he wants him to save them now. Yet he still will not reenter the battle himself. He will show Hector that Patroclus does not need him by his side, but he begs Zeus to make sure that it is Patroclus who is victorious, not Hector. The very length and solemnity of the prayer betrays Achilles' certainty that Patroclus unaided cannot survive the encounter. When he has beaten back the Trojans, Achilles prays, let my friend return, alive, unwounded, with all his men. Achilles has done what he can, what any mortal could do. Nevertheless, the poet shows us Zeus nodding assent only to the first part of the prayer, that Patroclus fight with spectacular bravery and give the Greeks a brief respite from the slaughter. Zeus denies the second part, that Patroclus return alive. Why is Zeus so selective in honoring Achilles' most urgent request? Not out of malice or a desire to punish Achilles, obviously. Nor does Zeus want Patroclus to die. It is just that Zeus's power to help the mortals he loves is shockingly limited. Zeus had already announced what he knows to be the fated sequence of events. In Book XV he told Hera that Achilles will send Patroclus out; that Patroclus will kill many Trojans, including Zeus's own much-loved son, Sarpedon; that Hector

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will then kill the brave Patroclus; and that this will so grieve Achilles that he will reenter the battle and kill great Hector, also beloved of Zeus (64— 68). There are two kinds of fatalism here. First, there is the belief that each person's day of death is unalterably fixed. This is a soldier's superstition, common even in modern wars. "There is a bullet somewhere with my name on it; if it comes today, it comes today." Hector comforts himself and his wife in Book VI by declaring that no one can kill him if it is not the day he is destined to die; but when a man's day does come, he says, he cannot escape it whether he is brave or a coward (487—89). It is easy to see why this should function as a comforting superstition. If life is very dangerous, comrades dying all around, one's own "life expectancy" horribly short, it is heartening to think that everyone's day of death was destined long ago—destined by a chance so mechanical that the dreaded event can be neither postponed nor hastened by anything one does or fails to do on any given day. Even in civilian life we often draw strength from a version of this idea: when someone who has lived much more prudently and successfully than ourselves dies nevertheless, painfully or prematurely, we congratulate ourselves on the unimportance of our own weaknesses and failures. And so Zeus does not lose, but actually gains dignity when he is seen to be willing to honor this kind of fatalism. The second kind of fatalism concerns the relative excellence of the various heroes on the battlefield. Everyone knows with some accuracy who would kill whom if they were to meet in single combat (cf. 7.111,178— 80). Once in a while someone hopes for luck or for the intervention of a god—and sometimes the unexpected does happen, as when Aphrodite saves Paris from Menelaus. For the most part, however, things happen according to the known standing of the various warriors. The poet would only confuse the story if he failed too often to make the events fit our reasonable expectations. Some religions thrive on miracles, but others, like that of the Iliad, gain strength by ratifying our observations as to how things actually happen in life. This kind of fatalism, too, like the belief in an unalterable day of death, functions as a comforting thought. No one can be blamed for attempting to avoid a confrontation that would result in certain death. Defeat at the hands of someone known to be the greater warrior is no disgrace. Both kinds of fatalism, therefore, normally relieve anxiety about personal responsibility; they enable a hero to keep fighting even in the grimmest battle. Achilles, however, is a special case. He has been told that he has two possible death dates, and that he can choose the one he wants (9.411-16). He exercises that option when he withdraws from battle, again when he decides to refuse Agamemnon's offer of restitution. But these decisions automatically alter the standings of the warriors. Hector

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is now by far the most able; and that in turn means that Achilles' comrades must die in large numbers. Then, when Achilles yields to Patroclus's request and lets him go out alone, he does so in the hope that Patroclus will prove to be better that anyone has any right to expect. Patroclus will surprise everyone, especially Hector—if Zeus grants Achilles' prayer. Achilles does not imagine them actually fighting in single combat. He sees Patroclus causing much slaughter among the Trojans while Hector looks on admiringly (16.242-45). At this point Patroclus will turn around and race back to camp. This scenario is improbable, especially if Patroclus is one of the great warriors. The best of them, like Hector, metamorphose into joyous and totally dedicated killers once they are out on the battlefield. To think of prudence in the very flush of victory is quite impossible. Hector's wife is deeply troubled by this tendency in her husband (6.407; cf. 444, 466-73). Patroclus is indeed a warrior of this sort, as we now see for ourselves. And if anyone could have known this before Patroclus went out, Achilles surely did—hence that solemn prayer to Zeus. In Book XVIII, the frightened and weeping Antilochus brings the terrible news to Achilles that Patroclus is dead. The poet tells us that Antilochus finds Achilles "pondering in his spirit that which indeed had already come to pass" (18.4). Achilles had noted that the Greeks were in retreat once more and remembered a not very ambiguous prediction made by his mother; he had concluded that surely Patroclus must be dead. Yet I told him, he says, once he had beaten the terrible fires away from the ships, he was to return and not fight Hector to the end. This is as subtle a portrait as any in western literature. Achilles both does and does not know that he has sent Patroclus to his death. The plan was not his own. Nestor first proposed it in Books XI (794-802); Patroclus then presented it to Achilles in Book XVI (36—45). Achilles had apparently not thought of it himself. But there it was, handed to him at a fateful moment. Achilles was painfully distressed by the consequences of his own earlier moves. He felt genuine grief for his wounded and dying comrades. Yet the one way he could reenter the war honorably and rescue his friends—by accepting Agamemnon's restitution—had already been rejected. Then suddenly here was a way out of his terrible predicament. When Patroclus is dead, Achilles must return; everyone agrees. Patroclus himself, as he dies, tells Hector that this must happen (16.852-54). Hector already knows this, he says, but he expresses the vain hope that the improbable will occur, that Achilles will die at his hands. In Book XV, when Zeus told Hera exactly what the sequence of events would be, he was merely stating the realities. Did Achilles, too, know what would happen, and did that thought seem like a way out of his dilemma? The poet appears to support this conjecture by the very vigor with which he has

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Achilles order Patroclus to return without fighting Hector, also by the anxiety implicit in Achilles' great prayer to Zeus. Achilles seems to reject the idea in horror as soon as it occurs to him; he is not a monster. Yet he does go through with the plan. There is no question about the sincerity of Achilles' self-blame once Patroclus has been killed. In Book XVIII Thetis explains, rather unkindly, that, after all, Achilles had prayed to Zeus that his comrades die, that Zeus had merely done him the honor of fulfilling his request (74—77). Achilles replies that he can take no pleasure in that now, since Patroclus was one of the dead. There is a poignant ambiguity at line 82 which is untranslatable. Achilles says to his mother that he has "lost" Patroclus. But the word is apolesa, which means more literally "I have destroyed him," "killed him." The mind immediately rejects this literal meaning, which is common enough in both epics, in favor of the more appropriate "I have lost him." Yet the rejected meaning, "I have killed him," lingers nevertheless, for it, too, is true. Achilles' more usual way of describing his own responsibility for Patroclus's death, at line 98, for instance, is painfully oblique: "since it was not to be that I should aid my friend when he was being killed." That Achilles' famous rage should now be directed toward Hector can be understood on two levels. Hector had killed Patroclus and was therefore the most obvious target for Achilles' hate. It would have been a dishonor to Patroclus not to kill Hector. But Achilles' anger is also fueled by his self-blame. Guilt can often be made more tolerable if an external enemy can be identified; but in Achilles' case the killing of Hector is a direct expression of guilt as well as a deflection to an outside target. When Achilles announces to his mother that he will now go out and kill Hector, Thetis explains yet another feature of his complex destiny: his own death is fated to follow soon after that of Hector (18.96). But this revelation fails to reduce the attractiveness of Achilles' decision: "then let me be killed swiftly," he tells her, "since it was not to be that I should aid my friend when he was being killed." And the working of guilt is also the most obvious explanation for the fact that he kills other Trojans, more and more of them, with inhuman ferocity. After he has killed Hector, he mutilates his corpse, over and over again. Eventually even the gods are horrified. (Achilles has killed pity, says Apollo, eleon. . .apolesen, 24.44.) But Achilles had in effect sacrificed his much-loved friend to solve a problem he had been struggling with exclusively from his own point of view. What a thing to do! Who would not hate himself? Then came a way to express his painful selfhatred quite directly. Hector, as he faced him on the battlefield, was dressed in Achilles' own helmet and armor. It was another self whom Achilles met and killed with such savage hatred. His subsequent attempts

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to wound the corpse are attempts to wound himself. If the wild grief, the readiness to die, and the brutal maiming of the corpse all seem right and inevitable, that is because they spring from Achilles' unbearable awareness of his personal responsibility for Patroclus's death. It is very improbable, of course, that the poet of the Iliad had explicit theories about unconscious motivation or about symbolic expressions of troubled needs. Nevertheless, he was clearly able to observe and understand anger and guilt at least as well as we can. We must not be patronizing. But the poet did presumably have explicit theories about the nature of divinity and its relation to human beings. His gods are significantly different from those in the Odyssey, as I have said. Athena, when she comes to the aid of Achilles in Book I, either does not forsee the consequences of the hero's decision to withdraw from battle or does not understand their importance. Zeus, when he grants Achilles' wish that the battle prove disastrous to the Greeks, offers no warning of the subsequent catastrophe for Achilles himself. Yet we are told later that he knew exactly what would happen. Thetis, when she tries to comfort her mortal son after Patroclus's death, shows very little comprehension of the reasons for his suffering. In the Odyssey the gods are more effective in assisting the just and wiser and more sympathetic in their dealings with the mortals whom they favor. In the Odyssey we are shown good people in genuine distress, but we know that justice will be done. We are in no need of special protection from this suffering. In the Iliad justice is neither promised nor given. The fact that Achilles blames himself is not accepted by us as simply correct. This awareness of his is the essence of his suffering. It is the most terrible suffering man can experience. But his pain is made tolerable for us the listeners by our knowledge of the inadequacy of divinity as a guarantor of justice in human life. In a universe as unfair as that of the Iliad, intense suffering like that of Achilles is possible in the lives of the best of men, not only as punishment for evil done by scoundrels. Plato is surely right: what pleases us in such a story is the implication that a sufferer need not always blame himself alone for his unhappiness. Plato did not acknowledge, as he ought to have done, that the greatest poets also satisfied our yearning for justice even as they emphasized the absence of justice in human life; but he was right that the rage to believe in injustice is dominant in our main literary and religious tradition. Except for a handful of "Separators" in Alexandria, the ancients assumed the existence of but one poet for both epics. When Aeschylus said that his tragedies were "slices" from Homer's great feasts, he did not differentiate between the Iliad and the Odyssey (Athenaeus 8.347 e). He did not even have distinct reactions to the visions of the two epics, as Virgil was to do centuries later. As we shall see in the next two chapters, what

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engaged the mind and passion of Aeschylus was a concern that united the Iliad and the Odyssey: the need to pity life's victims despite the efforts of the great gods to dispense justice. In later chapters we will see Sophocles and Euripides also struggling with Homeric visions, which they absorbed without any differentiation between the two poems. Similarly, Isocrates, when he gives an account of the theodicy of Homer (To Nicocles 48-49), makes no attempt to differentiate between the visions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The same is true of Heraclitus and Xenophanes (22 B 42 and 21 B 11, Diels-Kranz). Nor does Plato or Aristotle in his attack and defense respectively. In at least five passages Plato insists that "Homer" is the first tragedian and the leader of tragedy (Theaetetus 152 e, Republic 10.595 b 10-c 1, 598 d 7, 605 e l l , and 607 a 2; cf. 599 b 9, 600 e 4, and 607 d 1). Aristotle then made the idea his own. Epic and tragedy must have the same formal/final cause, he believed (Poetics 1449 b 17-20, 1462 b 13-14; cf. 1449 a 14-15), and "Homer" was the epic poet who moved most unerringly to the more perfect manifestation of this form, Tragedy (1448 b 38-1449 a 2). What seems like a dramatic difference to us, therefore, went unnoticed by the greatest moralists of the fifth and fourth centuries. The main consequence of this appears to have been that a bewildering variety of moral formulas could be adopted or attacked by the various tragedians and all assumed to be legacies from "Homer." In the rest of Part II we shall examine each of the three great "followers" of Homer, with particular attention to their interpretation of pathos. The search will show not one vision common to all three tragedians, but three distinct visions, with differences even from play to play.

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HE VENERATION of heroes more than anything else sets Greek religion off from other religions.1 The piety the Greeks felt toward their heroes was a major source for much that we admire in their achievements, including the development and perfection of tragedy. A hero was neither man nor god. Like us, he must suffer and die; but he does not die altogether. Like a god, he continues to live after "death" and to punish and bless forever. There were hundreds of heroes, associated in many cases with the ancient tombs all over Greece. Some of these heroes were feared or venerated even though no one remembered their names or lives. The most important of them, however, had well-known and oftentold stories and were felt as vivid personalities. A great many were identified with the famous warriors and kings in the Homeric poems and in other epics about the wars at Thebes and Troy. Hero stories proved crucial in the development of the Greek vision, for two reasons. First, the prominence of heroes in the religious myths led to a concentration on essentially human adventures and emotions. Sacred stories were therefore indistinguishable from literature—indistinguishable, that is, from the point of view of nonbelievers like ourselves. Second, the aspects of a hero's story that mattered most to the pious also made these stories suitable for serious and profound artistic treatment. For the hero's story usually revolved around his suffering, his pathe, rather than his achievements or benefactions. His history was typically one of bitter defeat. The passion that most obviously identified a true hero was rage. The communal celebration, which presumably originally centered on his tomb, naturally climaxed in public lamentation for the hero. We have a number of early funereal urns showing public grief being expressed with great formality. It is not really surprising to find that tragedy is connected with hero religion as far back as we have any trace of it.2 Great anger, as I say, is a common characteristic of a hero's impact. That is presumably why Cleisthenes feared the spirit of Adrastus. Even 1

See Burkert, Greek Religion, 203-15, with a bibliography at 429, n. 1. See also B.M.W. Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley, 1964), chap. 2, esp. pp. 55—61 and references in the notes. Farnell (see n. 4 below) is also indispensable. 2 See Chapter 5 above, especially the discussion of Herodotus 5.67.5. It was above all Ridgeway's exaggerated claims (Origin of Tragedy, 27-29, 37-39) that made the use of this passage seem for a long time to be unpromising as evidence for the origins of tragedy.

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the blessing and protection that a hero radiated from his tomb were aspects of his anger. In the Eumenides (762-74).) Orestes announces that when he has been laid in his tomb back in Argos he will show his great benevolence toward Athens by ruining the life of any future Argive ruler who dares to attack Athens. This is a curse, and an impressive one. Orestes, as he is depicted in the latter two plays of the Oresteia, is not in fact a man of great violence or hatred; yet as soon as his thoughts turn to his heroization after death, superhuman anger is the passion he forsees most clearly. This is hardly an arbitrary feature of hero religion. If we try to imagine what there would be about a dead warrior or king that would make his people believe he was still living and able to reach out from the grave, great anger, especially anger born of terrible suffering and an unjust death, would surely be the most obvious. In the Persians Aeschylus has the dead king Darius rise from his tomb before our eyes and curse the mistakes of his son and successor, Xerxes. In the Libation Bearers, which, like the Persians, takes place at the tomb of the late king, we are shown a prolonged ritual summons of the wronged spirit so that the angry hero might return and avenge his unjust murder. But the dancers tell Orestes that his father cannot rise again (439-43). He has been "armpitted," they say. Reliable ancient sources tell us that a murderer, at the purification ceremony, could cut off his victims's extremities—hands and feet, certainly, and probably also ears, nose, and genitals—then string these on a line, drape them over the neck of the corpse, cross at the chest, pull back under the armpits, and tie the grisly line at the back.3 The victim's spirit suffers the identical mutilation as a consequence, so the murderer need no longer fear the dead hero's all-too-predictable determination to return. That, then, is why Orestes can expect no help from the angry spirit of Agamemnon. Orestes himself was not buried in Argos, according to Herodotus (1.67—68), but in Tegea to the south and west. In historical times Tegea was a traditional enemy of Sparta. Early in the sixth century B.C. the Spartans sent to Delphi for help in their disastrous wars with Tegea, and 3 See Rohde, Psyche, appendix 2, maschahsmos. For the inclusion of the genitals, see Emily Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley, 1979), 236, n. 30. I follow the interpretation by Kurt von Fritz, Antike und moderne Tragodte (Berlin, 1962), 126. A. F. Garvie, following Lesky, "Der Kommos der Choephoren," SBAW 3 (1943): 1—127, insists that this cannot be right, "since it is assumed that Agamemnon is in no way prevented from taking vengeance." See Chapter 16, n. 16, below. True, but he does not in fact rise like Darius in the Persians, which may have been what Orestes had hoped for: this very unusual kommos, some think, was meant to function like the conjuring of Darius in the earlier play. Further bibliography on the interpretation of the kommos will be found in Anne Lebeck, The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 198-202.

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Delphi told them to find the body of Orestes and bring it to a new tomb in Sparta. The body was found by accident when a Tegean blacksmith tried to dig a well in his shop. Herodotus tells us that the corpse was much larger than men of that time. He also says that when the body of Orestes was reburied in Sparta, the Spartans began winning their conflicts with Tegea. It is not surprising that heroes were venerated. In the fifth century Delphi told Athens to find the body of its greatest hero, Theseus, and bring it home to be a living ally. The motive was the same: to gain the protection that the hero's body would give them. As with those of Orestes, it was not known where the remains of Theseus were buried. Cimon eventually discovered their whereabouts, however, and won great popularity as a consequence (Plutarch, Cimon, 8.5-6). The Greeks took their heroes very seriously indeed. Themistocles, the victor of the battle of Salamis, disclaimed credit for himself or for the Athenians: the victory, he said was the work of the gods and the heroes (Herodotus 8.109). Ajax, among others, was believed to have been present at the battle, protecting his homeland (8.121). Even the lack of a continuous tradition or the inability to locate a hero's tomb did not discourage fifth-century believers. Sophocles declared that Oedipus, ancient king of Thebes, inhabited Colonus at the outskirts of Athens—the suburb, indeed, in which Sophocles himself had been born—and the Athenians accepted this ever after. It used to be thought that hero religion, since it is so alien to the spirit of the Iliad and Odyssey, must have been a post-Homeric development. It is now believed that veneration of heroes was very old indeed; it is just that the bardic tradition and the epic poets did not exploit this worship directly for some reason.4 The same is true of Aeschylus, although in most of his surviving plays the power of the heroes as spirits to be feared and venerated is acknowledged as a fact of religious life. The one aspect of hero religion that Aeschylus did exploit directly was its emphasis on pathos. In the early years of Attic tragedy the pathos was already central and an absolute requirement. The dramatists did not even feel bound to draw their plots from hero stories every time; anything would do, even 4 Rohde detected traces of earlier, now misunderstood worship of dead warriors in Homer, but L. R. Farnell, in an equally influential book, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921), argues that "it is the chief defect in Rohde's treatise that he does not clearly distinguish between 'tendance' and cultus" (p. 6). The Iliadic description of the rites for Patroclus, for instance, is consistent with ordinary feelings about the need to send the dead off properly and implies no cult of the dead at all. More recent writers have sided with Rohde on this point, e.g. R. K. Hack, "Homer and the Cult of Heroes," TAPA 60 (1929): 57-74, and J. N. Coldstream, "Hero Cults in the Age of Homer," JHS 96 (1976): 8—17. Anthony Snodgrass, on the other hand, appears to side with Farnell, Archaic Greece: the Age of Experiment (Berkeley, 1980), 38—39. See also his inaugural lecture, Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State (Cambridge, 1977), 30-31.

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current events or recent history, provided only that it had the right kind of pathos, defeat experienced with great sympathy for the victim. We are told that Phrynichus, whom the ancients sometimes coupled with Thespis as a founder of Athenian tragedy, wrote a play about the slaughter of the Milesians by the Persians. Here indeed was a painful defeat. But this time it proved to be merely painful. The Athenians had been deeply involved emotionally on the side of the defeated Milesians, and they had been shocked and depressed by the calamity. They voted that Phrynichus, because he had reopened their wounds in such a distressing way, should pay a large fine. They also passed a law forbidding anyone from staging this play ever again (Herodotus 6.21). Phrynichus had broken a rule understood very well by the poet of the Odyssey: a pathos cannot be enjoyed if the hearer is involved personally. That was why Penelope asked the bard to stop singing in Book I, and why Odysseus wept in distress at the bard's song in Book VIII. A few years after Phrynichus's great failure the Persians were defeated resoundingly by the Athenians at Salamis. This gave Phrynichus a pathos he could exploit without risk. The story of the defeat of Persia and of its king was a pathos unlikely to upset an Athenian audience, obviously. Aeschylus's play, The Persians, has the same plot as Phrynichus's tragedy, and it, too, was successful in Athens.5 Aeschylus's version was much loved by all the Greeks and may even have been revived annually as part of their celebration.6 It is as though America were to celebrate Independence Day by staging a deeply sympathetic drama concerning the sorrows experienced by George III at the loss of the Colonies. That it should seem obvious to Greek poets that this was an appropriate way to celebrate so momentous an occasion demonstrates the importance they put on the thrill of the pathos in their religion. We have already examined (in Chapter 7) the most detailed exploration of the religious pathos in the surviving plays by Aeschylus. In the great hymn to Zeus in the Agamemnon (160ff.) the dancers give troubled thanks to the greatest of the gods for the mathos that they receive from pathe. What troubles them, as we saw, was that such events must come from gods who are perpetrators of violence and injustice. Also, they give thanks for the pathos of Iphigeneia, now in the past, but how can they be grateful for the one yet to come, that of Agamemnon? 5 That the Persians followed the example set by Phrynichus is stated by Glaucus of Rhegius, who was writing about the time of Socrates' execution. See the "hypothesis" in some Aeschylean manuscripts. 6 On the probability that the Persians was performed as far away as Sicily, see the edition by H. D. Broadhead (Cambridge, 1960), xlviii—1. That it (or some other play with this theme) may have been revived annually is Gilbert Murray's idea; see Aeschylus: The Creator of Tragedy (Oxford, 1940), 115.

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To the obvious distinction made in the Odyssey between others' pathe (usually pleasurable) and one's own (usually not), Aeschylus had added a much more troubling question: why should religious understanding depend on a pathos at all, since every pathos is an event we would have tried very hard to forestall had we been able? (Cf. the response of the chorus when Christ is arrested in Bach's Passion according to St. Matthew.) A pathos is a revelation of injustice, evidence that divinity itself can be unjust. How can we enjoy such a vision of the universe or benefit from the decisions of such gods? The dancers in the Agamemnon have no answer; but Aeschylus does. He adopts an idea from Hesiod, who had in turn adopted it from the Hittite succession myths.7 The cosmos, it is suggested, had evolved slowly from its violent beginnings; and now, as Zeus dominates more and more, reason and justice dominate more and more. Pathe like those of Iphigeneia, Agamemnon, and Orestes will be needed no more. By the end of the trilogy Athena has promised her people, the Athenians, that intelligence and a respect for true fairness will be introduced between a violent act and its consequences. Circumstances and intentions will now be taken into consideration. If there are miscarriages of justice, the cause will be corruption in human institutions, not the will of divinity.8 The gods will cooperate with one another and with mankind to bring about individual and social justice as much of the time as possible. An earlier generation of wise men, when they had attempted to explain why good people suffer and inferior people prosper, had suggested that divinity was not unfair in its assignment of punishment, merely "late." "Here is the manner of Zeus's retribution," wrote Solon (frag. 13, lines 25—32 West). Zeus does not get angry on each separate occasion, as a human being might; neither does he overlook the actions of the evil man. Justice comes, but often in quite unexpected ways. "One man pays instantly," says Solon, "another late; others escape I in their own persons and the fate of the gods does not touch them, I yet it does come later: people not responsible pay for the crimes— I their children or a later generation." This theory, or something like it, must have seemed adequate to 7

This is by no means the only way to undertsand the movement from the beliefs expressed by the dancers in the first play to those defended by Athena in the final play. See Chapter 7, n. 17 for an account of the controversy on this point. For the probable influence on Greek (i.e., Hesiodic) theogony from Hittite (and other Near Eastern) succession myths, see Peter Walcot, Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff, 1966), 1-26, and West's commentary on the Theogony (Oxford, 1966), 21-22, 28-30. 8 At Eumenides 690—95 Athena, in establishing a court on the Hill of Ares to deal with blood guilt, says first, here the citizens' reverence and inborn dread will restrain them from wrongdoing day and night (cf. Eumenides 517—19 and the discussion in Chapter 7 above); and second, this desirable state of affairs will last only so long as the Athenians themselves do not "muddy" their laws. (There is a dispute concerning the exact meaning of the last phrase: see Conacher, Oresteia, 203 and n. 22.)

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many people in Aeschylus's time. But even the dancers in the Agamemnon are troubled by it. Aeschylus obviously means for us to demand something better. From the beginning of the Agamemnon we are made by the poet to doubt that instances where "people not responsible pay for the crimes" could be understood as proofs of divine justice. We are moved by pity, not moral satisfaction, when we contemplate the sufferings of Iphigeneia, Cassandra, and the children of Thyestes. More complicated but just as pitiable are the blighted life of Electra and the harrowing of Orestes. Our pity for them is also strong and entirely justified. Agamemnon is condemned for his acquiescence in Iphigeneia's death, but he, too, is an object of pity in his own death. The dancers refer to it as "royal patbe''' at the end of the second play {Libation Bearers 1070). Most complicated of all is the case of Clytemnestra. Her death is simple justice, yet even her suffering does not bring the kind of satisfaction that we experience, for instance, at the death of the suitors in the Odyssey. The murder of Clytemnestra by her own son is presented in the Libation Bearers as the most upsetting event in the whole gory history of this house. The poet of the Odyssey barely acknowledged that Orestes had had to kill his mother Clytemnestra as well as Aegisthus. Orestes came home and triumphantly killed Aegisthus, his father's murderer. That was all. Then he built a tomb for this man—and for Clytemnestra (3.309-10). But Aeschylus does not permit us to sidestep the matricide in this way. It is Aegisthus's murder that is reduced to relative unimportance in his version. We in the audience are present when mother and son face one another at last. It is a horrible moment. Clytemnestra almost undoes Orestes' determination by pressing home the truth that Orestes is killing his own mother. Orestes turns to Pylades in panic. Pylades warns sternly that it is dangerous to disobey gods. For 899 lines Pylades had been one of the many mutes on stage, or so the audience must have supposed: his unexpected voice at this tense moment is like an intervention from Apollo himself. (Pylades does not speak again.) The mortals must obey and suffer— murderer and victim, both. Nobody wins. The justice of the gods is terrible for all. It is not above question yet. Solon had spoken of the necessity to separate the ideas of Zeus and anger. Zeus cannot be supposed to act in a rage, like some king or father—or like one of the vengeful heroes. This is the only way Solon could account for the puzzling timing in the realization of divine justice. Zeus evidently acts in an eerie calm. Aeschylus had a much subtler version of the same idea. Anger resides not in Zeus, but in the Furies. According to one late source (Pausanias 8.25.6), Erinys, "Fury," is derived from a verb then still in use by the Arcadians, erinyein, which meant "to be angry." Aeschylus may or may not have known this, but he did certainly depict

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the Furies as the very essence of rage. Throughout most of the trilogy they represent angry retribution meted out by gods to men. In the end, Athena depicts them as residing not merely under the earth, as was commonly believed, but also within the human personality itself.9 The true worship of the Furies, as they themselves insist, is accomplished by making the fear of wrongdoing so integral a part of our character that we want nothing so much as to act justly {Eumenides 508—65, esp. 550). Our fear of divine anger, therefore, is a liberating, not a crushing thing, for neither individual nor society can act freely or well unless the dread of wrongdoing has become an instinct. This is an extremely sophisticated idea. In the old order, when justice was so far from perfect, there appeared to be a universal law: evil inevitably begets evil, to him who does it shall be done. The libation bearers sing of it gleefully as they anticipate the long-hoped-for murder of Clytemnestra (312—14). But it is not only the good who act by this principle. Clytemnestra also depends on it when she attempts to justify her murder of Agamemnon. His death was made inevitable by the death of Iphigeneia, she says (Agamemnon 1525-29). The dancers agree: pathein ton erxanta, he who does will be done to. It is ordained, they say. It is a law that will remain as long as Zeus is on his throne. But the dancers are upset by the consequences of the law on this occasion (1560—66.) Clytemnestra makes an even more dubious use of the formula in a naked threat: go into the palace she says, before you do something that will necessitate a painful consequence, prin pathein erxantes (1658). The closer we look, the less impressive this so-called law becomes. The messenger, when he announces the fall of Troy, declares that Paris and his city cannot boast that they did more than they were done to, to drama tou pathous pleon (533). Here we can see the true force of this supposed wisdom: it is an expression of everyone's understandable desire to see his enemy suffer exactly as he himself has suffered (in quality as well as quantity: by stealth, by the sword, or whatever; Agamemnon 340,1397-98, Libation Bearers 888, 556-57). Orestes' last words to Clytemnestra before he takes her offstage to kill her are, "you killed someone you shouldn't, so now undergo something you shouldn't," to me cbreon pathe (930). But this same law of reciprocity now frightens the dancers: "yet a pathos blossoms also for the one who remains," they say (1009). Orestes, that is, must now undergo a new pathos as a consequence of the one they have just witnessed with such 9

Eumenides 691: the citizens' fear (phobos) is "inborn," xyngenes. And a very good thing that is, according to Athena, "for what man who fears nothing will be on the side of justice?" (699). "If," she says, "you fear in accordance with justice [tarbountes endikos] this kind of object-of-reverential-awe" (toionde . . . sebas)—meaning, perhaps, if you honor and nurture, rather than try to rid yourself of horror at the very thought of wrongdoing—"you will be able to preserve Athens against all dangers" (700-703).

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joy. The biological metaphor, the vision of the new pathos as springing from the seed of the old one, emphasizes the dancers' distress. This parallel from nature, which man uses so often to comfort himself because it suggests eternal renewal (cf. Hesiod, frag. 286 Merkelbach-West, cited in the introduction), is used in the Oresteia to express pitiless, unavoidable recurrence (e.g., Agamemnon 1565—66). The offspring of an old crime is a new crime. Once a seed is tainted, every new generation is doomed thereafter. The poet makes us long to awaken from this nightmare. We can be saved only by Athena, goddess of intelligence. Apollo and the Furies both foster the old rule, the tyranny of automatic reciprocity. Pollution is the business of both—of Apollo as the sender of plagues and the assigner of cleansings; of the Furies as the defiling spirits of the dead, especially in cases of blood guilt, the chief cause of pollution. But pollution works mechanically, without the intervention of thought. Its laws guarantee the perpetuation of cruelty. Neither Apollo nor the Furies could therefore be given an absolute victory in the new cosmic struggle. Aeschylus had to rewrite one of the best known of the sacred stories in order to make his criticism clear. It had always been believed that Apollo, at the very beginning of his career, had won a famous victory over the female forces then presiding over Delphi. He had killed Python, the great she-snake in the crevice of Mother Earth, and with the help of Zeus had usurped once and for all the prophetic powers of the female goddesses of night and sleep. But Aeschylus has the priestess of Delphi deny the truth of this story (Eumenides 5). There was no permanent victory of male consciousness over female dreaming. The true crisis came not at the beginning of time, but much later, Aeschylus suggests—at the famous trial of Orestes in Athena's city. The two great forces meet halfway, as it were. The overt action of the male world shrinks in size, from the great world to the personal, then to an internal struggle. At the same time, the feminine powers of dreams and the unconscious gradually erupt into the conscious world, then spread to the great world of public decisions. The two forces meet only in the last play. In the Agamemnon the main players are hampered in their freedom by the exigencies of the larger world: policy, war, and curses inherited from previous generations. Agamemnon's excuse for sacrificing his own child is that pleaded by all men of power: he really had no choice. By the end of the first play, however, the struggle has become personal. Clytemnestra pleads that it was not she herself, it was the ancient curse that killed her husband. But the dancers will have none of it. It suited Clytemnestra personally to have Agamemnon dead. In the Libation Bearers the struggle begins as a tension between individuals. The "armpitting" of the dead Agamemnon has deprived the brother and sister of the larger forces: they

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are pitifully alone. By the end of this play the struggle has turned inward. Orestes is insane. He can see the Furies, but the dancers cannot. In the Eumenides we ourselves finally see the dreaded creatures of the dream world. According to the ancient biography of Aeschylus, at the first performance, when the chorus of Furies came into view one by one, children fainted and pregnant women had miscarriages.10 The hair of the Furies was supposed to be live snakes; we may assume that the effect was very realistic that afternoon. But there is more to it than that. The Athenians feared these goddesses. They undoubtedly saw them in their nightmares and delusions. They believed them to live deep in a crevice, not very far from them as they sat in the Theater of Dionysus. And there they were, shown in plain view on the dancing place. At first the Furies are asleep and are chasing an Orestes who is only a dream. Although the real Orestes of the waking world sees them, heightened as his senses are, Apollo apparently does not see them. Then the objective Orestes leaves and the dream Clytemnestra enters (94), taunting the Furies for their ineffective dream existence. Will they not awaken and avenge her pathos? she asks (117-39). At this point the Furies erupt completely into the waking world. The dream Clytemnestra disappears and Apollo sees the Furies clearly (179ff.). He identifies them as vampires, creatures of the most hideous of our nightmares, especially those of castration; he orders them in a rage out of his house of prophecy. The two forces meet again in the climactic court scene. They battle for their rights before Athena and the Athenians. The virgin warrior goddess is able to reason with the Furies as Apollo was not. She offers them a new version of the law of reciprocity: to do good and as a consequence have good done to them, eu drosan, eu paschousan (868). When the Furies understand that they will still exist as dread of wrongdoing and as objective punishers, too (as Athena assures them: 930—36), they accept with joy and return to the nether region that is their home. The function of dread as a necessary ingredient in the character of a good man is not the main issue. It is insisted on by the Furies and Athena alike. (It is possible that Apollo's silence on the question should be interpreted as hostility or incomprehension. If so, then he may represent an obtuse kind of masculine trust in reason alone.) Athena's main concern is that dread be the consequence of rational thought, that intelligent deliberation be interposed between an act of violence and its fearful consequence. The Furies may still execute sentences by poisoning the imagination of the guilty; but it is not they who will decide who the sufferers are to be. Even the "doer" himself will no longer automatically be "done to." Orestes will be freed, and all the Orestes of the future. Judgments will be See the ancient Life in Page's edition of Aeschylus, 332.10—13.

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determined by principles that include consideration of moral innocence or culpability on the individual level. A life dominated by dread, the Furies say at one point, is terrible, but so is a life entirely unhampered by it (526-29). Later Athena echoes their words in a more overtly political context (690-92). She gives the court in Athens its new commission. Deep reverence and inborn fear, she says, must restrain them in their dreams and in their conscious actions. That way and only that way will pathe, terrible injustices, occur no more. She warns Athens not to tamper with its constitution. Dread must be built into laws and education alike; to remove it would be to remove the greatest protection any city ever had. The Furies speak of "city or man," polis brotos te (524). Aeschylus is making an assumption not unlike Plato's in the Republic: individual psyches and political structures are made up of the same elements and function with the same dynamics. Like Plato, Aeschylus took hope from this discovery. An individual, he concluded, need not suffer personal injustice in order that social justice should be served. If men arrange their inner and outer lives correctly, private and public justice will be one and the same. The individual and the state both need the Furies: horror at the very thought of committing a wrong. But both need Apollo too: unwavering commitment to rational considerations. It would be hard to imagine a more triumphant ending for a drama, or one truer to Plato's rules for the right way to envision gods and heroes. To be sure, Plato could not have approved of the celebration of democracy implicit in the Eumenides; but the glorification of reason and its identification with justice and divinity must surely have been welcomed by him. And yet Plato, as we saw, identifies Aeschylus along with Homer as one of the most important of all the poets who kept alive the vision that corrupts. It is only at the end of the trilogy, after all, that Aeschylus promises that we shall always have justice from the gods. Along the way he has used great art to move us with the pleasure of pathe of the traditional sort. However much Aeschylus may protest that unmerited suffering could occur only in the old order, before the trial of Orestes, he has not missed a single opportunity to give us the cleansing pleasure peculiar to pathe. Pathos and pathein occur with unusual frequency in the Oresteia, but with constantly shifting meanings. We are presumably meant to be bewildered by this. 11 First, as we have seen, the law of reciprocity is regularly defined with the verbal form: "to him who does it shall be done" [pathein). This is the old idea. But the wording is sometimes altered 11

Although he does not concentrate on this particular cluster of words, Goldhill's study of language in the Oresteia (Tragedy, chaps. 1 and 2), is pertinent and very valuable. He has proved beyond doubt that Aeschylus knew what he was doing in giving us bewildering and unstable uses for the same terms in the utterances of different characters.

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slightly to make the formula function as an excuse for something questionable that the speaker has done or intends to do. Clytemnestra contrasts the injustice of Agamemnon's act in murdering Iphigeneia with the justice of what he subsequently suffered by saying anaxia drasas I axia paschdn (Agamemnon 1526-27). The noun pathos usually refers to an unmerited calamity, like Iphigeneia's death (Agamemnon 177), or Agamemnon's (Libation Bearers 1070). But even this usage has a personal, self-serving variation. The dream Clytemnestra speaks of her own death as a pathos (Eumenides 121), and the Furies, when they believe that they will not be allowed to take vengeance on Orestes, speak of that injury as a pathos (143-45, a remarkable passage in which the word is used four times in three lines). We are made to wonder about the idea the various speakers are trying to bend to their separate purposes. They are all references to the same law, the lex talionis ("an eye for an eye"); the formulas differ one from another mainly in the degree of pessimism or narrowness of vision implicit in each use. The law itself needs to be reassessed, we conclude. The true law of heaven, Aeschylus declares, is that revealed by Athena: man (or Athenian man, at least) has an ally in the gods, all the gods. There is no god whom a good man need fear. Every action has a reaction—now as in the old order—but the infusion of intelligence, human and divine together, guarantees that good can only result in good, never evil. The suffering of the innocent is a thing of the past. The trouble with this kind of affirmation is that it can be sustained as a thrilling vision only for a very short time and so must be reserved for the end of the drama. In the Phaedo Plato tried to convince the Greeks that the pathos of the good Socrates, which resulted in no unhappiness for all that it was an extreme example of injustice, could be substituted for the much-loved martyrdoms of the traditional hero stories. But Plato, like Aeschylus, reserved this exhilarating demonstration for the last few moments of his drama. Perhaps this vision can never be sustained for long. Those gloomy stories of unmerited suffering, however, can be sustained almost indefinitely, like a dark theme in the slow movement of a nineteenth-century symphony. It is not really surprising, therefore, that Plato saw Aeschylus as one of the enemy. Aeschylus undoubtedly believed in his vision of a life-enhancing alliance between man and god, a bond created by their shared intelligence; but this is not the only vision that animates the Oresteia, Aeschylus was motivated by two contradictory ideas. They are versions of the two sides in Plato's ancient quarrel between "poetry" (our yearning to believe in a flawed universe) and "philosophy" (our rage to believe in the reality of divine justice). As Plato said, the quarrel arises from a division in the psychic forces within each of us (Republic 10.606—7). Both yearnings,

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therefore, motivate all of us—poets included. There is no reason why a poet should be more consistent than the rest of us. In some cases, it may be, a poet can proceed with his exploitation of pathe only if he can assure himself first that he really agrees with "philosophy." And readers, too, may need to conceal from themselves their deep yearnings for the dark pleasure of the pathos. Shakespeare presumably believed that in Macbeth he was presenting an obvious and decisive instance of justice: Macbeth kills Duncan so he himself is killed. The perpetrator of a horrible crime suffers horribly as a consequence. And we, too, may accept this picture as the key to the play's power to satisfy. Yet Shakespeare makes it very clear that Macbeth, left to himself, would never have done this terrible thing. ("Too full o' the milk of human kindness," says Lady Macbeth.) The existence of Lady Macbeth is crucial. It is she who screws his courage to the sticking place. So is the existence of the Weird Sisters. "Weird" means Fate in Elizabethan English. These Fates not only predict; they also trigger thoughts and actions. Later in the play they show Macbeth a vision of the future kings of Scotland and of the United Kingdom. Evidently Duncan had to be killed so that Banquo's sons would father this fated line of monarchs. If the play is done correctly, we are filled with pity for Macbeth despite his monstrous crimes. He is a true victim. "She should have died hereafter," says Macbeth. There follows an astonishing outpouring of grief, some of Shakespeare's finest poetry. If the play is done right, we are moved with utterly sincere compassion. As in Attic tragedy, so also in Macbeth: there are many peripheral pathe as well, pure examples of innocent suffering. There is the death of the old king ("This Duncan I Hath born his faculties so meek . . .") and Macduff's wife and children ("I have done no wrong" . . . "All my pretty ones?" . . . "Did heaven look on, I And would not take their part?"). These pathe function just like those of Iphigeneia, Cassandra, the children of Thyestes, and the other inessential victims. They are the essence of the pleasure we get from the tragedy before we reach the triumph of morality at the end. Another even closer parallel suggests itself: a dramatic retelling of Christ's pathos. Christianity, like the religion of Aeschylus, has to perform two functions simultaneously, that of "philosophy" and of "poetry." It is looked to by its believers as a source of strength, enlightenment, and moral instruction. Divinity must therefore be shown to be a trustworthy friend and a guarantor of justice. In this way all established religions side with "philosophy," at least in the defenses and explanations offered by their theologians. But Plato was right nevertheless to see popular religion as essentially an ally of "poetry," the keeper of the other vision—that of a universe where pathe are possible for the best of men.

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In such a universe alone might we ourselves be forgiven completely for our failures. A narrator of the Passion of Christ might end his story with the Resurrection and explain the sacrifice as an act of supreme, unselfish justice; yet he will draw most of his real power from the pathos itself, the terrible injustice endured by this most blameless of men. Paul tells believers to concentrate on the cross: the cleansing of our own guilt comes above all from the innocent suffering, not from the reestablishment of right and good later on in the story. (What we enjoy is not the suffering, of course, but the innocence.) Painters, sculptors, and musicians have always understood: there are hundreds of representations of the trial, the flagellation, the stations of the cross, the nails being driven through the hands and feet, the despair, the expiration, the lowering of the body, the pieta, and the entombment—for every representation of the resurrection. In antiquity Aeschylus had the reputation—mostly given him by Sophocles, apparently—of a wild, inspired poet who did not have conscious control over his poetry. Sophocles says that Aeschylus composed his plays while he was drunk. Any reader who has struggled through the craggy magnificence of Aeschylean Greek might sometimes be inclined to believe such stories literally. But we should not be fooled. Aeschylus was a subtle thinker and a bold explorer of the large issues. He was very demanding when he set himself to justify the ways of god to man. But he was also a true poet, in Plato's sense. Like Homer, Shakespeare, and most of the world's greatest poets, he intuitively gave us reason to grieve for his heroes as victims even as he also asserted eloquently that high justice was being demonstrated in his stories.

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EITHER THE Iliad nor the Oresteia is a direct exploitation of hero religion, a deliberate attempt to reproduce its special solemn thrill in an easily recognizable form. For that we shall have to wait until Sophocles. In a hero story of the Sophoclean sort, the death of the hero is usually of supreme importance, also the hero's awe-inspiring passion as he approaches death and the special signs that he has passed into a new, more godlike existence after his pathos has run its course. In the Iliad we have the characteristic wrath; but the hero's fated death is not foreseen as an event of religious importance. In fact, it is not depicted at all and only vaguely foreseen. Patroclus and Hector die while wearing Achilles' armor; in a way, therefore, they are substitutes for the great hero in their violent and lamentable deaths. Yet their funerals, great occasions though they are, do not signal the transition to a higher state, either for Achilles or for themselves. The ghost of Patroclus exhibits only the helplessness and yearning for rest that any unburied warrior might be expected to feel.1 In the Oresteia, Iphigeneia survives only as a bitter memory. Agamemnon and Orestes are both without heroic rage. They have no more than human unhappiness or indignation when they are seen in life. Later, Agamemnon's corpse and ghost are mutilated, a deliberate move to prevent a hero's after-existence among the living. Orestes' superhuman rage, as I have said, is foretold by the hero when he is still only a man, but this is still in the remote future when the trilogy ends and is of little importance to the drama as a whole. In the other four surviving plays by Aeschylus, only once, in the Seven against Thebes, does the poet show us a mortal warrior being transformed into a wrathful hero. Yet even here the wrath is depicted not as an essential quality of the hero himself, as in Sophocles, but as a larger force that enters him from the spirit of his violent father as he goes to his death. The angry sons of Oedipus were indeed revered after death as true heroes (Statius, Thebais 12.429ff., Lucan, Pharsalia 1.549-52; cf. Dante, Inferno 26.52-54); but Aeschylus does not tap the thrill of this knowledge in his play, as Sophocles surely would have done. The fact that Homer and Aeschylus both drew their plots from hero stories is partly an accident. They were the stories, or so the Greeks be1

See Chapter 15, n. 4 above.

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lieved, of the famous kings and warriors of their own historical past. What other stories were there to tell? An obvious alternative lay in the violent narratives about the gods themselves. These provided the subject for one of Hesiod's epics and one of the surviving tragedies in the Aeschylean corpus, the Prometheus Bound. But the poets, forced to move human audiences, naturally selected even from this body of stories those that, like the pathos of Prometheus, vitally affected mankind. In any case, the most intensely interesting of the purely divine stories, the pathe of Dionysus, Demeter, Persephone, and a few others, were protected by secrecy and could be told in public only with great caution. So hero stories it had to be. Plato treated the Greek literary tradition and at least one important strain of popular religion as a single phenomenon—a continuum connecting artistic storytelling and the most sincerely felt religious imaginings. The common element, as we have seen, was the pathos, the plot that, according to Plato, keeps alive from generation to generation men's deep yearning to believe that we are all victims to some degree, that happiness is not in fact in our own power. Never mind that many of the narratives and plays end with the triumph of justice; it is "the pathos itself," as Plato says, that is enjoyed by the devotee and the enthusiast. An emphasis on pathos links Greek storytelling, not only with hero religion but with many strains of Greek piety. Less than a tenth of Aeschylus's plays have survived, and none at all from his earlier years. Nor have any of the works of his predecessors or his early rivals survived, except in the meagerest fragments. In order to assess the nature and importance of Aeschylus's innovations, therefore, we are forced to draw inferences from chance-comments made by ancient writers still in a position to make the necessary comparisons. We are happy enough to listen to Aristophanes. He was born about the time that Aeschylus died, and he became a most intelligent connoisseur of tragedy. (He equated the passing of the last great tragedians with the passing of the greatness of Athens.) But we must also rely on more remote and less sympathetic writers. Many of these were philosophers. Even when, as in Aristotle's case, they profess to admire and defend tragedy, therefore, they write from an essentially hostile tradition. Still, these authors were able to read many texts no longer available to us, so we cannot neglect their testimonies. Finally there are lesser commentators, not a few anonymous, who have preserved the odd fact or tantalizing piece of gossip. Sometimes we are reduced to building conjectures even on their unverifiable information. We are in still greater difficulty when we attempt to understand the religious enthusiasms that may have been tapped, directly or in spirit, in Aeschylean tragedy. Complete literary works are never reliable records of

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popular beliefs, and documents other than complete literary works hardly exist from this period. In the case of the initiatory religions, we have an additional difficulty arising from the fact that secrecy was so important. It may also have been important in other kinds of religion—occasionally, at least. Sophocles covers the death and burial of Oedipus in holy silence. In hero religion, however, what chiefly hampers our understanding is the extraordinary proliferation of cults and stories and the great variety that characterizes the interpretations and responses of the enthusiasts. In any case, religions shared by many people over the course of many generations, especially in a brilliant and pluralistic society, are not likely to be characterized by unanimity of feeling or explanation. Nevertheless, our understanding of "the ancient quarrel" will depend in no small part on how we understand the connection between Aeschylean drama and Greek piety. An assessment must be made, however hazardous the attempt. For one thing, Aeschylus was given credit in antiquity for being the first to bring religious elevation into tragedy. Aristophanes has Dionysus, god of tragedy, address the shade of Aeschylus as follows: "You who first of the Greeks built towers of majestic phrases I and created order out of tragedy's nonsense: pour out your torrent!" {Frogs 1004-5). The words "majestic phrases," rhetnata setnna, more accurately "words carrying religious solemnity and dignity," seem to be echoed by Aristotle in his brief history of tragedy: "it also acquired magnitude, acquiring religious solemnity [apesetnnynthe] at a later date, after it progressed beyond the small mythoi and ridiculous language that it got from its origins in satyr drama" {Poetics 1449 a 19-20). The compiler of the ancient Life of Aeschylus paraphrases many authors, ranging from absurd gossips to writers who are obviously thoughtful and knowledgeable. One of his sources, in a comparison of Aeschylus with the other tragedians, observes that Aeschylus, unlike the others, did not strive for realistic illusions or try to wring tears from the audience: what he tried to produce was teratodes ekplexis, shock of the sort one experiences when divinity has made its presence felt (332 Page 4—5). It is here that the story is told of the faintings and miscarriages at the first appearance of the Furies in the Ewnenides. Another example is given that is not unlike the moment in the Libation Bearers when Pylades speaks after having been mute throughout most of the play. There was apparently an even more stunning use of this device in the lost Niobe. The ancient Life also states that Aeschylus "utterly shocked [kateplexen] the vision of his spectators by means of splendor [lamprotes], scenic effects, stage machinery, altars, tombs, trumpets, ghosts, and Furies."2 If this em2

333 Page, 6-9. Oliver Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), 46, is very

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phasis on stunning visual surprises was felt to be religious in character and even recognized as an importation from religion, the source was presumably from a tradition other than the hero stories. It is well known, in fact, that Aeschylus had special ties with the Eleusinian mysteries—secret initiatory ceremonies, dramatic and visual, centering on the patbe of Demeter and Persephone and involving Dionysus as well. Eleusis was a village close to Athens and dependent on it, but its rites were famous all over the Greek world. Aeschylus was an Eleusinian by birth and members of his family were hereditary priests in the rites. Aristophanes has the ghost of Aeschylus, at the outset of his defense of his plays, pray to Demeter: "you who nurtured my understanding" [Frogs 886). The ancient commentator explains this prayer as appropriate simply because Aeschylus was from Eleusis, and Demeter, whose mysteries were held there, would naturally have been his patron divinity. Modern scholars tend to agree, though one has emphasized that, after all, the main chorus of the play is a band of initiates enjoying the blessed existence promised by Demeter in the mysteries.3 The Frogs is in fact full of references to these ceremonies and to the divinities associated with them—Dionysus most prominently—and the rivalry between Aeschylus and Euripides is presented as a contest between a worshiper of Demeter and a worshiper of private and novel divinities (aether, tongue, wit, and a keen sense of smell): surely it is not hard to believe that the figure of Aeschylus, by naming Demeter as his instructor, was understood by the Athenians to be attributing something important in his tragedies to the things men learn or experience as initiates in Eleusis. The main reason why this clue is now seldom used in attempts to understand Aeschylean drama is the notorious fact that we know very little indeed about those secret rites at Eleusis.4 But there is also another reason. Most of us have a strong prejudice against attempts to "explain" literature by references to nonliterary phenomena such as antique religious practices. On the whole, this is a healthy prejudice. The starting point for our present investigation, however, is not the plays as plays, but the plays as they were understood by Plato. Plato asserted that the main error of the tragedians was theological, and he assumed that the holy stories used in tragedy worked psychologically just the way the same holy skeptical of the reliability of this part of the Life: "Suspicion, indeed disbeleif, is aroused here, not only by the loose sleeves, trailing cloaks, and high boots," also mentioned in this passage, "which definitely have nothing to do with Aeschylus, but also by the examples of 'razzle-dazzle' which seem almost all to be drawn from the Eumenides." Taplin also thinks that the mention of teratbdes ekplexis is disparaging: instead of doing what he ought, Aeschylus "horrified them out of their wits." 3 Knox, Heroic Temper, 174 n. 82. 4 See Chapter 9 above, and n. 5 for a bibliography; also see the Introduction, n. 16.

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stories did in religion. It must be of very great interest to us, therefore, that the first great genius in the development of tragedy was believed in antiquity to have learned something important directly from a famous religious ceremony—especially since that ceremony involved the god of tragedy. As we have seen, the main initiation at Eleusis was divided into three ceremonies, legomena, "things explained," drdmena, "things acted out," and deiknymena, "things revealed." The latter two are both spoken of as moments tinged with fear and wonder. The drdmena were probably not dramatic performances, despite the etymological coincidence, because the Hall of Initiation was very poorly designed for such an event.5 The deiknymena were the true climax and came a year after the other two ceremonies. Still, there may have been a dramatic element in both ceremonies. In the Republic Plato calls the genus of which true philosophers are a species philotheamones, lovers of theamata (6.475 d). In the Phaedrus, as we saw, lovers of theamata were thought of mainly as the excited initiates at Eleusis; in the Republic, however, they are thought of primarily as lovers of dramatic celebrations, men who never miss a Dionysian festival. The species "philotheamones of the truth," Plato concludes, are true philosophers (6.475 e 4). Although it is not the point of Plato's remarks, the implication is there nevertheless: eager initiates and connoisseurs of tragedy are attracted to a similar, or perhaps even identical vision. "Theater" means a place to witness a theama. What could this dramatic element have been in the Eleusinian rites? Our fullest account is late and therefore suspect; yet it may be right. This is the notorious passage from Themistius (fourth century A.D.) preserved by Stobaeus (4.107 Meineke), in which our experience at death is likened to that of the initiate. First there is anxious and frantic wandering, the horror characteristic of the uninitiated. Then come the terrors experienced by initiates at the climactic ceremonies. Themistius mentions all of the emotions recorded by Plato and Plutarch, the famous phrike, the sweating, and the rest. Then one passes into a pure light. There he finds music, love, the companionship of the good, also an excellent view of the uninitiated as men sunk in fog, mud, misery, and suspicion. (We might compare the Masonic progression dramatized by Mozart and Schikaneder in Die Zauberflote.) Themistius was a pagan in a Christian empire. He may even have been initiated at Eleusis. The question is why he did not hesitate to give details others were silent about. Was he guessing or was he revealing holy se5 There is room for doubt about this. Plans of the various telesteria constructed over the years are reproduced by Carl Ruck in The Road to Eleusis (New York, 1978), opposite p. 38.

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crets? If our record were less imperfect, however, we might find many others describing the same progression. Themistius was a Platonist, after all, and, as we have seen, a comparison between the Eleusinian and the Platonic experiences had had a long tradition by Themistius's time. This dramatic progression may not have been part of the secret, then. (Cf. Pindar, Olympian 2.61-80, an emotional description of the postmortem happiness that the truly good may expect as their reward.) In the Oresteia, as I suggested before, the movement from a universe in which pathe are the rule to one in which good always prevails may reproduce the progress in the Mysteries from the pathe of the great goddesses to the promise of pure justice. But the holy of holies were indeed shrouded in secrecy. "Mystery" is related to the verb tnyein, to keep one's mouth or eyes shut. It comes from a root meaning to make an unarticulated sound, "mmmm.. . . " It is cognate with "mum" and "mute." Its original meaning in Greek may therefore have been to preserve in silence (or in a "hum" or "murmur") some piece of momentous information. (Other cognates include "mot," "motto," "mutter," and "mumble.") As we saw, Plato, in his more lighthearted references to the Mysteries, focused on the secrecy almost exclusively.6 The reason why groups sometimes bind themselves together by enforcing secrecy has been the subject of several recent studies.7 Secrecy gives insiders exhilarating power over the uninitiated; they alone are the possessors of the secret. Their individualities drop away as a thiasos is born, a religious fellowship. Morton Smith has shown how close Christianity came to adopting this feature of earlier cults.8 Aeschylus was accused of having touched, in one of his nonsecret dramatic productions, matters believed by his audience to be reserved for the secret performances only. Aristotle says that Aeschylus, in the matter of the mysteries, pleaded that "he did not know that his words were not to be uttered" (Nicomachean Ethics 3.111 a 9). Aristotle was presumably referring to an incident so well known that he needed to say no more. The anonymous scholiast explains that in five plays (none of which has survived) the poet seems to have touched too inquisitively (periergoteron) on secret matters when he spoke of Demeter—but the scholiast may be guessing. He cites Heracleides Ponticus for the story that Aeschylus saved himself for the moment by clinging to the altar of Dionysus in the theater, and says that he was subsequently tried before the Areopagus. As time went on, the story got more elaborate: the poet was almost condemned to die by stoning and was saved by an irrelevant histrionic gesture by one 6

See Chapter 9, n. 6. Notably Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), and Bok, Secrets. 8 Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel (New York, 1973). 7

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of his brothers (this is Aelian's version, Varia Historia 5.19); the poet was not only ignorant of the fact that his words ought not to have been uttered, he had never been initiated (so Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.461). This last is almost certainly a simple misinterpretation of Aristotle's brief reference to the event. Athenaeus tells us that the Eleusinian torchbearers and hierophants ("revealers of the holy objects") emulated the beauty and religious dignity (semnotes) of Aeschylus's costumes in their own robes (22 e). It is possible, of course, that this most famous of Eleusinians remained uninitiated in these most famous of all mysteries, and that the emulation went one way only; but this seems very unlikely. It is much more probable that Aeschylus was so eager to tap the thrill of Eleusis that, in the opinion of some, at least, he sometimes overstepped the line between the secret and the not secret. There is one thing we can learn from this anecdote: it was not merely the general effect of the mysteries that Aeschylus brought into the theater, apparently; there seemed to be verbal borrowings as well, and from the inner secrets at that. A number of the anecdotes link Aeschylus personally with Dionysus, the chief god of tragedy. Sophocles is supposed to have asserted that Aeschylus got drunk to compose his poetry; and wine, of course, is Dionysus in liquid form (Stobaeus 1833, Athenaeus 22 a-b and 428 a 9). Plutarch confirms the report and remarks that the Seven against Thebes is not full of Ares, as Gorgias had said; like all his plays it is full of Dionysus (Moralia 715 e, 82 b 24 Diels-Kranz.) The dancers in the Frogs refer to Aeschylus as "our Dionysian prince" (1021). Pausanias says that Aeschylus himself would tell how, as a youth, he fell asleep once while he was supposed to be watching over his family's vineyard and Dionysus appeared to him in his sleep. The god told him to write tragedies. When the young Aeschylus woke up he was eager to obey, tried his hand at it, and discovered that it was quite easy (1.21.2). Indeed, as many as a dozen of Aeschylus's lost plays have titles that suggest that they may have concerned Dionysian myths directly. Also, we are told by the Suda that Aeschylus was the supreme master of the satyr play, the part of the tragic contests that remained overtly Dionysian in vision and subject matter throughout the fifth century. But Dionysus was, of course, one of the chief gods of the Eleusinian rites, not only as Iacchus, leader of the holy procession from Athens to Eleusis,9 but also as a god of ecstasy, the underworld, and the promise of immortality. To be sure, wine, Dionysus in potable form, was expressly forbidden at Eleusis, and Demeter in liquid form (very possibly intoxicating) was used instead; in other contexts, however, the two divinities were 9

Cyclops 69, Antigone 1120-21; cf. Frogs 312ff. and Herodotus 8.65.

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paired as twin benefactors of mankind, one giver of the wet, the other of the dry. The tie binding Aeschylus personally with Dionysus, therefore, might be understood as a further link with Demeter and her mysteries. In any case, Dionysus had his own initiatory rites—mysteries that resembled those of Demeter in many ways. Dionysus, too, suffered a pathos; and his story, too, issues in a promise of divine rescue from human wretchedness. The nonsecret elements of the Eleusinian story are well known, especially from the Homeric hymn to Demeter. Persephone is raped by Death and her grieving mother, Demeter, blights the earth in her terrible rage.10 The story of the two goddesses is an extreme example of terrible, completely unmerited suffering initiated by a god. Yet Persephone's partial and periodic restoration of all nature guarantees for the initiate a reprieve from the sentence of eternal death. Zeus ratifies the new order in heaven; Demeter's wrath is turned into goodwill toward men. She sends her divine son into the world to teach the secret of life from the earth: and just as the earth is renewed, so also will men themselves be renewed. The deiknytnena, we are told, included the dismemberment of a head of grain— a violent death absolutely necessary if the grain is to be born again. This was a promise to mankind, or to the initiates, at least. There was a similar movement in the secret story of Dionysus, apparently, though this has had to be reconstructed by scholars from various sources.11 The god suffered a violent death by being torn apart and eaten: he was reborn within the worshipers who ate him. If the two ceremonies were ever combined, Demeter was presumably consumed as bread, Dionysus drunk as wine. In some such way the pathos of divinity led to a promise of no more pathe for mankind. What had appeared to be the essence of Injustice thus led to Justice after all. The parallels with Christianity are obvious. Paul characteristically bids his correspondents to concentrate on the cross—that is, to feel the terrible injustice, the awful suffering of the blameless Christ: in this lies the salvation of mankind itself. Yet elsewhere he bids them rejoice in the resurrection; so too will they be restored. He even reaches for the ancient vision of nature renewed: "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die" (1 Corinthians 13.36). John attributes the idea to Christ himself when he first contemplates his "death": "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (12.24). We experience the pathos along with Christ somehow; but 10 On Demeter's wrath, see 11.303—13, 330—33 and 467—68, and cf. also her treatment of Demophon, 251-52. 11 See Gilbert Murray's "Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy," between chaps. 8 and 9 of Jane Harrison's Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1912). This overingenious paper is now much despised, but we can still learn from it.

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the elevation and release from guilt that we feel in the process is now attributed not to the vision of divine injustice implicit in the experience, but to the promise of justice hereafter. When Paul—or Aeschylus, or the poet of the Odyssey—is being a theologian, he tends to accept the assumptions of "philosophy." Reason inevitably argues for its own supreme importance. Reason is god in man. (That indeed was the original meaning of logos in the famous pronouncement by John.) Reason is Athena in the Athenians. But men's need for "poetry" will be gratified as well, whether they know it or not. The two main differences between paganism and the biblical religions both help conceal "the ancient quarrel" from the pious in modern times. First, paganism was frequently surprisingly frank and open in its championship of "poetry." That is, divinity was often depicted as being shockingly immoral or inadequate. Plato's criticisms finally carried the day, however, and the stories at the heart of the biblical religions are now told in such a way that the unfairness of divinity is concealed from the worshiper. Second, we have gone a long way now toward the separation of literature from religion. We have two secular literatures, in fact: one that continues the ancient exploitation of the pathos, though it is divested of all overt connections with religion; another, far more popular, that generally celebrates the triumph of good, as Plato said a story should. Intellectuals, who generally prefer to get their pathos not from religion but from literature, also enjoy and approve of "philosophy," if only in the form of Aristotelian criticism, theories of literature according to which justice, not injustice, is what we enjoy. They have it both ways, then, just as the ancients did; but they are unaware of the paradox because they are not thinking theologically in either instance. Nonintellectuals, on the other hand, want happy endings, not pathe, in their secular stories, but then switch effortlessly into a different mode of awareness whenever they turn to the pathe celebrated in their religion. They, too, see no inconsistency, because they are told to accept those pathe as manifestations of divine justice. This pious acceptance usually deflects their attention from the fact that these stories really imply divine injustice. I have argued that it was one of Plato's most enduring discoveries that our psyches operate on more than one level even though we are rarely awareness whenever they turn to the pathe celebrated in their religion. They, too, see no inconsistency, because they are told to accept those pathe as manifestations of divine justice. This pious acceptance usually deflects their attention from the fact that these stories really imply divine injustice. Furies, Earth, and Night are their natural enemies and stir primeval, counterrational fears at the bottom of our soul. Plato and Aeschylus did not agree, however, in their advice to mankind. Plato sides with Apollo

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in the Eumenides, who declared himself the implacable foe of the Furies. The victory of reason must be complete. But Aeschylus envisaged a new, life-enhancing tension between the two great energies within us. A precarious, but wonderful treaty is achieved by the divinities; an equally precarious but wonderful integration should now be possible on the human level, both in society and within each of us. This is the Aeschylean way to have it both ways. It is a solution that may well have seemed compatible with the Eleusinian treaty between Zeus and Death, and with the promise of human salvation implicit in that treaty. As we have seen, the most memorable and emotionally charged occasions in Aeschylean drama were said to be the scenes in which the poet contrived stunning visual experiences for the audience. The ancient biographer lists the devices: bright light, stage machinery, ghosts, and so on. 12 But he makes them all subservient of Aeschylus's achievement of "enlarging" tragedy with "the noblest pathe," pathesi gennikotatois. And indeed all seven of the surviving plays are so constructed as to present the unmerited suffering of great ones in scenes that are visually extremely powerful. We may conjecture that this love of spectacular victimizations was one of the things the poet learned from the mysteries. On the other hand, Athenian vase paintings a hundred years before Aeschylus's time show that such depictions had long been a popular taste and were not confined to any particular cult. A visual pathos is central to all seven plays. In the Persians we wait with mounting pity for the return of the defeated Xerxes, who comes before our eyes at last, a ruined man. The dancers lament in reinforcement of our sentiments. In the Seven against Thebes we watch with horror while Eteocles assumes his sacrificial role even as he dresses in his armor, item by item. He then goes off to a clearly foreseen death. At the end of the play we are asked by the dancers to gaze at his corpse and that of his twin as they are carried in, to grieve for them, "these pathe" tade pathe, that are now at last before our eyes (848-50). In the Suppliants it is the dancers themselves who are the chief objects of our pity. Their plight is echoed in the poetry by constant references to their ancestress Io, an ancient victim of Zeus and Hera. In Prometheus Bound, a profoundly Aeschylean play even if it is not by Aeschylus himself,13 Io is brought before our eyes and we cannot question either her innocence or the horror of her god-sent suffering. We are made to see her pathe stretch forward for centuries to come. "What still remains for me to suffer [pathein] ?" she asks the dancers (605-6). They do not know, but Prometheus does: 12

See n. 2 above. See D. J. Conacher, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (Toronto, 1980), 141-74, for an account of the controversy. 13

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"Hear now the rest of the pathe ! which this maiden must endure from Hera" (703-4); and our mind's eye sees the whole world as the scene of her agonies. In the last line of the play Prometheus himself says, "you see how I suffer [pathein] unjustly!" His chief tormentor, like Io's, is Zeus. The play, the first in a trilogy, opens with the great Titan, whom Aeschylus depicts as a longsuffering benefactor of mankind, being shackled to a bleak mountaintop by Force and Violence. He remains there throughout the tragedy immobile—in a cruciform position, if we may accept the evidence of vase paintings (e.g., by the Nessus painter in the seventh century)—full of agony and rage at his treatment: the most sustained spectacle of pathos in surviving Attic drama. At the climax of the play the dancers, daughters of Ocean, stand determinedly by Prometheus when he refuses to submit to Hermes, Zeus's testy messenger. When Hermes orders them off, they defy him and get swallowed up in a violent upheaval along with Prometheus himself. Nor did the pathos of Prometheus end there. In what may well be his opening speech to the chorus of Titans in Prometheus Unbound), the next play in the trilogy, Prometheus appears to echo the last line of the previous play.14 "Look at me," he says, bound to this sharp rock. Arrian quotes form the dancers' reply: "we have come, Prometheus . . . to gaze upon this pathos, your bondage," desmou te pathos tod' epopsomenoi ("A Circumnavigation of the Black Sea," 99.22 Hercher-Eberhard). It is at this point in his ages-long pathos that Prometheus undergoes the repeated torture of having his liver eaten by the eagle of Zeus. In the third play, as at the end of several of Aeschylus's late trilogies, including the Oresteia ana the Suppliant trilogy (but not the Oedipus trilogy), a cosmic equilibrium is achieved.15 Yet there is no evidence that Prometheus is eventually discovered to have deserved his punishment, or that Zeus can be exonerated of the charge of having persecuted the good. It is the gods, not their victims, who must be transformed. In the two earliest of the surviving plays, the Persians and the Seven against Thebes, there is a degree of justice in the punishment of the central sufferers. The sins of Xerxes are spelled out be the ghost of his father, Darius. His defeat, says Darius, was fated, yet Xerxes' weaknesses hastened the day: "when a man rushes to it, divinity will assist in the process" (742). Eteocles may well have deserved the curse of his father, Oedipus, though he is no simple sinner like Xerxes. In the later plays Aeschylus will put ever greater emphasis on the quite unmerited suffering 14 Frag. 324 Mette, 193 Radt. The lines are preserved by Cicero in his own translation, Tusculan Disputations 2.10.23. 15 See C J . Herington, "Aeschylus: The Last Phase," Anon 4 (1965): 387-403.

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of the victims. The innocence of the suppliants, of Orestes, and of Prometheus, each precipitates a cosmic crisis. Near the end of the Agamemnon we are made by the frenzied Cassandra to see in our imagination the hideous fate soon to be experienced by the king and by Cassandra herself. Then we hear the cries within. Finally the doors open and we see the carnage for ourselves. Clytemnestra, splattered with blood, relives the murder: "And blowing out a sharp spurt of blood I he struck me with a dark drizzle of murder-dew I at which I rejoiced no less than plants bursting I in bud rejoice in liquid gladness sent by Zeus" (1389-92, with some textual uncertainties). Agamemnon's moral responsibility in the death of Iphigeneia is now far from our minds as we gaze at his pathos in pity. The garment Clytemnestra had thrown over Agamemnon as he stepped out of the bath appears to have been a shirt with openings too small for the head and hands. 16 Its special horror was the sudden immobility it forced on the wearer: it is the visible form of the wife's enveloping malice. At the end of the Libation Bearers this garment, full of knife slits and dark with blood, no doubt, is shown to the audience once more. Orestes reemerges after the matricide and tells us to gaze with satisfaction at the new corpses. Then he holds up that terrible garment: "Look at this also, you who are audience to these miseries, I the device—bonds for my unhappy father, / the thing that squeezed his head and feet—, spread it out, stand 'round it in a circle, I display the thing she wrapped around her husband!" (980-84). Aeschylus makes us see even the pathe that cannot be put before us on the stage, the hideous fate of Thyestes' children who were eaten by their unsuspecting father, the anonymous soldiers who suffered and died at Troy or were drowned at sea on the voyage home. And above all there is "Iphigeneia the much wept for" (1526—27). As we saw, Aeschylus presents her pathos as though it were a scene composed by a painter. "She struck each of her sacrificers," the dancers recall, "with a pity-begging arrow from her eyes, I standing out like the chief figure in a painting." (240-43). The most famous ancient painting of this scene was done a half-century after the play,17 but scenes like this, stark and pitiful depicu The wording at Libation Bearers 982 is tantalizing, not decisive; but see the scholium to Euripides' Orestes 25. Cf. Fraenkel on Agamemnon 1382 and see the red-figure vase by the Dokimasia Painter, Boston Museum of Fine Arts 63.1246 (John Boardman, Athenian Red Figures Vases: The Archaic Period [London, 1975], fig. 274), which is now dated slightly prior to the composition of the Oresteta. On the influence of Stesichorus and even earlier traditions on Aeschylus, see A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus' Choephori (Oxford, 1986), introduction, esp. xvii—xxiv. The Dokimasia Painter seems to follow Stesichorus's version; see Garvie, xxiii. 17 See Quintilian 2.13.13. There are copies in Naples, Mus. Naz. 9112 (from the House

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dons of meaningless slaughter, including the sacrifice of children, survive in quantity from a time well before Aeschylus.18 In certain climates and generations, wherever a Platonized theology has triumphed over men's understanding of their religion, an uninhibited appetite for scenes of gruesome martyrdoms and the extreme sufferings of the good, both god and man, strikes people as not only morally and theologically perverse, but also morbid and in bad taste. The idea that we can experience piety of a high order by letting ourselves be moved by pity in such scenes strikes us as grotesque and we are not moved. This sort of thing does indeed sometimes become routine and banal. Yet depictions of terrible pathe have also inspired the highest art in every period. In our own century there are undoubted masterpieces in this mode, some of which have even achieved a degree of popularity: "Easter 1916," Wozzeck, Potemkin, Guernica, also the life-changing photographs from Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam. A pathos, when it is believed to be art or politics, is acceptable, even in forms as uncompromising as those terrible scenes in Aeschylus; it is only when it is believed to be religion that many object and refuse to be moved. The triumphant end of the Eumenides was also engineered with brilliance and daring. There are references to torches, the donning of scarlet robes, escorts, and a procession. Wilamowitz thought that the chorus of Furies may even have danced out of the theater and up into the crevice in the Areopagus where the Furies were known to live. Even if this did not occur, the scene must have been quite wonderful, especially for the Athenians, the majority of the audience.19 Yet the superbly realized dramatizations of lamentable pathe were not just canceled out in people's memory and may actually have moved them more decisively than the theologically more satisfactory vision at the end of the third play. It is this vision that stays with men and shapes their imagination. Plato instances a holy story that was also hinted at by the dancers in the Agamemnon, "the deeds of Cronus and his pathe at the hands of his son" (378 a 2). If stories like this should be told at all, says Plato, let them be available only in the most secret of rites; let admission not be purchasable by the sacrifice of a pig, as in the Eleusinian initiation, but only by "the sacrifice of something huge, something no one can find," so that the smallest possible number will ever hear them (378 a 5-6). Aeschylus the Eleusinian, therefore, ranks very prominently indeed in Plato's indictment of the poets. of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii) and in an altar relief in Florence, Mus. Arch. Cf. also Lucretius 1.80-101. 18 See, for instance, the sacrifice of Polyxena, British Museum 97.727.2 (John Boardman, Athenian Black Figure Vases [London, 1974], fig. 57), dated about 550. 19 As even Taplin agrees (Stagecraft, 415), although he argues for the most austere staging compatible with the evidence.

17 PATHOS AND THE "SHUDDER" IN SOPHOCLES

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S WE PASS from Aeschylus to Sophocles we find a shift from the exploitation of initiatory religion to that of hero religion. Hero religion, one senses, is something Aristotle felt more comfortable with. He disliked "religious shock," to teratodes, the sudden visual scene that convinced the audience of a supernatural presence {Poetics 1453 b 9). Hero stories could be responded to as literature. (Aristotle hardly mentions the gods in the Poetics.) But perhaps we should not be too quick to go along with Aristotle in this. It may be that Sophocles, no less than Aeschylus, engineered scenes that thrilled the original audiences with emotions strongly enriched by literal belief in divinity. In Homer, phrittein (phrissein) had no religious overtones. It was a shudder of fear for one's own safety and had no pleasurable component at all. Paris says that the Trojans shudder with fear at the sight of Diomedes like bleating goats at the sight of a lion (Iliad 11.383). In the fifth century, however, the verb regularly referred to terror occasioned by evidence that an event is god-caused. When Athena was born miraculously from the head of Zeus, Poseidon says, Sky and Earth both shuddered (Pindar, Olympian 7.38). A scholium to Oedipus at Colonics 1049 gives a garbled quotation from a lost play by Aeschylus that combines phrike, eros (perhaps), and the Eleusinian Mysteries (frag. 387 Nauck, 741 Mette; cf. Ajax 693). In the Seven against Thebes the verb is used of a shudder caused by a sudden, portentous glimpse. Hippomedon, says the messenger, turned suddenly and revealed the device on his shield, the monster Typhon, black snake coming from his mouth, coiled snakes around the edges of the shield: "I shuddered when he whirled it around"(490). At the emotional climax of that play, Eteocles, by putting on item after item of his armor, 1 becomes, no longer a responsible moral agent, but the warrior king and true son of the angry Oedipus. The dancers watch in horror as Eteocles becomes elated and supernaturally dedicated to his fate. "I shudder suddenly" (pephrika, 720), they sing, at the coming of the Fury of Oedipus. Both of these scenes from the Seven depend on the expectation that graphic devices (painting and accoutrements) can have the power to 1

See Wolfgang Schadewaldt, "Die Wappung des Eteokles," in Eranion: Festschrift fur Hermann Hotnmel (Tubingen, 1961), 105-16.

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shock in a special way. So also at the beginning of the Eumenides: the priestess delays her panic-stricken revelation of the ultimate teratddes, the snake-haired Furies at Apollo's sacred hearth, so that we can be prepared by remembering examples from paintings (50-51). She once saw, she says, a painting of the repulsive Harpies tormenting Phineus. She also refers to Gorgons. Only then do the doors open and reveal the Furies to our vision. Also, at the climax of the (imagined) scene in which Iphigeneia is sacrificed, as we have seen, we are asked to remember pictures of similar scenes (Agamemnon 242). This feature of Aeschylean stagecraft seems less surprising when we consider the role played by visual representations in other religions. Herodotus referred to the Egyptian "revelations" (deikela, from deiknynai) of the "death" of Dionysus (2.171). Paul tells the Corinthians that God revealed (deiknynai) the apostles, the last to be condemned to death, "for we have been made a spectacle (theatron) to the world, to the angels, and to men" (1 Corinthians 4.9). The emotional author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (10.32—33) reminds his correspondents of the pathemata they had endured on being enlightened, how they had become a public spectacle (theatrizomenoi), to their joy. This is the new idea behind the word "martyr," which originally meant "witness," as in a court trial: the god's pathos is revealed by everyone who imitates the pathos in his person. 2 Paul says, "proclaim the Lord's death—until he comes" (1 Corinthians 2.26). We have here three kinds of announcement: legomena, drdmena, and deiknymena. Sophocles does not linger on the memory of graphic works, as Aeschylus did, but he does arrange scenes on stage that have powerful graphic effects: Ajax falling on his sword; his corpse clung to by his woman and boy; the fettered Antigone led off to her entombment; Creon given a view of his dead wife and son; Aegisthus being forced to enter the dark where 2

Hermann Strathmann chronicles the shift in the uses of martys, "martyr," from denoting one who gives factual testimony to one who passes on a vision or acknowledges his belief (like St. Stephen in Acts), to one who shows the strength of his belief by his willingness to die if necessary, to one who is ennobled by being subjected to a fate like Christ's and even made joyous by Christ's presence at the moment of death (like St. Perpetua) and then elevated to heavenly glory: vol. 4 s.v. martys in the Theologisches Worterbuch, ed. Kittel and Fnedrich. The last meaning, which gained currency during the persecutions in the second and later centuries, is already adumbrated in the Stoic use of martys (esp. in Epictetus) for a rightly educated person who, like Socrates, bears witness to philosophy by his virtuous composure and triumphant happiness even in circumstances that would reduce a nonphilosopher to wretchedness. (There are also foreshadowings in the Old Testament and Macabees.) After the persecutions were no longer a large fact in the lives of Christians, and still later when the pathe literature of the Greeks had been rediscovered, genuine suffering came once more to be the essence of a martyrdom, as it had been in the Passion as told in the New Testament.

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he knows he will be killed; Heracles brought in unconscious from his pain; Philoctetes surrendering his bow and fainting; the blind old Oedipus being seized by Creon's men, and so on. Sometimes there is also mention of a "shudder." We have already examined the stunning scene in Oedipus the King in which the self-maimed king is brought back to the stage while the dancers sing of the "shudder" caused by this "sight of the pathos." The dancers in the Electra shudder at the sound of Clytemnestra being murdered by her son (1408). The women of Trachis shudder at the account of the pathe of Heracles (1044). Creon in the Antigone shudders in anticipation of dreadful news from the gods, the announcement of his pathos (997). The "shudder," then, occasionally accompanies the pathos in Sophocles, whether the pathos is actually visible to the audience or not. "Aeschylus" in the Frogs parodies the Euripidean monody by having a serving girl bewail her bad dream, calling it a "a fearful, shuddercausing sight," phrikode deinan opsin (1336). The line might have worked equally well as a parody of Sophocles. But then, Aeschylus, too, sometimes has his dancers "shudder" at a mere memory [Agamemnon 1243). In a two-word fragment from Sophocles preserved by Pollux (791 Nauck, 875 Pearson), someone speaks of a "horn-straight shudder," orthokeros phrike. Pollux says this is a variant of orthothrix, making the hair stand on end (cf. Libation Bearers 32, though the text is corrupt there). Sophocles' extravagant phrase must mean "a shudder causing the hair to stand up like horns" (cf. Oedipus at Colonus 1624-25). We might put this together with the dancers' elaborate speculations in the Oedipus the King about their ambivalence (attraction/repulsion) concerning the sight that caused the phrike and conclude that Sophocles may have developed psychological theories about the shudder. As we shall see later, there is evidence that he wrote a treatise and led discussions about the staging of dramas. He may well have written or spoken about the phrike, then. That does not mean, of course, that it was no longer a phenomenon of religious importance to him. In a passage in the Poetics that has already drawn our interest, Aristotle appears to accept the importance of the "shudder" but then to lay down rules for the best, the second-best, and the worst way to produce it. Best of all is when it is triggered with no "spectacle" at all (as when a tragedy is read aloud?); second best is when it is produced by the kind of "spectacle" Sophocles used in Oedipus the King (1295 ff.). What a tragedian should never do, says Aristotle, is engineer the kind of "spectacle" that results not in fear, but in to teratodes, "religious shock" (1353 b 9). We have seen that in the Life of Aeschylus it is stated that to teratodes was a prominent characteristic of Aeschylean tragedy. Aristotle's silence about the wonders of Aeschylean drama has often been noted; in fact his judg-

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ment may have been very harsh indeed. In any case it is clear that Aristotle preferred Sophocles' way of handling this sort of thing. The Life, as we saw, made Aeschylus's ability to dazzle and shock his audiences subservient to his more basic innovation: his success in "enlarging" tragedy by the use of the most dignified (or "most noble," gennikotata) pathe (333.6 Page). Sophocles' achievement is twofold, it would seem. He went farther than Aeschylus did in making the shudder-causing spectacle subservient to the pathos itself (although not as far as Aristotle would have wished); and he built his plays around pathe that were "most noble" in ways not characteristic of Aeschylean plays. This we learn above all from an examination of the plays themselves. The peripheral pathe in Sophocles' dramas, like the peripheral pathe in Aeschylean drama, are often starkly pure examples of completely unmerited suffering. Where Sophocles has moved away from Aeschylus is in the pathe central to each of his plays. The main heroes of the seven surviving plays are all liable to terrible anger, some are violent, two are criminals. All are victims nevertheless. The final vision in these plays is one of terrible divine will where only the actions of mortals had been suspected. It is rather easier to describe a "typical" Sophoclean hero than it is a "typical" Aeschylean or Euripidean hero. The heroic sufferers in Sophocles' plays are as vivid, willful, and selfaware as Achilles in the Iliad; but they regularly discover at the drama's end that their whole lives had been in the control of movements that were complete before they were even born. The hero's response to this revelation varies from Antigone's angry despair to Philoctetes' sudden, joyful acquiescence. Most typical is a grim but solemn acceptance of the newly won understanding. When Heracles finally comprehends how Nessus and the Hydra had reached across all those years to kill him, he makes no further complaint; he merely arranges his affairs in accordance with the rest of the predictions. Oedipus in Oedipus the King asks only that he be put back on Mt. Cithaeron so that his destiny might be played out to the end: "As for my fate—let it move on, wherever it is taking me" (1458). Aj ax comes to a magnificent peace with himself, and with the universe, before he throws himself—savagely and unforgivingly—onto his sword. In Oedipus at Colonus we actually witness the angry hero and his destiny coming together: it is a moment of frightening beauty and seriousness. The one response that is exemplified by no Sophoclean hero is selflaceration of the sort that overwhelms Achilles in the Iliad. So far is Aj ax from self-blame, he never for a moment entertains regret, either for his imprudent insult to Athena or for his intended murder of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus. Nor does Heracles regret any of his lusts or rages. The aged Oedipus responds to Creon's malicious taunts about the

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parricide and incest by counterattacking in a rage: it was all fated before he was even born, he says; only a villain would think that Oedipus himself had been responsible (960-1002). This speech reads like an attempt by the now aged Sophocles to correct misunderstandings about his earlier plays, especially Oedipus the King. When people think and talk about a play, "philosophy" takes over. They find it difficult to believe that they have been responding with deep pleasure to a story of monstrous injustice perpetrated largely or wholly by divinity. And so, like Creon in Oedipus at Colonus, they think the sufferer must surely hate himself for what he had "done." It is a common enough mistake. Job's would-be comforters cannot bring themselves to believe that Job is wholly innocent. Some people are so baffled by their thrill at the deaths of Lear and Cordelia that they insist on finding grave faults in both in the play's opening scene. Gloucester knows better: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; I They kill us for their sport." But the mind, unable to reconcile this vision with a rational theology, reaches restlessly for evidence that the sufferers themselves are at least partly to blame. Aristotle was particularly prone to this weakness. No wonder he disapproved of strong visual effects: in the very presence of a pathos it is hard indeed to convince oneself that this is really evidence of universal justice. Horace also disapproved of playwrights who tried to engineer sensational visual effects (Ars Poetica 179-88). He gives four examples. Two are metamorphoses, Cadmus into a snake and Procne into a nightingale; but the other two are examples of the most pitiable of pathe, the violent death of young children. He objects to being shown Medea killing her own sons to revenge herself against her husband, or Atreus preparing the corpses oi his young nephews for their unsuspecting father Thyestes to eat at a feast. Show me scenes like these, says Horace, and I shall simply stop believing. These remarks are sometimes taken to mean that the Greeks, too, like Horace himself, felt some sort of compunction, religious, moral, or artistic, against the showing of murder or violence onstage. And it is true that scenes like the violent suicide of Ajax are rare in the surviving plays. But neither Horace nor anyone else in antiquity mentions a taboo. There are several reasons, probably, why the more violent pathe take place offstage. First there were undoubtedly practical considerations. Since the Greeks, like the Elizabethans, had neither lights nor curtain, the actors playing the victims could not get up and walk off. And unlike the Elizabethans, Greek actors wore masks with fixed expressions. Second, the traditional means of making us see the pathos—prophesies, the frenzied description of a visionary, cries from within, long eloquent messenger speeches dramatically delivered, doors opening to show us the dead—

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were quite good enough. But there is one other reason, as important as either of these. A true pathos was violence perceived by the audience with strong sympathy for the victim. As we know from sensational scenes in modern popular drama, if the violence is shown in full force, it is likely, even when we are meant to deplore the act, to confuse our loyalties. The audience disintegrates: some openly enjoy the violence, others are angered by an appeal to emotions they do not want roused. The main reason why tragedy was popular in antiquity but is not so today is the fact, mentioned briefly already, that religion and tragedy were one in antiquity but are quite separate today. The secularization of tragedy, though it has not diminished its appeal for the educated, has made it seem depressing and off-putting to the majority. The stories preferred by the majority do not always have happy endings; sentimental stories and sagas of endless domestic sorrows are clearly very popular. And popular stories are not always soft and evasive; violence and realism are popular also. But popular entertainment that we are loath to call "tragedy" has the two ingredients of tragedy, unmerited suffering and vivid violence, in forms and combinations that are decisively different from the suffering and violence of Greek tragedy. Violence cannot be done away with, apparently. Greek tragedy would be unthinkable without it. Above all, the holy shudder depends on violence, or the fear of violence, at least. But on this point, as I have suggested, the popular taste in antiquity and in the modern world diverge in a very clear and simple way. In modern entertainment the audience is invited to sympathize with the perpetrator. It is drawn into a phantasy about an admirable person who is beset by much less worthy foes, rather as in the Odyssey. As in the Odyssey, violence will then be eagerly looked forward to: the moment when the long-delayed justice finally arrives. Because the perpetrator has every right to be angry and no injustice is being done to the victim, the thrill experienced by the audience is unclouded by either sorrow or guilt. It does not take great art to engineer such a moment. All one has to do is give ample proof that the destined victims are loathesome or dangerous, and that the perpetrators must do what they do either for their own safety or for that of society. In this tradition it would indeed be absurd not to stage the violent act in plain view of the audience. In the main ancient tradition, however, it is the victim of the violence whom we approve of, whom we love and are drawn to. The scenes of violence in plays of this sort, therefore, had better be handled with tact. The after-scene, the vision of the victim in death or in his suffering, is more to the point than the violent blows themselves. Shakespeare presents the blinding of Gloucester as a pathos of the old pattern. The shudder is quite like that provoked by Sophocles. But Shakespeare takes a

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chance that Sophocles would have avoided. Regan asks Gloucester why he has sent Lear to Dover. "Because," he says, "I would not see thy cruel nails I Pluck out his poor old eyes." Then he adds, "But I shall see I The winged vengeance overtake such children." "See't shalt thou never!" says Cornwall, taking his cue with grim whimsey from Gloucester himself. He has the servants hold Gloucester to his chair while he puts the heel (?) of his shoe through one of the old man's eyes. Regan cheers him on: "One side will mock another; th' other too!" There is a scuffle caused by a servant who cannot bring himself to obey the order; but Regan stabs the servant in the back and Cornwall returns to his grisly work: "Out, vile jelly! I Where is thy lustre now?" The sensation is mainly generated by the words, of course; we cannot actually see the eyes being gouged. Still, there is the suggestion that we are present at the scene itself. The messenger's description of Oedipus blinding himself cannot have quite as direct an effect on our viscera as this scene in Lear. Sophocles would have been content with the next scene: Edgar suddenly sees his newly blinded father, and we too see him, "poorly led" and in unimaginable despair. Distinguishing between sorrows that are "tragic" and those that are merely sentimental is more difficult. Sentimental stories tend to annoy lovers of tragedy precisely because they mock tragedy in so many ways. The difference between them lies primarily in the audience's understanding—both of the suffering itself and of the universe in which this pitiable injustice is permitted to take place. A sentimental story is one in which the suffering is more than compensated for—either by the fact that the world admires so noble a sufferer or because the sufferer has at least escaped the things that make the audience's lives so unsatisfactory. At the end of a sentimental story we are shown a universe that would actually be preferable to the one we live in. People with a taste for stories of this sort are likely to find true tragedy depressing or alarming. Tragedies do not often adhere to the rules of the conscious daydream, the level on which most people have been trained to enjoy secular stories. In true tragedy, as Aeschylus saw, we are made to accept reality against our will. The implications of our new vision are necessarily upsetting. Yet if we accept them honestly (etetymos), we are freed from depression and guilt, say the dancers in the Agamemnon: we become grateful to Zeus for an experience as wonderful as it is hard to explain. If we refuse to be entirely honest, however, and insist that reality is as we would like it to be, we will deprive ourselves of this valuable thrill. The Athenians enjoyed weeping copiously in the theater. Plato complains bitterly about this taste {Republic 10.603 c-606 b). Sometimes the final scenes of a play are drawn out, as in Italian opera, precisely to permit this special pleasure. The newly blinded Oedipus is shown first with the dancers alone, then with Creon, then with his infant daughters. He says

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things that no modern playwright would risk: that his eyes, though they can no longer see, can still weep. He dwells on the evidence that divinity is saving him for something terrible yet to come. He recalls the happy past, suppertime with his beloved daughters. He pictures vividly the bleak future when his girls will be shunned at holy celebrations. Finally we watch as he is cruelly separated from the girls and ordered to return to the palace, alone, unable now to exercise his will even in the small matters. What prevents this scene from being merely sentimental is Sophocles' hard insistence that the suffering is not compensated for in any way and that the universe is truly a terrible place even for the good and the capable. In all seven of the surviving plays by Sophocles, the sufferer emerges impressively as one who is more than human. His rage certifies him as a hero who will one day be closer to divinity than the rest of us. Usually this telltale anger reaches a crescendo at the final climax of the play and transforms the suffering in one way or another. But in two of the plays the heroic anger collapses at the end. It is in these plays that we are closest to sentimentality. One is Oedipus the King. The hero's anger, which was so palpable during most of the play, vanishes when the role of divinity is fully understood. Oedipus is forced to accept an entirely new vision of life: he can no longer assume that his goodwill and unusual ability make him the gods' ally. He is the gods' victim and has been all his life. The reemergence of his heroic anger is still many years in the future. The other play in which the anger almost disappears in the final suffering is the Antigone. In this play the heroine's earlier sureness and ardor— the depth of her loyalty to divine, as opposed to human, reality when she sets her course for death in preference to submission—create a special problem. We are in danger of not believing that Antigone's pathos involved genuine and terrible unhappiness. "I take pleasure in infirmities," says Paul, "in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong" (2 Corinthians 12.10). The audience of the Antigone might feel that this heroine was strong when she was weak and persecuted, her anger carrying her over all earthly considerations. But so important was the perception of genuine unhappiness in a Sophoclean pathos that the poet shows Antigone, in her last scene, full of doubt and misery. Antigone presents herself to her city as a spectacle of deep wretchedness. "Look at me," she says (806). In her last long speech she explains her motives in an argument so unconvincing that we feel she has surely lost her way. Then she begins to doubt that the gods are with her at all. Did she do something to offend them? she wonders. Apparently, she says, her pious act had made her impious. "When my pathos is over," she

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muses bitterly, "maybe I'll know then what my error was [hamartanein]. I But if it is they who are wrong [hamartanein again], I could wish no greater I pathos for them than the one they have unjustly engineered for me" (921—28). The "they" refers primarily to Creon, but the ambiguity may be intentional. This is a collapse of certainty we could hardly have imagined the earlier Antigone would be capable of. For a moment the thought of her extreme youth and the pointlessness of her heroism overwhelms her. But her belief in her innocence returns in her last words. "Look at me," she says again, last daughter of the royal house (she ignores her sister, perhaps because of Ismene's lack of the ancestral rage): "what a pathos I undergo, at the hands of what men, I because my piety made me act piously" (942—43). The men who recorded and propagated the story of Christ's pathos presumably did not sit down like Sophocles and deliberately devise ways to make the suffering unmistakable and utterly convincing. Yet the need to do just that was as important for them as it was for Sophocles. Their problem was even more acute than Sophocles' in the Antigone. Christ was not just a man-god in transition to divinity of a minor order; he was virtually divinity itself. If he had not been shown to us experiencing terrible doubts, we would have been confident that his understanding of the necessity for his pathos, plus his knowledge that he would soon return to the throne of the universe, would have left little room for horror and genuine unhappiness. Fear, depression, and terrible doubt must be shown graphically, therefore, if we are to believe them. "And he went a little further," says Matthew, "and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" (26.39). Luke heightens the moment even more: "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground" (22.43—44). Theologians and literary critics are both natural allies of "philosophy." Both find Plato's logic irresistible: surely right-minded people rejoice in Justice, not Injustice. Literary critics of the traditional sort usually couch the argument in psychological terms. If we are deeply moved by the suffering, it must be because we know and care for the sufferer; but if we know and care for him, it must be because we have had the opportunity to observe his mind and character manifested in his decisions; but if his suffering is the consequence of his own decisions, in part at least, there must be an element of justice in his fate. Not everyone in Antigone's place, or in Oedipus's place, would have acted as Antigone and Oedipus acted or suffered the same consequences. Once upon a time the critics believed Aristotle when he concluded that these sufferers must obviously have made serious errors [hamartanein). Did Antigone not show the ugly side of her rage in her

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ungenerosity toward Ismene? Should Oedipus not have refrained from killing anyone old enough to be his father, whatever the provocation? More recently, however, a subtler kind of justice is being found in the pathe. A woman who had listened to Ismene and had not defied Creon would have been less noble than Antigone; a king who had given up the hunt for his origins when Teiresias and Jocasta urged him to do so would have been less brave than Oedipus. What we thrill to at the end of each play is the fact that Man (Antigone, Oedipus) is now seen to be nobler even than the gods. We see the reward even if the sufferers themselves do not. 3 Theologians usually begin with the assumption that divinity must be just and then work backward from that. The agony in the garden merely reveals the human side of this wonderful composite being. That revelation in turn is necessary if we are to understand why Christ's suffering can be accepted as a substitute for our own. The same explanation is offered for Christ's dying cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It dramatizes the fact that Christ is indeed partly human and therefore able to bear our sins for us. But some theologians suggest an even bolder explanation. They point out that Christ's cry is the first line of Psalm 22: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? I O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not. . . ." Now it happens that after twenty-one lines of terrible despair this moving psalm suddenly changes completely in its tone. It ends in a joyful praise of the Lord's "righteousness." Christ must really have been saying, therefore: never mind, things look desperate now, but just you wait. But if this is what Christ intended for us to understand when he said "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" he is surely guilty of having framed the worst literary allusion in history. To the degree to which a religion functions as a repository of moral wisdom and instruction, it must reinforce the assumption of "philosophy"—that life is just, that suffering is the fault of the sufferer himself. All moral systems without exception must teach the young to blame not chance, not enemies, not divinity, but themselves alone for the failure to achieve happiness. But if, as is the case in pagan and biblical religions alike, the worshiper is also offered strength and renewal through the vision of a pathos, it must be an entirely different need that is being served by this drama: the need for consolation, reconciliation, and forgiveness. That our intellects are baffled by this latter pleasure is just what we should expect. It is a thrill that can be given us only by the sight of great 3

See Chapter 13, n. 10, and Chapter 7, n. 16.

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unmerited suffering, and that is something the mind knows it ought not to enjoy. Aeschylus followed the Homeric, Hesiodic, and archaic traditions, and probably also those of the initiatory religions: he satisfied "poetry" and "philosophy" at one and the same time. But Sophocles was not interested in this complex solution. He favored the more direct exploitation of pathos in hero worship. Sophocles, alone among the Greek poets, devoted his poetry exclusively to the antiphilosophical function of religion. The holy frisson was all. The world view implicit in such moments was accepted without apology or rationalization. It may well be that the extreme position taken by Sophocles helped Socrates and his followers to see more clearly the polarity between "poetry" and "philosophy."

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P

LUTARCH EXPLAINS the slow progress of the would-be Platonist by comparing it to Sophocles' account of the stages by which he shook off the influence of Aeschylus and found his own voice {Moralia 78 e-79 b). There is a fabled land, says Plutarch, where it is so cold that words spoken in winter cannot be heard until they thaw out in spring: so also a person who reads Plato's words in youth may not understand them until he has softened in old age. As our judgment acquires stability we learn to welcome things that produce character (ethos) and greatness (megathos); we also look for language that leads inward, not outward. As Sophocles said, first he learned to make a joke of the massiveness of Aeschylean composition, then he learned to handle its artificiality and its biting quality (? to pikron) in the same way. Only then could he take the third step, which was to change to a new kind of language, one best suited to convey character (ethos) and the highest excellence (arete). So also, Plutarch continues, should a student of philosophy learn to progress beyond language calculated to excite large numbers of people and find language instead that captures character and pathos (meaning "feeling" or "emotion" if this is Plutarch's word, not Sophocles'). The terms most likely to go back to Sophocles himself are those describing the special qualities of Aeschylean verse and those describing Sophocles' own achievement, especially the proud reference to "character," ethos, and "supreme excellence," arete. "From a tiny half-line or a single speech," says the ancient Life of Sophocles, "he could create the character of a complete personality—and this is the most important thing in the art of poetry: to reveal character and feeling [ethos and pathos]." We may remember that in the Life of Aeschylus it was said that the older poet did not strive for this sort of thing, but for ekplexis teratddes (religious shock). Sophocles was obviously one of the poets being contrasted with Aeschylus. By the revelation of "supreme excellence" Sophocles meant, presumably, that his plays magnified the greatness of men and women. Aristotle quotes Sophocles as having said that he portrayed men "as they ought to be," in contrast to Euripides, who portrayed them "as they are" (Poetics 1460 b 33-34). Yet Aristophanes has the shade of Aeschylus make a similar contrast between his own "Patrocluses and lion-hearted Teucers" and

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Euripides' love-sick Phaedras and Sthenoboeas (Frogs 1040-44). So Sophocles, when he compared his plays with those of Aeschylus, was presumably boasting about something other than the portrayal of prominence, stature, warrior greatness, or moral strength. If we compare the surviving plays by the two poets, we can see easily enough what that was. The mortal heroes in Aeschylus are sometimes brave and inspiring, but with the single exception of Eteocles in his last moments before death, none makes us feel that he is more than human. (Prometheus is a special case, of course.) All seven of Sophocles' chief sufferers, by contrast, shock us with the awe-inspiring intensity of their energy and anger. It is not hard to believe, even while they are still alive, that Sophoclean heroes are destined for a different lot from that awaiting ordinary humanity. Visions of sublimity, frightening power, and immortal anger do occur in Aeschylean tragedy, but these qualities are associated with the immortals, not with the essential nature of the heroes whose lives we watch in crisis. In his later years, at least, Aeschylus needed to tie his three tragedies together into a single trilogy. The revelation he presented to the audience could not be shown in the story of a single hero, or even in that of a single generation. The real drama took place in the divine backdrop, therefore, and required the passing of more than mortal time. Sophocles, by contrast, makes the central event of each play the revelation of a hero's ethos and arete—the specialness of that hero whom we see down there on the stage, his superiority to ordinary men. As for the great gods, their presence is felt even if it is not seen, but it is not they who are is crisis, as in the trilogies of Aeschylus. The Olympians are now frighteningly monolithic, inscrutable, and apparently without history. That, presumably, is why Sophocles abandoned Aeschylean trilogies in favor of single plays. Drama is now to be found in the emergence of something more than human among us, the divine nature of the hero. 1 That Sophocles should have described his contribution to tragedy in terms of his innovations in language need not be taken as the essence of the matter. This is a Greek way of talking. Aristophanes examines the language of Aeschylus and Euripides in order to determine which of them was the better moral teacher. The philosophers put a similar emphasis on what we would call "style" as the key to larger visions. Still, it may be that Sophocles first took the cragginess and extremeness of Aeschylean verse as the essence of his famous semnotes, religious dignity. The younger poet's preference for less "artificiality in construction" may be part of his move from grand effects to the portrayal of more human ex1

The evidence that Sophocles wrote trilogies in his earlier years is problematic; see T.B.L. Webster, An Introduction to Sophocles2 (London, 1969), 179-80.

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periences. This in turn may have been dictated by his shift from the cosmic visions of Hesiodic and Eleusinian theodicies to the exploitation of hero religion as the essence of tragedy. As Sophocles tells us himself, it was only with time and a struggle that he escaped from the Aeschylean vision of tragedy. Plutarch describes Sophocles' first victory, which was also the first occasion on which he was admitted to the competition {Cimon 8.7—9). The year was 468, when Sophocles was still in his twenties. The audience was divided in their judgment, some favoring Aeschylus, others Sophocles. Passions rose so high that the archon refused to cast the lots by which the ten judges (one from each tribe) would be chosen. The selection of judges takes place before the tragedies are performed; the intense parisanship described by Plutarch must therefore have resulted from the proagon, the "preliminary contest." We know little about the proagon at this period, but after 444, at least, when Pericles built the Odeum (an auditorium apparently modeled on the Hall of Initiation at Eleusis), each poet in turn mounted the platform, gave an account of his plays, and introduced the players. In 468, according to Plutarch, there was at the proagon so much sentiment in favor of the untried Sophocles, even though his main competitor was the venerable Aeschylus himself, that the archon feared the angry and unruly pressure that would surely be put on the judges. Then Cimon and the other nine generals (one from each tribe) entered and made the customary libations: the archon appointed them the judges. Plutarch explains that Cimon had recently won great popular favor when he brought back to Athens the remains of Theseus and established hero honors for him. So great was the Athenians' respect for Cimon and his colleagues that their decision, which was in favor of Sophocles, was accepted peacefully. What could have been perceived about young Sophocles' plays that would have stirred such strong feelings before they were even staged? Pliny the Elder says that 145 years before the death of Alexander, Sophocles put on a play called Triptolemus (18.65). Since Alexander died in 323, Triptolemus, if Pliny is right, must have been produced in 468, the year of Sophocles' famous victory over Aeschylus. Triptolemus is the hero of Eleusis, the divine youth sent into the world by Demeter in a winged and dragon-wheeled chariot to teach mankind the secret of life from the earth. His mission formed part of the triumphant climax of the holy story of Eleusis. Few fragments survive from this tragedy by Sophocles, but we do have a mention of a chariot with coiled snakes, also some lines from an address by Demeter to Triptolemus as he is sent out to teach mankind. The Athenians, as we know from the orators, prided themselves in the fact that it was from their land that agricultural knowledge spread throughout the world. The promise, therefore, that Sophocles' play

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would issue in this solemn event guaranteed the Athenians both a religious and a patriotic excitement. Aeschylus had found his match. 2 This stage in the development of Sophoclean drama we know only from this anecdote. We have no plays from the first twenty or twenty-five years of his career. The earliest of those that have survived, probably, is the Ajax; but in this great drama we already have all of the most distinctive features of Sophoclean tragedy in its fullest realization. The energy and passion of the hero himself is the focus of all attention—the concern of the gods themselves as well as of mankind. Ajax is not a vulnerable mortal like Xerxes, Eteocles, Agamemnon, or Orestes: he is more like the Titan Prometheus in his immortal rage and unappeasable will. He has done things no society could tolerate. If he had not committed suicide, it is hard to see how he could have avoided being executed. His death, like those of Eteocles and Agamemnon, makes up the drama's central action; but unlike those heroes' deaths in Aeschylus, that of Ajax is also a beginning. Olympian divinity is present, but it promises no comfort: it is as devoid of humanity and compromise as the hero himself. The great warrior hero of Salamis is first shown to us in almost unimaginable disgrace. Cheated of Achilles' armor, he had tried to murder the judges who were also the chiefs of the Greek expedition. When we are first asked to picture him, he believes that he is surrounded by their mutilated corpses—except for his bitterest enemy, Odysseus, whom he thinks he has tied up in preparation for special tortures and a slow death. But Athena had deflected his ungovernable rage toward the sheep and cattle on which the army must live, and it is their bloody remains that are strewn around him. His anger is made hideous by madness, and Athena gloats over the scene:she asks the horrified Odysseus if he would not like to see this degrading spectacle. When he demurs, she asks, "Is there anything more enjoyable than jeering at one's enemies?" (79). There are few instances of divine vindictiveness more shocking than this one. The parallels with the Iliad are carefully drawn. Achilles, too, was unjustly treated by the sons of Atreus and in his great rage he drew his sword to kill them. Athena intervened in both instances. In Sophocles' story, however, instead of dissuading Ajax in secret, thus saving him from a criminal's death, Athena reduces him to insanity and leads him to commit acts that will simultaneously make the criminality of his rage most obvious to his enemies and will make the very thought of continued life intolerable to the sensitive hero himself. The second time we see Ajax the madness is gone. The dancers assume that the great anger had been part of the madness and must have passed with the delusion; but it is not so. Ajax is a wounded animal at bay, profoundly aware of his humiliation and his impotence but even more full of 2

On the regular confusion of piety and patriotism, see Dover, "Freedom."

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rage than before. The air is heavy with his misery and crackling with his more than human bitterness. Finally he convinces his distressed and terrified friends that he is going to cleanse himself in the sea and make his peace; but even in this speech—as eloquent and moving as anything Sophocles wrote—the constitutionally honest hero cannot quite tell a lie, and a strange, wonderful mixture of reconciliation and bitterness shows through in his disguised farewell.3 Before throwing himself on his sword he calls once more on the Furies to avenge his death, angry to the end. The leap onto the sword, also the discovery [phantasia) of the body were evidently both sensational in the original production (see scholium to 864). The last part of the play is sometimes felt by modern readers to be an anticlimax; yet it was vital for Sophocles' design. Ajax's enemies rightly interpret the suicide (unique in the stories of the male heroes from the Homeric cycle) as a victory at their expense.4 Their only defense is to try to prevent the burial of the hero's remains. The last scenes of the play have the feel of a world without heroes. Agamemnon, Menelaus, Teucer, Tecmessa, and Odysseus vary in ability and generosity, but they are all mere mortals trying to cope with life one problem at a time. They are bitter and angry but in a way that convinces us that Ajax's bitterness and anger were of a different order. It is a little like the final scene of Don Giovanni. The survivors line up before the footlights and sing of their various sorrows and plans for the future: the violent death of the Don has cleared the air—and left the world a smaller place. In Sophocles' play, however, the hero is not really gone. His corpse remains in view, at least in outline under a cloak. His woman and his son take suppliants' positions, touching the corpse, as though it were already a revered shrine.5 Ajax's half-brother Teucer pleads for the right to give him a proper burial. The always-worldly Odysseus finally persuades the sons of Atreus that it is actually to their advantage to permit the burial. But when Odysseus then offers Teucer his own services in the ceremony, Teucer demures: "I shrink from letting you touch the tomb; I that way I could displease the dead man" (1394-95); that is, he might rouse once more the terrifying rage that was so palpable while the hero still lived. Now the rage can be expected to reach across the grave. The great warrior of Salamis is dead but the revered hero of Salamis is alive.6 Here, as in the Women of Trachis and Oedipus at Colonus, we watch 3

See John Moore, "The Dissembling-Speech of Ajax," YCS 25 (1977): 47-66. See Marie Delcourt, "Le suicide par vengeance dans la Grece ancienne," Rev. d'Hist. de Religion 119 (1939): 154-71. 5 See Peter Burian, "Supplication and Hero Cult in Sophocles' Ajax," GRBS 13 (1972): 151-56. 6 See Friedrich Welcher, "Uber den Aias des Sophokles," in Kleine Scbrtften (Bonn, 1845), 2:302-22, originally published in RhM. 3 (1829). 4

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the Sophoclean hero inch toward a transfiguration into an immortal. In all three cases the anger actually increases as the moment nears. The implication appears to be that pure divinity must be pure rage. Athena in the Ajax, who alone of the great gods appears onstage in the surviving plays by Sophocles, seems to bear this out. No one but Athena can match the hero himself for horrifying vindictiveness. Her anger at Ajax, we are told, will last for that day only; thereafter she will be angry no more. By the end of the play we understand why: it is not that she will be satisfied only when he is crushed, but that she will welcome him as more than human. The world may be run by people like Odysseus, but divinity is more like Ajax. In the Women of Trachis it is the final pathos of Heracles himself that is the subject of the drama—the only hero to have been elevated to full Olympian godhead. We see this greatest of heroes, Zeus's own son, on what the audience knows is the final day of his earthly existence, a day that will end with the hero's mortal parts being burned away on Mt. Oeta so that his true, immortal spirit can rise to take its rightful place beside Zeus and Hera. (There are references to Mt. Oeta at 200, 436, 634, and 1191). Yet neither foreknowledge of that destiny nor retrospective satisfaction in a life devoted to the slaying of monsters is allowed to lighten the mood of the day even for a moment. Heracles is to have the most painful possible "death." What is more, he will be revealed in his final hour as the true son of Zeus in the least comforting sense: like his father in heaven he will be Father indeed—demanding, uncompromising, wrathful, and full of selfish lust. To make us feel this as sharply as possible, Sophocles forces us to see the event through the eyes of the hero's wife, son, mistress, and servant. Heracles is not actually brought onstage until the play is almost over, but right from the beginning it has been his trials and his fate that have concerned everyone. The air is full of foreboding concerning his immediate future. Old prophesies and fresh news dovetail in ominous ways. The rumor could not be more distressing: Heracles is butchering an entire city because the woman he was promised has been denied him. His wife Deianeira has to accept the humiliating truth and is even asked to welcome her rival, Iole, into her own home. The device she then uses to win back her husband's love turns out to be the instrument of Heracles' long-predicted final agony. When the "savage-minded" hero is finally carried onstage in a litter, he is sensitive to no one's needs but his own. Told that his destruction was the result of a mistake and that Deianeira had in fact already committed suicide, Heracles makes no comment at all. He merely demands that his son, Hyllus, marry the mistress (so that no one else can have her) and that he kindle a pyre to end his father's pain (an act that would have incurred

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a very serious pollution). Hyllus orders his dying father to be carried to Mt. Oeta. Hyllus bids his comrades treat Heracles with great "fellowfeeling," since he had been given so little of this by the gods (1264-66)— those gods "who sired us and are called I our fathers yet can look calmly down on pathe like these," toiaut' ephordsi pathe (1268-69). They bear the disgrace, he says; the human actors deserve only pity. "But of all men it is hardest / for the one who is suffering this ruin" (1273-74). Hyllus might reasonably have compared the heartlessness of the heavenly father toward Heracles with his own father's very similar heartlessness toward him. Instead he dwells exclusively on Heracles' pathos: "and there is nothing in these events that is not Zeus" (1278, a line attributed to the dancers instead of Hyllus in some manuscripts). As in the Ajax the nature of the hero and that of the Olympians have converged and the impression we get of divinity as a consequence is very frightening. None of the surviving Sophoclean plays is concerned with heroic pathe that an Athenian would have responded to with literary or antiquarian interest only. (Orestes was tried in Athens, Oedipus "died" there, and so on.) In the case of Heracles the personal connection was very direct indeed. The great hero once visited Sophocles while he slept.7 A golden crown had been stolen from a temple in Athens and Heracles came to Sophocles in a dream, three times, to tell him where it could be found. Sophocles did nothing the first two times, but after the third visitation he went to the place indicated by the deified hero and recovered the crown. The poet was thanked in a public declaration and rewarded with a large sum of money. He used the money to establish a shrine to Heracles. A Socratic would no doubt have thought it ludicrous to try to reconcile the reverence toward Heracles implicit in this anecdote with the vision of Heracles in the Women of Trachis. There was undoubtedly much variety in emphasis, subtlety, and moral sophistication from hero cult to hero cult and in the responses of different persons to the same story. In particular, violent or criminal behavior by the revered hero was evidently accepted by some people without hesitation or worry; others would fret over such elements in the story or even deny their truth altogether. Thus Sophocles goes out of his way, as we saw, to emphasize the lawlessness of Aj ax's designs, but Pindar insists on the complete innocence of Ajax (Nemean 7.20—30). Pindar is also embarrassed by the stories of dark, unjust violence in the house of Tantalus and Pelops, whose games (originally funereal) he celebrates eloquently. However, he does not scruple to repeat these stories in some detail even while 7

Hieronymus of Rhodes (third century B.C.), cited in the ancient Life, also Cicero, On Divination 1.54 and Tertullian, On the Soul 46.9 (Radt, Test. 1.41 and 167). See also Hesychius s.v. Menytes.

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he expresses his doubt concerning their truth (Olympian I). In one ode he tells, entirely without apology, the very damning story of the pathos of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles; he was evidently forced, however, by clients who held Neoptolemus in special reverence to deny in a new ode any criminality in the hero's behavior (Paean 6.100—122, Nemean 7.33ff.).8 Sophocles was obviously drawn to heroes who suffered terribly through no fault of their own, also to heroes who responded to a morality more sublime and demanding than that which guided the ordinary mortals about them. But these were evidently not for him the first and most obvious defining characteristics of a hero, as they certainly were not in fifth-century hero religion. The first requirement was appalling rage; and if legend had it that the hero was violent in plainly intolerable ways, so be it. In this respect, all that Sophocles required was that the sufferer passionately believed that he had been wronged. The degree to which Sophocles nevertheless went beyond the common stories in his demand for "supreme excellence" can be judged from the stories of heroes who were canonized in historical times. In 486, after Aeschylus had already been composing tragedies for some years, an athlete named Cleomedes first won the crown for boxing at the Olympic games, then had his victory taken away from him when his opponent died as a consequence of the contest (Pausanias 6.9.6-8). Cleomedes was accused of foul play, an accusation that he denied in a rage. So violent did the injustice make him that he pulled down the pillars of the boys' school, killing sixty children. The grieving and maddened townspeople pursued him with stones, so he fled to the temple of Athena and hid in a chest. Yet when the pursuers broke open the chest he was not inside. Bewildered, they sent to Delphi for an explanation. Delphi told them that Cleomedes had become the last of the heroes and must be honored with sacrifices. As one scholar has said, they must have been relieved to hear that he was the last.9 Sometimes rage and savage resentment all by itself, without even a pretension of justice, seems to have been enough to indicate heroic powers. A man variously identified as Polites or Lycas got drunk one day and raped a young girl (Pausanias 6.6.7—11). His fellow townsmen angrily stoned him to death. But the rage of their victim evidently survived his execution: he came back as a malignant spirit and attacked the townspeople, sparing neither old nor young. When consulted, Delphi told them to build him a shrine and honor him as a hero. These honors included the gift, once a year, of the most beautiful virgin in the city for him to rape. 8

This interpretation has been challenged by E. L. Bundy, Studia Pindartca, CaI. Pub. in Cl. Philol. 18 (1962), 1:4, but see D. S. Carne-Ross, Pmdar (New Haven, 1985), 131-52, easily the best account of the Seventh Nemean. 9 See Knox, Heroic Temper, 57.

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A philosopher might argue that the Sophoclean Heracles was as little worthy of veneration as this dreadful creature; but a person who saw no difference between them at all would have to have very uncompromising standards indeed. Heracles appears again in another of Sophocles' surviving tragedies, the Philoctetes. This time he is a god already and is seen at the very end of the play, high above the other actors, where the Olympians usually make their appearances. 10 He is sent by Zeus to intervene in the pathos of Philoctetes, the hero who had lit the fire that had released Heracles from mortality. The great, unerring bow of Heracles, which Philoctetes had received in return for that final service, plays a prominent part in this drama. In the course of the play Philoctetes vacillates between deep, unforgiving hatred for those who have ruined his life and a wonderful mild openness—an ability to love and be loved. We have no trouble admiring him and approve enthusiastically as the inexperienced young Neoptolemus gradually responds to Philoctetes, his craggy honesty, his immense suffering—both physical and spiritual—and the staggering unfairness represented by his ruined life. We cheer almost as at a melodrama when Neoptolemus actually turns his back on the pragmatic and unscrupulous Odysseus in order to stand by the lonely sufferer. Odysseus needs Philoctetes for practical reasons: Troy cannot be taken without him and his magic bow. But during the course of the play, "going back to Troy" {es Troian triolein, 112, 1363, etc.) becomes a hateful phrase meaning surrendering oneself to being used by the ordinary world (always run by people like Odysseus) for its absurd and wasteful projects. We do not want Philoctetes to have to go. Neoptolemus tries one more time to persuade him to go voluntarily, but he will not. Then suddenly Heracles appears in the sky and tells him he must go to Troy anyhow. The dilemma in the hero's heart is instantly solved by the divine command and he turns to go to Troy—not only willingly but with joy. His wounds, both physical and spiritual, will be healed at last. The telltale susceptibility to rage is there. Philoctetes' anger is terrible when Neoptolemus betrays his trust and seems to reconsider, just for a moment, his decision to abandon Odysseus and his mundane purposes. But the atmosphere is very different from that in the Ajax or the Women of Trachis: this hero's suffering, which has certainly been long, painful, and totally undeserved, has made him not inhuman in his bitterness, but touchingly grateful for whatever human kindness he is offered. His joy at 10 The use of cranes, etc. is still a matter of some dispute; see Peter Arnott on the theologeton: Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1962), 42-43; also Taphn, Stagecraft, 440.

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winning over the noble young Neoptolemus (whom he calls "son" except during Neoptolemus's brief betrayal) is as intense and impressive as his bitter hatred for the likes of Odysseus. He is trapped as painfully as Ajax, but by conflicting needs within himself more than by external events. For such a person, it is a great kindness to be told finally that he has no choice but to reenter the normal world. To be told directly by divinity that he had never been in the wrong and that his sufferings have actually marked him out for divine honors is more than kindness: it is a resurrection after long burial. "I have abandoned my place in heaven," the deified Heracles tells Philoctetes, "for your sake, I to tell you what Zeus plans for you" (1413ff.). First Heracles reminds him of his own pathe, "how many labors I undertook and labored through before 11 won eternal excellence [arete]—as you can see" (1418-20). The epiphany was presumably staged in such a way that Heracles' divinity was brilliantly clear: he even refers to his visible shape as an opsis (1412). Heracles then compares his own case with that of Philoctetes. "Know that for you, too, it was fated [opheiletai]that you undergo [pathein] what you have undergone, I [it was fated that] from these labors your life be made glorious" (1421—22). Troy will fall by his hand. The long, terrible pathe were needed by heaven in order to bring about the destined destruction of the hapless Trojans. Unlike Ajax or the Heracles of the Women ofTrachis, Philoctetes is given a reason why his own will counts for nothing in his life: divine will must win, even if good men must suffer that this be so. The pathos is finished by the time that this necessity is made clear. No wonder Philoctetes feels exalted by the concurrence of "great Fate [megale Moira], I intelligent advice of friends, and the all-subduing I daimon who has brought these things to pass" (1466-68). In Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles goes even farther: he shows us the actual transformation into a divine hero, to the extent that such a scene is possible on the Greek stage. This is far and away the most important of the surviving plays for our understanding of Sophoclean hero religion. When we see the hero at the beginning of the play he is at the nadir of his life—not only a pariah because of the still infamous parricide and incest and pitifully helpless in his self-inflicted blindness, but deprived, by his own sons, of the maintenance and support that were his due. He is led in by his adored daughter, Antigone, but, luckless as ever, stumbles immediately onto ground that must not be trespassed on. Yet when Oedipus hears from a horrified native that the place is sacred to the Furies, he knows his final adventure has begun. He prays to the Furies and bids them remember what Apollo had told him in the oracular response in which the parricide and incest were predicted: that he would eventually find a resting place among the Furies and that he would then disperse

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great good to those who received him and equally great ruin to those who had refused to receive him. The dancers, old men from Colonus, confess that their pity is mixed with anxiety. Oedipus argues that he is surely the least fearful of men: "since my deeds I were things done to me [pathein], not by me" (26667). He is harmless because he is morally innocent. "How am I guilty in my nature I if what I did was in response to something done to me [pathein], so that even done in full knowledge / the act would not have made me evil?" (270-72). "I endured the utmost horrors, friends, endured them I involuntarily, divinity be my witness; / none of those things was done by choice!" (521-23). The dancers pity him: epathes, "You were a victim . . ."; epathon alast' echein, "I was a victim [pathein] of things never to be forgotten!"; erexas, "You perpetrated . . . "; ouk erexa, "I did not perpetrate!" (538-39). The hero's legendary wrath is linked, as usual, to his conviction that he had been monstrously treated by man and god alike. At one point Oedipus recalls that at the discovery of the parricide and incest he had seethed with a terrible wrath and that that was what made him put out his eyes (434, with echoes of Seven against Thebes 708-79). Yet when his anger had abated, he says, and he had regretted his excessive self-punishment, the Thebans changed their minds and drove him from the city. The king's rage is rekindled as he remembers how his own sons failed to prevent this outrage, although they could have done so easily. Oedipus's famous, deadly curses against his sons come out slowly, in a crescendo, during the course of the play. The hero's attitude toward the injustice of the gods themselves cannot be expressed so directly. The poet solves the problem by having the hateful Creon speak for the gods, as it were. To this Oedipus can respond with passion. How could he have known the identity either of Laius or Jocasta? he asks (982-83). Divinity had foretold these violations before he was even born (969-73). The gods wanted it that way; perhaps they had long been angry at his family for some reason (964—65). One thing is clear: no one could blame Oedipus himself. "For in me myself you could not find I one charge of error [hamartia] in payment for which 11 erred [hamartanein] in these ways against myself and my kin" (966-69). The turning of the hero's fortunes is signaled by a new oracle that Ismene brings him: "at some point you will be sought by the people there [i.e., in Thebes], I both still alive and when you are dead, for their safety" (389-90). Who could possibly be benefited by a helpless man like me? he asks. Your strength and theirs are one, Ismene replies. When I am no longer anthing, then I am finally someone to be reckoned with? The gods, Ismene replies, who destroyed you will now lift you up. Oedipus scoffs bitterly: it is a paltry thing to ruin a young man then restore him when he

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is old. Ismene explains: the Thebans, worried about the oracle, want the old king buried near their city so that his body will protect them; but they are still unwilling to let him within the walls for fear of the pollution. Oedipus declares angrily that he will not permit this shoddy compromise. Then someday there will be a grief to the children of Cadmus. In what sort of circumstance? asks Oedipus. She replies: "by the agency of your anger [orge], when they stand by your tomb" (411). Eventually it came to be believed by some Athenians that at one crisis or another the spirit of Oedipus really did repell the Thebans when they neared Colonus. 1 1 From the Athenians' point of view, of course, the anger of the dead hero will be a manifestation of his benevolence toward them. This is the nature of a hero: to bless and curse, both in the same act. In the course of this play the two passions are seen as the hero's great love and great hate while still alive. Love is reserved above all for his daughters; rage for his sons. Love is also expressed for the Athenians and for Theseus, their splendid king; rage against the Thebans and Creon, their crafty envoy. The love and hate both reach intensities that modern readers and audi­ ences find embarrassing since they are necessarily responding to them as purely human emotions. The prolonged and terrible curse against PoIyneices is almost impossible to stage sympathetically today; but the love that Oedipus expresses in his farewell to his daughters is almost as diffi­ cult: "Yet a single word I wipes away all that hardship—love. / You will never have as much from anyone I as you have had from me, and now you must I live out your lives deprived of me" (1615—19). As soon as Polyneices leaves, thunder is heard and flashes of lightning are seen. Oedipus commands that Theseus be sent for quickly, for he is needed in the final transition. The thunder continues until Theseus arrives at last. Oedipus explains that Theseus alone will know the secret place where he will pass underground; it will be essential for Athens' protection that the secret be kept and passed down by each prince to his successor. Then firmly, knowing exactly where he is going, Oedipus leads Theseus, his own daughters, and a small retinue into the mysterious forest. The dancers are now alone. A little later a messenger returns and tells them what happened. First, like Ajax, Oedipus took off his soiled clothes and cleansed himself. Then "Zeus of the Underworld" rumbled in thunder. This reduces the daughters to frightened tears, so Oedipus embraces them and gives them his final message of love. Then there is a sudden silence, followed by a voice that makes their hair stand on end (a sign of the "shudder"?): δ houtos, houtos, Oidipous. "Oedipus! Oedipus! Why do we delay / to go? Too long have you lingered" (1627—28). Oedipus makes 11

See Aelius Aristides (second century A.D.), "In Defense of the Four Orators" 284 Jebb, and the schol. ad loc.

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everyone except Theseus stay behind. When they turn to look, Oedipus is no longer to be seen and Theseus is shielding his eyes as if from something terrible (deinon, thus fulfilling Oedipus's prophesy, Oedipus the King 1457), something impossible to look at. Then Theseus does reverence to Earth below and to Olympian divinity above. The messenger does not know how Oedipus "died," only that there was no lightning or whirlwind. He conjectures that some god conducted him away or that the depths of dark but kindly Earth opened for him. "Without any cause for grief, without any suffering in illness [nosos, recalling Oedipus's prediction, Oedipus the King 1455] I he was taken off: if any mortal's ever was I this man's departure was a cause for wonder" (1663—65). In Oedipus the King, when Oedipus, in full possession of the truth at last, burst frantically into the palace in search of Jocasta, he moved, said the messenger, "as if someone were leading him," hos hyphegetou tinos (1260). At the climax of Oedipus at Colonus Oedipus, though he is blind and a stranger, walks to his destined end "none of his friends leading him [hyphegeteros oudenos phildn], himself the guide for all of us" (1588— 89). In the earlier play there was the suggestion of a grim divinity taking him in hand: "some divinity showed him in his frenzy" (1258); in the later play Oedipus is himself the guiding divinity. Evidently we ought to have felt a pious expectation of the eventual transfiguration even in the earlier play. As we have seen, a solemn excitement of this sort also colors our response to the Ajax, Women ofTrachis, and Philoctetes. And what of the remaining two plays? Antigone may have been the recipient of hero honors; certainly her brothers were, as we saw. The fact that her destiny was linked with that of her hero father is mentioned repeatedly in the play (Antigone 1-6, 49-58, 379-80, 5 8 3 603, and especially at 853-71). In any case the gods, through Teiresias, ratify the correctness of her interpretation of divine will. Because of what Creon had done to Antigone, Teiresias says, "the Furies of the gods and of Hades lie in wait" for him (1075). That this justice comes too late to save Antigone from a terrible pathos should not surprise us: in one way or another this happens in most of the plays. The Electra is the most difficult of the seven to interpret; still, it may be that the vision in this play is essentially like that of the other six. Aeschylus had imagined what it would be like to be a mortal victim of the Furies—a human being forced to act out terrible vengeance whether he wanted to or not. In the Oresteia Orestes is shown taking on a role that is alien and abhorrent to him. He does not even swell with a passion for his new identity as Eteocles does just before he goes off to kill his brother. But Sophocles in the Electra shows us heroes whose natures resonate completely with the appalling demands of heaven and the underworld. Furies are mentioned repeatedly in the course of the play (e.g., Ill—

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12,276,453-54,489-90,1080-81) and the audience would surely expect them to hound Orestes after he has killed his mother. Yet at the play's end they fail to appear. Suddenly we understand: the heroic pair, Orestes and Electra, are themselves the Furies incarnate on earth—just as Clytemnestra and Aegisthus had been in their time.12 The brother and sister themselves feel nothing but triumph at the parricide; but we in the audience pity them. Their pathe is not as in Aeschylus, to have been forced by divine will to do things contrary to their human impulses: their special suffering—and glory—was to have become inhuman forces in their own will.13 If this is the right way to read this puzzling play, then it is the most daring of all of Sophocles' heroic pathe. Heroes-to-be occasionally must serve the passions of the angry dead; and they themselves regularly become spirits of the angry dead after their pathos is over. But in this play the two experiences coincide. The Furies walk among the living, as in the Eumenides, but they have taken the shapes of the heroes. The result is wonderful drama but very queer theology. Still, to Socrates and his followers all of Sophocles' heroic pathe are very queer theology. 12 As Orestes, egged on by Electra, kills their mother the dancers say, "the Curses," Arai, are bringing the deed to its completion (Electra 1417). These they identify as the dead who are really alive, and they say that they are now draining blood in recompense for blood drawn long ago. For "the Curses" (Arai) as a name for the Furies (as at Electra 111—12 also), see Eumenides 417 (Arai d'en oikots ges hypai keklemetha). (The Athenians preferred to use euphemisms: see Pausanias 1.28.6 and Frazer's note.) For the Furies as blood suckers (cf. Electra 785-86), see Eumenides 183-84, 264-68, and 302. At Electra 1080 the dancers refer to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as "Twin Furies." Orestes' identification as "one of those in Hades" is underlined at Electra 1342 (see next note). At Electra 1477-78 Orestes asks Aegisthus tauntingly, haven't you noticed that you've long been wrongly equating (confusing) the living with the dead? (accepting Tyrwhitt's zontas for the zon tots of the manuscripts), i.e. that the dead are really living? It must be remembered, however, that it was possible to speak of someone as a Fury without implying a literal identification, e.g. Medea 1260. (Cf. Medea 1059 and Agamemnon 749, which may or may not imply that Helen is a Fury—although Virgil seems to have thought that it did, Aeneid 2.573.) 13 Orestes' public announcement that he is dead causes him much anguish, Electra 53— 66. It is an important element in the play, as at the agitated climax of the famous recognition scene. To be sure, the Greeks felt so strongly about death rites performed for someone incorrectly believed to be dead that Delphi required an elaborate pantomime of birth once more before such a person could take his place in society again; see Plutarch, Moralia 264 f—265 a. Cf. Hesychius, s.v. deuteropotmos (= hysteropotmos). Yet Sophocles could have avoided the whole subject had he wanted to—as the other two tragedians did. Surely his motive was to make us see Orestes as one of the dead (see previous note on Electra 1342).

19 SOPHOCLES OR SOCRATES?

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NGER AS A manifestation of divinity is hardly limited to Sophoclean hero stories. It is quite common in the world's religions. The Greeks recognized many varieties of violent divinity—Hephaestus burning, Poseidon shaking the earth, Zeus thundering, Ares raging in battle. There are also visions of Apollo punishing with his deadly arrows, the Furies driving those tainted with blood guilt into violent insanity, Dionysus inspiring women to brutal murder on a vast scale, and so on. Any of these phenomena might be imagined as a manifestation of anger. The Romans expected divinity to make itself felt as authoritative energy, nutnen, and that, too, was frequently felt as anger. Nor did the biblical religions really shake themselves free from the ancient vision of a god of wrath. Church Fathers, as Nietzsche has shown, could swell in pleasurable response at the thought of God damning his enemies for all time. Nor is this an alien pleasure today. Just before the "Hallelujah" chorus in Handel's Messiah the soloist sings, "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh them to scorn, the Lord shall have them in derision. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." When the chorus responds with "Hallellujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth," the audience, since King George first set the precedent, rises in exhilarated recognition of true religion. Nevertheless, hero religion seems to have depended on pure anger to an uncommon degree. Historically it may have been fear of the spirits of wronged kings and warriors that made this kind of religion believable. Yet the cults would hardly have become as important as they did in the imaginative lives of many fifth-century Greeks had they continued to draw their power exclusively from ancestor worship plus the fear of ghosts. By putting the emphasis on the terrible injustice that kindled the anger and kept it burning—which is the vision of the Iliad (the first tragedy, as Plato says)—Sophocles, for one, was able to transform these unpromising stories into visions capable of stirring many of the most demanding of the pious. Sophocles is described in the ancient Life as "loved by the gods as no other man," theophiles. . . hos ouk alios (see Pearson's ed. xix 12). The author illustrates the point by telling the story of the golden crown and the appearance of Heracles in Sophocles' dream. He adds other stories about Sophocles and various gods and heroes. He was also thought to be wor-

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thy of all those indications of divine favor. Sophocles, observes the scholiast writing on Electra 831, was "one of the most religious of men," heis ton theosebestaton. Indeed, in an age when so many famous men were charged with impiety, Sophocles' reputation for piety and his freedom from suspicion are conspicuous. 1 His interpretation of the sacred stories, therefore, cannot have been disturbing to the orthodox. One suspects that his reputation for being closer to the gods than most people must have arisen, in part at least, from the fact that the thrill he produced in the theater was immediately recognizable from popular religion. The extraordinary emphasis on anger may not have been just what everyone would have expected; but it must have been perceived as right nevertheless. That a Socratic would find the theology implicit in these plays profoundly, even dangerously wrong, is not to the point. The majority liked what they saw. It is not necessary to conclude that Sophocles was entirely without originality in his treatment of the cult stories. Aeschylus had not followed Homer's example in making the more than human passion of the suffering hero the main focus of the narrative. His concern was rather to make us see an overarching order that would satisfy our yearning for justice. Only in the Seven against Thebes, which does not issue in a grand vision of this sort, is the emergence of heroic rage used to stir the audience. Euripides equates frightening rage with superhuman greatness in the Medea, but we are moved even more by Medea's moments of human weakness. His Heracles also is more to be pitied than feared. Heroic anger is really Sophocles' special theme. It may be noticed that in the Seven against Thebes the destructive fury enters Eteocles from without: it is not latent in his personality so far as the audience can see. {Prometheus Bound, like the Medea, is a little different because the chief sufferer is not a hero of the usual order.) It is important to see that Sophocles' heroes are not just angry the way any of us might be angry. Nor was it enough for Sophocles that a man or a woman be one of the vengeful spirits in a hero legend. Only a special sort impressed him. In most of the plays the hero is pitted against men who act with all too human rage—Menelaus and Agamemnon in the Ajax, Creon in the Antigone, Teiresias in Oedipus the King, and so on. The more earthbound character is angry because the established order is being disturbed or his own rights and functions are being threatened. But this is the anger of one who assumes that the crisis is temporary. The distinctive Sophoclean hero, by contrast, feels himself to be the victim of an injustice so deep that it threatens his confidence in himself, mankind, and the universe. For all his differences from "Homer," Sophocles' debt to the Iliad is 1

His uniqueness in this respect can perhaps be made too much of: see Dover, "Freedom."

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obvious. The wrath of Achilles took its energy from the fact that Agamemnon's ability to implement his spite knocked the foundations away from the only life Achilles could imagine with pleasure. So also do the heroes and heroines of Sophocles come face to face with enemies, divine and human, who seem to give the lie to all that had made life good: Ajax when he understands how readily both man and god forget his excellence; Antigone presented with reality in a world run by Creon; Oedipus in his prime forced to reject his lifelong confidence in the importance of intelligence and goodwill; Electra when she thinks that Orestes, her last hope, has suffered a senseless death; Philoctetes when he believes that only the unscrupulous can survive and prosper; Heracles when he understands the fragility and meaninglessness of his might and of his divine ancestry; and the aged Oedipus faced with the incomprehension of the world, the selfishness of his sons and fellow Thebans, and the apparent cruelty of divinity. This is the kind of shock and rage that can awaken, not only the hero, but his audience—or worshipers—as well, and lift them above their dayto-day concerns. Anger of this kind can make us identify with the very excellence and morality that is being attacked. It is what Blake calls "Experience" or "Twofold Vision." It is the rage felt by Ivan Karamoazov at the thought of children being tortured. If Ivan had accepted these pitiful stories without anger, neither we nor Alyosha would have been so moved. We might contrast the anger of the humiliated Lear, when, in a storm and on the heath, he suddenly thinks for the first time of all those "poor naked wretches." This time the anger comes first and then the pity. Blake offers a third pattern in some of the "Songs of Innocence." Neither the sufferer nor the narrator appears to be angry, yet this only intensifies the anger of the reader. When rage of this sort is awakened, we move into Experience: the passion can catapult us to a higher understanding that is exhilarating, not depressing. "The tygers of wrath are wiser that the horses of instruction." The fact that the Sophoclean hero partakes both of the divine and the human makes it possible for the human worshiper to get closer than usual to the divine. The parallel with Christianity is obvious. But Christian theologians rarely interpret the anger of Christ—as in the overturning of the money-changers' tables, the withering predictions of damnation for the complacent and the unresponsive, the literal withering of the fig tree, and so on—as glimpses of his true divinity. Socrates has triumphed in Christian interpretations. But Sophocles, a contemporary and fellow citizen of Socrates, was innocent of his keen reasoning. He did not hesitate to see divinity itself in the right kind of anger. Athena, Zeus, Apollo all reveal the same elevated and elevating wrath as that of their heroic victims. It is precisely on this issue, divinity as anger, that the longest-lasting

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quarrel between "poetry" and "philosophy" has been waged, from the fifth century to the present. It is an odd kind of war today, to be sure. The idea that the universe is a dangerous, unpredictable, and unfair place is still as important as ever in serious literature and popular religion; but what Plato called "philosophy," in the form of criticism and theology, simply denies its importance. The insistence on "the wrath (orge) of God" is prominent even in the New Testament (John 3.36, Matthew 15.34—35, Romans 1.18, Ephesians 5.6, etc.); yet few are the interpreters now who are willing to leave it undisguised. The modern theologian's instinct is to dress God's anger in dark beauty, calling it mysterium tremendum or das Heilige. But in Plato's time the battle was fought openly, since most Greeks were still frank in their acceptance of divine anger. Later, in the early Christian centuries, "philosophy" had to return to the attack once more because it appeared to be so difficult to deny that Jehova was wrathful, especially in Genesis.2 To be sure, "the ancient quarrel" was never quite so clear-cut and obvious as Plato's censures of the poets make it appear. As we have seen, the justice and the injustice of divine rule are both discoverable, side by side, in the Homeric epics and in the tragedies of Aeschylus. This is so even of the plays of Sophocles, although in a very different way. Our desire for justice is not gratified (as Aristotle thought) by the various mistakes made by the Sophoclean heroes, nor by their excessive passions; it is gratified by the value that we, the audience, put on the experience of witnessing the pathos. This is the emotion that elicited such puzzled gratitude from the dancers in the Agamemnon. But the addition ot great anger, which was not a prominent feature of the pathos of Iphigeneia, nor in the response of the dancers when they brood on that event, apparently makes a difference. In Sophocles' plays divinity itself is felt in the rage. As Sophocles shows us in Oedipus at Colonus, fierce hatred is but the other side of fierce love. The great haters, Nietzsche says, are the great lovers. Love passionately enough what is good in the world and you may find that you are filled with rage against the malice, selfishness, and superficiality that seem so often to defeat the good. Sophocles saw that the pathe of certain traditional heroes could be told in such a way that their legendary anger became glimpses of "man as he ought to be." Still, it seems unlikely that Sophocles ever articulated his theology or defended it rationally. The vision implicit in "poetry" does not make much sense when it is spelled out. Rational sense is the exclusive property of "philosophy." Socrates complained that poets seem to us to be pro2 See the Introduction, n. 41 above. See esp. "The Wrath of Man and the Wrath of God in the N. T." by Stahlin, in Kittel and Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 419-47.

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found when we let ourselves by moved by their work; but when we ask them about the significance of their revelations, their attempts to explain are laughable (Apology 22 a—c). It is possible for a true poet to have a mind so fine, as Eliot said of Henry James, that it is never violated by an idea. (See his memorial tribute to James—"the most intelligent man of his generation.") 3 "We are apt to be deluded by the example of Dante," Eliot says in another essay.4 "Dante has a philosophy, therefore every poet as great as Dante has a philosophy too . . . I can see no reason for believing that either Dante or Shakespeare did any thinking on his own." Nor do we judge Shakespeare to be the inferior of the two, he points out, just because the borrowed philosophy incorporated in his plays is inferior to Dante's Thomism. Carlyle went to the opposite extreme: "If called to define Shakespeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all in that." 5 It depends on the way one defines "thought" and "intellect," of course. If a fool is a person who cannot comprehend an experience unless he has undergone it himself (pathdn de te nepios egtto), a wise person is one who can comprehend untried experiences, brilliantly, effortlessly, and with great accuracy, even when the imagined role is very remote from his own situation. On this definition Shakespeare and Sophocles are both giants of intellect. If, however, we judge a person's intellect by his possession of minutely defensible theories about life, divinity, morality, and so forth, then neither is a thinker of note. "The people who think that Shakespeare thought," says Eliot," are always people who are not engaged in writing poetry, but who are engaged in thinking, and we all like to think that great men were like ourselves." In Sophocles' time, however, there were thinkers who were not fooled. Socrates knew that the "thought" of Sophocles was woefully inadequate. Sophocles was not one of those poets who composes almost unconsciously and is never able to talk about his art. As we have seen, he accused Aeschylus of having composed while drunk, "for even if he wrote what was required, he did not do so from conscious knowledge," eidos ge.6 The implication is that Sophocles himself did compose with conscious control. The Suda says that Sophocles wrote a book, in prose (kata3

T. S. Eliot, "Tribute to Henry James," The Egoist 5 (January 1918). See F. O. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot3 (New York, 1959), 8-9, 24. Eliot meant it as praise. 4 T. S. Ehot, "Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca," in Selected Essays (New York, 1932), 107-20. 5 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History: Six Lectures (London, 1841), lecture 3. 6 At Athenaeus 428 a, Sophocles is cited as the ultimate source. See also Plutarch at Stobaeus 3.1833 and Athenaeus 22 a—b (where Chamaeleon is given credit). See Radt, Test. 52.

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logaden), called "On the Chorus." Since phrases like "to grant a chorus" meant to grant the poet what he needed in order to stage his tragedies, this book probably treated the whole art of composing and staging dramas. The contrast between his own artistic control and Aeschylus's more intuitive methods may have come from this book, also the contrast, cited by Aristotle, between his own greater than human heroes and Euripides' more realistic sufferers. If the poet's careful description of the stages by which he learned "to make a joke" of the massiveness and artificiality of Aeschylean poetry also comes from this book, it may have been the inspiration for Aristophanes' brilliant scene in the Frogs in which Aeschylus and Euripides take turns weighing a line from one of his own plays—ponderous old Aeschylus winning every time, of course. We know that Sophocles formed a thiasos, a religious fraternity, that was devoted to the Muses. The members, say Istrus, were drawn "from the educated." (We might compare Weber's Harmonische Verein or Schumann's Davidsbund.) But it is entirely possible nevertheless that Sophocles never raised the larger moral and theological issues that so interested Socrates in his attacks on tragedy. The Athenians thought Sophocles an unusually capable man; that is clear. They appointed him to various dignified public offices. Some of these were merely ceremonial, perhaps; but he was a treasurer of the imperial tribute in 436, he conducted important embassies, and he even led an army. According to Aristophanes of Byzantium, he was selected as one of the year's ten generals in 440 "out of admiration for his production of the Antigone" (first synopsis of the Antigone 17-18). This always astonishes modern readers. There are few parallels: Rubens and Velasquez were much valued by their princes for their advice and tact; in modern times Yeats was made a senator, Saint-John Perse and Pablo Neruda were given important posts in the foreign service; in 1919 Poland made the pianist Paderewski its Premier and Foreign Minister; and in 1989 Czechoslovakia made the playwright Vaclav Havel its president. But there is nothing quite like this event in the life of Sophocles: a popular democracy electing a poet to a generalship out of admiration for one of his plays. To be sure, the Antigone is full of sharply argued controversies that concern religion, politics, and morality; and the audience may well have been deeply pleased by what they took to be the poet's bias in the play— for democracy in preference to tyranny, for instance, or conscience and family in preference to political pragmatism. But what Aristophanes of Byzantium said was that the Athenians admired the "production" of the drama, its didaskalia—a technical term for putting on a tragedy and making it work. It should be remembered that the Greek dramatic poet not only composed the plot, poetry, music, and choreography; he also trained and directed the actors and dancers, and even devised the scenery and

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costumes (cf. Athenaeus 22 dff.). It may have been the total effect of the play, then, that made the Athenians conclude that here indeed was a man who could carry anything off with wonderful success, no matter how important and complex. It was sensible of the Athenians to give him a try, anyhow. To be as consistently and spectacularly successful as Sophocles was in staging events that required the coordination of as many rare skills as are involved in Greek tragedy (three tragedies and one satyr play all in one day), suggests a high order of practical ability and control. That the Athenians were wrong, however, is well known. It is the burden of several famous anecdotes. The most valuable by far, since it also gives us a vivid account of the poet talking about poetry, is the story of an evening with Sophocles preserved in the words of a fellow poet, Ion of Chios. Although he was not an Athenian, Ion nevertheless competed— successfully—in the tragic contests in Athens. He also wrote memoirs in prose, a long passage from which has been preserved (Athenaeus 603 eff.). The dialect of the passage makes it certain that it is a direct quotation. Ion says that he met Sophocles when the latter came to Chios as one of the Athenian generals. This was the Samian war of 440, we assume. When he had been drinking, Ion says, Sophocles tended to be "boyish" and playful, also clever and witty (dexios). Ion describes a dinner party at which he himself was present, perhaps as host. The boy who was serving the wine was exceptionally good looking, says Ion, and he was rather flushed by the heat of the fire near which he stood. Sophocles was visibly agitated. He asked the boy if he would like him to enjoy his wine. When the boy said yes, Sophocles told him that he should linger a bit, then, whenever he came to refill his cup—which caused the boy to turn an even deeper red. Sophocles remarked to the guest next to him on the excellence of Phrynichus's line, "The light of desire shone on his vermillion cheeks." But this neighbor was a teacher of literature and begged to differ with Sophocles. You may be a fine poet, he said, but you are wrong to praise that verse. Consider the awful effect a sculptor would create if he actually put vermillion cheeks on the statue of a boy. (The Greeks painted their statues realistically). Sophocles burst into laughter: the whole of Greece, he said, admires Simonides' line, "the girl let out a cry from her vermillion lips," yet you would have to condemn it! You would also reject the line "golden-haired Apollo," since actual gold on the hair of the god's statue would ruin it. And you would even object to Homer's "rosy-fingered Dawn" on the grounds that a woman who dipped her fingers in red paint would have the hands, not of a beautiful woman, but of a vermillion dyer! The company laughed, says Ion, and Sophocles' neighbor was crushed by this drubbing. Sophocles then returned to his conversation with the wine boy, who

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was now trying to remove a speck from the poet's cup with the tip of his little finger. Sophocles suggested that he blow it out instead and showed him where it was. As the boy brought his mouth to the cup (puckered ready to blow), Sophocles brought the cup closer to his own mouth. When their heads were almost touching Sophocles encircled the startled boy with his arm and kissed him. The company laughed happily and applauded the poet's clever maneuver. Sophocles then announced, "I'm practicing my generalship!" He explained that Pericles had once said to him (in effect), "As a general, Sophocles, you're an excellent poet." Ion ends his reminiscence with the remark, "with such cleverness (dexios) did he speak and act when he drank and played around. In his services to the state, however, he was neither wise nor especially effective"—like one of the best of the Athenians, no more. Ion presumably composed this memoir after Sophocles' death. The ancient Life and the Etymologicum Magnum (256.6, Radt, Test. 69) say that after he died Sophocles was revered as a hero under the title Dexion, "the Receiver" (because he had "received" the god of health, perhaps as a snake, into his own home when his new shrine was not ready for him). It is possible that Ion's use of dexios and dexios were intended as puns on his hero name. But even if we rule this out, Ion's assessment of Sophocles as a great man is not very flattering. The severe judgment by Pericles is corroborated by an anecdote preserved by Plutarch and Cicero (Pericles 8.8, De officiis 1.40.144, Radt, Test. 74a-e). The Athenian generals, who that year included both Sophocles and Pericles, were in a serious conference one day when a particularly handsome boy went by. Sophocles remarked on the boy's extreme beauty; which drew from Pericles the rebuke, "Sophocles, a general must keep not only his hands but even his eyes untainted." The ancients remembered Sophocles as an urbane and happy man who was also rather weak, a slave to sexual gratification to an unusual degree. In Republic I Plato has old Cephalus repeat admiringly the aged Sophocles' response to the question whether he was still able to make love with women. The answer was an emphatic no and an expression of great satisfaction that he had at last escaped that tyranny. A boy once went off with Sophocles' cloak after they had made love on the grass (Hieronymus of Rhodes, quoted by Athenaeus, 604 d 4, Radt, 75.3ff.). The poet's humiliation became known to everybody because he had to slink back into the city in the boy's smaller, cheaper cloak. Euripides remarked, if we may believe the anecdote, that Sophocles had been treated with contempt because of his lack of moral strength, dia ten akolasian. We have a fourline poem Sophocles is supposed to have written in reply to Euripides. "It was the sun god who stripped me of my cloak," he says, referring to Aesop's fable about the contest between the sun and the north wind to see

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which would be the first to get a man's cloak off his back. When Euripides slept with another man's wife, Sophocles suggests, the act was presided over by the north wind, since Eros himself was thereby implicated in a foul crime (frag. 4 West). There are a number of anecdotes that stress the ridiculousness of an aging poet helpless before the charms of women and boys. Athenaeus attributes to Sophocles a hexameter prayer to Aphrodite: he begs the goddess to make a certain woman reject the love of youth and notice instead old men, who, though blunted in strength, are vigorous still in will (592 a, where it is noted that the prayer was in fact attributed to Homer by some). The gossips never wearied of pointing out that Sophocles, great and famous poet though he was and conspicuously loved by the gods, was no hero to the boys and women whom he admired and pursued. One prostitute described her life with him as that of an owl sitting on a tomb (Athenaeus 592 b, where the remark is actually attributed not to the prostitute but to one of her other lovers). Machon, a comic poet of the third century B.C., has a conversation between a boy who was a favorite of Sophocles and a prostitute with whom the boy sought his own pleasure (422-32 Gow). The prostitute had a much-admired bottom and the boy asked her if he might make love to her that way. She laughed and said, sure: I give it to you, then you pass it along to Sophocles. The question of wisdom to be found in Sophocles' tragedies is not affected by such anecdotes, of course; but these stories may at least keep us from making facile inferences from the poet's reputation for unusual piety. He was clearly not a saintly, remote, or otherworldly man who lived on a higher plane than the rest of us. He was witty, urbane, capable of making fun of himself, a man who very much enjoyed his worldly success. He was also remarkably lucky in his life, which is the biographical fact that has caused the most trouble. Sophocles' plays have been read for centuries as the works of a pious and serene man. Let us look closely at the basis for this assumption. The Greeks praised a person for being happy. It was more than congratulating him, as we might do, for being free of serious neuroses and able therefore to love and work; it was praise for achieving a rewarding relation with divinity. In the fifth century, as in Homer's world, to say that the gods were with a man was to bestow on him the highest possible compliment. And the most common word for happiness literally meant just that—divinity is with him. Therefore the fact that Sophocles, like Socrates, had achieved enviable peace and contentment would tend to be taken as evidence that his vision of morality and divinity must be profoundly right. After paganism had been replaced by the biblical religions, there was no longer any temptation to interpret the serenity as proof that the gods ratified his wisdom; yet that fame for happiness was not simply dismissed as

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of no consequence. In the Renaissance and a long time thereafter the plays of Sophocles were seen as models of "classical" calm and control. The idea that an Apollonian nobility characterized his plots and portraits, and that an ideal "stillness" informed his poetry, was a long time dying. Critics as shrewd as Winckelmann, Herder, and Lessing looked at the contortions and realism of the Laocoon and saw only the "motionless depths of the ocean," which could not be disturbed by the violence of the stormtossed surface. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that until very recently readers looked right at the violence and anger infusing the tragedies of Sophocles and saw only pious affirmation of the goodness of divinity. But there is no doubt that the poet's ancient reputation for extraordinary happiness compounded the problem in his case. A Greek, unlike ourselves, might conclude that someone who had everything—looks, health, longevity, fame, luck, and unconquerable high spirits—must be unusually close to the gods. Sophocles had all of these things. He was exceptionally beautiful as a youth. After the great victory over the Persians in 480 he was chosen to lead the boys' dance around the trophy, lyre in hand. He would have been about sixteen. One source says that he wore a cloak, but he is usually said to have been naked (cf. the ancient Life, par. 3, and Athenaeus 20 e—f, Radt, Test. 28). He was exceptionally accomplished in the dance, as a musician, and in athletics, and had the good fortune to have famous instructors in all of these skills. As we have seen, he was admitted to the dramatic competitions when he was still in his twenties, and he defeated Aeschylus in his first try. In later years Sophocles' plays were almost always accepted for the competitions and won prizes regularly, first prize perhaps as much as half the time. He was a celebrity and was honored by his fellow citizens in many ways. The poet's close association with the god of health may mean that he himself enjoyed magically good health year after year, even during the plague. His creativity never slowed down; he wrote more than a hundred and twenty plays and various other works in verse and prose, and his last play is one of his very greatest. He suffered no serious reverses and died ninety years old without having to witness the final humiliation of Athens at the hands of the Spartans. This last point is important, because the Greeks put an almost morbid emphasis on the manner of a person's death when they assessed the degree to which he was favored by the gods. The comic poet Phrynichus, writing in the year of Sophocles' death, saluted the poet for his happiness: "Happy Sophocles, who died after a very long life, I a happy man [eudaimdn, favored by divinity], an able man dexios, I who wrote many beautiful tragedies I and died well because he had not lingered for the catastrophe" (second hypothesis of the Oedipus at Colonus). Aristophanes, also writing just after the poet's death, made Dionysus

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characterize Sophocles in this famous line: "he was contented [eukolos] here and is contented there"—that is, in the afterworld (Frogs 82). The adjective eukolos means literally "of good digestion"; it is the opposite of dyskolos, "grumpy," "hard to please." It can mean more than "contented" or "easygoing," but not much more. Dionysus uses the word to explain to Heracles why Sophocles, unlike Euripides, also newly dead, would probably not even be interested in returning to life from Hades. (It is reasonably certain, Samuel Butler notwithstanding, that Sophocles was not included in the underworld contest in the Frogs primarily because he was still on his deathbed when Aristophanes began work on the play.) 7 Eukolos eventually came to be attached to Sophocles as firmly as setnnotes, "religious dignity," was attached to the tone of Aeschylus's dramas. Plato has Cephalus use the word in his praise of Sophocles' equanimity in old age. Sophocles was right, he says; character (tropos) is everything: "if men are free of inner discord[&oszrao(] and are eukoloi, even old age will be a tolerable burden" {Republic 1.329 d 3—5). When the word is used again of the easygoing manner in which Socrates drank the hemlock, we may suspect that there was a kind of rivalry seen in the two men's respective claims to have achieved perfect happiness (Phaedo 117 c 4). In Sophocles' case it was a matter of charm. "His character (ethos) was so pleasing," says the ancient Life, "that he was liked everywhere by everyone." (That could hardly be said of Socrates.) There was probably an implicit contrast between the gregariousness and sunny dispostion of Sophocles and the less winning personality of Euripides, who was said to be a loner and a brooder. It is the kind of trait that ought not to be given any weight at all when we assess a poet's wisdom. But this reputation has in fact had its effect on readers' attitudes toward the theodicy implicit in the plays. Surely, it is thought, he must have been pious in the most ordinary sense. The ancients went much further: Sophocles was a holy man. Dionysus himself, they said, ordered the Spartan general besieging Athens to permit Sophocles to be buried in his ancestral tomb outside the walls (Pausanias 1.21.2; also the ancient Life—see Pearson xx 15 and cf. Radt, Test. 70— 71). A hymn to the god of health sung many centuries after the poet's death was nevertheless attributed to him. Eventually he was listed as one of those who had been able to summon divinity to help his countrymen in an hour of need: he was given credit for having cast a spell on winds that were unseasonably strong. 8 He had become a revered hero despite the absence of a pathos in his life—indeed, because there was no pathos. 7 8

See K. J. Dover, Aristopbamc Comedy (London, 1972), 180-81. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.17 (Radt, Test. 73a) and 8.7 (Radt, Test.

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There are not very many parallels for this attribution of extreme holiness. We might instance Empedocles or Pythagoras; but we know of this aspect of Empedocles only from his own claims, and Pythagoras disappeared into myth so quickly that we have no sense of him as a man. Or we might think of Socrates. If we may accept Plato's judgment, Socrates was indeed a saintly, otherworldly man, in touch with divinity in a very special way. Yet Socrates' claim to a divine voice was apparently the source of suspicion and annoyance in his lifetime (see esp. Euthyphro 3 b 1-7). As for the Delphic response confirming the superiority of Socrates' wisdom over that of all mankind, this was introduced into his trial for impiety (according to Plato) as a story quite unknown to the Athenian public. Socrates could do nothing right, it seems. His interest in seeking out bright young men in the marketplace and the gymnasia was thought to be prurient and ridiculous; he was widely believed to be the lover of the notorious Alcibiades; it was assumed that he was behind the dangerous wave of hostility both to democracy and to traditional piety. Plato has Alcibiades himself confess to having misinterpreted Socrates' spirituality. Nor was he the only member of Socrates' circle who was an embarrassment. There was also Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants. Critias later turned against Socrates for having publicly humiliated him. Socrates disapproved of Critias's slavish love for a boy. Critias, he said—in the boy's presence—could no more stay away from the boy than a pig could stop scratching its back against a stone (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.30ff.). As a consequence Critias promoted a law to stop Socrates from philosophizing. Yet the democratic party in Athens nevertheless continued to assume the worst. Socrates had created Critias and the other enemies of the democracy. It was not until well after his death that Socrates acquired a universal reputation for piety like that enjoyed by Sophocles even in his lifetime. To be sure, Socrates was not born saintly. Cicero preserves the story of a visit to the Socratic circle by a famous physiognomist, one who reads moral character in facial characteristics (Tusculan Disputations 4.27.80). When the physiognomist detected strong lusts and vices in Socrates' face, the disciples laughed at his absurd mistake. Socrates, however, defended the physiognomist. The unruly passions were indeed exceptionally strong in him, he insisted, but they had long since been made completely subservient to the passion of intelligence. And Plato, too, admits that as a youth Socrates enjoyed quite ordinary pleasures of the body (Symposium 211 d 3-8). But in his later years, Plato insists, Socrates' banter about his weak166); Philostratus the Younger, Imagines 13 (Radt, Test. 174); Lucian, In Praise of Demosthenes 27 (Radt, Test. 73b).

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ness for good-looking youths and his good-natured acquiescence to the gossip about his infatuation with Alcibiades were all part of a game. Socrates now belonged to a higher level of reality and was only a temporary visitor in our ordinary world. He was full of irony and good humor toward his benighted fellow citizens and only occasionally objected openly to the role everyone expected him to play. Nevertheless most Athenians continued to think the worst of him. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Athenians were a bit obtuse or trivial, overlooking as they did the genuinely otherworldly strength of the notoriously ugly Socrates and being so impressed by the affability and glowing happiness of the handsome Sophocles. Not that we do not also honor looks, charm, serenity, and success: in America the conjunction of these gifts almost qualifies a man for the presidency. Only very rarely, however, do we permit such considerations to affect our admiration for a poet. (Byron was an obvious exception.) It is a minor scandal, therefore, that learned classicists—Jaeger, Opstelten, Ehrenberg, and Schadewaldt among others—should permit the glow of Sophocles' famed blessedness to influence their response to his plays. Three general observations may be made. First, the greatness of Sophocles' plays is a fact apart. They are among the finest in the world, in craftsmanship, delicate human sympathy, and in their power to give us a somber gratification of a rare and valuable kind. Second, this gratification, though kindred to an experience for which many religions are also valued, cannot be reconciled with a rational theology of the Platonic sort and was in fact the main target of Plato's attack on the poetic tradition. (There is no evidence that Sophocles defended the religious vision he exploited—a thing that would be difficult to do in any case. Unlike Aeschylus, Sophocles does not appear to have advocated theological ideas of his own.) Finally, the poet's famous amiability and contentment with the established religion—evidence of a temperament that is the polar opposite of that which he gives to his great heroes—cannot help us very much in our attempt to analyze and assess the religious vision that functions in his plays. (Like most poets, Sophocles could probably explain and defend his art more convincingly than he could the philosophical significance of his art.) The character and happiness of Sophocles during his lifetime is obviously of little interest when we evaluate his plays. The same is not true, however, when we attempt to assess the achievement of Socrates. A defense of Socratic philosophy would indeed include an examination of the claim that the philosopher himself was deeply and unshakably happy. The fact that Socrates, unlike Sophocles, was the victim of a pathos, in the sense of a radically unjust death, makes the necessity all the greater. We are impressed or unimpressed by the good news of Platonism accord-

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ing to our willingness or unwillingness to believe that Socrates really had discovered that reality—what really counts—is beautiful, attainable, and cannot be taken away from us by time, enemies, bad luck, or even death, not even by an unjust death. Socrates was publicly tried, found to be the least worthy of all the citizens, and asked to kill himself by swallowing poison, although he was, according to his friends, not the worst, but the best of the Athenians of his time. When the verdict was passed on him, however, his happiness, according to Plato, was entirely undiminished. How marvelous it will be, he says, if the poets turn out to be right and we go to Hades after death: I shall be able to compare "my own pathos with the pathe of others," like Palamedes and Ajax. What could be more delightful? Xenophon, who was not in Greece at the time of Socrates' trial, heard later when he returned that Socrates had been disastrously pugnacious and that this was why he was sentenced to death instead of being sent into exile or acquitted outright. Xenophon concluded loyally (Xenophon's Apology ad init.) that Socrates must have wanted it this way—in order to avoid the ills of extreme old age that would soon be upon him. Plato, however, who was at the trial and with Socrates in the final days {Apology 38 b)—although he was ill on the day of execution (Phaedo 59 b)—gives us a different interpretation. Socrates really believed what he had always taught: that good men are happy whatever they may experience at the hands of less good men, and that death is not an evil but a freeing of the true self from the degrading body. Had Socrates done what the court wanted—admitted that he was wrong, pleaded for mercy, and agreed to hold his tongue in the future—the jurors would no doubt have been content with exile (see Apology 37c 5); but that would have been a life purchased as the cost of a true evil:a falsehood in itself and a betrayal of Socrates' mission to mankind. "Perhaps," says Socrates, "someone will say, 'Well, Socrates, aren't you ashamed to have so conducted your life that you are now in danger of being put to death?' " {Apology 28 b—c). He says that he would reply to such a taunt that his case is just like that of Achilles: both refused to subordinate everything to the esteem of their fellow countrymen, and that is why they went down. The heroes were regularly in the right in their pathe: if their defeats are not now used as evidence to prove that they had been wrong, why should his troubles be interpreted in this way? But in fact his case was different from theirs in one respect. The heroes raged in bitterness; he himself experienced no diminution at all in his perfect happiness. As we have seen, Plato usually has Socrates condemn the heroic pathe of the poetic tradition as an impossibility. If the heroes were truly good they were not suffering; if they were really suffering they cannot

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have been truly good. The pathos of Socrates gave the lie to all the other pathe. On the day of his trial and conviction Socrates experienced an unprecedented and exhilarating release from the nagging "sign" that had reined him in many times a day every day of his life. As we have seen, he took this as proof that divinity entirely approved of his conduct and his fate. On the day of the execution itself, he had one last serene and joyous philosophical conversation, scoffed at the suggestion that he wait until the last minute to drink the poison, and made a joke about the hemlock as the executioner handed it to him {Phaedo 117 b). He screwed up his face and looked up at the jailor in mock ferocity—a characteristic expression— and asked, Tell me, sir, is it the done thing to pour a libation with this stuff? The jailor answered, sadly, that they prepare only enough to do the job. Socrates' last words were a request to his oldest friend that a sacrifice be offered to the god of health. One vows a sacrifice of this sort when one is ill and fulfills the vow when one recovers. The implication is that Socrates, far from going down in defeat, was now about to be freer than ever in the life of the intellect. His mental self was about to be cured of the morbid state called "life." Plato has an eyewitness say that Socrates went away to bathe himself and dress for the next world—like Ajax and Oedipus. When he returned he made a confident prayer to the gods that his passage to the next world be a lucky one. He then drank the poison, without a hint of distaste and in good spirits, eukolos. Up to that point, the witness says, most of those present had been reasonably successful in holding back their tears; but when they saw him drink, when they saw that he had actually drunk it, they broke down. He himself, says the narrator, cried profusely despite himself, covering his head to conceal the fact. He explains that he was crying for himself, not for Socrates: he was overwhelmed by the greatness of the friend he was being deprived of. Another disciple, unable to hold back his tears, left the room. Another had been weeping quietly all along and now burst into loud mourning. Then everyone broke down. Socrates is astounded and very displeased. They are instantly ashamed and regain control of themselves. Socrates then does what he has been told he must do in order to hasten the action of the poison. Finally his oldest friend sees that his eyes are fixed, so he closes both eyes and mouth. Thus died, says the narrator, "the best, most intelligent, most just man" of his time. In Republic II, as we have seen, Plato says that the suffering in the pathe shown us by the poets may be genuine, but there must be no true injustice. Either the suffering is the inevitable consequence of the sufferer's foolishness or the gods have sent it in order to improve his character of understanding (380 a—b). In the Phaedo Plato offers an equally radical revision of the traditional pathos: the injustice is genuine, but the victim, because

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he is good, does not really suffer. As Plato has Socrates explain near the end of the Apology, the conviction and execution are rewards, not punishment; they show the vigilance and justice of divinity, not its neglect or cruelty. Socrates is not angry at those who voted his condemnation or even at his accusers, "although they accused me in the belief that they were injuring me, not because they really understood that I was being benefited—and for this I do hold them deserving of blame" (41 d 6-9). It is only because they are ignorant. It is they, therefore, who deserve our pity, not their victim. Socrates had found a serenity, Plato thought, that had changed history.

20 EURIPIDES AGAINST THE MYTHS

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HE "ANCIENT QUARREL" was not limited to poets and philosophers in the fifth century. Even history might be narrated in such a way that the historian appears to be taking a stand in the "quarrel." Thucydides moves us by a narrative of the last days of Nicias. He gives us details calculated to make us deeply regret his execution. We hate the callous men who ordered it after promising that they would not do so. We pity the good Nicias, however exasperated we may have been earlier by his caution and uncertain judgment. The story ends with a summary not unlike the one that Plato gives the narrator at the end of the Phaedo. "It was for this reason, or something very like it, that he was put to death—a man who, more than any Greek of my time, did not deserve to end in such extreme misfortune, for he had devoted himself to the practice of every excellence" (7.86.5). The gods are not mentioned. Or are they? In the matter of the eclipse, Nicias was seen to have faltered, not despite his piety, but because of it. Thucydides appears to have substituted Nicias's ungrounded faith in divinity for actual interference from real gods. In any case, when a story resembles one of the traditional pathe closely enough, theological questions are raised automatically.1

Like Thucydides, Euripides, too, raised questions about the traditional religious beliefs in the very way he told his stories. By so doing, he seems to have stirred serious controversies. (We do not know how Thucydides was received.) The raw material for Euripides' plays, of course, was the traditional holy stories, the "myths" about heroes and gods; theological questions were therefore closer to the surface than they were in the historian's narrative. But Euripides was hardly more direct than Thucydides. He made it very difficult, in fact, to figure out which side he was on. Aristotle calls Euripides "the most purely tragic" of the dramatists (Poetics 1453 a 29). From the context we conclude that he was referring, above all, to Euripides' use of bleak, unhappy endings, narratives that end in suffering that is not only unmerited but also uncompensated for in any truly convincing way. In this respect, it is quite true, Euripides often went further than either Aeschylus or Sophocles in his exploitation of "poetry." Still, Euripides was as angry about the difficult moral implications 1 Which is not to say that I would endorse Cornford's elaborate theory in Thucydides Mythistoricus (London, 1907).

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in such stories as any of the philosophers. He misses few opportunities to emphasize the grotesque features of many of the revered mythoi, especially when a sequence of events can be so told as to throw doubt on the intelligence and moral excellence of the gods. Like Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Protagoras, and Socrates, Euripides forces us to look at the mythological tradition from the outside and demand answers to searching questions concerning the claim that they are full of truth and true religion. His opponents were all those who confidently rewrote the mythoi, pruning, suppressing, interpreting, squaring them with sense and piety: Homer, Hesiod, and, above all, Aeschylus. As we have seen, Aeschylus boldly rewrote the history of the Delphic oracle in order to make the pathos of Orestes the all-important crisis between masculine and feminine divinity. There were well-known versions of the much loved myths that were simply false, and it was the poet's duty to weed them out—even when reason, not scholarly research, was the tool he had to use in order to find the right version. To be sure, reason had to be shown to be ratified by some other detail in tradition. When Aeschylus has the Pythian priestess say that the oracle was handed down from Earth to Themis to Phoebe (who took her place "with Themis's consent and without violence to anyone"), he makes the story into an etiological myth: Phoebe presented the oracle to Apollo on the occasion of his birth—and that is how Apollo came to be called "Phoebus." There was nothing Aeschylus could do with the Python story, however, and so, in the fashion of Homer and other older poets, he was simply silent about the embarrassing detail. Euripides appears to mock the entire procedure. In Iphigeneia among the Taurians he tells this very same mythos, but he does so in such a way as to ridicule all attempts to make this famous story the carrier of profound insights. He deliberately refuses to rewrite it. Instead, he savors the crudities and absurdities of the unedited story. The newborn Apollo, according to the dancers, was carried in his mother's arms to Delphi, "where a speckle-backed I wine-faced snake, I bronze, covered in the shady, I leafy, laurel, I monstrous beast of Earth, guarded Earth's oracle: I you, still a baby, still a baby, still in your dear I mother's arms, leaped, I leaped and killed it, Phoebus, then you mounted the oracular place . . ." (1245-51, with several textual uncertainties). But more violence was required, the dancers say, because Themis, Earth's daughter, had to be forcibly removed from her ancient center of power. "Earth gave birth to nocturnal dream phantasies." In revenge for the violence done to Themis, Earth snatched the office of female oracle back from Apollo. So "Apollo rushed to Olympus I and clung with his childish fingers I to the throne of Zeus I and begged that the wrath of the goddess be removed from his Pythian home. / Zeus roared with delight that his son / had moved so

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swiftly to secure an assignment that would bring in so much gold. I He nodded in approval—that night-oracles would stop . . . and gave the privilege back to Apollo" (1262-80). Euripides was a connoisseur of myths and had done his homework carefully. The Python is said to be a she-snake in the Homeric hymn to Apollo (300-374); but Plutarch, a Delphic priest himself (in the time of Hadrian), speaks of it as male (Moralia 293 c). Euripides appears to know both traditions: he deftly chooses compound adjectives that could have identical endings for the masculine and feminine, and uses a neuter noun, teras, "monster." Euripides plays his version of the mythos against that in the Oresteia. He refers to Aeschylus's interpretation quite openly, in fact. He has Orestes refer to events in the Eumenides—in a mischievously altered version. He has him report that some of the Furies had been persuaded by Athena at the famous trial, but that the rest had declared her plan to be unfair (968-75). Worse yet, a barbarian witness to an attack of the Furies against Orestes assures us that Orestes and Pylades had merely been misinterpreting the mooing of his cows and the barking of his dogs (281-94). The implication is that the great Aeschylean pageant on the Aeropagus may have been a huge illusion—or an arbitrary invention by Aeschylus. Euripides also has Orestes complain to Pylades that Apollo had boldly lied to him at Delphi, and that the god had then resorted to trickery in order to get Orestes as far from Greece as possible—in shame over his earlier oracular promises. This was the god "to whom I had given everything I had," he says, "whom I had obeyed— / killing my own mother! And now I am myself destroyed as a reward" (714—15). Pylades blandly replies, "You shall have a tomb," meaning that he, Pylades, will establish hero honors for his friend once he is dead. He also promises that he will marry his friend's sister, Electra. "And so, poor man, I shall I hold you dearer then than I do while you live" (716—18). To be sure, the play ends in a thrilling, last-minute rescue, so members of the audience are free to tell themselves that Orestes and Pylades need not have been so pessimistic about the justice and effectiveness of the gods. That is how Aristotle read the play.2 But Euripides is quite capable of tacking on a miraculous happy ending in cruel mockery of the audience's desires—in the spirit of John Gay at the end of The Beggar's 1

Also many modern interpreters, e.g. A. P. Burnett, Catastrophe Survived: Euripides' Plays of Mixed Reversals (Oxford, 1971): "Orestes has recognized his sister and, through her, the true nature of Apollo." "In him the recognition has wrought a physical and spiritual transformation. . . . His resentment of the god has turned to gratitude" (p. 58). On the role of chance in this play: "The final accident allows [Euripides] to maintain the scale of his portrait of humanity almost undiminished, while he yet concludes his piece with a demonstration of the power of the gods" (p. 68).

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Opera, or better yet, Brecht's bitter adaptation of that scene in Die Dreigroschenoper. The most spectacular example of such an ending in Euripides' surviving plays occurs in the Orestes. After engineering an impasse that can end only in multiple murders quite unknown to the tradition, Euripides has Apollo appear suddenly. In glaring contradiction to the realities we have just witnessed, the god calmly parcels out the dignified destinies promised in the ancient mythoi.3 Nor does Euripides always resort to indirection when he wishes us to see the questionable morality of a god in one of the old stories. At the end of the Ion Athena appears instead of the expected Apollo (the scene is Delphi and the play concerns Apollo's son, Ion) and announces that Apollo did not want to come, out of shame for having raped Creusa, Ion's mother. At the end of the Electra the Dioscuri appear and explain that Apollo, whose authority they cannot question, nevertheless ought not to have ordered Orestes to kill his mother: "that oracle was not up to his usual wisdom" (1246). If Euripides had dramatized the mythos of Abraham and Isaac, he might well have had Isaac, after his miraculous salvation, question his father closely about a god who was delighted by a mortal father's willingness to kill his own son. Had he dramatized Christ's pathos he might have included a lively conversation between the son and his omnipotent father concerning the latter's extraordinary choice among the infinite ways open to him to cancel man's Adamic guilt. In one of his lost plays Euripides has Bellerophon say, "if the gods do something shameful they are not gods" (frag. 292.7 Nauck). The line is quoted with approval by Plutarch, who takes it to be a pious sentiment (Moralia 21a). Plutarch was a Platonist and therefore insisted that divinity was unfailingly just and noble. He does not see Euripides as an innovator but as a true conservative, like himself. Like almost all religious reformers, the Socratic philosophers assumed that they were merely restoring a corrupt tradition to its original, uncorrupted form. They were quite clear who the corrupters were: Homer, Hesiod, and Aeschylus, poets who reworked and tried to make respectable mythoi that actually could not be salvaged by such tinkering. What put a myth beyond usefulness, as we have seen, was the attribution of immoral behavior to the gods. It is not at all surprising that a complaint like that made by Euripides' Bellerophon should be taken as a battle cry for "philosophy" in its 3 Kurt von Fritz, in his interpretation of the peculiar ending to the Alcestis, Antike und moderne Tragodie, 312, argues that "Wenn . . . Euripides mit hilfe eines deus ex machina ein kunsthches happy end an eine Trgaodie ausetzt . . . , wird der {Contrast zwischen dem 'idealistischen' Optimismus des Marchen und dem schniedenden Realismus . . . viel scharfer sichtbar, als wenn er den iiberlieferten Ausgang geandert hatte."

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centuries-long struggle against these latter-day corrupters of original truth. 4 The idea that a pre-Homeric interpretation of the gods was still recoverable did not seem fantastic to the Greeks. "The generation of each of the gods," says Herodotus, "whether or not they had all existed forever, what they are like in appearance: these are all things that the Greeks knew nothing about until just the other day, as it were; for I believe that Homer and Hesiod lived only four hundred years before me—no more—and it was they who gave the Greeks the gods' genealogies, assigned them their epithets, and explained their spheres of influence, their special skills, and their distinctive appearances" (2.53). To be sure, behind Homer there lay generations of bardic singers who cannot have had a vision radically different from Homer's in every way; yet the importance of these two great interpreters of the mythoi may have been very great nevertheless. The clear historical sense found in their narratives, especially Homer's, is not what we find in genuinely primitive mythologies, as modern anthropologists have shown. 5 Herodotus makes it clear that there were two parallel strains in the religion of his own day: the vivid, historically ordered Olympus made popular by Homer (and possibly also by the bardic tradition from which the epic poems grew), but also a more timeless body of mythoi, visions 4

The garland seller in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae complains that her income has been cut in half since Euripides persuaded men, by means of his tragedies, to believe that there are no gods: en taism tragoidiais poion I tous andras anapepeiken ouk etnai theous, 450—51. For that alone he deserves to die, she says, and the dancers agree. It is probable that Aristophanes is exaggerating wildly; nevertheless, it is not impossible that some Athenians interpreted Euripides' program in this way. Plutarch's assumption, however, that Euripides was siding with "philosophy" against "poetry," that he was not rejecting the existence of divinity but urging a rational theology, is surely closer to the truth. Heracles' bitter rejection of the "disastrous stories repeated by the bards," Heracles 1341—46, is not unlike Xenophones, frag. 11 Diels-Kranz, also the Socrates of Euthypbro 6 a—c. The dancers' cynical conjectures concerning the usefulness of the old holy stones (Euripedes, Electra 736—44) remind us of Sisyphus, frag. 1 (Nauck) llff., by Critias, a follower of Socrates. Sometimes a criticism of the apparent immorality of the gods is unaccompanied by a rejection of the stories men tell about them, e.g., Andromache 1161—65; more typically it is accompanied by a strong refusal to believe the stories, as in Heracles 1341—46 and Iphigenia among the Taurians 380-91. (There is a similar inconsistency in Pindar's comments on the mythoi, and no one suspects him of being an atheist.) See also the rejection of specific mythoi as just hard to believe, at Helen 21, Iphigenia at Aulis 794, Electra 737, Trojan Women 969, and elsewhere. 5 Also unbelievable, of course, is Herodotus's assertion that the Greeks owed an important part of their religion to the Egyptians. We miss references to the Mesopotamians and the Hittites, as well as to the bardic tradition. Nevertheless, "Homer" may have played a decisive role in popularizing this strain among the many in the religion of the earlier Greeks.

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not ordered into the larger genealogies and often connected with rites and holy places that were isolated one from another. He says, for instance, that he learned the secret and ancient explanation for the ithyphallic herms by being initiated into certain Pelasgian rites called the Cabirian Mysteries (2.51). Traditions were alive, then, that were probably pre-Homeric and quite untouched by the anecdotal and realistic treatment of the epic poets. Even in the fifth century a pious Greek must often have responded to the old vague divinities who lurked behind their vivid namesakes. When he coaxed fuel into fire he would say, "Hephaestus burns"; he surely did not at that moment picture Homer's lame blacksmith limping around his dreaded father's dinner table provoking unquenchable laughter from the immortal gods and goddesses. Such a person might even consider it an act of piety to reject Homer's vision as frivolous and far from true religion. As I have said, Euripides did not make it easy for the Athenians of his own time to be sure what his motives were when he censured or parodied the Homeric and Aeschylean visions of the gods. In one fragment of his Belleropbon,—which may indeed belong to the speech quoted without a context by Plutarch, the hero asks, "Does someone say that gods exist in heaven? I There are none, none, unless a man is willing, I if he's a fool, to rely on the ancient stories" (frag. 286.1-3 Nauck). Look for yourself, he says: tyrants kill, rob, and pillage, they violate sacred oaths—and they are far happier than their wretched victims. In war it is the size of the army, not the piety of the citizenship, that determines who the victor will be (286.4—12). In the passage from which Plutarch plucked his single line, Bellerophon appears to contrast the intelligent procedure of doctors, who always consider the special needs of each case, with the procedure of gods, who seem to be insensitive to such considerations (frag. 292.1—2). Indeed, doctors make up for the crudity of the gods by curing the gods' innocent victims. "Now this is what I'm trying to say: I if the gods do something shameful they are not gods." In his earlier years Bellerophon had been the target of a whole series of treacherous plots by various mortals. Yet he had received such spectacular aid from the gods that he seemed to be the most fortunate of men. He was living proof that the gods protect and reward the good. With the aid of Pegasus he had performed labors almost as formidable and famous as those of Perseus and Heracles. He had won, as a consequence, every reward ever bestowed upon the successful by their fellow human beings. He also had the satisfaction of seeing his mortal enemies pay dearly for their treachery. Then he had fallen from divine favor and as a consequence led a life of terrible misery on earth (cf. frag. 285). In his own judgment, at least, his suffering was utterly unmerited and proved either that the gods did not exist at all or that their notion of justice was barbaric.

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Euripides presumably accepted the usual story: Bellerophon's change of fortune came about when he rose to the realm of the gods on Pegasus in order to salute the gods who had been so good to him. It was then that he was thrown to earth and made to live out his years severely crippled from the fall and shorn of all his former blessings.6 Homer apparently knew no special story concerning Bellerophon's death: he died ingloriously, it seems, still wretched, abandoned by men and gods alike (Iliad 6.200—203). One fragment of Euripides' play has someone, presumably the dying hero himself, say, "Alas—but why do I say 'alas'? After all what I am suffering [pathein] is but what all mortals suffer" (frag. 300). Pindar, however, hints that there was something morally troubling about the manner of Bellerophon's death: "his death I shall pass over in silence" (Olympian 13.91). Some believe that in Euripides' play the hero mounted Pegasus once more, in anguish this time, and tried to confront the Olympians on the question of their injustice toward men; their answer was to hurl him to his death. Pindar says in the next line that Pegasus, "by contrast," was returned to Zeus's stable in the sky. (Pegasus does not figure in Homer's version at all.) In any case, Bellerophon's death was the climax of Euripides' play. The dying hero appears to have been certain to the very end that his misery was completely unmerited. Aelian says that Bellerophon, in our play, prepared for his death "in a great-souled and heroic fashion." He says to his own soul, "you lived with piety toward the gods, when you lived; always I you helped your hosts, nor did you weary in your help to friends" (De natura animalium 5.34; Euripides, frag. 311). Someone then says, "carry him inside, this man of wretchedness," dysdaimon (frag. 310). A god may have appeared in the epilogue, since someone says, presumably of Pegasus, that now he is the carrier of Zeus's thunderbolts (frag. 312). There is also an imperfectly preserved line in which, according to Plutarch, Pegasus was blamed for his excessive willingness to do the hero's bidding (Moralia 529 e; Euripides frag. 309). It would be in Euripides' manner for this god to announce carelessly that the Corinthians would of course honor Bellerophon evermore with a hero's shrine and rites. (There were in fact a precinct and statue in Corinth, according to Pausanias, 2.2.4; and Corinthian coins show him in several noble poses.) Euripides, appears to be teasing his audience, not preaching to them. Clearly, making his portrayals of the gods immediately acceptable to the pious in his audience was not his chief motive. What else was he up to? A famous hero is reduced to despair by his unmerited suffering, reduced even to wondering if the gods exist at all; yet one of the gods appears at 6 Aristophanes, Peace 135-36, Acharnians 426—29; cf. Euripides, frags. 306 and 308 Nauck.

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the end of the play in plain view of the audience. Was Euripides sincere? Sarcastic? Even today readers are puzzled and wonder where the poet himself stood on the reality of the traditional gods. There is plenty of evidence that Euripides was deeply admired by many ordinary people (Plutarch, Nicias 29.2-3, Lysander 15.2-3; Satyrus 39.19.11ff., etc.). He was appreciated more abroad than at home, perhaps, but the Athenians did great honor to him also.7 Still, he won only two first prizes in his lifetime, and it is not hard to believe that Aristophanes was merely reporting a fact when he pictured the younger, sophisticated Athenians as being far more enthusiastic about Euripides than their elders were {Clouds 1365-78, etc.). Some of the very best and most moving of Euripides' surviving plays raise the same questions that are raised by the Bellerophon. In the Hippolytus, for instance, a simple servant prays to Aphrodite. He begs her not to be selfish, single-minded, or insensitive to real moral worth. He reminds her that "gods should be wiser than mortals" (120). But we have just seen the goddess herself: we know that she is all the things the servant fears she is. We have also seen Hippolytus, her victim, and we know that his piety is genuine, something worth far more than the servant's superstitious prudence. Hippolytus, in his great devotion to Artemis and to purity, finds that he cannot also worship Aphrodite. "A divinity worshiped at night I do not like" (106). The servant is upset and insists that men are not free to refuse what a god demands. In the context this means that all mortals are under a religious obligation both to make love and to remain virgin, since there is a goddess who demands worship in these two contradictory ways. Hippolytus wins the greater admiration, surely, not only because the prudential scruples advocated by the servant are so unsubtle, but also because—at this point in the play, at least—the worship of Artemis seems to be rarer and more wonderful than service to Aphrodite. At the end of the Hippolytus, when the young hero is brought on stage, like Bellerophon, just before his death, Artemis appears and confirms the hero's innocence and the moral culpability of Aphrodite (1298-1307). She rebukes Theseus for his role in his son's destruction, but says that he can be forgiven because the anger of Aphrodite was ultimately to blame for these events (1325—28). She then gives a chilling, legalistic explanation for her own failure to step in and save Hippolytus. She admits that no mortal is dearer to her than Hippolytus—but, well, there is this rule observed by all the gods and enforced by Zeus himself: "none of us undertakes to become an opponent I of the willful desire of another" (13297

Vita 2.5, Pausanias 1.2.2, Aulus Gellius 15.20, Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.1384b 14-16 (with the scholium), etc. See P. T. Stevens, "Euripides and the Athenians," JHS 76 (1956): 87-94.

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30). Her explanation ends with a formula that, in the context, is a parody of popular religion. She tells Theseus that, although he is the chief mourner, she, too, grieves for the dying hero: "for gods rejoice, not when the pious I are cut down; it is the evil I whom we destroy—children, house, and all!" (1339-41). The lifelong and total dedication of Hippolytus to Artemis has no parallel in the other surviving tragedies. Hippolytus has more in common with certain saints (including one of those who bore his name) than he does with the great angry heroes of Sophocles. Euripides may be offering us a finer sort of hero to worship. Yet by the end of the play we do not watch Hippolytus slowly approaching godhead, as a Sophoclean hero would: we watch him disengage himself regretfully from his long and intense identification with his divinity. He accepts Artemis's affirmation that Aphrodite had indeed acted in a way that showed her unworthy of his worship; but he is not consoled. "Would that a mortal" (or "the mortal race") "could be a curse of divinities" (1415). Do not worry, Artemis assures him: although you will go into the gloom of the underworld, Aphrodite's rages [orgai) will not fall upon you unavenged—the orgai that fall upon you "because of your piety and your goodness of mind" (1416-19). Already we wonder at the strange logic the poet has attributed to the goddess; but it gets worse. She explains why all is well despite appearances. First, she promises that with her own hand and her unerring arrows she will exact vengeance against whatever mortal happens to be most dear to Aphrodite (1420-22). Second, to the long-suffering Hippolytus himself, "in return for these injustices," she will award the most honored worship in Troezen. "For unmarried girls, before their weddings I will cut their hair in your honor, so you, down through the ages, I will harvest great mourning from their tears. I Yours forever will be the maidens' I skillful songmaking." And so the eros of Phaedra for Hippolytus, she says, will never be forgotten (1423-30; cf. Pausanias 2.23.1-4). There is little reason to doubt that the poet intends for us to be shocked by the grim resemblance between the two goddesses—the fact that Artemis is every bit as willing as Aphrodite was to extract the honor due to her by destroying some utterly innocent mortal. And it is difficult to believe that Euripides could not have found some way, had he wanted to, to make the rites that were celebrated in Troezen in honor of Hippolytus and Phaedra seem less grotesquely inappropriate. As it is, we are made to admire the hero's devotion and purity, not as intimations of divinity, but as quintessentially human virtues. Artemis commands Thesus and Hippolytus to embrace and forgive. Thesus is to forgive himself for having fatally cursed his innocent son. "That men I should err [hamartanein]," Artemis explains, "is what one

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should expect when gods are involved" (1432—34). Then she excuses herself because she cannot be present at the moment of death. Hippolytus's four-line farewell to the goddess is apparently full of piety, goodwill, and affection; but it is couched in words that could also indicate the reverse of these feelings. (It is frequently exasperatingly difficult to be sure of the tone of a speech in Greek tragedy.) The first line is seemingly formulaic and without irony: "you, too, go in joy, blessed virgin" (1440). If this is read with a different emphasis, however, the line means, "I wish you as much joy as you have brought to me!" The next line, one of the most beautiful in Greek poetry, could mean, "but ours was a long companionship—which you, because you are a goddess, can leave without the grief I suffer." Or it could mean, "and yet how casually you now abandon our long companionship!" (The hyperbaton seems to put the emphasis on the "long . . . companionship," not the rhaidibs, "lightly," but this kind of evidence is seldom decisive.) Hippolytus then declares that the painful strife with his father is no more—"since you command it. I Have I not always done what you command?" That line could be delivered either with pride or with bone-crushing bitterness. The final scene of the drama is without gods—not only in the sense that Artemis has left the stage, but also in the sense that the gods are simply irrelevant. Our interest is centered entirely on the dignity and passion of the tender mutual recognition between father and son. Except for the Cyclops, a satyr play, all of the surviving plays by Euripides include references to or open announcements of cults that will be established in honor of the events just witnessed. Sometimes the references are oblique (e.g., Alcestis 1153—56 and Trojan Women 1240—50); more typically the future rituals are proclaimed with authority and in some detail, as in the Hippolytus. These are usually hero cults like those that Sophocles, too, occasionally foreshadowed. But these announcements in Euripides' plays have little of the grim dignity that characterizes the brief foreshadowing in Sophocles. In the Hippolytus, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, Orestes, and several other plays, the effect of the announcement is to belittle rather than to magnify the gravity with which these cults were treated. In other plays, like the Medea and the Bacchae, there is no hint of ridicule, yet the poet's moral outrage may have been detected by the Athenians nevertheless. (Euripides was even accused of having invented his own version of the rites for Medea's children, 1381 ff.; schol. to 9; Aelian, Varia Historia 5.21.) The Euripidean hero is not cut off from mankind by his pathos and closer to the gods than ordinary mortals; he is brought by his suffering closer to ordinary mankind. My pathos is but that of all mortals, Bellerophon declares. As for the gods, because they appear before us, hoisted by great stage cranes, uttering verbose and overly literal versions of the theodicy implicit in popular reli-

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gion, they seem unreal, or at least very remote, not of the essence of the play.8 As we saw, Sophocles had pointed out that Euripides typically portrayed heroes as mere men and women, in contrast to his own heroes, who revealed their essential difference from us even before their deaths (Poetics 1460 b 33-34). As we have seen, this is in fact born out by their surviving plays. But we must not conclude that Euripides' talent was therefore of a smaller order, that he was not able to sustain the illusion of divine power. His Medea and Dionysus are very impressive indeed. Nor can we conclude that Euripides' sympathy with ordinary humanity, or his ability to portray this worldliness, was superior to that of Sophocles. The lesser mortals in Sophocles' plays are drawn with wonderful understanding and psychological perception—especially the women. (Deianeira in the Women of Trachis is so human that critics are forever suggesting Euripidean influence!) We must conclude that the two dramatists simply set out to do two very different things. Of the two, Euripides seems much more likely to have been a serious thinker and a profound critic of human morality.9 In the one anecdote that pits Euripides against Sophocles as a moral agent Euripides accuses Sophocles of having a weak moral character (Athanaeus 604 d 4). Euripides' own reputation for immorality had a different origin. It was clearly the result of his cleverness—the biting, apparently sophistic sentiments of his dramatic characters that were quoted without context by enemies and comic poets. We may assume, therefore, that Euripides had a serious and moral motive in choosing to dramatize the famous heroic pathe as the victimizations of ordinary, vulnerable human beings. In effect, by refusing to make clear that there was any essential difference between these demigods and ourselves, Euripides elevated the moral crises of human existence to the status of the most important problem in the universe.10 8

The most outrageous parody of divine intervention in human affairs occurs at Rhesus 641. Athena tells her favorites, Diomedes and Odysseus, to scram because Paris is coming. Paris enters and is addressed by Athena who coyly says she is Aphrodite, ready as always to promote his interests. Even in antiquity it was doubted this could be the play Euripides was known to have written on this story. If, as some have argued, it is from Euripides' juvenalia, the play is merely puzzling. See William Ritchie, The Authenticity of the Rhesus of Euripides (Cambridge, 1964), and cf. H.D.F. Kitto, "The Rhesus and Related Matters," YCS 25 (1977): 317—50: "If we must believe that Euripides was the author, I would suggest that he wrote it at the age of fifteen or so, prin physai phrenas, as you might say" (p. 350). But if this is a fourth-century play written under the spell of Euripides, as others argues, e.g. Hans Strohm, "Beobachtung zum Rhesos," Hermes 87 (1959): 257-74, it can at least be used as evidence of sympathetic reactions to Euripides in his own time or shortly thereafter. 9 See "Dichter und Denker," in Lesky, Tragische Dichtung, 512—22, with a useful bibliography in the notes. 10 This is a theme that has been taken up by many modern commentators, from Jaeger,

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In Euripides, as in Sophocles, the stories of heroic pathe regularly involve great anger. But anger can characterize a pathos in two different ways, as I have said. The anger can be experienced by the victim of the pathos, or by the poet only. (A third pattern, in which the reader or audience alone is angry, as in Blake's Songs of Innocence, may be a sophisticated version of the second.) Sophocles typically shows the elevating anger as something experienced by the victim himself. There is, as a consequence, no sense that the poet is especially angry. In the plays of Euripides it is usually the poet alone who is angry. Sophocles may owe his reputation for great piety to the fact that his own voice appeared to be without rage or indignation. Conversely, the way Euripides habitually loaded all the outrage into the felt personality of the poet may have convinced the Athenians that he was angered by the holy story itself, that he was therefore opposed to traditional piety—or indeed to piety itself. Sophocles did not deprive himself of the power of pathe that were entirely without heroic anger—the pitiful defeat of the completely mortal. Like Aeschylus before him, and like most tragedians down through the centuries, he found many opportunities to move us with the suffering of innocent bystanders. In five of the seven surviving plays of Sophocles, all but the Electra and Philoctetes, the lamentation following the heroic pathos is protracted and the stage is full of mourners. There are also the corpses of incidental victims in some cases. Unlike the heroic sufferers, these side victims can be portrayed as human, vulnerable, pathetic, and completely defeated. They are usually women and children (as in Aeschylus also, and cf. Lady Macduff and all her "pretty ones"): it is easier to believe in the complete innocence of women and children than it is in the innocence of kings and warriors. Thus the Antigone ends not with the corpse of the heroine being brought in (too angry, too close to the gods), or merely with the sight of the wretched and defeated Creon (too clearly responsible for his own downfall; cf. lines 1260 and 1261), but with the bodies of Creon's son and wife. Creon accompanies his son's remains as they are brought into view; then in the midst of his grieving a messenger enters and announces his wife's death: "you can see it—it is no longer in the inner chamber," he says, and the door opens to reveal the new corpse (1294). "Now I see a second evil," says Creon (cf. Women ofTrachis 950 and 968), and he asks how she died. Suicide, the messenger replies, when she learned of the pathos shrilly-wailed-for of her son, hopos I paidos tod' eisthet' oxykotaton pathos (1315—16). What Euripides has done, in effect, is to bring these unheroic pathe into the central action. Like Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Joyce, and Paideia, 1:341-57, esp. 351 and 353ff., to J. de Romilly, Time in Greek Tragedy (Ithaca, 1968), 113-41, esp. 131.

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Cocteau, Euripides has insisted on the humanity of the great figures of legend and the revered texts. Their pathe are indistinguishable from those of the innocent bystanders. The names still carry magic and ought to invoke awe—Jason, Theseus, Heracles, Clytemnestra, Hecuba, Orestes, Pentheus, Cadmus, Oedipus, Eteocles—and yet Euripides forces us to imagine them all as no further removed from our experience than Sophocles' Tecmessa, Eurydice, Haemon, Hyllus, Deianeira, or Ismene. In the Trojan Women it is assumed that the most significant pathe in the Trojan struggle were those of the victims whose suffering is always the hardest to justify in any war, the mothers, sisters, wives, and infant children— especially those on the losing side, most especially in war as it was fought in Euripides' own time. The fact that the sufferers in the Trojan Women bear the great names of legend—Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, Astyanax—is of no consequence. Their pathe are but the pathe of all mortals. Can we imagine Aeschylus or Sophocles constructing such a play? As I have suggested, the impression that Euripides himself is indignant at the suffering—and therefore, in a strange way, indignant at the religious stories themselves—seems to be enhanced by his refusal to show the sufferers responding with heroic anger. Theseus destroys his son in anger; but his rage collapses rapidly in remorse when it is pointed out to him that his hatred had been the consequence of a limited imagination and ignorance of the role of the gods. Heracles butchers his family, but we know he was sent a madness by the gods; and when he recovers he is only with difficulty dissuaded from suicide. Nor is his suicide contemplated in great anger, as in the Ajax: it is the counsel of despair and bottomless depression. Medea's angry vengeance drives her to kill her infant sons; but the mother's horror and compassion that she has to overcome in order to carry through the deed partly undermines our sense of a superhuman rage. Her suffering makes her pathos, and Jason's, as touching as that of the children themselves. In the Orestes, brother and sister plan a crime worthy of Sophocles' Ajax, but heaven forbids it at the last moment, so our wonder collapses quite suddenly. In the Ion, mother and son reveal murderous intentions against one another—until their relation is revealed to them, at which point they fall into one another's arms. In the Orestes and the Ion the anger is the sort one can find in any newspaper; it is hardly a thrilling glimpse of divinity. When the gods themselves express their anger in a Euripidean play, as at the beginning of the Bacchae, Hippolytus, or Trojan Women, it is morally distressing, not grand at all. Ennobling anger is found in the poet's voice alone. As with all dramatic and illuminating dichotomies, Dionysian/Appollian, Guilt Culture/Shame Culture, Hedgehogs/Foxes, so also with Plato's "poetry" and "philosophy": the closer one looks at individual examples the harder it is to believe that a pure instance of the one or the other has

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ever existed. The Furies and the Olympians, Emanation and Specter, Eusebius and Floristan, Will and Idea, Id and Ego, Anima and Animus, Yin and Yang, Right Lobe and Left Lobe: the clarity is almost always blurred whenever the dichotomy is applied with subtlety and honesty. Nietzsche concluded that tragedy required a tension between the Dionysian and the Apollonian. It could not exist if either were eliminated. Dodds's critics were quick to find elements of Guilt Culture in the Iliad and of Shame Culture in our own world. Isaiah Berlin was forced to describe writers as either Hedgehogs who thought that they ought to be Foxes or Foxes who thought that they ought to be Hedgehogs. Aeschylus, Blake, and the psychoanalysts were as eager as split-brain theorists to recommend wholeness through balance and integration. ("Meditation" is the word favored by some structuralists today.) Plato recommended not a compromise but a ruthless censorship of "poetry," one of the two opposing drives; but he did trace the appeal of "poetry" to an eternal force in the human personality. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the Iliad, the Odyssey, also in the surviving tragedies of Aeschylus, we find conscientious attempts to honor both "poetry" and "philosophy." But Sophocles and Euripides are most difficult to analyze in these terms. Sophocles, as we saw, presents a special problem because his concession to "philosophy" was so muted: it is usually limited to a simple affirmation of the value to humanity of Divine Injustice. Sophoclean tragedy works wonderfully as drama, but when his plays are scrutinized as "philosophy" they do not make a great deal of rational sense.11 The problem presented by the plays of Euripides is of a different sort. He is so good at gratifying the yearning traditionally catered to by "poetry" that Aristotle quite rightly calls him "the most purely tragic of the poets," yet he manifestly disapproves of the very tradition he has mastered with such skill. Where does he stand? The tone changes from play to play. The general implications are not always the same. There are specific intellectual polemics, some of which we are no longer in a position to comprehend. The poet's mind is restless, protean, capable of swinging without warning from bitterness to tenderness. It is at least possible that Euripides' most constant purpose was similar to that of the Socratics: a desire to free mankind from the dark myths of popular religion. Desperate, completely unjustified suffering and Brechtlike farce could both serve this purpose. It would be an intellectual's man11

According to Tycho Wilamowitz, Die dramatische Techntk des Sophokles (Berlin, 1917), Sophocles always had one overriding motive, his desire to be effective in the theater. All other goals were subordinated to this one, he argues. Wilamowitz may be closer to the truth than most are now willing to allow; it is just that theatrical and religious thrills— neither of which requires much theoretical reasoning—may have been one and the same th>ng in Sophoclean drama.

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ner—and therefore not immediately popular—to lace the sweetness with unsettling doubts in either of these two ways. Nietzsche was incautious enough to accept without scholarly suspicion the ancient story that Euripides and Socrates were good friends.12 Nietzsche was soundly thrashed for this by the young Ulrich von Wilamowitz, and there the matter has rested ever since. Yet there is nothing inherently improbable in such a friendship, however doubtful the sources of the story. Why should Socrates not have seen clearly what many Athenians appear to have suspected, anyhow: that Euripides disapproved of the myths as vehemently as he himself did? At Frogs 1482-99 Aristophanes has the dancers celebrate the victory of Aeschylus over Euripides by praising true, civic-minded intelligence— possessed, presumably, by Aeschylus—and disparaging spending one's time chattering, and sitting by Socrates, as Euripides is apparently being charged with doing, actually or metaphorically. The dancers elaborate on "chattering with Socrates": throwing out mousike [apobalonta mousiken, 1493] I and leaving out what's most important I from the art of tragedy," ta te megista paraliponta I tes tragbidikes technes. Dover takes "throwing out mousike" to mean "discarding song and poetry" 13 and the next two lines then become little more than a restatement of this. Aristophanes would therefore be complaining about the ugliness of Euripidean language and music—although Dover would surely also include in "what's most important" the "moral effect" a drama ought to have. 14 Euripides' failure in this latter respect might well be thought to be attributable to Socrates, especially if Socrates were thought of as a cham12 Chap. 13 of "The Birth of Tragedy" {Geburt der Tragodie cms dent Geiste der Mustk [Leipzig, 1842]). This was a particularly weak part of Nietzsche's historical argument and was an easy target for the elder Wilamowitz in his savage attack, Zukunftsphilologie! Eine Erwidrung aufFrtedrich Nietzsches 'Geburt der Tragodie' (Berlin, 1872), 25-26. The most interesting evidence for the friendship, Frogs 1491-95, was not used by Nietzsche in Geburt (which has no footnotes), but was quoted in full in his earlier lecture, "Sokrates und die Tragodie," Samtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 1 (Munich, 1967), 544. Wilamowtiz's title, "Philology of the Future!", is a sarcastic play on Wagner's Zukunftsmustk. Rohde convicted Wilamowitz of philological errors of his own, in an essay he called Afterphtlologie, which is itself a complicated, extremely impolite pun (see M. A. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy [Cambridge, 1981], 98). Most of the texts are reprinted in Karlfried Grunder's Der Streit um Nietzsches Geburt der Tragodie (Hildesheim, 1969). Despite the philological errors and philosophical distractions in Geburt, Nietzsche must be given credit for his appreciation of the "ancient quarrel." As Lloyd-Jones says, Nietzsche saw that "tragedy gave its audiences comfort. . . by bringing them face to face with the most awful truths of human existence"; "Nietzsche and the Study of the Ancient World," in Studies in Nietzsche and the Classical Tradition, ed. James O'Flaherty et al. (Chapel Hill, 1979), 9. 13 Dover, Comedy, 186. 14 Ibid., 185.

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pion of sophistic cynicism. Yet "throwing out mousike" is a strange way to describe this kind of corruption. Now at Frogs 797 mousike is used as a synonym for tragoidia, or rather it means there "music and poetry" as exemplified in tragedy. So "throwing our mousike" might well mean "throwing out (true) tragedy." The next lines, then, "leaving out what's most important I from the art of tragedy," explain and qualify that statement. What Euripides did to the tragic tradition, first, is something so central and important that it was tantamount to rejecting tragedy altogether; second, is something akin to what Socrates would like to do to tragedy; and third, amounts to "leaving out" something vital. What Socrates wanted left out, of course, was the pathos. Euripides did not do that, but he did frequently undercut the enjoyment that the pious wanted to get from the moving pathe in the old holy stories. In a sense he was indeed "leaving out" a thrill central to tragedy. He was questioning the Tightness of the old stories in very irritating ways indeed. And so was Socrates. Both men might be perceived to be attempting to deprive Athenians of an enjoyment so central to tragedy that they were "throwing it out." For all we know, Euripides and Socrates really were friends. Aristophanes may have heard gossip to that effect. But the idea may have been his invention. If they were actually friends, the bond may have come into being because each saw in the other an ally in his fierce opposition to reverence for the holy stories and the the traditional ways to exploit them. But if the friendship was fictional, perhaps the similarity that was observed in their attitudes toward the mythoi made people (or Aristophanes, at least) think of them as fellow doubters. Socrates would like to have seen pathos religion disappear altogether; Euripides ridiculed the Aeschylean attempt always to find the one right version of a mythos and the one right way to tell it. Anyone upset by Socrates might be upset by Euripides, too. Hostility toward one or more strains ot the stories told about gods and heroes is as old as our record. The poet of the Iliad shies from monsters and magic; 15 the poet of the Odyssey is hospitable only to stories that show some justice in divine acts; and Aeschylus feels free to cast out stories very important to earlier generations. To this list we should add Hesiod, who reconciled divergent visions and pushed moral lessons wherever he could; Heraclitus, who dismissed Homer and Hesiod with contempt (22 B 40 and 42 Diels-Kranz); and Xenophanes who accused men of having an astonishing lack of imagination when they tried to pic15 When, as in 1.399^406, the poet gives us a glimpse of a time before stability was reached on Olympus, it is almost disorienting, so thoroughly has he expunged such visions from the body of his work. He also puts heroes who, like Perseus and Bellerophon, are thought to be capable of superhuman feats—also monsters like the centaurs—in a world that no longer exists at the time of the Trojan War.

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ture the gods (21 B 11-16 Diels-Kranz). Xenophanes sternly rejected the propriety of telling stories about the wars of the gods and repeating other unbecoming lies about them.16 People attending to what Socrates and Euripides had to say, therefore, would not have found their criticisms entirely unfamiliar. Many Athenians obviously agreed with their censures and accepted them as expressions of a higher piety. The poet and the philosopher both had sizable followings. But if enthusiasm for rational scrutiny of the holy stories reached a new height in the latter part of the fifth century, so did hostility toward this ancient enterprise. Pindar was perhaps the last to ask the question in the old form: how are we to decide whether to accept or reject a given story or version? Sophocles may have been important in the shift to a new question. As we have seen, he dramatized heroic pathe entirely without Aeschylean qualification or theological hedging of any kind. As I have suggested, this may have been one of the things that provoked Socrates and others to ask if the attempt to find true versions of the old stories is not profoundly wrongheaded and the essence of an ancient impiety. By his devastating mockery of Aeschylean tragedy and in many other ways, Euripides showed himself to be of Socrates' party in the new religious crisis. That it was indeed a religious crisis can best be seen by imagining the effect Socratic criticism would have on the pious in the American "Bible Belt." In some respects, of course, the two situations are very different. Above all, in fifth-century Athens the holy stories did not receive the deep respect as texts now given them by many Christians. It would now seem outrageous to the pious to say that there was any test whatever that could and should be used to weed out false holy stories from the ancient canon. But suppose a modern Socrates succeeded in convincing believers that even Fundamentalists use unacknowledged but identifiable criteria to decide which stories to emphasize and how to emphasize them. He might then plead successfully with them to be more careful in the scrutiny of their criteria. He might not find much resistance to the criterion Plato has Socrates choose in Republic II as most basic of all, the insistence that divinity causes only good. But if this criterion were stretched and made to mean that divinity causes only good even in the short run and to every 16 22 B 11 Diels-Kranz. At 22 B 1.8-9, the poet says that men of sound mind (or of cheerful disposition, euphrones) should hymn divinity with tnythoi that are benign, not illomened [euphemoi) and with stories (or words, logoi) that are pure (katharoi). He appears to equate this (21—24) with a refusal to retell the fictions of the older poets (plasmata ton proteron) concerning battles fought by gods against Titans, Giants, or other gods. It is possible that Xenophanes would have approved of Aeschylean drama, however, had he known it. (He lived too early and too far from Athens to have known even his earlier plays.) After all, both poets appear to have believed that "purifying" the holy stories, ridding them of "inventions by the earlier ones," presented no insurmountable obstacles.

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individual, man or god, if it were shown that either Christ therefore deserved his Passion or that the story of the Passion must be dropped from the canon, they would turn against this modern Socrates with the most intense hostility. That Aristophanes knew or suspected that Euripides sided with Socrates in this crisis is not surprising. But that most other Athenians failed to see this (after all, Euripides was not asked to drink the hemlock), is also not surprising. As Blake said of Milton, "he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." That is, Euripides could hardly write a bad line or dramatize a pathos that did not sweep the audience with it. For all the ways that he is inferior to the other tragedians—and his tendency to Socratic jabs and sermons is only one of them—he could trigger the frisson so loved by lovers of tragedy better than any of them.

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HEN MODERN readers turn to Euripides they often feel that here at last we have the invention of "modern" theater. This impression arises from three characteristics, all of which set Euripides off from the other ancient tragedians. First there is his use of a very "modern" kind of irony: the adoption of a mocking tone—sometimes bitter, sometimes playful—a voice that makes the audience focus on the playwright himself and not on his play alone. As in most modern uses of this technique, it is an instrument for social and moral criticism, part of a deliberate attempt to irritate the comfortable and to stir ambitions more selfless and humane than those that motivate most men most of the time. Second, there is Euripides' single-minded concentration on "man as he is," not "as he ought to be." As we have seen, the result of such a narrowing of vision is the awakening of an angry demand for "man as he ought to be." Still, the contrast with Sophocles is sharp nevertheless, because in Sophocles "man as he ought to be" was the superhuman, the presence of divinity in our midst. Euripides, despite the frequent appearances of gods and goddesses in his plays, is so concerned with mankind as such that all theological justifications for suffering and injustice are seen to be prevarications, man's instruments for perpetuating evil in human life. Euripides usually combines these two manners, intellectual irony and earthbound humanism: so do many modern playwrights, especially the Germans: Buchner, Wedekind, Hauptmann, Brecht. And there is a third aspect of Euripidean drama that also helps account for the impression of modernity. More regularly—and more self-consciously—than the other poets of the classical period, Euripides makes us feel that life's victims, the downtrodden, the forgotten, the exploited, the helpless, are somehow beautiful and noble, not despite their victimization, but because of it. This is a vision we usually think of as "modern" in the sense that it is central to both Judaism and Christianity. We cannot imagine the angry hero of Oedipus at Colonus extrapolating from his victimization, as Lear does, a general compassion for all who are down and out: "Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are . . . O, I have ta'en I Too little care of this!" Nobody in Euripides says anything quite like this either; yet by the end of the Trojan Women the poet has made us feel it for ourselves.

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Unlike Euripides' irony and humanism, which we accept as welcome innovations, his love of helpless martyrdoms is seldom praised unreservedly as a mark of the true tragedian. This aspect of his tragedies makes us uneasy, for several reasons. First, it is uncomfortably close to the sense of "tragedy" familiar from newspaper headlines—the "tragic" victims of famine, earthquakes, plane crashes, or school buses stalled "tragically" at railroad crossings. Second, it reminds us of a great deal of bad art, "tragedies of fate," Uncle Tom's Cabin, Poe's calculated ecstasy at the death of a beautiful maiden. But above all, what disturbs us is our tendency to associate stories of noble victimizations with the biblical religions, especially Christianity. Believers and nonbelievers alike, therefore, are apt to think of generalized pity as an aspect of modern religion. Both believers and nonbelievers may be put off when they sense that an artist is consciously tapping the special power of a martyrdom or the pathos of Christ himself. The procedure is not always condemned, to be sure. Dostoevsky's Idiot, Hardy's Jude, Brecht's Macheath, and Bergman's Magician are all "really" Christ, we feel; but the identification is done subtly, tactfully, not too obviously, so we do not object. Sometimes a modern dramatist quite openly helps us make the connection and gains much power by the device: as when a camera dwells on innocent victims of a plastique in Algiers while the soundtrack plays slow chorals reminiscent of Bach or Handel. But the failures outnumber the successful attempts. Sometimes the violence rather than the suffering is concentrated on—as when the Pawnbroker pushes his hand down over the spindle—and we are merely shocked. The "Crucifixions" by Francis Bacon deliberately toy with our uncertain feelings about this sort of thing: some people are moved, others repelled. In the heyday of Christianity the western world was filled with saints' relics and graphic representations of martyrdoms, crucifixions, stations of the cross; ordinary speech was filled with reminders of "God's wounds" and the sorrows of the Virgin. Today even Christians are apt to think that this kind of emphasis on the suffering of the good is religion at its most vulgar and routine—not, certainly, the aspect of religion that could inspire serious literature. The construction of a story around a "Christ figure," therefore, is usually thought to be the mark of a young and immature writer. Readers are apt to be offended whether they are believers or not. Their embarrassment is most acute when a writer, in the ancient fashion, borrows one of the sacred stories directly. The Prioress in the Canterbury Tales tells the horrendous story of a seven-year old Christian boy who sang a Latin hymn to the Virgin Mary as he walked home through the Ghetto, and had his throat cut by the Jews. Even the faithful no longer feel their faith strengthened by such a narrative. Even theologians avoid such stories,

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now that theology has been Platonized. Paul, the first great apologist for the cross as the essence of Christianity, is now out of favor. It is little wonder, therefore, that the Passion is assumed to be an unpromising paradigm for tragedy. And so, whenever we are presented by Euripides with the grisly pathe of ordinary, helpless people—pure victims—we are not zealous to claim this as "our" conception of true tragedy. This is a victory for "philosophy," certainly. Yet it does not seem to be a very profound victory. It represents a turn around in our thinking but not really in our sentiments. This is most obvious when we consider the unabated power of pathe in political life. As in ancient art and early Christianity, the pathe of real people can, even today, unite the literate and nonreaders in an exalted and cleansing anger. Now as always the ennobling thrill is bound up with a feeling that the innocent dead are not really or wholly dead. In modern Russia, at Zagorsk, less than fifty miles from Moscow, simple people still line up and shuffle solemnly by the relics of Saint Sergius, whose coffin is covered with glass from the waist up. For more than fifty years Russians of the new orthodoxy would also travel long distances and stand patiently in line for hours so that they could pass in awed silence by the glass-covered coffin of Lenin in Moscow. In many Communist countries large signs or banners proclaimed that "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live forever," and his name and likeness were everywhere. He had become the most powerful hero-totem of the modern world. To be sure, he was worshiped for his benefactions, not for a pathos in his own life; but his struggle was identified with the plight of the exploited and oppressed, so unmerited suffering was an essential part of his mythos nevertheless. The certainty that the world's downtrodden poor would triumph in the end was expressed in the certainty that Lenin's moral fury had not died with his mortal parts. The illness and paralysis that marred the last months of Lenin's life probably contributed to the exalted sadness that surrounded his memory, but his story was a pathos primarily because of his spiritual alliance with the world's victims. Caesar and Lincoln, on the other hand, both suffered pathe of the ancient pattern. A clear instance in our own time was the pathos of President Kennedy. A surge of emotion—a frisson, awe—swept America and much of the world at the news of Kennedy's assassination. A feeling of having witnessed something greater than ordinary life and death affected even some who had hated Kennedy when he was a mere man. We instantly gave his name to schools, airports, highways, and launching pads; we put his image on coins, stamps, and public monuments. Thousands still visit the "eternal" flame burning over his remains in Arlington National Cemetery. A quarter of a century after his death

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there are few citizens who can name Kennedy's contributions to mankind; yet his pathos keeps him very much alive. As in religion and in literary tragedy, it is not our reason that is gratified by the spectacle. Established governments under attack from revolutionary movements are often fearful that new martyrs could be created by their enemies— even deliberately, perhaps. This is just as true today, when virtually no one believes in the literal survival of a martyr's spirit, as it was when the Greeks looked to their dead heroes to defend their country, or when Frenchmen prayed to the martyred Joan of Arc. In October 1977 West German "terrorists" appeared to be in a position to engineer a hero cult, and the government nervously tried to frustrate their plan. Three young "terrorists" had been found dead in their cells in Stuttgart and it was announced that they would be buried together. Members of the established order "expressed fear that the burial and the graves . . . might attract sympathizers from all over the country," reported the New York Times (October 23, 1977). When Rudolf Hess died in Spandau prison in August 1987, the allies, including Russia, agreed to tear down Spandau immediately, for fear that the empty tomb would become the center of neo-Nazi veneration. The fear was obviously that the shared veneration as a community of mourners would make the community grow. Hess's body was given to his family to bury privately in Wunseidel, but the sympathizers then began to gather there, even before it contained the body. As with the "terrorists" in 1977, the anxiety was realistic, even if no dangerous movement gained ground. The Korean government had much more reason to fear, because the nationwide reaction to the massacre in Kwangju in May 1980 was very emotional. One of those jailed by the government for the Kwangju troubles, Yoon Kang Ok, after he was released, campaigned for a monument to the victims, to be built in Kwangju. The government was disturbed enough to drive him into hiding. In the new unrest of July 1987, a single martyrdom in Seoul, that of a young student, Lee Han YoI, caused such national outrage, that the government had to make significant concessions. The following month the workers were given a martyr of their own, Lee Sok Kyu, also a young man, and it looked as though the government must now be in a mortal crisis. The new martyr's fellow workers held his body in Koja hospital, threatening to delay the funeral rites until their demands were met. Fortunately for the government, the young man had an uncle who was a Lt. Colonel in the army. He and the rest of the family asked for a private burial in the family plot in Namwon. On August 28, when the body was being taken in a massive procession to Kwangju, government troops hijacked it and redirected it to Namwon. Even a classical pathos will not always have the power one side hopes for and the other side dreads. Everything has to be right. The assassins of

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Aldo Moro may have delayed as long as they did because they dreaded his future existence as a martyr. They need not have feared. He was too vain, even too Catholic, perhaps. And he spoiled his bid for immortality by begging his former colleagues to make a deal. And above all, he was not thought of as a champion of the earth's poor, like Caesar, Lincoln, Zapata, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King; he was an upholder of the established powers. Bodies, tombs, places, and anniversaries are important but not absolutely necessary. One of the Polish people's most urgent wishes in the late 1970s and early 1980s was that their many national pathe be restored to their school textbooks. Without their pathe they were not fully a nation. The Russians are now experiencing a similar hunger. The memory of even greater horrors now unites Israel; and the annual rites at Hiroshima are still far from routine. The mass deaths at Masada (first century) are still invoked by Israelis, those at Karbala (seventh century) by their Shiite enemies. The anniversaries of Sharpville (1960) and Soweto (1976) are dreaded by the government of South Africa. In all of these cases it is the very ordinariness of the victims and the arbitrariness of their selection that moves the survivors. To live on as a hero, then, a victim need not have been one of the famous and powerful at all. A Euripidean (or Christian) pathos is as apt to succeed as a Sophoclean vision. Political movements occasionally achieve a limited success by celebrating martyrdoms invented by public relations men, as in the pathe of Horst Wessel and John Birch. Movements can gain strength by fixing on victims who never existed at all, like the multitude "freed" from the Bastille and the mathematics student beaten to death by the police in Prague in 1989. But the world is a cruel place: if we wait long enough, the slaughter of innocents will occur when it is least desired. The brutal massacre of Timisoara, Rumania, instantly triggered a brutal and decisive uprising. The memory of such an event can then tie a whole nation together for a generation or two, sometimes longer. In October 1941 the Germans shot in reprisal six hundred railroad workers in the Jugoslavian town of Saljevo. Many of the victims were very young indeed; family snapshots from happier days provided very effective propaganda. The men who ordered the mass execution obviously did not forsee that their brutal decision would help unify a country that had never really been unified before. On June 4, 1989 the world watched in fascination and horror as the students in Tiananmen Square were mercilessly overrun by tanks. The emotion this stirred, not only in China but around the world, was the sort that has toppled empires. To be a citizen of China suddenly seemed, to the Chinese themselves and to all who heard of the massacre, a dignified and precious thing. The memory of the event also

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played a role five months later in the fall of the Czech and East German governments. To be Polish was to be the butt of cruel jokes, until the first defeat of Solidarity, in Gdansk in 1970. There is now a giant cruciform monument in Gdansk, to keep alive the memory of those who died in that uprising. It was dedicated on December 16, 1980, the tenth anniversary of the deaths. In this remarkable ceremony the leader said, "We summon you, you who have perished." Then he named them one by one. After each name a chorus of men shouted, "He's here now!" At the end he summoned those whose names were not known (so that they would not "have died in vain"). The chorus replied, "They are among us!" 1 The Church would no doubt prefer a different focal point for Polish enthusiasm. In June 1987 the Pope visited the tomb of a priest, Jersy Popieluszko, who was brutally killed by Polish police: he spoke of Father Popieluszko as a "martyr." Intense concern for the tombs of Adrastus and Agamemnon, and for the bodies and burials of Aj ax and Polyneices, no longer seemed difficult to imagine when we saw the picture of the funeral, on June 6, 1989, of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Behest-e-Zahara cemetery in Teheran. In their frenzy to touch the body, mourners tore it from the flimsy coffin. Eight people were trampled to death. Thousands continued to press forward after the burial, trying to touch the temporary shrine (made of cargo containers) on top of the grave. They also touched the monument with pieces of cloth and prayer beads, hoping to give them the power of relics. A mosque has now been built over the site, which will no doubt be a "mecca" for pilgrimages. 1 If, as I have been arguing, group memories of victimizations are the key to group cohesion, and if these are akin, or perhaps identical, to the thrill an audience feels at a pathos in tragedy, then an influential theory that traces tragic pleasure and social cohesion to a group memory of violence it once committed (and is in danger of committing again, individually or as a group) is at least partly incorrect. This theory, influenced by Freud's Totem and Taboo, traces tragic violence to ritual sacrifice in which "we" are the perpetrators. See esp. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrich Gregory (Baltimore, 1977; orig. ed., Paris, 1972). For an overview of this now fashionable idea, see Helena Foley, Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripedes (Ithaca, 1985), 30—64 (with bibliography, 24-25, nn. 6— 11). For Freud's (and Frazer's) influence, see Bennett Simon, Tragic Drama and the Family: Psychoanalytic Studies from Aeschylus to Beckett (New Haven, 1988), 253—64. The theory is right in that it illuminates the thrill of violence in tragedies by similar violence in events contributing to social cohesion; wrong in its assumption that "we" are the perpetrators, not the victims. The Japanese can be made only with great difficulty to remember that they started the Pacific war and were recently guilty of atrocities; they remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki with fierce pride. Americans take their identity from wrongs done to them, pathe like Valley Forge and the Alamo, not from memories of wrongs they did to the Indians and the Vietnamese. The Holocaust unites Israel; the history of their dealings with the Palestinians divides them.

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Khomeini, like Lenin, was a martyr only in an oblique sense. He suffered a death such as we might imagine for ourselves, but after a lifetime devoted to the humble and the wronged. And, unlike Lenin, he lived a life of spectacular self-denial, which he bore, not cheerfully, like Gandhi, but with a perpetual scowl, as though he were angry or suffering or both. An assassin's bullet was not needed: he had already given his life for Lord, Prophet, and people. Somehow even the deaths of those he sent into battle were part of his pathos. But if events of this sort are to prove valuable and ennobling for all nations and all time, something else is needed: the transforming power of art. Who would now be profoundly moved by the memory of the burghers of Calais if it were not for Rodin, or by that of the peasants of Spain in the Napoleonic wars if it were not for Goya? So also the horrors of the Peloponnesian War still seem very important indeed, because the genius of Thucydides and Euripides have universalized them. A high-ranking German officer once paid a call on Picasso during the Occupation. When he saw a reproduction of the Guernica on the wall of the studio, he said, "Oh, you did that!" Picasso replied, "No, you did that!" In a sense, the German officer was really right. At Easter in 1916 a bungled, pointless failure of an uprising against the English in Dublin led to swift "justice": one after another of the very ordinary citizens who had attempted unsuccessfully to be patriots were tried by quick, secret military proceedings and shot by a firing squad one by one. Because the hopeless band had held on for several days and had prolonged the suffering longer than anyone had expected—and because the British were so insensitive to the high ideals that motivated the "treason"—the world reacted powerfully to the pathos and felt an ennobling anger. Maude Gonne MacBride remarked that Ireland had rewon "tragic dignity," and that Irish freedom was now a certainty. She was right: the pathos, just by itself, as it was known to the world from newspapers and orators, sealed the fate of the British in Ireland—as the news of My Lai and a photograph of a "suspected Viet Cong" being shot in the head by the Chief of Police in Saigon sealed the fate of the Americans in Vietnam. But Yeats gave to the Dublin pathos a power that quickly transcended politics altogether. Like the dancers in the Agamemnon, Yeats wonders at the paradoxical beauty of such a defeat even as he celebrates it. He had thought he was living, Yeats says, in a world "where motley is worn," where men exchange only "polite, meaningless words." But that world had vanished suddenly. "All changed, changed utterly: IA terrible beauty is born." He notes that some of the Dublin victims had not yet come into their own; others had grave faults at which he had often chafed. Of Major MacBride he says he had "dreamed" him "A drunken, vainglorious lout. I He had done most bitter wring I To some who are

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near my heart," meaning Maude Gonne and her daughter. "Yet I number him in the song; / He, too, has been changed in his turn, I Transformed utterly: I A terrible beauty is born." Yeats then broods on the fact that a life devoted to urgent political causes is a life without exuberance, naturalness, or a truly human delight in change. "Too long a sacrifice I Can make a stone of the heart." When will it end? he asks—again like the dancers in the Agamemnon. "That is heaven's part," he replies. "Our part I To murmur name upon name, / As a mother names her child / When sleep at last has come I On limbs that had run wild." "Heaven's part" is the realization of justice, somehow, eventually. Yeats does not deny that it may come about someday. The theologians, in other words, may yet prove to be right. But Yeats sees that this is not the proper theme of his celebration. He sternly dismisses one possible inference from his comparison of death with sleep: "What is it but nightfall? I No, no, not night but death." 2 Like Antigone, or like so many Euripidean victims, he is able to entertain very vividly indeed the possibility that this may prove to have been a "needless death after all." "And what if excess of love," he asks, "Bewildered them till they died?" It would make no difference. He is a poet and the celebration of the mathos, the revelation of a new beauty, is his special duty. "I write it out in verse— / McDonagh and MacBride I And Connolly and Pearse I Now and in time to be, / Wherever green is worn, I Are changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." And of course, the "terrible beauty" is now felt far beyond the lands "where green is worn." As we have seen several times, even artfully retold pathe do not always stir people in enjoyable ways. Painful memories can be reawakened safely only in special circumstances. Neither Penelope nor Odysseus enjoyed the bards' songs, and the audience present at Phrynichus's infamous play was deeply angered by what it was shown. Too much fear wipes out the ennobling power of pity. Helen did not take pleasure in the thought that her suffering was destined by the gods so that men would be moved by it in song (Iliad 6.357-58). And the dancers in the Agamemnon were merely appalled by the thought that their king was fated to be the next victim in the great drama. It is not surprising, therefore, that political pathe, especially when the memory is still fresh, divide a people more often than they unite them. Garibaldi, like Lenin, was identified with the suffering poor. So effective was the identification in his case that even in his prime, even when he had just won a string of almost miraculous victories, and despite the fact that he was well known to be the great foe of the Church, Garibaldi was 2

We may note that there is no hint here of Yeats's Nietzschean nonsense about the gaiety of tragedy's victims (see Chapter 12, n. 1 above).

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often depicted in the homes of the pious poor as Christ suffering in agony on the cross. His own daughter preserved as holy relics every hair she ever clipped from his head and beard. Yet there were enough people in Italy who were impervious to this extraordinary sympathy, or who were stirred merely to hatred, that Garibaldi suffered genuine defeats and was a pathetic figure in old age. In Germany today untactful reminders of the Holocaust are apt to divide an audience: some complain that such things are "unnecessary" and in "bad taste." They are most likely to be deeply angered if the reminders are very vivid. The widely circulated photograph of a little girl in Vietnam who had been accidentally burned by a napalm bomb dropped from a friendly plane stirred strong anger—of two very different sorts, depending on where each person stood concerning the need to continue the war. In March 1988 the Austrians commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluss: much pain was stirred, even for the majority who had no personal memory of the country's union with Nazi Germany. Some resented, others envied the small Jewish community in Vienna that held its own commemoration fueled only by the right kind of terrible memories. The Israelis in turn resent the use of the term "holocaust" to refer to other instances of national suffering, especially that of the Palestinians. In 1989 Catholics and Jews fought bitterly over the right of Carmelite nuns to raise a cross and reside close to Auschwitz. Nonpolitical pathe may be divided into two sorts, those meant to be accepted as religious truth and those that either belong to someone else's religion (that is, to mythology) or are intended as frankly fictional, "myths" in a different sense. I have already suggested that tragedy was popular in antiquity precisely because the stories were not yet "myths" for everyone, either in the sense that they were made up or that they were from a foreign tradition. Unlike our own dramas, those enjoyed by the ancients could be accepted either way, as religion or as fiction, or rather in both ways at the same time, by different members of the audience. Their appeal was universal, therefore. Today the religious enjoy pathe in their holy stories, just as in antiquity, but do not want their recreational fiction to be informed by this vision at all. In the latter they want a daydream with a happy (or sentimental) ending. They are not as easily trained as the nonreligious are to a sincere preference for tragedy even in their fiction. The pious Dr. Johnson was so upset by the deaths of Lear and Cordelia that he could not bring himself to reread the last scene of the play until many years later when he was editing the whole of Shakespeare. In a Euripidean tragedy, as we have seen, the Athenians were sometimes given sly suggestions that this was all really fiction, not religion at all. And occasionally they may also have suspected that Euripides was

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giving them political pathe: the Peloponnesian War thinly disguised as the Trojan War, for instance. In either case the poet had broken an important convention and the pleasure of the pious in the audience was marred. But the young loved Euripides from the start, and by the fourth century he was everyone's favorite. Here was a new kind of tragedy, a kind that could survive the passing of fifth-century piety. Much more has been written about Sophoclean than about Euripidean irony. The Sophoclean sort is useful for the heightening of religious tragedy. The witnesses at a religious pathos need to be reminded of the otherness of the victim, the unbridgeable gap separating the revered hero from the audience itself, especially in his transition to a higher state. Sometimes, as in Oedipus the King, the special nature of the hero's pathos also makes it imperative that the audience be offered no temptation whatever to experience the story as their own conscious daydream. This may be why the Oedipus has more "Sophoclean irony" than any of his other plays. Every time Oedipus says something that is truer than he knows, or is actually the reverse of what he will soon discover to be the case, or functions as an unintended reminder of the still-unimagined nature of his true predicament, we in the audience are reminded that we know something Oedipus does not know—therefore we must be separate persons. At the same time Sophoclean irony gives us constant reminders that the gods, not the mortals down there on the stage, are really in command. When Jocasta says that Apollo is "the closest" of the gods, we are made to feel that he is so indeed, he is right there in the theater. In Euripidean tragedy there is an equally urgent need to put some distance between the viewer and the chief sufferer; but the reasons are different. The victims of Euripides' pathe are undeniably, even shockingly human, and they play out their stories, not in a higher reality, but in the world known well to the audience in its waking hours. There is an obvious danger, then, that the audience might get sucked involuntarily into the play as into a daydream. But only very infrequently does Euripides use Sophoclean irony to prevent this from happening. His main safeguard—which may not have worked for all viewers—was to avoid having a single character whose story was identical with the plot of the play and through whose eyes we see everything that happens. (The Medea, which is Sophoclean in other respects as well, may be an exception.) In most of Euripides' plays our sympathies hover over the action; we are constantly shifting our apprehensions or grief. We begin by siding with Phaedra, then shift to Hippolytus, and finally include Theseus as well. We make a common cause first with Dionysus, later with Pentheus, his victim, finally with the wretched survivors, Agave and Cadmus. We experience the story first with Andromache, then with Hecuba, finally with Peleus and Neoptolemus. First we are with Hecuba, then with Cas-

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sandra, later still with Andromache and Astyanax, finally with all innocent victims, not only in Troy, but in all wars everywhere. If it works, this kind of "irony," the deliberate multiplication of candidates for our sympathy, keeps potentially painful experiences at a safe distance. This is a procedure tailored for historical or fictional rather than religious stories. When Eisenstein tried to create a tragedy that would be enjoyed enthusiastically by the masses, he hit upon the same idea: an audience that ordinarily wants daydream stories with happy endings, if it is denied a central figure whose story is also the story of the drama, can be made to identify with all mankind. The experience is one that can be enjoyed by people who ordinarily do not like tragedy. Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers is an especially fine example of this kind of drama. Euripidean irony, then, like Sophoclean irony, helps to achieve a distancing of the audience from potentially distressing pathe; but the two sorts of irony function in different ways. An "ironic" line in Sophocles reminds us of the larger forces at work in the play—the real power and presence of divinity. Euripidean irony reminds us that there is a playwright, and that we are watching his play. Euripides sometimes quite deliberately punctures the dramatic illusion, or suddenly reminds the audience of the absurd limitations imposed on their joint activity by theatrical conventions or by the mythical tradition. Plunk! We are back in our seat in the theater, listening to clever old Euripides!3 Such thrusts must occasionally have divided the audience. Some would accept the wit as brilliant; others must have fumed with resentment at the poet's refusal to be solemn and straightforward. Sometimes a reference to the fact that an audience is just that, an audience at a play, is necessary and reassuring. Shakespeare uses this kind or irony with marvelous tact. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player I That struts and frets his hour upon the stage I And then is heard no more:" Also: "You that look pale and tremble at this chance, I That are but mutes and audience to this act, / Had I but time . . ." In both scenes the poet has intervened purposefully to remind us, at a moment of terrible loss, that we are, after all, in the theater. Potential pain is diffused and transformed. Euripides, however, sometimes likes to sting us suddenly into full wakefulness and self-criticism just when we feel that we want most to remain deep in the story's illusion. It is surely very easy to imagine a split in the audience's reaction. Phaedra, at a tense and lyrical moment, invites the dancers to come up to the actors' level and eavesdrop with her as her life falls apart; the dancers tactfully decline {Hippolytus 575-80). Hecuba warns Menelaus bitterly not to take the fatally seductive Helen back to Greece on the same 3

See R. P. Winnington-Ingram, "Euripides, Poetes sophos," Arethusa 2 (1969): 127-42.

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ship with him; Menelaus asks obtusely if Helen has really gained that much weight during the Trojan War (Trojan Women 1049-50). The dancers, peasant women, first sing the story of the quarrel between Atreus and Thyestes, complete with all the famous miracles, then imply that personally they would rather believe modern astronomical explanations of these anomalies, and add that, no doubt, frightening myths of this sort are quite useful for coercing men to serve the gods (Electra 699—744). A sophistic argument by Gorgias, a contemporary of Euripides, is brilliantly demolished by Hecuba, queen of Troy (Trojan Women 969-1032, Gorgias 82 B I l Diels-Kranz.) The fine scene in the Libation Bearers when Electra comes to the realization that Orestes has returned at last is harshly ridiculed by Euripides' Electra and made to seem half-witted (Electra 5 0 8 82). And in addition to the large, obvious, self-conscious thrusts of this sort there are many small, fleeting glimpses of the poet behind the poetry—whenever a character is a little more loquacious or pompous or clever or stupid than he need be, when an excuse for an entrance or exit is deliberately made improbable or clumsy, and so on. In the Electra we can see how the three distinctive characteristics of Euripidean drama work together, the naturalism, the emphasis on life's pathetic victims, and the intellectual's irony. The Electra is also uniquely valuable inasmuch as we still have versions of its mythos by all three tragedians. A comparison makes the Euripidean vision seem very modern indeed.4 Brother, sister, mother, and stepfather are alone and without gods; their unhappiness at the play's end is felt as an example of the victimization of all mankind; and throughout the drama we are made to feel the presence of the dramatist manipulating his characters and us. But of course the three techniques are parts of a single, powerful conception of tragedy. All of these Euripidean innovations contribute to the feeling that the poet's personality has been introduced into the action; irony is only the most direct means by which he achieves this. The surprising thing is that this intrusion does not dilute but intensifies the power of the pathos. I have already suggested one reason for this: we are shielded by such awareness from pain implicit in scenes of terrible unhappiness, so the poet can be bold in his depiction of the suffering. But there is something else. The poet's wit is a constant reminder that he may be as distressed by all this as we are. If we wish, therefore, we can assume that of course this is all absurd, it could never have happened this way; justice, not injustice, is what we really want, expect, and enjoy in our stories, especially in our 4

Had von Hofmannstahl felt this modernity and followed Eunpedes' instead of Sophocles' Electra, his play and Strauss's opera would surely have been much better than they are.

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holy stories. As with Aeschylean promises of a divine covenant, or Sophocles' intimations that we receive great benefits from the suffering of heroes, Euripides' personal presence in his plays calms the intellect—so that a counterrational element of our psyche can get what it wants, visions of the terrible injustice of human life. Orestes' satisfying revenge against Aegisthus, his father's murderer, is given great prominence in the Odyssey. The act is held up by the gods themselves as a splendid example for Telemachus to emulate. Aeschylus, however, passed over this murder relatively quickly so that he could emphasize the killing of Clytemnestra, which he presented as a pathos for victim and slayer alike. (This shift in emphasis had already been made by Stesichorus a century earlier.)5 Sophocles restored the killing of Aegisthus to its orginal position of importance, but by giving Aegisthus unexpected dignity and stature at the last moment he shocks his audience with the revelation that Orestes was beyond humanity, a heartless force from the realm of the dead. Euripides arranges the killing of Aegisthus so that what shocks us is the sordidness of the murder. (Sophocles' version may actually have been written after that by Euripides.) Aegisthus, according to the messenger in Euripides' version, was struck down from behind during a formal prayer, immediately after he had welcomed Orestes affably and invited him to join the ceremonies. Orestes then comes before us carrying the severed head of his victim (880; cf. 856). The joyful Electra rushes up to her brother and crowns him with symbols of victory. Orestes says, needlessly, that he can prove, "not in words but in deed" (893), that he had done what he set out to do; then he apparently hands the head to his ecstatic sister. She addresses the head in a long, bitter speech (907-56) before she throws it down or hands it in disgust to an attendant [errh', 952). The audience knows that it is probably in for a particularly grisly version of the famous matricide. After the scene with the head it is announced that Clytemnestra is approaching. Suddenly Orestes suffers a failure of nerve. Electra displays firmness and inspired confidence. But a bookish allusion to the Aeschylean version rather compromises the seriousness of the moment (965; cf. Libation Bearers 1015, 1000, Eumenides 146, etc.). In any case her exultation fails to inspire her brother and we begin to pity him for being so unheroic just when his great moment has come. Orestes now realizes the enormity of what is expected of him—to murder his own mother. He accuses Apollo of ignorance and a lack of understanding (971). Electra is disgusted: if one cannot trust Apollo, whom can one trust? Perhaps, suggests Orestes, it was not really Apollo but a fiendish spirit who had ordered the matricide. Electra rejects the idea impatiently. Orestes reluc5

See frag. 42 Page, also Garvie, Aeschylus' Choephori, xvi—xxiv.

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tantly and in deep dejection goes off to conceal himself in order to do what is wanted of him. What he must do is horrible, he says—but if that is what divinity demands, so be it (986—87). A long scene between Electra and Clytemnestra confirms Orestes' judgment that this is just a very nasty crime that the god has ordered. The extraordinary realism of the quarrel between mother and daughter makes it impossible for us to think of this as a great event of concern even to the gods. We believe both women and sympathize with both, as each exposes her guilt and regrets and her terrible fear of the other. Electra gets her mother to go unknowingly to her death by exploiting her piety and her sense of duty as a mother. We are not proud of Electra when she then lets out a cry of triumph (1142-46). As in the Oresteia, there are plays on the various formulas employing pathos and pathein. The dancers say that they shudder [phrittein) at the sound of Clytemnestra's cries—so like those of Agamemnon in Aeschylus's play—but hold to the conviction that what she is undergoing (pathein) is exactly what she deserves in payment for having killed her husband (1168—71). Then the doors open and we see the butchery for ourselves. Suddenly the mood changes. The dancers grieve for the whole house of Tantalus. Orestes now stands where his mother had stood at the end of the Agamemnon, but he is totally without her savage sureness. Even more unnerving is Electra's grief and fear. She acknowledges her own guilt: had she insisted on the death of the woman who had borne her? She asks Orestes to weep for her. The dancers (if Kirchhoff's ascription is correct and not the manuscripts, which give 118-89 to Electra) use pathein again, but now in its other sense, a pitiable fate (1188). The dancers have turned against Electra. In describing her decision to kill her mother they use the same metaphor, an unholy wind change, that the dancers in the Agamemnon had used of the king's decision to sacrifice Iphigeneia (1201-5, Agamemnon 218-21). Orestes then goes into appalling detail in his description of what he has just done: his mother, as she died, bared her breasts (as in Libation Bearers) and bent to the earth the legs "between which I was born. . . . Her hair! I . . ." She pleaded, "my child!" He had to cover his head and stab blindly, says Orestes. The dancers tell him, "You have done the most fearful of pathe" (1226: a paradox, of course, since pathe are things done to one).6 6 deinotaton patheon erexas. Denniston in his note suggests that a deed is a pathos when it also harms the doer; but he does not support this idea with any convincing examples. (He cites anekestaton pathos erdein at Herodotus 1.137.1 but admits that it is not a true parallel.) As we have seen, many of Aristotle's examples of heroic sufferers are indeed the perpetrators of to demon, not the victims in the more obvious sense—Oedipus, not Lams, Thyestes, not his sons, and so on. And Medea is an example of a sufferer who, like Orestes, knew that she too was victim of the deed even as she killed her sons. But Orestes' swift

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An epiphany mercifully interrupts this painful scene. We are instantly jolted into double awareness. The Dioscuri not only apologize for Apollo's lapse of judgment but also correct Aeschylus in their account of what must now follow. The Areopagus, they say, was so called because Ares had once stood trial there (1258-63; cf. Pausanias 1.28.5). This is the original story. Aeschylus had substituted a new, less distressing explanation, but he was wrong, apparently. The Furies, they say, will still be grieved when they return to their dark home beneath the hill (1270). Aeschylus had said that they were in harmony with mankind and the Olympians by that time, but he was wrong about that, too. (The Dioscuri do not mention Aeschylus by name, of course, but the audience could hardly miss the allusion.) Apollo must confess his guilt, and human intelligence must supplant that of the gods, if the nightmare is ever to end. Again: Aeschylus was naive in his piety. As for the war and its horrors, that was all for nothing, since Helen had never accompanied Paris to Troy in the first place. In all of these corrections Euripides insists on the versions of the myths that are least in harmony with a rational theology. The effect is simultaneously to permit the audience to put a safe distance between itself and the realistic pathos and also to make it uneasy about the Aeschylean project of extracting wisdom from those violent old stories. Euripides has thus made remarkable concessions to the philosophers' side of the "ancient quarrel." Plato, to be sure, could not welcome his kind of drama. The antiphilosophical passions in the nether regions of our personalities are still catered to in Euripidean tragedy. Indeed, the purity of the pathe, as Aristotle saw, is greater in the plays of Euripides than it is in the works of his predecessors. According to Plato it is not enough to overlay a story of Divine Injustice with theological proofs that what we are really moved by is the knowledge that divinity is just. An adult can eventually be trained to detect and enjoy philosophical subtexts of this sort (hyponoia, Republic 2.378 d 7); but that will only disguise, it will not replace, the young person's natural response to the uninterpreted pathos. Most people continue all their lives to hunger for the "terrible beauty" of martyrdoms—if not in religion, then in history or in art—and it appears to make no difference that we have learned to dismiss such visions as contrary to rational piety. Plato's new kind of pathos, as in the noble death of Socrates, has ended in the sterile imitations of Jacques David and Erik Satie; Euripides, on the other hand, is ever-fresh and continues to inspire the best in western art. transition (even before the arrival of the Furies) from grim resignation to horrified regret, also the dancers' paradoxical phrase, to perpetrate a pathos, are not traditional: Euripides is forcing us to think more clearly about the disturbing moral puzzles.

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I

S THE POWER of "the pathos itself" an invariable ingredient in tragedy? Is it perhaps the quality that makes a work "tragic"? From our examination of Greek drama this would seem at least to be in line with the poets' own thinking in fifth-century Athens. But we must not insist that the climactic or final excitement of a play be an exhibition of a pathos. "Philosophy" may triumph in the final scene or the final pages. All that is required is that serious pathe be exhibited along the way to the end. If we were to exclude from tragedy stories that concluded in an affirmation of justice we would have to drop almost a half of our surviving Attic plays. A definition that did not work for so many of the dramas that the Greeks themselves called "tragedies" would surely be suspect. As we have seen, each of the three Attic poets had his own characteristic way of combining "poetry" and "philosophy." It seems probable that an examination of postclassical tragedy would yield many more patterns. The particular balance and formula preferred by each tragedian may be as distinctive as a fingerprint. Philosophers, unlike poets, usually hunger for a single, internally consistent explanation for truth and are therefore apt to be hostile to the one or the other vision. There are exceptions, of course. Nietzsche tries hard to accept both visions. A few philosophers champion "poetry" against "philosophy" (Heidegger is an obvious example); 1 but most in essence champion "philosophy" only. The Socratics virtually define themselves as champions of "philosophy." The thrill of the pathos is treated by them as something that must be eliminated, neutralized, or shown to be of minor importance in the imaginative lives of good and enlightened people. Even among the Socratics, however, their differences on this matter are as interesting as their agreement. Plato argues that the two contradictory hungers, for Justice and for Injustice, are both needs inborn in the human psyche. Most would now agree with this, especially since the development of psychoanalytic theory. But Plato then insists that one of the two, the hunger to believe in Injustice, is crippling, of no use at all, to be permitted no indulgence whatever. Almost no one who understands what Plato is demanding can agree. Aristotle is preferred because he sees that good dramas include visions of both justice (philanthropia) and injustice (the arousal of pity). But Aristotle then insists that no tragedy can work 1

As Laszlo Versenyi makes clear in "The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry," Philosophical Forum 2 (1970-71): 200-212, esp. 208-11. This thoughtful essay presents an analysis of the Quarrel compatible with mine but without reference to pathos or Plato's attitude toward it. Of the earlier statements of Versenyi's (essentially sound) position, the best, perhaps, is J. Tate, "Plato and Didacticism," Hermathena (48 (1933): 93—113.

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without a glimpse of a large measure of justice in the event (the tnegale hamartia). A pure pathos would be a "defiling" experience, at least for a good man. And even the arousal of pity is pleasurable only as it is flushed out. Almost no one who understands what Aristotle is demanding can agree.

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O

VER THE ENTRANCE to the Academy was the legend, "Let no one enter here who is not already an accomplished mathe­ matician" (Elias, commentary on Aristotle's Categories 118.18 Busse). Socrates' habit of talking with anyone who would stand still for a cross-examination suggests that his criticisms of ordinary values could stir people on all levels of society and in quite brief encounters. But Plato believed that mankind's best hope lay not in such chance meetings, but in the laborious training of a gifted elite. Even ordinary people, he thought, people in whom the intellectual vision that brings true happiness could never in any circumstances be the ruling passion of their lives, would be led to a happiness far superior to that which they now pursue if they could be shielded from the corrupt religious and literary tradition that now shapes them and were trained instead by this happy elite to value what they would have valued had they too been capable of the highest vision. A distinction between rational and irrational motives within the human personality had often been drawn and was a frequent theme in tragedy, especially in Euripides.1 But Socrates had redefined the distinction and Plato had made that improvement a central feature of his philosophy. 2 Intelligence is now identified as the true human being within us, the part that is fully awake and completely dominant in Socratic happiness. As in one fairly common use of the English term "intelligence," so also in Pla­ to's use of nous, noein, logos, and logistikon: it is that which is function­ ing well whenever we are able to see correctly what our true happiness is 1 There has been a dramatic shift in this century from the assumption that Euripides was a relentless rationalist (Norwood, Verrall) to the realization that he was a deep and accurate chronicler of the types of irrationality (Dodds, Winnington-Ingram). Winnington-Ingram's Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge, 1948) is probably the climax of this new sensitivity, but special mention should be made of Charles Segal's several articles on the subject, espe­ cially "The Tragedy of the Hippolytus: The Waters of Ocean and the Untouched Mead­ ows," HSCP 70 (1965): 117-69. Tate, "Plato," 112, n. 29, warns us, however, that analyses like that offered by Dodds in "Euripides the Irrationalist," CR 43 (1929): 97-104, should not lead us to assume that Euripides wanted to discredit reason. 2 Like Euripides (see Segal, "Tragedy of the Hippolytus"), Socrates and Plato may also have arrived at their new understanding as they extended not the older theories of psyche so much as the Greek preoccupation with purity and guiltlessness. See L. Moulinier, Le pur et I'impur dans la ρεη5έε des Grecs d'Homere a Aristotle (Paris, 1952), 333-422 and Parker, Miasma, 281-307.

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and what we must do to achieve it or maintain it. On this definition irrational motives are mistaken desires, drives that cannot lead to happiness. Therefore the human goals implicit in the religious and literary tradition, if they can be shown to be contrary to rationality, must, by definition, be corrupt and dangerous. It is not possible that they could ever be defended as right or harmless. Most people, ancient and modern alike, think of intelligence as the ability to calculate, the capacity to meditate between our most important feelings (our true selves) and the world as we find it, reality. The desires that Plato condemns as our real enemy are usually taken to be our unalterable wills; what Plato praises as our true will, intelligence—the only drive within us that is accurately directed toward true happiness for the whole person—is usually taken to be not a passion at all, but the ability to plan accurately in the pursuit of desire, a passion-free servant of the passions. The proof that the majority is wrong, and always has been (according to Plato), is plain for anyone to see: people are deeply unhappy and always have been, both in their private lives and in the arrangement of public good. We should not hesitate, therefore, to assume that the religious and literary tradition has led men not only into false passions, but also into a false vision of the role of intelligence in the life of passion. It is a central tenet in Platonism that what we would find if we dug to the bottom of the human personality would be a reservoir of mad fears and desires, ambitions so cruel and uncompromising that even in a nonphilosophical society they are denied as far as possible any conscious role in waking life. This is the eternal enemy of intelligence. There are certain states of mind, however, in which intelligence is regularly weakened to the point that these nightmarish energies force their way into our awareness. In a moral and healthy person this may happen only when he sleeps and dreams. 3 If he is a citizen of an ordinary corrupt society, it may also happen when he lets himself be swayed by a tragedy or a religious ceremony that concentrates his attention on a pathos. In the lives of unhealthy or badly trained people these dark drives influence indirectly even their conscious pursuits in daily life—making them neurotic, compulsive, criminal, or insane, depending on the seriousness of the weakening of the intelligence. And in extraordinary situations a whole nation will go mad. Plato in his youth lived through the horrors of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath—which included the execution of Socrates. He knew what the human passions are that rise to the surface when a civilization 3 To be sure, Plato wondered if a perfectly good man might not have dreams that varied not at all from his understanding of the world when he was entirely rational, Republic 9.571 d 6-572 b 1. Cf. Freud's 1932 paper "My Contact with Joseph Popper-Lynkeus." (PopperLynkeus wrote a story called "Traumen wie Wachen" in which there is a description of a man who claims he has never dreamed anything nonsensical.)

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falters. We in our own century have had even more terrible opportunities to observe the madness of this energy, from the trenches and the gas chambers to the destruction of Asian villages. We cannot dismiss Plato's personal experiences as anomalies. Yet Plato saw that a simple dichotomy between the rational and the irrational would not do. Complete breakdowns of civilization offer very instructive glimpses into our nether regions, but such nightmares are hardly the rule in non-Platonic societies. Even in an ordinary corrupt society most people are able to insulate themselves from criminal phantasies most of the time. People may be selfish and imprudent and pursue material goals that will lead them to something less than happiness; but only a minority is insane. What allows people to function as well as they do is a third element in the personality, the "middle" part of the psyche as Plato calls it. Plato thought that this third part had a natural affinity to rationality: it is easily trained to side passionately, even angrily, with the intellect in its never-ending war with the "lowest" part of the psyche. It is this third drive that would be strengthened in the common man and put in charge of his whole personality if the happy elite were in charge of his art, education, and politics. Only in the case of the most gifted of the young—and at that only at a late stage in their training—would the philosopher rulers attempt to enlighten the intellect directly. Plato was quite sure that no society would ever have more than a few individuals who could themselves be awakened to the highest vision. For the most part the philosopher kings would have to concentrate on purifying the myths of art, religion, and politics, making sure that they were true "images" of the reality most men will never see directly.4 Some of the ordinary citizen's "irrational" drives may be incorrigible, therefore, or almost so; but the passionate or angry energy of his "middle part" can be conditioned by good myths to dominate the incorrigible appetites and see to it that as far as possible they contribute to, rather than undermine, the whole man's pursuit of happiness. As the internal representative of the highest ordering powers in society, the "middle" passions obviously function quite like the Uber-ich of psychoanalysis.5 Plato argues that this division in humanity's psychic drives can be observed, not in the happy, philosophical city only, but even in ordinary societies—insofar as these states do function adequately. The writing of laws and the training of children always presuppose this tripartite arrangement. In no society, he points out, is a child set free until adults have established in its psyche a set of rules resembling those of the state. 4 In addition to "molding" the citizens by shaping their education and institutions according to the patterns seen by the intellect (Republic 6.501 b), the philosopher would also adjudicate in day-to-day disputes (7.517 d). 5 See introduction, n. 31 above.

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"When we have strengthened the best in them by means of the best in ourselves and have thereby established within them a guardian and ruler to represent us, then—and only then—do we set them free" (Republic 9.590 e-591 a). In other words, whenever the adults in a society have made the young want what they, the adults, want them to want, then, and only then, do the adults let the young do whatever they want. Since this happens in good and bad societies alike, the right way to distinguish between better and less-good civilizations is by the real excellence or foolishness of the ambitions thus awakened in the young. If the young are taught to put high value on goals that cannot be won, or cannot last very long, or cannot bring deep satisfaction even when attained securely, then it is a bad society. In the perfect society a citizen will be so trained that his desires will have to be frustrated neither by society nor by nature. He will then feel free, therefore, unhampered. He will also be "free" in the best sense: he will desire only things he can win and keep, and which will never disappoint him. A myth as an "image" of reality can be good or bad according to its accuracy. A bad myth is one that can make a citizen follow the wrong priorities when he makes important decisions in his own life. There is no such thing as a neutral story. Whether a story is accepted as literally true or true only in a less direct sense (Republic 2.377 a), whether it is drawn from one of the sacred traditions or is frankly fictional, whether the motive of the storyteller is to instruct or merely to entertain, it will in every case convey a theory of life and happiness. Let us consider once more Plato's definition of the subject matter of all imitative poetry. It "imitates men doing things either voluntarily or under compulsion," he says, "and supposing themselves to be faring well or poorly as a consequence of their action, and in all cases either rejoicing or grieving" (Republic 10.603 c 4-7). Any three points determine a plane, any three notes a key; so also any representation of an agent acting or being acted on and experiencing as a consequence an increase or decrease in his happiness will determine a vision of human life. The importance of intelligence, reputation, real moral worth, divine favor, accidents, coincidences, or luck will be implicit in any story, sacred or profane. The true role of genetically inherited tendencies, education and social conditioning, conscious planning, unconscious drives, economic motivation—the accumulation of money, the power of big business, government, conspiracies, the media, history—a theory about one or more of these issues will be conveyed subtly to readers or audience in any plot, even if it is nothing but the news, gossip, advertisement, political propaganda, song, or entertainment. Now, the prevalence of unhappiness in ordinary societies proves that men act on false theories; and that means the stories they are

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exposed to are false "images" of reality. The first—almost the sole—duty of the philosopher ruler, therefore, must be to correct those deadly myths. Plato makes it clear that he was prepared to sacrifice most of the masterpieces of the Greek poetic tradition. Homer, Hesiod, and Aeschylus are considered especially dangerous, in part just because they were so profoundly respected. Very little would be kept: straight praise of the gods and heroes (Republic 10.607 a 3-4, Laws 7.801 e) and true visions of happiness and success (Laws 7.812 c). Since all young people "imitate" the models given them in stories, obviously disastrous models must not appear in anything they see or hear (Republic 3.395 b-d). To augment what little is rescuable from traditional poetry, the philosopher will also compose new myths. Plato offers several sorts that a philosopher king might invent: the postmortem court in the Gorgias, the history of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias, the Myth of Er at the end of the Republic, and so on. The last, since it follows so soon after Plato's most profound criticism of unenlightened myths, was undoubtedly intended as an example of a true "image" of reality, one that Plato probably hoped would also be popular in future generations. In fact the only Platonic myth that has had a popularity comparable with those of the nonphilosophical tradition is the history of Atlantis; and that would soon fade if it became generally known that it was indeed made up wholecloth by Plato himself. The most successful with the educated elite has been the dramatic Dialogues themselves, which Plato does indeed identify as the right kind of imitation (Laws 7.811 c-d). In a class by themselves are Plato's mythlike pictures of the human psyche. It is not hard to see why these should be of such central importance to Plato: the old, false visions of life will never be supplanted by a true vision so long as people have a completely mistaken notion of passion and intelligence. In Republic IX intellectual passion is likened to a perfectly formed man; the "lowest" passions to a many-headed monster, snaky and bestial; and the "middle" passions to a noble, wrathful lion. The myth helps Plato explain the terrible consequences of having the wrong power-structure within one's psyche. In the Phaedrus the passions most remote from intelligence are represented by a sweaty, violent black horse; the noble passions by a proud, dutiful white horse; intellectual passion by a human, reality-inspired charioteer. All three are said to be winged and are shown both in their natural state, free of the body, in the train of the gods, and incarnate, inspired only intermittently by disturbing glimpses of divine beauty. At the beginning of the Phaedrus Socrates had dismissed as without much interest the search for an historical basis for the old myths (a fashionable procedure then, as it still is, as we can see in the modern attitude to Atlantis); instead, he wanted to contemplate the myths of equine creatures like Chimera and Pegasus and of reptilian mon-

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sters like the snake-haired Gorgon or snake-bottomed Typhon. He wondered what they might reveal about the human psyche. "I should like to know," he says, "whether I am truly more tangled, convoluted, and poison-ridden than Typhon, or a gentler, simpler creature with a share of the divine" (230 a). In Republic X Plato acknowledges that the mutual animosity between poets and philosophers is "ancient" (607 b 5, c 3). But instead of giving examples he merely quotes insults hurled by one side at the other. The origin and significance of the quotations are not known (although we may guess from a remark in the Laws that the line about yelping dogs was probably from a poet expressing his contempt for critics of the poetic tradition, 12.967 c 5-d 2). We are forced to infer Plato's meaning in this passage from his more general criticisms.6 "Poetry" is the celebration of divine and heroic pathe, the main tradition from the Iliad to the Bacchae and Oedipus at Colonus. In "philosophy" are included not only the systematic thinkers like Heraclitus who heaped insults on the poets, but anyone who complained that the gods ought not to be envisaged as the authors of all human misery, deserved and undeserved alike. By the fifth century it had become a regular feature of this secondary tradition—"philosophy" in the broader sense—to use the visions of mythical monsters more or less as Plato used them: to depict the various forces at work in the human psyche. The most obvious examples are the sculptural decorations on the temples built in the archaic and early classical period. Momentous battles between gods and titans (or between gods and giants, fully human warriors and bestial or half-bestial creatures, male heroes and barbarous Amazons) were used to celebrate the triumph of the good over the evil forces in human nature, the divine in us over the monstrous in us. In Hellenistic art the uses of this motif were often tired and automatic, but for a time the theme inspired some excellent art. Among philosophers the Orphics seem to have made the most elaborate use of such images, if we can trust 6

See introduction, n. 2. Jaeger, Paideia, trans. Gilbert Highet (Oxford, 1944), 2:218, arrives at an interpretation of the tension between Greek religion and Greek philosophy quite like the one I have been presenting, although he ignores the references to pathe and analyzes the religious tradition instead in terms of fate, motra: "The belief t h a t . . . misery deserved and misery undeserved, each is 'moira of the gods'." "The conflict," Jaeger says, "between this religious conception and the ethical idea that man is fully responsible for the results of his actions runs through all Greek poetry, although sometimes beneath the surface. It was bound to come to a head when Socrates preached his radical doctrine that all human life should be judged by ethical standards." Later, however, Jaeger's failure to see the "Quarrel" in terms of enthusiasm for versus hostility to depictions of pathe leads to a bland interpretation of the argument in Republic X, which he presents as almost unconnected with the argument in Republic II.

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7

our record. Of the poetic adaptations, none can match the Oresteia in subtlety and sublime ambition. Euripides enriched the text of the Bacchae with reminders that, although Dionysus may really be a bull, Pentheus (son of Echion, which means "Snake") was himself descended from the sown-men, sons of Earth. When Plato employs animals and mythical monsters to explain the inner struggles in men's lives, he is using a language already well understood. In the three-way contest of the Eumenides neither Apollo (bright young god of the upper zone, champion of reason and fairness) nor the Furies (ancient snake-haired daughters of the lower realms, instillers of primeval nightmares) could be granted an out-and-out victory by their stern arbiter, the male-female Athena. All three forces, Apollo, Furies, and Athena, are equally immortal. The same is true of Plato's three-way tension. The passion of human intellect may employ the leonine anger of the "middle" element in its attempt to drive the bestial and snaky element back down to its dark home—the unconscious; but that incorrigible enemy of reason cannot be killed outright. Although Plato is not entirely consistent on the point, he usually pictures the psyche as surviving its separation from the body with its darkest element still intact.8 Let us consider again the passage in Republic IX where Socrates says that even in good men there lurk horrendous and criminal appetites of which they are quite unaware in daylight hours. There are drives, as he puts it, which are normally "awakened," egeiresthai, only in sleep when the intelligence loses its vigilance and control (571 c 3). Plato's examples, as we saw, are so chosen as to make the reader aware of a sinister resemblance between our worst nightmares and the most famous tragedies. First come sexual crimes, and first among these is sexual intercourse with one's own mother. Next comes pollution-causing murder stopping at nothing in the selection of the victim. A Greek would think above all of parricide, like those committed by Oedipus and Orestes. Third is the eating of forbidden food. This last makes no sense, as I argued, except as a 7

See Burkert, Greek Religion, 462, n. 1. At Timaeus 69 c 7—8 Plato says that a human being, in addition to the athanatos arche psyches, also has alio eidos, . . .to thneton, namely the seat of pleasures, pain, fear, anger, etc. That this "other kind" should be "subject to death" would seem to follow from the assumption that what is deathless is also divine and good. Whenever Plato considers postmortem rewards and punishment, however (e.g. in the Myth of Er and in Laws 10.903—6), he envisages the survival of the whole psyche. After all, what would be the sense or justice of punishing only the unerringly good part? To be sure, the ability to survive one death, as he notes in the Phaedo (86 e—87 e), is not the same as being truly immortal; yet in the Phaedrus, the souls of the forever-free philosophers, and even of the gods themselves, are seen as tripartite still. G.R.F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus (Cambridge, 1987), gives a detailed analysis of the interactions among the three parts: see esp. 190—203, also the works by de Romilly, Ronna Burger, and others cited in his notes. 8

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reference to myths like that of Thyestes who was tricked into eating his own sons. Poetry, too, Socrates insists, "awakens" egeirein, the lowest part of the psyche—the energies that he had explained in Republic IX as awakened in dreams (10.605 b 3). He is thinking primarily of tragedy, the main challenge to philosophy in the fifth century (cf. 605 e l l , also 607 a 2—3). A decent, law-abiding person may take his place in the theater and switch effortlessly from the standards by which he makes his judgments in the serious business of life to standards quite incompatible with these, standards normally implicit only in violent dreams. The fact that we are emotionally excited by the action shows, Plato thought, that it is not merely the figures from the ancient myths down there on the stage who are perpetrating or enduring parricide, incest, and the rest; a vital part of the viewer, too, must be indulging himself in these terrible phantasies. He did not hesitate to identify the excited part with our dreamer selves, the "lowest," most bestial part of the psyche. What is awakened normally only when we sleep and dream must be something that normally sleeps when we are awake. To have desires in our waking hours that remain asleep is to have unconscious desires.9 When we try to avoid "awakening this part of the psyche and nourishing it or making it strong" for fear that it will "destroy the rational will" (605 b 3-5), if we even "restrain it by force" (606 a 3), what we are trying to do, of course, is to repress the unconscious passions and keep them as firmly as possible in the unconscious. Now if attendance at a tragedy undermines this effort, if it tends to tip the balance in favor of the passions intelligence wants to repress, then tragedy is the enemy of intelligence. The resemblances that connect dreams, madness, and the myths of literature and religion are anything but reassuring, Plato believed. The poets have been playing a most dangerous game. Plato's "most serious charge" against the tragic poets was, as we saw, the fact that they make us want to pity ourselves and weep for ourselves and can therefore pollute the character of even the strongest Socratic. The project of making sure that we are always intelligent and strong, Plato believed, is constantly endangered by a pernicious, soft desire to see ourselves as victims. The "ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy" is also an internal struggle and therefore humanwide, as Aeschylus implies in the Eumenides and Euripides in the Bacchae. "Philosophy" is coextensive with the drive to take charge of our own destinies, to act always on the assumption that by making ourselves good, morally and intellec9

Fifteen years after its first appearance, Freud added to The Interpretation of Dreams a parenthetical reference to this passage (p. 67 in the American edition, trans. James Strachey [New York, 1961]); but he still failed to acknowledge the extent to which Plato anticipated his theory of dreams and unconscious desires.

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tually, we must necessarily win true happiness. "Poetry" is the expression of the "lowest" part of the psyche, the desire to believe that we inhabit a world that is so monstrously unfair that no one need blame himself for his own unhappiness. That is why the "lowest" drive requires for its food and drink the pathe of hero religions, initiatory religions, epics, and tragedies. This is "the most serious charge," Plato believed, because "philosophy" is wholly in the right and "poetry" wholly in the wrong. Divinity must never be shown as irrationally angry, or at war one god with another, or guilty of unruly sexual appetites, or changing into other shapes. Above all, divinity must never be shown as the real author of human suffering. Divinity, since it is good, could not possibly be the cause of all things, as the majority believes. It must be the cause of only a small number of things that happen in men's lives. The good things in our life are small in number compared to the evil things. Divinity and only divinity should be given credit for this good, but we must look elsewhere for responsibility for evil. (2.379 c 2— 7)

The poet must therefore always insist that what divinity does in his story is just and excellent, that sufferers always profit from their punishment (380 a 5-b 2). Plato then reiterates the principle twice again, so that there can be no mistake: a pathos of the sort traditionally used by Greek poets, god-caused suffering that is neither merited nor therapeutic, cannot be tolerated at all if the citizenry is to avoid the perverse theory of life that now prevails in its imagination. What men must understand is "that divinity is not responsible [aition] for all things, only for good things" (c 8— 9). At this point pious people in the modern world usually encounter a difficulty that Plato could ignore. If divinity is omnipotent, then ultimately it must be "responsible" for evil as well as good. (There are standard ways of getting our of this difficulty, of course, the most popular being the suggestion that "free will" is more desirable than happiness.) But Plato was a dualist: he assumed that the power of divinity was limited by eternal non rational forces in the universe and in ourselves. There are two levels of reality, he believed: in one no evil will ever exist; in the other evil can never be eradicated (e.g., Theaetetus 176 a-b). The first is indeed our true home and to it we must flee as quickly and efficiently as we can; but the second is necessarily most men's home as long as they are incarnate. The split between "rational" (good-directed) and "non rational" (not good-directed) energy is found, not in our psyches only, but also in the stuff of the visible world itself (Laws 10.896 c-897 c). Political man is therefore subject to "irrational" energy—essentially

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random in its own nature, according to the theories of Plato's old age— forces that divinity can minimize but not obliterate. These are forces to which men themselves would never yield willingly if they were properly englightened. "All of us who are bad," says Plato, "are bad because of two, totally involuntary things," mental or physical faults we may have been born with, and the bad luck not to have been educated and brought up correctly {Titnaeus 87 b). Neither our rational selves nor divinity is "responsible" for this. But supine fatalism is not the right response to this perception: we must do what we can for ourselves, such as acquiring knowledge and good moral habits, and for others, such as giving them encouragement, punishment, enlightenment, or intelligent government. All of these activities are ways of introducing new causes—good-directed energy to offset the random forces. Like most philosophers, Plato believed that all human decisions are made in the belief, right or wrong, that one is maximizing one's happiness—maximizing it spiritually if not in physical pleasure, in the long run if not immediately. But if no one ever knowingly diminishes his own happiness, it might be asked how a completely happy philosopher could ever be induced to lessen his happiness knowingly in order to become a philosopher king and thus improve the lot of his wretched brothers in the lower world? Would that not be a case of a person knowingly reducing his own happiness? It is clearly not like going to a surgeon or dentist; the temporary unhappiness is neither necessitated by a breakdown in the philosopher's own life nor required for a further improvement in his happiness. In Republic VII Plato wrestles with this problem at some length, but does not find a completely satisfactory solution. It is only when he turns to the parallel problem of god's willingness to descend to our unhappy level that he sees his way to an answer. The solution is found in his triumphant rejection of the poets' vision of divinity as motivated by phthonos, grudgingness or jealousy. Near the beginning of the Titnaeus it is argued that the Demiurge, the "carpenter" of the cosmos, because he is flawlessly good, can harbor no phthonos at all. His awareness that other creatures are less happy than himself will therefore move him to great labors in order to improve their lot (29 e-30 b). So also with the true philosopher, who spends his life becoming as much like a god as possible {Theaetetus 176 b 1-2, Republic 10.613 a—b, etc.). Because he is truly good he is without grudgingness: his own happiness would be seriously compromised if he knew that he was neglecting the chance to make other people as happy as himself. The anger of his "middle" part rouses him to indignation at the spectacle of needless suffering. He will, like Socrates, needle people into higher visions at every chance encounter in the marketplace or he will, like Plato, write

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dialogues, found a university, propose just constitutions, and do everything he can to change the myths men live by. In the Symposium it is suggested that gods, because they possessed securely forever everything needed for flawless happiness, could not desire or love (202 d). In the picture of divinity in the Timaeus, however, this idea is seen for what it is—a paradox, which must, like all Socratic paradoxes, be interpreted before it yields good sense. Even the happy have yearnings, according to Plato's mature theory, but not directly for themselves: what they yearn for is that all creatures be as happy as themselves. (At this level there is no great difference between Platonic eras and Christian agape.)10 It is this yearning that makes divinity interfere in the lower realm continually, in order to make men's chance for happiness as great as possible (e.g., Laws 10.903-4). And it is this that makes philosopher rulers legislate, adjudicate, and censor art and religion: in order to make less fortunate men desire as much oi the time as possible only goals that are permissible, attainable, and capable of satisfying them to a superlative degree. It frequently happens that readers who have profound admiration for Plato also find the pathe of serious literature among the finest and most valuable of man's pleasures. Plato would hardly have been surprised: simultaneous loyalty to two incompatible visions of life is just what one would expect, given the division within our psyches. But from Aristotle on, the temptation to argue that the two passions, for "philosophy" and for "poetry," are not really at odds at all is rarely resisted. This is because thought—that is, "philosophy"—looks upon discontinuities and inconsistencies as problems to be resolved. The antirational is assumed to be merely rational-but-not-yet-explained. There are three ways by which modern readers attempt to reconcile "poetry" and "philosophy." 11 First, it is pointed out that Plato himself 10 The neglect of this argument in the Timaeus vitiates Christian claims (e.g., by Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. P. S. Watson [London, 1932], vol. 1, sec. 1) that what Paul called agape was something undreamed of by Plato. 11 The bibliography is enormous: see Harold Cherniss, "Plato 1950—1957: Continuation," Lustrum 5 (1960): 520-54, also 4 (1959): 228-34. Cherniss includes more than fifty studies directly relevant to our problem published within two decades alone. Many of these propose ways to absolve Plato of the charge of having been (seriously) opposed to the (whole) poetic tradition. The best are those that start from a consideration of Plato's own dramatic artistry, his use of profound and vivid myths, his elevation of beauty to the object of highest knowledge, his thoughts about pleasure, and his appreciation of love and other kinds of inspired energy. The most exasperating are those that claim to detect playfulness or irony in Plato's criticisms. Among the more useful studies are Helmut Kuhn, "The True Tragedy," HSCP 52 (1941) and 53 (1942) and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic, trans. P. C. Smith (New Haven, 1980), 39-72. Of the more recent attempts to come

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was troubled by his perception of the poets as enemies of philosophy, that even he held out the hope that some day someone would be able to prove him wrong. Immediately after declaring the quarrel to be an ancient one he says, "Let it be said nevertheless that if the poetry that is composed to produce pleasure and is mimetic can support the claim that it ought to exist in the well-governed state, we would receive it with delight; for we are aware that we ourselves are bewitched by it.. . . Are you yourself not bewitched by it, friend—above all when you delight [theorem] in Homer?" (Republic 10.607 c 4—d 1). It would be a betrayal of piety, he says, to prefer this pleasure to the truth; still, justice demands that we would end the exile if poetry's defense is adequate, whatever kind of poetry the defense is made in. "Indeed, we would even let defenders who are not poets themselves but merely lovers of poetry produce their arguments in prose, to the effect that such poetry is not only pleasant but also beneficial for [good] government and human life [in general]. We would listen sympathetically, since we ourselves would obviously be the gainers" (d 6-e2). Aristotle clearly thought that he had finally provided just such a defense. Now, if Plato could be imagined as welcoming Aristotle's solution, then we would not need to worry about Plato's hostile poetics any more. But Aristotle's analysis does not solve the problem, as we saw. Although he acknowledges the vital importance of pathe in the poetic tradition, and also the essential role of pity, he then tries to reconcile poetry and philosophy by insisting on the supreme importance of real justice in all good tragedies: the presence of a major error in the actions of the sufferer himself. In other words, Aristotle's analysis of the poetic tradition would be acceptable only if we were willing to put the major emphasis on that element in the tragedies that has always been in agreement with "philosophy" anyhow. As for Plato's disturbing discovery that the poets awaken the "lowest" part of our psyche, that, according to Aristotle, is of no consequence, because those lower drives are benign and not enemies to reason at all.12 In other words, we could accept Aristotle's reconciliation to Plato's defense, the most interesting are Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (Oxford, 1977); Julius Elias, Plato's Defense of Poetry (Albany, 1984); and Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1986), 122-35 and 223-27. Further bibliography in Nussbaum's notes, esp. n. 2, pp. 452-53, also in HalliwelPs commentary on Republic X (Warmington, Wiltshire, 1988), 30—31. Cherniss's general bibliography has been brought up to date several times: see A. C. Bowen, "On Interpreting Plato," in Platonic Writing, Platonic Reading, ed. C. L. Griswold (London, 1988), 275, n. 1. Griswold's collection adds several new contributions to the question, some from a Straussian point of view. Cf. Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York and London, 1988), 1-26. 12 On the Soul 2.4, On Generation and Corruption 2.10, On Prophesying by Dreams 1, Physics 1.9, etc.

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of "poetry" with "philosophy" only if we were also willing to abandon Plato's dualism. The second major way to circumvent Plato's hostile poetics is by emphasizing his own exhuberant and life-long devotion to dramatic and mimetic art. There are useful "images" as well as the destructive kind; pious poetry as well as the impious. Plato never denies this. And there are his own myths and dialogues. Surely he was condemning certain faults, but not the whole poetic tradition as such. When he does make sweeping charges against all poets, therefore, he must be "ironic" or playful. It is even argued that in the ideal states the philosophers themselves would be permitted to enjoy Homer and the rest even if the ordinary citizens would not. And it is a point of some satisfaction that in the Phaedrus mimetic poets are no longer the lowest of the low. But in fact the main criterion used by Plato to distinguish the permissible from the impermissible in poetry leads us to condemn not just what we, too, think of as bad poetry, but almost all of the greatest masterpieces from the Iliad to Plato's own time—and indeed to our own time if we include only serious literature. His quarrel was with the use of pathe; it is a moral and religious criticism, not an aesthetic complaint only. The art he would save would indeed include his own wonderful myths and dialogues; but it would not include much tragedy, ancient or modern. As for the enjoyment of traditional poetry by the philosopher rulers themselves, what Plato actually said is this: "as we listen to it we will chant to ourselves the argument we have given—this countercharm of ours—taking care in this way not to fall once more into that puerile eros of the multitude" (Republic 10.608 a 3-5). As several commentators have seen, the first phrase, literally "we shall listen to it," akroasometha autes, probably means, not "as we enjoy poetry," but "as we listen to poetry's defense of itself." Philosophers will in fact abstain from poetry, by a violent effort if necessary, as one caught in a ruinous sexual erds.13 In the Phaedrus "the poet or other imitator" is sixth in a descending order of nine lives possible for fallen souls (248 e 1-2). First in that list is "the lover of the philosophic vision, lover of beauty, devotee of the Muse, 13

The antecedent of autes must indeed be he pros bedonen poietike (techne) kai he mimesis (607 c 4—5), but the protasis of the clause at 608 a 3 is "so long as it is unable to make a defense (apologessasthai)" This is preceded by a comparison to one fallen into a ruinous eros abstaining forcefully, i.e. "against his will," as it were, biai men, homos de apechontai, 607 e 5—6. (The verb that follows our sentence, 608 a 6, is probably corrupt—see Adam— so nothing can be safely inferred from the concluding remarks in Socrates' argument.) We might paraphrase the part of the argument that is textually sound as follows: "We share the universal eros (or 'poetry'; yet so long as it cannot be shown that this is not a ruinous eros, we shall abstain. This will run counter to a very strong eros indeed, but abstain we shall nevertheless." The counterargument (logos) that we chant as we hear "poetry" attempting to defend itself is, of course, "philosophy."

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the man of erds" (d 3-4). If it were not for the appearance of the mimetic poet in sixth place we might think he belongs in the first order; but true philosophers alone are evidently admitted to this highest incarnate existence. They are the "true" servants of Eros, beauty, and the Muse. Homer, Aeschylus, and the rest are the false, deluded servants. Second in the list are kings and other servants who live by law; third, politicians and businessmen; fourth, people who work for physical health—athletes, trainers, and physicians; fifth, professional priests in oracular shrines and initiatory rites. Only then do we come to poets and other imitators. The only people more lowly than the poets are manual laborers, sophists, and tyrants, in that order. Lovers of poetry can take little pleasure in this reevaluation, surely. Finally, a person who loves both Plato and tragedy might console himself with the thought that Plato may have been wrong on this one, nonessential detail, but that that error does not weaken the case for PIatonism as a whole. In other words, the condemnation of the poetic tradition was not vital to the truth-claim of PIatonism. One could drop Plato's poetics, it is assumed, without doing serious damage to his philosophy as a whole. But this, too, is a position that cannot be defended. As we have seen, Plato's objection to the Greek literary and religious tradition is twopronged, moral and psychological. Both criticisms are related to central and vital aspects of PIatonism and are in fact both valid inferences from his theories in these two matters. Plato's moral objection may well go back to Socrates himself, as I argued in Part I. The heart and soul of the Socratic revolution was the discovery that all good men and only good men are happy. Excellence is not only a necessary condition for happiness, it is the sufficient condition. A genuinely admirable man or woman who is genuinely unhappy is an impossibility. In addition, the notion that the gods would tolerate or even promote such injustices is impious, not to be repeated in the hearing of our citizens. The thrill of the pathos is therefore contrary to both logic and religion. A nation that takes the pathos to heart as a vision of truth will never believe that happiness is in the citizen's own power, to be had by anyone who makes himself good. And one more thing: true happiness is achieved by making oneself as much as possible into a god; but the poets attribute phthonos to the gods, making them unattractive as models and dangerous as rivals or companions. Plato was simply stating an obvious fact when he asserted that his moral theory could not be reconciled with that of the great poets. Plato's psychological objection to tragedy is presumably a postSocratic development. The discovery that the human psyche is tripartite, and that the existence of some of its appetites can only be inferred from such things as dreams, poetry, religion, and compulsive behavior, was

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made, no doubt, as the consequence of Plato's systematic attempt to understand the preponderance of unhappiness in human history. As we have seen, some aspects of his model for the soul may well go back to the poets themselves. Nevertheless, he was quite right to see that he now had a way to explain why tragedy was able to "bewitch" even the philosopher himself without having to concede any truth to their pathe. The lowest part of the psyche by its very nature yearned for the right to pity itself—it hungered for forgiveness, absolution, reconciliation.14 The last thing this part of us enjoys is proof that happiness is in our own power and unhappiness always our own fault. Even the philosopher has a difficult time trying to free himself entirely from the hungers of that "lowest" part and therefore from the pleasure of a pathos. We must ban the production of pathe altogether. Plato's discovery of a "middle" part of the psyche was a triumph, one of the great moments in the history of psychology. But it is also here that Plato made his one major mistake in his poetics. Plato welcomed the existence of the angry element in the souls of all men, because he saw correctly that this drive tended by its very nature to be an internal representative of society's standards and authority. He concluded, correctly again, that one could judge the excellence or corruption of a society by the liberating or enslaving effects of these internal standards. He also saw that without the "middle" part, society could never be organized at all, since few men are guided by their intellects alone. Civilization, therefore, and its incalculable benefits, are made possible by this leonine passion for justice. But Plato was wrong when he supposed that no harm could ever come from society's attempts to strengthen the "middle part" as much as it could. Our internalized anger, even in Plato's account, must be directed toward our own "lower" selves as often as it is toward external evils. It functions as the guarantor of moral behavior precisely because it is the part of our psyche that punishes us for being too lazy, too stupid, or too morally weak to have achieved happiness. The trouble is, as we now know, this passion is capable of terrible unfairness. It can punish us for a dream, a passing phantasy, a relatively minor weakness, or even for a nonexistent fault of thought or action. And here is a paradox that is truly damaging for Platonism: it is the most saintly of men who are most apt to have their lives poisoned by an unreasonable conscience. Being good, therefore, may in certain circumstances actually decrease one's chance for 14 Murdoch (Fire and Sun, 39-41) agrees with Plato that the tendency of art to reconcile us to our fate (in various senses) is pernicious. She notes that Freud also agreed. For Murdoch's objections to art that "consoles," see also her essay "Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch," Encounter 16 (January 1961): 16-20.

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happiness. It is here, as I say, that we can fault Plato and defend the poets after all. A pathos, Plato was right, thrills us with an exalted pleasure because it permits us momentarily to forgive ourselves. We yearn to believe in the possibility of unmerited suffering. This is hard, not because we find it difficult to believe in suffering, of course, but because we cannot believe that our own suffering is ever completely unmerited. That "middle" part of the psyche is the villain. The better a person is, the greater his need to escape its cruel lacerations. We may need this internal punisher; we obviously do need it. But we also need pathe, either in religion or in literature, visions that cleanse us—temporarily, now and then—from its tendency to destroy happiness.

23 THE TRUE DIONYSUS

T

HE QUARREL Socrates and Plato picked with the tragedians was theological in the first instance. Plato's psychological analyses came later, in further support of his objections to the religious vision implicit in tragedy. Now, Dionysus was the god, not only of ecstatic religion as such, but also of tragedy in particular. The two philosophers were therefore challenging Dionysian religion. To be sure, their piety did not permit them therefore simply to reject the worship of Dionysus. What they did was to redefine Dionysus. In the prologue of the Symposium, and again in the epilogue, we are told remarkable stories about the strange way in which Socrates would sometimes suddenly withdraw from the ordinary world altogether (174 d, 220 c). The implication is that he sometimes returned for a time to a higher level of reality where he was closer to divinity than the rest of us. He is not like any other human being who has ever lived, says Alcibiades (221 c). He is only on loan to us down here, as it were—the god's gift to Athens, as he himself maintains in the Apology, sent by divinity to awaken ordinary men from their false dream and stir them to the existence of a far more beautiful reality (30 a). Alcibiades compares Socrates to Silenus, chief of the divine though grotesque-looking male followers of Dionysus. He was like one of the figurines of Silenus playing a flute, available then in statuary shops, which could be opened to reveal small statues of gods inside (215 a—b). Alcibiades describes what happened once when he himself saw the gods' images inside Socrates: "they were so divine and golden, and so entirely beautiful and astonishing, that I had to do immediately whatever Socrates commanded" (217 a 1). Being with Socrates could be a religious experience. Master and disciple were both transported to a visionary state. That Socrates, too, experienced an elevating excitement in such encounters, and not his companion only, is clear. Aeschines, one of the most reliable recorders of Socrates' manner and speech, has him say in one of his dialogues, "through the love I had for Alcibiades exactly the same thing happened to me as happens to Bacchants: when they become filled with divinity they draw honey and milk from wells which do not even yield water for others" (frag. 11 Dittmar, 4 Krauss). He goes on to claim, as usual, that he had no doctrine and could not help people by teaching in the usual way, but that he could inspire them nevertheless with the power of his

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love. His love for Alcibiades had this effect, he says. Plato, too, has Socrates describe the philosopher's own experience as Dionysian excitement. The god of philosophers is none other than Zeus himself; but the excitement of an approach to Zeus is described nevertheless as being like that of a Bacchant (Phaedrus 253 a). As the philosopher catches a glimpse of Zeus in the younger man, he himself takes on the god's qualities, "to the extent that a man can partake of divinity." Philosophers give the younger man credit for this vision and love him (agapan): "and if, like Bacchants, they draw liquids from Zeus, they pour them into the soul of the loved one and make him as much as possible like their god." Euripides portrays Dionysus in the Bacchae as ever calm, even eerily so: the still center when those whom he intoxicates are stirred to frantic energy. Vase paintings of the god surrounded by his divine or human followers often (although not always) show him this way also. Socrates, too, sometimes appeared to those whom he intoxicated as impervious himself to the excitement he generated in his companion. As Alcibiades says in the Symposium, Socrates' astonishing invulnerability to the usual pleasures and excitements is an important part of his special power over people. It is what makes him more like a god than a man. Most witnesses agree: Socrates was sincere and consistent in his claim to have no doctrine he could impart to men. The elevation and exhilaration so valued by his young disciples were personal things, inseparable from his personality, or almost so. The peculiarity of Socrates' power is remarked on several times, most memorably in the Theages, a brief dialogue included in the Platonic corpus but considered by some (with little reason) to be the work of some other Socratic.1 Aristeides, grandson of the great Aristeides, tries to explain to Socrates his despair at finding that he needed Socrates' physical presence. When he had gone off to war, he says, the separation from Socrates had had the effect of drying up his inspired eloquence. Did this happen suddenly or gradually? Socrates asks. Gradually, he says. "Although, as you know yourself, I never learned any doctrine from you, I nevertheless improved whenever I was with you— even when I was merely in the same house, without being in the same room. And when we were in the same room and you were talking, my progress seemed to be much greater when I looked at you than when I looked away. And it was greatest of all when I would sit beside you and 1 The chief defender of the authenticity of the Theages is Paul Friedlander, Platon1, vol. 2: Die Platonische Scbriften, Erst Period (Berlin, 1964), 135-42 and 309-11; in English, Plato, vol. 2: The Dialogues, First Period, trans. Hans Meyerhoff (London, 1964), 147-54 and 327-29. The main reason why modern readers persist in doubting its authenticity is the strange nature of the information it gives us about Socrates' "voice," information paralleled in Xenophon to some degree but not in Plato's other works. To reject the dialogue on these grounds, however, would be a case of rejecting evidence because it is evidence.

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be in contact with you and hold on to you" (130 d-e). Socrates himself recounts this conversation to illustrate the power of his divine sign, he tou daimoniou dynamis (129 e 8)—a power, he says, that was more evident or effective in some of his companionships than in others. Alcibiades was Socrates' best-known failure. Not only did he lose philosophical zeal once he was away from Socrates, he even ceased to believe in the superiority of that higher vision to the pursuit of mere political power {Symposium 215—16). Meno was even less satisfactory as a potential discipline. He was happily glib in moral discussions when Socrates was nowhere about, but would dry up and be unable to speak when he was with Socrates—as though he had touched a stingray, he says. "You bewitch, drug, and enchant a person," Meno explains, and induce a paralyzing uncertainty [Meno 80 a 2—4). This was a more common reaction than that of Aristeides, apparently: Meno tells Socrates that even before they had met he had heard it said that this was the effect Socrates had on people. Even in the case of the brilliant Alcibiades, it was Socrates, not his young friend, who became truly eloquent when they were together. Alcibiades likens the effect of Socrates' words to the divine flute music of Marsyas. (215 a—e). He adds that only Socrates could play this instrument. "When I hear his words my heart jumps more than that of any Corybant and my tears flow, and I've seen many another affected [pathein] in the very same way" (e 1-4). This, he says, is what he experiences (pathein) from Socrates' extraordinary speech (d 8), and so do even women and children, even when the words are reported secondhand. We need not assume that Socrates was being less than straightforward when he claimed to teach no doctrine. Although we, at our distance and with Plato as our careful interpreter, can see a "doctrine" implicit in Socrates' conversations, it may not have been evident either to Socrates himself or to his interlocutors. His words were simple, his concerns apparently with humble and obvious things (Symposium 221 e; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.37-38, etc.); his queries were tailored to the particular situations and were elicited by the predictable attitudes of unthinking people. When asked his own opinion, he habitually said he had none [Republic 1.337 a, etc.). Whenever the participants or witnesses felt something divine in his conversation, therefore, it was not the consequence of a coherent idea persuasively presented. Socrates must have been able to quicken a profound uneasiness that even the most ordinary people had concerning the life devoted exclusively to corporeal goals; when the stirrings of these doubts did not anger them (as it very often did), it apparently sounded like the promise of grace. Among Socrates' closest friends were some, like Crito, who were neither young nor especially critical of traditional beliefs. It may have been

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the younger men who adopted Socratic techniques in order to rouse the hostile response (Apology 23 cff.; Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.4OiL, etc.), but older men of conventional piety also valued his company—for the joyful effect on themselves rather than for the discomfort it could bring to the proud and the famous. Theodorus in the Theatetus is one of these older admirers. When Socrates explains that there is a divine level of reality, a place where the contrary of good cannot get the smallest foothold, Theodorus understands and agrees (176 aff.). Socrates says that we must make every effort "to flee this region and ascend as quickly as possible to the other." Theodorus offers no objection. This flight, Socrates, explains, is accomplished by making ourselves like divinity as far as that is possible; and he says that this transformation can be achieved only by making ourselves as good as possible. "There is nothing so like a god as anyone of us who is as just as possible" (c 1—3). The ordinary person believes that it is enough if he appears to the world to be good: the point, he believes, is to avoid frustration or retribution from mundane powers. But we become godlike only by achieving excellence in reality, since perfect excellence is a defining characteristic of divinity. When Socrates then apologizes for this digression and turns once more to the specific investigations they have been pursuing, Theodorus acquiesces with some reluctance. The digression was more delightful for one of his age, he says, and easier to follow, too (177 c 3-4). The erotic aspect of Socrates' companionship was presumably evident only in his relations with Alcibiades and other young men of great promise. For Socrates himself (to judge from Aeschines) and for Plato, this erotic aspect of the Socratic power was very important indeed; but both philosophers were certain that it was not identical with the most vulgar manifestations of eras. Hesiod had distinguished between the good and bad kinds of eris, "strife"—one that inspired the kind of competitive zeal for excellence that makes a civilization brilliant, and one that is angry, selfish, and destructive {Works and Days 11-26). The idea was central to the Greek imagination and had been given several profound interpretations, from Homer (Iliad 18.107-10, and 490ff.) to Empedocles (frags. 16, 59, Diels-Kranz) and Sophocles Oedipus the King 873-82). In the Symposium Plato gives us his own version: it is erds, not eris, that is the energy both of good and also of bad ambitions. If we yield to the earthly erds we will be trapped in the corporeal reality; if we respond only to the heavenly erds, we will transcend this world and escape all mortal limitations. The earthly erds pulls us downward and tears us away from union with true good; it pulls us toward a lonely and selfish gratification at the expense of others, man and god. The heavenly erds, although it appears to the outsider as a negative, ascetic, flight from fulfillment, actually pulls us to the single goal inspiring all things in heaven and earth. When Soc-

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rates asserts that he has no doctrine to teach, he sometimes makes one exception: he does know about eros. Notice that Plato has virtually identified true erotic energy with religious enthusiasm as such. That would make Eros and Dionysus one and the same god. Plato does not go quite that far. The two gods remain discrete. They are merely closely associated, as they sometimes were also in popular iconography.2 Like most religious reformers, Plato treats the outlines of the traditional beliefs as basically right, in need only of more careful and inspired interpretation. Plato's divinity is unified and all-good, but he is not a monotheist in the biblical sense. In the Phaedrus and Timaeus he even welcomes the new, originally Babylonian, identification of certain gods with the chief heavenly bodies.3 In all of the Dialogues the gods still keep their separate characteristics and the well-known names. Indeed, the variety of their traditional natures is used by Plato to explain the varieties in human nature (Phaedrus 246 e—247 a). The one innovation he insists on is that all are flawlessly good, above all that no phthonos exists on the divine level (247 a 7). 4 Dionysus, therefore, must be accepted as a true god, like all the rest, and his defining character must be looked for in the things mortals have always believed about him; but he must never be thought to be destructive or dangerous, as was often supposed. Dionysian worship needed more drastic revisions than was the case with most of the gods. After all, he was the god popularly associated with the most directly antirational enthusiasms in human life: drink, music, dance, drama, laughter, bawdiness, madness, sleep, forgetfulness, prophetic frenzy, even panic and the rage to kill (Bacchae 302—5). Yet if he is truly a god he must actually inspire only good, according to the Socratic principle. Ordinary piety is, as usual, deeply and dangerously wrong, but the god's true nature is nevertheless to be found hidden within the traditional assumptions. Dionysus is an ally of the true Eros, Plato concludes, the inspired energy that draws us upward to the divine. He does not work 2

See my Platonic Love (London, 1963), 192, n. 10. Timaeus 38 d, Phaedrus 246 e-247 a. Euripides, Phaethon, frag. 781.12—13 (Nauck), speaks (or rather, has Clymene speak) of the identification of the sun and Apollo as something not known to everyone. Aristotle's scheme, in which the more remote the celestial sphere the greater its causal power down here at the center, gave respectability to astrology, but he was himself not interested in drawing inferences from the traditional powers and personalities of the various planet gods. Plato felt an obligation to do so. 4 See also 253 b 7. Cf. Timaeus 29 el and Republic 2.379 c (both discussed in the previous chapter). At Metaphysics 1.983 a 2—4 Aristotle also denies that "divinity can be characterized [o« . . . endechetat] by phthonos" and adds that, "according to the saying [paroimia], poets tell many lies." As we have seen, this phrase carries us back to a championship of "philosophy" that was the common property of Socrates, Euripides, Xenophanes, and others: see Chapter 20, n. 4. 3

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out the precise relation between the two; he merely invokes popular associations with both. Although the subject of the Symposium is Eros, Plato takes care to fill our minds with Dionysus also. It is a drinking party, and there is much talk about the power of wine. The occasion is the celebration of a victory in the tragic contests during the Dionysian celebrations, and the dialogue is set in the home of the victorious poet. What Plato does is to offer us two images of Dionysus, one true and one false. The false image is none other than the incorrigible Alcibiades. He bursts into the party, young, handsome, drunk, crowned with holy leaves and fillets, accompanied by a flute girl. He is surrounded by revelers, obsessed with earthly love, demanding to be made the master of the drink. At the beginning of the party the tragedian Agathon, the urbane host, had invited Socrates to recline next to him so that the visionary experience he had just had (when he withdrew for a while from the ordinary world) would flow into him like liquid when they touched physically (175 c—e). Socrates replies that the flow would surely go the other way, since he had no wisdom to impart. We shall let Dionysus judge which of us has true wisdom, Agathon predicts. When Alcibiades enters much later, he crowns Agathon first, but then takes some of the fillets back when he sees Socrates (213 a—e). "Dionysus" had chosen the winner, just as Agathon had predicted. Yet slowly, almost subliminally, we are made to feel that Socrates is the true image of Dionysian energy. First there is his identification with the true Eros. In his own myth he describes Eros as shoeless, in want, ever resourceful, a hunter of youths, a daemonic link with higher divinity. When Alcibiades is told he must praise Eros, he refuses and insists on praising Socrates himself. His description of Socrates then matches the Socratic Eros in striking ways. Alcibiades proves in the most vivid possible way that Socrates is in fact uninterested in corporeal sexual pleasure. Could this be the god of eros} Yes, the god of true eros, eros for true divinity, Eros the companion of the true Dionysus. Parallel to Socrates' inability to be seduced by corporeal sexuality is his remarkable invulnerability to the power of drink. It is spoken of more than once (176 c, 214 a) and illustrated dramatically at the very end of the dialogue. Could this be the god of intoxication? Yes, the god of true intoxication—the daemonic pull upward to divine beauty and immortality. Socrates' physical resemblance to Silenus, the bewitching quality of his talk (so like the music of Dionysian flutes), and his strange mixing of the erotic and the religious make him a true image of Dionysus. The fact that he is never drunk, however much he drinks, has to be reinterpreted. He is free of corporeal intoxication, which pulls downward to false gaiety, individual paralysis, and corporeal poisoning; but he is already permanently intoxicated with the drunkenness that is truly di-

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vine. True intoxication is indistinguishable from philosophical joy. As for the prediction that Dionysus would judge the winner in wisdom, Socrates does that, too: at the end of the dialogue he triumphs over Agathon and Aristophanes, the tragic and the comic poets. The true Dionysus inspires philosophy, not tragedy or comedy. Philosophy combines them and transcends them. 5 The Symposium itself is an illustration of Socrates' meaning. As we have seen, the Dionysian was only one of the several strains of popular religion associated with tragedy. Nevertheless, as Aristophanes makes clear in the Frogs, Dionysus was still thought of as the chief of the presiding divinities, even at the end of the fifth century. There are three possible reasons for this. First, the pathos of Dionysus himself may still have been felt to be, if not the archetype of tragic plots (as some scholars used to argue),6 at least a strikingly appropriate example. Second, an actor's or a dancer's disappearance into a role or as a member of a chorus may have been felt to be an essentially Dionysian liberation. Finally, an audience's experience in the theater may have been recognized as a Dionysian absorption of the individual into a group hallucination. In all three ways Attic drama was, in Plato's eyes, the work of the wrong Dionysus. Dionysian religion seems to have been involved in all religion, especially the sort that includes secrets, initiations, and the promise of personal immortality. Dionysus is the son of Zeus and is almost a double for him: Zeus the son as opposed to Zeus the father. His complicated history includes repeated rebirths, one from Zeus's own groin. The first part of his name is the same as that of Zeus.. His pathe take the form of repeated sparagmoi. A sparagmos is a tearing apart limb from limb; it is followed by an omophagia, the ingestion of the victim, originally while it was still hot and pulsing. The final pathos, reenacted on holy days, we assume, climaxed in the rebirth of the god in the community of worshipers after they have broken him apart and eaten him (possibly as bread and wine). The appropriateness of this worship to the experience of the audience in the Theater of Dionysus is not immediately obvious. Herodotus, who identified Dionysus with the Egyptians' Osiris, expressed shock at the shamelessness of the Egyptians in acting out the god's pathos in public (2.48 and 70-71). The implication is that no Greek would dare do such a thing. The pathos could not be enacted openly. Some mortal's pathos, therefore, might be recognized by the initiated as that of the god, piously cloaked in artful disguise. The god's own victim may have been a favorite 5

See Helen Bacon, "Socrates Crowned," Virginia Quart. Rev. 35 (1959): 415—30. See Murray's "Excursus" and Lesky's Tragische Dichtung, chap. 1, "Die Ursprungsprobleme." 6

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substitute: the sparagmos of Pentheus in the Bacchae has several parallels in Dionysian myths. All modern editions of the Bacchae refer the reader to a curious medieval Greek poem known as Christus Pattens, "Christ suffering his pathos." This poem utilizes many lines from Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus and Euripides. When the poet comes to the mourning over the dead Christ, he adopts a number of lines from Agave's mourning over the dismembered parts of Pentheus as they are brought onstage near the end of the Bacchae. It was lucky for us that he did so, because our manuscripts of the Bacchae skip a number of lines at this point and we can use the Christus Pattens to reconstruct the missing passage. This kind of easy substitution, a mortal pathos for a divine one, then back again to a divine pathos, is a prominent feature of Dionysian religion. The sparagmos and omophagia of the god is envisaged in the myths as suffered not only by human substitutes, but also by wild animals, or by bulls, eventually by cakes, perhaps—with the blood being drunk in the guise of Dionysian wine. Pindar speaks of a glorious moment in Thebes' legendary past "when Dionysus of the long hair was caused to rise and be enthroned beside Demeter of the bronze clanging" (Isthmian 7.3-5). 7 Teiresias in the Bacchae links the two gods as givers of life through grain and wine, the dry and the wet (272—83). Both gods had to be ingested, as grain and wine, before the worshipers could experience rebirth as divinity uniting the community and destroying mortal limitations. When Christ at the Passover broke the bread and distributed it, saying that this was his body, and passed around the wine, saying that this was his blood, then bade all to eat and drink, he was preparing a sparagmos and omophagia very like that in the Greek mysteries. If Christians were not so frightened about drinking more than a token of the wine, they would know Dionysus still. As we have seen, the final spectacle in the annual rites at Eleusis may have included the sparagmos of a head of grain—presumably so that it could be scattered and die—so that it might be reborn as a field of new grain. Ingesting divinity, therefore, not only sustains our present corporeal life, it also guarantees a new life after our own pathos. This idea, too, survives in shadowy form in Christianity, as we have seen. 7

The verb I have translated "caused to rise," anatellein, is also used of the slow, majestic rise of the sun or of a constellation above the horizon. Cf. Antigone 1146—47: Dionysus is described as "dance leader of the fire-breathing stars" and "overseer of night voices." These are among the few but interesting pieces of evidence that even in the classical period there was an astronomical (or calendrical) dimension to Dionysian religion. There is more evidence from much later periods: see Hugo Rahner, Grtechische Mythen in christlischer Deutung (Zurich, 1957); in English, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, trans. Brian Battershaw (New York, 1971), 134-45.

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But eating the god is not the only way by which a group of individuals is reborn as a divine community. Like many other religions, the Dionysian relies heavily on music, visual beauty, and the close proximity of likeminded people. This brings us to the second reason why Dionysus was the god of tragedy. He is the god of the thiasos—the superbeing that can only come into existence if the individual members shed their separate awarenesses, memories, ambitions, and anxieties, and function as parts of a whole. Thiasoi are also formed in the biblical religions; but the Dionysian worshiper was willing to go all the way. The solemn hymns, the comforting proximity of other worshipers, the drinking of wine, and so on, were all carried to what we might consider excess. ("The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom," says a Proverb from Hell.) We come closer to the ancient experience when we add the Pentacostals speaking in tongues, the handling of rattlesnakes in Tennessee, and the visionary dancing of the Hasid. We may start with the communal prayer that the Lord be with us on that day, but we must imagine ourselves continuing until we know that he really is there—in the leader and in the now-ecstatic band itself. We must move with the music, freely but with absolute precision, like a herd of gazelles, or a school of tiny fish, or the dancers in a tragedy. In the rural Dionysia, before the establishment of the elaborate, official performances in the great theater in Athens, it is probable that everyone participated. It is unlikely that people came just to sit and watch. Forethought and art may have gone into the preparations, but these performances were religious rites and probably included everyone present. At this point in the development of tragedy the appropriateness of Dionysus as the presiding god must have been obvious to all. Although a yearning to be reborn as a thiasos is clearly universal, modern man often goes through his whole life without ever letting the experience completely overwhelm his separate consciousness. A hypnotist can persuade a subject that he has a past but no future. The result is an appalling depression—all those guilty memories still intact and no future at all. But the hypnotist can also persuade his subject that he has a future but no past: the result is wild euphoria. The experience of a participant in a Dionysian thiasos is evidently like that. Shedding his past means shedding his regrets and all sense of his own limitations. The joy that accompanies this new state of mind is perceived as a direct consequence of the participant's union with the god, so the god's immortal happiness is his also. It is not to be wondered at that Plato needed to redefine Dionysus before he could become the god of true philosophy. The Dionysus of popular religion was the enemy of philosophy because the hope he held out was false. The ecstasy did not last and, as with Agave, a painful return to

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the disappointing world could not be avoided. Authority—Pentheus and his tribe—always finds it necessary to curb this kind of Dionysian religion. Solon opposed the tragedies; Philip of Macedon opposed the snake handling; the Roman Senate passed decrees against the revels. This Dionysus is by his nature subversive and disruptive, inimical to reason and justice. The use of costumes and masks is probably older and more basic than the dramas that were the most important public occasions for their use in classical times. (See Euripides' Hypsipyle, frag. 752 Nauck, and Bond's note on kathaptos in line 2). Wearing costumes and masks is a powerful means toward Dionysian liberation from one's own conscious separateness. The Bacchae is almost a play about costumes. First we see a man dressed as a god disguised as man. Then come dancers, men dressed as women dressed in animal skins and other exotic trappings. Then we are treated to an actor dressed as a young military prince and two others dressed as old men wearing long female Bacchic costumes, leafy crowns on their heads. When one of the old men tries to crown the young one with the sacred leaves, the young man rears with horror. The next confrontation is between the young warrior prince and the disguised young god, who is dressed in disturbingly unisexual softness. The first violence in the play is a disrobing: the god's hair is cut and his wand removed from his hand. The first climax is a shocking costume change: the god maliciously gets the prince to put on the costume of a woman and a Bacchant. This particular disguise is obviously central to the experience sought by the Dionysian. It is also at the heart of what anti-Dionysians hated about this religion. It was bad enough when Cadmus tried to get Pentheus to wear that ritual crown of ivy. Heads are sensitive places for costuming. Most people would feel slightly humiliated if they were forced to wear ridiculous hats in public—unless they had already consumed quantities of Dionysus. Headpieces of the opposite sex are almost taboo unless the occasion is ritual, as in the theater. Children find this kind of exchange mysteriously funny. But the triumph of Dionysus over Pentheus goes much farther: Pentheus is made to wear a woman's dress—and he is made to like it. He is exultant, in fact. Not only does he no longer look like himself—that is a first-order liberation—but he looks like his mother or his aunts or just any woman ready to run to the mountains clothed in animal skins to do whatever marvelous things women do when they are dressed that way. He has become the complete actor. The attitude of most societies is very curious on this point. In Greece, Rome, Renaissance Italy, Elizabethan England, medieval Japan, and almost everywhere that drama has flourished, there has been a strong feeling that no proper woman, or perhaps no woman at all, ought to be allowed the strange experience of public disguise on the stage. Usually, as

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in Greece, all the dramatic roles have been played by males (even though female roles actually loom larger in these phantasies than they do in ordinary public life). The necessity for boys or men to dress as women has then very often led to yet more hostility to the whole idea of theater.8 All through history the kind of male-dominated society that Pentheus represents in the Bacchae has tended to be almost as hostile to acting as to Bacchanals. Yet the yearning to dress up and act has rarely been suppressed with complete success. We are in one of the moments in history when few people object to actors or acting. (We have recently had an actor in the White House, indeed). This had been so, however, for a surprisingly brief period. OnJuIy 2, 1755, the faculty of Yale College fined six students twenty shillings each for "publicly" acting in a play in Hartford. 9 The harshest punishment was reserved for the two who dressed as women in the play— "which is contrary to the laws of the Colony as well as the laws of this College." (Among other things, they were sent to the bottom of the seating order in chapel; since students at the time were seated according to their father's positions in the community, this was almost equivalent to expulsion from society.) But new decrees against dramatic performances had to be issued by the faculty almost annually. Blanket rules against theatrical events within the college were not repealed until 1900—after a bitter fight by William Lyon Phelps, and then only after Harvard had permitted the first performance of Ben Jonson within its confines.10 The Yale Faculty continued even then to maintain a surveillance over fraternities and dramatic societies to make sure that they did not slide back into "rudeness and salaciousness." In Greece tragedy was welcomed within the social order because of a bold political move by the sixth-century Athenian tyrant, Peisistratus. Solon, it is said, opposed the admission of the extremely popular rural performances into the city itself. He had attended one staged by Thespis and had been shocked by the untruthfulness, pseudologia (Diogenes Laertius 1.59; cf. Plutarch, Solon 29.6—7). Later Peisistratus seized control of Athens by acting a part: he inflicted wounds on himself and presented himself as a terrified victim. The angry people voted him a bodyguard, again Solon's grave warnings. As Solon had predicted, Peisistratus used this per8

See Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrtcal Prejudice (Berkeley, 1981), 89-93. See Arthur Bloom, "The History of the Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut before 1860" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1966), 8—19, and Terri Jones, "Undergraduate Drama at Yale" (Senior essay, Yale Archives, 1976), 3—4. 10 See Jones, "Undergraduate Drama," 45—52, and William Lyon Phelps, "Culture Comes to Yale," in A Symposium on Yale Development to Commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Yale Daily News (New Haven, 1928), 44. 9

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sonal army to make himself tyrant. That, said Solon, is what comes from activities like tragedy.11 Peisistratus solidified the support of the impoverished country people by permitting their beloved Dionysia within the city and even supporting them lavishly with public money. By the time the tyrants were finally overthrown and a democracy was in control, the ceremonies could no longer be banished. The leaders of the fifth-century democracy might privately have disapproved of Dionysian celebrations, but they could hardly have opposed these ever-growing festivals without courting intense unpopularity. That these two rival forms of government were both sponsors of tragedy was merely another reason why Plato would have been suspicious of it: democracy and tyranny are the two worst forms of government, he believed. In the modern world, the army, because of its emphasis on uniform dress and lockstep marching—also because of the extraordinary effectiveness of military training in transforming moral individuals into conscience-free mass murderers—is the most obvious example of a Dionysian thiasos. An efficient army even needs to believe that its mortal commanders represent the will of God, as the ecstatic bacchants believed their leader to be Dionysus. But the dancers in a tragedy provided for fifthcentury Athenians an even more visible and easily realized example of the divine thiasos. And there is yet another thiasos in all theaters, modern as well as ancient: the audience. This is the third of the three reasons why Dionysus was still the appropriate god to preside over tragedy, even in the fifth century when the thematic material had long been drawn eclectically from many other strains of religion. The more effective the play, the more complete the submergence of individual moral beings into a submissive thiasos. It is one of the aspects of tragedy that most disturbed Plato, as we have seen. Plato found the mimetic nature of so much of Greek poetry to be objectionable. All young people learn by mimesis, so it is very important that they never be given models that will deform their characters and minds. But unphilosophical models are much more effective in poetic performances than philosophical behavior is {Republic 10.604 e). As we have seen, Plato believed that, unbeknownst to ourselves, we experience pathe of drama along with the masked and costumed actors down there on the 11

The literal truth of this story is doubtful, at least Solon's role is. He had withdrawn from Athens twenty years before and may well have been dead by this time. Few, however, doubt the story of Peisistratus's return after he was subsequently driven out by the Alcmeonids. He is said to have returned in a chariot with a tall, beautiful woman dressed as Athena and to have demanded the right to take her to her temple on the acropolis. This pseudologia and theatrical costuming won Peisistratus a more lasting hold on power.

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stage (606 a-b). This is mimesis induced by the false Dionysus. The most appalling models are offered for our inner phantasies. We come to the theater rational individuals—some of us philosophers or potential philosophers—yet the music, the spectacle, the poetry, the acting, the pathe, the suggestions of divine presence transform this sum of rational individuals into a thiasos as pure and unreasonable as the corps of dancers in the dancing place. We respond with the part of the psyche that is normally allowed phantasy fulfillment only in our dreams. As he did with Pentheus or a bacchant, Dionysus has awakened the Dionysiac within us—the false Dionysiac, that is. The true Dionysiac is not the enemy of philosophy; it is philosophy, the divine passion of intelligence, the vision that unites us with divinity. The true Dionysus makes us yearn not for a pathos but for confirmation that divinity is powerful, good, on our side—continuous, indeed, with the best part of ourselves. To be sure, the false Dionysus also lures us from our lonely separateness, just as the true one does; but he does so treacherously, by a kind of sparagmos: the ego surrenders its integrity and is scattered through the theater. The audience is reborn as a mystical troop. Like Agave, we will find after the performance is over that we have been bestialized. Or so Plato believed. Plato was an evangelist in the literal sense of the word, a bringer of good news. Immortal happiness was possible for mortals after all. He was a spokesman for religion, therefore, and enthusiastic religion at that. Indeed, modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have all be influenced by Platonism in important ways. Nevertheless, the great majority of religious people, if they have looked for intense, spiritual joy and have not adopted their religion merely as moral teacher and protector of the status quo, have been inspired not by Plato's Dionysus, but by some version of the popular god, the god of "poetry." The joy and peace offered by most religions, both classical and postclassical, are not intellectual experiences, and the advice offered by these institutions is usually anti-intellectual. The promised reward can come in a flash, it is maintained, and can be experienced by people who are neither morally trained nor mentally instructed. Organized religions usually assume that the simpler the potential convert, the more promising he is. They may even assume that a guilt-ridden sinner is closer to divinity than the person who has thought deeply and worked hard and long at the moral virtues. Socrates, indeed, seems to have counted on some of these factors in his marketplace encounters and friendly tete-a-tetes; but Plato felt that religion as philosophy was open only to the gifted and after long intellectual as well as moral preparation. Popular religions, modern and ancient, usually assume that it is wrong and even dangerous to forget that a great gulf separates man from god.

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They offer a joy that is compatible with humility, a peace that comes from the awareness of one's unimportance and complete dependence. The analogy is with the relation between subject and ruler, infant and parent, or animal and husbandman. We the powerless may ask for aid and hope for benevolence, but we cannot share all of our ruler's goals. Socrates and Plato demand one law for both parties. This is the very essence of impiety for some: justice for mankind is one thing, justice for divinity is something quite different. Who are we to say what "good" means for God? The Socratic program to win immortal happiness by making ourselves as much like gods as possible seems not only impious, but unattractive. What religious people want from their religion is usually the assurance that divinity is not like a just man at all: they fervently hope that it is as likely to reward sinners as those who have lived godly lives. The forgiveness implicit in the pathos is what they really want, not the promise of flawless justice. As we have seen, Plato denies that there is a sequence of rational demonstrations that can lead even the most gifted student in the world, inexorably, step by step, to Platonic happiness. In the best of circumstances the process will take years and a great deal of goodwill. The most explicit statement to this effect is found in the Seventh Epistle, but the idea is also implicit in the description of the guardians' education in the Republic. In the Epistle the moment of enlightenment is described as a sudden religious conversion. As we have seen, Plato habitually compares the highest philosophical revelation to the experience of an initiate at the mysteries. But Plato held out no hope whatever that one could jump immediately from ordinary mentality to godlike happiness and power. Whether one proceeded by "the right use of the love of a youth" (Symposium 211 b 5— 6; cf. Phaedrus 249 a 2) or "without trickery," adolds (Phaedrus, ibid.)— that is, by working through the "levels" of reality, including a mathematical understanding, one by one—the ascent as a whole is very slow, however swift and unpredictable that final leap. There is a ladder, an ascent that has to be traversed from image to original, to the original of that, until the whole of reality is before one. Then, unlike converts to religious happiness of the usual sort, a Platonic philosopher can also descend again and utilize his higher vision to make accurate judgments even on the lowest "level" (Republic 7.517 d-e, etc.). The true Dionysian energy can never drop us, like Agave, into "single vision," as Blake calls it, the conviction that physical/political reality is the only reality there is. In the Phaedrus Plato describes the full, godlike vision as a reverent gazing at excellence of all sorts—justice, courage, wisdom, and the rest (247 cff.). In the Phaedo he implies that what we would see would be a world just like this one, rocks, trees, animals, people, and so on, only perfect, dazzling, flawlessly beautiful, and not subject to decay (109 bff.).

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It is suggested that the precious stones that may occasionally be picked up in our own shadowy world are but fragments of the ordinary stones with which the upper world is strewn; that is why we are so fascinated and bewitched by gems—they stir presentiments of true reality. (The three stones mentioned in the Phaedo, 110 d 8, are the same three also mentioned in Revelation 4.3: "And he that sat was to look upon as a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round the throne, in sight like unto an emerald") In the Republic both visions are implied, the types of excellence and the types of physical objects as well. Indeed, it is because Plato insists on packing both visions into the same, strained image that the Line and the Cave are so difficult to interpret. The desire to link the two, however, is the key to Plato's version of Dionysian ecstasy. Indeed, it is this double vision above all that has power to convince doubters that Plato may be right. In 1838 Emerson delivered an address to the graduating class at the Harvard Divinity School.12 He urged the graduates to seek the Platonic vision (although he did not call it that, of course). Consciousness of one's own excellence was the means; the end was the ability to see all nature and all natural objects as alive, beautiful, and divine. "A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears" when one know oneself to be good. "Whilst a man seeks a good end, he is strong by the whole strength of nature." This is the "law of laws"; the perception "makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is the mountain air.. . . It makes the skies and hills sublime, and the silent song of the start is it." If we transcend all petty ambitions, the anxiety merely to appear to be good, "all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and bear you witness." Awareness of one's own Tightness, then, can be experienced as a conviction of the Tightness and divine beauty of nature itself. So far Emerson's vision could be reconciled with a strain of Christianity that was merely reinforced by the Platonic tradition, not drastically altered by it. But then he goes all the way: "If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice." Emerson shocked his audience of Unitarians. His punishment was not to be asked to speak at Harvard again for many years. The problems are much the same, then, for the pious person, whether he is pagan, Jew, or Christian. He must determine whether the traditions and teachings he honors demand humility and mystery, or whether they 12 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Address to the Harvard Divinity School Seniors," delivered July 15,1838, in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen Whicher (Boston, 1957), 100-104.

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encourage him to shed subservience, to hope instead that he will become divine himself. This is not a choice that divides ancients from moderns; it divided fifth-century Athens as it does twentieth-century Europe and America. Also he must decide which is the trustworthy route to pious happiness, the thrill of the pathos, or the conviction that divine good is also human good. That is, is Divine Injustice or Divine Justice the vision that will save us? If Injustice, then salvation is open to everyone, even in quite sudden conversions. If Justice, then the highest happiness is open only to a gifted few, and then only after long and carefully directed study. Once again, the dogmas and traditions, ancient and modern alike, are vague and do not offer much help. Sooner or later the honest inquirer will be forced to investigate the problem in psychological terms. As Plato saw, the true nature of the pathos is the key. Before we can decide whether to take pleasure in pathe, we must understand what that pleasure really is.

24 THE TROUBLE WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS

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LATO AND FREUD both construct psychological models for the "ancient quarrel," or rather for its sources within the human personality. In both models the lowest part of the psyche, the epithymetikon and the id, harbors aboriginal and violent phantasies that account for the alarming contents of dreams, madness, and religious and literary myths. In both cases, however, the idea was introduced in a fairly guarded way. Plato, as we saw, chooses the plots of famous tragedies for his list of bad dreams, and then says that the part that "awakens" when we dream also "awakens" when we watch a tragedy. He also says that we secretly enjoy the tragic hero's pathos in our own persons. Freud, in his praise of Oedipus the King, traces the power of that play to the existence of Oedipal phantasies in the inner lives of all members of the audience {Interpretation of Dreams V D 6). He also insists that it is the nature of Oedipus's crimes, not the role of fate, that explains the play's universal appeal. Even when he connects the pleasures of fiction with those of ordinary daydreams (as in "The Paths of Symptom-Formation," XXIII of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis), he emphasizes the distorting effects introduced by "condensation and displacement," also the "mysterious" ability of the artist to disguise his phantasies in order to reduce our guilt and increase our pleasure. Neither Plato nor Freud introduced crude theories that in effect reduced the content of all art and religion to the most universal of our forbidden yearnings, but it is understandable why their readers have often felt disturbed. Plato and Freud both meant to shock us, and they have succeeded. Their tact, reservation, and qualification were not able to prevent revulsion. I have already spoken of the similarities between Plato's model and Freud's. Both men recognize the need to oppose the id's phantasies by reason and reality. Both believe that the needed opposition must come from the highest part of the psyche (intelligence, the ego) or the middle part (indignant anger, the superego). But there are also important differences in their analyses. Plato defines intelligence in the Socratic fashion: it is the ability to see and to be drawn efficiently towards the true good for the whole man. Intelligence, therefore, is what we want always to be in command. And

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the middle part is for Plato the natural ally of intelligence. It can be undernourished, even perverted, perhaps; but its nature is to side with right. Its existence accounts for the fact that relatively unintelligent people are sometimes intelligently motivated by their passions. So nous and thymos are both ranged against the lawless phantasies of the epithymetikon, and indulgence in the phantasies of the epithymetikon is almost always harmful. Most of the phantasies thrown up by the epithymetikon itself must be replaced by new phantasies invented or replaced by nous. But Freud sides with the multitude against the Socratics in one sense: the intelligence, he argues, is a mediator. It is a mediator between the lower passions (ultimately the source of all psychic energy) and the unfortunate, limiting aspects of reality. The superego, although it is indeed the carrier of social norms and other aspects of civilization, is also often irrational, he argues, a second source (in addition to reality) of unhappiness in our inner lives. This is in fact a more bitter source of unhappiness, in good men's lives than it is in the lives of lesser men. Clearly, Freud had less reason than Plato to assume that the inner censors of the id's phantasies must always be right. In "The Paths to Symptom-Formation," which was published in 1917, Freud gives the censoring role entirely to the ego. Fifteen years later, however, in "Dissection of the Psychical Personality" (XXXI of the New Introductory Lectures) he depicts the ego as a conciliator or mediator; the superego is now the most implacable opponent of the id. The latter essay is not concerned with the production of phantasy and art, but that should not stop us from using it to correct the earlier model. The superego, which Freud came to understand only very slowly, is one of his most significant and widely accepted innovations. One need not be a Freudian to understand and use this part of his theory. The question is why Plato, who was the first to describe the superego with some precision, failed to recognize it as dangerous, a source of unhappiness, and not a carrier of justice and civilization on every occasion. The role played by Socrates in Plato's life may have been decisive, as I have suggested. Socrates appears to have been a benign paranoiac. He was a paranoiac inasmuch as his superego was abnormally strong—so strong that he experienced it as a "voice" ready to censor his every word or deed whenever it was incorrect in any way. It was benign, however, because it was life enhancing, not life poisoning. In ordinary cases of paranoia voices of this sort are destructive to happiness. They are identified as signaling plots set in motion by malevolent associates. Release from this oppressive vision is experienced as joy and may be accompanied by vigorous activity. But in benign paranoia (or perhaps it should be called "positive paranoia"), the voices are cherished, they are a sign of

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one's special importance or blessedness; a silencing of the voices may bring depression. Joan of Arc may have been a benign paranoiac of the Socratic sort. It should be noted, however, that in her case the voices quite often told her what to do; they did not censure only. Their presence was also oppressive sometimes. Blake may have been a paranoiac of the Socratic sort. "I am either too low or too highly priz'd; I When elate I am envy'd, When Meek I'm despis'd" (letter to Butts, August 16, 1803). When he was elated, he saw himself and his friends as Eternal Ones and loved forever by angels and archangels. (We might also think of Whitman's "I know I am august . . . I see that the elementary laws never apologize.") Schubert is reported by his friends Bauernfeld and Lackner to have had moments in his last year when he could no longer remember that most of his finest achievements in music remained either unappreciated except by a small circle or not even performed yet. He would announce fiercely that he was world famous, that his works were universally acclaimed, that "Art" meant Franz Schubert, and so forth.1 Each of these instances is different; nevertheless they all differ from the more tedious and destructive kinds of paranoia in that the voices, even when negative, buoy the spirit and encourage production. This is not what usually happens when someone has an overly strong superego. Even in cases that we should hardly classify as paranoia, a strong superego is usually oppressive. Freud was apt to think of people like Augustine or Francis of Assisi, men whose adult years are darkened by the memory of insignificant crimes many years in the past. Plato's understanding of the phenomenon seems to have been distorted by the example of Socrates, as I say. This may be enough to explain why he missed what for Freud was one of the most important aspects of the superego, that it is a nearly universal cause of unfair oppression in our spiritual lives, something from which we need and deserve periodic relief. There is one aspect of this internal tension that Plato believed to be essential but Freud gave no thought to at all. Freud had no conception of the id as by its nature yearning to believe that "we" are victims and not responsible, either morally or intellectually, for our failures and unhappiness. In Freud's model the ego and the superego deal energetically with reality, with the id, and with one another; but the id itself is hardly aware of the other factors except as things blocking its blind desires. The id's own drives are partly animal, partly ancestral, full of infantile fixations and suppressed desires from all stages in life. Freud identified no single 1 Robert Schumann may also have been subject to this kind of paranoia; see Peter Ostwald, Schumann: The Inner Votces of a Musical Genius (Boston, 1985), 58—62. Also Maria Callas; see Arianna Stassinopoulos, Maria Callas: The Woman behind the Legend (New York, 1981), 59.

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aim as defining the id in its opposition to the other drives, only "pleasure." Now the pain we experience as shame or guilt implies a tormentor and a tormented, a punisher and a punished. In both the Platonic and the Freudian schemes the punisher must either be reality (shame, pain inflicted by parents, police, etc.) or the superego (guilt, pain inflicted by a "bad" conscious, etc.). But Freud conceived of the id as being so entirely without unity, purpose, sense of time, sense of cause and effect, or sensitivity to logic that it could not be the ultimate victim of shame or guilt. Instead, he saw the victim as the ego. Whenever the ego is perceived to have yielded too much or too openly to the id, it is victimized by the superego in alliance with reality and with ancient values. Plato, as we saw, began with the Socratic definition of ego/intelligence: it is the truly human element within our personalities, the desire for the truly desirable. Intelligence defined in this way can hardly be identified as the victim of shame or guilt. Nor could the superego, as its natural ally, be the victim. That leaves only the id. Plato saw that the id was chaotic, many-headed, and constantly changing, but he thought it also might be unified and purposive nevertheless. It experiences the limiting actions of what it takes for reality and the censures of the thytnos and intelligence as victimizations. Might it not be reasonable to assume that this lowest part yearns for relief and revenge? Since its enemies are upholders of "Justice," what the lowest part yearns for, presumably, is proof that life is ruled by injustice: it hungers for pathe. Plato's starting point, then, was the observation of a sinister resemblance between our darkest night-dreams and the most powerful mythoi of religion and poetry. Freud took an early interest in the much less sinister resemblance between daydreams and popular fiction. To be sure, Plato also touches on daydreams (obliquely, in his emphasis on mimesis in children's playacting), and Freud takes our night-dreams very seriously indeed (mostly as clues to be used for diagnosis and cure). But in their attempts to account for phantasies in art, Plato thought mainly of nightdreams, Freud of daydreams. It is hardly to be wondered at that Plato concentrated on the universal appetite for pathe, whereas Freud showed contempt for critics who explained the Oedipus as primarily a tragedy of Fate (which would put the emphasis on the Injustice and therefore the pathe). Freud thought that children's play was guilt-free and natural. (In addition to "Symptom-Formation," see also "The Poet and Day-Dreaming," published in 1908.) It is guilt-free because the child usually plays at being grown up, and he regularly incorporates reality as honestly as he can in his phantasies. There is no reason to feel guilty. Adults, by contrast, relive such phantasies for the pleasure they bring, even if they must ex-

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elude reality in order to keep the vision going. Hence the guilt.2 Even more guilt is attached to daydreaming when the dreamer returns to the fixations of childhood and includes repressed desires. On the whole, however, fixations and repressed desires play a large role only in nightdreams, Freud thought. This is proved by the fact that night-dreams are regularly so distorted and disguised that they become obvious wish fulfillments only after they have been decoded by science. Most daydreams are clearly wish-fulfillment phantasies; they need little or no decoding. Freud then, in "Day-Dreaming," distinguishes between "poets, who, like the bygone creators of epics and tragedies, take over their material ready-made," and "those who seem to create their material spontaneously." He asks us to concentrate on the latter. He even asks that "we not choose for our comparison those writers who are most highly esteemed by the critics." We should chose instead "the less pretentious writers of romances, novels and stories who are read all the same by the widest circle of men and women." These stories, he finds, invariably have a single protagonist whose adventures are also the plot of the story. He then has no trouble showing how closely these phantasies resemble daydreams. And what of the great epics and tragedies? He suggests that they are one step removed, that is all: they piously repeat "material . . . derived from the social treasure-house of myths, legends" and fairy tales," memories of the childhood of mankind. Otherwise they are just like the more obviously daydream stories.3 It is here that Plato's analysis is preferable to Freud's. Instead of starting with the element of wish fulfillment that is common to play, daydream, popular fiction, and reason, then working gradually toward "epics and tragedies," Plato begins by noting that even the "small stories" told to children by nurses and mothers are far from being fulfillments of rational wishes (cf. Freud's own essay, "The Occurrence in Dreams of 2 See, however, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," (1920), in vol. 18 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey (London, 1959), sec. 2. Freud observed "a little boy of one and a half" (actually Ernst, the elder son of his daughter Sophie) acting out a phantasy by which he tried to console himself during his much-loved mother's absences. Ernst had a spool to which was tied a string. He would repeatedly throw the spool away and out of sight with the cry, "fort!", "gone!", then pull it back, crying "da!", "there!" From this (and other, more substantial evidence) Freud inferred that there was a compulsion to repeat painful experiences. He suggests that the game player, by his repeated acts, takes control of the situation, either for revenge or to escape from a sense of of intolerable helplessness. "Finally," he says, "a reminder may be added that the artistic play and artistic imitation carried out by adults, which, unlike children's, are aimed at an audience, do not spare the spectators (for instance, in tragedy) the most painful experiences and can be felt by them as highly enjoyable" (p. 37). For yet another Freudian theory about the power of tragedy, see Chapter 20, n. 15. 3 The quotations are from Sigmund Freud on Creativity and the Unconscious, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York, 1958), 44-54; the translation is by I. F. Grant Duff.

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Material from Fairy Tales," 1913). He then argues that these stories give the child a worldview he will recognize again in "epics and tragedies": that is why, when he becomes an adult, he honors them so solemnly. He was given his taste for pathe before he reached the age of reason and retains that taste when he grows up. 4 I have been arguing throughout this book that we should probably give some honor to both of these theories, the Platonic and the Freudian. Literature satisfies our yearning for injustice, as Plato argues, but it also satisfies our yearning for justice, as Freud assumes. Perhaps there are two kinds of literature, dream literature and daydream literature. Any poem, play, or story that makes a strong appeal to the dreamer self, however bold and clear its simultaneous appeal to "philosophy," we may call dream literature. Thus the Oresteia and Macbeth, for all their apparent loyalty to the rational morality of the wakeful, rational person, qualify as dream literature nevertheless, because of their powerful appeal to that part of us that enjoys pathe and yearns to believe that life is unjust. Any poem, play, or story that appeals solely to a satisfaction in the justice that is manifestly being done at the story's end may be called daydream literature, inasmuch as the yearnings fulfilled are not at odds with our waking ambitions any more than are the goals of ordinary daydreams. Such stories could, of course, have dream elements as well. In daydream literature we may be quite conscious—or almost so—that we are personally involved in the story; we usually see ourselves quite clearly in phantasies that parallel those of the central figure or figures. But in dream literature our personal involvement always goes underground, at least some time before the catastrophic end, if there is one. We are often quite astonished, once we put the book down or come home from the theater, at the gap between what we think we want to experience in life and what we apparently enjoyed imagining while we read or watched. Another self had been appealed to. If this is the correct way to describe dream literature, we may assume that 4 The converse of this principle is )ust as important to Plato. At Republic 3.402 a, for instance, he argues that the order and beauty of the right kind of music can so prepare a person before the age of reason that, when the time for reason comes, he will "salute and recognize it readily from its kinship with himself." This is why Plato has no patience with the idea that a future ruler ought to have plenty of experience with evil and corruption. Plato's emphasis on extreme youth in all this is mirrored in many modern studies, e.g. Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York, 1950; 2nd ed., 1963), esp. part 2, "Childhood in Two American Indian Tribes." But is Plato right? On the one hand the fact that a classic impresses us deeply cannot be wholly unconnected with the values and world views we learned as children. On the other we have plenty of experience in daily life of people coming to love and admire literature essentially incompatible with the stories they once shared with parents and comrades.

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disguises are probably used at all levels, even in the act of composing dream literature. In writing The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky obviously struggled consciously with "pathe within the family circle," in this case the insoluble problems that beset fathers and sons. But in addition to daydream phantasies concerning this impossible relation, he surely also spun dream phantasies, the niceties of which he himself may well have been less than fully conscious of. By giving the father his own name, Fyodor, Dostoevsky perhaps disguised from himself the fact that the sons were really himself, split into four. Each of the four then assumes one of the mutually incompatible responses to the problem of fathers and sons: the eldest enters into open rivalry with the father for the favors of the same woman; the second son cannot reconcile himself to the father's existence—he becomes an atheist, denying even the father in heaven; the third alone is able to love the father, although he can only do so by identifying with his mother—he involuntarily imitates his mother's reaction in one vivid scene, wears the skirts of a neophyte monk, surrounds himself with young boys, and so on; the fourth son, declared monstrous and illegitimate and banished to the dark world beneath the stairs, actually murders the father, after analyzing correctly the unconscious order given him by the intellectual second son. From the reader's point of view as well, the story has the stuff both of dreams and of daydreams. As always, it is the dream story that is less obvious. Troublesome matters are touched on with a nightmarish intensity unsoftened by moral resolutions: parricide, sexual rivalry with the father, identification with the mother, madness, loss of faith, death. We are strangely exhilarated by all this, not depressed. Our dreamer selves, not our rational selves, are being gratified. On the other hand, the brother about whom we care the most has a triumph of sorts at the end of the story: we are also given the simpler daydream satisfaction of seeing that the good are sometimes rewarded as we ourselves hope to be rewarded. While we are actually reading, we may be as unaware of the daydream satisfaction as we are of the dream pleasure; a critic could explain our delight by emphasizing this daydream aspect, however, and we would be untroubled by his analysis. But if another critic put the emphasis on our dream pleasure—the gratification of a desire to see Oedipal conflicts as universal, inescapable, and yet forever outside the treaty our rational selves have made with life—we might resist. Surely that was not what we were enjoying. It makes no sense, says our waking self. If Plato's theory is correct, popular religion relies on dream stories as heavily as serious literature does. Indeed, as I have suggested, serious literature was popular in antiquity precisely because it could function also as religion for the believers in the audience. What made religion work this way for the pagans was the fact that their gods were violent, partisan,

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unpredictable, and often manifestly unfair. As Jung argued, much the same can be said of divinity in the Old and New Testaments. What thrills us in myths like Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son and God's own decision to sacrifice his has much less to do with God's love, which theologians are sure to discover as the chief revelation in these stories, than with the confirmation implicit in both mythoi of divinity's ultimate responsibility for unmerited suffering. That the pious believer should be much more willing to go along with the theologian than with Plato is just what we would expect of him—once he has escaped the spell of the mythoi and has been asked to think about them. Plato, as we saw, argued that religious mythoi should be purified of all pathe. Confirmation of Divine Injustice is the last thing a religious story should convey. Postclassical religion has accepted Plato's proscription but has refused to alter the holy myths themselves: like Aristotle, theologians accept Socratism but insist that it has been implicit in the beloved myths from the start. It is easy enough to see the dream appeal of the biblical myths. The more timeless and beloved a story, the more dreamlike, as a rule. We may take the expulsion from Eden in Genesis as typical. We can spot immediately odd warpings in the story of just the kind we get in dreams. As Freud explains, we disguise the real meaning of dreams so that we will not wake up in a cold sweat. When we say of a child that he has not yet grown out of his nightmare stage, what we mean is that he has not yet learned to warp his dreams so that he is no longer aware of their true content—the dimensions of the story that are in conflict with his rational attempts to cope and conform. In the mythos of the Expulsion we have one apple and two trees—the tree of knowledge and the tree of life: if we were to interpret this as a dream, we might suspect that this was a disguise for one tree with two apples on it. We would then guess that the Expulsion was really about our bitterly regretted exclusion from the free, sensual intimacy we once enjoyed with our mothers. Those apples belong to the father, we are told; we may not touch or eat. The malevolent snake offers adult pleasure, the father's privilege: it seduces the female, who then becomes its accomplice in the seduction of the male. (The myth was obviously told by men for men.) All sorts of details fall into place. We now know why the gate leading back to our lost paradise is guarded by the father's representative, holding a flaming sword. If a believer were told that all this explains the deep, mysterious—and universal—power of the mythos, he would balk. No believer, ancient or modern, can be expected to like a psychological explanation for his religious stories, for the simple reason that such an explanation does not require the real existence of the divinity in question. A religious person is one who puts supreme value on his pleasure in religious pathe precisely because the numen of divinity is perceived in them. This, as I have sug-

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gested, is why critics who, like Jung and Dr. Johnson, are deeply pious do not equate their own most valued pleasure with the pleasure that other people have in their quite different religions and literatures. Thus religious people and lovers of tragedy (and the two groups do seem to be separate now and seldom overlap) both find dream satisfaction. The difference is that religious people usually appear to delight in pathe and revelations of Divine Injustice only if they are assured that this is a holy story. Lovers of tragedy have trained themselves to have the right kind of dream identification even when they know that the story is either mythological (a product of someone else's religion) or avowedly fictional. And both groups get dream satisfaction of a much lower order in all sorts of rituals in everyday life. For, once we start on this kind of analysis, we find that it makes sense of a sort even of apparently mindless activities, like sports. A case might be made for the assertion that team sports, which the Greeks never had, have replaced popular tragedy, which we are without. Apparently senseless rituals in which grown men hit or throw a ball, or try to sink it into a hoop, or rituals in which men try to zing a puck into a cage defended by the tightly clamped legs of a goalie, all show dream logic and "pathe within the family circle." A baseball fan will be conscious of excited partisanship for one of the teams as a whole, and vivid empathy with whichever of its team members is up at bat or reaching for a fly ball. The power of the myth as a whole will not affect him consciously; but it is there. The pitcher-father tries to complete a throw into the mitt oi his mate crouched over home plate. A series of sons steps up and each in turn tries to intercept the throw. If one of them is successful, he can win "home" and defeat the pitcher—if he is able first to complete a hazardous journey out into the adult world of the father's allies. As in most sports, the players and the spectators stand unconsciously above the ritual and take it in in its entirety, trying on now the son's role, now the role of the parent, every half inning. Levi-Strauss argues that "games . . . appear to have a disjunctive effect: they end in the establishment of a difference between individual players and teams where originally there was no indication of inequality."5 Ritual, he argues, is probably different because it seeks to obliterate such tension. He cites the case of the Gahuku-Gama of New Guinea, who were taught soccer but insisted on playing night and day until they had achieved an identical score on both sides. They had transformed the game into a ritual, he argues. But the mixture of objectives in a team sport is like that in most activities of the imagination: there is dream logic, but also daydream logic. In baseball the daydreamer wants his side to win; his pleasure may be spoiled if it does not. The dreamer uses the constant 5

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago, 1966), 32.

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shift of roles, from that of the father to that of the son and back again, to rise above the phenomenon and see it as a whole. Our dreamer selves may find a kind of absolution in the fact that we are not responsible for the choice of opponents or for the formulation of the rules. There are many ways by which personal guilt may be replaced by universal forces: when the player with whom we sympathize is let down by a teammate, or is the victim of an accident, or is subjected to arbitrary decisions by the umpire (that most obvious stand-in for grim fate). And unlike life, there is always another game, and another season. This is a mindless use of myth, to be sure, not only because the admixture of "philosophy" is limited to a drive for justice in the simplest sense—the hope that one's own side wins—but also because the dream concerns are not explored at all boldly. No risks are taken; the Oedipal situations are just repeated again and again, in heavy disguise at that. Most people demand much more of their myths, whether in their religion or in serious literature. Suffering and loss, for instance, inescapable dangers in ordinary life, especially in our later years, are faced and accepted in the most valuable myths, as they are not in baseball. "Patbe within the family circle" are examined both in a sport and in Genesis and the Brothers Karamazov; but a baseball fan will not sit down in the stands or before his television set with the anticipation experienced by Keats "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again." "For, once again, the fierce dispute I Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay I Must I burn through," says Keats. When we have said of a story that it concerns parents and children, we have not said very much. Even if we can show that the story examines a serious difficulty and one experienced by almost all mankind, we have not explained the story's true value. Universality—and obsession with "pathe within the family circle"—characterize myths of greatly varying subtlety, profundity, and real value to those able to respond to them. If we define "myth" as public and shared phantasies of a narrative sort, and include not only stories that cluster around the names of human and superhuman beings believed to have some kind of actual existence, but also popular phantasies with a large variety of possible protagonists, including the hearers themselves or avowedly fictional persons, then the world is obviously full of myths, our world and that of the ancients alike. Myths are needed by all human beings, and perhaps even by some animals. We cannot function without trying to imagine ourselves in this or that situation; and ready-made scenarios given us by society, whether in a deliberate or a haphazard fashion, are tried on as soon as heard. Such myths make us recognizable members of our nation, era, class, religion, and so on. It was, after all, because of this power that public phantasies have over our private imaginings that Plato took so seriously the need to

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censor literature and religion in order to save mankind from its present unhappiness. As we saw, the Greek world differed from our own in that it had a limited number of famous poets who could be identified as the carriers of society's most characteristic and influential myths. The closest we come to such an easily identifiable source is the Bible; but the Bible's influence is slackening. Most modern myths are thin and obvious. They do not invite the citizen, as the Greek was constantly invited, to contemplate painful subjects in dangerous and intricate detail. As Jung points out, even people who take to heart the richest myths of the Old and New Testament are apt to coat them with the soothing interpretations of theology and so limit their power. Outside of religion there are many heroes who "capture our imagination," as we say, some from schoolbooks or history, some from newspapers, some from novels, film, or television. But we are fickle in our hero worship. We eventually discard the heroes of our youth, or those of the previous season. (The graffito "Ollie North, our Hero" looked like a bad joke three months later.) The mobility of our lives, our love of novelty, and the commercial domination of the rapid means for distributing myths have their effects; but it is hard to believe that the power and persistence of Achilles, Heracles, Ajax, and Oedipus in the imaginative lives of the ancients could be explained by the fact that Greek media were not as responsive as ours to sudden shifts of fashion or to cynical control by commercial interests. Greek stories were not as thin as ours, and once learned, could not be discarded as ours usually are, like so many year-old "hit" songs. Modern myth, whether raw or packaged, is almost always offered primarily to the daydreamer self, not the dreamer self. The reader or audience is invited to imagine himself or herself quite consciously in the role of the protagonist. This is obvious in children's literature and "pulp" stories, and almost as obvious in films, television, and best sellers. Our myths therefore have the main limitation of the daydream: no matter how perilous things may seem at times, we must be assured of a happy ending, an ending that will be either triumphant or sentimental. (The attractiveness of sentimental death scenes might be explained by children's willful fantasies of their own deaths: the child himself looks down from above and takes great satisfaction in the sight of his parent's grief and regret. Film distributors have discovered that such endings are more popular in some countries than in others.) Things that would turn a daydream sour must be avoided in public daydreams also: as in a daydream, there is danger of disgust at too radical a departure from the possible, or dismay at the thought of not being able to stop the phantasy before old age, infirmity, and death must be accepted as inevitable. Not that plots governed by daydream logic are invariably poverty-

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stricken or of no use to imaginative writers. "Melodrama is perennial," says Eliot, "the craving of it is perennial and must be satisfied. If we cannot get this satisfaction out of what the publishers present as 'literature,' then we will read—with less and less pretense of concealment—what we call 'thrillers.' " 6 More than that, stories operating on daydream logic must, if they are to work for large numbers of people, use art and subtlety. It is not the case that anyone can spin them. This is because the conscious and not quite conscious yearnings and dilemmas even of ordinary people are not simple; they are quite snarled and full of contradictions. And then there are those limitations of the daydream itself, especially the need to find a satisfactory point to end it. A few years ago an honored colleague made a great deal of money by hitting on a double daydream, one for the men in the audience and one for the women. The phantasy concerned the achievement of romantic love against all sorts of opposition. The yearned-for triumph included marriage—and happiness ever after. But of course, nobody lives happily ever after. The years bring boredom, fat, financial problems, ungrateful children, sexual unfaithfulness, bad health, senility, and death. As in all such cases, the daydreamer's greatest problem is finding a place to stop the marriage myth before any of these things must be faced. In this case what the author did was to announce in the very first sentence of the novel and of the voice-over in the film that the beautiful heroine would die while still in her twenties. The warning is important because the daydreamer must not be given a defeat he or she had not expected. Neither the man nor the woman in the audience is likely to end a willful personal daydream with the young bride's death—even if the death is imagined as ennobling and untainted by pain, ugliness, the sordidness of hospitals, or the withdrawal of loved ones. Both men and women therefore accept the author's ending with gratitude. The woman has escaped from the thought that she must eventually lose her youthful looks, the ardor of a youthful husband, and so on; the man has escaped from all that makes the thought of long married years less than completely welcome to him. It should be noticed that this double daydream would not have worked for either one if it had been the man rather than the woman who had died young. Dreams haunt the waking lives of children more than they do the conscious planning of adults; dream logic is therefore found in abundance in children's stories. In animated cartoons a man, or cat, or dog, can walk off the edge of a cliff but not fall until he realizes where he is; and after he crashes he can get up and resume his flight or pursuit without a bone broken or a hair misplaced. And there are "phantasy magazines" for the 6

T. S. Ehot, "Wilkie Collins and Dickens" (1927), in Selected Essays (New York, 1932), 409-18.

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older child, and science fiction stories, which often resemble a certain kind of dream myth in the Greek tradition. But there is constant commercial pressure to reduce dream stories to daydream logic. Hanns Sachs has shown how Walt Disney, for instance, by sentimentalizing the cartoon world, quite destroyed its dream quality.7 "Formulas" have largely replaced ancestral myths. But even "formulas" are sometimes hard to discover and exploit. They must usually be shaped for special segments of the population—secret sadists, growing boys, love-starved shop girls, and so on. In a famous article on "Boys Weeklies," Orwell pointed out that many of the boys and girls who write letters to the editors "are living a complete fantasy-life. Sometimes a boy will write, for instance, giving his age, height, weight, chest and biceps measurements and asking which member of the Shell or Fourth Form he most exactly resembles."8 Married women in England, Canada, and America buy astonishing numbers of romances, but the formulas, rigid within each country, differ slightly from one nation to the other. These novels all have taboos against adultery, illegitimate children, and explicit seductions, and all must end in a happy marriage. But those published by Mills and Boon in England, for instance, often emphasize the fact that either the man or the woman is scarred or crippled in some way; the happy ending must then include not only a shift from an initial hostility to true love, but also the discovery that the disfigurement is of no importance after all. In America Simon and Schuster engaged an advertising firm to make sure that the formula used in their series, "Silhouette Romances," was exactly what their readers wanted. The resulting story resembles the English romances (the man is mature, older than the woman, and so on), but there are differences also (less emphasis on warm climates or that disfigurement, for instance). "The sameness of the stories gives them comfort," said the editor in chief of the American series.9 Even the length is fixed: exactly eight quires, no more, no less. This is convenient for the printer, of course, but also helps the reader—as the standard times for films and television dramas help their audiences, too. One estimates the number of pages left or looks at one's watch, to ready oneself for the climactic turn-around. For many years "true confession" magazines provided very satisfying phantasies for young American women who shared a difficult problem. The stories were not in fact confessions but fiction written by men who had learned the fairly rigid rules for the appropriate formula. The readers had two painfully contradictory desires that they could not easily recon7

Hanns Sachs, The Creative Unconscious (Cambridge, Mass., 1942). "Horizon 3 (1940). 9 New York Times, August 11, 1980.

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cile in their personal daydreams. They wanted a boy who was young, handsome, masterful, and very masculine—that is, selfish and ruthless; but they also wanted a man who was gentle, who understood women, and would protect them as their fathers had (or should have done). So the young heroine—not an obvious beauty, but pretty if one notices—is first swept off her feet and roughly seduced by an irresponsible boy her own age (a thing never permitted in the older women's romances). The only variations allowed are in the details: is it in the Everglades of Florida or the frozen countryside of Alaska? Is the seduction accomplished in an automobile, a field, or perhaps at midnight on the old leather couch in the school Principal's office? Is the boy unshaven, dressed in leather, smelling of tobacco, or perhaps still sweaty from the basketball court? In any case, he abandons her, she finds she is with child by him, and she is in despair. At this point the second lover is introduced. The girl now has a job, perhaps, in the town library. Slowly she becomes aware, in the midst of her grief and guilt, of a nice man in a conservative suit, with a neat moustache, perhaps, like father's. This man begins to pay gentle, understanding attention to her. He falls in love with her and she reciprocates—but oh, the horror of it! Will he not despise her and leave her if he finds out about her pregnancy? Then the dilemma must be solved: perhaps he knew about the child all along, and not only does not mind, but is eager to bring the young man's child up as his own. There is actually a Euripidean drama with this very plot. Creusa, in the Ion, is raped by the beautiful young Apollo, cruelly abandoned by him, and left with his child, whom she exposes. Later she is married to her father's old friend, the gentle and protective King Xuthus, who eventually accepts her newly rediscovered son as his own. In the course of the play, however, Euripides stirs all kinds of troubling thoughts: the mother and son, in their grotesque comedy of errors, reveal murderous hatred for one another before they embrace in the sudden, unexpected reunion. Also, the violence and immorality of divinity is stressed in a way that would never be tolerated in "true confession" stories. We come closer to the spirit of the modern myth in Hellenistic and Roman comedy: there is a popular plot, full of mistaken identities, which in effect unites the proper husband and the illicit lover in one person. As we have seen, Greek tragedy combined literature and religion and satisfied two audiences at once—those who actually preferred dream literature even in their fiction and those who enjoy such myths only when they were accepted as holy stories. And from the Odyssey to the Ion, daydream needs were also served by the most serious artists. This, presumably, is why we hear so little about a subliterature like that in the modern world. But if Plato is right about the "little" myths (those told by nurses and mothers) being essentially like the "great" ones (those shaped

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by the most famous poets), Greek popular myths, even when they were passed on entirely without the benefit of a fine poet, had far more dream logic than such myths have today. The myth from which Euripides made the Ion, for instance, is full of things like a snake-bottomed king who has sprung from divine semen cast in disgust upon Mother Earth. If we looked for a myth that might have served Greek girls in the manner of the "true confession" formula, we would probably select the story of Cybele. This wonderful creature was born without benefit of a man straight from Mother Earth. At first it had the attributes of both sexes, which made it the most powerful creature in the world; but a jealous male god cut off the masculine part, leaving Cybele purely female. From her severed member there grew a fine straight tree. A river nymph plucked a flower from this tree, put it into the cleft of her bosom, and became pregnant. The son born from this act was the beautiful Attis, who was exposed but was suckled by a male goat. When he grew to early manhood, a nymph fell in love with him. But Cybele, out of jealousy, caused Attis to go insane and to cut off his own masculine member. At her request, the gods granted that Attis, though dead, would remain forever beautiful. His hair continued to grow and his little finger could still wiggle. The Greek girl invited into this myth may have been helped by it, but not in the manner of a daydream. That is, she was not asked to spin a conscious phantasy in which she herself took Cybele's place. It is not only religious people who tend to be hostile toward psychological explanations of their most honored stories; lovers of literature regularly feel a similar distaste. Psychological explanations sometimes seem to reduce all stories to the same level of "profundity." The more famous it is, the more likely, or so it seems, that it can be traced to a nasty, infantile problem "within the family circle." In fact this is a problem peculiar to dream stories, those that fuel religion and serious literature. Plato would not have been dismayed, since he approves only of phantasies that imply rational principles. He quite explicitly condemns all dream stories. But before we either dismiss psychological explanations for our pleasure in pathe as of no validity (which would be very difficult to do) or capitulate to Plato's demand that pathe be banned altogether, let us remember that there was a serious flaw in Plato's own psychological analysis. He failed to appreciate the happiness-destroying tendencies of the "middle" part of the psyche, the superego. Nor did he realize that the more sensitive and moral a person is the more likely he is to have a cruel superego, one from which he has a profound need for protection: a cleansing and a forgiveness. And if this person is not religious, then serious literature, especially tragedy—any genre that exploits pathe—is a most promising source for this cleansing and forgiveness. It is reasonable

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also to expect that the myths best able to do this for him will be those infused with bold honesty, a true understanding of humanity, and art of all sorts. The myth of Cybele badly needs a Euripides. When we have identified a myth as having the right kind of pathos, that is the beginning, not the end, of our analysis. There are fine and life-giving phantasies of the daydream sort, as I have argued, but their power is not essentially different from that of "philosophy": they depend on to philanthrdpon, "fellow feeling," delight in justice and the assurance that happiness is in our own power. They are also seriously limited by the necessity to conform to the goals we seek when we are fully conscious and rational. And they offer no help against the superego. It would seem that it is dream stories, then, that we should honor most. A further limitation of daydream literature is the fact that climactic tension and violence (if there is any) must necessarily be experienced with deep sympathy for the perpetrator, not the victim. If our sympathies are entirely with the victim, then it is a true pathos; we are enjoying a vision of deep injustice—a dream story, not a daydream story, "poetry," not one of the plots approved by Plato for inclusion in the philosophical state. It is not dream literature, but daydream literature, therefore, the plot preferred by Plato, that causes a problem when the story includes serious violence. Violence of the daydream sort, violence in which a surge of intense joy comes from to philanthrdpon, is the subject of much concern among those who worry about violence in life. Popular entertainment— "R"-rated movies, police drama, martial arts films, and so on—depends on this thrill above all others. The need for a distinction between violence felt from the point of view of the perpetrator and violence experienced with deep sympathy for the victim is clear. Dangerous and inartistic violence is often called "gratuitous" violence, avoidable, not needed by the plot—stuck in for its own sake, as it were. We must justify the inclusion of violence, the argument goes, by proving that a genuine threat could not be overcome without it. Violent action should be necessitated by evil clearly perceptible in the character and motives of the victims. But this is precisely the kind of violent climax that invites the audience to unleash the beast within each individual. If theatrical violence contributes to violence on the street and in the home, it is violence of this sort, not the violence of pathe, that does so. The quality of being "gratuitous" in yet another sense is also precisely what we do want in dramatic violence: we must perceive it as an event full of exquisite injustice. We cannot even say that the story ought not to have been constructed deliberately in order that the terrible injustice of this sort could be included. Shakespeare need not have included the blind-

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ing of Gloucester, nor have ended the play with the terrible deaths of Cordelia and Lear. It would not be wrong to say that the play's plot was constructed precisely so that these terrible victimizations might be presented as vividly as possible. Violence of this sort is implicit in a pathos and a pathos is implicit in "poetry." As we have seen, the greatest poets have all found ways to mix "poetry" and "philosophy." Literary criticism, therefore, that dwells on the subtleties of a drama's "philosophy" is not necessarily wrong. It is wrong only if this element in the story is singled out as the essence of the power and profundity of the work. And even that is no very serious mistake. A religious person may believe the rational explanations offered by theologians, yet he will switch to "poetry" when he responds once more to the pathe of his myths: the true source of his cleansing has not been compromised by his false thinking. So also a lover of tragedy can be convinced by a rational critic of the Aristotelian stripe: this will not prevent him from responding to the pathe of tragedy again in the manner explained by Plato.

25 THE TROUBLE WITH ARISTOTLE'S ALTERNATIVE

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LATO'S PERCEPTION of the poet's influence as pernicious was obviously not the consequence of a personal distaste for poetry. As we have seen, it was dictated by the logic of Socratism: if it is not possible that a truly good person can ever be truly unhappy, then the vision central to "poetry" is false and dangerous. Plato has Socrates say that he is very susceptible indeed to the pleasure to be got from the poets, that he regrets the necessity to ban Homer and the rest from a city run by philosophers {Republic 10.605 c-e), but that he saw no way out. Aristotle, on the other hand, although he defended the poetic tradition as harmless and even rather helpful in our pursuit of philosophical happiness, clearly was not a man who was easily and deeply influenced by poetry. Aristotle was not ignorant of the poetic tradition, of course. One was not educated in his day without much exposure to Homer and others. Aristotle also has flashes of taste and insight. On the whole, however, he appears to have survived his education in poetry without having learned to bring much of the poets' language into his inner life. Occasionally a line from one of the poets, usually a routine phrase, will jump into his mind as an appropriate or impressive way to express something he is explaining; usually, however, his infrequent (and notoriously inaccurate) quotations are made for the driest of reasons. He quotes Homer to confirm his description of the structure of a horse's head (On the Generation of Animals 785 a 15-16; Iliad 8.83-84), or on the position of a blood vessel (History of Animals 6.5 74 b 33-34; Odyssey 17'.326-27), or to support his theory that castrated boars are the fiercest (History of Animals 6.578 b 1-2). In this last example Aristotle bases his interpretation on a fanciful etymology and a conflation of two passages, one from the Iliad (9.539) and one from the Odyssey (9.191). In describing intangible things like feelings, perceptions, moral inclinations, and decisions, Aristotle does sometimes make effective use of the poets' colorful language; but even here most of his debts to poetry are superficial. To aim accurately at the intermediate in moral matters, he says, one must first put distance between oneself and the more extreme of the contraries. "As Calypso advises: 'keep your ship beyond the waves and spray' " Nicomachean Ethics 2.1109 a 31-32). But these words were spoken by Odysseus, who was following, not Calypso's advice, but

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that of Circe (Odyssey 12.219-20). Aristotle quotes part of a line describing Euryalus staggering dizzily from a blow in a boxing match at the funeral games for Patroclus {Metaphysics 4.1009 b 28-30; Iliad 23.698); he remembers the line incorrectly as referring to Hector and is only interested in a single word, allophroneonta, "thinking other things." He remarks that Anaxagoras quoted the line to support his theory that thought alters with physical alterations. In another work he quotes the same line, still confusing it with some passage about Hector, and remarks that Democritus was right to cite it in support of his very different theory, namely that mind and soul are identical (On the Soul 1.404 a 29-30). Aristotle is just as ponderous as the early philosophers. He remembers the beautiful words of Odysseus in one of his most melancholy broodings, "the mind of earthbound man is as it is according to what I the father of gods and men brings on from day to day" (Odyssey 18.136-37). He quotes the first phrase as proof that the ancients all equated thinking and perceiving and conceived of both as bodily experiences (On the Soul 1.427 a 25— 26). When a poet's line sticks in Aristotle's head it is almost always unencumbered by any memory of the context. He quotes the magnificent simile in which Menelaus, as he spots the hateful Paris among the Trojan warriors, is compared to a lion delighting at the sight of his prey (Nicomachean Ethics 3.1118 a 22—23; Iliad 3.24). Aristotle's only interest is in correcting the suggestion that animals other than men get pleasure from their perceptions. (He remarks that lions do not really delight in seeing a stag or a goat; what they delight in is a meal in the offing.) Metaphysics XII, Aristotle's major discussion of the Prime Mover of the universe, climaxes with a reaffirmation of the singleness of the supreme mover and ends with a ringing line from the Iliad (2.204), "Rule by many is not good: let there be one ruler" (1076 a 4). Yet in its context this is a routine line; it is spoken in great irritation by Odysseus as he angrily hits the back of one of his colleagues who is dashing too eagerly back to the ships. Plato's language, by contrast, is rich with words and reminiscences from the poets—usually passages of considerable beauty, remembered correctly and with their emotional power intact. In his severest criticisms of the poets he sometimes preserves a superb line that would otherwise have been lost to us. A line or phrase will well up in him and he will let himself be captured by it. In the Allegory of the Cave he tries to convey the revulsion that the true philosopher would necessarily feel upon being asked to descend once again to become king in the dark world of everyday politics. He has Socrates quote the words of the embittered ghost of Achilles in the underworld: that he would rather be a laborer in the service of a landless man—if he could be on earth's surface—than be king of

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all the strengthless dead below {Republic 7.516 d; Odyssey 11.489-91). Yet this very passage from Homer was cited earlier in the Republic as an example of the kind of sentiment that a rational society could not allow its young to hear (3.386 c). Even in his most famous vision, Plato acknowledges the sweep of his enemies' influence over him. It is obviously theoretical considerations alone, therefore, that made the one philosopher antiquity's harshest opponent of the poets and the other its most celebrated defender. Personal tastes and sensitivity had nothing to do with it. In his youth Aristotle presumably shared Plato's hostility to the poets. He began his philosophical career as a loyal Platonist, after all. But he eventually developed a version of Platonism that was distinctive and not acceptable to all of Plato's other students. He was no doubt introducing what he took to be improvements, innovations that would permit him to solve some of the difficulties recognized by the community of philosophers in Athens. Some of his innovations were basic and led to dramatic revisions of Plato's conclusions. On Plato's controversial condemnation of poetry he did an about-face: not only was it no longer necessary to oppose the poetic tradition, it was now necessary that Aristotle defend it as essentially rational and good. We may see Aristotle squaring off against more orthodox Platonists at the beginning of chapter 13 of the Poetics, where he admits that watching depictions of good men, epieikeis, going from good to bad fortune is indeed polluting, miaron. Such scenes do not even rouse pity, he says, although he may mean only that our sense of uncleanness is so great that pity is no longer our dominant reaction. As we have noted, miaron occurs only in chapters 13 and 14 of the Poetics, nowhere else in Aristotle. It is surely one of the terms he took over from the Academy. Plato talks frequently about pollution and its opposite, purity; Aristotle never mentions miasimata. Occasionally, like Aristophanes and Demosthenes, Plato uses miaros as a term of abuse (in the vocative, miare, meaning "you scoundrel," as at Phaedrus 236 e 4 and Cbarmides 161 b 8 and 174 b 11, all interjections by Socrates himself and addressed to one of whom he would hardly use the term literally or in anger). Aristotle, since he is not writing dramatically in these unpublished notes, never uses miaros even in this way. In fact he uses a word derived from miaenein twice only, and one of these may well go back to Plato. At Rhetoric 2.9 1386 b 25-29, in a passage about pity, fear, envy, indignation "and other [painful] path?' of this sort, he says that a person who finds unmerited suffering painful will enjoy merited suffering (or will at least not find it painful); no good man (chrestos), for instance, is pained by the punishment of parricides and miaiphonoi, perpetrators of murders that bring pollution. Plato used the verbal form of that word at Republic 9.571 d 2 in reference to nightmares and violent tragedies. (The other occurrence of the word in

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Aristotle is in the Nicomachean Ethics 10.7.1177 b 10, where he says that only a tniaiphonos would turn his friends into enemies so that he could demonstrate his prowess as a fighter.) Plato's concern about pollution arising from tragedy is twofold. First there is the distressing way the tragedians emphasized the most pollutioncausing crimes in their choice of mythoi. Aristotle is silent about the pollution and says, simply that "the poets were compelled [by the nature of tragedy, its formal and final causes] to go to the houses in which pathe of this sort occurred" (1454 a 12-13). Second, there is that most dangerous aspect of tragedy, the way it "awakens, feeds, and strengthens;" the "most polluted" part of the psyche whenever it presents moving spectacles of radical injustice. Aristotle does not believe that the "lowest" part of the psyche is "polluted" at all. Nevertheless, he thinks that philosophical miaron, the absence of the quality he calls to philanthropon, should be kept to a minimum, either by showing us justice in the end, as in the Iphigeneia or, failing that, by clear signs that the sufferer himself was partly to blame, as in the Oedipus the King. None of the tragedians themselves accepted uncritically a simple, primitive fear of pollution. Aeschylus, as we saw, eloquently advocated the insertion of intelligence and an enlightened conception of individual justice between the polluting violence and the violence necessitated by that pollution. Sophocles created moving drama out of the gap separating the carrier of pollution and his enemies or the dancers. The latter are often insensitive and unintentionally cruel, which increases our sympathy and admiration for the sufferer. Euripides, as we might expect, had fun at the expense of the whole idea. In the Orestes, for instance, he has Helen say to Electra the day after the matricide, "I'm not polluted by talking with you\ 11 attribute the harmartia to Phoebus," since it was he who ordered the crime (75-76). Plato, however, is surprisingly conservative in some ways. He speaks with approval of the old notions concerning the blood guilt that was traditionally thought to cling even to involuntary killers. But the purification, he argues, should not be less for one who only plans a crime and does not commit it with his own hand (Laws 9.865 a-b). Athenian law was quite primitive on this point. And Sophocles still felt the distinction strongly. (There is much emphasis on the fact that Oedipus killed his father with his own hand; Laius had tried to kill Oedipus and Creon Antigone in manners that would leave their hands untainted.) And indeed, in the Euthyphro, presumably an early dialogue, Plato shows Socrates as still deeply sensitive to the underlying idea, the special taboo against causing pollution with one's own hand. 1 Not until the Laws, written at the end of his life, did Plato oppose this distinction boldly. 1

At least this is a possible inference from 4 e, where Socrates expresses surprise at Eur-

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Even here, however, Plato warns the involuntary killer of a free man not to discredit the ancient mythoi concerning the wrath of the victim, wrath that has the power to reach across the grave (9.865 d-e). The slayer must avoid his victim's customary haunts for a full year, says Plato. The tragedians are right, he says elsewhere in the Laws, when they bring "Oedipus, Thyestes, or Macareus" onstage and show them as unholy, hated by the gods, and longing for death (8.838 c)—even though all three did what they did in complete ignorance of the blood ties they were violating. (Macareus unknowingly slept with his sister.) The one point on which Plato is consistently "rational" is in his denial that gods could ever be responsible for inducing men to commit pollution-causing crimes. But Plato was anticipated in that revision by Euripides (among others). The reason for the persistence of the idea of "pollution" in Plato's thinking was his conviction that the higher reality is "pure" whereas the lower is "corrupted," "polluted." Contact with our own bodies may actually pollute our spirits, he believes (Phaedo 66—67). In a corrupt society all the philosopher can hope for is to keep clear of the polluting influences of politics and to flee the filthy storm that is the ordinary world (Republic 6.496 d 7). Philosophy is a "purification," katharsis {Phaedo 67 c 5-d 2, 69 b 8-c 3). "Perhaps the men who established the Mysteries," he says, "were not such fools: they have long been trying to tell us something symbolically when they say that the uninitiated goes to Hades and lies in the mud whereas the initiated and purified, kekatharmenos, when he arrives in the other place, dwells with gods" (69 c 3-7). The word katharos, "pure"—the opposite of miaros—occurs many times in Plato's description of the divine world, the true home of our true selves. What pollutes us in this world is not only corporeality as such but also the part of the psyche that is most akin to corporeality. If a man submits to the tyranny of the lowest part, he says, "his most divine part becomes a slave of the most godless and polluted part" miarotaton, Republic 9.589 e 4). The corruption will not leave us even in death. But if we can live our lives out to the end still under the rule of intelligence, he says, "we shall not be polluted in our psyche" when we cross over, as happens to those who do not practice philosophy (Republic 10.621 c 2). It is no wonder, then, that the Platonists' condemnation of the poets includes the charge that their stories are "polluting." As we saw, Plato's catalogue of our worst dreams included above all those that depicted incest with one's mother, "pollution-causing murder," and the eating of forbidden food—in other words the stories of Oedipus and Thyestes (Republic 9.571 c-d). When we find the same two heroes thyphro's confidence that prosecuting his own father for a capital offense carried no pollution whereas the death from exposure of the workman his father is accused of murdering clearly requires his father's execution.

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given prominence again in the Laws (8.838 c), we may suspect that these stories had become stock examples in the Academic discussions of "poetry." Aristotle has presumably picked out these stories for special praise (Poetics 1453 a 11) as a kind of turning of the tables on the Platonists. A similar motive may lie behind his choice of katharsis as his explanation of the "good" performed by tragedy. If he intended us to understand it, in part at least, in Plato's sense, a religious purification, it is a brilliant and quite successful coup de main. As we have seen, the exhilaration we experience at the end of some tragedies really is a cleansing of guilt and is indeed like that experienced in some religions. But even if Aristotle meant the word in a physical sense, the flushing of noxious substances out of the body (see Politics 8.7.1341 b 32-1342 a 16), and in no other sense, even so it was a mischievous use of Plato's own idea. In the Republic Plato spoke of the poets' vision "filling," "stuffing," or "satisfying" the polluted parts of the psyche (10.606 a 4, also 9.571 c 5-6): not a bit of it, says Aristotle—it rouses pity and fear only to flush them out and leave us clean and strong. Plato's charge that tragedy tips the balance of power in the psyche in favor of the lowest part ("the most serious charge") is easily dismissed by Aristotle. First there is his new conception of the nature of this part of the psyche. According to Aristotle, the function of the lowest part is the preservation of each species through nutrition and reproduction, "so that as far as possible [each creature] will partake of the eternal and divine—for that is what they all strive for [oregesthai], that for the sake of which they do whatever they do when they act according to their own nature" (On the Soul 2.4.415 a 29-b 2). This is a vision recognizable from Plato's middle period, his thought at the time when the young Aristotle first learned Platonism (Phaedo 74 d-75 b, Symposium 207 c-e, etc.). Although the individual specimen is more real than the species (Categories 5, Metaphysics 12.5, etc.: here Aristotle differs from Plato altogether), it is nevertheless only the species that is immortal (On the Generation of Animals 2.1.731 b 31ff.). Nature strives for the better and reality is better than nonreality (On Generation and Corruption 2.10.336 b 27ff.), but only things close to divinity at the outer periphery of the corporeal cosmos can exist without interruption forever (b 3 0 - 1 ; cf. Metaphysics 12.7 and 10); divinity has therefore arranged things in such a way that generation and ceasing to be are uninterrupted—the closest that sublunary creatures can come to immortality (On Generation and Corruption 2.10.336 b 25—34). In order that this may be guaranteed forever, there must be eternal cosmic movements that induce nutrition and reproduction. There are two such movements: the circular motion of the "fixed" stars, and the passage of the sun through the signs of the zodiac, which brings the seasons (336 a 31—69).

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Some creatures have sense perception for greater facility in surviving and reproducing their kind. In some, perception produces persistent images. Sometimes these images are wrongly interpreted; even an intelligent creature can make mistakes. We do not need Plato's notion of a criminal element deep in our being. In sleep the residual effects of perception cause dreams. These, too, are harmless. Alarming or exciting dreams can be explained by reference to the dreamer's particular character and experiences {On Dreams 460 b). Prophetic or insightful dreams are usually the products of coincidence, but inasmuch as nature is divine, so dreaming, a product of the dynamics of nature, may also be "divine" in a sense {On Prophesying by Dreams 463 b 12—15). In any case, dreams are never counterrational. Although Aristotle does not say so, it would seem to follow that dreamlike phantasies, such as the myths exploited by religion and poetry, are also quite without power to harm sophisticated people, or perhaps anyone at all. Aristotle has removed tragedy altogether from the realms of madness and criminality. Second, Aristotle argues that tragedy does not in fact cater to the lowest, but to the middle part of the psyche. In his opinion the lower two parts are both as good-directed and "natural" as intelligence itself. Counterrational actions are possible and even common, but such actions are mostly just the things men do as a consequence of having acquired bad habits. Aristotle could hardly deny that men are capable of irrational acts—acts contrary to their true good. Like Plato he emphasizes above all the role of habits, and the responsibility of society in the formation of habits. But of their own nature the passions of the middle part are neither good nor bad. That is precisely their value: it accounts for the fact that they can be intelligently trained. Throw a rock upward—away from its natural goal—ten thousand times, he says, and you will still not have trained it to want to go anywhere but "down" {Nicomachean Ethics 2.1). Its tendency is "natural" in the simplest way. The middle part of the psyche, however, tends in whatever directions the mind of society trains it to tend. But this, too, is "natural" in the sense that even in error some good is being striven for. What Aristotle has done is deny that radically irrational energy exists anywhere—either in our psyches or in the dynamics of the visible world itself. In his own analysis of the most basic differences between himself and his teacher, he says just that. There does indeed exist, "something divine and good, the object of desire," he says, meaning form, substance, the perfections towards which nature and men alike strive ceaselessly {Physics 1.9.192 a 16—17). And contrariety exists in this realm of the "divine, good, and desirable"—in the sense that the realization of one form may necessarily inhibit or rule out the realization of some other form {Physics 1.7.191 a 5, 2.1.193 b 20, Metaphysics 12.10, etc.). But

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there is only one thing in the universe besides these forms and that is "that which by its nature desires and yearns for" (oregesthai) these perfections. Plato's great mistake was to assume that the substratum introduced a dynamic of its own—energy capable of preventing the realization of forms. By distinguishing clearly between contrariety, which exists within the realm of forms, and matter, which is motivated only by desire for forms, Aristotle achieved one of Plato's most elusive goals, to show how good was the true cause of being (Phaedo 74 d-5 b, 98 b—9 d, Republic 6.508 e—9 d, etc.). Other Platonic problems were solved also: the relation between intelligible form and perceptible particulars, the knowability of the perceptible world—including its failures—and more. In Aristotle's version of Platonism there is really only one difference between the forms pursued by nature and those that motivate human creation. In nature the patterns of perfection are striven for directly by the substratum itself; the pattern of the full-grown oak must be in the acorn and the sapling, pulling them from within, as it were. In human art the patterns must first inform the mind of some human agent, and this then causes that agent to shape matter that he finds at hand outside himself. When a physician brings into being the pattern of Health, not in someone else's body but in his own, his art is precisely like a natural process, Aristotle says {Physics 2.8.199 b 30-33; cf. 2.1.192 b 24-26). Thus forms realized by art—house, oration, tragedy, and so forth—are perfect and immortal just as Man and Oak are. A father does not invent Man when he engenders a son; nor dies a housebuilder invent House when he is moved to build a new house. He sees a house, comprehends the principle and the advantage (protection from the elements, etc.), and is led to build a house for a new beneficiary [Physics 2.7). In the same way, presumably, a potential poet hears a mythos or sees a play, recognizes dimly the principle and function of such a production (a pleasurable cleansing of pity, etc.) and is led to compose dramas for new beneficiaries. Housebuilder and poet alike therefore play their parts in the cosmic process of perpetuating the realizations of the perfect patterns in the material world, each with its distinctive "good," in serial succession, forever. Neither art nor nature needs to deliberate (Physics 23.2.199 b 26-32). Mistakes can occur in either process (199 a 33—b 7). On the whole, however, nature and artist are both remarkably efficient: they act just as they would if they did deliberate. Even Plato assumes that in the infinite past, true philosophical good must sometimes have been realized by the efforts of his predecessors. The philosophical state may have been achieved, briefly at least—in "Atlantis," or approximated in real places like Crete or Sparta (Laws 3.676 bff.; cf. 2.656-57 and Timaeus 22 bff.). Aristotle assumes that such triumphs happen repeatedly all through time. After all, the forms are eternal and never changing; the causes of activity must be

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the same for all men in all periods. It is not surprising, therefore, that mankind seems always to be groping for the same truths and the same achievements. Thus men have always known that the outermost regions were divine, and have even called it "aether," just as Aristotle did {On the Heavens 1.270 b 16-20, Meteorology 1.339 b 25-30). Aristotle's cosmology is but a more developed state of a very ancient idea (Metaphysics 1.985 a 4ff.). So also there must always have been a striving for the very same goals Athenians strove for in the age of Sophocles by composing and attending tragedy. Aristotle knew well that writing and witnessing tragedy was not a universal activity and was of comparatively recent origin. But the form Tragedy, with its characteristic "good," its final cause, must be as eternal as House, Health, Oak, or Man and the good each of these realizes. Aristotle's assumption that conscious deliberation is not essential even for intelligent human striving gives him a way out of the dilemma. Learning by mimesis, as Plato had said, was a universal human drive. As with the slow, halting discovery of Aristotelian cosmology, so also with the gradual increase in the efficiency with which men practiced mimesis: the pattern of perfection did not change, only men's ability to realize it. Aristotle notes no difference between the "good" performed by Homer's epic and the good performed far more efficiently by Sophocles' tragedies {Poetics 26.1462 b 12-15; cf. 5.1449 b 16-18). Tragedy as Athens knew it in the fifth century grew slowly, Aristotle says, "but when it had undergone many changes, it stopped, since it had achieved its nature" (4.1449 a 1 4 15). It is like the striving discernible in the metamorphosis from acorn to perfect oakhood, only prolonged over many generations. Aristotle's way of reconciling "poetry" and "philosophy" clearly will not do. This is not because Aristotle arrived at his solution as a side effect of an ancient and local philosophical controversy; that would be irrelevant if the consequent theory were interesting nevertheless. But it is not. The poets are given a place in a well-run society—but what a minor place it is! Their function is to clean out our emotional lives periodically so that we can get on with more important things. And even this function is assigned to them for the wrong reason. Aristotle supposed that our painful pity for undeserved suffering was convertible to pleasure, in part because we see that the sufferer nevertheless brought on his own unhappiness to a significant degree. This is in fact the case in many good tragedies; but justice of this sort is neither inevitable nor the essence of tragedy's special pleasure. Plato himself could have accepted Aristotle's response to his call for a defense of poetry {Republic 10.607 d) only if he had been willing to accept not only Aristotle's innovation in the tripartite psyche, but also his new monistic interpretation of reality as a whole. As for the relative merits of Plato's and Aristotle's versions of Plato-

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nism considered in their entirety (as opposed to the specific analyses of tragedy that they deduced from their basic premises), a case could indeed be made for either vision. Plato's vision of incorrigible, antirational forces at the bottom of the human psyche and theoretically unknowable forces in nature itself characterizes much modern thought also. And Aristotle's confidence that what a good person enjoys, even in the depths of his imagination, is reassurance that happiness is in our own power—his belief that we do not have an eternal enemy, either within ourselves or in nature, as Plato thought—is shared by many others today. To the latter sort Aristotle's attempt to reconcile "poetry" and "philosophy" makes sense. The former sort ought to be deeply suspicious of Aristotle. It is not so much a difference in interpretations of the tragedies themselves; it is a difference in people's willingness or unwillingness to believe in the ultimate reconcilability of the various conflicting drives within nature and themselves.

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HO IS RIGHT, Plato or Aristotle? From the sixteenth century to the present this has not seemed to be a very interesting question. Plato was wrong to condemn tragedy, Aristotle right to defend it. That much is clear. But if the question is which philosopher came closer to a true understanding of the nature of tragedy, the answer must be quite different. Let us begin with the broad area of agreement between the two. Both agree that a pathos must occur. Aristotle would not disagree with the outlines of Plato's definition of a pathos in Republic II: it is a catastrophic event that is neither a case of a sufferer getting exactly what he or she deserves, nor merely a requirement for enlightenment or improvement. For both it is suffering well beyond what the sufferer deserves or needs, although the two philosophers disagree as to whether it might be absolutely undeserved. Plato and Aristotle both assume that the victim is always or usually one of the heroic figures from Greek popular religion. (This fact bothers Plato but not Aristotle.) Both agree that pity is the expected response to the witnessing of a pathos. Both assume that this pity is felt personally by the reader or viewer inasmuch as resemblances are recognized between the sufferer's vulnerability and that of the reader or viewer. Both philosophers also assume that, even when the pathos is not followed later by a triumph or vindication, it produces strong pleasure— either because pity is pleasurable in itself (Plato) or because, although a kind of pain, it can be roused in such a way as to bring about a pleasurable cleansing (Aristotle).1 There are also major differences in their analyses of tragedy. First, Plato emphasizes the divine responsibility for the pathe in most Greek tragedies. He is disturbed by the fact that the pathe of popular religion are similarly god-caused, and that this is apparently a requirement if any pathos, whether in religion or in drama, is to yield its dangerous joy. Aristotle usually manages to describe the plots of a tragedy without any reference to the gods and without any acknowledgment ot a parallel in popular religion. He does, of course, acknowledge the importance of pop1 Some critics are uncertain that the function of tragedy, katharsis, is the same as its "characteristic pleasure"; see Gerald Else, Plato and Aristotle on Poetry (Chapel Hill, 1986), chap. 11, "The Tragic Side: Peculiar Pleasure (otkeia hedone) and Katharsis."

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ular religion in the origin of tragedy; but he argues that tragedians make a profound mistake when they attempt to recreate the teratddes, the "holy dread" of initiatory rites, in their dramas. To teratddes has nothing to do with tragedy, he insists (Poetics 1453 b 9); it is something wholly different from the "shudder" and "fear" caused by a well-made tragic pathos. Plato, as we have seen, drew parallels between the terror experienced in the outer mysteries and that felt by lovers of sophia when they are at the beginning of their ascent to Platonic visions. He does nothing with this, however, in any of his comments in tragedy. He is concerned with the treacherous pleasure to be got from tragedy, not the fear. A part of us yearns to believe that we are all victims, he argues (Republic 10.606 a— b). This yearning is secretly gratified by the pathe of tragedy. Fear is not stirred, it is laid to rest. As for the intellect, it "knows" that we are not in fact victims of pathe in our own lives. If there is fear in our response to tragedy, it is fear of succumbing to the pleasure we are being invited to experience. The only evidence that Plato or his followers equated the dark pleasures of tragedy with to teratddes, the "holy dread" of initiatory religion, is the fact that Aristotle emphatically rejects the equation. The pity and fear of tragedy are both given the most banal possible definitions by Aristotle (Poetics 1453 a 4-7): the first is what we feel when we see someone suffering more than he or she deserves, the second what we feel when we cannot escape the observation that the sufferer's situation is not unlike our own. Agreeable pity and joyous fear are simply ruled out. That disagreeable emotions can indeed be stirred by vivid accounts or representations of pathe had always been acknowledged, as in the weeping of Odysseus in the Phaeacian court or the rage of the Athenians against Phrynicus; but such responses were always thought to be abnormal or proof of serious failure. Not so, says Aristotle. If it were not for the pleasure of the katharsis that follows the arousal of pity and fear, a tragic pathos would always cause us to be as depressed as Odysseus or as appalled as the Athenians at Phrynicus's play. It cannot be said that Aristotle distorts ordinary Greek usage when he treats pity and fear as he does. "Phaedo," for instance, says that what he felt (pathein) when he sat with Socrates on the day of his death amazed him: he felt no pity, eleos, as one normally would in the presence of an excellent man on the point of death {Phaedo 58 e 1-2). Because Socrates was happy, he too was happy. Obviously eleos, like phobos, "fear," is not an emotion we relish. We do not try to multiply the kind of occasion that will make us feel pity. Where Aristotle does spring a surprise is in his insistence that the pity we feel for the victim of a tragic pathos is no different. His brief definition in the Poetics is an invitation to remember his surprisingly long and rather defensive analysis of pity in the Rhetoric.

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Both philosophers would agree with Yeats that no public has ever read stories or attended performances "generation after generation because of [the stories'] pain." Both speak unhesitatingly of the "pleasure," hedone, of tragedy. As we have seen, pitiful catastrophes had always been held by the Greeks to be the most enjoyable of plots. Plato agrees with this but declares it to be an unhealthy joy, one the public should not be allowed to experience, inasmuch as it could be traced to an irrational desire to believe that happiness was not in our own power. Rational happiness, which is, he thought, superior in every way, is unattainable for anyone who has allowed himself to enjoy the special kind of pity called up by tragedy. Aristotle, by contrast, insists that all pity is the same—all painful, especially for a good man. What good man would enjoy the spectacle of another good man suffering unjustly? If he is a Socratic, he will feel himself polluted by such a story. Yet if such an injustice is tempered by a modicum of justice, as in all good tragedy, the pity can set into motion a process often observed at certain rites and musical performances: a liberation from the painful emotion, a homeopathic cure. That we get pleasure from a sudden return to health and normality was not a new idea. It occurs in Plato more than once (e.g., Philebus 31 d, Phaedo 60 b—c). But both philosophers thought of this as a fairly minor phenomenon. It figures in neither of their analyses of the highest intellectual pleasures. As for nonintellectual pleasure, it is of more interest to Aristotle than to Plato; yet even Aristotle, in his most elaborate discussion (Nicomachean Ethics 10.4), makes only a brief, dismissive mention of the joy of being freed from pain (1173 b 7—20). Since Plato explains the pleasurableness of pity by tracing it to a yearned-for vision of divinity as ultimately responsible for all suffering, he stresses the divine or superhuman causes of the suffering depicted in the plays. Aristotle, since he does not believe that pity is ever pleasurable—only our release from pity—ignores the role of the divine and superhuman causes for the suffering in the plays. Instead he puts new emphasis on the sufferer's own responsibility for what happens and on the pleasure to be derived from visions of justice realized. First, which one is right: Plato, who emphasizes the gods' responsibility for the pathe of tragedy; or Aristotle, who pays little attention to the role of the gods? It would seem that Plato was more accurate concerning the practice of Attic dramatists; Aristotle more useful in our attempts to adopt Greek visions to modern tragedy. But a case can be made in favor of Plato's emphasis even when we are considering the tragic literature of our own time. When we today read or watch an ancient play, we do not need to suspend our own beliefs in order to be able to think and feel like a pagan. At

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least we are usually unaware that we are making an effort to do so. The same is true of our responses to a modern story when it is told by someone who believes in God and insists on God's presence in the plot: we are not required to feel, even temporarily, that a real divinity is actually present in the events. The doubter in the Theater of Dionysus was probably moved by the Ajax as much as his neighbor who revered this hero and honored him in cult ceremonies. So too an atheist may be as deeply moved by Paradise Lost as a Puritan—perhaps more deeply moved in some instances. A storyteller may assume that he is depicting God or the gods because they are real. He may even assume that readers and audiences who do not share his beliefs at all will remain untouched by his story. But this is in fact very seldom the case. The presence of divinity in a story can function in much the same way in the imaginations of believers and nonbelievers alike. A pathos is by definition an event that is entirely or primarily unfair. The catastrophe is usually deeply, overwhelmingly unfair. Now, it is surely difficult to imagine a portrayal of a bitterly unfair event that implies nothing at all about the force or forces that proved to be dominant in the outcome. The larger influences described by the storyteller do not have to fit our consciously held assumption with any accuracy: all that is required is that we ourselves also feel the threatening presence of superpersonal forces of some sort, large movements that we cannot hope to dominate or even to understand as adequately as we should like. Even if we reject out of hand the real existence of inimical divinity or circumscribing fate, we cannot deny the influence in our lives of things like inherited traits, weaknesses in human nature, the corroding effects of time, the patterns of history, the effects of economic or political necessity, the unstoppable march of some dread disease or revolution, unspeakably bad luck, and so on. We do not have to be believers in order to respond to plots that hinge on the existence of fate or the gods: we do respond, with all our hearts, however remote our own literal beliefs may be from those of the storyteller. We swiftly and effortlessly substitute (temporarily, of course) the storyteller's superpersonal causes for our own. It is something we learn to do as we learn, from childhood on, to enjoy many different kinds of story. A person who demands that the storyteller agree with him literally and in minute detail may find that there is a limited number of stories that will satisfy him deeply. Now, if the suffering is unfair, then it will obviously not do to explain the plot of the story in terms of the sufferer's own mind and character, as though he or she lived in a benign, just, and predictable universe. There must be something deeply discouraging about the circumstances. In serious stories, as in life, what is wrong is, first of all, the ability of certain

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people we do not like to harm people we do like. In stories, however, the implicit world view is made clearer than in life: the idea that less-good men and women are regularly able to do lasting harm to more worthy people and then escape satisfactory retribution. That is, we are made more aware than we usually are of forces much larger and more difficult than particular human agents out to thwart people with whom we sympathize. Vast, slow movements, ill defined perhaps, are seen to grind on, oblivious of the needs and wishes of the persons we care about in the story—and so oblivious also of our own needs and wishes. If a reader or member of an audience is already consciously preoccupied with evil or capricious forces destroying his own life, forces he has no hope of overcoming—an inoperable cancer, for example—he may have trouble with tragedy. If he is compelled by a play to acknowledge the inevitability of his own long-dreaded defeat, he may not be grateful, only pained. The workings of the Greek gods strike some people as offensive or absurd for this reason. But most people can be trained to feel gratitude for stories of god-caused defeats. This is true even of people who deny irrational evil in their own world. Neither Plato nor Aristotle failed to respond to tragedy with pleasure, we may note, even though they both rejected not only the traditional vision of heartless gods and goddesses, but also the existence of cosmic forces that act in ways similar to the traditional gods. Plato is surely right: even a wholehearted commitment to Socratic optimism cannot extinguish the part of us that hungers for glimpses of Divine Injustice. Chance is probably the most universally resented nonhuman cause of failure in human rational endeavors, in a secular world at least. Now, it is often remarkably easy to translate our feelings about the vivid divine interventions in the ancient stories into uneasiness and bitterness concerning chance in our lives. Why, when Athena persuaded Achilles to put up his sword and not kill the sons of Atreus, did she not tell him then what would happen to Patroclus as a consequence? Did she not know? When Zeus acceded to Thetis's plea to have the Trojans triumph over the Greeks for a while, why did he not also tell her to warn Achilles of the bitter consequences for his own happiness? Why was Thetis's warning about the death of the greatest of the Myrmidons not less ambiguous? (The opacity or ambiguity of oracular warnings usually implies a bitter mixture of chance and personal responsibility, with chance predominating.) Still, the idea that chance was the "real" cause would have surprised the poet and his earliest audiences. Like Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles also clearly meant for their gods and goddesses to be taken literally; they are not symbols for something else. Yet the role of the gods in the lives of the mortals in their plays can also feel like the effects of chance. Why were Iphigeneia, Orestes, and

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Electra in the way, as it were, when the great movements of divinity swept over them, turning their lives into nightmares? Why was Oedipus, even before he was born, destined by the gods to kill his father and marry his mother? Yet neither Aeschylus nor Sophocles wants us to identify chance as the major cause in these events. Just as Jocasta brings offerings to Apollo because he is "the closest," in comes the messenger from Corinth, bearing the fateful truth that will destroy her and her son. We are meant to feel that this is not a coincidence but evidence of the complete control Apollo has over the day's events. Yet the effect is the same as that of bad luck. Orestes might indeed have said with Hamlet: "the time is out of joint: O cursed spite I That ever I was born to set it right!" Oedipus, however, cannot begin to guess why his suffering is necessary or even what it is that requires setting right. Still, the older poets effectively deflect our attention from the elements of chance in their tales. We accept the idea that real gods are in command. Euripides, however, goes out of his way sometimes to underline chance at the expense of comprehensible divine intentions or plans. The announced purposes of Aphrodite at the beginning of the Hippolytus and of Dionysus at the beginning of the Bacchae are so monstrously unfair to at least some of their human victims that speculation concerning a long-range good being done by the gods is effectively discouraged. The events seem to be senseless, monstrous. Even when, as in the Trojan Women, the gods do clearly have something to set right, we are then shown almost nothing except the consequences of their "justice" in the lives of innocent bystanders. Even in Euripides, however, chance is sometimes at least thinly disguised, most typically as the inadequacies of the traditional gods, their obtuseness, cruelty, or ineffectiveness—in short, their disheartening resemblances to human beings. Controversial this vision of the gods certainly was, yet it may have been less irritating than a vision of incomprehensible randomness, chance as an ultimate mover in human life. In modern tragedy, too, writers and their readers or viewers prefer chance to be disguised. A letter slipped under the door is accidentally pushed under the carpet as well, so it is not found or read and terrible things happen as a consequence. Hardy's readers feel annoyed. On the other hand, the multiple chance events that prevent Jude from acquiring a university education or rising out of poverty and misery work without irritating us, because we see them as a consequence of various evils in English society at the time, versions of which are found in our own world as well. The death of Jude exhilarates us as only a true tragedy can. In King Lear chance as a cause is dangerously close to the surface. This is not a god-haunted play like Hamlet or Macbeth. The theories about nature and divinity offered by the various players, both the ones we admire, like Gloucester, and those we hate, like Edmund, are all unconvinc-

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ing. The triumphs of the extremely evil and the extremely good follow each other so rapidly that all seems to be random. We are in a universe ruled by chance. The crucial opening scene annoys many readers and audiences because there is so little sense of inevitability in it. Here is the good but foolish old king indulging himself in the pleasures of pomp and power and seeking dramatic proof of love. His selfish daughters oblige; but his loving daughter is so disgusted by their hypocrisy that she breaks up the ceremony. It is too easy for us to imagine the same people at the same moment in their lives acting just a little differently and so avoiding the painful consequences. Later, on the heath, Lear's sanity is held on to very precariously, then slips away as a consequence of a string of bad luck. It is made clear that the king will be safe if only he is allowed to sleep; but every time he is about to sleep, something happens to force him on. Finally, in the last scene, the lives of Lear and Cordelia can obviously be saved still, if swift action is initiated by the admirable victors of the war. Edmund is dying and means to redeem himself. He is not prevented from giving the necessary information by the gods, or even by the forces of evil—only by chance. Every time he is about to speak of the danger father and daughter are in, someone unintentionally deflects his attention and that of the others on stage. This sublime play therefore fails to elevate and thrill some lovers of tragedy, those, especially, who need a modicum of to philanthrdpon in their pathe. If you need constant proof that being human is a wonderful thing, then you will be distressed when you are made to accept chance as a fearful wrecker of human lives. Dr. Johnson was such a reader and admirer of tragedy. "I might relate," he says in his note on the play (in his edition of Shakespeare, 1765), "I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scene of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor." Even then, however, he preferred Tate's rewriting, in which good triumphs and both Lear and Cordelia survive. A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of common events in human life; but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice makes the play worse; or that if the other excellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue.

Johnson's description of popular taste in his time would apparently be an accurate description of one popular preference in Aristotle's time as well {Poetics 1453 a 33-35). That it would be a true account of a general popular preference in our own times is easily proved by box-office re-

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ceipts. It is not this taste but the preference of people who do not demand "the final triumph of persecuted virtue" that is the paradox and in need of explanation. The judgment of time has gone against Johnson. People who read Lear with pleasure, talk about it, write about it, unanimously dismiss Johnson's plea for Tate's happy ending. The last scene should exhilarate us, not depress us, and needs no altering. What went wrong in Johnson's response? It is impossible to be sure, of course. The main question is this. Is the fault in his reading of this play, or is it in his response to tragedy as such? If the latter, then Johnson really sided with the majority and was not a lover of tragedy. There is plenty in Shakespeare to love and admire even if one does not find the stark representation of a pathos itself an occasion for immediate exalting pleasure. Johnson was a deeply pious Christian. Like many religious persons, he may have found that pity is pleasurable and cleansing only when it is caused by the pathe in the stories of his religion. Pity is painful when it is shorn of its religious context and so divorced from any call to feel the presence of real divinity. A religious person automatically suspends conscious worldly hopes and ambitions when he responds to a holy story; he must be educated to do this, however, in his reading of nonreligious texts. We may compare Aristotle's response to the Oedipus. He shows much admiration for the play, although he may have selected it for special attention, as I have suggested, only because the story of Oedipus was held up by Plato as an especially horrifying example. In any case, he had two reservations. First, he insisted that Oedipus must have committed some large error. Since he is asking for something that is just not there in the play, it may be that he did not really like the play as it is. It is more probable, however, that Aristotle was moved by the Oedipus and enjoyed it deeply but then could not believe that what he had enjoyed could be totally irreconcilable with Socratism. Aristotle's second reservation concerns the climactic visual representation of the king's pathos, his reappearance after putting out his eyes. Aristotle's objections are couched in general terms and have a surface reasonableness: a playwright ought not to produce his effects by means of skills not essential to his own craft. But this would surely have surprised fifth-century Athenians, both the poets themselves and their audiences. And the reappearance of Oedipus in a new, horrifying mask is hardly a case of crude dependence on elaborate, nonessential arts. It is possible, therefore, that Aristotle found this moment as painful as Johnson found the return of Lear with the dead Cordelia in his arms. Or, he may have been thrilled by this scene in the theater, then found it a most unphilosophical kind of enjoyment: pleasure from pure suffering, no time to re-

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assure oneself that the exhilaration was caused, in part at least, by seeing justice done. Lear, which alone among Shakespeare's tragedies caused Johnson intolerable distress, uses disguises and stratagems that fail to make the play pleasurable for all viewers and readers. Different members of the same audience apparently draw different inferences from the action they are watching. As Schlegel and Bradley and many other readers have seen, the doubling of Lear's story in that of Gloucester has, or should have, the effect of raising what would otherwise have been mere chance to something more definite.2 Since these terrible things are happening not in Lear's life only but in others' as well, we are made aware of something superpersonal at work. But is this a malign and unnatural influence blanketing the world, something peculiar to this moment in history? Or are we being shown a universal law of nature—the existence of positive evil everywhere, or of good-defeating chance, or perhaps of the advantage that chance always or often gives to positive evil? Readers who find Lear wonderfully enjoyable and who try to explain to the rest of us why we like the play usually make the first inference, that we were witnessing a particularly dark moment in the history of mankind. "The world is convulsed by evil, and rejects it," says Bradley. We have witnessed terrible injustice by the end of the play, but at least the evil that triumphed for a while is gone. The world has been washed clean of it. This sense that it was all worthwhile is then further supported by our memory of Lear's marvelous shedding of pomp during the storm, the emergence of the old king's true humanity: universal sympathy and love now seen to have been the true cause of his rage and madness. But if the reader or viewer draws the second inference, that we are witnessing the workings of a law of nature, that what has happened to Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, Edgar, and Kent is what often happens to the most gentle, generous, loving, and well intentioned of human beings, he may be distressed. If he has no taste for "the pathos itself," he may crave the assurance of to philanthropon, as in Bradley's reading. And even if he does find pathe pleasurable, he may still not respond with pleasure if chance is the only discernable cause of the pathos, the one universal law of human life revealed in the action. What makes things like fate and divinity preferable to chance is that they provide the reader or viewer with the assurance that all this was inevitable. This is satisfying because it is like "God's will," for which the pious of all ages have often sought no further explanation. Chance, however, shatters all hope that the events in the story will be seen by the end to have been inevitable. Superpersonal forces of all other kinds are capa2

See A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy1 (Oxford, 1905), lectures 7 and 8.

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ble of being misinterpreted as ultimately reassuring in the way that religion can be reassuring. Chance is reassuring in only one way: its triumph means that the warnings and promises of the moralists amount to nothing. The preference on the part of Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles for fate and gods rather than chance was not the consequence of calculation, of course. They believed in fate and the gods, as Greek audiences did also. Because the responsibility for suffering was therefore explained in familiar religious terms, these poets could stir wide audiences. The holy stories that worked best, however, emphasized unfairness in human suffering just as emphatically as chance does. As Plato saw clearly, the pious in the audience were deriving pleasure unconsciously from an un-Socratic and, therefore, rationally indefensible kind of reassurance: they were drawing comfort from vivid proofs that the warnings and promises of the moralists amount to nothing. Even when a Greek tragedy ends on a note of triumph, as many do, it is never simply the "triumph of persecuted virtue." Consider the "happy" endings of the Eumenides, the Philoctetes, Sophocles' Electra, Oedipus at Colonus, the Ion, Orestes, or Iphigeneia among the Taurians. The world view we are left with is remarkably different from play to play, and it is always slightly askew from the Socratic point of view. Certainly we are never invited to relax with the reassurance that life is fair and the gods dependable upholders of justice: "So if all do their duty they need fear no harm." Even the triumph of good at the end of the Odyssey is darkened by distressing revelations. An innocent man is included in the butchery. The slaughter of the servants is disturbing, to say the least. (Odysseus quickly and grimly silences the nurse when she whoops with delight at the sight of the carnage.) The suffering of the previous twenty years is not wiped out, and Teiresias's description of Odysseus's future brings little joy. The confrontations with old Laertes and with the families of the dead suitors are full of unresolved guilt and grief. And above all, we are left with a vision of divine rule that emphasizes Divine Injustice to a far greater degree than either Aristotle or Johnson would tolerate in his conscious assumptions about life. Aeschylus was right to put that adverb, etetymos, "truthfully," in such an emphatic position in the pathei mathos ode. The thrill we get from pathe, whether in religion or in tragedy, will not be realized if there is not at least a momentary acceptance of what reason tells us we do not want to be true, that injustice, not justice, dominates in human lives. The instant we insist on a more comforting and reasonable vision, we leave the realm of tragedy. There are delights to be experienced from stories that imply that all is well; but these are pleasures, as Aristotle might say, other

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than the pleasure peculiar to tragedy. That is why tragedy requires powerful, unjust gods—or cruel fate, or bitter luck, anything except human beings getting only what they deserve—as the moving force or forces in the action. The source of pleasure in tragedy lies in a thought rightly abhorrent to all good men and women when they are reasoning sanely and well: that the warnings and promises of the moralists amount to nothing. So Plato's theological definition of the tragic pathos in Republic II puts the emphasis where it should be, it seems, on the anti-Socratic world view implicit in true tragedy. His psychological analysis in Republic X carries the same burden: a pathos is an event that leaves the audience or reader with the impression that human happiness is not in human control and that bitter unfairness prevails to a much greater degree than philosophers and nonphilosophers alike want consciously to be the case. If this is indeed a correct account of the essence of tragedy it should help us to differentiate true tragedy from pseudotragedy: melodrama and sentimental stories. By "melodrama" I mean (rather arbitrarily) a story that may have as much violence and suffering as the greatest tragedies, but which reinforces our hunger for justice. By "sentimental stories" I mean dramas or narrative that may depict as much unmerited suffering as the greatest tragedies, but imply a world view that offers solace, reassurance, even subtle promises of triumph and joy. Tate turned Lear, which is a tragedy with some melodramatic and even sentimental elements, into a melodrama with strong sentimental elements and a few tragic moments. Terrible things still happen to the good in Tate's version. As in the original play, Lear, Cordelia, and Edgar are misunderstood, unjustly rejected, caused deep, undeserved pain, put into great jeopardy. Poor old Gloucester has his eyes put out. Then, at the end of the play, Edgar kills the evil Edmund in a thrilling duel and the evil sisters engineer each others' downfall. These events are all acceptable to Tate. But then he strengthens the melodramatic and sentimental elements decisively: Lear is saved just in time, so is Cordelia, who will care for her father lovingly through a few more intensely happy years. Nobody has any patience for Tate's rewriting now; but because the pleasure to be got from nontragic stories, especially from melodrama, is so obvious and so easy to explain, directors of this play often shift the emphasis just as Tate did, even though they do not feel free to alter the ending. It is especially easy to bring out the melodramatic possibilities, because there are elements of melodrama there already. A television film of Lear with Lawrence Olivier as the king succeeds in scene after scene but then falters badly in the climactic scenes at the end. Oswald is so odious, the sanctimonious Edgar so virtuous, and their duel so protracted that Oswald's violent death is an occasion for the pleasure

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of pure melodrama. The duel between Edgar and Edmund is even more drawn out, with much heightening of the danger for the good man, exultation at the defeat of the bad man at the fight's end. Worse yet, the role of chance in act 5, scene 3, is simply excised. The defeated Edmund says, "What you have charged me with, that I have done; I And more, much more.. . ." Edmund's mind drifts to other things. Edgar does not pick up the "more, much more" because he does not know what Edmund has done. The film does not include these remarks at all. A few minutes later Edmund says, "This speech of yours has moved me, I And shall perchance do good: but speak you on; I You look as you had something more to say." And Edgar does have more to say; Edmund's resolution to save Lear and Cordelia comes to nothing once again. This exchange is also left out in the film. Later Albany says, "Great things by us forgot! I Speak, Edmund, where's the king? and where's Cordelia?" But at this point the bodies of Regan and Goneril are brought in and there is yet another short delay. This conjunction, too, is left out. It is clear when Lear does enter, carrying Cordelia, that the rescue was only a few seconds too late. The senselessness of the action is an essential part of its power: "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, I And thou no breath at all?" Insofar as the viewer is prevented from feeling this senselessness as fully as Shakespeare intended, he is deprived of the pleasure that distinguishes tragedy from other kinds of drama. Sentimental stories are like melodramas in that they may have all of the ingredients of tragedy except the anti-Socratic world view. They differ from melodramas, however, in not leading to "the final triumph of persecuted virtue." Either, as in soap opera, they have no climactic resolution at all, a comforting idea in itself, or they end on a note of agreeable sadness. Instead of the gratifying violence of melodrama, when good finally triumphs over evil, they do, like tragedy, show the defeat of the good; but the defeat is gentle (usually), not violent, and the value of human goodness is affirmed, not questioned cruelly, as in tragedy. If a person has acquired a taste for tragedy and is expecting a tragedy, a sentimental ending may seem offensive, dishonest. In a 1980 film called On Golden Pond, we are shown an eighty-year-old man with a bad heart brooding about his death, which cannot be far off. It is summer's end. A dead loon is found in the pond. Near the end of the film (one looks at one's watch and knows), the man picks up some boxes that are obviously too heavy for him. He collapses on the porch. His wife runs to him in alarm. When he regains consciousness and has been given his medicine, she tells him, "When I looked at you, I could actually see you dead." At last, they face the fact that he must soon be dead. What is it like? "Not so frightening. Sort of comforting.. . . " What is more, that day has clearly not come yet.

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The music swells. The loons come to say good-bye. Death is really just like leaving one's summer home at the first touch of autumn. The fact that the sentimental story is now far more popular than tragedy proves that most members of the audience do not enjoy tragedy, do not expect it, on those occasions, at least, when they settle down to be moved by a fictional drama or narrative. They feel no dishonesty in the sadness of sentimental plots, nor even in the invitation to cry, if there is one. They obviously enjoy themselves hugely. There is a kind of melancholy, apparently, that is as enjoyable as laughter or exultation. It is agreeable, presumably, because there is an implicit promise that nothing very bad will ever happen to us or to those we love. All ends, collapses, failures, even deaths will only be further occasions for sweet melancholy. But if a lover of tragedy has wandered into this audience by mistake, he may feel nothing but disgust. There are some descriptive terms, "tearjerker," for instance, that are pejorative and used primarily to dismiss a work as sentimental and therefore contemptible. There are others, however, such as "heartbreaking," "full of pathos," "deeply moving," and "tragic," that are almost never pejorative and can be used by both those who enjoy true tragedy and those who enjoy only sentimental stories. One needs to know the tastes and sensibility of the user of the phrase before one can understand its meaning. And indeed there are some dramas that can satisfy several audiences simultaneously, people who want tragedy, people who want sentimental stories, and people who want melodrama. The Verdi/Boito Otello is an unflawed tragedy, yet lovers of sentimental opera can find in the final scenes enough of the ingredients for the kind of sentimental ending they demand to enable them to put one together for themselves, as it were. To a lesser degree the lover of melodrama can do so also. Much depends on the director and the singers. The tenor must be a very good actor if the final scene is to work as tragedy and not as melodrama and sentimental story only. (The suicide can be made to seem merely melodramatic if the acting is bad; "un altro bacio" the purest sentimentality.) On the other hand, superb acting and direction can turn a scene intended by Puccini to please the sentimental public (say the quartet in the snow and the parting that follows, in La Boheme) into something a lover of tragedy can enjoy, if only for a few minutes. The line between tragedy and sentimentality is sometimes far from clear. When the public has not settled down to being moved by a fictional drama or narrative, it can be made to enjoy the pathe of true tragedy, today even as in antiquity. One such occasion, as I have argued, is in the contemplation of holy stories at solemn moments in the religious calendar. In such circumstances the habit of using fiction as an aid to day-

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dreaming is dropped as being inappropriate, and lovers of melodrama and lovers of sentimentality are united with lovers of tragedy. All three respond as dreamers, not daydreamers. Another occasion for the universal enjoyment of tragedy is in response to news stories, especially if they are accompanied by startling pictures. When the majority prepare themselves to enjoy fiction, however, they require the daydreamer's safeguards: either the suffering of the good must be made acceptable by the assurance that it is all merely a prelude for a violent triumph (at the time of writing, vigilante and martial arts films, also the "Rambo" series, are the purest examples), or it must invite us to luxuriate in the pleasure of melancholy without letting us see the cruelty (and universality) of the causes of the suffering. To turn Love Story into a tragedy it would be necessary, first, to remove the implication that youthful love is not followed by the death of love, infidelity, boredom, sickness, age, and death. Next the death scene would have to include, even emphasize, the loss of looks, the obscenities of hospital routines, the presence of tubes in various orifices, the fear, the pain, the mind distortions caused by the pain killers, the impatience and inadequacies of loved ones, and so on. In short, the randomness and cruelty of the heroine's fate would have to be laid bare. Such changes would now guarantee popular failure for the film. It is just here that we find the most crucial difference between modern audiences and ancient audiences. The Athenians enjoyed pathe and did not require the suffering of the good to be sentimentalized. There was a vulgar taste for melodrama, as Aristotle points out, but almost none for sentimentality. Evidently the ancients were not trained, as we are, to see themselves in the principal roles. Plato says as much, or he implies it, at least {Republic 10.606 b). Yet critics and scholars, when they explain the reasons why the Greek plays are still moving today, sometimes emphasize nevertheless the life-enhancing (i.e., sentimental or melodramatic) elements as the key to our enjoyment of the pathe. Our deep pleasure in the Ajax or Oedipus the King, they say, comes primarily from the splendid angry defiance of these heroes, their refusal to submit to ordinary evil. Oedipus is so admirable in his brave insistence on discovering the truth, also in his claim to autonomy when he puts out his own eyes, that the unfairness of fate or the gods is canceled out. But this reading of the Oedipus, as I have already argued, does as much violence to the text as the older, Aristotle-inspired interpretation, which rests on the assumption that Oedipus commited an error great enough for us to feel that there was some true justice in his suffering after all. Those who follow Aristotle want to shift the play toward melodrama; but some of the modern critics, including those who object to the Aristotelian reading, end up with an interpretation that shifts it toward sentimentality. That temptation, too, must be resisted.

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Neither Antigone nor Tosca deserves to die. Both are brought to their untimely deaths by their own willfulness and their refusal to cooperate with the world ruled by Creon/Scarpia. Both live and die by a code higher than that corrupted by the temporal leaders: Antigone appeals to divine laws; Tosca, conventionally pious, says she has lived for art and love. And when Maria Callas makes us feel the parallel in her own life, which was indeed given, with much personal loss, to art and love, we are, if only momentarily, in the realm of tragedy. But Antigone's death, also those of Haemon and Euridyce, are indictments against the rule of the gods, who are shown to be either incompetent or just as subject to chance as we mortals are. Tosca kills her tormentor, then she and her lover are undone by him even so; finally she throws herself from the rampart of the Castel Sant'Angelo. The music swells, the curtain descends, and the house lights go up to wild applause. The distance between Sophocles and Sardou/Puccini is so great in so many ways that the comparison is ludicrous. Even so, an analysis of the central pathe in the two dramas shows why Tosca could never be tragedy even if the words and music were far better than they are. There is no revelation at all of divine responsibility for the suffering, and very little in the way of a substitute for divine responsibility— chance, the momentum of history, or the like. And envy for the heroine's beautiful fate neutralizes any invitation that may also be there to see life as truly and terribly unfair. Successful tragedies, ancient and modern, can be conveniently divided into two sorts: those that feel fate haunted and those that feel chance haunted. In both kinds of tragedy we also see and understand the crucial importance of human intelligence or obtuseness, willfulness or impotence, goodness or vice. Indeed, it is on human decisions and actions that our conscious minds are trained. Our admiration or apprehensions about Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, and Odysseus seem to us to direct our emotional involvement. It is as though the action in the Philoctetes depended solely on these human players. Yet the play would not work if this were really so. Philoctetes is caught in a web of mostly quite incomprehensible superhuman forces. Our total response to the tragedy depends as much on our awareness of these forces as on our awareness of the moral and intellectual virtues of the mortal participants and victims. I have already offered the Iliad and King Lear as examples of chancehaunted stories. The Oresteia, the Oedipus plays, Hamlet, and Macbeth are fate-haunted dramas. One could not give an account of their plots without many references to divinity and superhuman destiny. But plays can be fate-haunted even if there is no suggestion of a god-ordained purpose at all. In more recent centuries, fate has taken the form of an inherited tendency to madness, social conventions that work unfairly for cer-

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tain individuals, vast historic or economic forces that sweep everyone with them, unforeseen political upheavals with a past of their own, unfortunate decisions made by powerful people high up and far away—anything that might interrupt the pursuit of individual success in such a way as to exonerate the individual if he comes to grief instead. In the Hugo/Piave/Verdi Rigoletto purest chance actually determines most of the turns of the plot; yet Rigoletto can sing convincingly, " O uomini! O natura.'/Vil scellerato mi faceste voi!" His fortuitous return to his house during the kidnapping of his daughter is introduced by a fateladen aside, Riedo! . . . perched The storm in act 3 is made to seem like divine judgment. Qual notte di mistero! sings Rigoletto, and Verdi's brilliant addition of humming voices to the orchestration in itself makes this no ordinary night. Rigoletto's memory of having publicly ridiculed Monterone's grief when the Duke seduced his daughter increases the bitterness he feels when, by chance, his own daughter is also abducted by him; but this, too, becomes fate because of Rigoletto's special horror at Monterone's maledizione, which becomes a force of nature. What Verdi has done—and did again in many operas—is to combine broad traditions about destiny, which he probably had to cater to in order to create a truly popular tragedy, with invitations to understand the events as the result of more modern ideas about the superpersonal reasons for men's success or failure. The latter include not only chance and coincidence, but also that birth defect, the loss of Gilda's mother, poverty, the insolence of royalty, and so on. A combination of this sort is necessary if a modern drama is to reach the two audiences as Greek tragedy did. The Poulenc/Bernanos Dialogues des Carmelites moves "opera lovers" in ways that surprise them. The opera (composed between 1953 and 1956) ends when sixteen nuns have their heads cut off, one at a time, by a guillotine. There is a moment of silence before the curtain comes down. Members of the audience are then surprised to find that they are exultant. The rather wordy prose text by Bernanos and two scenario writers (from a story by Gertrude von Le Fort) is fabricated almost entirely from references to various kinds of destiny. The audience is hardly aware of this; it is apparent only when the text and music are examined at leisure. Some of the more obvious ways to shape an opera by injecting a sense of destiny are not used, such as the repeated return of a special theme {maledizione] those five notes in Carmen) or of a person (Monterone, the ghost of Charles V). Prophetic announcements, however, which are almost as common in modern as they are in ancient tragedy and come true as regularly, either in an obvious or in a surprising sense (the Ides of March, Birnam Wood), are used here both in broad and in subtle ways. The first prieure de Carmel, Madame de Croissy, as she dies, has a vision of the chapel stripped bare by the forces of the Revolution; Soeur Con-

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stance "knows" the minute she sees Blanche that they will die together. But there is also the known consequence of the Revolution when it came up against the Church; Blanche's pathological timidity, explained by a violent event on the day when she was born and her mother died; Soeur Constance's naive assumption that people can mistakenly die each other's death, meaning that since Madame de Croissy died a "bad death" someone else will get her easy death. There is also tension between Mere Marie and Madame Lidoine, the second prieure, as to whether or not the nuns should look forward to a martyrdom, even work toward it. Mere Marie is for it; the prieure against. By accident (apparently) the prieure is included in the martyrdom, Mere Marie left out. When Mere Marie then decides to hurry and join the sisters before it is too late, the armonier says, "Qu'importe voire volonte en cette affaire? Dieu choisit ou reserve qui lui plait." Blanche, who had chosen the name Soeur Blanche de l'Agonie du Christ, does join the martyrdom of her own will, but we know that this is right. Constance is filled with a joy that overcomes her last-minute panic: she marches happily to her death with Blanche right behind her, still terrified but no longer herself: that is how the opera ends. But there is more still. On one occasion Blanche says to Constance in exasperation, "Vous croyez toujour que Dieu fera selon voire bon plaisir!" Constance replies, "Pourquoi pas? ce que nous appelons hasard, c'est peut-etre la logique de Dieu." At the opera's most impressive and moving moments, as in the first address by Madame Lidoine to the sisters, Poulenc's overwhelmingly seductive music is broad and evenly paced, throbbing, as it were, or marching with calm inevitability. It is the musical equivalent to the unwavering progress of events as only Constance sees it—until we see it also. Then Poulenc performs a miracle. As the nuns walk or hobble solemnly toward the guillotine singing the "Salve Regina" (shifting to the "Veni Creator" when only Constance and Blanche are left), the whoosh of the blade is heard repeatedly from the orchestra—but not at predictable intervals. There is no way for the audience to predict each new fall of the blade. The effect is not only to underline the awfulness of all this innocent suffering (a sentimental composer would surely have made the blade's sound return each time at the same place in the music), but also to ratify the conjecture that "hasard" is the place where we will find "la logique de Dieu." The other all-important way in which Plato and Aristotle diverge in their understanding of pathe concerns the emotional response audiences (or worshipers) are expected to have when they view a pathos. Is Plato right that the pity stirred by a pathos is in itself a strong, seductive pleasure? Or is Aristotle right when he assumes that pity, like fear, is always a dis-

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agreeable emotion, agitating and obstructive—unless its arousal causes a pleasurable purgation, one that will leave us with "calm of mind, all passion spent"? As I have suggested already, the term katharsis would be quite a good one for the uplifting self-forgiveness experienced at a pathos if it were used in its common religious sense, a cleansing from guilt or (moral) pollution. But Aristotle uses the word—in the main, at least—in its more mundane sense, the flushing out of noxious materials. This is proved, not only by his description of musical and dramatic katharsis in the last pages of the Politics (1341 b 32-42 a 28), as many people have seen, but also by his assumption, in the Rhetoric and Poetics, that what is being flushed out is an admirable emotion experienced by good people yet a painful emotion nevertheless, one any good person would prefer to avoid if he could. For Plato, the temporary adoption of the world view implicit in a pathos is felt as an exhilarating liberation by a part of us that longs to be released from moral responsibility for our own happiness. This is a secular version of katharsis in the religious sense, and is pleasurable in itself. But Aristotle was certain that the sight of an admirable person suffering terribly—even when this occurs in a story, not in life—will always cause a good person pain. The pleasure that follows this pain must be from a katharsis in the other sense, a movement exactly as in one of Plato's definitions of bodily pleasure (Philebus 31-32; cf. Gorgias 494 and Phaedo 60 b-c), the return from an abnormal state to a normal one, in this case like the pleasurable elimination of urine or excrement or of some upsetting substance that must be forcibly purged from a body afflicted with poor health. No doubt the religious usage of the word katharsis gives it some dignity whenever it appears. And for non-Greek readers the fact that the term appears only once in the Poetics as we have it and is left quite unexplained gives it the power of a mystery. But the mechanism being described by Aristotle may well have been as banal as I have suggested. If so, Aristotle is awarding to tragedy an absurdly trivial role in men's lives: it strengthens us against the natural tendency to be saddened by injustice. Still, one of the assumptions on which Aristotle's theory rests is plausible enough—that in itself pity is not an emotion a healthy person seeks to experience just because he enjoys it. "It is certain," as Hume says in his essay "Of Tragedy" (1757), "that the same object of distress, which pleases in tragedy, were it really set before us, would give the most unfeigned uneasiness." So much is admitted by all who have described the power of a pathos in a story, from Homer {Odyssey 8.83ff.) to Plato himself (Republic 10.603 eff.). Distance is necessary, as Phrynichus found out the hard way. Distance and art are both necessary, Hume insists, if the pain of seeing something pitiable is to be transformed into pleasure.

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Unreality is evidently not required. The Phaeacians who delighted in the Trojan pathe told by Demodocus assumed the stories to be true. So also the audiences that enjoyed the Persian pathe staged by Phrynichus and Aeschylus. As Hume points out, the suffering of the innocent depicted so vividly by Cicero in the Verrine orations would not have been nearly so enjoyable if they had been believed to be fictional. The same is true of Goya's Horrors of War, Picasso's Guernica, Yeats's "Easter 1916," and so on. What should astonish us is that pathe known or assumed to be fictional are so often every bit as moving as historical pathe. And even distance is not always a good thing. It is probable that a woman who had just been told that she had an inoperable cancer would not enjoy Bergman's Cries and Whispers. Any serious story may distress some individuals in the audience by awakening personal guilt or anxiety. Phrynichus's Milesian play has not survived, but there is no doubt that he made large numbers in his audience remember things they would rather have forgotten. If the pathos is of the right sort, however, it can thrill even some who were very close to the victims. "The Dublin Tragedy has been a great sorrow and anxiety," writes Yeats on May 11, 1916 (letter to Lady Gregory). Yet he says in the same letter, "I am trying to write a poem on the men executed—a 'terrible beauty has been born again.' " Maud Gonne wrote him from France: "Tragic dignity has returned to Ireland." She immediately (and accurately) predicted that Irish independence was now assured. Yeats wonders if she had not heard yet that her own husband had been among the dead. Yeats's poem was finished a bare six months after the event it celebrates. Goya and Picasso wanted as little distance as possible in their moving depictions of Spain's catastrophic wars. If a pathos unites people, lifts them above "polite, meaningless words," and makes them identify with Man as he should be, distance is neither needed nor desirable, even for most of the people personally involved in the defeat and suffering. It is probably naive to suppose that the Oedipus was not put on until a comfortable time had separated the Athenians from their own plague; or to wonder why the Athenians did not hate Euripides for showing Poseidon predicting catastrophe for the Greek fleet sailing westward—even as the Athenians were readying their own ill-fated expedition to Sicily. Yeats and Gonne use the words "tragedy" and "tragic" in a sense familiar from newspapers, radio, and television. (Shock! Horror! Tragedy in the Sky as Space Shuttle Explodes!) Indeed this usage has now become so closely associated with the cliches of the popular press that literate people tend to avoid it. This is unfortunate, because it disguises the fact that pathe in literature and pathe in the news may indeed be very similar. If we wish to preserve the dignity that once characterized the word "tragic," we should reserve it for pathe of the elevating sort; but there is

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no reason why the explosion of the Challenger might not qualify as true tragedy. Hume suggests that tragic poets are so fond of dark, violent, pitiable, and terrifying scenes because events of this sort easily provoke very strong emotions in an audience, and that that is what we go to the theater for. It is much harder to produce contentment or self-congratulation, so terrible and pitiable events it will have to be. Human beings are just built that way. There is something to this. It is often difficult to think what to say to someone to make him or her intensely happy; remarks calculated to stir instant unhappiness are easy to invent. Also, stories of suffering and defeat can be strung together, one after another, almost indefinitely. Except in a certain kind of comedy, a thrilling victory must be held in reserve for the final scene. We like novelty, sharp distractions, strong emotions of almost any sort, Hume thought, so long as we are tactfully assured that we are not personally at risk. Take a violent and painful story, add distance and art, and you have an enjoyable tragedy. The weakness of this idea as a theory of tragedy should be obvious. It is inadequate on at least three counts. First, in tragedy worthy of the name, as I have argued, also in the parallel religious experiences, the viewer is not really distanced from the pitiable event; at some level he is subtly but powerfully invited into the pathos in his own person. It is this closeness, not the distance, we must concentrate on. Second, Hume is really offering an explanation for our pleasure in horror movies and roller coasters. In tragedy we have a much more difficult problem: how to explain our pleasure in evocations of our most intractable memories and anxieties—rejection, loss, the death of friends, our own deaths. These hardly become pleasurable merely by being called up with the art needed to make them vivid and real. Finally, our certainty that works like the Oedipus and Lear are freighted with extraordinary understanding and insight is not easily accounted for by Hume's assumption. Understanding and insight are not extra qualities—inessential to the pathe as such but added on, as it were. Yet that is what we would have to assume from Hume's theory. If we ask what the extraordinary truth was that was revealed to us in the final scene of King Lear, we are tongue-tied. It is not something that makes compelling sense to the intellect. That is because it is not a lesson tacked on to a pitiable event; it is the essence of the pity we were stirred to. Like Aristotle, Hume is convinced that truly bitter injustices are avoided by all the best writers. (Painters, especially painters of "such horrible subjects as crucifixions and martyrdoms," are just a bad lot, he concludes.) "The mere suffering of plaintive virtue, under the triumphant tyranny and oppression of vice, forms a disagreeable spectacle, and is

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carefully avoided by all masters of the drama." This may well be true in one sense: if the deaths of Lear and Cordelia had been traceable entirely to the malice of Edmund and of the evil sisters, with no contribution at all from chance and the imperfections of the world we all live in, our pleasure might indeed have been much less. But that is not what Hume has in mind. If you do not have "vice receiving its proper punishment," he thinks, then you either have a story that is merely painful or "the virtue must. . . convert itself into noble courageous despair." If you cannot have good melodrama, in other words, or a sentimental story (one in which the "noble courageous despair" cancels the pain), you will have a story that no decent person could possibly enjoy. In Hume's case, then, and perhaps in Aristotle's and Dr. Johnson's also, the stubborn insistence that a pitiable event is a painful event (unless it is either followed by victory or transformed by admirable behavior) can be traced to an equally stubborn belief that human happiness is in human control—or at least that we are glad to be human only when we are given evidence that this is so. In other words, the second of Aristotle's departures from Plato on the matter of the pathos is virtually implicit in his first departure, his refusal to trace responsibility for the pathos to forces not controllable by human beings. Some human responsibility for the pitiable event must also be discernible in a tragedy. Aristotle was not entirely wrong. Often there is a great deal of human causation, as in Lear. Without it we would not be able to recognize life as we know it. But if everything that happens is entirely explicable in terms of the decisions and actions of men and women, the longed-for glimpse of superpersonal causes will be missing and we will not be cleansed of guilt for the past and anxiety for the future. In A Death in the Family James Agee made a tragedy of the death of his own father in an automobile crash. The Agees' neighbors in Knoxville gossiped after the event about the father's hard drinking and fast driving. It is not surprising that the son, who also drank heavily and sometimes drove too fast, insisted that the real cause of his father's death was the loss of a cotter pin in the steering mechanism. But the emphasis on that cotter pin keeps the story from being merely painful for the reader as well. Had the father's drinking been the cause, or even if an enemy of his had fixed the cotter pin so that it would fall out, the death would have been of the wrong sort. It is not that the pain would not be transformed into pleasure; it would be a painful, rather than a pleasurable plot. The absurdity of a loose cotter pin causing all that human suffering is of vital importance. So is the role of chance in King Lear. The senselessness is essential for our pleasure in both stories. It is possible that Dr. Johnson simply failed to pick up the evidence concerning chance in Lear, act 5, scene 3, and that that is why he found the play's ending so terribly

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painful. Viewers of the much-edited Olivier performance were rudely deprived of this evidence. As a result, the ending puzzles and disappoints some in the audience who know and love the play. The assumption, first clearly stated in the hymn to Apollo, that pitiful stories are the most enjoyable, was not challenged before Aristotle, apparently. It was treated as a strange paradox, to be sure. The unfortunate effect of this kind of story on someone whose regrets, guilt, or anxiety is stirred idiosyncratically was often noted. The theological implications of a pathos disturbed not a few. And the contrast between our response to tragedy and our response to similar catastrophes in our own lives sometimes struck people as strange. But nobody before Aristotle thought that what was stirred by a religious or literary pathos was always a painful emotion that would then have to be transformed into pleasure. Poets give their hearers the shudder of great fear, phrike periphobos, says Gorgias (82 b 11.9 Diels-Kranz), also pity that causes copious tears, eleos polydakrys, and yearning that makes one long to grieve, pothos philopenthes. From the victories and defeats in other people's lives the psyche of the listener experiences [epathen) a pathema ("defeat"?, "emotion"?) that is somehow nevertheless his own, idion ti. But this statement is made in a long list of wonderful services we receive from logos, speech. Plato was therefore merely building on traditional descriptions like this one by Gorgias when he said in Republic X that we secretly enjoy the hero's pathos as our own when we respond to a tragedy, and that this brings us a pleasure that we cherish. In Republic IV, when the two nonrational elements of the psyche are distinguished for the first time, the lowest element is depicted as hungering for pathe of the most unadorned sort. Plato tells the story of Leontius, son of Aglaeon, who, on the way back into Athens from the Piraeus, passed the place, just outside the walls, where the executioner threw the bodies of the executed into a pit (439 e-440 a). He caught sight of some bodies beside the executioner and found that he had an intense desire to feast his eyes on them. This was the lowest part of his psyche, Socrates says, which also hungers for food, sex, and so on. In this instance the middle part of the psyche immediately opposed his hunger. What Leontius did was indulge his desire to look but angrily curse his eyes for their depravity. The pleasure of looking at these pathe was so strong it could not be denied; yet Leontius experienced a revulsion at the same time, an awakening of a sense of decency or good taste, as we might say. Aristotle would have assumed that a decent man, although he might feel the pleasure of to philanthropon if he knew that the executed fully deserved their fate, could take no pleasure in the sight of corpses just in itself. Certainly for him a hunger to look at anonymous dead could not

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be a key to the pleasure offered by tragedy. Leontius must have been a monster. Readers of the Republic, ancient as well as modern, have sometimes reached this conclusion.3 Leontius is like the people who slow down on the highway, hoping to catch a glimpse of corpses even as the police try to hurry them past the scene of the accident. He is like the people who buy the extremely popular tabloids that regularly have gruesome scenes spread across the front page. What has this appetite to do with the elevated taste for the pathe of tragedy and religion? Yet even Aristotle implicitly recognizes the kinship when he complains about scenes, even in Sophocles' best plays, in which the pleasurable shudder is produced by visual effects rather than by the plot alone. The truth is, Leontius is unusual in the strength of his revulsion, not in his desire to look. Readers of tabloids and motorists who slow down and hope to see maimed or dead people in an automobile wreck are not in the minority, after all. We do not think of such people as depraved, merely insufficiently trained and educated, not the decent folk they would have been had they come from better homes and gone to better schools. They are raw humanity. More important, even people who have left behind all vulgar interests in anonymous corpses on the highway or in the news occasionally react just as their uneducated brothers and sisters do if they are surprised by a pathos they cannot avoid. Nor does their conscience always reprove them for their interest, especially if the sight of a pathos is an occasion for feeling an ennobling indignation. News pictures of this sort are sometimes cherished years later: the crying baby abandoned in a bombed-out railway station in Shanghai; newsreel footage of hostages crying hysterically as they are taken away to be shot by Falangists in Spain; heaps of emaciated corpses in a concentration camp; the proud Lumumba jeered at and beaten as he is carried aloft, hands tied behind his back; that little Vietnamese girl accidentally napalmed by one of ours; the dead at Kent State or in South Africa; Palestinian youths systematically beaten by Israeli soldiers; British soldiers savagely killed by a mob of Catholics in Northern Ireland. We do not have to think of ourselves as enjoying these sights, since our thoughts are all directed toward the larger forces at work in the events and the urgent need to oppose them. We may think that it is because of these larger, worthy emotions that we cherish the pictures and honor the journalists who gave them to us. And there is something to this. As Yeats knew, a certain kind of anger can lift us above our selfish pursuits and make us identify momentarily with humanity as it should be; and this is surely a cleansing and ennobling thrill. As we have seen, heroic anger is a special characteristic of Sophoclean tragedy. Euripides, too, 3

See Bergk and Koch cited by Adam in his note on 439 e 32.

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although he rarely depicts this heroic rage, effectively generates an anger not unlike it in the audience itself. And yet, Plato may be right: even this is not the essence of the pathos. A pathos need not be moral or political at all. Sometimes our reaction is quite like that of Leontius. In January 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded as millions of people watched on television. The prevailing response, of course, was horror. Yet people, including educated people, who had not been watching, hurried to a television screen when they heard the news, hoping that the scene would be repeated, as it was, over and over again. They found more than they hoped for, in fact. There were shots of the parents of a passenger astronaut watching with pride from the launching pad: their faces slowly changed as the terrible knowledge was forced on them. There were also the bright faces of schoolchildren in New Hampshire whom she had taught. Their faces showed, first eager excitement, then puzzlement, then shock, then grief. People who missed the scenes of the parents and schoolchildren sometimes felt bitter disappointment. Usually they, and also those who did see the faces of the survivors, felt disgust with themselves as well, just as Leontius did. Our ambivalence was mirrored in the decisions made by two of the major television networks. NBC continued to repeat the most terrible moments; CBS stopped short of the actual pathos, in the name of decency, no doubt. It was not until some months later that we were given reasons for being angry at anyone. That is presumably why so many people were puzzled by their own interest in the television record of the events. But in fact the visual record moved us in the manner of a pathos in tragedy only as long as there appeared to be no villains. What we want is glimpses of a force so large that guilt cannot be assigned easily. No doubt the faces of the parents and the children make this catastrophe especially arresting. Without the faces the sight of the explosion itself would soon have faded from our memory. But this fact makes us angry at ourselves for our apparently indecent fascination. We hardly want to think about our intense interest in those faces at that moment. Are we not violating these people's privacy? Nonpolitical pathe are caused by things like mechanical failure, unseasonable weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or "natural" death. Unlike bombings, executions, and concentration camps, the sense of powerlessness and freedom from moral responsibility is not mixed with rage and a desire to do something. Here we have, if Plato is right, the unadorned essence of the pathos. The heroic pathe of Greek tragedy are always seen in complicated, evocative contexts, usually religious, political, or both at the same time. Once only in the Greek record are we asked to contemplate the pathos without context: in Plato's treatment, especially in his story of Leontius.

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There is one thing about Leontius that is a little peculiar: his hunger was for the sight of lifeless corpses. More often what people find moving is expressions of extreme grief or agony. The dead themselves do sometimes serve this function. We remember the newsreels of corpses of Jews pushed by a bulldozer into a giant pit, or the newspaper photograph of a victim of the earthquake in Colombia in 1985—one arm protruding from a giant mudslide in an eloquent gesture of despair. But usually we must turn to some onlooker whose face can instantly make us feel the full power of the pathos. There is probably nothing a human being responds to more quickly and more keenly than a human face. (Surely nothing in Attic drama can have equaled the close-ups of Olivier's face at the climax of Lear's suffering.) It is doubtful that the exploding Challenger would have been as important to us as it is if the video cameras had not been trained on the faces of family and students. There were no such pictures of the survivors of Chernobyl (until the August edition of Life), and for that reason alone we find it a less important pathos in our inner lives. A veteran photographer for Life likes to ask would-be journalists what they would do if they had one picture left in their camera and had to choose between the dead man or his wife in extreme distress. The seasoned photographer would of course turn to the wife. We are moved much more by the face of the crying accordian player than by Roosevelt's catafalque and its burden. But this is ancient wisdom. It is doubtful that the "Stabat Mater" would have retained its immense popularity if it had been an invitation to die with Christ instead of to mourn with the mater dolorosa. Even Griinewaldt, who went to extraordinary lengths to emphasize the grimness of Christ's experience, augmented the scene with Mary the mother and Mary Magdalene, each expressing her traditional but always eloquent variety of extravagant grief. Shakespeare shows us both the dead Cordelia and the dying king carrying her; the newly blinded Gloucester, "poorly led," and his horrified son, Edgar. So also in Greek tragedy: Agave slowly reassembles the dismembered body of her beloved son; Jason begs for the lifeless bodies of his sons. The players in an Attic drama always wore masks, of course. It would be rash to assume, however, that it was therefore entirely impossible for the Greeks to move an audience with a grieving face, however great the advantages enjoyed by medieval painters, professional newsmen, and cinematic actors. Many of the tragedies must have required a change of masks, giving the mask-maker a chance to heighten the emotions of the audience in key scenes. (The most obvious example is the scene that so troubled Aristotle: Oedipus returning after he has put out his own eyes.) There are many final scenes that we should probably picture as striking above all for the strong emotions portrayed visually by the mourners. The Seven against Thebes, the Women of Trachis, and the Bacchae show us

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survivors who are easier to sympathize with than the central figures whom they mourn. But even in plays like Antigone and Hippolytus, in which our sympathies are entirely with the dead or dying victims themselves, the emotions of the survivors were surely used to good effect. And we must not forget the dancers. Dancers have always been eloquent communicators of extreme emotions. Early funeral vases show professional mourners in ritualized stances that suggest tragic choruses. Nietzsche may have been too quick to dismiss out of hand A. W. Schlegel's idea that the dancers' function is to lead us to the appropriate emotional response.4 They seldom show us how to respond morally or intellectually to what has happened; but they do often help us respond emotionally, just by their own perceived emotion.5 Aristotle's insistence that some of our pleasure in Attic drama comes from to philanthropon, the thrill of seeing justice being done, is not erroneous. It is indeed a very important source of satisfaction in many of the plays, as I have argued at length. Plato's silence about this thrill, however, does not mean that he was blind to it. It is, after all, the feeling that it is produced by the plot he prefers, the only plot he fully approves of. He clearly did not find enough of it in the most prestigious tragedies. More than that, he did not think it was as characteristic of tragedy (or popular religion) as pathe uncompensated for, or inadequately compensated for, by subsequent triumphs. What justice there is in a tragedy comes almost always only after a keen sense of injustice has been felt by participants and audience alike. This is presumably why neither the Odyssey nor the Oresteia was acceptable to Plato. Both depend on the long dominance of different kinds of injustice. The justice enjoyed at the end does not simply cancel this out. 4

See Nietzsche's Geburt der Tragbdie, chap. 8; A. W. Schlegel, Vorlesungen, ed. G. V. Amoretti (Bonn, 1923), 1:54—55; and Silk and Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy, 236—37. 5 Dancers still express grief very effectively, of course, e.g. in Boris Eifman's "Adagio" performed by The Kirov Ballet; but it is now our fashion to freeze dance, as it were, in the sculpture that commemorates pathe. See, for example, the remarkable reminder of the Holocaust by Mando Gild at the Yad Vasham Museum in Jerusalem. (It is a testament to their power that Holocaust monuments are often defaced; so are monuments to political victims, sometimes, as in Brazil and Colombia in 1989.) Even monuments that do not openly use human bodies sometimes seem human nevertheless. The monument at Yerervan, the Soviet Republic of Armenia, commemorating the massacre in Ottoman Turkey in 1915 is peculiarly effective: inwardly tilted concrete slabs seem to simulate human grief. Most mysterious of all is the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. The strange, slightly depressing shape, the black stone, and the presence of so many names often catches people by surprise: open crying is not uncommon, even by those who did not suffer during the war. Yet people are grateful, glad that they had visited. Some, at least, of those who were responsible for its erection supposed that the memorial would restore pride in having fought well in a necessary war; instead it moves people in the way of a true pathos.

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Pip, the narrator in Great Expectations, looks back on the years of cruel injustice he endured at the hands of his older sister. "In the little world in which children have their existence," he says, "there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice." In itself this might be a sobering thought, an invitation to recall painful incidents from our own childhood. But Dickens hurries us on, in a tone that elicits amusement instead of sorrow. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small and its world is small. . . . Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks, (chap. 8)

This is the kind of reminder of life's injustices that whets our appetite for a triumph of justice. Nobody would now be tempted to call Great Expectations a tragedy. It might have been different had Bulwer Lytton not persuaded Dickens to discard his first ending;6 as it stands, however, it is a story of some deserved triumphs with darker, tragic elements and some sentimental scenes as well. On the whole the mix is successful. The difficulty of classifying this fine novel does not seem very important. There are other essentially nontragic works that have a much greater admixture of tragic elements. Is A la recherche du temps perdu a tragedy? Moby Dick} The Brothers Karamazov} Don Giovanni} The Divine Comedy} There is room for argument, of course, but we should probably be content to say that among the things we admire these works for is their incorporation of tragic elements. They appeal to our hunger to see life as bitterly unfair. Yet they call on our pity within a universe that also contains much true justice. This allows us to enjoy so much philanthropon that the designation "tragedy" seems odd, not quite right. Still, the Greeks included such mixed works among the plays they called "tragedies." One thinks of Euripides especially, as in his Ion and Iphigeneia among the Taurians. Nor was exception made of the Odyssey when Plato called Homer the first tragedian. What was indeed foreign to the Greeks' notion of tragedy was appeals to to phuanthrbpon so intense that our response is almost lustful, a hunger for the triumph of friends so great that it can only be satisfied by gleeful and graphically explicit revenge against enemies. Pity in stories of this sort is stirred only so that the triumph of the good may be assumed to be entirely justified, however violent it may be. It is like the pity for an 4

See. G. B. Shaw's preface to Great Expectations (Edinburgh, 1937).

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anonymous fetus stirred by antiabortion organizations: the pity is elicited and heightened as far as possible in order to justify the bombing of abortion clinics. The Phyllis Schlafley Report advocates "the right to life of all innocent persons from conception to natural death." The "guilty" not only can, but should be put to death, by capital punishment or just wars. "There is a high correlation," says Gloria Steinem, "between those who are anti-abortion and those who are in favor of both capital punishment and high military spending."7 The audiences at the most successful film and television dramas of the "action" sort link their pity for innocent suffering to their lust for vengeance in much the same way as do ideologues on the political Right. In both cases the pity is unlikely to be experienced as something valuable in itself; it is enjoyed only insofar as it can fuel violence at the moment when a vindictive triumph can be realized. Examples come easily to mind: The Deer Hunter, The Warriors, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (the fist in the face of that terrible nurse). Even if it cannot be proved that violent retribution at the climax of a popular film significantly increases violence in the streets, it surely does contribute to the acceptance of violence in politics and morality. Nixon sat through Patton several times before ordering the invasion of Cambodia. Reagan saw the bombing of Libya as a Rambo plot. (The London press called Mrs. Thatcher "Rambo's Daughter" for her enthusiastic support for this bombing.)8 At the other extreme we have stories that stir our pity merely for the pleasure that that brings and not to ready us for the pleasure of justice to come—stories that we nevertheless would hesitate to call tragedies because they strike us as suspiciously agreeable and reassuring. These works, too, can have tragic elements, gestures in the right direction, appeals to our hunger to believe that happiness is not in our power; but then the writers may back off or deflect our attention to something else, such as the courage and nobility of the story's victims. In this category, too, we find undoubted masterpieces that we would not want different, novels like Buddenbrooks, films like Noel Coward's Brief Encounter, also a number of fine operas, La Traviata, The Cunning Little Vixen, and the Strauss operas that end in a wonderfully sustained elegiac mood. Some of these works have more tragic elements than others, but all qualify their melancholy endings with soft, reassuring or uplifting suggestions. Individual performances can be made to tip the balance toward tragedy or 7

Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York, 1983), 312. "A 16-year-old boy, apparently enthralled by the film character Rambo, killed his father, mother and brother and wounded his sister," reported the New York Times, March 23, 1989. "He wore camouflage outfits.. . . The police . . . found in his bedroom dozens of Rambo posters and magazines," also firearms. "When the boy was booked at the police station, he gave his nickname as 'Rambo.' " 8

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toward sentimentality. Dumas's La Dame aux camalias becomes considerably less sentimental in Verdi's La Traviata. Franco Zefirelli, in his film version of the opera, brought it even closer to tragedy by a telling detail. He hints that Violetta is not really dying with all her loved ones gathered around her, as Piave/Verdi have it, but quite alone; the Germonts, the faithful maid, and the sympathetic doctor were illusions generated by her fatal illness. A writer risks angering a sophisticated reader if a sentimental note is offered where tragedy was needed and expected. This is a very common failing in films, especially. Careful, He Might Hear You is an example: a world view entirely consistent with tragedy is suddenly dropped in favor of an "upbeat" ending. Nancy Mitford spoils her splendid comic novel The Pursuit of Love by ending it with the deaths of Linda in childbirth and Fabrice at the hands of the Gestapo. The effect is to confirm the eternal lovableness of the pair and, by the way, to free us from the necessity to follow them into middle age and beyond. As with the love of Rambo plots, so also with the love of sentimental stories: it is easy to find the offending attitude in ordinary life as well as in fiction. We think of people who are moved by the tribulations of a child or a small animal, but are also able to act swiftly, without remorse, to realize their aims, even when that cannot be done without harming innocent human beings. President Kennedy meant well and habitually sided with the underdog; yet he insisted that the men around him be able to act decisively and be free of too much anxiety concerning the unfortunate side effects of presidential policies. His frequent sigh, "Life is unfair," was irritating in the way that a sentimental story can be irritating. In both cases we are asked to accept something as profound and honest that we suspect is neither the one nor the other. Hard truthfulness, as Aeschylus saw, is one of the requirements for true tragedy. That will save us from sentimentality. Compassion is the other requirement, as Virgil and Yeats and many others saw. That will save us from melodrama. Perhaps the two achievements are linked: a special effort to face those elements in life that must someday defeat us all is rewarded by a new ability to forgive both others and ourselves. This is what some of the very best art can do for us. It does not require the grandness of the Theater of Dionysus. It can be done in a brief time or in an instant, and with quite humble means, as in the decoration on a drinking cup, a votive offering, or a funeral monument—or in a Schubert song, Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich, Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place," or in a photograph that electrifies the world. The requisite truthfulness can be won only if we overcome the understandable fear that such truthfulness will result in depression, the opposite of exultation. That is why a people, like ourselves, not brought up

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from childhood with the thrill of pathe, must be educated, led by the hand through the experience until we learn to put a high value on the strange joy of tragedy. Something else is needed before such training will work: we must not be held back by the lesson of "philosophy," namely that happiness is entirely within our own power. A person can so set his mind on enjoying a phantasy only when virtue triumphs, or when its defeat is beautiful and "heartwarming," that the pleasure of a true pathos can be his only if he is caught off guard. This happens not only in things like startling photographs but sometimes even in fictional entertainment. Many people watching the Australian film Callipoli probably dreaded the thought that their favorite character in the drama would suffer an utterly meaningless death. (The causes of his death were cruel timing, the breakdown of a battle-phone, and the cynical policy of the British Command.) Had they been told beforehand that the film ended in a freeze-frame at the moment of the hero's death, they would probably not have attended—unless they had been reassured that it was a smashing film nevertheless, as seems to have happened in many cases. (It was a resounding commercial success.) In the parts of our society, however, where entertainment is a commercial venture on a large scale, producers seldom take a chance on tragedy. And indeed, the dramatists themselves are so far from understanding the reasons for successes like Gallipoli that they fail in their attempts to reproduce their past triumphs. Lina Wertmiiller, for instance, does not seem to know what she did right in Seven Beauties. The potentiality for widely popular tragedy is still there, apparently, but we are so thoroughly conditioned to demand the other two plots, even in our theology, that it is seldom achieved, even in religion.9 Compassion has a role in all three plots, but not the same role. In a melodrama pity is stirred only that we may enjoy the later pain or demise of the perpetrators of the suffering. In sentimentality pity is made agreeable by accepting a lie about human suffering in general. It is the lie we enjoy, not the pity. Milan Kundera suggests that sentimentality is intensely enjoyable precisely because it fulfills a human need to feel just what all right-minded people also feel, that we are marching with good comrades in "The Grand 9 As in the best periods in antiquity, educated people today are seldom able to sustain unquestioning belief in their ancestral religion throughout their lives. Unlike the Greeks, however, modern doubters often "pray for faith"—unquestioning belief in the existence of something for which it is known or suspected that there is no objective evidence (except, perhaps, for the fact that its nonexistence can also not be proved). "Faith" is attractive because it answers a yearning that unpalatable truths can be held at arm's length. That leaves only the holy stories themselves as the element in modern religion that can function in the way that tragedy functions. But if, as often happens, the religious either do not let the stories play an important part in their imaginative lives, or they accept unquestioningly the theologians' metamorphosis of pathe into stories of Divine Justice, even this is lost.

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10

March." Tragedy depends on proof that "a living man is blind and drinks his drop . . . a blind man battering blind men"; sentimentality warms us with proof that there are also many good men and true, the sufferers themselves and we who pity them. Tragedy allows us to "cast out remorse" by making us face the proofs of injustice in life; sentimentality woos us into thinking that there is perhaps a higher justice after all.» In tragedy the pity is felt as almost universal forgiveness—"almost" because it is compatible with bitter resentment toward the superpersonal causes of human suffering and toward individuals who are so obtuse about these forces that they actively serve them. 12 What we identify with is not the rest of mankind joining with us in our outpouring of concern, but mankind as it should be, mankind at its best. It is this that characterizes the experience of fellow-feeling at a tragedy, the syngnomosyne Hyllus asks for at the end of the Women of Trachis. It is also the fellowfeeling Odysseus is always hoping to encounter in his perilous wanderings, what Aeneas thinks he sees depicted in the murals in Carthage, and what Lear learns to feel in the storm on the heath. Notice that in all of these cases the feeling is compatible with fierce resentment against shallowness, selfishness, insensitivity, and malice, also with an honest accep10 "The Grand March," part 4 of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York, 1984), is in effect a fine treatise on sentimentality, although Kundera uses the German word Kitsch instead of the French word we prefer in English. Also, Kundera is as likely to offer as an example of the sentimental "children running in the grass," or the lit windows of a house at the beginning of a summer evening in Connecticut, as he is a march of protest against the outrages perpetrated on Czechoslavakia or Cambodia. 11 Kundera's overriding interest in "political kitsch" (liberal kitsch, Communist kitsch, American kitsch) is what leads him to his emphasis on the joy of finding ourselves in agreement with those we admire; but he does offer as a general definition of kitsch "the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word." For additional analyses of sentimentality, see Mark Jefferson, "What is Wrong with Sentimentality," Mind n.s. 92 (1983): 519-29, and Nico Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge, 1986), 352. Sentimental people Jefferson suggests (p. 524), "misrepresent the world in order to feel unconditionally warm-hearted about bits of it." 12 Cf. James Baldwin's "revelation" at his father's funeral in Harlem {Notes of a Native Son [Boston, 1955], 113—14). He suddenly realized that, to escape the hatred that destroyed the hater, "we must hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea [is] acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are," which includes the comprehension that "injustice is commonplace." Somehow, as he observes, this acceptance is not canceled out by the opposite conviction, that "one must never accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all of one's strength." Cf. Timaeus 87 b 6. Kundera's warning that "the brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a basis of kitsch" should be emended: awareness of the brotherhood of man can indeed be won also by sentimentality, but in doing so we omit the second part of Baldwin's "revelation."

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tance of the vulnerability of the deserving to the undiscriminating tyranny of things like time, disease, and war. In his novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell has a chapter he calls "The Machinery of Justice." 13 A good and muchwronged man is forced to sit in a courtroom among friends and hear his wife's lawyer describe him, recall his words and actions—half correctly, with key omissions, distorted by the legal ceremony, and resulting in a picture of himself he can hardly recognize. At the end of the court proceedings he has lost everything, his children, even his self-respect. "He knew what had been done to him but not what he had done to deserve it." No promise of a triumph in the future could resolve this vision of injustice. What the sufferer is here made to long for is neither suffering for his enemies nor reassurance that nothing really bad had happened, but something quite different. It would have been a help if at some time some Baptist preacher, resting his forearms on the pulpit and hunching his shoulders, had said People neither get what they deserve nor deserve what they get. The gentle and the trusting are trampled on. The rich man usually forces his way through the eye of the needle, and there is little or no point in putting your faith in Divine Providence. . . . On the other hand, how could any preacher, Baptist or otherwise, say this? (p. 120)

Plato understood. There is no doubt at all that he received intense pleasure from tragedy or that he understood the source of that pleasure. On the other hand, he could not condone this "knowledge" any more than the Baptist preacher could. That would have required Plato to renounce philosophy. So Long, See You Tomorrow (New York, 1980).

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INDEX

Adam, James, 32n.3, 29On Adkins, A.W.H., 40n.5 Adrastus, xiv, 25-26, 27, 104-5, 194 Aelian, 123, 177, 180 Aeschines of Sphettus, 59n,7, 225—26, 228 Aeschylus, xxv, 20, 31, 61, 71, 102-3, chaps. 15 and 16 passim, 140, 141-42, 143, 156, 171, 174, 184, 186, 213, 261; Oresteia, 60, chaps. 15 and 16 passim, 153-54, 173, 201, 202-3, 215, 246, 272-73, 282, 293; Agamemnon, x-xi, xxiv, 36-44, 45, 131, 136, 158, 195-96, 296; Libation Bearers, 36, 40, 200; Eumenides, xxv «.40, 24, 37n, 40-42, 131, 172, 215-16, 277; Persians, 19, 40, 105, 107, 126, 127, 286; Prometheus Bound, xiv «.18, 39n, 118, 126-27, 156; Seven against Thebes, xxiii, 63, 117, 123, 126, 127, 130, 151, 156; Suppliants, 39n, 126, 127; fragments, 21, 119, 127, 130 Aesop, 162—63 Agee, James, 288 Alamo, 194n Alexander of Aphrodesias, xii «.12 Allen, T. W., 93n Anaxagoras, 259 anger, 104-5, 108-10, 117, 124, 130, 133-34, 137-38, chap. 18 passim, 1 5 5 58, 164, 170, 171, 182-83, 191, 262 Apollodorus, 26n.8 Archilochus, xi, 24 Anstarchus, 93n Aristides, Aelius, 152n Aristophanes, 118, 119, 120, 123n, 132, 141-42, 160, 164-65, 175n.4, 177n, 178, 185-86, 188,231,260 Aristophanes of Byzantium, 160 Aristotle, xx-xxn, chap. 8 passim, chap. 13 passim, 118, 160, 206, 219, 220, 229n.3, chap. 25 passim, 277, 288; Categories, 263; History of Animals, 81, 258; Metaphysics, xii «.12, 49n.l, 229n.4, 259, 263, 264, 266; Meteorology, 266; Nicomachean Ethics, xii ».11, xx, 16, 58, 71, 82, 122, 258, 259, 261, 264, 270; On Dreams, 264; On Genera-

tion and Corruption, 220n,12, 263; On Prophesying by Dreams, 81, 220n.l2, 264; On the Generation of Animals, 258, 263; On the Heavens, 266; On the Soul, xii n . l l , 17, 60, 61-62, 220n.l2, 259, 263; Physics, 17, 264, 265; Poetics, ix ».1, xxi, xxiv, xxvi, 17, 29n, 32n.3, 64, 65, 103, 119, 130, 132, 134, 141, 171, 181, 260, 263, 266, 268-70, 2 7 4 75, 281, 285; Politics, 263, 285; Rhetoric, xii «.11, xxi, 49, 64, 65, 178n, 260, 269, 285; fragments, xiii «.16, xxiii «.37, 14-16, 39, chap. 9 passim, 82n.6 Arnott, Peter, 149n.l0 Arrian, 127 Arrowsmith, William, 46n.l6, 84 Athenaeus, 102, 123, 159n.6, 161, 16263, 164, 181 Athenagoras, xiii «.16 Atlantis, 213, 265 Auerbach, Erich, 68n Augustine, 243 Auschwitz, xv, 197

Babylonians, 229 Bach, J. S., 108,190 Bacon, Francis, 68, 190 Bacon, Helen, 231n.5 Baldwin, James, 235n.8 Barish, Jonas, 235n.8 Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji, 17n.9, 49n.l baseball, 249-50 Bastille, 193 Berg, Alban (Wozzeck), 129 Bergk, Theodor, 29On Bergman, Ingmar, 190, 286 Berlin, Isaiah, 184 Bernanos, Georges, 283 Bernard of Clairvaux, 68n Bernays, Jacob, 49n.l Bible, biblical religions, xxvi, 3, 12, 39, 42, 163, 237, 251; New Testament, x, xi, xv, 19-20, 64, 66-68, 73-74, 80, 115-16, 124-25, 131, 137-39, 157-58, 174,

312 Bible (cont.) 187, 189-91, 219, 232-35, 239, 248, 297, 299; Old Testament, xv, 19-20, 80, 134, 174, 233-37, 248 Birch, John, 193 Blake, William, 157, 182, 184, 188, 233, 238,277 Bloom, Allen, xvii—xviii «.27 Bloom, Arthur, 235n.9 Bloom, Harold, 77n.2 Bok, Sissela, 57n, 122n.7 Bond, G. W., 234 Bonitz, Hermann, 49n.l Bowen, A. C , 219-20n.ll Bowra, C. M., 24n.2, 26-27n.9, 84 Bradley, A. C , 276 Brecht, Bertholt, 174, 184, 189, 190 Broadhead, H. D., 107n.8 Bryon (poet), 13n.2 Bundy, E. L., 148n.8 Burian, Peter, 145n.5 Burkert, Walter, xiii «.16, 56n.5, 57n.6, 104n.l,215n.7 Burnett, A. P., 173n Butcher, S. H., 49n.l Butler, Samuel, 165 Byron, Lord George Gordon, 167 Bywater, Ingram, 60n.l0 Caesar, Julius, 191, 193 Callas, Maria, 243, 282 Calhnus, xiii, 25 Campbell, D. A., 24n.2 Campbell, Lewis, χ «.5 Caravaggio, 182 Carlyle, Thomas, 159 Carne-Ross, D. S., 26-27n.9, 148n.8 Challenger (spacecraft), 286-87, 291-92 Chamaeleon, 159n.6 chance, 272-79, 281,288 Chantraine, Pierre, xi Chaucer, Geoffrey, 190 Cherniss, Harold, 13n.l, 219-20n.ll Chernobyl, 292 "Chnstus Patiens," 232 Chroust, A.-H., 13n.2, 14-15n.4, 55n.l Cicero, 127n.l4, 147n, 162, 286 Cingano, Ettore, xiv «.17 Clay, Diskin, 4 3 n . l l Clay, Jenny Strauss, 91n.l3 Clement of Alexandria, 123

INDEX Cocteau, Jean, 182 Coldstream, J. N., 106n Conacher, D. J., 38n, 39n, 40n.6, 108n.8, 126n.l3 Cornford, F. M., 29n, 171n Corybantes, 59, 60, 227 Coward, Noel, 295 Critias, 175n.4 Croissant, Jeanne, 60n.9 Cybele, 255 dance, 233, 293 Dante, 117, 159, 294 David, Jacques, 203 Davidson, J. A., xiv «.18 Dawe, R. D., 36n daydream stories, 197-98, 244-47 deconstruction, 85n de Lange, N.R.M., χ «.3 Delcourt, Marie, 145n.4 Democntus, xii «.11, 259 Demosthenes, 14, 260 Denniston and Page, 36n, 202n Descartes, Rene, xx «.33 Dickens, Charles, 294 Didymus, 13n.2, 14n.3 Diodorus, xiii «.16 Diogenes Laertius, 13n.l, 14, 235 Dion, 13 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, xiii «.16 Disney, Walt, 253 Dodds, E. R., 84, 9On, 209n.l Doerrie, Heinrich, xxiv «.38 Dokimasia painter, 128n.l6 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 12, 31, 190, 247, 294 Dover, K. J., 19n, 40n.6, 43n.8, 144n, 156n, 165n.7, 185 dreams and dream stories, 29—32, chap. 13 passim, 95, 111-13, 125, 198, 210-11, 215-16, 237, chap. 24 passim, 264, 281 Dublin uprising, 195 Dumas (fils), 296 During, Ingemar, 13n.2, 15n.5, 55n.l, 82n.6 Dvorak, Antonin, 68 Easterling, P. E., 19n, 91n.2 Egyptians, 175n.5 Ehrenberg, Victor, 167 Eifman, Boris, 293n.5 Eisenstein, Sergei, 129, 199

INDEX Eleusinian mysteries. See initiatory religion EIias, Julius, 219-20n.ll Elias philosophus, 209 Eliot, T. S., 159, 252 Else, Gerald, 29n, 49n.2, 268n Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 239 Empedocles, 166, 228 Epictetus, 13 In Er: myth of, 12, 213, 215 Erikson, Erik, 246n Etymologicum magnum, 162 Euripides, xxni, xxv, 103, 120, 141—42, 160, 162, 165, chaps. 20 and 21 passim, 209, 229; Alcestus, 174n, 180; Androm­ ache, 175n.4, 198; Bacchae, 64, 180, 183, 215-16, 226, 229, 232, 234-35, 238, 292-93; Cyclops, 123n, 180; Electra, 174, 175n.4, 200-203, 277; Helen, 175n.4; Hercules Furens, 156, 179n.4, 183; Htppolytus, 64, 178-80, 183, 199, 273, 293; Ion, 174, 183, 254, 277, 294; lphigeneia among the Taurtans, xxii, xxv, 18, 53-54, 172-74, 175n.4, 180, 261, 277, 294; lphigeneia at Aults, 175n.4; Medea, 52, 154n.l2, 156, 180, 183, 198, 292; Orestes, 174, 180, 183, 261, 277; Rhesus, 181n.8; Trojan Women, 64, 175n.4, 180, 183, 189, 198-200, 273, 286; fragments, 174-78, 180 (Bellerophon), 234 [Hypsipyle), 229n.3 (Phaethon) expulsion from Eden, 248, 250 Farnell, L. R., 104n.l, 106n fate, 282-84 fear, xxiv, 28, 47, chap. 8 passim, 58-60, 110-13, 121, 131,269 Ferrari, G.R.F., 215n.8 films, 251, 253, 295; Battle of Algiers, 190, 199; Brief Encounter, 295; Careful, He Might Hear You, 296; Cries and Whis­ pers, 286; The Deer Hunter, 295; GaIlipoli, 297; King Lear, 278-79, 289, 292; Love Story, 252, 281; The Magi­ cian, 190; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, 295; On Golden Pond, 279-80; Patton, 295; The Pawnbroker, 190; Potemkin, 129, 199; the Rambo series, 281, 295-96; Seven Beauties, 297; La Traviata, 296; The Warriors, 295 Finley, John, 26—27n.9

313 Finsler, Georg, 52n.7 Foley, Helena, 194n Forster, E. M., 96n Fraenkel, Eduard, 36-37, 40n.5, 42nn. 9, 10, and 11, 128n.l6 Frances of Assisi, 39, 243 Frazer, James, xin «.16, 154n.l2, 194n Freud, Sigmund, xix ».31, 30—31, 34, 66— 67n.2, 70, 73, 74—75, chap. 13 passim, chap. 24 passim; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 245n.2; Civilization and Its Discontents, xx; The Interpretation of Dreams, 81, 216, 241; Introductory Lec­ tures on Psychoanalysis, 241, 242, 244; "My Contest with Joseph Popper-Lynkeus," 210n; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, xix κ.31, 80, 242; "The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales," 245-46; "The Poet and Day-Dreaming," 244—45; Totem and Taboo, 194n Friedlander, Paul, 226n Frijda, Nico, 298n.ll Fritz, Kurt von, 105n, 174n Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 3In, 219-2On. 11 Gagarin, Michael, 38n, 39n, 4On.5, 43n.l0 Gandhi, Mohandas, 193, 195 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 196—97 Garvie, A. F., 105n, 128n.l6, 201n Gay, John, 173-74 Gay, Peter, 66-67n.2 Gdansk, 194 Gellie, G. H., 85n Gellius, Aulus, 178n Girard, Rene, 194n GIaucus of Regium, 107n.5 Glid, Mando, 293n.5 Goldhill, Simon, 37η, 47n, 85n, 113n Goold, G. P., 96n Gorgias, xn «.11, 123, 289 Gould, Thomas, 229n.2 Goya, F. J. de, 195, 286 Gnswold, C. L., 219-20n.ll Grunder, Karlfried, 185n.l2 Grunewaldt, Matthias, 68, 292 Guernica, 195 Guthrie, W.K.C., 7n, 13n.2, 3 In, 56n.5 Hack, R. K., 106n Halliwell, Stephen, 52n.7, 219-20n.ll

314 hamartta, hamartanein, xxii, 17—18, 20, 53-54, 61, 138-39, 151, 179, 208, 220, 261, 266, 270, 275 Handel, G. R, 155, 190 Hardy, Thomas, 190, 273 Harrison, Jane, 124n.ll Hauptmann, Gerhart, 189 Havel, Vaclav, 160 Havelock, E. A., 3In, 92n Haydn, Joseph, 68 Heidegger, Martin, 206 Hellanicus, 93n Hemingway, Ernest, 296 Hendrikson, G. L., xxiv κ.39, 32n.4, 5On.4 Heracleides Ponticus, 122 Heraclitus, 103, 172, 186, 214 Herder, J. G., 164 Henngton, C. J., 19n, 47n, 127n.l5 Hermias, 13—16 Herodotus, xiii, xiv, 24, 25—26, 27—28, 43, 64, 66, 104n.2, 105, 106, 107, 123n, 131, 175, 202n, 231 hero religion, xxin, chap. 5 passim, 104-6, 117—19, chap. 17 passim, chap. 18 pas­ sim, 155-58, 217 Hesiod, 20, 43, 47n, 71, 108, 140, 143, 172, 174, 175, 186, 213; Theogony, 93n, 118; Works and Days, xxiv, 37, 93n, 159, 228; fragments, xi, 23, 111 Hess, Rudolf, 192 Hesychius, 147n, 154n.l3 Hicks, R. D., 49n.l Hieronymus of Rhodes, 147n, 162 Hiroshima, 193, 194n Hirzel, Rudolf, 29n Hittites, 108, 175n.5 Hofmanstahl, Hugo von, 200n Holocaust, xv n.21, 194n, 197, 293n.5 Homer, 32, 61, 71, 140, 158, 161, 172, 174, 175, 213; Homeric Hymns, 91, 124, 173, 289; Iliad, ix «.1, xi «.8, xv, 3, 11, 20-21, 22-23, 40, 41n, 63, 65, chap. 14 passim, 106, 117, 130, 133, 144, 155-57, 177, 184, 186, 196, 228, 258, 259, 272, 282; Odyssey, ix «.1, xi «.8, xii-xvi, 3-4, 22-24, 28, 40, 51, 65, chap. 14 passim, 106-9, 125, 135, 184, 186, 196, 201, 254, 258-60, 269, 277, 285-86, 293-94, 298 Horace, 134 Hubbard, M. E., 52n.7

INDEX Hume, David, 285-88 Huxley, G. L., 26-27n.9 Hyginus, 26n.8 Iamblichus, 60 initiatory religion, xiii, xxiii, chap. 5 pas­ sim, 3 8 ^ 8 , chaps. 9 and 10 passim, 130, 140, 143, 176, 217, 231-35, 238, 269 Ion of Chios, 161-62 irony, 198-201 Isocrates, 103 Istrus, 160 Jacoby, F., 9On Jacopone da Todi, 68 Jaeger, Werner, xii n.12, 7n, 15n.5, 55nn. 1 and 2, 9On, 92n, 167, 181-82n.l0, 214n James, Henry, 159 Janacek, Leos, 295 Janko, Richard, 93n Jebb, R. C., χ n.5, 36n Jefferson, Mark, 298n.ll Joan of Arc, 192 John-Paul II (pope), xv ».21, 37n, 194 Johnson, Samuel, 197, 249, 274-75, 277, 288 Jones, Terry, 235 Jonson, Ben, 235 Josquin des Pres, 68 Joyce, James, 182 Jung, J. C., xix, chap. 13 passim, 248, 249, 251 Kamerbeek, J. C , χ «.5, 36n Karbala, 193 katharsis, xxiii, chap. 8 passim, 60, 61, 263, 266, 268-70, 285, 289 Keats, John, 250 Kennedy, John F., 191-92, 296 Kermode, Frank, 122n.7 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 194-95 Khrushchev, Nikita, 25 King, Martin Luther, 193 Kirk, G. S., 93n Kirkwood, G. W., xiv n.19 Kittel, Gerhard, and Gerhard Fnedrich, χ n.3, 66-67n.2, 131n, 158 Kitto, H.D.F., 181n.8 Kleinknecht, Hermann, xxvi η

INDEX Knox, B.M.W., 84, 85n, 104n.l, 120, 148n.9 Koch, Theodor, 29On Kohl, J. W., 93n Kohnken, Adolf, 26-27n.9 Kranz, Walter, 19n, 40n.6 Kuhn, Helmut, 219-20n.ll Kullmann, Wolfgang, xvi n.22, 90η, 92n Kundera, Milan, 297-98 Kwangju, 192 Lacey, A. R., 7n Lattimore, Richmond, 26—27n.9 Lebeck, Anne, 37n, 40n.6, 85n, 105n Lelut, L.F., xx «.33 Lenin, V. I., 191, 195, 196 Leontius (son of Aglaeon), 289—92 Lesley, Albin, xiv «.17, 26nn. 7 and 8, 105n, 181n.9, 231n.6 Lessing, G. E., 164 Letters, F.J.H., 84 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 84, 249 Lincoln, Abraham, 191, 193 Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, 41n, 47n, 84, 91n.3, 185n.l2 Longinus, ix n.l, x, 64—65 Lucan, 117 Lucas, D. W., 17n.9, 49n.2, 60n.l0 Lucian, 165—66n.8 Lucretius, 81n.4, 128-29n.l7 Lumumba, Patrice, 290 Lytton, Bulwer, 294 Machon, 163 Mann, Thomas, 295 Masada, 193 masks, 234, 292 Matheson, W. H., 26-27n.9 Matthiessen, F. O., 159n.3 Maxwell, William, 299 Meautis, Georges, 84 Mellville, Herman, 294 melodrama, 135, 252, 281, 294-96 Mesopotamians, 175n.5 miaron, miasmata, miainein, xxi, xxii, 11, 12n.2, 17-18, 51-54, 111, 208, 209n.2, 260-62, 270 Milton, John, 188,271 mimesis, 30-32, 213, 236-37, 244, 266 Mitford, Nancy, 296 Mohrmann, Christine, χ κ.3

315 Moles, John, xxii, 18n.l0, 50nn. 3 and 5 monuments, memorials, 293n.5, 296 Moore, J. A., 145n.3 Moro, Aldo, 192-93 Moulinier, L., 209n.2 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 121, 145, 294 Miiller, Edward, 49n.l Murdoch, Iris, 219-20n.ll, 223n Murnaghan, Sheila, 94n Murray, Gilbert, 107n.6, 124n.ll, 231n.6 My Lai, 195 Mylonas, George, 56n.5 mystery religion. See initiatory religions Nagasaki, 194n Nagy, Gregory, 92n Nardelli, M. L., 60-61n.l0 Neruda, Pablo, 160 news stories and photographs, 281, 28687, 290-92 Nietzel, Heinz, 39n Nietzsche, Fnedrich, xx «.33, 155, 158, 184, 185, 196n, 206,293 Nilsson, Martin, 56n.5 Nisetich, F. J., 26-27n.9 Nixon, Richard, 295 Norden, Eduard, 37n North, Helen, 40n.5 Norwood, Gilbert, 209n.l Nussbaum, Martha, 219-2On. 11 Nygren, Anders, 219n.l0 Olivier, Lawrence, 278-79, 289, 292 Olympiodorus, 15 opsis, xxiv, 28, 44-47, 50, 58-59, 61, 132, 150 Opstelten, J. C , 167 Orphics, xiii ».16, 214 Orwell, George, 253 Ostwald, Peter, 243 Owen, Wilfred, 77n.2 Paderewski, I. J., 160 Page, D. L., 96n Palestinians, 197, 290 Palestnna, Giovanni, 68 Parker, Robert, 59n.8, 209n.2 Part, Arvo, 68 pathe en tats philiais, xxi, 51-54, 81, 247, 249-50, 255

316 pathei mathos, xxiv, 37-44, chap. 9 pas­ sim, 107-8, 136, 277 Paul, x, xv, 67, 116, 124-25, 131, 137, 191, 219n.l0 Paul and Timothy, xv «.20 Pausanias, xiii, 109, 148, 154n.l2, 165, 177, 203 Peisistratus, 235—36 Pergolesi, G. B., 68 Perse, Saint-John [pseud, for Alexis SaintLeger], 160 Pfeiffer, Rudolf, 37n, 93n Phelps, William Lyon, 235 phtlanthropon, xxn, 18, 53-54, 61, 91, 206, 256, 261, 274, 276, 288, 289, 293, 294 Philoponus, 49n.l, 82n.6 Philostratus and Philostratus Junior, 165— 66n.8 phrike, phrittein. See shudder Phrynichus comicus, 164 Phrynichus tragicus, 107, 161, 196, 269 Picasso, Pablo, 129, 195, 286 Pickard-Cambndge, A. W., xiv «.17 Pindar, xiii, xiv, 19, 20, 24, 26-28, 64, 122, 130, 147-48, 175n.4, 177, 187, 232 pity, xxiv, 18, 33, 43, chap. 8 passim, 61, 89, 101, 109, 115, 116, 129, 206, 223, 266, 268-78, 284-99 Plato, chaps. 13, 22, and 24 passim, 184, 206, 261; Apology, xvii, 4, 5-6, 24, 33, 38, 158-59, 168, 170, 225, 228; Charmtdes, 260; Crtttas, 213; Crito, 4, 6; Epistles VI, 14; VII, 10, 13, 57, 238; Euthyphro, xvi, 166, 175n.4, 261-62; Gorgias, 9, 16, 213, 285; Laws II, 16n.6, 265; III, 265; IV, 59; VII, 12, 213; VIII, 262-63; IX, 261-62; X, 215n.8, 217, 219; XII, lx n.l, 214; Meno, 227; Phaedo, xvni, 13, 34, 114, 165, 168, 169-70, 171, 215n.8, 238-39, 262, 263, 265, 269, 285; Phaedrus, xix «.31, 12, 38, 39, 47, 57-60, 121, 213-14, 215n.8, 221-22, 226, 229, 238, 260; Philebus, 270, 285; Republic I, 8-9, 162, 165, 227; II, xii, xvii, 5, 10-11, 16, chap. 4 passim, 26-27n.9, 28, 29n, 32n.3, 71, 92-93, 169, 187, 212, 217, 268, 278; III, 9, 10, 11, 29n, 213, 229n.4, 246n, 260; IV, 113, 289-92; VI, 39, 70,

INDEX 121, 211n.4, 238-39, 262, 265; VII, 9, 41-42, 211n.4, 218, 238-39, 259-60; IX, xviii, xix ».31, xxiv, 9, 17, 29-30, 210, 212, 213, 215-16, 260, 262, 263, 275; X, ix n.2, xvni, xix, 3, 9-10, 17, chap. 6 passim, 38, 49n.l, 50-51, 6 0 61, 70, 74, 92-93, 103, 114, 136, 212, 213, 214, 218, 220-21, 236, 258, 262, 263, 266, 278, 281, 285, 289; Sympo­ sium, 9, 10, 60, 71, 166, 219, 225-31, 238, 263; Theaetetus, xvii κ.25, 41, 103, 217, 218, 228; Theages, 226-27; Timaeus, 9-10, 213, 215n.l8, 218, 219, 229, 265 Pliny the Elder, 143 Plutarch, xiii, xx «.33, 13n.l, 39, 59, 106, 121, 123, 141, 143, 154n.l3, 159n.6, 162, 173, 174, 175n.4, 176, 177, 178, 235 Poe, Edgar Allan, 190 Pohlenz, Max, 46n.l6, 84, 85n pollution. See miaron Pollux, Julius, 132 Polygnotus, 65 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 199 Pope, Alexander, ix «.1, 65—66 Pope, Maurice, xi «.6, 39n Popieluszko, Jersy, 194 Popper-Lynkeus, Joseph, 210n Poulenc, Francis, 68, 283-84 Prague, 193 Proclus, 60, 82n.6, 93n Protagoras, 172 Proust, Marcel, 294 Psellus, Michael, 55 Pucci, Pietro, 92n Puccini, Giacomo, 280, 282 Pythagoras, 166 Quintilian, 128n.l7 Rahner, Hugo, 232n Reagan, Ronald, 235, 295 Rees, B. R., 49n.2 Reinhardt, Karl, 46n.l6, 85n, 9On Reinkens,J. H., 49n.l Rembrandt, 68, 182 Rhode, Erwin, 56n.S, 105n, 106n, 185n.l2 Ridgeway, William, 26n.7, 104n.2 Risch, Ernst, xn «.14 Ritchie, William, 181n.8

INDEX Robert, Carl, xiv M. 18 Rodin, Auguste, 195 romances, 253 Romilly, Jacquilme de, 181-82n.l0, 215n.8 Ronnet, Gilberte, 85n Rose, Valentinius, 55n.l Rosen, Stanley, 219-2On. 11 Rosenmeyer, Thomas, 4On.6 Ross, W. D., χιίκ.12, 55n.l Rossini, Gioacchino, 68 Rostagni, Augusto, 49n.2 Rubens, P. P., 160 Ruck, Carl, 26-27n.9 Sachs, Hanns, 253 Sahevo, 193 Sappho, 19,59 Sardou, Victorien, 282 Satie, Erik, 203 Satyrus, 178 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 68 Scarlatti, Domenico, 68 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, 13On, 167 Schaper, Eva, 3In Schikaneder, Emanuel, 121 Schiller, J.CF. von, 46n.l6 Schlafley, Phyllis, 295 Schlegel, A. W., 276, 293 Schubert, Franz, 68, 296 Schumann, Robert, 160, 243n Segal, Charles, 84, 85n, 209nn. 1 and 2 sentimentality, 136-38, 197, 251, 253, 278-82, 284, 294-98 Sergius, Saint, 191 Shakespeare, William, 12, 31, 95, 115, 134-36, 157, 159, 182, 189, 197, 199, 247, 250, 256-57, 273-75, 278-79, 282, 287-89, 292 Sharpville, 193 Shaw, George Bernard, 294n shudder, xxiv, 28, 45-46, 50, chap. 9 pas­ sim, 121, chap. 17 passim, 152, 188, 191,202 Silk, M. A., and J. P. Stern, 185n.l2 Simon, Bennett, 194n Simon, Erika, 56n.5 Simonides, 23, 161 Smith, Morton, 122 Smith, P. F., 36n Snodgrass, Anthony, 106n

317 Socrates and Socratism, xvi, xx, xxiii, chaps. 1-3 passim, 19, 31, 33-35, 40, 42-43, 52-54, 61, 70, 72, 75, 114, 131n, 140, 154, 157-58, 165-70, 172, 184-87, 206, 209, 222, 225-31, 2 4 1 44, 270, 275 Solmsen, Friednch, 47n Solon, xi-xu, xvi, 23, 24, 108-10, 2 3 5 36n.ll Sophocles, xvi, xxv, 103, 116, 117, 123, chaps. 17-19 passim, 171, 180, 181, 182, 184, 187, 189, 261; Ajax, χ n.5, 37, 40, 144-46, 183, 271, 281; Antig­ one, xiv «.18, 52-53, 123n, 182, 196, 232n, 261, 282, 293; Electra, xxiu, 1 5 3 54, 20On, 201; Oedipus at Colonus, 47, 150-53, 189, 277, 282; Oedipus the King, x, xxii, xxiv, 18, 36n, 44-47, 5054, 58, chap. 13 passim, 198, 241, 244, 261, 272-73, 281, 282, 286, 287, 292; Philoctetes, 149-50, 277, 282; The Women ofTrachts, 146-47, 181, 182, 292, 298; fragments, 143 Soweto, 193 spectacle. See opsis sports, 249 Stabat Mater, 68, 292 Stahlin, Gustav, 158n Stalin, Joseph, 25 Stanford, W. B., 32n.4 Stassinopoulos, Arianna, 243 Statius, 117 Steinem, Gloria, 295 Stesichorus, 128n.l6, 201 Stevens, P. T., 178n Stinton, Thomas, 52n.7 Stobaeus, 121, 123, 159n.6 Stoics, 33-34, 13In Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 190 Strabo, 13n.l Strathman, Hermann, 13In Strauss, Leo, 219-20n.ll Strauss, Richard, 20On, 295 Strohm, Hans, 181n.8 Suda, 123, 159 Susemihl, Franz, 49n.l Sutton, D. F., 60-61n.l0 Synesius, 55 Taplin, Oliver, 40n.6, 119n, 149n.l0 Tate,J.,206n,209n.l

318 Tate, Nahum, 274-75, 278 teratodes, 61, 119, 119-20n.2, 130-31, 132,141,269 Tertullian, 147n Thatcher, Margaret, 295 Themistius, 121 Theognidea, 23—24 Thespis, 107, 235 thiasos, 122 Thucydides, xii «.11, 19n, 171, 195 Tiananmen Square, 193 Timisoara, 193 Tolstoy, Leo, 296 true confession stories, 253—54 Turin shroud, 73 Tyrtaeus, xi, 24 Valley Forge, 194n Varro, χ «.4, 66 Velasquez, 160, 182 Verdenius, W. J., 3In Verdi, Giuseppe, 68, 280, 283-84, 295, 296 Vermeule, Emily, xiv «.17, 105n Vernant, J.-P., 209n.l Verrall, A. W., 209n.l Versenyi, Laszlo, 7n, 206n violence, xxvi-xxvii, 48, 50—54, 95, 117, 135,164,256 Virgil, 89, 102, 154n.l2, 298 Vivaldi, Antonio, 68 Vlastos, Gregory, 7n

INDEX Voltaire, xx «.33 Walcot, Peter, 108n.7 Walzer, R., 55n.l Weber, Carl Maria von, 160 Webster, T.B.L., 84, 142n Wedekind, Frank, 189 Welcker, Fnedrich, 145n.6 Wertmiiller, Lina, 297 Wessel, Horst, 193 West, M. L., xi «.8, 108n.7 Whitman, Cedric, 84 Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Tycho von, 184n Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Ulrich von, 15n.5, 26-27n.9, 66-67n.2, 129, 185 Winckelmann, J. J., 164 Winnington-Ingram, R. P., 39n, 47n, 85n, 199n, 209n.l Wormell, D.E.W., 13n.2 Xenon, 93n Xenophanes, 103, 172, 175n.4, 186-87, 229n.4 Xenophon, xii «.11, 168, 227, 228 Yale College dramatic societies, 235 Yeats, W. B., chap. 12 passim, 129, 160, 195-96, 203, 270, 286, 290, 298 Zapata, Emiliano, 193 Zefirelli, Franco, 296 Zuntz, Gunrher, xiii «.16