The Trojan Trilogy of Euripides 9783666251566, 3525251564, 9783525251560

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HYPOMNEMATA 60

HYPOMNEMATA U N T E R S U C H U N G E N ZUR ANTIKE UND ZU I H R E M NACHLEBEN

Herausgegeben von Albrecht Dihle / Hartmut Erbse / Christian Habicht Hugh Lloyd-Jones / Günther Patzig / Bruno Snell

H E F T 60

V A N D E N H O E C K & R U P R E C H T IN G Ö T T I N G E N

RUTH SCODEL

The Trojan Trilogy of Euripides

V A N D E N H O E C K & RUPRECHT IN G Ö T T I N G E N

CIP-Kurztitelaufnahme Scodel,

der Deutschen

Bibliothek

Ruth:

The Trojan trilogy of Euripides / R u t h Scodel. — Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1980. (Hypomnemata; H. 60) ISBN 3-525-25156-4

© Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen 1980 - Printed in Germany. Ohne ausdrückliche Genehmigung des Verlages ist es nicht gestattet, das Buch oder Teile daraus auf foto- oder akustomechanischem Wege zu vervielfältigen Gesamtherstellung: Hubert Sc Co., Göttingen

IN MEMORY OF MY FATHER

"O madness of discourse, That cause sets up with and aginst itself! Bi-fold authority, where reason can revolt Without perdition, and loss assume all reason Without revolt." Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

Preface This is a highly speculative book, and the scholar who deals in fragments is well advised to season his guesses with some humility. I would not be surprised if many of mine were proven wrong. Still, I think they have been worth making. Though not radically different from the Euripides I was taught to see in the tragedies, the Euripides who has emerged from my work on the plays of 415 has some characteristics to give him a particular identity: placed beside the conventional portraits he is more skilfull, perhaps more intelligent, less a psychologist and a realist, more a dialectician; a more difficult, ambiguous figure, no simple propagandist for or against Olympian religion, sophistic enlightenment, or Athenian imperialism, a man of wide sympathy and great honesty. I hope that, despite my inevitable errors, the poet would recognize his creation in my reconstruction. The title is slightly inaccurate, since it neglects the satyr-play (which at first I did not intend to discuss), but it has the merit of recalling one of Gilbert Murray's essays on these plays. His interpretation is weakened by a basic sentimentality, but he was, I think, essentially right, and his work has been the basis of mine. Originally this book formed my 1978 Harvard dissertation, and publishing schedules have prevented extensive revision. In the opening chapters, a few references have been given in shortened form, but fuller information can be found in the bibliography. Abbreviations follow APh and common scholarly practice. Citations from extant plays of Euripides other than Troades follow Murray unless otherwise noted; for Troades, I have used the text of W. Biehl. The writing of the thesis had the invaluable support of a fellowship from the Mrs. Giles M. Whiting Foundation. The work has reached Hypomnemata through the kind offices of Professor Albrecht Dihle, and with the aid of 7

the Department of the Classics at Harvard and its Chairman, Professor Zeph Stewart, who provided a subsidy from the Loeb Fund. I also owe much to my readers: Professor Lowell Edmunds removed many errors from the text, and the rigorous criticism of Professor Albert Henrichs saved many passages from confusion and inaccuracy. The flaws of style, logic, and learning that remain are, of course, my own. As for Professor Cedric Whitman, who directed the dissertation, only those who have worked with him can guess my debt to his critical and sympathetic attention, philological sense and literary sensibility, and constant encouragement.

Table of Contents Introduction

11

I. The Reconstruction of the Alexander

20

II. The Reconstruction of the Palamedes

43

III. The Trojan Trilogy

64

IV. The Agones

80

V. Theme and Action

105

VI. The Sisyphus and the Gods

122

Conclusion

138

Appendix: Troades 9 6 2 - 6 4 and 9 9 0 - 1 0 0 1 .

143

Selected Bibliography

145

Index of Authors and Historical Figures. . .

148

Index of Modern Scholars

152

9

Introduction Troades is a difficult play. It almost entirely lacks all the ordinary kinds of dramatic tension, and its unity, if unity there be, is hard to grasp. Most often it is understood as chiefly a depiction of the horrors of war, a reproach to the Athenians for the atrocities at Melos and a warning against further imperialist aggression; as such, the work has a certain popularity, and its flaws as drama are ignored or covered in apology. The tragedy is treated as rather a sad pageant than a play, a series of laments and tableaux. The text, however, in many ways resists this approach. For while a first impression of the action does consist of a mere sequence of miseries, a long succession of painful incidents, the actual details of each scene peculiarly refute the instinct to regard the play in this light: Troades balances its emotional pathos with a large component of dry and analytic rhetoric. All four main characters, Hecuba, Helen, Cassandra, and Andromache, present formal rheseis, not at all pathetic in either tone or content, but logical and disputatious. These speeches, moreover, seem inappropriate to both characters and situations: Cassandra follows a display of prophecy and madness with the exposition of a paradoxical argument; Hecuba's passion for revenge expresses itself in rationalizations of Olympian religion; Andromache, about to be dragged off to the bed of an enemy, discusses propriety of behavior in women and the respective merits of life and death; Helen appeals for her life, not to her beauty, but to elaborate self-justifications. Although a love of arguments which are not strictly necessary to the progress of the action and of tirades which are not entirely suited to their contexts is a notorious characteristic of the Euripidean stage, this play may carry it farther than any extant work of its author. This curious dryness of tone has not satisfactorily been explained by the play's interpreters. Either these sections are treated and explained individually, with varying success, or they are dismissed as blots, or they are somehow excused. But this obsessive and persistent argumentation, so seemingly unnecessary, indeed so destructive to the creation of a fully pathetic effect, demands a critical examination of the drama as a work fundamentally concerned as much with intellectual issues as with an attempt to arouse an emotional response. Yet these issues, as they appear in the play, are too various for any dramatic unity to be found by examining them one by one. This problem in the play itself joins another presented by the evidence for the circumstances of its production. From Aelian ( Varia Historia ii, 8) and a scholium to Aristophanes,1 we know that in 415 Euripides was awarded 1

Aves 842; Vesp. 1326, often cited, is, as far as I can tell, incorrect and unhelpful.

11

the second prize at the Great Dionysia for the Alexander, Palamedes, Troades, and the satyr-play Sisyphus. Aelian considered the victory of Xenocles—of whom he knew nothing—a patent absurdity, in view of the plays in question, and suggested that either the judges were fools or they were bribed: the plays no longer extant evidently aroused his admiration. What has interested modern readers of this passage is the information that Euripides presented three tragedies whose plots belong to the Trojan Cycle. That the three might form a trilogy, or the four a tetralogy, 2 is an obvious possibility, and, to the critic bemused by the problems Troades presents in isolation, an attractive one. By itself the work seems a heterogeneous mixture of debates and laments, impressive but chaotic; but perhaps, considered in the light of the works whose performance preceded it before the Athenian audience, it may yield some greater clarity. The most famous (though not the first) exposition of an interpretation of the group as a thematically connected tetralogy is that of Gilbert Murray. 3 He suggested that the distinguishing characteristic of the group was paracharaxis, the "restamping" of conventions. The Alexander had the plot of a romance of the same type as that of the childhood of Cyrus; the hero of such a romance, the child exposed and then recovered, should by the logic of the plot be a savior-figure, a hero like Cyrus or Moses, but Alexander was the ruin of his city. In the Palamedes, the hero was the inventor of the art of writing, which became the means of his destruction, while the crowd chose to follow Odysseus, the representative of a spurious cleverness, over Palamedes, the truly wise man. In each of these, what the characters admire is proven to be undesirable, while they reject what is really good; in Troades the results of their errors are fully revealed, and conquest, conventionally the greatest of human achievements, is shown as it actually is: even the wretched victims are more blessed than the victorious Greeks. 4 Thus the trilogy had its unity in the development of the contrast between actual and apparent good, and the satyr-play, in which Sisyphus stole the horses of Lycurgus from Heracles, parodied this pattern of reversal. Murray subtitled his essay "The Deceitfulness of Life," but in addition he gave the last play, at least, a political motive, arguing that Troades was inspired by events at Melos. While the notion that the plays were connected was widely popularized by Murray—Koniaris provides an impressive list of scholars who have given the possibility some tentative approval, at least5—except in his argument that 2 In the following discussion, the word "trilogy" will be used even where a group may have formed part of a tetralogy. The Sisyphus presents special problems and will be discussed later in a separate section. 3 Murray first discussed this issue 'm Mélanges Gustave Glotz (Paris, 1932) II 645—565, but the work cited here will be Greek Studies (1946), which presents an expanded exposition. * Vide Tr. 3 6 5 - 3 8 3 . s Koniaris, HSCP 77 (1973), pp. 8 9 - 9 0 .

12

Troades is intended to reveal that conquest is no glory, and that it was inspired by the sack of Melos, the interpretation he offered of the group as a whole has found little support or response. In fact, the reasoning of Murray proceeded by attaching a meaning to the extant play, and then relating the lost plays to the one extant, so that it can in part be detached, unchanged by the juxtaposition. Inevitably, this procedure was in part the only one possible, since one could hardly base an interpretation on works which are barely known, but it meant that the part of the essay which linked the words thematically through paracharaxis could be ignored, while the rest was largely accepted. The theory does not help motivate the peculiarities of Troades by integrating them into the whole work, for the "curses" on both Greeks and Trojans shown in the preceding plays serve only as a kind of background. The paracharaxis itself is a genuine and important phenomenon, but it does not suffice to establish unity among a group of tragedies; it is characteristic of whatever we consider most tragic. What Murray means by the term seems really not to be very different from what is called tragic or dramatic irony, the discrepancy between reality and appearance which, in some form, pervades all tragedy: certainly we can see it in the Alexander and Palamedes, but also in Oedipus Rex and King Lear. Moreover, the type of "restamping" is very different in the three tragedies, and on its mere presence it is hard to link them. In the Alexander, the appearance is related to the kind of story being told, the narrative type; the deceit is the result of the pattern of a folktale. In the Palamedes, on the other hand, we have an error on the part of the characters, who are truly ignorant of the good and are also deliberately deceived; in Troades, the deceit in question is a commonly held belief in the excellence of military achievement, a belief held firmly by most of the audience, who soon after seeing the play voted for the Sicilian Expedition. The thesis of Murray is not fully satisfactory as he developed it. Still, it is the most interesting trial of the possibilities of the group of plays; its insight is real, and scholars who have failed to pay it much attention have failed to improve upon it. Webster, who was most a partisan of the idea of the connected trilogy in recent years, was far shallower. Murray was, in fact, preceded in the attempt to consider the meaning of the trilogy by Wilamowitz, 6 who devoted the opening pages of the introduction to his translation of the Troades to the theme. He sums up the teaching of the work (p. 263) as "das vollkommene Widerspiel der Theodicee" and sees it as above all an expression of absolute pessimism and a criticism of the Olympian gods. Odysseus goes unpunished, Cassandra is unheard, Athena's favor is a matter of whim, "Also hat das Moralische in der Welt keine. Statte" (283). He does not see even the consolation Murray allowed the characters of the trilogy, their vague sense of glory or hope of fame: though he wrote 6

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Griechische 297.

Tragödien

(Berlin, 1906), III, 259—

13

earlier, his tone is the more modern, without Murray's Victorian optimism. He also confronts the formlessness of the surviving play (263): Die Troerinnen geben keine fortlaufende Handlung, sondern eine Reihe von Scenen konvergieren auf dasselbe Ziel; es ist die Komposition, die Euripides für das letzte Stück einer Trilogie bevorzugt hat. This is not an explanation, except insofar as one might argue that a lessening of tension is emotionally necessary in the last piece of so long and intense a creation as a tragic trilogy; but the interpretation at least makes some sense of the intellectual tone of the work by providing it, in the attack on any optimistic belief in divine justice, with an intellectual subject. Parmentier7 is essentially a follower of Murray, though he drops paracharaxis. He no longer speaks of the action of the two earlier plays in terms of a curse, as Murray did, but sees the Palamedes as presenting a crime which demands vengeance, a vengeance which is promised by the prologue to Troades. The moral status of the action of Alexander is left obscure, but the words (p. 4) "les Troyens à l'heure où ils attirent irrévocablement sûr eux les ménaces du destin" imply that he considers the Trojans are to be regarded as in part, at least, responsible for their fate. One of his more interesting arguments concerns the depiction of Hecuba, for he thinks her character in the Helen scene utterly different from what it appears to be in the Alexander, and he believes that the arguments she uses in that scene actually contradict the facts as shown in the first play: but such contradiction, he feels, is entirely Euripidean, and he compares the denial of divine responsibility for Heracles' madness in Heracles, though the attacking goddess has appeared to the audience. He denies that the Sicilian Expedition, conceived as a war of conquest, was under discussion when the plays were composed, and so associates the contemporary allusions of Troades with the policy of increased harshness to the subject cities fostered by Cleon and Alcibiades, without special reference to the Melians, and, while he sees political inspiration for the Palamedes in the trials of Phidias and Anaxagoras, he does not attempt to connect its political implications to the political meaning of Troades or to extend any political message over the entire group. Nor does he try to use the trilogy as a means of understanding the oddities of the extant play; he contents himself with praising the adroitness with which the dramatist has introduced variety into his essentially monotonous subject. Apart from these attempts, partial as they have been, at the interpretation of the work, the usual attitude to the idea of a connected trilogy has been a combination of mild favor with great reserve. Insofar as a consensus may be said to exist, Lesky 8 may be taken as a representative: Léon Parmentier, in Parmentier and Henri Grégoire, Euripide (Paris 1964), IV, 3—25. Albin Lesky, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur, 3rd ed. (Bern and Munich 1971), p. 432. 7

8

14

Die große Form der aischyleischen Inhaltstrilogie war seit langen aufgegeben. Das hinderte freilich nicht, daß man gelegentlich die drei zusammen aufgeführten Tragödien doch in eine thematische Bindung brachte, deren Intensität wir freilich an keinem erhaltenen Beispiel überprüfen können. Sie ist in der Trilogie, die Euripides 415 aufführte, kaum besonders groß gewesen. That the obvious connection among the three was intentional and of significance is admitted, but this significance, once granted, is then severely reduced by the assumption that the connection is not "intense." Even this reserved belief in a connected group was attacked by Koniaris in 1973; 9 he argues that the three plays are as unrelated as any three tragedies chosen at random from the Euripidean corpus. This has been the longest and most detailed treatment ever given the issue, but it is poorly argued and simplistic in its assumptions. It has, however, convinced at least some scholars 10 and there may be a shift of opinion away from the acceptance of the idea that the trilogies were connected in even the weak manner implied by Lesky. Meanwhile, though the question has now been seriously raised, it has never received yet a full, detailed, and sophisticated discussion. The first problem must be to define what is meant when we speak of "connected" trilogies and tetralogies, and to place the trilogy now postulated in its context. Only the analysis of whatever connections appear in the texts can really answer the question of what may be there. Though some aspects may be forever lost, what is most important is to avoid passing over what remains by being unwilling to allow and explore the author's dramatic possibilities.

II Neither τριλογία nor τετραλογία is attested in the fifth century, nor with any certainty in the fourth; trilogies and tetralogies are not referred to directly or indirectly in any extant work before the Hellenistic period, and they are not mentioned in Aristotle's Poetics, though he may possibly have used the term τετραλογία or at least the collective title Παρ&ορι'ς in the Didascaliae.11 Neither Plato nor Aristophanes, both eager critics of tragedy in their different ways, ever mentions the existence of this particular form of tragic composition, though one could easily say in answer that it is relevant to neither of their purposes. 9 10 11

See especially Koniaris 110—114. Κ. H. Lee's recent Troad.es commentary, however, fully endorses the trilogy. Aristotle fr. 619 Rose (Sch. Ar. Aves 281). See also fr. 618 (Sch. Ar. Ranae

1124).

15

This fact is used by Koniaris 12 as evidence that the Athenian public would not recognize a trilogy, at least not a trilogy whose connections were not completely explicit, in 415, because the members of the audience were not prepared to look for or expect such links. Actually, the implications of the lack of attention paid to the aesthetic nature of the form are more interesting than Koniaris supposes. For the trilogy, as such, certainly existed and exists, whether the works here under discussion constituted one or no; we do not know if Aeschylus had a term to distinguish his connected productions, like the Oresteia, from others such as that which included the Persae; he may well have had, but the difference was not a prominent enough issue to emerge in extant discussions of tragedy until considerably later. To a modern reader, the importance of the trilogie form is self-evident. We feel acutely how much we lack in trying to assess Supplices or Septem, and a scholarly or critical discussion of one play from the Oresteia in which the others went unmentioned is almost unimaginable. Yet clearly this was not the case, at least to such an extent, for the audience in the fifth century. Equally clearly, we are not wrong; that the single play always retained its structural and artistic independence we see in the shape of the texts before us, but we see likewise that in theme and dramatic meaning the single plays are not always fully adequate in themselves. If this was not clear, or not important, to the original audience and critics, it must have been clear to Aeschylus, who composed in this way by choice. There seems to be a gap between literary criticism and literary practice, and perhaps likewise a gap between literary appreciation and criticism. Certainly the audience must have felt the difference between two kinds of production, but it was a feature of their theater the critics did not, apparently, feel the need to articulate. This dominance of the single play, even within an evident trilogy, corresponds to the tendencies of literary discussion in the fifth and early fourth centuries. Not only would the existence of the play as a single roll of papyrus tend to confirm its status as the unified work, once the performance was past and the drama was essentially an object, but unity itself is not an issue in literature before Aristotle. Plato (despite Phaedrus 264c) and Aristophanes base their moral judgments on lines or passages; they do not analyze the effect created by the parts when they are subsumed in the whole. To have articulated, once and forever, the doctrine that a work of literature constitutes a whole and must be considered as such is the great achievement of the Poetics. Yet poets certainly composed with unity as a goal, and audiences responded to it, whether they could have explained their response or not. Aristotle was not the only reader to prefer the Iliad to the Cypria.13 12 Koniaris, pp. 111-112. 13 Poetics 1459a 30-32. 16

It is thus foolhardy to restrict what artistic means Euripides may have used on the basis of what the audience may be presumed to have expected or been ready to understand. He was not confined by the condition of criticism. And the trilogy does not seem to have been an entirely dead form at the end of the fifth century, though the evidence is poor. There may be another group of Euripidean plays with linked subjects in 4 1 0 , Oenomaus, Chrysippus, Phoenissae, and the Oedipodeia of Meletus, however its author is identified, is very unlikely to have been produced much before the turn of the century, as it belongs to the same year as the Pelargi of Aristophanes. 14 Unfortunately, there is no absolute proof that titles of this type are inevitably collective, though no known title of a single play is of this form, and the scholia clearly distinguish the collective titles Όρεστεϊα and AuKOVpyeia from their constituent plays. 15 There is no reason to imagine a different usage here, although the issue for the fifth century itself is complicated by the problem of Ranae 1124 where the [πρόλογοι] έξ Όρεστείας is from Choephori. The Παι>διοι>ίς τετραλογία of Philocles was produced before Aves ( 4 1 4 ) ; 1 6 the Telepheia of Sophocles may have been a trilogy. 17 Plato is said by Aelian to have composed a "tetralogy," which he burned under the influence of Socrates' advice ( Var. Hist, ii, 30). All this is weak, perhaps, but with as many gaps as remain in any sane reconstruction of the didascalie records, anyone who tried to deny the existence of trilogies in the second half of the century would be overbold. The main source of oversimplification in this area has been the infamous sentence of Suda in the biography of Sophocles, και αϋτός ήρξερ τοΰ δράμα προς δράμα άγωνίξεσόαι άλλά μη τετράλογίαν.16 Whatever this means, it is most unlikely to mean that on each day of the festival each poet presented only one tragedy, a system which would, of course, have rendered trilogies impossible. 19 If it did, it would indicate a truly profound disregard for the meaning of the trilogies the Athenians most admired, since it would wreak havoc on the revivals of Aeschylus which were specifically permitted by law. At any rate, if we accept the statement under the easiest interpretation—for none is entirely satisfactory and the information has certainly become confused in transmission and abbreviation—what we have is the 1 4 Meletus I, Τ 1 TrGF, and for the date oí Pelargi the allusion to Patrocles at fr. 431 Kock and Neocleides fr. 439, persons elsewhere mentioned only in Plutus and Eccl. is Sch. Ar. Ranae 1124, Sch. Thes. 135; cf. P. Oxy. 29. 2506, fr. 26 col. ii (II A. D.; a commentary on lyric poets), where the Oresteia is named and followed by the separate titles. 1 6 Philocles was a contemporary of Euripides and Aeschylus' nephew, see Philocles I, Τ 1 and 2 TrGF (Suda φ 378). 1 7 See Pickard-Cambridge, DFA2 pp. 54—6, 81, for the problems connected with the Telepheia and the Axione inscription. 1 8 Accepting the emendation of Meursius for OTpaTokoyeiodai. 1 9 Pickard-Cambridge, p. 81, n. 3. That the rules were changed and then again altered before 415 is maintained by Τ. B. L. Webster, Hermathena 100 (1965), 2 1 - 2 8 .

2 Scodel (Hyp. 60)

17

fact that Sophocles preferred composition by single plays and that others followed his example. This should not be overstressed. Aeschylus did not always write trilogies, and those who came after Sophocles may have chosen occasionally to explore the larger form. The Greek liking for a πρώτος βυρετής produces elegant and simple history, but not always accuracy. Euripides in particular may not have been adverse to an Aeschylean experiment. That he follows in the footsteps of Aeschylus rather than those of Sophocles is common knowledge; he shows every sign of intense study of the older master, while Sophocles seems to stand slightly to one side in the history of tragedy. Similarities of language between Euripides and Aeschylus are many, and other forms of influence are not lacking. 20 Moreover, Euripides was partial to experiments of all kinds: the expanded use of monody, the supplementary chorus, the pro-satyric play may serve as examples; the attempt at trilogy would be completely natural and in place. It is the less surprising if he did try the larger form because so often his works seem crammed with more matter than they can reasonably contain; such plays as Heracleidae and Supplices seem structurally almost to collapse into utter incoherence under the strain. The wider form may have been the natural resource for combining more thematic material than a single work could hold. If, however, he was attracted to the potential of the Aeschylean form, that does not mean that he would have wished to use it in the exact manner of Aeschylus, or could have done so had he wished it. Unfortunately, our only models for the trilogy are the extant Oresteia and whatever can with probability be reconstructed of other Aeschylean trilogies, and it is unlikely that the Euripidean "imitation" would bear much real resemblance to the original. His dramatic interests were too different from those of Aeschylus. But just as we cannot limit the consciousness of the Athenian poet (or his audience) by our knowledge of the limits of his critical vocabulary, we cannot limit the imagination of a poet by our knowledge of his available models, even if we could be sure in either case that our knowledge were complete. The outstanding characteristic of great poets—and above all great innovative poets, among whom no one would deny Euripides a place—is that they possess a greater imagination than their imitators or their critics. This is one reason why the reconstruction of a lost play, which will be twice attempted in the following pages, is so tricky an affair: the author is prone to devise precisely what we do not expect. The Aeschylean trilogy, at least as we imagine it on the basis of our one example, is straightforward in structure. The external connection of the 20

O t t o Krausse, De Euripide Aeschyli Instauratore (Diss. J e n a 1905), has examples. As Wilamowitz remarked (Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie reprt. Darmstadt 1974, p. 21): "Aber Sophokles hat jedenfalls nichts bei ihm (sc. Aeschylus) gelernt. Weit eher k ö n n t e man es von Euripides glauben, wo die Zeit es verbietet."

18

plays, their plot, is very closely joined with their internal, thematic connection. The history of a family curse produces a simple and natural progression on both levels. We do not know whether groups whose interrelation was significantly more complex existed. One could imagine groups which had no external connection at all, but were produced together by the playwright in order to suggest to the audience particular comparisons or contrasts of subject; but our evidence does not really suffice for any useful investigation of such groups, and the attempts of Webster 21 to arrange the plays of Euripides according to such groups produced only skimpy and dubious results. At any rate, it is not only the direct links of plot which constitute the larger unity; these may have been introduced, at least in some instances, chiefly in order to draw the attention to more subtle ties. In a complex work, they may have been limited deliberately, for a simple plot sequence opposes certain kinds of ambiguity. Euripides allowed and planned contradiction. What we have before us are the titles of three tragedies which all derive from the Trojan Cycle, and the knowledge that the use of myths from the same mythological realm for all the tragedies in a production was not the usual practice of the author. We are entitled to guess that this did not occur by accident, if only because trilogies did in fact exist, and the poet was therefore inevitably "marking" the plays by choosing these subjects. He was not so fond of Trojan themes that one would expect such a conjunction as inherently probable. One might, perhaps, compare the "Roman Odes" of Horace, which are recognizably a special group only because they are placed together; scattered, they would only be various examples of the political ode. If these works had not been produced together, they would be no more closely associated than any of the other Trojan plays of Euripides; but he chose to present these as a group. Though the public may have been relatively indifferent to the trilogy as a form, it is hard to believe that they could have seen the Alexander and Troades on the same day and made no connection. The older members of the audience had been brought up on Aeschylus. The interpretation of the trilogy cannot be separated altogether from the arguments in favor of its reality, despite the evident circularity. Absolute and external proof there can be none. What can be persuasive, however, is a demonstration of relationships among the plays at several distinct levels. There are links of plot, links of theme, and links of structure. The first task is to define what can be known and what conjectured about the content and tone of the two tragedies no longer extant; when they have been reconstructed with whatever security and precision is possible, the unity and meaning of the group may be examined. 21

Webster, Tragedies of Euripides, passim. On 3 I f f , for instance, he divides the early plays into tragedies about " b a d " and " u n h a p p y " women, with a third, even vaguer category, and suggests Euripides arranged these in productions on a principle of contrast.

19

CHAPTER ONE

The Reconstruction of the

Alexander

Evidence for the Alexander is of several kinds. Primarily, we have the usual fragments from quotation, a substantial papyrus which preserves a good portion of one scene and scraps of others, and most of a papyrus hypothesis; also there are fragments from the Alexander of Ennius, and a series of paintings on Etruscan urns, whose value for the reconstruction is difficult to judge. This is a far more promising situation than is often encountered, and much of the play can be reconstructed with some certainty; nonetheless, numerous problems remain. The publication of the hypothesis has rendered virtually obsolete most previous discussions of the play, and for many of the difficulties, Coles, the editor of the papyrus, has carried the discussion as far as seems possible. 1 This analysis will concentrate mainly on the problems which remain. The hypothesis provides the basis for any attempt to fit the fragments in place; the difficulty is in knowing how to interpret it and how far to trust it.2 It is a specimen of what are commonly called the "Tales from Euripides," and derives from a roll containing a group of such hypotheses (the same roll contained Andromache, Aeolus, and Alcestis hypotheses). These bare plot summaries are all much alike, and an idea of the dangers they present may be gained by examining those which belong to extant plays. They relate in 1

The bibliography on the Alexander is long, repetitious, and largely dated. The editio princeps of the Strassburg papyrus was by Wilhelm Crönert, "Griechische literarische Papyri aus Straßburg," NAWG 1922 Heft 1. Studies published before this date will not normally be cited here. The papyrus was re-edited by Christian Lefke, De Euripidis Alexandre (Diss. Münster, 1936), and then by Snell in Hermes Einzelschriften, Heft 5. Some of the fragments have been edited yet again by Coles BICS Supp. 32 (1974). Although he has in several places improved readings, he does not reprint or renumber most fragments; the edition of Snell, therefore, will be the basis for this work. All fragments, including those of Ennius, will be cited from this edition. Coles has, however, renumbered Snell's fr. 43. Lines 85—105 were certainly misplaced; they have been renumbered 23a. Lines 29—35 have been renumbered as 23b, since though their placement in Snell is plausible, it is not certain (there is no join). All references to fr. 43 in this study refer to 43 Coles. Coles has not numbered the new fragment from the hypothesis, the second half of the play's first line; I shall refer to it for convenience as fr. 69. Coles provides a concordance with previous editions on pages 64—65. 2 On the reliability of hypotheses, see the helpful review of Coles by Richard Hamilton, AJP 97 (1976), pp. 65—70, to whom the following is much indebted.

20

essence not to the drama itself, but to its mythos, the story it employs. Thus, the introductions to the hypotheses do not repeat the contents of the Euripidean prologue, but include whatever the author of the "Tales" considered necessary background information. Names of characters left unnamed by Euripides may be added and minor differences from the actual version he follows may be introduced by the intrusion of a mythological variant. The opening of the play is severely compressed and much of the early action dropped completely, since often early scenes contain material which is not absolutely necessary to the plot: in mood and character the hypotheses show little interest. Last, and perhaps most serious, the timing of the hypothesis may bear little resemblance to that of the drama itself; the locus classicus is the hypothesis to Hecuba, where the slaying of Polyxena is described as if it occurred before the beginning of the drama. In other words, the hypotheses are, for practical purposes, mythographical sources, whose chief advantage over a passage of Hyginus or ps.-Apollodorus is that their main source is securely identified. While they are not completely reliable, the main facts they relate can be trusted to have occurred in the play, but inferences drawn from the arrangement of the information or the wording of the hypothesis are unsafe. In this particular case, fortunately, the fragments and the plot itself do not seem to indicate much likelihood of serious distortion. The action is centered on a single group of causally related events whose basic timing is logically determined. The difficulties of the hypothesis are evident in the reconstruction of actual episodes, but there does not seem to be any valid reason to distrust the basic sequence unless the facts of the hypothesis are to be rejected altogether. A scene-by-scene discussion is therefore possible, the evidence being introduced where it seems appropriate. The main danger in this, of course, is the ease with which a fragment, once placed, can appear decisive, though its location is subjective, while a perpetual danger with papyrus fragments is the temptation they present to any scholar who can compose an iambic line to forget what is his own work und what that of the author. The fragments of Ennius present further problems, since we have no real way of knowing how far he follows Euripides at any time; but there seems no need to doubt that the Alexander is indeed Ennius' source, in view of fr. 17, 3 where Varrò quotes Ennius with the words, "imitari dum voluit Euripidem." Comparison with the Medea indicates that Ennius followed his model fairly closely, though his text, of course, cannot be treated as a mere translation. 4

3

The fragment, in view of its content, can only be from the Alexander of Ennius; for the question of the hero's name, see pp. 41—42. 4 For the problems surrounding the version of Ennius, see H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 202ff.

21

a) The Prologue The prologue speaker is not named by the hypothesis, but the second half of the first line is preserved, and the line may be supplemented as [Τροία μβν r?5e] και το κλεινόν "Ιλιον. The deictic is necessary, for without exception in every Euripidean prologue extant, a form of Ö6e is used when the scene of the drama is first named, always in the same line. This being the case, a second proper noun is needed to receive the pronoun, and the possibilities for supplementation are therefore limited. The opening line may be compared with that of Helen, Νείλου μβν aïbe καΧΚιπάρύενοι ¡>oai. The question of the speaker has been hotly debated. 5 The prologue necessarily told the story of Hecuba's dream and the exposure of Paris; the lines of Ennius which tell this story, quoted by Cicero (fr. 1), no doubt represent the Euripidean prologue. These eliminate as speakers Hecuba, Priam, and the god Apollo, all of whom are mentioned in the third person, but the use of "mater" and "pater" does not indicate that the speaker need be one of their children, since Paris himself was probably mentioned in the preceding lines and the words may well refer to his parents. Euripides must have told more than the story of the dream and exposure in his prologue, however; although he does not always reveal the action to come, he does not conceal from the audience the knowledge of the real situation at the opening of the play: we are told that Ion is the son of Apollo and Creusa, that the true Helen never went to Troy but is here in Egypt, that the priestess of Artemis is Iphigencia (and immediately after the opening speech, that the two Greeks are Orestes and Pylades). Though in the famous case of the Ion we are misled about what will come, we are not left without the premises of the action, though these may be unknown to the actors. We may, therefore, feel fairly sure that the speaker of the prologue explained that Alexander had not died, but had been reared as a herdsman. This, of course, further reduces the number of possible prologoi. By far the favorite candidates of scholars for the speaker have been Cassandra and Aphrodite. Snell (pp. 24—26) argues for the former, Webster (pp. 165—67) and others the latter. Snell's argument is complex, and has largely been destroyed by the new hypothesis, for he postulated that the prophetic scene of Cassandra came early in the play. Cassandra may well enter at the end of fr. 6, which is probably from the first episode; her entrance is the easiest way to understand 5 Cassandra as speaker is favored by Jouan, Euripide et les légendes des chants cypriens, p. 202; Denys Page in Greek Literary Papyri (Cambridge, Mass., 1942), p. 55; Parmentier, Euripide IV, iv, and F. Scheidweiler in Philologus 97 (1948), p. 321; Pickard-Cambridge in J.U. Powell's New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature 3rd series (Oxford, 1933), p. 141 hesitates between Hecuba and Aphrodite; a whole series of alternatives is given by T. C. W. Stinton, Euripides and the Judgement of Paris, Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Supp. Paper 11 (1965), p. 67; alii alia.

22

καΐ μην δε] δορκα iralba Κ [ασάνδραν σέ dev ηκουσα]ν άδυτων ώ[δβ Φοφείων πάρος Snell attached fr. 7 at this point and assumed that the mad prophecy was delivered here; but fr. 8, where the chorus (probably) 6 asks sed quid oculis rapere visa est derepente ardentibus (aut) ubi illa paulo ante sapiens virginali' modestia? would indicate that Cassandra has already appeared on stage in a sane condition. This could only be her appearance to speak the prologue. This argument is weak in itself, for the sane condition of Cassandra need not have been shown to the audience; but the hypothesis provides solid evidence (lines 25—30) that the prophecy of Cassandra came later in the play. In that case, an allusion to her previous state in that scene would well accord with her having some role in the first episode, but there is no evidence for her speaking the prologue; indeed, her exit after the opening speech followed by so quick a return might seem clumsy, though Iphigeneia in Tauris succeeds with such a structure. Moreover, there are particular arguments against Cassandra. In general, it seems unlikely that a scene of inspired prophecy delivered in trance (έμμαρής) should be preceded in the drama by any display of supernatural knowledge presented in a rational tone, though it may be followed by such a display once it has had its full effect, as in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Some vague indication, presentiments, a description of the prophetic gift: these are possible, but the detailed and specific clairvoyance that would be required of the prologue speaker would completely destroy the effect of the spectacular recognition. There would be little έκπληξις if the audience knew that Cassandra knew who Alexander was all the time. In addition, there are the logical problems her knowledge could present, which the playwright could perhaps have evaded, though only with meticulous care. If Cassandra knew, the audience would be prone to think, why in all the preceding years has she done nothing? Partial knowledge—or foreboding, rather—makes sense; but if she told the whole truth, one would wonder what she is actually doing thoughout the play; if she were to proclaim her utter ineffectuality, saying that she has no hope of preventing the coming disaster, again the effect of her great scene would be ruined, since she does try there to act (fr. 10 with its cry to the cives). Cassandra, then, can probably be eliminated. Aphrodite is the alternative favorite; once Cassandra is abandoned, she seems to be the only possible speaker with sufficient knowledge. Here, too, difficulties present themselves. It is a minor point that the gods, in the extant divine Euripidean prologues, always begin in a form that leads to an immediate self-introduction, ηκίύ, 6

Either the chorus must be the speaker or est should be corrected to es; Jocelyn op. p. 207 chooses the former; others (e.g., A. S. Pease on Cie. de Div. I, 66) the latter.

cit.

23

with the name as subject, or, in the case of Hermes in Ion, the speaker's genealogy, while the first line of this play would not fit such an opening; the examples are not numerous enough to constitute a rule. More important is what such an opening would mean to the play itself. A divine prologue does not merely reveal information no mortal possesses, but also indicates an involvement by the gods in the action to come. Aphrodite in Hippolytus, Dionysus in Bacchae have obvious motives, while Hermes in Ion speaks on behalf of Apollo, who is too abashed, apparently, to appear. Poseidon in Troades is introduced in order to fill a role which would normally be that of a final deus ex machina, the prediction of events beyond the end of the play. But also he appears to explain his lack of involvement in the action; the gods leave captured cities, and his departure is as significant in symbolizing the end to Troy as is the anger of Aphrodite in putting the pathos of Phaedra in a universal context. If Aphrodite appeared in this prologue, she would have to provide an explanation of her interest in the events to come, and she would of necessity have such an interest. This would mean that the Judgment would have to have taken place before the play began—for Aphrodite could hardly favor Paris before that—and this, in turn, would imply that the action of the play is Aphrodite's fulfillment of her promise. This, however, quite alters the way the audience would regard Alexander himself. He is, of course, an ambiguous figure. But from all that is left of the play, it is impossible not to feel that he must be basically sympathetic. The reader, knowing how dangerous he is, must still be lured into a desire to have his mother recover him: the essence of the play lies in the tension between our knowledge and our liking for the plot of the romance, and for this Alexander must seem still innocent. Moreover, it is hard to imagine how Aphrodite could scheme all this, after the Judgment, while leaving her favorite ignorant of his true identity. Not all critics have recognized these consequences. Some scholars seem fonder of divine prologues and gods from the machine than even Euripides, and introduce them with little justification. Besides the problem manipulation of the plot by Aphrodite would present in the character of Paris, there is no sign of it in fragments or hypothesis; the only divinely inspired action seems to be the prophecy of Cassandra, and that obviously acts in the opposite direction from Aphrodite's. The hypotheses of Ion, Troades, Alcestis, Hippolytus all do mention the appropriate gods. A divine prologue is, in fact, unneccessary, because there is a human character who possesses all the required information: this is the old herdsman, Alexander's foster father. 7 The hypothesis guarantees his role in the play and role in 7 I discovered after writing this section that the herdsman had been suggested as prologue speaker by Georg Wentzel, Epithalamion auf Wolfgang und Helene Passow (Göttingen, 1890), p. 26, η. 20: "Daß ein Gott den Prolog gesprochen habe," he says, "würde der Technik des Euripides nicht entsprochen haben, der zu den Göttern nicht greift, wenn

24

the recognition. Since the exposure and rescue of the hero involved only himself, he would have known the truth all along, but this does not, of course, present the problems it would in Cassandra's case. His appearance here could prepare for his importance later without giving him unnecessary space within the play itself—for he is unlikely to have had much dramatic interest—and would allow for the formal exposition of the essential fact, the identity of the young cowherd with the lost child. The use of the slave herdsman as speaker would be a characteristically Euripidean touch. The only difficulty in the suggestion is his separation from Paris, who enters later with the subsidiary chorus. He may have explained that Paris was at odds with the other herdsmen and given some explanation for his own presence; he could be hoping to aid his foster-son in his trouble, or have come with sacrificial animals for the games. His separate appearance actually solves rather than creates problems. He can scarcely have been given a speaking role in the agon, or more than just have been mentioned there; the first episodes probably concentrated on Priam's family; yet he needs to have been introduced. It would be a severe weakness if he first appeared only at the crucial moment of the recognition. The play does not seem to allow for a substantial indirect introduction to him, such as the Pythia receives in /on; 8 Alexander has no monody and no intimate conversation. His role in the recognition requires that the audience be fully aware of his existence; his appearance as prologue speaker is therefore the most plausible and economical solution.

b) Parodos,

first

episode

The prologue told the history behind the play, probably including the establishment of the games. The herdsman must have left after delivering his speech. The following sequence was probably also essentially preliminary, as Hecuba was consoled by the chorus. The great grief of Hecuba may have been mentioned in the prologue as the reason for the games' being established, 9 but it is so central to the play that it deserved a scene to itself early in the action. Either Hecuba entered alone in a kind of second prologue, or a brief dialogue with the departing herdsman intervened, or (most likely) the chorus er einen Menschen finden kann, der alles weiß." The rest of Wentzel's reconstruction has been shattered by the more recent evidence. The herdsman is also mentioned as one of many possible speakers by Stinton (n. 5 above), who, however, doubted his even having a role in the play. 8 The monody, and the mention of the Pythia as Ion's foster mother at 321, give her appearance dramatic force: Alexander's foster father needs a similar introduction. 9 The hypothesis has not proven (pace Coles, pp. 23—24) that the games were a repeated rather than a unique event. This is an inference from the placement of διεΧϋόντων δè έτώι> είκοσι, exactly the kind of point where the hypothesis cannot be trusted; the issue remains open.

25

entered immediately after the opening speech (as in Hecuba, Supplices, Bacchae) and Hecuba appeared from the palace of Priam, attracted by their song. That Hecuba is one of the interlocutors in fr. 6 is almost certain from line 1, ëoTLV τέκνων σοι πλ[, and line 3, where Priam is mentioned in the third person. That the chorus is the other is likely both from the tone of conventional moralizing (line 5 especially, παλαιά καινοϊς δακρύοις ού χρή oréveiv) and the ώς φασι of line 7, which suggests that the speaker is not intimate with the royal house. The content consists of the familiar sententiae of consolation; the mother is reminded of her other children (one thinks of the variant of this in Thuc. II, 44, 3) and is admonished to give up mourning an old sorrow; fr. 5 is to the same effect, the healing effect of time, and probably belongs here, along with the well-worn sentiments of frs. 3 and 4. This scene of consolation clearly belongs early in the play, for it would merely interfere with more exciting action later, and it serves as an introduction to Hecuba designed to win immediate sympathy for what will later prove a character with reserves of fierceness. The device may be compared to the parodos of Sophocles' Electra in mood and purpose, and, as in that play, the chorus is most likely to have consisted of women, though some scholars have considered old men a possibility. 10 But the consolation of a mother surely belongs to women, particularly as this would give a reason for the chorus' initial entry, while old men would surely attend the games. The women could either be noblewomen of Troy, Hecuba's friends, or her own slave women, and though this latter is less likely, Ion would be parallel. This dialogue ends with the entry of Cassandra, in all probability, as has been mentioned above. Coles has, with his usual caution, allowed the possibility that the last lines of fr. 6 should be interpreted otherwise and that the whole scene belongs elsewhere, but presents no alternate arrangements. 11 Fr. 7, which Snell placed here for reasons both logical and papyrological, has no join with 6. The logical reasons may be dismissed along with the reconstruction of Cassandra's role discussed under the prologue, while the technical reason, a similarity in the appearance of the fibers of the two 10 A chorus of old men is postulated not only by Snell, but by Lefke, op. cit. p. 43, Jouan, p. 119, D. Lanza, "L'Alessandro e il valore del doppio coro euripideo," SIFC 34 (1963), pp. 230—245. These scholars rely mainly on fr. 9, which we know from ps.-Longinus was spoken by a Euripidean Cassandra, άλλ' ώ φίλιττποί Τ ρ ώ ε ς . This has, naturally, been associated with the "cives" of her cry in fr. 10. But a cry to the citizens in tragedy need not be addressed to the chorus (e.g., Or. 1621), especially as Cassandra is in a state of great excitement in which it would be natural to apostrophize persons not actually present (she cries out to the Hector of her vision in fr. 10). A female chorus is likelier when a woman is involved in violence or intrigue (Medea or Ion). 11

Coles, pp. 40—41. Cassandra certainly should be introduced before her great prophetic scene; even in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, she does not begin her prophecy until she has been mute on stage for some time, introduced by Agamemnon 9 5 0 f f , addressed by Clytemnestra 1035ff.

26

fragments, is not conclusive by any means. 12 So Cassandra enters from the temple of Apollo, but need not βακχεύειν φρένα. The contents of her conversation with her mother can only be guessed at, but that she does speak with Hecuba is very likely. Hecuba, however, must leave before the agon, since the actor playing her must take a different role. Cassandra too must leave. Very possibly she attempted to prophesy, or advised that the games not be held, and was reproved by Hecuba; this incident could provide a context for fr. 11 (probably from this play), άχραντα γάρ μ' έύηκε δεσπίξειν άεός και πρός παάόντων κάν κακοϊσι κειμένων σοφή κέκλημαι, πριν παϋειν δέ μαίνομαι, which is too sober in tone for the great prophecy scene. The likeliest possibility is that Hecuba persuaded Cassandra to enter the palace and left with her; the stage was then bare during the stasimon. But this is, of course, uncertain. The only other fragment likely to have been located before the agon is the mysterious fr. 16. Priam is almost certainly one of the speakers, for line 8, ]ov τετίμη[κ]ας τέκνων should be addressed either to him or to Hecuba, and the role implied by line 11, ] τήνδ' άφα^νίξεις χΰόνα, can only be his. Now Priam and Hecuba were probably played by the same actor and did not have speaking roles at the same time, unless a role was split between two actors, which does not seem to have been the usual practice (see Chart A). Priam, therefore, cannot be speaking with Hecuba, who must have left before his entrance and had time to change costume: this fragment does concern the establishment or celebration of the games and should be placed in or near the first episode. Of the many ways one could imagine the action, the simplest would be to put the stasimon after Hecuba's exit and before Priam's entrance, as postulated above; Priam would enter accompanied by his interlocutor. It would be easiest, considering the later action, if this were Deiphobus (played by Cassandra's actor), so that he would be on stage at the entry of the second chorus with Paris, but Euripides may not have done the simplest thing. But the episode is unlikely to have ended after this fragment and just before the agon, since the song of the secondary chorus would be less impressive immediately following a stasimon. We are fairly safe, therefore, in guessing that the stasimon intervened before Priam's entry; but we cannot eliminate the possibility of choral participation in the scene, or of the involvement of a character who appears in neither of the scenes on each side. Even Cassandra could participate, if she left in time for her actor to change to Deiphobus, and we cannot be sure when Deiphobus entered. Dramatically, however, the best solution would be a conversation between Priam and Deiphobus at this point. 12

Coles, p. 4 0 , "grounds admitted but not necessarily compelling."

27

One thing that can be said with confidence about fr. 16 is that it contains n o reference t o a plague, though such an allusion has b e e n postulated, 1 3 and Coles does n o t utterly reject the idea (p. 4 2 ) . But w e k n o w from the hypothesis that the games were established because o f Hecuba's grief; the exposure o f an infant w o u l d n o t be a cause o f pollution in Greek thinking and in any case the child did n o t die. Part o f the fragment, at least, seems t o be a consolatio to Priam, corresponding to the consolation offered t o Hecuba. Such a phrase as άνάα\τααίν re γ η ς suggests that the father is being reminded that he acted for the g o o d o f the city; as the m o t h e r was consoled w i t h the usual topoi, the father is consoled through more public, almost elevated arguments. This consolation is prompted b y discussion o f the games: ] τήνδ' ¿upayνίξεις χύόνα may refer t o some form o f purification or to the preparation o f a temenos.14 Changes of speaker within the fragment cannot be placed; it could be stichomythia or a long speech with about equal likelihood. This makes the problem o f the speaker even harder. But the chorus has played the part of comforter o n c e , and the poet probably sought variatio. In any case, Priam is one o f the speakers, and he need n o t leave the stage again until after the agon·, the other cannot be identified. The scene has impressed the audience with the grief o f b o t h parents over their child, and the necessity o f his having b e e n e x p o s e d .

c)

Agon

Priam probably remained o n stage while the subsidiary chorus 15 entered w i t h Alexander. The hypothesis says at this point (Coles' translation): the other shepherds, o n account of the arrogance of his relationship towards t h e m b o u n d him and brought him b e f o r e Priam. Questioned in the presence o f the ruler, he

and caught out (?)

each (?) of those w h o were slandering him, and he was allowed t o take part in the games arranged in his honour. 1 6 13

J. O. de G. Hanson, "The Reconstruction of Euripides' Alexandres," Hermes 92 (1964), p. 177 maintains the plague theory; something similar seems to be in the mind of Felix Schcidweiler, cited n. 5 above, whose arguments are largely based on his own (not especially convincing) supplements of fr. 16. 14 àipafvi^eiv is a rare verb. It should mean "separate off and consecrate," cf. Ale. 1146, and need not imply a state of impurity to be healed. ls The existence of the secondary chorus of herdsmen was known before the hypothesis from the scholia on Eur. Hipp. 58. 16 The hypothesis has already been virtually re-edited by Wolfgang Luppe, "Die Hypothesis zu Euripides' Alexandros," Philologus 120, Heft 1, pp. 12—19. He reads at this passage:

17 άπ[ολο]γΐ7ΐ?είς [δ ]è ini τού δυνά18 στο[υ] τ[ι]μωρ [kw] n[a]peiro και τούς δι19 αβάλλορτας έκάστ[ο]υς 'έλαβε και των 20 èff' αύτώι τελ[ο Υμένων ά·γώνων είάόη 21 μετασχεϊρ 28

This is problematic. Somehow the issue must have changed during the scene itself. At the beginning, Paris is himself under accusation b y his fellowslaves, b u t the main issue of the agon must be his entry into the games. Many of the literary fragments clearly derive from this scene (27—38), but most of them are too general in reference to tell much about the transition. The only real suggestion made so far (not surprisingly, since the issue could not arise until the hypothesis revealed the hostility of the subsidiary chorus to Alexander) is to introduce the bull motif from Hyginus 91. 1 7 This is the solution of Coles (pp. 24—25). In this version of the tale, Paris' pet bull was chosen as the prize in the games; he wished to enter in order to recover it. This does not fit well with the image of the hero the hypothesis presents, nor does it make sense in the light of Alexander's situation. Euripides, when he has contrived so elaborate a means of bringing his central figure into the action, does not need this device; it is hard to connect Paris' love for his bull with whatever has angered the herdsmen. No doubt his desire to compete is an expression of his natural arete, or arrogance: the play may well have left some deliberate ambiguity about the boundary between the two. Once the chorus entered, sang, and identified themselves, while delivering their complaint against Alexander, they cannot have participated to a large extent in the scene. The nature of the Euripidean agon requires a pair of long and formal speeches of a kind which no chorus or chorus leader can deliver. The first problem, therefore, is joined b y a second. Not only the issue must shift, so must the offended party. One could imagine that after a brief complaint by the chorus, perhaps including questioning b y Priam, the accused herdsman could deliver a speech whose conclusion would lead to the second part of the scene. What cannot be determined is whether Paris' arrogant behavior and his desire to enter the games were linked from the start, or whether, for instance, he requested permission to enter in order to show his detractors his true worth. Somehow the scene included b o t h questions, and somehow the complaints of the slaves were turned into a speech b y an actor, who cannot have represented a slave. The remnants of the speech are sufficient to show that it included an attack on all slaves, particularly the summary lines of fr. 33, where the speaker concludes, tfkeyxov οΰτω yap κακόν δοϋλον yévoç · yάστη ρ άπαντα, τούπίσω δ' obSèv σκοπεί.

In general, his readings are very close to those of Coles; he adds several ingenious supplements. In no case do his proposed changes or additions significantly alter the evidence for the play itself. If his reading here is correct (I cannot judge from the photograph), the hypothesis stresses the formality of the agon as a trial. 17 All previous attempts to restore the play have depended on either the pet bull of Hyginus 91 or on the inspiration of Aphrodite for a motive for Alexander. But such a positive motive is the kind of thing one would not expect the hypothesis to miss.

29

The obvious solution to the problem of the speaker is the re-introduction of Deiphobus, who was generally believed to be the opponent of Alexander before the hypothesis introduced the herdsmen. Deiphobus is hostile to Paris later in the play; Hecuba is obviously inappropriate in such a context and was probably doubled with Priam in any case, as argued above. How Deiphobus was introduced presents a further difficulty. If he was already on stage when the chorus and Paris entered, this would ease the difficulty, but the cause of his interest in the issue is undeterminable. If he did not enter the debate until the issue had been defined as entry into the games, this might not be much of a problem, since Euripides did not mind blatantly contriving his agones: the Helen scene of Troades has no dramatic or naturalistic likelihood whatever. It may be worth mentioning that the hypothesis has Paris "catch o u t " έκάστους τους διαβάλλοντας, which suggests different attacks, though the hypothesis cannot be trusted on such a matter of detail. The fragments of the episode can be divided into those of the first and those of the second part. Fr. 27 is the most interesting from this point of view, for it probably forms part of the original accusation or of Alexander's reply: δούλων όσοι φιλοϋοι δεσποτών yévoç, πρός τών όμοιων πόλεμον αίρονται μέ^αν. Perhaps it is more likely to come from the second chorus, 1 8 considering fr. 38, which must be spoken b y Paris to the subsidiary chorus, perhaps at the opening of a speech of defense: ώ παγκά/αστοι και τό δοϋλον où λ ό γ ω έχοντες, άλλα τή τύχχι κεκτημένοι. This suggests that Alexander makes a distinction between true slaves and those who are slaves λ ό γ ω ; he might not refer to himself as a slave at all. In those fragments which belong to Deiphobus, the word "slave" occurs repeatedly; in the two belonging to the main portion of Paris' rhesis (36 and 37), the terms employed are πλούτος and πενία; the difference in vocabulary corresponds to the difference in emphasis on physis and environment. At any rate, two speeches by Alexander seem to be required, though the first may have been short. 1 9 18 The fragment certainly sounds like self-praise from a slave; it could, perhaps, represent part of Deiphobus' entry into the quarrel. He would then be praising the secondary chorus. 19 Alexander's refusal to accept the definition of himself as "slave" and substitution of "poor man" could lead to some ideas about the sequence of events. He probably defends himself against the herdsmen not by denying his arrogance, but by claiming that it is justified by his excellence: this would be almost a twist on the attitude of a supporter of pure physis (a poor aristocrat like Theognis). Externals do not prove merit. When Priam answers that defending the herds is not sufficient proof, he might challenge any hero of Troy to meet him in competition in a speech possibly modeled on Od.. viii, 166—185.

30

However the passage from one issue to the other was managed and the involvement of Deiphobus effected, the agon ended with the granting of permission to Paris to participate in the games and, by implication, in his "acquittal" of whatever charge beyond general obnoxiousness his fellow slaves had brought against him. Fr. 39 is probably placed correctly here by Snell, χρόνος δέ δείξει , I have tentatively placed in a scene of consultation of Odysseus with Agamemnon, though the passage at Ranae 1446ff might suggest that the speaker was Palamedes: one might compare the parody of 578, 4, πελα-γίαν ύπβρ πλάκα at Ranae 1438, a complete change of context. The lines could, however, come from the agon; so perhaps frs. 584 and 585, on the just man. These could also be from a final speech of Palamedes reported by the messenger, for instance, but the irony of the first, εις TOI δίκαιος μυρίων ούκ ένδικων κρατεί το âeiov την δίκην re συλλαβών, seems too bitter for it to come after the agon, and both could well serve to demonstrate Palamedes' confidence in his own innocence. Fr. 579, πάλαι πάλαι δή α' έξερωτήοαι σχόλη μ' άπειρη e

ϋέλων,

is corrupt and hard to place, but it should come early in the play, to judge by its tone.

An Echo of the Palamedes in Philostratus Philostratus, though he did not follow the Palamedes of Euripides in the Heroicus, seems to have known the play: he quotes not only the famous lines of fr. 588 Ν 2 , but the following lines indirectly (see p. 83 above). It is therefore natural to look for other echoes of the work in his narrative. At Heroicus X, 10, he describes the coming of Palamedes to Troy: fiye δε ές' "Ιλιοι^ orne ναϋν ούτε άνδρα άλλ' έν πορύμείω ζύν Ο ία/α τ φ άδελφώ έπλευσε πολλών, φασί, βραχιόνων άντάζιον έαυτόν ηγούμενος · The φασί implies a proverb or quotation. The phrase is an echo of II. XI, 514, which seems to have been quasi-proverbial, 37 ίητρός yàp άνήρ πολλών άντάξιος άλλων, but the rhythm is iambic and the metaphorical use of βραχίων is familiar from Euripides (Supp. 478). The closest parallel in both language and thought is Antiope fr. 199 Ν 2 : 37

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Judging by the style of the Platonic quotations, Politicus

297e and Symp.

214b.

το δ' άαϋενές μου και το ύήλυ σώματος κακώς έμέμφάης- ei γαρ ev φρονεϊν éχω, Kpeiooou τόδ' έστί καρτερού βραχίονος · Both Amphion, who must be the speaker here, and Palamedes are poets and sophoi. Philostratus is not echoing the Antiope, and it is unlikely that he combined the Homeric echo with what sounds like tragic diction. What is extremely plausible, however, is that Euripides did so, and that he in the Antiope varied the lines he had created a few years before for a similar character: we have before us the disiecti membra poetae.

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CHAPTER THREE

The Trojan Trilogy The end of the introduction to this work provided some reasons why it is legitimate to presuppose that the Trojan plays of 415 were meant by their author to be connected with one another in a way that most plays of Euripides were not connected with others. The audience was to feel dramatic impact and to seek dramatic meaning by setting each tragedy against the others. The chief hint to the audience that a special unity was in question here was the use of three Trojan subjects for a single production: at the very least, the spectators would be compelled to see the group as a dramatic study of the Trojan War, a "political" trilogy. But this presupposition is not enough. Before we can proceed to the analysis of the intellectual and ethical problems the poet chose to treat in the trilogie form, the reasonable guess must be given all the support it can be given from the extant parts of the texts. The works have more in common than the Trojan subject and their deeper themes of the reversal of values and language; between the obvious relationship of subject and the inner relationship of theme lies a group of deliberate links which join both plot and meaning. Many of these have doubtless perished. Similarities of language and imagery to point the way to connections cannot, of course, survive the loss of the poet's words; nonetheless, hints, at least, permeate the remaining text. The links are also peculiar in being nearly all indirect. Euripides did not want to repeat himself, and he deliberately created ambiguity and irony. For these reasons, the independence of the single play is not compromised by explicit reference to what the audience has already seen or will see on stage. Instead the poet gives us statements which inevitably remind the reader or spectator of the preceding plays, or he turns our attention to different views of events which lie outside all three tragedies.1 The connections are prepared for the 1 I have in this chapter continually stressed this particular point in order to r e f u t e Koniaris. He summarizes his argument on p. 120 as follows: " H a d Euripides a t t e m p t e d through flashbacks to make the Troades a continuation of the Alexander, why would he have abstained so systematically f r o m making references in the Troades to the δρώμενα proper of the Alexander? Why would he have utilized elements f o u n d only outside the δρώμενα proper of the Alexander and why would he have used them so obscurely when he had endless opportunities in the Troades for introducing effective flashbacks to the δρώμενα proper of the Alexander?" The word in which this argument reveals itself is, of course, "systematically": if there is systematic and, hence, deliberate abstention, some artistic purpose must connect the two works. The problem is similar to that raised by

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reader, but they are not made explicit for him. Troades is not "about" the Alexander or the Palamedes, but it does have special echoes, parallelisms of character and language, and plot developments which place it in a kind of dramatic dialogue with the two previous plays. Many of these links have been discussed before. 2 They have not, however, been treated with the attention they deserve and need to enable the hypothesis of a trilogy to withstand criticism or to bring out their thematic function. I do not claim to have found all the connections latent in even the remaining material, and I am sure that much can no longer be recovered; but something, at least, has survived. A. The Prologue of Troades The opening rhesis of the play is spoken by Poseidon, who is portrayed, contrary to the Homeric tradition, as a pro-Trojan god. 3 While even in the Iliad his anti-Trojan attitude is never as violent as that of Hera or Athena, 4 his claim at the start of this play to have loved Troy ever since he built its walls is surprising nonetheless: the familiar story of how he was cheated by Laomedon has been completely ignored. 5 Though Apollo, despite the ill treatment he received, is always a defender of Troy (Poseidon reproaches him at II. XXI, 441ff), this treatment of Poseidon requires explanation. It is not really necessary for any mechanical reason. The storm could have been predicted by Athena alone as sole prologue speaker; or if an effect of pathos were desired, another pro-Trojan god could have been introduced (e.g., Apollo), or perhaps Poseidon himself could have been shown as moved by pity for the defeated Trojans and anger at Greek sacrilege. But the portrayal of Poseidon does more than facilitate the prediction of a disaster awaiting the Achaeans. By removing one of the traditional causes of divine enmity against Troy, it puts a greater emphasis on the other. Poseidon says at 23—24:6 "Monro's Law," the principle that no incident of the Iliad is repeated in the Odyssey ; did not the poet of the Odyssey know the Iliad, or is he purposely constructing his work as a complement? 2 Snell discusses the trilogy especially at pp. 65—68, but also elsewhere passim·, see also T. B. L. Webster, "Euripides' Trojan Trilogy," For Service to Classical Studies (Cheshire: Melbourne, 1966), pp. 2 0 7 - 1 3 , and Tragedies of Euripides, pp. 1 7 7 - 8 1 . 3 That Poseidon really is to be understood as pro-Trojan has been disputed by Joseph Fontenrose in Agon I (1967), pp. 135—41, but his attempt to show that Poseidon loves only the physical city he himself built relies on distortion of the plain sense of the text. 4 In particular, he rescues Aeneas at II. XX, 2 9 I f f . He has not taken a vow never to help any Trojan. 5 For the cheating by Laomedon, see II. XXI, 441 ff. The whole story is implied by any account of the first sack of Troy, such as we have in this play at 799ff; but even in this ode, the king's dishonesty is kept completely in the background. 6 All quotations from Troades follow the edition of Werner Biehl, Troades (Teubner: Leipzig, 1970), unless specially noted. In no passage cited is a difference between this text and that of Murray, or any other standard edition, crucial to my argument. 5 Scodel (Hyp. 60)

65

έ γ ώ òé—νικώμαι 'Ήρας, Άΰάνας

yàp 'Apyeiaç t?', a t avvereiλον

âeoû, Φρΰγας

Hera and Athena: as far as Troades is concerned, the cause of the Trojan War was the Judgment of Paris. Poseidon does not recall any Plan of Zeus, such as Euripides often mentioned in other plays; 7 the destruction of the city is entirely the work of the two angry goddesses. This emphasis on the Judgment tightens the mythological framework of the trilogy, for the events of the Alexander become more crucial the more weight is placed on the Judgment as the cause of Troy's fall. A slight verbal echo confirms the association of this speech with the Alexander:

λ ε ί π ω τό πλεινόν

"Wiov βωμούς

τ' έμούς

(1.25) is a reminder of the very first line of the Alexander (fr. 69), ] καί τό κλεινόν "IXLOV. The epithet, no longer appropriate, sets off the present of Troades against a past defined by the time of the Alexander and emphasizes the causal link between the events of the two tragedies. Often discussed has been the second part of the prologue and its relationship to the Palamedes,8 This play included, as has been shown above, a scene in which Oiax sent a message to Nauplius about the fate of Palamedes; Nauplius revenged himself on the Greek army by setting false beacons to wreck much of the fleet during the storm which attacked the ships as they sailed from Troy. The storm planned by the gods in this prologue is therefore the prerequisite for Nauplius' vengeance, and the fact that Poseidon was Palamedes' ancestor makes a connection all the more likely. 9 The storm is specifically tied to Euboea at the first mention of the corpses at 1.84, and the Capherean Cliffs are named last in the list of places which will receive the dead (I. 90). The cliffs were closely associated in the mythological tradition with Nauplius the Wrecker, 10 and it is impossible that he should not have come to mind as 7 For the Plan of Zeus, see Helen 36—41, Orestes 1 6 3 9 - 4 2 , Electro 1282-3, fr. 1082 N*. The most remarkable attempt in this connection is that of John Wilson in GRBS 8 (1967), pp. 205—20. He considers that the entire second portion of the prologue of Troades, after the opening rhesis, is interpolated, and that the section dealing with the storm was proabably taken directly from the Palamedes; mihi non persuasit. He does prove that the prologue of Troades is in certain ways unique, but the end of the play is also unique in lacking any prophetic element. He does not recognize that the god's leave-taking is not entirely a literal event; in a sense, he could "leave" Troy without coming there, as Hecuba at 985 claims Aphrodite could have brought Helen to Troy without leaving the heavens. Poseidon has come in order to say goodbye in the formal abandonment of the city by its gods; his formulae of departure, therefore, can refer not to his immediate going, but to his permanent absence in the future. 9 At Iph. Aul. 198, Palamedes is described as the son of Nauplius, the son of Poseidon; he is thus the god's grandson. In other versions, two heroes named Nauplius are distinguished, one the son of Poseidon, the other, his descendant in the fifth generation, an Argonaut (Ap. Rh. I, 134) and Palamedes' father. The name of Oeax, Palamedes' brother, maintains the family's assocation with the sea; Palamedes is the only member of the family who shows no marine associations, and even the παλάμη is used to guide a ship. 10 Note especially Helen 1126ff. 8

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they were named. Nevertheless, a whole list of sites where corpses will come to land is given, and the motive here for the raising of the storm has nothing directly to do with Palamedes. On the other hand, the motive is in certain ways analogous to the case of Palamedes. Athena is angry because of Ajax's sacrilege in dragging Cassandra from her temple, 11 but her anger extends to all the Greeks, since he has not been punished or even reproached. (I. 71). The Greek neglect of justice here reverses that in the Palamedes: before the innocent man was condemned, here the guilty one escapes. The thematic similarity reinforces the allusion to the cliffs, bringing Palamedes into the mind, though he himself is never mentioned. In fact, the poet's purpose made it impossible to name him. For the revenge Nauplius exacts for his son is not the concern of the gods who make it possible, and though Euripides wanted that vengeance to be present in the minds of his audience, he did not want to attribute any real consideration for justice to the gods he depicts. Athena is not angry because of the injustice committed by the army in allowing Ajax to go unpunished, but annoyed at the lack of respect for herself their neglect reveals (1. 69: ύβριοόεΐσάν με). Poseidon gives no reason for his own help in raising the storm, but he has been hostile to the Greeks all along, and seems to be eager to return to good terms with Athena. Though he expresses pity for the Trojans, and ends the prologue with a moralizing sententia, he seems fundamentally little more serious than Athena. The poet thus achieves a double effect. He fulfills an expectation aroused in the Palamedes by establishing the conditions for Nauplius' revenge; but he does not attribute any care for this revenge, or for justice of any kind, to the gods. Poseidon's pity for the Trojans is not unlike the attitude of Artemis to Hippolytus, as Athena's to the Greeks is like that of Aphrodite to Hippolytus. 12 If the destruction of the Greek fleet is vengeance for the sufferings of the Trojans, its emotional effect is lost by the placement of the scene, for the Trojan women do not hear of it, and by the end of the play, when the audience is full of their sufferings, it is almost forgotten. If it helps provide some justice for Palamedes, that was not the intention of the gods who bring it about. The reminiscence is achieved; but the gods are not therefore just. 11 Euripides does not make it an actual rape; she is irapdévoç at 41 and 252, and her flesh is still à-γνή at 453. See P. G. Mason, "Kassandra," JHS 79 (1959), pp. 82 and 89. That versions in which she was actually raped already existed is suggested by vase paintings in which she is naked while being dragged by Ajax; the maintenance of her virginity in Troad.es helps make her the "same" Cassandra she was in the Alexander. 12 His departure is, in fact, similar. Barrett on Hipp. 1437—39 points out that as the holy places of the gods must be kept free of contact with death, it is assumed that the gods avoid death; cf. also Alcestis 22ff.

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Β. The Characters Two characters are repeated in Troades from the Alexander, Hecuba and Cassandra, while two others echo characters from the previous play, Helen corresponding to Alexander, Andromache to Hector. The two Greeks who most dominate the action from behind the scenes, Agamemnon and Odysseus, are the two villains of the Palamedes; the herald may also have been a character in that play. Menelaus is completely new, but he falls into the role of judge paralleled in the other plays (Priam and Agamemnon). 13 Hecuba's first appearance is in a sense a reversal of her original entry in the Alexander. There she mourned for a child who had not actually died, and the chorus came to comfort her; here her mourning is for all her children and for Priam. Her sons are truly dead, but now she assumes the role of consoler. Her opening anapests (especially 101—104) are essentially that exhortation to τλημοσύνη which is a central part of the traditional consolatio:14 μ€ταβαλλομένου δαίμονος άνέχου • πλεϊ κατά πορύμόν, πλβϊ κατά δαίμονα, μηδέ προσίστω πρωραν βιότου προς κύμα πλέουσα τύχαισιν. Her very laments constitute an acceptance of what has taken place which sharply contrasts with her refual to accept the consolations offered by the chorus in the first episode of the Alexander, though she has now lost the real consolations the chorus could then urge upon her, her other children. She is still within this framework in her advice to Andromache at 697—698: 15 άλλ ώ φίλη παϊ, τάς μέν "Εκτορος τύχας êaoov—où μή δάκρνά νιν σώσχι τά σά. It emerges in the following lines that she still has hopes of Astyanax: her advice to Andromache shows that she has fully accepted the message of the chorus of the Alexander and has transferred her emotions from the dead to the living as far as she can. As her grief for the dead child in the Alexander led directly to her violence in defending her living children against the intrusion of the cowherd, so her final loss, that of Astyanax, leads directly into her attempt to force some vengeance for Troy by persuading Menelaus to kill Helen. The alternation from apathy to anger and energy in this scene 13

The "trial" scenes found in all three plays show a structural similarity which is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the hypothesis of a trilogy. The agones will be treated in some detail in Chapter 4. 14 For τλημοσύνη as a regular feature of consolations, note especially Archilochus 13 West (7 Diehl), and see Rudolf Kassel, Untersuchungen zur griechischen und römischen Konsolationsliteratur, Zetemata 18 (1958), pp. 54ff. 15 Compare II. XXIV, 5 5 0 - 5 1 and Kassel, p. 63.

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has surprised some critics, 16 but the transformation of the griefstricken into the enraged mother in Alexander may well have seemed equally sudden. By the end of her speech on the dead child, however (1203—6), she can only pronounce the final epitaph for Troy in an echo of Poseidon's last comment in the prologue: ϋνητών δέ μώρος ό'σπς eu πράοσειν βέβαια χαίρει

δοκών

The wheel has completely circled; her final abandonment to grief at the end of Troades and her performance of the rites for Astyanax, in a ritual that brings no comfort, places her exactly where she was at the beginning of the first play of the trilogy. Her character is clearly the same in both tragedies, and she is surrounded by the same patterns of grief, desolation, and rage: but the movement from grief through rage to consolation has been reversed. Cassandra's character likewise is exactly the same in the two plays in which she appears; in some ways, her nature excludes her from dramatic development. Yet in her too there is reversal: in Alexander she prophesied disaster from what was in a moment about to be seen as great joy; in Troades she prophesies victory from what appears to be absolute defeat. Despite this change, she is presented in the same manner in both plays; Hecuba herself refers to the lack of any difference in her at lines 349—350: σεσωφρονήκασ',

ούδέ a' ai τύχαι, τέκνον, άλλ' èr' èv ταύτώ μένεις.

In each work she shows a self-consciousness about the irregularity of her own behavior; in the Alexander such a self-consciousness must lie behind the apology of fr. 8, while in this play it emerges as she begins her sophistic argument (366—67): ëvûeoç μέν, άλλ' δμως τοοόνδε y' έξω στήαομαι βακχευμάτων. The word βακχευμάτων is significant. Fr. 7 of the Alexander must surely refer to Cassandra, for no one else could be said to be mad (βακχεύει φρένα)}1 This Dionysiac imagery for Cassandra's madness, used despite her devotion to Apollo, is repeated in Troades. The very phrase is repeated by the herald at 16

Sartre speaks of "le double attitude d'Hecube, qui tantôt s'abandonne à son malheur, tantôt réclame justice," in the introduction to Les Troyennes (Gallimard: Paris, 1965), p. 6. 17 Theoretically, one might try, with scholarly caution, to think of other possibilities, such as Hecuba's murderous rage; but a glance through the concordance of Allen-Italie should convince anyone that the Dionysiac language is used only for real insanity: note especially Or. 411 and 835, HF 899, 1122. It is used for Cassandra in other Euripidean plays, cf. Hec. 121, 676, and the Dionysiac gesture of I ph. Aul. 756ff. On the other hand, it is not so associated with Cassandra in Euripides as to lose all force as a link in these plays; there is no sign of it, for instance, at And. 296—300.

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1. 408, ei μή ο' 'Απόλλων έξεβάκχβυσβν φρένας, and other, similar language is frequent in the Cassandra scene. We do not know whether it was further developed in the Alexander beyond the tiny fragment we possess, but the use of this kind of imagery for Cassandra seems to have been a unique Euripidean creation. 18 It thus links the two works decisively to an extent that Cassandra's appearance in both does not in itself link them: this Cassandra, quite differently represented from her great model in Aeschylus, is characterized by special language.19 It is worth remarking that none of the surviving parts of Cassandra's prophecy in the Alexander alludes to the events of Troades itself: in what remains, at least, there is no reference to the enslavement of the Trojan women or to the murder of Hector's son. This may, of course, be chance. On the other hand, the corresponding passages in Troades look back, though from a very different viewpoint, to the subjects of the earlier prophecy, Paris the " f a x " and Hector, whom his sister saw lying dead in fr. 10. Where she first proclaimed the danger of Alexander, and perceived Hector's corpse in her vision, here she speaks first of the glory of her greatest brother, which would have been unknown without the Achaeans (394—97) and then of the achievement of Paris in marrying the daughter of Zeus: the inversion is, as far as can be seen from the extant remains, precise. The entire tenor of the prophecy is a complete inversion, of course, as the Cassandra who previously declared the doom of Troy twice calls herself νικηφόρος (353, 460); even the detail of Cassandra's calling herself one of the Erinyes at 1. 457 echoes the earlier prophecy, for Helen was described in similar terms in fr. 10, "quo iudicio Lacedaemonia mulier, furiarum una adveniet." The only repetition may be the obscure allusion to the fate of Hecuba at 429—30, a prophecy already made in fr. 14 of the Alexander, if the line really belongs in that play. 20 Yet even this is brief and, like the other prophetic passages, alludes to a subject outside both plays. Both prophecies, insofar as they concern the Trojans, focus on the time between the Alexander and the Troades. Much of Cassandra's prophecy in Troades concerns Odysseus and Agamemnon. This is perhaps sufficiently motivated by the fact that Hecuba has been allotted to the first, Cassandra herself to the other; but the prophetess knows that her mother will not leave Troy with Odysseus, and the emphasis on his fate (even if 435—45 are spurious) seems superfluous. In fact, one might sooner expect a prophecy of the fate awaiting all the Greeks, the coming 18

See Mason, op. cit. p. 92. Koniaris challenges Webster on p. 108, " H e must prove, for example, that Cassandra in the Troades is the same Cassandra as in the Alexander and n o t merely the Cassandra who belongs in the Troades by virtue of m y t h o l o g y . " I trust this section has shown that she is the same Cassandra; whether her appearance in the two plays could in any case be explained as required " b y virtue of m y t h o l o g y " is very d o u b t f u l . 20 The fragment is not attributed to this play, b u t where other than the Alexander could a prophecy of Hecuba's fate belong in the works of Euripides? 19

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storm; but the prologue is not repeated. Moreover, the prophecy of Cassandra deals with the villains of the Palamedes. No more is said of Palamedes in this scene than was said in the prologue, for Cassandra is interested in vengeance for Troy, not in the crimes committed by the Greeks against each other. But in defining the evils to come for the two, she completes the image of Greek disaster begun in the prologue in a way that fulfills the Palamedes. The woes of other heroes who traditionally survived the storm are not mentioned, though Neoptolemus or Menelaus might well have been. These, however, have been omitted both in order to fit the prophecy to the Palamedes and because the poet does not want the fates of Helen and Andromache to be predicted. These two, the other central characters of Troades, both depend dramatically on figures from the Alexander. Andromache's entire presentation of herself centers on her life as Hector's wife; she enters in a wagon accompanied by Hector's son and Hector's armor. Helen is treated throughout the play as the cause of the Trojan War, with Alexander almost lost behind her: she has taken his place. Naturally the Trojans stress her role rather than his, but nevertheless one implies the other, and Andromache, at least makes the connection (597-98) 2 1 : δυσφροσύναισι ΰβών, óYe σος yôvoç €κφνγ€ν δς λεχέων orvyepcjl· χάριν ώλεσε népyapa

"ALÒAL·,

Τροίας.

Thus, through Helen, Alexander is almost continually present in this play. Even Deiphobus reappears briefly in connection with Helen at 959—60.22 In neither case, however, does the female counterpart, Andromache or Helen, correspond to the character portrayed in the Alexander. Rather, just as the characters of that play carried intense overtones of what they were eventually to become, the women associated with them bring to mind their husbands' characteristic actions. The Paris of whom Helen reminds us is the Paris of the Judgment and the rape; the Hector mourned by Andromache is the great defender of Troy. Prefigured in the Alexander, they are remembered in Troades. The repetition of characters from the first play in the last shows a pattern. Hecuba's character passes through an emotional development in opposite directions in the two works, as if the pivot lay between; Cassandra's prophecies center at the same point. Andromache and Helen recall characters whose 21

Biehl assigns this passage to the chorus. I see no reason to alter the traditional assignments, and prefer to give the lines to A n d r o m a c h e ; b u t in such a matter the tradition has no authority. My argument is not seriously affected by the issue. 22 The lines are bracketed by most editors; wrongly, I think. T h e y seem to me to be answered by Hecuba at 1016—17, where the plural must allude to marriage other than the original liaison of Paris and Helen; the problem of Hecuba's saying that Helen claims to have been taken by force (998—1001) is separate. I in fact suspect that these lines are n o t genuine (see Appendix).

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telos also fell in this intervening space; the great contrasting figures appeared at the beginning without yet having attained their essential natures, and are echoed at the end by their women: what they were is visible only indirectly in the prophecies and the images of themselves and their wives which frame the empty space the poet has placed with such emphasis in the center of his work.

C. The tirade against Odysseus At lines 278 and following, Hecuba, on hearing that she has been allotted to Odysseus, bursts into a lament in which she grieves at being the slave of such a man: μυοαρω δολίφ (re) λέλσγχα φωτί δουλεύειν, πολεμίω δίκας παρανομώ δάκει, 8 ς πάντα τάκεϊϋεν έν— ΰάδ', άντίπαλ' αύάις έκείσε διπτνχω γλώσσς. άφιλα τα πρότερα φίλα τιθέμενος

πάντων.

This is peculiar. To be sure, the general treatment of Odysseus in tragedy is extremely unsympathetic, and he will be revealed later in the play as the murderer of Astyanax; but so far he has done nothing to justify the particular accusations Hecuba makes against him. He has not even been described as the man responsible for the making of the Wooden Horse, which in lines 9—12 is called the work of Epeius and Pallas only. In respect to the Trojans, moreover, it makes no real sense to accuse Odysseus of reversing friends and enemies; whatever evils he has done them and will do are not of this kind. The lines must surely be an allusion to the Palamedes, where his whole object is, precisely, attained by ¿Lpika τά πρότερα φίλα τιϋέμένος πάντων. This is the tone of the Aristophanic lines usually attributed to the Palamedes:23 εί των πολιτών οίοι νϋν πιοτεύομεν τούτοις άπιστήοαιμεν, οΐς οι) χρώμεύα, τούτοισι χρησαίμεοϋ', Ισως οωύείμεν άν. The world of the Palamedes was permeated with just this kind of inversion; Odysseus deliberately created it, and it is in this context that the tirade of Hecuba must be understood. Of course we are not to imagine that Hecuba has heard of, or cares about, Palamedes. As a character, she has her own reasons for hating Odysseus, and her opinion of him is confirmed when we learn that it is he who has per23

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Fr. 5 8 2 N 2 ; the reply to the speech is

eu y', ώ

Παλάμηδες, ώ

σοφωτάτη φύσις.

suaded the Greeks to kill Astyanax; but the poet has distorted the form in which her hatred is expressed in order to make a point to his audience. Tragedy is not an entirely realistic genre, and its personae not infrequently say not what is most appropriate to themselves, but what the author needs to have said: 24 this is, to an extent, such a case. The attack is so framed that the audience would think of Palamedes, without their having to assume that he was in Hecuba's mind. Even as foreshadowing of Astyanax's death, the passage is a link between the Palamedes and the Troades, for it helps to paint Odysseus with the same colors he showed in the earlier play. At line 721, Talthybius says, vucq. b' 'Οδυσσεύς èv Πα^έλλησιι; λέγω^; it is the same course of events as in the Palamedes, where the Danaans again committed their crime πεισάέντες άνύρώπω δεινφ και άναώεΐ. Yet the disciple of Realpolitik who is behind this murder would not be quite the figure from the Palamedes without Hecuba's words. He is not just a ruthless politician, but a perverter of all language and values and a destroyer of trust and good faith. The cry of Hecuba brings this man into the background of Troades, and defines the Greeks who stand behind the action of the last play as the same men who themselves acted in the second.

D. The murder of the innocent The plot of the Alexander depended on the presumed death of an exposed child and on the attempt to murder a young man who had done no actual wrong to anyone. The Palamedes involved even fuller use of the theme of the innocent murdered; and in Troades, the theme is again used, and summarized, in the slaying of Astyanax. All four killings are linked, more or less subtlely, to the others. The two most obviously alike are the first and the last. Astyanax and the infant Alexander are both children taken from their grieving mothers for political reasons; these political motives are precisely opposite. Alexander had to be killed in order that Troy might be saved; Astyanax is murdered in order to ensure its complete and permanent destruction. At least one verbal echo can be traced; the ]ov τετίμηκας τέκνων of fr. 16, mysterious as the fragment is, certainly refers to the lost infant, and Andromache (line 740), begins her farewell to her child ώ φίΚτατ, ώ περισσά τψηάείς τέκνον.25 There is some ambiguity in the connection, for we cannot help but 24

This phenomenon is most obvious in prologues, but is by no means confined to them. Nor is it unique to Greek drama; in the Arden edition of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, for instance, J. W. Lever (p. lxxvi) comments on Lucio's speech in Act i, 4, that it is "out of character, and the more impressive as a formulation of standards." 25 The verb TlßCW does not occur elsewhere in Euripides in association with τέκνον or any synonymous word. 73

feel that the exposure of Alexander was justifiable and necessary, since we know that the child was as dangerous as his mother's dream portended; this may cause us to wonder, even though our sympathies are entirely with Hecuba and Andromache, whether Astyanax is as negligible a threat to the Greeks as he appears. The Achaeans fear a resurgent Troy; this is exactly what Hecuba has hoped for at lines 701 following, and the departure of Andromache is followed by a lyric in which the chorus is used to remind the audience that Troy was sacked before, by Heracles and Telamón, yet revived enough to produce Paris. Despite our feelings—which the poet deliberately arouses—the mind must be driven at least to comprehend the Greeks' fear. The memory of Paris in association with Astyanax is especially strong since the child is also linked with the Paris who appeared in the earlier play, who seemed so manifestly excellent and bore such destruction. The murder attempt on the cowherd and the slaying of Astyanax are both motivated by irrational fear; Hecuba complains at 1158ff that the Greeks are cowards, and concludes at 1165—66: oik αΙνώ φόβον, όστις φοβείται μή διεξελάών λ ό γ ω · This corresponds to Hector's words to Deiphobus at lines 7—8 of fr. 23, èyù δέ y' ό'σ]τις μικρά έχων δειvòv νο]μίξει και συνέστηκεν

éyκλήματα φόβω[ι

But the motive for the killing is given also in other terms in each case. Andromache at 742—43 addresses her son: ή του πατρός δέ a' eùyéuei' άπώλεσεν, ή τοϊσιν άλλοις yíyverai σωτηρία. This could hardly fail to remind a sensitive listener of fr. 44 of the Alexander, where the young hero himself cries όίμοι, όανοϋμαι δια το χρήσιμον φρενών 6 τοϊσιν άλλοις yiyverai σωτηρία. The reminiscence must be one of the strongest self-echoes anywhere in Euripides; the repetition of an entire line can hardly be carelessness or accident. The murder of the innocent in this trilogy is not just a recurrent crime; it represents an inversion of the rules by which life is normally lived: what is elsewhere enviable becomes a source of danger. Palamedes, even more than Paris, could be said to be the victim of το χρήσιμον φρενών.26 The treatment of Astyanax wavers between a dominant association with his father and an underlying connection with Alexander. Thus, in the words of 26

Hence his use by Xenophon at Mem. IV, ii, 33 as an example, along with Daedalus, of the possible disadvantages of wisdom, which Euthydemus has claimed to be indisputably a good. 74

Andromache just quoted, the boy is linked with Hector through words which recall Paris. The child's death is implicitly contrasted with his father's at 1167ff, but with that of Alexander at 1209, where his failure to reach the age for athletic contests is lamented. The theme of his marriage joins the two models. The marriage of Paris and Helen is in mind throughout the tragedy, and is explicitly mentioned at 780—81 by the chorus; the scene where it is most prominent, the trial of Helen, is placed inside the section of the drama dealing with Astyanax, as if to ensure that it is not forgotten. Y e t the wedding of Hector and Andromache is also mentioned at 745—49, and Hecuba's lament at 1218—19 reflects this marriage: â δ' έι> γάμοις έχρήν σε προσδέούαι Άσιατίδων Ύήμαντα την ύπερτάτην

χρο'ι

A genuine, if elusive, ambiguity is created by these mixed echoes of Hector and Alexander. We feel with Hecuba that the Greeks are cowardly to fear a child; but though explicitly their fear derives from the child's association with Hector, we may find the boy potentially fearful through his association with Paris. Thus the murders of the Alexander and Troades are linked by theme and diction. The Palamedes is harder to join, since less remains from which the echoes could be gleaned. But the hero of the Palamedes, like the Paris of the Alexander, is a victim of ιρΰόνος. The word does not appear in the extant remains of the Alexander, but resentful envy is clearly the chief emotion in the heart of Deiphobus, and the idea is so closely associated with athletic victory that any Greek would have recognized it as Deiphobus' motive; the role of φΰόνος in the Palamedes has already been discussed. The plot against Palamedes is more complicated than that against Paris, but essentially it shows the same theme of innocence trapped by intrigue; even in the Alexander, a phrase like 7 ± ] δεϋρο, είς βόλον yàp äv ττεσοι (fr. 23b, 1. 43) foreshadows the atmosphere of the Palamedes. The deaths of Palamedes and Astyanax are related in that the complete harmlessness of both is emphasized: the first is ούδέν' àkyòvovaav, the second ουδέν αίτιον. The two are also similar in being unprotected: in fr. 588 N 2 , Palamedes, killed by the Danaans, is the "nightingale of the Muses." The metaphor not only affirms his status as poet, but also, evidently, echoes the ainos of Hesiod's Erga 202—12. Here the hawk addresses the nightingale in his talons: άφρων δ', ός κ' édéXfl προς κρείσσονας άντι/φερΐξειν νίκης re στέperai πρός τ' αίσχεσιν άλγεα πάσχει This is a world where, as Hesiod has just said at 1. 201, κακού δ' ούκ έσσεται. άλκή; Palamedes' death, through his portrayal as the murdered nightingale, is put into this pattern. Astyanax is killed in a similarly amoral world; the 75

herald follows his message of the decision to kill the boy with this advice (Unes 726-29): άλλ' μήτ' μήτε έχεις

ώς yevéoùcx), και σοφωτέρα φανfj · άντέχου τοϋδ', ευγενώς δ' äXyet κακοίς, σάένουσα μηδέν ίσχύειν δόκβι· yàp άλκήν οϋδαμχι •

It is exactly the advice of the hawk to the nightingale; it is impossible and futile to resist superior force. The wise man and the child are linked not only by their harmlessness, but their complete helplessness before the Greek hawks: their deaths are images of the world as a domain of pure force. All three tragedies are thus united by the theme of the innocent murdered. The death of Astyanax seems to complete a dramatic movement which began with the description of Paris' exposure in the prologue oí Alexander; the funeral of the dead child ends the tragic action of Troades as mourning for the supposedly dead infant began the Alexander. In between there are two further uses of the theme in the attempted murder of Paris and the effected murder of Palamedes. The killing of Palamedes, where the theme is treated in most detail, is at the very center of the trilogy, framed by the appearances of the theme in the other two works. It represents a shift in the large dramatic movement of the group: after two attempted killings by Trojans, we behold two successful killings by Greeks, with Odysseus as the instigator of both. Though this may not be as obvious a structure as is presented by an Aeschylean trilogy, it is neither obscure nor unimportant.

E. The Torch One thematic image can still be traced in what is left of the group: the torch which betokened the fatality inherent in Alexander recurs through the first play and the last. Whether the image was used in the Palamedes we do not know. But it is easy to see in the other two. 27 The image is still explicit in two fragments of the Alexander. In fr. 1, Hecuba's dream is described as part of the prologue; pregnant with Alexander, she dreamt of giving birth to a blazing torch. The image is taken up by Cassandra, who announces the presence of her brother with a cry to the people to extinguish the torch in fr. 10. 27

Koniaris attempts to deny the connective function of the torch symbolism on pp. 119—20; he is forced to presume that a Greek audience would not see the same object if different words for "torch" were used and that Alexander could explicitly be called a "torch" by Helen without an audience's thinking of Hecuba's dream: the argument flies in the face of all common sense.

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Torches reappear in Troades, but the first time they enter, they are no longer directly associated with Paris. 28 Cassandra dances onto the stage bearing her own wedding torches. Yet even here the light of the torches is associated with the destruction of Troy, for Talthybius' first thought on seeing the glare (11. 298ff) is that the women have set fire to the buildings where they are held in an attempt at suicide. In a sense, he is not wrong, since Cassandra's celebration of her wedding is also a celebration of her own death, a necessary part of the vengeance in which she rejoices: it is a fine example of how κάρτα TOI τούλεύϋερον èv τοίς TOLOVTOLÇ δυσλόφως φέρει κακά. Even Hecuba's expostulations have a certain ironic correctness. When she says at 3 4 3 - 4 5 , "Ηφαιστε, δς,δουχείς μεν èv γάμοις βροτών, άτάρ Xvypáv ye τήνδ' άναιόύοσεις φλόγα έξω τ€ μεγάλων έλπίδων. she is, of course, right: but the bitterness of this marriage is not entirely on her side. To Agamemnon, this flame is truly Xvypáv. The image gains greater force from the implicit comparison of this wedding with the rape of Helen suggested by Cassandra's description of herself as a Fury at line 457. She reinforces the comparison by discussing the rape more directly than any other of the Trojans, asserting that to marry Zeus' daughter was at least a great thing (398—99) and that the Greeks were wrong (368ff) in their willingness to kill so many for the sake of a single woman; 29 the memory of one destructive wedding is strong in this scene which predicts another. Of course, Cassandra herself speaks in contradiction of her earlier cry to destroy the "fax": but her very defense of the past, spoken after the imagery of its destructiveness has been repeated for a similar situation, ironically recalls the validity of the earlier image. There are two explicit references to Alexander's exposure in Troades, one connected with the torch. At 597—98, Andromache speaks of Paris in lines quoted above, p. 71 (unless the lines belong to the chorus): δνσφροσύναισι

ύεών, οτε σος yôvoç εκφυγεν "ALÒav.

This is certainly an allusion to the exposure and not to his near-escape in the Alexander. It would be tactless indeed for Andromache to suggest that only the ill-will of the gods prevented Alexander's death at his mother's hands. And Helen, who is deliberately seeking to put the blame for what has happened on the Trojans, does not mention Alexander's acceptance by his family either. She returns to the image of the torch (919—22): 28

Bruno Menegazzi, "L'Alessandro di Euripide." Dionisio NS 14 (1951), pp. 172—91, considers the torches a leitmotif of Cassandra, and the idea is taken up by Mason, op. cit. But the torches do have wider associations. 29 Cf. Herod. I, iv, 2.

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πρώτον μέν άρχάς èreneν f¡be τών κακών, Πάριν τεκοϋαα · δεύτερον δ' άπώλβσε Ύροίαν re κάμ' πρέοβυς ού κτανών βρέφος, δαλοϋ itucpòv μίμημ', Άλέξανδρόν, ποτέ. Here it is clearly the exposure that is in question. 30 From the infant's escape from death, Helen proceeds directly to speak of the Judgment. Though the use of the torch image directly recalls the prologue of the Alexander, its main content has no place. She does not say that by allowing the grown Paris to survive, the Trojans effectively condoned his actions, though this might well suit her argument. Her nearest further reference to the Alexander is her mention of the two names (941—42): these were of course both explained in the earlier play, but they were not given the young man as part of the action. They are irrelevantly mentioned in order to bring the Alexander to mind; but there is no true backward reference to the play itself. The scene deliberately uses the image of the torch to create a connection with the previous tragedy, and Alexander's double name is a further link; but, as in the Cassandra scene, attention to the past is confined to events outside the Alexander's scope. The exposure, the Judgment, the Rape are all discussed, but the links created both here and in the words of Andromache do not attach themselves to the actual plot material of the first drama explicitly. At 1256 and thereafter, the torch imagery finally reaches its inevitable conclusion in the torches used to set fire to Troy. Hecuba herself looks on as her dream, which began the trilogy, becomes the reality which ends it. She attempts to hurl herself (1282—83) into the flames, but is restrained by Talthybius: the cycle is complete. A pattern is evident in all the links which remain of those which held the trilogy together. There is no direct or explicit backward reference to the actual events of either of the preceding plays. Palamedes is never named; the escape of Paris from death is connected only with his exposure. Nonetheless, words and actions are so framed as inevitably to suggest the earlier events to the minds of the audience, while the actors themselves speak explicitly mainly of the events between and around the plays. Even the lyrics completely avoid those portions of the background to Troades which have actually been represented on stage. The modem critic must wonder why Euripides, if he wished to compose a group of tragedies in which the whole of the Trojan War would be treated 30

The new hypothesis should convince skeptics that the Vρέσβνς of Helen's speech is the old slave and not Priam. It is quite clear from the opening lines of the hypothesis that he disobeyed his instructions in allowing Alexander to live and was thereby the person responsible. Despite the implications of And. 292—300, one who exposed a child would not be likely to be blamed as ού κτανών (in Andromache, it is not clear that the family considered even exposing a child: the myth used is quite different).

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would not have made his central play the treatment of a theme directly related to the topics of the other two: the Judgment, the Rape, the death of Hector. Yet his technique indicates that this closeknit and comprehensible structure is deliberately avoided. The links are indirect, because the work depends on irony and disagreement, and not on clear resolutions. Direct allusions to earlier action would come too close to offering the author's judgment on the action, to providing an obvious causality. The events at the very center of the work are therefore treated only obliquely. The trilogy is a whole; we cannot believe that accident could produce such a pattern of allusion and avoidance. Its wholeness, however, is a very complex one.

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CHAPTER FOUR

The Agones The more important links among the three tragedies of 415 have been analysed in Chapter Three, but one outstanding relationship among the members of the trilogy has not yet been discussed: each includes a scene in which a character is accused of wrongdoing and tried in the formal style of the agon so frequent in Euripides. This similarity of structure is perhaps the most remarkable of all the connections, for it gives all three dramas, despite their obvious differences in tone, organization, and plot, an evident surface resemblance of action. Not only are all three plays concerned with the Trojan War, they are all involved in the question of judicial resolution: if the outer frame shows the failure of the final method for solving disputes among cities, each play also includes a scene in which we behold the strength or weakness of the chief method by which serious dispute within the city is controlled. 1 The tragic agon is a scene of debate whose distinctive characteristic is a pair of symmetrical, opposing speeches, in which an issue is treated from widely differing views. There may be additional speeches, before or after, by the same two speakers or by a third; there is usually some choral interjection between the speeches, and stichomythia or other continuation of the debate after the two formal arguments; but the pair of long rheseis, modeled after the prosecutor's and defendant's speeches in the law courts, is the central feature. Though the emotional level of such a confrontation may be high, the agon is essentially rational in mood; despite the admixture of invective, the basis of such a scene is rational argument. 2 1 The comparison is implicit as early as Homer's depiction of the law scene on Achilles' Shield as part of the City at Peace; at II. IX, 63—64, Nestor treats the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon, for which he proposes arbitration, as equivalent to έπώήμιος πόλεμος. Hesiod at Erga 276ff contrasts men, who live by δίκη, with animals, who eat one another; the context is, of course, a lawsuit. In the first book of Plato's Leges, the whole discussion arises from the comparison of internal wars, within the city, household, or individual, and external war; when the city has attained a just peace internally, it is ready for war with outsiders (628b):

... δέξαιτ' αν τις μάλλον η φιλίας re και ειρήνης ύπό δια\λα·γών -γενομένης, ούτω τοις έ'ξωάεν πολεμίοις πρόσεχειν άνάητκην είναι τον νουν; The role of δίκη in enabling cities to exist is a commonplace, e.g., in Protagoras' myth in Plato's Pro. 320d ff, where the city is able to wage an external war against wild animals, or the Sisyphus fragment attributed to Critias (Crit. fr. 19 TrGF, 25 D - K ) . 2 All agones known from the great tragedians are listed and the structure of agonistic scenes is analyzed in Jacqueline Duchemin, L ' 'Ayow dans la tragédie grecque, (Paris, 1968).

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Not all of Euripides' plays include an agon: none of the three extant "romances," for instance, possesses one. Those that do appear are of various kinds. The simplest and most characteristically Euripidean is the debate on an abstract question between two parties. The debate cannot have a real conclusion, and need not be completely integrated into the rest of the play: a perfect example of this type is the discussion of oligarchy and democracy between Theseus and the Theban herald in Supplices 409—55. Other agones, however, are held in the presence of an arbitrator. In Phoenissae 446—637, Jocasta attempts to reconcile her sons; in the main body of the agon, each delivers a speech of self-justification, and their mother then speaks, adressing each in turn. The Hecuba's last episode is an agon of the same type found in the Trojan trilogy: before Agamemnon, who serves as judge, Polymnestor defends his own acts and accuses Hecuba, while she defends her ghastly vengeance. This last type of agon has peculiarities of its own. It cannot be separated from the drama as can be such two-person debates as that of Theseus and the herald or that of Amphion and Zethus in Antiope. The presence of the judge indicates that an actual decision must be made, and one character, at least, must attempt to distinguish right from wrong, true from false. Though abstract principles have by necessity a place in the arguments, what is said cannot easily be dismissed as dramatically irrelevant in the way the contents of other agones are dismissed by some critics. 3 These disputes have evident consequences. All three agones of the trilogy are formal trials, set off carefully from what surrounds them. The trial of Palamades is defined by the summoning of the hero; the opening of the Helen scene uses dramatic improbability to create a detached atmosphere. Helen, hearing that she is to die, asks (903—04): ë&anv ούν προς ταϋτ' άμβίφασϋαι λόγω, ώς ob δικαίως, ήι> όάνω, ΰανούμβϋα; Menelaus intends to refuse, but Hecuba intervenes, requesting the right to answer her. The intervention could, perhaps, be explained psychologically, as could Menelaus' grant of her request (σχολής rò δώρον), but Euripides has clear dramatic reasons for using this structure. It frames the formal trial and defines it as a unit, despite the close connection of the scene with the rest of the tragedy; 4 like the agon in Supplices it is artificially removed from its context, its rational tone thereby emphasized. 3

E.g., Albin Lesky, Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen (Göttingen, 3rd ed., 1972), p. 507, "Es ist daher größte Vorsicht vonnöten, wenn man das im Agon Gesagte für die Deutung des Ganzen auswerten will." The earlier Griechische Tragödie (translated as Greek Tragedy, Ernest Benn, 1965), uses stronger language (p. 139), "It is quite wrong to make something ... [from an agon] into a key for the understanding of the whole play." 4 For the connections of the Helen scene with the whole of the Troades, see Dietrich Ebener, "Die Helenaszene der Troerinnen." WZ Halle III (1954), pp. 6 9 1 - 7 2 2 , which includes a chart showing the repetitions of central motifs thoughout the tragedy. 6 Scodel (Hyp. 60)

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The formality of the Alexander must have been more complex. But certainly the agon began with the accusation by the herdsman, which provided one boundary, and the debate over Paris' entry into the games proceeded directly from this accusation; the participation of Deiphobus, however, probably was engineered as part of the formal framing of the paired speeches of the main agon. The appearance of Odysseus as prosecutor in the Palamedes must have been equally contrived, since his motive for opposing had to be secret. The double framing of the agon in the Alexander, which is introduced first by the accusation, and then by involvement of Deiphobus and the establishment of a άμιλλα λ&γων, renders the scene even more formal. The three are thus similar in structure, and they share the characteristic of having in each case a prosecution speaker whose involvement derives only from his own desire. The decision in each play is forced upon the judge, whether a trial takes place or not; that an agon is held emphasizes the importance of such arguments in a search for truth and justice. The three, however, treat different kinds of situation. The Alexander begins with a general accusation, the υπερήφανος συμβίωσις, and then becomes a deliberative debate, where the point at issue is not a past action, but the possibility of a future one; nonetheless, the oratory involved is still essentially forensic, for the question, at least as handled by Paris, is still one of justice and injustice (fr. 37): s äSucov ó πλούτος, πολλά δ' ούκ όράώς noel. In the Palamedes, we see the classic situation of judicial dispute. The issue is whether certain acts, whose moral status is not under dispute, were or were not performed by the hero. In the Troades, on the other hand, Helen does not deny her actions; all that is argued in the main part of the speech and the reply to it is the cause of these acts and the moral judgment suitable to them. The facts under dispute are only secondary proof. The three together, then, provide a spectrum of types of judgment. The similarity of structure is remarkable and is surely significant. The agon held in the presence of an arbiter is not so frequent that its appearance in three successive tragedies could be coincidence, and the artificiality with which the prosecutor enters the debate in each case adds to the resemblance. 6 These scenes, therefore, constitute one of the most important links of the trilogy. They deserve examination on at least two levels: intellectual content and dramatic functioning. The agon is a natural place for contemporary ideas to manifest themselves in tragedy, and there may be connec5

For justice and injustice as the defining concern of forensic oratory (as opposed to deliberative or epideictic), the locus classicus is Ar. Rhet. 1358b, but the definition goes back to the fifth century; note e.g., Thuc. Ill, 44,1—2. 6 Normally the prosecutor would be the injured party. Deiphobus apparently assumes the role of the original plaintiffs; Odysseus has no pretense of being personally injured. Hecuba, of course, has, but one would not expect it to be any concern of Menelaus. Contrast the agon in Hecuba.

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tions in the ways the poet introduces such material in the different works; it is also a natural focus for dramatic irony, and the ironies of the different plays may be linked. The trial is essentially a means of finding truth in order that justice may be done; the agones, with their opposing arguments and their complex working in the whole action, may suggest problems in the human attempt to find truth and thus to decide justly. The liking for such debates was, of course, fostered by sophistic rhetoric. Their use in the trilogy brings the sophistic itself under a peculiar scrutiny: the deliberate prominence of the agon in the work suggests that the form itself is here subject to critical examination by the dramatist.

A.

The

agon

of the

Alexander

The debate in the Alexander concerns slavery and ebyeveia. Although it treats themes which are frequent in the work of its author, the handling of the topic here is unique in the claims of the hero and his isolation. Euripides' use of slaves as characters has been misunderstood; 7 the complexity of the Alexander appears most clearly when the drama is set beside other passages where related themes appear. For while many slaves are treated sympathetically by Euripides, nowhere else is a radical assertion of equality combined with the portrayal of a slave who claims a superiority that goes beyond moral virtue. Stobaeus LXII (Δ, 19) is a major source for Euripides' remarks about slaves and slavery. Many of these quotations give the impression that Euripides deliberately elevated his slave characters, who often speak nobly of their own moral equality with their masters, or even of superiority. 8 But two quotations from this anthology which belong to extant plays suggest the limitations of these statements imposed by the original contexts. At Helen 728— 33, a slave proclaims his inner equality: έγώ

μεν

èv τοίοί δούλοωι,

εϊην,

κει

όμως

πέφυχ'

yevvaioiow τοΰνομ'

οϋκ έχων

èXevâepov,

τον νοϋν

δ ε • κρεΐσσον

y hp τόδ'

ëv' δντα

χρήσ&αι,

φρένας

άλλων

τ' άκούειν

λάτρις,

ήριύμημένος

τάς

δοϋλον

δντα

ή δυοίν τ' έχειν των

κακοίν κακάς πέλας.

7 Overestimation of Euripides' "liberalism" goes back at least to Wilhelm Nestle, Euripides, der Dichter der griechischen Aufklärung (Stuttgart, 1901), pp. 348—61. A moderate attitude is taken by Joseph Vogt, Sklaverei und Humanität, Historia Einzelschriften 8 (1965), pp. 12ff; see also H. Brandt, Die Sklaven in den Rollen von Dienern und Vertrauten in Euripides (Hildesheim, 1973). 8 For the superiority of slaves, note e.g., fr. 511 Ν 2 , πολλοί δ' äßeivoiK ei σι των èXevâéβων, from the first Melantppe. Similar opinions concerning bastards are also found several times in the Euripidean corpus.

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B u t the nobility the slave retains consists, precisely, in being a g o o d slave (726-27): κακός yàp δστις μη σεβει τά και ξυγγέΎηΰε και συνωδΐνει

δεσποτών κακοΐς.

A t Ion 8 5 4 — 5 6 , the situation is similar. T h e slave's real inner equality with the free man is expressed in his willingness to die f o r his mistress. While this d o e s indicate the undeniable virtues of loyalty and courage, the slave still shows his virtue only in a f o r m defined b y his status as a slave, and these passages, far f r o m implying real criticism of the institution o f slavery, almost d e f e n d it. Even the farmer of the Electra, a character similar to the noble slaves, displays his excellence chiefly through his having refrained f r o m c o n s u m m a t i n g his marriage with the princess. He is above his status because he fully a c c e p t s it. Despite the high praise Orestes gives him a t 3 6 7 f f , where the p o o r farmer is the m o d e l o f the citizen, his low status remains. Electra at the end of the play marries Pylades, and e x e m p l a r y virtue seems to consist essentially of restraint. T h e slaves in Euripides are the descendants o f O d y s s e u s ' swineherd E u m a e u s . When he says at Od.. xvii 322—23 the f a m o u s words •ήμισυ yàp τ' άρετής άποαίνυται εύρύοπα Ζευς άνέρος, εύτ' âv μιν κατά δούλων ημαρ ελχισιν, he does n o t refer t o himself, b u t to the slaves w h o have neglected the master's d o g : the slave shows his loss o f arete b y being a b a d slave. T h e claims o f Paris are entirely different. All his arguments are being used to show that he should be permitted t o c o m p e t e in the g a m e s , a privilege which w o u l d certainly n o t be e x p e c t e d b y the Greek audience to be granted. 9 Instead of asserting an inner nobility which inspires him to serve his master honestly and faithfully, he seeks t o engage in direct c o m p e t i t i o n with his own master's f a m i l y . G a m e s were, of course, an aristocratic province, and the slave in this c o n t e x t is simply the lowest possible status. T h a t A l e x a n d e r is really a m e m b e r o f the royal house is crucial t o the dramatic irony and to the final meaning of the agon, but the f a c t d o e s n o t alter the basic issue Paris' d e m a n d raises. As long as he himself and those a r o u n d him consider him a slave, he actually is one; this w o u l d p r o b a b l y b e a normal fate f o r an e x p o s e d child who survived at all. 1 0 Alexander's d e m a n d to c o m p e t e , therefore, presents the issue o f slaves and masters in its m o s t emphatic and radical f o r m . 9 Philos. Gym. 25: the officials at Olympia or Delphi will investigate a boy, et φυλή τώδε και πατρίς, ei πατήρ και -γένος, ei έξ έλευάέρων και μή νόϋος. According to Aeschines, I, 138, a νόμος foibade δ ούλο ν μη ·γυμνάξεσόαι μηδέ ξηραλοι φείν έν ταίς παλαίστρα ις. 1 0 The question is not uncontroversial, but see E. Weiss, "Kinderaussetzung," RE pp. 468—69, who considers that much probably depended on the interest of the finder; actual adoption was, of course, impossible unless by fraud.

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The terms in which the discussion is held on each side can only be recovered in part, but the extant quotations reveal several complexities. Deiphobus speaks of the relations between slaves and masters in fr. 28: καλόν πεπάσϋαι Again in fr. 32: 1 1

δούλους yàp ob κρείσσονας τών δεσποτών.

δούλου φρονοϋντος μάλλον ή φρονείν χρεών ούκ ëoriv άχάος μείζον ούδέ δώμασιν κτησις κακίων ούδ' άνωφελεστέρα. Critical words are κρείσσονας and μάλλον φρονοϋντος. Paris is arrogant beyond his station; it is dangerous to have such slaves, above all if they are "stronger" than their masters. Deiphobus here is thinking in the terms proper to a slave holder, worrying about his own security. Frs. 29 and 33 (and 30 and 31, if from this play), 12 however, stress something else, έκ τών ομοίων οί κακοί γαμοϋο' άεί: κακοί broadens the frame of reference to include all those who are not άριστοι, for it cannot here be a purely moral term. This suggests that Deiphobus may have prepared for Paris' use of the contrast between πλούτος and πενία by including in his invective not only slaves, but all persons of low birth; the slave is to Deiphobus what the aristocratic context implies in itself, the lowest possible place in the social world. His contempt would extend to those far higher than Paris. Deiphobus, then, divides arete on social lines; κακοί is a social term at fr. 29, an ethical one at fr. 33. This demands that he assert that arete is essentially inherited. His argument clearly shows the democratic and radical potential in the sophists' claim to teach arete·, if it is available to anyone, the prestige of noble birth must crumble. The issue of entry into the games sharply emphasizes this threat. Deiphobus' statement that the κακοί always marry their like is, of course, dramatically a deep irony, since he and Alexander will both marry the same woman, κάκιστη in the ethical sense. Seen within his argument, however, the statement stands directly opposite Paris' assertion that he has attained arete precisely by not being reared as an aristocrat. Paris does not, of course, put his argument in such bare form. Instead he turns from masters and slaves to rich and poor, selecting a useful element 11

φρονοϋντος μάλλον is ambiguous. Its primary meaning is "too arrogant," as a comparative of the idiom péya φρονεϊν, but the scene ends with an equation of nobility and

intelligence (fr. 40, 10: το φρόνψ,ον eòyéveia και TÒ συνετόν), and Alexander may well have asserted that he possessed TO φρόνψ,ον. The dislike of over-intelligent slaves would suit Deiphobus, but it is not sure that he would concede the possibility that intelligence would accompany low social rank. 12 Neither is cited as being from this play, and their attribution to the Alexander is extremely dubious, considering the number of possible contexts for them in Euripides.

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from the speech of Deiphobus. In part this simply confuses the issue, since it raises the question of the man of noble birth whose wealth is lost; but it also enables Paris to reverse Deiphobus' argument. By altering the κακοί to the πενιχροί, he can call Deiphobus' άριστοι the πλούσιοι. He then associates wealth with effeminate softness in fr. 36: κακόν τι βούλενμ' ήν âp' είς εύανδρίαν ò πλούτος άνϋρώποισιν αϊ τ' âyav τρυφαί, πενία δέ δύστηνον μέν, άλλ' δμως τρέφει μοχύοϋντ' άμείνω τέκνα και δραστήρια. This message is extended in fr. 37, άδικον ό πλούτος, πολλά ουκ όράώς ποεϊ. The wealthy have become positively inferior to their own slaves, and the context—Paris' bold demand to compete—keeps this from being a purely ethical question. Yet Alexander, in claiming arete and ascribing his possession of excellence to his upbringing, has created a peculiar problem for himself. Alexander is at odds with the other herdsmen, who object to his arrogance. He cannot claim that he is better than they as a result of the crucial role of good birth in creating arete, for he is, as far as he knows, base-born. Instead, he attempts, in refuting Deiphobus, to claim that the hardships of his early life have made him superior; yet the other herdsmen, presumably, have had this same education, but are not on his level. It is an inversion of the problem with which Socrates confronts Protagoras in the dialogue named for him (320c ff). These problems and objections to the sophistic claim to teach arete were doubtless already current in the fifth century, 13 and Euripides must have had them in mind. Protagoras must insist that arete is taught, since he takes fees for teaching it; on the other hand, he is denying that it is a technical subject, on which a city should receive the advice only of experts, and it would seem, therefore, that he must consider it innate. Paris is caught between noble birth, which he must deny, and education, which has not, apparently, been effective in the cases of the other herdsmen. We do not have enough of the agon to judge whether Paris did actually confront this difficulty in his speech, or whether the poet simply left it as an ambiguity. He could, of course, have used the argument Protagoras does: some arete is inherent in any civilized person, but proper training improves natural capacity. 14 Certainly Euripides seems to have believed something of the kind. 15 Only one fragment, however, sheds any light on Paris' attitude to the issue. In fr. 38 he reviles the other herdsmen: 13 The controversy must be nearly as old as the claim itself. A brief history of the issue is given in W. K. C. Guthrie, The Sophists (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 2 5 0 - 6 0 . M Plato's Prot. 320d ff and Prot. fr. Β 3 D - K . I am indebted to the discussion of Protagoras' myth in Guthrie, op. cit., pp. 63—68. 15 Notice, for instance, the emphasis on education in Supp. 909—17. Orestes, probably speaking for the author, at El. 367 declares that arete seems to be found unpredictably and at random; at 1A 558ff the chorus takes a balanced position: education makes a large contribution, but there is no implication that it is the only factor.

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ώ παγκά/αστοι και το δοϋλον ού λ ό γ ω έ χ ο ν τ ε ς , άλλά. την τύχην

κεκτημένοι.16

This implies that he himself is really a slave λ ό γ ω only; this is, o f course, truer than he knows, but the meaning he intends is more interesting than the irony. He does not claim to be other than he appears, for his argument assumes that he is the poor herdsman he seems, nor does he mean what the other slaves in Euripides mean when they draw the distinction between name and reality. Rather he seems to be saying that slavery is a τύχη which can be resisted or accepted, almost a δαίμων. But his form of resistance is not just an inner, moral retention of selfhood; it is the others who are conventional "good slaves" (fr. 2 7 ) : δ ο ύ λ ω ν οσοι φιλοϋσι δεσποτών •προς των ομοίων

πόλεμον

yévoç,

αίρονται

μεγαι>.

Instead, he proclaims his share o f the " c o m p e t i t i v e " virtues, 17 the qualities most associated with aristocratic birth. Y e t τύχη is an ambiguous term; the extent to which it is an innate quality cannot be specified. It is thus not clear how far Paris went in establishing a fully defensible argument. In any case, by the conclusion o f the agon, the theme has clearly been extended to cover the question o f ei/γέveía and δυσγένεια in the widest sense, as well as the opposing claims of φύσις and education to produce the ideal man. Alexander demands not just a moral victory, but an effective modification of the ordinary social rules; when Priam rules in his favor and thus, by implication, accepts his assertion that social distinctions are without a natural basis and do not correspond to human worth, he makes an impressively radical decision. In fr. 3 9 , he leaves the final verdict on Paris' character to be decided by time, but the granting of permission to join the games indicates that the king is willing to accept the doctrine o f natural equality. The chorus

16 The manuscripts (of Stobaeus) have Tfl τύχη; the accusative is my own conjecture. The text has been much emended, the problem being the difficulty of understanding or translating τύχη. Attempts have been made to ease matters by altering τύχη to φύσει, but this is such a simplication that the corruption would be very hard to explain. Wilamowitz, in "Lesefrüchte," Hermes LXII (1927), p. 290, defended the traditional text, by arguing that τύχη is almost synonymous with δαίμων; I have largely followed him. No critic, however, seems to have adduced the two parallel passages, Tro. 737, σιγώσα δ' ευ Te τάς τύχας κεκτημένη and Phoen. 891—92, ούτ' έμοί τόδ' άσφαλές/πικρόν re TOW ι την τύχην κεκτημένοκ. These certainly confirm the Tightness of τύχη, and besides the use of the accusative in the parallels, I think that "to have this (i.e., slavery) as one's τύχη" is stronger and clearer than "to have slavery by one's τύχη." Earlier scholars had the disadvantage of not knowing that Alexander was at odds with the other slaves, and were thus misled by the assumption that the persons addressed in the fragment were free men: this made the understanding of τύχη far more difficult. 17 The term is that of Arthur Adkins in Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960). I use it for its convenience, but do not agree to any great extent with Adkins' views about the role of cooperative and competitive virtues in archaic and classical ethics.

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summarizes the result of the debate and places it at a level beyond the tendentious statements of Paris (fr. 40): πάλαι

TÒ yàp

δ ' ënpwev βροτούς,

και

όμοίαν δφιν

· Ιδιον

μία

yovà

τό τ'

δε

νόμφ

και δε

απασιν

ούδέν

¿ξβπαι — έσχομεν,

ebyevèç

τό

yavpov

διά

δτ' èyevôpeûa

yä

χάών

δευσεν (πέφυκε)

πρώτον

à τεκοϋσα

Svayevéç, αϋτό

κραίνει

χρόνος.

Alexander's victory is complete, as the Trojan chorus declares that his claims are substantiated by φύσις, and have only νόμος against them. The ideas of two philosophers may be traced in this fragment, Antiphon the Sophist and Archelaus. The second appears in the origin from earth and the word διακρίνειν, used for the primeval separation of mankind as a whole from mud or the other animals. 18 Archelaus may have been one of the first thinkers to use the φύοις/νόμος antithesis, 19 and he doubtless associated his ethical relativism with his speculation on evolution. Antiphon, on the other hand, has been connected with this passage by Luria, 20 and the association, though rejected by Wilamowitz and most scholars,21 is not unconvincing. The passage of Antiphon reads: [τούς ρων μεϋά τους

έκ καλών

προς άλλη[λους βεβαρβαρώ[με-

τε κ[αί δε

[έκ

Χοϋ ο'ίκ[ου οΰτε

πατέ-]

έπ[αιδονοεβόμεόα, μη καδντας

έπ[αιδούμε-

ûa ούτε έν τσύτω[ι

σεβομ[εύα δέ

ϋα,

ènei

πάντα

φύσει πάντ[ες

ομοίως

πεφύκ[α-

μεν

βάρβα-

και

poi και

Έλληνες

εϊναι.

Antiphon appeals to φύσις to vindicate the basic identity of Greeks and barbarians, while Euripides uses the concept, elaborated by allusion to the original state of mankind, to proclaim the fundamental identity of the well and basely born; but it is clear from Antiphon that είτγένεια is included in his argument, and the passage of Euripides refers to a common origin of all 18 Arch. A 4, sec. 6 D—Κ, διεκρίόησαν ανάρωποι. Archelaus inherited the term and the theory embodied in it from his teacher Anaxagoras, with whom Euripides is o f t e n associated; the word is frequent in the fragments of Anaxagoras, e.g., at A 45, line 28, A 46, Β 5, Β 12, line 9 D - K . 19 Arch. A 1 and 2 D - K ; see Guthrie op. cit., p. 58. 20 S. Luria in Aegyptus V (1924), pp. 3 2 6 - 3 0 , and Hermes LXIV (1929), pp. 4 9 1 - 9 7 . 21 Wilamowitz criticized Luria in Hermes LXII (1927), pp. 288—90; m u c h of his criticism was valid, though he himself treated the text high-handedly and continued Luria's mistranslation of part of the passage. Luria's reply, the second article cited in N o t e 20, is a great improvement, and is the most convincing piece in the group.

88

men. Moreover, the mention of the similar appearance of all men (the easiest way to understand όμοίαν 6\¡/ιν) corresponds to Antiphon's expansion of •πάντα πάντες ομοίως:22 άναπνέομέν re jàp εις τόν άέρ[α] άπαντες κατά τό στόμ[α κ]άί κατ[ά] τάς ρίνας κ[αί έσϋίομε]ν \[epoiv άπαντες] If Euripides did not have Antiphon or Archelaus in mind when he composed this lyric and the preceding agon, he was certainly under the influence of thinkers who worked along very similar lines. 23 A theory of the origin of mankind is used to substantiate radical egalitarianism. 24 And if virtue is not the natural property of any race or class, it must be produced by teaching, if differences among men are to be accounted for, or by environment at least in part: Alexander and the sophistic profession seem simultaneously vindicated. Yet ambiguities remain. Paris is, after all, a member by birth of the royal family, and his status as slave would have no effect on his nature, if descent were indeed the real source of arete. This might explain why he differs from the other herdsmen. Yet he surpasses his brothers, whose birth is the same as his own; Euripides here has dramatized the complexity of the question. The final statement of the chorus need not be rejected, for it rests on science. Men do have a common origin, and social distinctions are artificial. The argument of Paris is still valid, for his defeat of his brothers proves that his early life has influenced him for the better. Yet his birth is a relevant factor, and it has not entered the debate. Though the agon concludes in an advance in understanding by Priam and the chorus, the truth they attain is not complete. They have learned that it is possible for Alexander to be what he claims, but neither he nor they know who he actually is. Both the abstract problem and the specific case are thereby left only partly elucidated. The irony, however, goes deeper than the mere ignorance of Paris' identity. Beneath the Paris whose native nobility has joined with early hardship to 22 Both passages quoted are from Antiphon fr. 4 4 Β 1 - 2 D - K (P. Oxy. XI 1364), and the supplements given are those in D—K. The editto princeps has very slight differences, but one which alters the basic sense. 23 Vogt, op. cit., p. 11, associates the fragment with Hippias, following Wifhelm Nestle's Vom Mythos zum Logos (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 1942), pp. 369ff. This is perhaps possible, though there is no apparent reason to connect Aristotle's allusion to those who deny natural slavery at Pol. 1253b with any specific fifth-century thinker. Probably someone preceded Alcidamas in criticism of slavery, but Hippias' only approach to the subject in our extant information is his address to the gathering at Prot. 337c—d. Here he does show a willingness to dispense with the nomos of the barriers among cities, but it does not prove that Hippias would have extended his reasoning to deny any natural superiority of free men to slaves or Greeks to barbarians. 24 The association of speculations about man's origin or early state with praise of human progress or the criticism of nomos is, of course, common throughout the century and after.

89

create an apparently ideal youth lurks the firebrand. Alexander in fr. 36 by implication accuses Deiphobus of having been spoiled by äyai> τρυφαί, but there can be no character in ancient literature more consistently associated with τρυφή than Paris himself. 25 Deiphobus and Hector reveal the different potentialities of a single family, but each is consistent with himself. Paris, on the other hand, is quite other than what we know he will become, though he does not realize this himself. The real irony of the passage is that the arete which is so painfully revealed with the help of the sophistic attack on νόμος is finally spurious. In the end, therefore, the mechanism for discovering the truth is inadequate. Priam's decision and the choral reaction to it are both just and wise. Yet the speeches and the logic they employ do not reach the real issue. Alexander remains unknown. One level of falsehood is stripped away, but a second requires the rest of the play and the danger of a murder to be uncovered, while the third is never pierced, except by Cassandra, until it is too late. The splendid mechanism which has enabled the judge to see more than a slave in the herdsman has not been able to provide him with the insight he really needs. A bitter irony lies in his moderate willingness to allow time to show the truth (fr. 39): χρόνος δέ δείξει [i)pcô]7rotç, where it alludes to all human physical needs; Democritus Β 278 D—Κ (the two words here are not a single phrase b u t appear in close conjunction), where again it seems to be sexual desire, and Thuc. V, 105. 2, where the Melians are told that ύπό φύσεως άναγκαίας b o t h the gods, as far as men know, and men certainly, rule where and whenever they have superior force. "Necess i t y " by itself is a c o m m o n philosophical principle, but the conjunction of nature with necessity has a clearly apologetic purpose in at least two of the attestations, while Antiphon, though here pursuing a different subject, would not have objected to the other uses of the term. If something is " n a t u r a l , " it is probably opposed to νόμος or morality, b u t if it is "necessary," it cannot very well be blamed. It is almost as though Hecuba were anticipating Helen's defense and making it part of the very nature of Zeus. The expression even later seems particularly connected with compulsions u p o n humanity (cf. Isoc. IV, 8 4 and Aeschin. I, 138). 35

The first scholium ad 884 concludes, όρμώνται δε έξ Άναξαγορέων λόγων. Another interpretation suggested for the phrase is that àvaπλασμός δέ έστι της ημών διανοίας ό άεός, which is certainly a possible reading of the Greek, and perhaps a meaning Euripides intended to leave open as a deliberate ambiguity.

94

human thought and the divine are at least very close. 36 Euripides was interested in such theories; he boldly states the identification in a line whose context is unknown (fr. 1018): ó νοϋς yàp ημών

è ση ν èv έκάστω

tfeoç.

The last sentence of the prayer is again deliberately ambiguous. Is the "justice" by which mortal affairs are directed the traditional religious justice we would see in the words if this sentence appeared in Aeschylus, or is it the justice of the pre-Socratic, 37 or an attempt at reconciliation? These five lines compact the traditional and the new into an intense declaration of mingled hope and bewilderment. The doubt of understanding expressed in the hymnal formula goes back to Aeschylus, 38 but the use of so much varying philosophical content in the short passage brings to mind Gorgias' use of the disputes of philosophers to illustrate the force of persuasion and δόξα. 39 The speculations finally only deepen the doubt. The prayer's only assertion, that of justice (whatever form of justice is in question) is about to be put to the test; both religion and philosophy are involved. The essential point in the debate between Helen and Hecuba is the behavior of the gods and its relation to human responsibility. The critical defense of Helen, to which all else is purely secondary, is the compulsion to obey the will of Aphrodite under which she acted (948—50): 36 The beliefs of Democritus in this connection are problematic; see fr. A 74 D— Κ = Aet. I, 7, 16 (D 302), Δημόκριτος νούν τον deòv èv πυρί σφαφοεώεϊ, and Cicero de nat. deor. I, 12, 29, "qui [sc. Democritus] tum imagines eorumque circumitus in deorum numero refert tum sententiam intelligentiamque nostram. . . . " At I, 43, 120 of the same work, Cicero alludes to the "principia mentis, quae sunt in eodem universo" as divinities according to Democritus. Soul, fire, and air are composed of similar atoms, and these also form the gods. Diogenes does not identify the divine with the human mind, but his divine air is the substance of the mind (B 4): τούτο αύτοϊς και ψυχή έστι και νόησκ, cf. A 8, τον αέρα yàp αύτόν Δία νομίζει». The Euripidean phrase is probably the poet's own variation on a theme of contemporary philosophy; that he was attracted by the ideas of Diogenes is evident, and he puts a variant of them into the mouth öf Theonoe at Helen 1014-16:

όνούς άΰάνατον εις (ώόνατον aidép'

έμπεσών.

What matters is that both άνάη/κ,η and νούς, opposites though they are, belong to a rational scheme of things. 37 The philosophical concept of δίκη as something inherent in the nature of things goes back to Anaximander's famous δώόναι yap avrà δίκην και τ im ν άλλήλοκ της άδιχίας κατά τήν τοϋ χρόνου τάζιν (Β 1 D—Κ) ; but one might also think of such passages as Heraclitus' reference in Β 94 to the Ερινύες Δίκης έπίκονροι, who would keep the sun from overstepping his bounds, or Parmenides' Δίκη πολνιτοινος, who keeps the keys at the gates of Day and Night in Β 1, 14. 38 Ag. 160. Fracnkel ad loc. discusses how the formula is there turned from a formal device of originally magic intention to a vehicle for the poet's religious questioning. 39 Gorgias, Helen 13.

95

την ûeôv κόλαζε και Διός κρείσαων yevoß, δς των μέν άλλων δαιμόνων έχει κράτος, κείνης δέ δούλος έστι· συγγνώμη δ' έμοί.

In fact, she claims, she deserves a reward, for had Paris chosen either Athena or Hera, the Trojans would have conquered and ruled the Greeks. All depends on the critical importance of the Judgment; once Alexander chose, and Aphrodite came to Sparta, Helen was victim rather than actor. Although the gods are often invoked in excuses, the complete abdication of responsibility here is abnormal, and one may remember that the mythological excuse is provided for Helen in Homer not by herself, but by Priam (III, 164), ού τί μοι αΐτίη

èoai,

όεοί νύ μοι αίτιοι

είσιν.

Even a believer in Aphrodite's

influence would probably not be inclined to sympathize with Helen's plea. It shows none of the sense of shame we find in Homer's Helen or in such a victim of Aphrodite as Phaedra. We are therefore willing to accept Hecuba's arguments. She both rationalizes the gods and dignifies them. On the one hand, she says, the goddesses came to Paris only in play, and could not have been so foolish as to sell their favorite cities for so silly a whim as love of their own beauty. 4 0 If the goddess, moreover, did wish to bring Helen to Troy, she need not have accompanied Paris as Helen says she did at 9 4 0 , ηλό'

ούχι μικράν

ûebv

έχων

αυτού

μέτα, but could have used her power from heaven. If the spectator at this point wondered whether Helen's argument need be taken so literally, and might in a metaphorical sense be true, he is immediately answered by Hecuba's next point (987ff): ην ούμός υιός κ ά λ λ ο ς έκπρεπέστατος, ò σος δ' ίδών νιν νοϋς έποιήϋη Κιιπρις· 40

Hecuba does not deny that the Judgment occurred. The scholium suggests that 975— 76 al παιδιαϊσι κ ai χλιδή μορφής πέρι/ηλόον προς "Ιδην be read as a question; this gives inelegant Greek and is an unnatural way to construe a plain relative clause; it is clear from the wording of the scholium that the intention was to avoid Hecuba's admitting that the Judgment took place, and excision is suggested as an alternative. The scholium therefore represents only the subjective opinion of an ancient scholar and is without authority; it rests on an assumption of what Euripides ought to have said. The same end of making Euripides say what we might prefer is sought by Naber's conjecture of e£ for at, which is accepted by Murray. This is not only unnatural Greek, but almost impossible grammar, a fact almost admitted by Murray, who offered a Latin gloss of his text in the apparatus. Though excellent scholars have used one solution or the other (the translation of Wilamowitz follows the scholium, and evades the inelegance of the Greek by free translation), there is really no problem. Biehl quite rightly keeps the manuscript reading. Hecuba's argument is fully comprehensible, and the obvious interpretation is easier to reconcile with the Alexander than any other. After all the emphasis placed on Paris, for Hecuba to deny the Judgment would be difficult. What she does is more subtle, for it leaves the basic facts untouched. The only facts about which Helen and Hecuba disagree are, oddly enough, those of which they both have personal experience, Helen's behavior in Troy.

96

rà μώρα yàp ττάντ' έστίν 'Αφροδίτη καί τοΰνομ' όρύώς άφροσύνης άρχει

βροτοϊς, ϋεας.

The audience would have known the extraordinary beauty of Paris from the Alexander, and the statement, breaking through powerfully in asyndeton, in its simple realism has an air of direct truth. As far as Helen's personal responsibility is concerned, we are fully persuaded. Yet our belief that Helen cannot be exonerated by an appeal to divine force does not mean that Hecuba's explanation is really satisfactory. Cassandra, after all, prophesied the Judgment in fr. 10 of the Alexander: iudicavit inclitum iudicium inter deas tris aliquis: quo iudicio Lacedaemonia mulier, furiarum una adveniet. What Cassandra says must be true. The Judgment cannot, then, have been as unimportant as Hecuba claims. Poseidon in the prologue also attributed the destruction of Troy to the Judgment, by saying that the city was destroyed by Hera and Athena (see Chapter 3). The evidence of the prophet and the god is more substantial than Hecuba's argument from eikos. The goddesses cannot be the essentially rational beings of Hecuba's speech, who might compete in a beauty contest but would not wager their serious concerns on so foolish an issue. Possible divine involvement does not remove the guilt of Helen, but Hecuba's picture of the gods is not accurate either. In fact, though there is no doubt of which side we are to favor, the ambiguity of divine involvement was great enough so that the δισσός λόγος of this debate probably already was a recognized topos; Phaedra and her nurse at Hipp. 373ff argue essentially the same issues as Helen and Hecuba. Our sympathies are with Phaedra's view of her situation as an inner passion, and not with the Nurse's accusation of ύβρις (474—76): ληξοί' ύβρίξουσ'· ού yàp άλλο πλην ύβρις τάδ' έστΐ, κρείσσω δαιμόνων είναι ϋέλειν, τόλμα δ' έρώσα· &εός éβουλή άη τάδε. Nonetheless, we have seen Aphrodite before us in the prologue, and we know that Phaedra's passion has been imposed from outside: this, however, need not mean that she would be right to surrender to it; we approve and admire her resistance. Helen's self-defense has sinister and compelling overtones. Gorgias defends her in terms very like those she uses here (Helen 6): πέφυκ,ε yàp ού το κρείσσον υπό τοϋ ήσσονος κωλνεσάαι, άλλά το ήσσον virò τοϋ κρείσσονος άρχεοδαι και âyeaûai, καί τό μεν κρείσσον ήγεϊaûai, τό δε ησσον επεσΰαι · άεός δ' άνύρώπου κρείσσον This language connects Helen's defense to late-fifth-century theories of the natural right of the stronger; Hecuba's prayer has already sounded the notes of the Melian Dialogue (see Note 34). If Gorgias lets the assumption slip 7 Scodel (Hyp. 60)

97

past quietly, Thucydides' Athenians stress the claim that the rule of strong over weak is natural and inevitable, while Euripides must have seen advocates of "Might is Right" like Thrasymachus or Plato's Callicles. 41 Though on the surface it is Hecuba's rationalizing argument that seems modern and sophisticated, Helen's, despite its mythological basis, was equally contemporary. If the spectator would not feel that the influence of Aphrodite excused sexual misbehavior, still he would feel disturbed by the argument as phrased in terms of the inevitable rule of the stronger, as Helen phrases it: this is the contemporary tone of private discussion and public debate. The ambiguity, however, goes even deeper than this. Menelaus declares his agreement with Hecuba in his verdict (1036—39): έμόί où συμπεπτωκας ¿ς ταύτόν λόγου, εκουσίως τήνδ' έκ δόμων έλάείν έμών ξενας ές εύνάς • χή Κύπρις κόμπου χάριν λόγοις ένεϊται. Yet Helen wins. Though Menelaus leaves the stage still speaking as if there were no doubt of his killing Helen on his return to Sparta, the chorus, praying that she never reach home, reminds us of the lack of any tradition in which Helen was punished. Indeed, the lyric contrasts Helen with the singers, implying that although in the prologue (34—35) Helen was among the captive women, soon she will be again wrapped in luxury (1107—11): χρύσεα δ' êvo-κτρα, παρόένων χάριτας, έχουσα τυγχάνει Διός κόρα. μηδε yaïàv ποτ' ëXûoi Λάκαιναν πατρωόν τε ΰάλαμον εστίας Though Menelaus' judgment is correct, the sentence with which we sympathize will never be carried out. This failure must be connected with the repeated warnings Hecuba gives Menelaus against Helen's beauty and his own passion (1051): ούκ εοτ' έραστης όσης ούκ áei φίλεί. Before Helen appears, she warns Menelaus in terms which give Helen's loveliness (and name) magical qualities (891—93): όρών δε τήνδε φενγε, μή α έλχι πόΰορ · aipelyàp άνδρών δμματ', έξαφεϊ πόλεις, πίμπρησι δ ' οίκους · ώδ ' ¿χει κηλήματα. Clearly, we are to imagine Menelaus as unable to resist this overwhelming charm. But the failure of Menelaus to resist Helen is closely analogous to Helen's failure to resist Paris, whose surpassing beauty turned Helen's mind 41

There is no evidence outside Plato that Thrasymachus held the opinions he has in the Republic, but though they may be exaggerated, they are unlikely to be complete invention. Callicles must have been a real person, since Plato elsewhere seems never to have named fictitious characters. The career of Critias, or even Alcibiades, would almost exemplify the type.

98

to Cypris. If Hecuba herself attributes magical power to appearance in one case, it may fairly be imagined in the other. Helen's actions, even as described by Hecuba, Eire in a sense defended by her husband's, for he cannot even follow the judgment he himself has reached. This theme is also close to that of Gorgias' 'Eyκώμων Ελένης. He teaches the impossibility of resisting δόξα or the πάθη of the soul, and uses this impossibility as the defense of Helen if she was motivated by eros. It is, as it were, Helen's argument rephrased to reply to Hecuba's objections and completely rationalized. As he says in 15, ä yap όρώμεν έχει φύοιν οϋχ ην ημείς ΰέλομεν, άλλ' ην έκαστον ίτυχε • δια δ€ της όψεως η ψυχή κάν τοις τρόποις τυποϋται. He continues his argument with the example of fear, which causes men to forget νόημα, rational considerations, and with the effects that painting and sculpture have on the soul. Euripides, of course, makes no point of this kind explicitly, but he does make it clear that Menelaus will succumb as Helen did. There is a circular sort of irony here: the real defense of Helen lies in the very reason that her presumed guilt is not punished. If it is a full and satisfactory defense, Menelaus has no real cause to kill her; but his failure to kill her is the only suggestion made by the poet that it is a satisfactory defense. The paradox is another form of the double deception of the other two plays: beneath Helen's specious introduction of Aphrodite into her defense lies only her own corrupt nature and Paris' attractions, but the weakness of Menelaus set against the language of Hecuba's warnings suggests that mere appearance is a magically irresistible force, as powerful as the Aphrodite of myth. 42 Yet the defense of the power of appearance is offset by our complete lack of sympathy for Helen. An audience is tempted more to despise Menelaus than to recognize beauty as an overwhelming force. The repellent selfconfidence of Helen is a reminder that to accept the Gorgianic defense is virtually to abandon the right to judge any human act whatever. The criticism of the sophistic method in this scene is not accomplished through a demonstration of its inadequacies, but by a triumphant enactment of one of its arguments. A vision of man completely dominated by relativism is put before the audience, and no means are offered either to render the image tolerable or to argue that it is incorrect. 43 The tension is never resolved. 42

That is the Aphrodite of Hym. Horn. V, 34—35, who overcomes all but the three virgin goddesses, not the Aphrodite of moral apologetics. 43 The actions of Menelaus enact not only the Gorgianic principles, but a rule opposite to the Socratic equation of virtue and knowledge. Menelaus has knowledge, but does not act on it; he is a victim of άκρααία. On the other hand, he can scarcely be said sua sponte peccare. The tragedian sees both the moral horror of the Sophist's ethics, and the psychological simplicity of the philosopher's. He simultaneously presents the difficulty of judging human motivation and causality and the chaos that arises if they cannot be judged.

99

This is the darkest of the agones. Hecuba's prayer has gone unanswered, and the speeches have not elucidated their subject. The truth of the Judgment and of Helen's deeds is not really uncovered, and whatever truth at one point seems to have emerged is instantly negated. Rationality is not only incomplete, but helpless in the face of an essential moral impotence. One form of the sophistic has reached its telos: the world is utterly given over to appearance, and neither gods nor men seem able to find any reality. The trial scene of the Troades is closely connected not only to Gorgias' Helen, but to his Περί φύσεως or Περί του μη δντος (Β 1—5), a work in which he argued that nothing exists, that if anything exists it cannot be conceived in thought, and that if it can be thought, nonetheless it cannot be communicated. The first part of the argument, with its clever use of the Eleatic manner, is amusing and remote from the world of common sense; but the examination of the gap between thought and reality is not to be taken lightly. The argument says that since men think of much that does not exist, what does exist does not correspond with what is thought; this assertion that there is no mechanism for distinguishing reality and fantasy clearly impressed Euripides. And beyond this problem, language is not reality, and is yet the only means of communication. The impossibility of linking thought and reality or language and thought, the doubt of whether there is any reality, permeate the agon. The basis of knowledge in this scene seems to have been lost, and the basis of persuasion, λόγος, has become irrelevant. The trial of Helen begins with a surge of hope in the fundamental order and justice of the world, summed up in the appeal to Zeus, but it concludes with chaos. Gorgias may not have meant what he said completely seriously, 44 but Euripides had a vision of the Gorgianic universe, where doubt and relativism have destroyed not only moral judgment, but any possibility of knowledge. In this scene, tragedy comes as close to the abyss as it could without ceasing to exist.

D. The Judgment of Paris Behind all the agones lies the Judgment of Paris. It is, of course, never directly depicted, yet it dominates the action. Predicted in the first tragedy, argued about in the last, it brings the theme of judgment to a profounder level than the agones themselves. The decision is of a rather different kind from those shown in the tragedies. The real issue, the relative beauty of the three goddesses, is recognized as insoluble from the start; the issue is the preferable life. It has been characteristic of the agones that the verdicts 44

I do, however, think that Gorgias, despite his playfulness, was not without real philosophical intentions, pace E. R. Dodds, who in his introduction to the Gorgias treats him as interested only in style (pp. 6—10).

100

rendered in the trials have revealed less the right and wrong of plaintiff and defendant than the moral status of the judge or the situation, and in a sense, this is inevitable. The audience, endowed with distance and with more information than the actors, can contemplate the difficulties of decision in the search for justice. In the Judgment of Paris, the weight of the event is clearly on the judge, whose importance is no longer obscured by the audience's emotional concern with the protagonist of the play. The judge's effort to decide rightly appears by itself. The Judgment is treated only obliquely, and we never really know the truth of it. That it did take place and had genuine consequences we know by the authority of Cassandra and Poseidon, but these two tell us no more. Hecuba's insistence that Hera and Athena would not have sold their favorite cities to win may yet be true, for their destruction of Troy does not prove that they would have gone so far. 45 Helen's version is obviously self-serving; nonetheless, it is the only detailed version we are offered. The event is wrapped in obscurity. The Judgment is presented by Helen as involving essentially only two alternatives, and her version is doubtless an innovation of Euripides' own, for in other variants, the gifts of Hera and Athena would not have harmed the Greeks. 46 But the merging of these two goddesses goes beyond Helen's speech. Hecuba also nearly combines them (971—74): έγώ

yàp

Ήραν

παρύένον

re

άμαόίας

έλϋεϊν

ούκ ¿ς τοσούτον ώσϋ'

η μέν

Παλλάς δ'

"Αργός Άϋήνας

Παλλάδα δοκώ

βαρβάροις ΦρνξΙ

άπημπόλα,

δονλεύειν

ποτέ

This reduction of the three alternatives to two has interesting implications. It appears in Callimachus' Hymn V ("Lavacrum Palladis") at lines 15ff: μη μύρα

λωτροχόοι

(où yàp olaere ούδ'

μηδέ οκα

TÇL

Άûavaia κάτοπτρον ταν

Îôç

Παλλάδι

χρίματα

àei καλόν Φρύξ

άλαβάστρως

μηδ'

μεικτά έδίκαξεν

φιλεΐ)

6μμα

τό

τήνας.

ëpiv,

45

One might, however, recall II. IV, 50ff, where Hera does in fact offer Zeus her favorite cities to destroy if he should be so inclined at some time—a passage clearly in the poet's mind when he composed Hecuba's argument. Traditionally the goddesses seem to cherish their hatred for one city more than their love for another. 46 A typical description of the choice offered Paris would be that of Isocrates in his Helen 41-42: δώούαης 'Ήρας μέν άπάσης αύτω της 'Ασίας βασιλεύειν, έν τοις πολέμοις, 'Αφροδίτης δε τον γάμον τον 'Ελένης

Ά&ηνάς

δε

κρατείν

Euripides' merging of Hera and Athena has been recognized by P. Walcot, "The Judgement of Paris," Greece and Rome XXIV (1977), Ν. 1, pp. 3 1 - 3 9 .

101

ούτ' ές όρείχαλκον μεγάλα ΰεός ούτε Σιμούντος ίβλεφεν δίναν ές δναφαινομέναν· ούδ' Ή ρ α · Κύπρις Òè διαυγέα χαλκόν έλοίσα πολλά/ci τάν αύτάν. δις μετέϋηκε κόμαν. Hera is merged with Athena in order to create a dramatic contrast with Aphrodite. If the structure of this version, with its contrast of Athena cum Hera to Aphrodite, resembles the version of Troades, in the content of the opposition it follows a tradition attested for the satyr play Κρίσις of Sophocles. The important fragment is fr. 361, I Radt, 334 N 2 : 4 7 Σοφοκλής δ' ò ποιητής έν Κρίσβι τ ω δράματι την μεν Άφροδίτην ήδονήν τίνα ούσαν δαίμονα μύρω τε άλειφομένην -παράγει και κατοπτριξομένην, την δ' Ά&ηναν φρόνησιν ούσαν και νοϋν, έτι δ' άρετήν έλαίω χρωμένην και γυμναξομένην. The likeness to the passage of Callimachus is self-evident. The report of Athenaeus, however, indicates the probability that in the version of Sophocles the contrast between Athena (and most probably Hera) and Aphrodite was presented less as an opposition between the goddesses than as an opposition in the kinds of life: the perfumes and mirrors are the tokens of ηδονή, the oil the sign of φρόνηοις and arete. Not the nature of the goddesses, but the choice of the judge is critical. The hero is offered a choice between virtue, represented by Athena, and vice, represented by Aphrodite— and he chooses vice. It is difficult not to see this satyr play, or at least part of it, as a parody of Prodicus' "Choice of Heracles." 48 Especially notable is the similarity of Aphrodite to Prodicus' Κακία (Xen. Mem. II, i, 22): ... κατασκοπεϊσόαι δε ύαμά έαντήν, έπισκοπεϊν δε κάί εΐ τις άλλος ΰεάται, πολλάκις δέ κάί εις την έαυτής σκιάν άποβλέπειν.

αύτήν

The spectacle of a hero who reacted to the paradigmatic moral choice by accepting the blandishments of the worse cause must have been highly amusing. The lack of separate characterization for Hera has a simple explanation in the context of a play: not only was the parody stronger through her being almost suppressed, but in a scene on Sophocles' stage she was doubtless played by a mute. 47

Quoted by Ath. XV p. 687 C; Kpioei is Tyrwhitt's emendation of κρησί. The correction may be taken as certain in consideration of fr. 333 N 2 , where the title Κρίσκ is attested, and the lines of Callimachus, which show the theme of Aphrodite's and Athena's adornment in connection with the Judgment. A brief discussion of the Sophoclean play as a "choice of lives" version of the .Judgment is found in Stinton's Euripides and the Judgement of Paris, pp. 8—9; he compares Sophocles with Prodicus in passing, but does not suggest direct parody. 48 Prodicus' σύγγραμμα irepi Ηρακλέους is described in Xen. Mem. II, i. 2 1 - 3 4 . These paradigms of choice may have seemed especially meaningful in the late fifth century, when there seemed to be a new and confusing plethora of possibilities in human life.

102

The date of Sophocles' Κρίσις relative to the production of 415 is unknown; in simple probability, it is likely to have been earlier. In any case, the work of Sophocles proves that in the late fifth century or before, the Judgment of Paris was envisioned as a choice of lives. Euripides, however, twists the choice between good and evil. All the choices offered Paris in the version of Euripides entail conquest and destruction. By choosing Helen, he destroyed his own city, but gained the eternal glory of having married the daughter of Zeus; had he chosen either Hera or Athena, he would have ruined another's city instead of his own, but the essential result would have been the same. The entire tragedy shows the hollowness of military glory and the conquest of empire. If the Judgment could be imagined as a choice between Virtue and Vice in which the hero chooses Vice, Euripides in the trilogy depicts it as a choice between Vice and Vice. The agony of choice so prominent in the trial scenes becomes the complete lack of true choice. While the agones show the difficulty of coming to a right decision and abiding by it, the presentation of the Judgment suggests that no right decision exists. *

In the agones, sophistic (and pre-Socratic) theories and principles are employed as the chief method of uncovering truth. The debate about whether arete can be taught, the radical equality based on φύσις preached in Antiphon, the argument from eikos, rational criticism of the Olympian religion and philosophical substitutes for it: all enter, all are in part successful. The method itself, the double argument used by Protagoras, 49 does in each case advance our understanding, or at least provide a basis on which understanding can be built. Yet in no instance is a right judgment made and carried out. The method does not suffice to handle the intricate complexities of things. The only sophistic doctrine fully supported by the agones is that appearances control human action. Menelaus allows 6φiç to overcome his formulated verdict, while Priam and Agamemnon are confused from the first. In the first two agones, the audience, at least, is provided with the reality behind the illusions, and the final sophistic doctrine, the relativity of value, is kept at bay. But the ambiguity left surrounding the Judgment leaves this problem open. We do not know the reality of the Judgment; we may be tempted to 49

Protagoras seems to have been the greatest practitioner and teacher of arguing both sides of any subject (frs. A 21, C 2 D—K): the catalogue of his works at D. L. IX., 55 includes Άρηλογάκ. By the latter part of the century, the method was, of course, widespread and popular enough to produce a relatively undistinguished work like the Δισσοι Λόγοι—a result in which Euripides himself clearly had a substantial part (fr. 189 N 2 ):

έκ παντός αν τις πράγματος δισσών λόγων àyûva deir' άν, et \éyeii> είη σοφός. 103

wonder whether there exists any one reality, or if the Judgment took place and has reality only in the different uses to which it is put in argument. Our sympathies in the three agones prevent this from being more than a suspicion; we are not driven to feel that all decisions and judgments about reality are equally valid or invalid. When we turn to the Judgment itself, however, we are presented with choices which seem different and are yet in a way the same. And since the event is left in such obscurity, it seems possible that the choices themselves are not external realities brought by actual goddesses, but a creation of the mind itself. Hecuba's prayer with its doubt and its range of possibilities spreads over the trilogy. We are shown the possibility that Zeus is the νοϋς βροτών, that Aphrodite is άφροσύνη; if we are as prone to be deceived as the actors of the trilogy, it may be inevitable that we doubt even the Poseidon and Athena we have seen before us, and the Cassandra whose prophecies are a standard for truth. The more the trilogy is allowed to affect us, the more it. seems almost to disintegrate in the doubts it creates. Realities, at least as they can be represented in language, become more and more tenuous. Thought creates only confusion.

104

CHAPTER FIVE

Theme and Action That the tragedies of 415 possessed some trilogie unity can scarcely be doubted; the repetitions of characters, themes, and images from play to play, and the parallelism in structure of the agones, show patterns that can still be recognized, despite the loss of so much of the text. The agones share a concern with sophistic methods and arguments, and a particular artificial form; nonetheless, their explicit subjects seem quite distinct. Yet in fact the problems raised in each of the agones are echoed in the action of the entire work. That the issue of the Helen scene of Troades is intimately connected with the Alexander is self-evident; the association is essential to the scene and is deliberately signaled by the author. Each of the other trials also presents a cluster of ideas which appear in the dramatic development. The agon of the Alexander deals with nobility and slavery, issues which reappear in the Troades, and by implication with other conventional distinctions among men, such as that between Greeks and barbarians, which again appears in the Troades and may well have been treated, in some form, by the Palamedes also. The Palamedes sets forth the opposition between true wisdom and spurious cleverness, as well as exploring the difficulties of the argument from eikos; the unpredictable plays a part in both the other plays, manifesting itself in the changes of fortune which constitute their action and especially in the theme of the destructive nature of good qualities. The contrast of unrecognized wisdom and false σοφία appears in both the other plays. The idea of progress, prominent in the Palamedes, is examined in all three tragedies. The agon itself is by nature a competitive action, and each trial ends in a victory for one side, a defeat for the other: the opposition of victory and loss is interwoven in much of the drama. All these binary contrasts, merged with each other or separately, together form the fabric which joins the intellectual abstractions of the agones to the action. The trial of Helen is largely concerned with the gods, whose role will be discussed in the following chapter. Some of its other issues were recurring themes. The natural and inevitable rule of the stronger, for example, is implied in Talthybius' advice to Andromache at 728—9 (compared in Chapter Three to the ainos of Hesiod's Erga 202—12): μήτε σ&ένουσα μηδέν ίσχυεLV δόκει. ¿χεις yàp άλκη ν οϋδαμή · σκοπεί ν δέ χρή. Though no doctrine is here stated, there is a clear implication that force is the only criterion on which action can be based. The world of Troades is 105

d o m i n a t e d b y b r u t e p o w e r , t o w h i c h m o r a l s t a n d a r d s are n o t a p p l i e d ; H e l e n ' s c l a i m is in t h e spirit o f the d r a m a . Y e t h e r w o r d s at 9 4 8 , την και Δ ι ό ς κρέισσων 23a,

yevov,

w e r e a n t i c i p a t e d in the Alexander

deòv

κόλαζε

b y Hector (fr.

12-13): el δ ' έστί

κρείσσω)

ύφ' ή ς ένίκω·

σου, κόλαζε

κυριότερος

yàp

την

φύσιν,

el.

T h e last clause is p r o b a b l y sarcastic j u s t as H e l e n ' s w o r d s are; 1

Deiphobus'

d e f e a t is a s c r i b e d t o a n i m p e r s o n a l φύσις, w h i c h has b e s t o w e d p h y s i c a l strength o n the h e r d s m a n . T h e t h e m e o f relative strength r u n s t h r o u g h the

Alexander,

a m b i g u o u s l y d i v i d e d i n t o the m i g h t o f p o l i t i c a l o r social status a n d that o f the s u p e r i o r a t h l e t e . D e i p h o b u s in the agon

argues that the q u e s t i o n s h o u l d

n o t b e a l l o w e d t o arise, f o r o n e s h o u l d a v o i d h a v i n g slaves w h o a r e s t r o n g e r than their masters ( f r . 2 8 ) . O n c e A l e x a n d e r is a l l o w e d t o c o m p e t e , his vict o r y r e n d e r s m o o t the q u e s t i o n o f w h o is the strongest, w h o t h e n a t u r a l r u l e r . H e c t o r ascribes the slave's p h y s i c a l s u p e r i o r i t y to a n e x t e r n a l

φύσις,

a n d thus a v o i d s the issue b y p l a c i n g such s u p e r i o r i t y in t h e same c a t e g o r y as the e f f e c t s o f d i v i n e i n t e r v e n t i o n s . T h e s e can b e c o n s i d e r e d a c c i d e n t a l a n d w i t h o u t m o r a l w e i g h t . S o H e c t o r ' s g o o d n a t u r e d a c c e p t a n c e o f the upstart's v i c t o r y relies o n a n a b d i c a t i o n o f r e s p o n s i b i l i t y w h i c h serves as a d a n g e r o u s p r e c e d e n t f o r H e l e n . 2 T o a t t r i b u t e o n e ' s f a i l u r e s t o a g o d is a f a m i l i a r e x c u s e

1

M y punctuation and interpretation o f these lines follows that o f Luria, Aegyptus

326—30. Most scholars and editors have preferred to punctuate the line, ei δ ' èoTÌ σων,

σοϋ κόλαζε

V, κρείσ-

την φύσιν. In this case φύσις could not, I think, mean "physical condi-

t i o n , " as some have wished to take it. It is t o o late f o r Deiphobus to profit by better exercise, κυριώτερος

would have little point, and there w o u l d be a peculiar implication

that Deiphobus was naturally weak, since φύσις should refer to his basic constituion, not to any μαλακία,

unless the noun were suitably qualified. Rather, φύσις would probably

mean something close to όργή. Hector would then be saying that Deiphobus is naturally hot-tempered; the phrase ύφ' ής ένίκω

would not allude to the games, but to Deiphobus'

lack of self-control. This is possible, but weaker than Luria's interpretation, èvùcio is stronger as an allusion to the games, and its tense makes more sense; it is hard to explain the emphatic αού with φύσις. T h e real argument in favor of this interpretation is metrical, as it provides a normal penthemimeral caesura. On the other hand, lines o f the type produced b y Luria's reading can certainly be found in Euripides. T w o at least can be found elsewhere in the trilogy, in Pal. fr. 583, όστις λέγει, and Tro. 386, Τρώες δέ πρώτον

λέγει μέν εΰ, τά δ' ëpy' έφ' οίς

μέν, το κάλλιστο ν κλέος.

In each case, there is

a sense break at the third longum, which is preceded by a monosyllable. Paul Maas in Greek Metre

(trans. Lloyd-Jones, O x f o r d , 1962), denies that Euripides ever allows a medial

caesura, except where elision follows, but states (paragraph 137) that he "allows postpositives to stand after the masculine caesura without restriction." While the relation between caesura and sense break is not settled, it is hard to think that Euripides would leave a word like the eu of εΰ λέγειν

or the μέν o f πρώτον

μέν isolated between the

caesura and the colon end. 2

N o t e the verbal similarity, despite a different grammatical construction, with

acjv/κόλαξε

106

in each case: this looks deliberate.

κρείσ-

from Homer, 3 but the extension of the excuse from personal divinities to φύσις helps prepare for the partial validity of Helen's plea even under the rationalized interpretation of Hecuba. In the Palamedes, the same issue may well have arisen near the end of the play, in Oeax's attempts to resist the leaders of the army. His helplessness and his image of the Greeks as nightingalekillers in fr. 588 again present a world of violence and force; Oeax is in a situation like that of Andromache, and the theme of the right of the stronger is merged with the pattern of the murder of an innocent. The doctrine has therefore two sides. It is used by the aggressor to justify any action or simply to cow the weak; it need not even be stated, for its arguments are inherent in the situation. It can also be used by those who defend their failures or crimes by claiming to have been overpowered. When Hector uses this defense for his brother in an attempt to molify him, he speaks from within the traditional framework of Greek morality. The excuse is an admission of human limitation, the necessary recognition that the world is not entirely under human control: Deiphobus' anger is truly close to hybris,4 Though in the Alexander the advice is moral and receives our sympathy, in Troades the same terms are used to deny morality altogether. The use of the argument with respect to men, represented by the situations of Andromache and probably Oeax, shows how the alteration takes place. In place of the restraint suitable to men, the rule of the stronger becomes an excuse for ignoring all restraint. And as men work only in terms of power, so they portray the gods. s The social differences criticized in the agon of the Alexander are obviously relevant in Troades, whose subject is the enslavement of the Trojan women. The chorus, which sympathized with the queen in the earlier play and shared her joy at its end, moves in a direction opposite to that of the title character of the first tragedy. Just as Hecuba and Cassandra seemed to pivot around the intervening action in their development, so the total action of Troades reverses that of the Alexander. Paris moved from slavery into freedom and 3 An outstanding example in a situation not unlike that of Deiphobus is, of course, Paris' excuse at II. III, 4 3 9 - 4 0 . 4 Cf. the comparison of the Helen scene of Troades to the argument of the Nurse in Hipp, made in Chapter Four. The Nurse actually uses the word ύβρις at 474. 5 The most outstanding illustration of this is the passage of Thuc. cited in Chapter Four (V, 105, 2 - 3 ) :

η'γούμεΰα yàp τό τε âeîov δόξη τό άνάρώπειόν re σαφώς δια παντός imo φύοεως άρα-γκαίας, ού âv κρατχι, άρχειν καί προς μεν τό delov ούτως έκ τού εικότος ob φοβούμεδα ελασσώοεσΰαι. This kind of thinking is open to criticism; for instance, Iphigeneia at Iph. Taur. 389—90 says that the Taurians have imagined Artemis in their own image:

τους δ' ένϋάδ', αύτούς όντας άνάρωποκτόνους, ες την âeôv τό φαϋλον άναφέρειν δοκώ. 107

royalty; the chorus throughout the drama is moved deeper into slavery, as the captives are allotted and finally depart. The action of Troades complicates the issues of the first agon. The Trojan women are εύγενεΐς; as Talthybius says at 302—3, they are identifiable with τούλεύύερον, and are not patient with their lot: κάρτα TOI τοϋλεύϋερον èv τοίς τοιούτοις δυσλόφως φέρει κακά. As the portrayal of Paris suggests, real nobility is not found in passivity and submission to fortune; he proved his native excellence by refusing to allow his presumably low origin to determine his ambitions. Yet in Talthybius' advice to Andromache, the values seem reversed (727): μητ άντέχου τοϋδ', εύγενώς δ' άλγει κακοϊς. Here ebyéveia is the abandonment of a futile resistance which, despite its weakness, might seem to be the best proof of nobility. The echo of οϋ λόγω έχοντες, άλλά την τύχην κεκτημένοι in the same speech (737) has the same implications. Where Alexander treated slavery as a τύχη to be withstood, Talthybius regards fortune as a power not to be resisted even by speech: σιγώ σα δ' εύ τε τάς τϋχας κεκτημένη If Paris won admiration by displaying not slavish, but aristocratic virtues, the women are at least exhorted to express their nobility by submission; and Andromache, threatened by the herald, succumbs. Yet all the Trojan's contempt for the Greeks is expressed by Hecuba at 1156—1206: they are δείσαντες and ώ μείζον' ÖJKOV δορός έχοντες Ή φρενών. The inherent arete shows itself in the only way it can, παρρησία.6 Though Hecuba does not actually curse the Greeks, Andromache has cursed Helen, the chorus both Helen and Menelaus. Very little is held back. The issue of nobility is thus not simple. The attitudes of both speakers in the Alexander are falsified by events, as both were already qualified by the original dramatic situation. Since the women of Troy can be enslaved, evidently slavery is altogether independent of φύσις; yet the allusion to the high birth of the main characters suggests that their evyeveia, in the literal sense, is the source of their nobility of mind. 7 The action of the play could be summed up in the words of Andromache (614—15): άγόμβ^α λεία συν τέκνω· τό δ' ebyevèç ές δούλο ν ηκει, μεταβολάς τοσάσδ' έχον. 6

The association of free speech with freedom is not uncommon; note e.g., Ion 674—75 and especially Phoen. 391—92:

Πο. ev μέν μέγιστοι, ούκ έχει παρρησίαν. Ιο. δούλου τόδ' είπας, μη λέγειν α τις φρονεί. 7

The theme first appears in Hecuba's opening monody, at 108—09:

ώ πολύς όγκος συστελλόμενος προγόνων, ώς ουδέν άρ' ήσάα cf. lines 583, 742. The recital of the erotic connections of Troy with the gods at 819—59 stresses the great history of the royal family.

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The change is real; the independence from τύχη claimed by Paris is severely qualified. Yet nobility does not cease to be itself. The Alexander showed its young hero's rise from slavery into freedom; in the Troades, his rise has caused the free world he entered to fall into slavery. In fact, the play presents the slavery not only of the Trojan women, b u t of their masters: no mortal actor in the drama could really be called free. The chief representative of the Greeks is the herald Talthybius, who is essentially no freer than the women to whom he bears messages. He dislikes what he does, and says so more than once (786—89): τά δέ τοιάδε χρη κηρυκεύειν, όστις άνοικτος και άναιδείρ της ημετέρας •γνώμης μάλλον φίλος έστίν. He is unwilling, as he says at 710; as much the victim of superior force as the women, he advises Andromache to follow his own σοφία. He counsels her to accept the decisions of the chiefs as he accepts them; though he complains of what he must do, he speaks less freely than the captives. He is restrained by fear, having something to lose. Cassandra's expression of contempt for the herald's trade belongs in this context, immediately following Talthybius' excuses for what she has prophesied (407—10; note also 417—19): εί μή σ' Απόλλων έξεβάκχευσεν φρένας, οΰ τά ν άμ LOÛÎ τους έμονς στρατηλάτας τοιαΐσδε φήμαις έξέπεμπες äv χΰονός. She has the disgust of the free nature for the servile (424—26): η δεινός ò λάτρις • τί ποτ' έχονσι τοϋνομα κήρυκες, εν άπέχύημα πά-γκοινσν βροτοϊς, οί περί τυράννους και πόλεις ύπηρέται; The herald is a λάτρις, a υπηρέτης; the terms which can be used for Cassandra's service to Apollo show the slavish situation of him who serves men. 8 Though he is never actually called a δούλος, the herald is more servile than the slaves.9 Among the other actors, Helen herself proclaims her own subjection to Aphrodite. In 963—64, she actually uses the word: τά δ' οϊκοάεν κείν' άντι πικρώς έδούλευα';

νικητηρίων

Though we may not accept her claim of having been compelled, the alternative is the statement of Poseidon in the prologue (34—35), that she is "justly" held among the captives; despite her ultimate escape from this con8

Cassandra calls herself την 'Απόλλωνος λάτριρ. While υπηρέτης can be used of anyone in a subordinate post, λάτρις is often used of slaves, Tro. 1106 ( λ ά τ ρ ε υ μ α ) , ΙΑ 8 6 8 , Hec. 609 (though one might note that the god Hermes uses the word of himself at Ion 4). 9

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dition, she is no model of freedom. Her peripeteia seems an inversion of the main action of the drama; we almost expect her death at the entry of Menelaus, but at the end she seems to be the only character to have an upward shift in fortune. Others descend further into slavery, while she beguiles her way to freedom. Her upward rise, however, is the exact opposite of the freedom gained by Paris in the Alexander. He attained his true status by refusing to accept his apparent condition, while she escapes her captive status, which a god has declared to be just, by proclaiming her own essential slavery. She is even more servile than the herald. As for Menelaus, his failure to carry out his sentence reveals his fundamental lack of freedom. The chorus may advise him that by killing Helen he will prove himself είτγενής in his enemies' eyes (1035)—but he fails. Not only does he fail to appear noble, he shows himself as much a slave of Aphrodite as Helen claims to be, for his failure shows him to have been *''captured" by Helen just as Troy has been captured and enslaved (891—92): ορών δέ τήνδε tpeirye, μή σ' è'Xfl πόόφ · aìpel yàp άνδρών δμματ', έξαφεϊ πόλεις. For Helen, indeed, the whole universe is enslaved to Cypris. At 948—50 she says: και Διός /epeίσσων yevoû, δς των μέν άλλων δαιμόνων έχει κράτος, κείνης δέ δοϋλός è ση If Zeus himself is enslaved, freedom no longer exists in the cosmos, except for this irrational force. Freedom does not appear in the tragedy. The Alexander and the Troades are thus closely connected in their use of the theme of the transition from slavery to freedom, freedom to slavery. Certain aspects of the theme had a part in the Palamedes. The herald, that symbol of servility, may well have played a role in the play. The speech of Talthybius to Andromache, moreover, seems almost a parody of the behavior of Palamedes. The hero retained his dignity; if he spoke, it was certainly not to lament or to curse his enemies. 10 In Gorgias he insists that the issue is not one of life or death; his calm confrontation of his fate may have expressed itself as silence or in reserved speech, but his philosophical tranquillity remained unshattered. 11 Talthybius begins his exhortation with 10

The attitude of Palamedes was briefly discussed in Chapter Three. His silence is emphasized by Philostratus, Her. X, 8. 11 Especially interesting is the passage in paragraph 33, where Palamedes explicitly rejects the use of appeals to pity, a section imitated in Plato's Apol. 34—35. In several places, Plato uses Gorgias' work, and the conception of Socrates as a second Palamedes helps show how the hero was imagined at the beginning of the fourth century, presumably under the influence of both Gorgias and Euripides. For the imitation of Gorgias in the Apology, see G. Calogero, "Gorgias and the Socratic Principle Nemo sua sponte peccat," JHS 77 (1957), pp. 1 2 - 1 7 , and J. A. Coulter's response in HSCP 68 (1964), pp. 2 6 9 - 3 0 3

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the words (726), άλλ' ώς γε^εσύω, καί σοφωτέρα φανη. The restraint of Palamedes is a true example of σοφία and the ebyeveta which the herald also invokes. The acceptance of fate shown by Palamedes depended partly on an understanding of its inevitability in a wide sense, as well as on the selfcontrol which would not allow him to demean himself with laments or to give his enemies further triumph. The silence enjoined by Talthybius is based on external weakness, that of Palamedes on inner strength. In this context, the full irony of the herald's eiryeveia and σοφία becomes manifest, while as a final alternative the poet shows the silence of Hecuba at 686—96. She is άφύογγος neither from the self-conscious restraint of Palamedes nor from the surrender recommended by Talthybius: she is simply exhausted by the number of griefs before her. The agon of the Alexander dealt primarily with the subject of slavery and ebyéveua. The theme is important in Troades, and for some of its effect probably depended on the Palamedes. But this opposition does not completely summarize the first agon, for Alex. fr. 40 suggests a wider application of its arguments. All social distinctions which depend on νόμος are included. Not only slaves and free men, but rich and poor, Greeks and barbarians, are present by implication in the chorus' assertion that men share a single origin. Both these oppositions are to be found elsewhere in the trilogy. The contrast between rich and poor was given a new twist in the Palamedes, for it is clear from fr. 580 N 2 that the hero was accused of betraying the army for money. Odysseus insists not only that wealth is the universal desire of all men, but that it is the measure of wisdom: ΰς δ' äv ifkeloT ëxxi σοφότατος. On the other hand, Palamedes must have denied desiring money, and said that he possessed enough already: he is the advocate of τά μέτρια..12 In essence he is indifferent to wealth, standing apart from both the claims in favor of poverty made by Alexander or the opposite claim, made by Odysseus, that wisdom and riches are at least thought of as equivalent. To Odysseus' assertion the mediocre Talthybius gives a sufficient reply early in the Troades (411—16): άτάρ τά σβμνά καί δοκήμασιν σοφά οϋδέν τι κρείσσω των τό μηδέν ην άρα • ò γαρ μέγιστος των ΪΙανελλήνων άναξ, Άτρέως φίΚος παις, τησδ' έρωτ êÇaiperov μαινάδος υπέστη· καί πένης μέν e ¿μ' έ γ ώ , άτάρ λέχος ye τησδ' &ν ούκ έκτησάμην. Neither has, I think, satisfactorily given an answer to the question of why Plato imitated the Palamedes, but I think the hero was popular in Socratic circles. In D. L. 2, 44, we learn that fr. 588 of the Euripidean play was, in despite of chronology, considered a reproach to the Athenians for the death of Socrates; the play may have seemed to justify this reading. 12 This relies on the connection of fr. 580 N 2 with Gorgias' Pal. 15.

Ill

The herald has apparently equated wealth and intelligence in the past, b u t events have proven even t o him that the two are unrealated. Hecuba sees the nature of wealth rather more deeply; at 1248—50, she meditates on Astyanax' funeral: δοκώ Sè τόϊς ΰανοϋοι διαφέρειν βραχύ, el πλουσίων τις reiterai κτερισμάτων κενόν ôè Ύαύρωμ' έστί των ζώντων τάδε. Two themes involving the contrast are thus developed. The first is the dignity of poverty, which appears in the position taken by Paris in the first agon and near the end of the trilogy in Hecuba's farewell. The second involves the basic lack of any connection between wealth and intelligence. This arises in fr. 40, 10—11 of the Alexander, where true nobility is defined as intelligence: TÒ φρόνιμον eùyeveia και τό συνετόν, ό âeôç δίδωσιν, ούχ ò πλούτος. This aspect is resumed in Troades by Talthybius. Both aspects meet in Palamedes, whose wealth is not great, who rejects money as a motive for action, and who actually sets wealth and intelligence in direct contrast with one another. His argument from eikos demands that he argue that the wise man knows better than to pursue money. Fr. 40 also suggests the Greek-barbarian antithesis; the allusion to the appearance of men (1. 5—6, όμοΐαν δφιν) should refer to race above all. This contrast cannot have been developed within the Alexander itself, since all the actors were alike barbarians, but the implications of fr. 40 may have been played upon in the second play and are certainly evident in the third. The structure of the trilogy itself creates an ambivalence about this subject. In the Palamedes, the Trojans cannot have been portrayed in detail; they were only the enemy, those to whom Palamedes is said to have betrayed his friends. Yet as such they must have been continually in the background. One lyric fragment appears to allude to a local cult of the Great Mother, who is joined with Dionysus (fr. 586 N 2 ) : 1 3 * ob oàv Αωνύοου κομάν, *ος άν 'Ίδαν τέρπεται σύν ματρί φί\