Euripides and the Tragic Tradition 0299107604, 9780299107604

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Euripides and the Tragic Tradition

WISCONSIN STUDIES IN CLASSICS General Editors BARBARA HUGHES FOWLER and WARREN G. MOON

E. A. THOMPSON

Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire JENNIFER TOLBERT ROBERTS

Accountability in Athenian Government H.I.MARROU A History of Education in Antiquity Histoire de [' Education dans [' Antiquite, translated by George Lamb (originally published in English by Sheed and Ward, 1956) ERIKA SIMON

Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary G. MICHAEL WOLOCH

Roman Cities: Les villes romaines by Pierre Grimal, translated and edited by G. Michael Woloch, together with A Descriptive Catalogue of Roman Cities by G. Michael Woloch WARREN G. MOON, editor Ancient Greek Art and Iconography KATHERINE DOHAN MORROW

Greek Footwear and the Dating of Sculpture JOHN KEVIN NEWMAN

The Classical Epic Tradition JEANNY VORYS CANBY, EDITH PORADA, BRUNILDE SISMONDO RIDGWAY, and TAMARA STECH, editors

Ancient Anatolia: Aspects of Change and Cultural Development

Euripides and the Tragic Tradition Ann Norris Michelini

The University of Wisconsin Press

Published 1987 The University of Wisconsin Press 114 North Murray Street Madison, Wisconsin 53715 The University of Wisconsin Press, Ltd. I Gower Street London WCIE 6HA, England Copyright © 1987 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved First printing Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Michelini, Ann N. Euripides and the tragic tradition. (Wisconsin studies in classics) Bibliography: pp. 338-373. Includes index. I. Euripides-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Mythology, Greek, in literature. 3. Tragic, The, in literature. 4. Tragedy. I. Title. II. Series. PA3978.M5 1987 882'.01 86-40057 ISBN 0-299-10760-4

avo> 1totpouO't 1tiyyo Ill) 1(aKt(JaEi~ Ei~ avaVoptav 1tEcrn]" (982). At that critical moment, the quality in Orestes that his sister reproaches is also the humanizing factor that unites him to the ethic he expounded earlier, in which euandria (manliness, 367) received a new definition not based on courage in battle or victory in games. That Orestes requires and submits to such goading thus threatens both the new ethic that supported his quest for revenge and the old ethic of manliness that had imposed it in the first place. Klytaimestra's suggestion that women like to imitate (mimeisthai) the male partner seems to have a further application in this light. When men and women are united in partnership, heroic autonomy is excluded. The failure of Klytaimestra and Aigisthos to be satisfyingly villainous corresponds to the web of relations in which they are embedded, their marriage, their new family, and their new and old social roles. Even Elektra's sham marriage is real enough to compromise her heroic status and her enmity with her mother. Klytaimestra's rather shallow notions about balancing off the claims of family members may seem in the end· to have as much general validity as Elektra's dream of an ideal and dominant male partner. R. SchottHinder, in analyzing the ethical system of Elektra (1982), was struck by a contradiction. If it is true that the farmer is a good man, why is he not worthy of Elektra and why is his marriage to her a "deadly marriage [thanasimos gamos ]"? In fact, he is praised precisely for not thinking himself worthy of his wife and for refusing to make their marriag~ a real one. 203 But this ethic, contradictory as it is, is not unique to Elektra. It has been noted that slaves in Euripidean plays show themselves ethically advanced by their selfless concern for their masters. 204 Women also fit this pattern: the good wife, as the chorus points out, subordinates herself in every respect to her husband (1052). The passive or cooperative virtues in the dual system of Greek morality are commended especially to those for whom self-aggrandizement would be inappropriate, to young people, to poor people, to women, and to slaves. 205 The ethical change that we generally associate with Sokrates as a source 203. See O'Brien (1964, 33-34) and Schottliinder (1982, 49lff.). Both scholars make a somewhat Verrallian use of this contradiction, assuming that it represents a more valid truth than the surface praise of the Autourgos. But I am arguing that this view is traditional and natural, so that its contradictions could not be immediately apparent to a Greek audience. 204. See Brandt (1973, 137 - 38). "Die Diener freilich zeigen sich nicht urn sich selbst, sondern urn ihre bedrohten Herren besorgt." Slaves argue with their masters and express strong opinions, which gives them a new importance in the plays. But in fact they are more, not less, subordinated to their masters and are concerned only with them: the plays show "eine spezielle Diener-Moral auf, nach der vor allem die Rettung des Herro wichtig ist ... " 205. Adkins (1960, 36-37): women's arete is found, in contradiction to the masculine standard, among the quiet virtues. This happens, as A. points out, because "it is men who determine the nature of arete-both for men and for women. "

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reverses these values, so that the poor or women or even slaves tum out to be in some sense "better" than those traditionally placed above them in the social scale. But, since real social rankings do not change, hypocrisy and sentimentality are built into the new system, through the gulf between social reality and ethical standards. The aesthetic problem presented by the Autourgos-how to insert such a figure into a "serious" setting-is one with the social and moral problems of the new ethic. If eugeneia means what the Autourgos thinks it does, and what Orestes thinks it should, then the former's support of his patrons and their pretensions may be wrong. Worse, there are moments when the new moral hero looks silly rather than serious. The problem we have in assessing him is pointed up in his opening speech: is he a noble (gennaios) man, or a fool? If his wife is insubordinate, has the Autourgos anyone to blame but himself?206 Orestes' despairing suggestion at line 379 was truer than he meant it to be: "it is better to let those things go at random. "207 The schemes imposed on reality by the historical or theological viewpoint do not clear up the paradox of human suffering, any more than the disposition of a woman in marriage reduces her neatly to an instrument of genealogy. In the interstices of these arrangements life still continues. It is this irreducible relativity and impurity of human life, this dependency on environment, that is the focus of the comic viewpoint. The Elektra is a tragic play that includes and assimilates the comic universe; and by forcing us to feel sorrow for people who at other times--or at the same time-inspire repulsion or laughter, it becomes one of Euripides' most sustained and intensive responses to the problems of tragic form. In watching the play, it becomes difficult to keep life and death, horror and sympathy, laughter and tears separate; and we cannot ever achieve a satisfactory perspective from which to accommodate ourselves to these divisions. I would agree with Gellie in seeing the playas a remarkably bold innovation, with an "experimental" quality. The sweet aura of festival and celebration that faintly haloes the grisly story, melded with the awkward charm of the bucolic setting, creates a consistently maintained degree of dissonance with the action. When this dissonance breaks, at the end of the play, the tension between comic and tragic is resolved into an exquisitely balanced pity that is-in its lesser amplitude-analogous to the sublime bitterness at the end of the Trachiniai or the bitter sublimity at the close of the Oidipous at Kolonos. 206. We may compare the comic persona of Sokrates, with his shrewish wife (see Xenophon Symp. 2.\0 and Mem. 2.7 -9; and H. Dorrie in RE s.v. Xanthippe); or Euripides, with his adul-

terous one (Satyros xii, xiii [pp. 66 - 67 Arrighetti)). 207. lCpancrtOv EiKjj taut' iilv acpElj.t£va. Note the discussion above of the famous tag lines from Euripides, Chap. 3. This one, at any rate, while its meaning in the context is innocuous, has a hidden sting, a sting that is built into the play itself.

8 H erakles: Tragedy in Paradox

I. Some Critical Problems Herakles of all the extant plays raises with greatest urgency the perennial Euripidean questions about the nature of dramatic unity, the role of the gods, and the uses of cult and legend; and it has been impossible for interpreters to proceed, while leaving these central issues unresolved. Yet the very directness with which this play approaches problems that elsewhere are masked in an irony of indirection makes the elements of its structure almost impossible to miss. As a result, the image of the play in critical literature is clear in general outline, although central areas remain severely distorted or out of focus. Herakles raises problems of "unity" that are considerably more severe than those in other tragic plays that are thought to fall into two parts. I In the case of the Sophoclean "diptych" plays, or plays like Hekabe that combine two actions, or plays like Hippolytos that center on two protagonists, we note primarily a change of focus from one part of the play to another. But in Herakles the two dramatic actions are not causally related, do not move in the same direction, and in fact reverse and contradict each other radically. I. Division of the play has been a subject of controversy, with some scholars arguing for three parts, counting the divine epiphany in the middle as a separate part. See Kamerbeek (1966,

2-4), Burnett (1971, 157 -58). Gregory (1977, 259 n.2) summarizes groups of scholars in each camp; Strohm (1957, 108) argues against strong divisions, pointing to the close interrelation of the parts. For practical purposes-and such "divisions" have no other significance than convenience-it makes sense to treat the epiphany as a quasi prologue, setting off even more abruptly the second part from the first-see U. v. Wilamowitz (1895, 2: 180); Bond (1981, 281).

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The first half builds to a happy ending, with Herakles triumphantly returning to rescue his family from the usurper Lykos, while the second half shows the savior as the murderer of his family.2 While in the other cases it is possible to trace the ways in which two actions have been interlaced, in this case we can only point to parallels and analogies between the actions. The central feature of the structure must remain the abrupt break that severs the play into two halves. The emergence of the second action violates a familiar and long-lived stylistic criterion that requires a work of art to possess "organic unity", as if it were an independent ecology or system, an organism, rather than an intentional construct. 3 Since all art is in fact made for human purposes, this critical norm imposes yet another layer of artificiality upon the work: ars est celare artem. The "organically" designed play presents us with a series of dramatic events that appear to fit together causally as, from certain human viewpoints, some series of real events do. But the unity of a dramatic reality does not depend upon any editing or analysis by our consciousness, since all the elements in a work of art should be a part of the same system of significance. Herakles presents us with a part of reality usually left out of drama, a sequence of events that, like many sequences in life, is arbitrary, senseless, and contradictory. Because the events of the second half render the events of the first irrelevant and without meaning, the dramatic structure does not "make sense" and cannot be deciphered in the normal way. It is designed to be unintelligible. The first part of Herakles is as W. G. Amott has said (1978) a "red herring," a decoy that betrays the audience's understanding of what they are to expect from a play, even a play by Euripides. This is an extreme example of the ways in which Euripidean plays manipulate their audiences. We have seen that sympathy and identification, once developed, are often undercut, or may be put in question from the start, as when in Elektra or Wise Melanippe the audience is teased with an alternation between pathos and ludicrous overtones. In this case we are misled by an elaborate false front or dummy play, from which the real dramatic action emerges startlingly, like a jack from its 2. See Kroker (in his dissertation of 1938, the best single work published on Herakles in this century; pp. 110-13): the play creates a unit, "die zwei Gegensiitze in unaufloslicher Problematik einander zuordnet." See also Ziircher (1947, 90) and Lesky ([ 1956] 1972.1, 379): in no other drama "ist die Bindung der Teile zur Einheit dUTCh die Antithese so stark wie bei diesem." Conacher (1967, 58): "The action of the play is arrested and redirected by a series of three reversals, none of which is caused by something which has gone before ... " And see Galinsky (1972,57 -58). 3. On the genesis of this analogy, see the important article by Pohlenz, ([1920] 1965, 438- 39): P. points to the Clouds of Aristophanes, in which stylistic demands for unity (systasis ) can be traced at line 1367, where Aischylos is called axystatos by a detractor.

Herakles: Tragedy in Paradox

233

box. The "unorganic" quality of this play corresponds to the artful or artificial way in which Euripidean drama reveals its manipulation of the dramatic event, inviting the audience to question how and why the action has been put into its present form. 4 If the dramatic structure of Herakles is an extreme example of Euripidean shock tactics, the play also provides an extreme example of the critical and unsympathetic portrayal of divine agents. While in other plays the role of divinities is restricted to prologue and epilogue areas, where these problematic figures can appear to frame off the dramatic event and where we may even feel that the mimesis of reality has become less vivid, in Herakles they emerge in the play's center, breaking in upon the action and violently rearranging its course. Since it is these figures that precipitate the swerve into dramatic unintelligibility, we are forced to ask ourselves what sort of divine power, and therefore what sort of universal order, confronts human beings. 5 Critical approaches to this difficult play have centered on the question of "unity."6 This focus has enriched our understanding of the play in detail, even as it has predictably tended to falsification and denial of the play's central structures. U. von Wilamowitz in his pioneering study pointed out that Herakles centers on conflicting concepts of heroic arete, opposing a new, modernized heroism, adopted by Herakles at Theseus' urging, to the traditional model of violence and force. 7 This emphasis on heroism also suggests an odd position of centrality for this play in the notoriously centrifugal work of Euripides. While other plays mark the Euripidean rejection of the spoudaion by selecting obviously ineligible protagonists, this play begins with the most renowned hero, working out its revisionist view through what would seem the most unlikely of subjects. Wilamowitz' other major contribution to the debate on Herakles was his 4. See Hekabe as a kind of dramatic experiment in extreme misery, Chap. 6, above. On the artful and arbitrary structures of Euripidean drama, see the perceptive comments of Kitto ([ 1939] 1961,268, on Medeia: "the whole play is conceived intellectually"; see also pp. 274-76). 5. Conacher (1967,89): the plot of Herakles reveals "the arbitrary intrusion of the 'gods of myth' into the lives of men" and thus cannot "proceed in accordance with dramatic probability." "Dramatic probability" is a phrase that rather fudges the fact that what is likely to happen in dramas has little to do with probability in ordinary life. 6. See the complaints of Murray (1946, 112; the play is "broken-backed"); Kitto ([1939] 1961,237). Note also discussions of previous views by Chalk (1962, 7-8); Gregory (1977, 259); Shelton (1979, 101). 7. 1895, 1.127-28. This notion is modified by Chalk (1962), who suggests that arete and bia are shown as inevitably connected. See Kroker (1938, 90-91); Galinsky (1972, 65-66). Adkins, who attacked Chalk's interpretation (1966.1, 209ff.), used a rigid definition of arete to explain away the evidence for the restructuring of traditional values in Euripidean plays. Cf. Adkins' discussion of Polyxene in the same article, and Chap. 6, Section IV, above. Dover (1983,40-41) argued against Adkins for a more flexible interpretation of moral concepts.

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attempt to remedy the disjunction between the two halves of the play by transfonning the theme of heroism to mend the cleavage. Rather than an irrational incursion from outside, the madness of Herakles became an expression of the violence from which the hero would be purged by the play's end. s The parallel with critical approaches to Oidipous Tyrannos is interesting. In both cases a benevolent and heroic male in the prime of life is destroyed by a crisis that, through no apparent fault of his own, makes him responsible for the violent deaths of close family members and that shatters his relation to his own children. 9 In the case of Oidipous, attempts to make the hero himself responsible for his fate have largely been repudiated; 10 but in fact the Sophoclean play gives far more encouragement to such an exegesis than does Herakles. Herakles' behavior is less strikingly irascible and violent than that of Oidipous; and the offenses of Iokaste are considerably more serious and receive much more notice in the play than do any trivial errors ascribable to Megara. II In contrast to the doomed union of Oidipous and Iokaste, the marriage of Herakles is nonnal, and even exemplary. While in Oidipous Tyrannos the flaws and faults of the hero and his wife seem to run along in the same current with the surge of fate that overwhelms them, in this play there is no coherent movement that leads to the final catastrophe. 12 Attempts to link Herakles' character with his downfall aim at creating an aesthetic structure through which the events of the play will hang together and explicate each other, suggesting a significant universe. But that would not be the universe of this play. Herakles like the hero of Aias goes mad because of the influence of a 8. 1895, 1:128: "Die Tat aber ist eine Folge der herakleischen eignen Natur geworden." This view was expanded and developed by Verrall in his usual colorful style (1905, 156ff.); he argues that Herakles is mad as a hatter from his first entrance. See also the odd theory of Blaiklock about Herakles' epileptic mania (1952, 124ff.) and Kamerbeek (1966, 10-13). 9. It will be pointed out that Herakles' children are, after all, dead; but burial provides a prolongation and reaffirmation of family ties, and this final relation is cut off for Herakles, because he is his children's murderer. For the comparison with aT, see Sheppard (1916, 78), Miiffelmann (1965,120-21). 10. Moralizing interpretations: Bowra (1944, 210 - 11): Oidipous "has been taught modesty through suffering"; Kitto ([1939]1961,180-81): Oidipous is hybristic. Cf. the valuable dissertation of Miiffelmann (1965, 120ff.), who draws a parallel between the problems of gUilt in the two plays. For rejection of Oidipous' guilt, see Whitman (1951, 124 - 28); and the trenchant discussion of Dodds, "On Misunderstanding Oedipus Rex" (1966), on the prevailing critical agreement on this point (38). 11. The views of Rohdich and Burnett, who blame Megara for excessive rationalism or a lack of faith in divine protection, are discussed above, Chap. I, Section lII.C. 12. Miiffelmann (1965, 121) suggests that Euripides, in structuring Herakles as he did, may have been attempting to avoid the "mistake" by which Sophokles permits us to confuse Oidipous' fate with Oidipous' trivial errors; but the Sophoclean structure is not a mistake. (The problem of "tragic error" is discussed in the following chapter.)

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goddess. 13 By treating Aias' madness, which was probably traditionally associated with his anger at the loss of Achilleus' arms,14 as an external accession, unmotivated by any psychological experience, Sophokles builds sympathy for the hero, who betrays himself against his will. Aias sees himself as horribly shamed by his insane outburst, while at the same time the behavior of the Greek army confirms that Aias and his family have become social outcasts, subject to public scorn and mob attack. 15 But, because everyone in the play, including Aias' bitterest enemies, treats his madness as a divine punishment, Aias' humiliation is both his and not his; it is significant that, while Agamemnon and Menelaos indict the hero as a hybristes and a would-be murderer, they do not scorn him as a senseless madman. 16 The treatment of Herakles' madness is not dissimilar, and the effect is stronger in that there is no discernible psychological source for Herakles' acts. They do not even result from the deflection of an original sanely conceived intention, as those of Aias do.'7 The device of divine intervention permits us to see Herakles awakened on the stage as a totally separate person from "Herakles Mad" behind the scenes. IS Like Aias, Herakles is not a madman, but a sane man who has suffered an isolated episode of madness, so that in the second half of 13. Hera sends madness to those she hates, usually because of her jealousy of Zeus' sons by mortals, e.g., Athamas (Apollod. 1.9.2, cf. 1:76 n.1 Frazer). Herakles and Dionysos offend Hera by their very existence; mortals such as Pelias or the Proitides (see Bakchylides 11.43ff.) may have offended by some impiety. 14. In the Iliau Persis (5:139 Allen) the physician Podaleirion recognizes the symptoms of Aias' incipient madness, which proceeds from his anger: {)fJ. Kat Ai'av1:ot; ltpiii1:0t; lla9E Xrooj1€VOlO / Olllla1:a 1:' clO1:palt1:0V1:a !3apuvoll£VOV 1:£ vOTllla. This is a sufficient disproof of the argument of Drexler (1943, 314) that the Greeks always had treated madness as an external visitation. 15. Aias' shame: lines 367, 383,454 (laughter of enemies); 408-9 (hostility of the Greek camp). Teukros' reception in the camp: £i'1:' OVEl&O"lV T1paooov Ev9EV Kav9Ev ou&tt; £09' ou (721 - 28). On the laughter of enemies as the greatest fear of the heroic personality, see Maddalena (1963, 138), who compares Medeia and Aias. 16. See Menelaos' indictment, lines 1057ff., 1126 (Aias as a virtual murderer); 1081 - 82, 1087 - 88 (Aias as hybristes). Note that this view of Aias' offense conflicts to some extent with the normal Hellenic "results-oriented" morality (see Adkins [1960, 51-57)) according to which Aias' actual humiliation rather than Aias' intended crime would be a more potent weapon in the hands of his enemies. 17. See Kroker (1938, 119; comparison with Aias 90-91), Miiffelmann (1965, 119). The most diabolic quality of Athena's revenge is its potential as a source for the laughter most feared by the heroic figure: Aias' mistake in killing cattle in place of his enemies is a "joke" of which he finds himself the butt. This accounts for the different treatment of madness in the two plays. See Miiffelmann ibid.: Aias' madness is trivial and humiliating, and therefore totally unassimilable to the hero's view of himself. By contrast, Herakles' murder of his children forces the hero to reassess his whole career. 18. But see Pucci (1980, 182-85). For parallel effects in Homeros, see Gundert (1940, 225-29).

at;

at;

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the play, as in Aias, we see Herakles coming to terms with misfortune, shame, and guilt that are, in some significant sense, not really his. 19

II. The Design of the First Half II.A. ARCHAIZING STYLE IN DIALOGUE AND LYRIC

Euripidean language is quite consistently smooth, elegant, and limpid, pared of the exuberant Aeschylean vocabulary and avoiding the tense and elaborate (katatechnon) mannerism of Sophokles. 2o Herakles, however, makes a different stylistic impression. U. von Wilamowitz noted the elaborate diction of the lyrics and ascribed it to the evocation of an archaic ideal of heroism. 21 But even the language of the trimeter speeches presents some remarkable anomalies, particularly in the opening scenes. 22 The play begins typically enough with a precise and clear narrative prologue by Amphitryon, followed by dialogue between the old man and Megara; and the tone of instruction gives way to a greater depth of mimesis and pathos, as the woman tells of the lonely waiting for Herakles to return. The second part of Megara's speech is full of domestic atmosphere;23 but the language of the first part is extremely formal. She begins with a tortuous honorific address to Amphitryon as the man who conquered the Taphians. 24 Her language reaches greater heights a few lines further on, as she remarks that her father held a tyranny "for whose sake the long spears leap with desire into fortunate

19. See discussion of Phaidra's moral responsibility for her erotic feelings, in the fo\1owing chapter. 20. Katatechnon is the term used by Sophokles himselfto characterize his middle period; see Plut. Moral. 79b (1:157 Paton & Wegehaupt). For modem assessments of Euripidean style, see Masqueray (1908, 3\): "uni, fiuide, d'une extraordinaire agilite"; and Kitto ([1939]1961, 272): "simple and limpid." Pohlenz attempted to trace fifth-century estimates of Euripides' style, as suggested by Frogs, directly back to Gorgias ([1920] 1965,456-57). Pohlenz (458 n.3) points to a reference in Quintilian (2.10.6) that may derive from the same unknown source in fifthcentury critical prose as do Aristophanes' jokes about the "dieting" down of Aischylos' swo\1en style (Frogs 939-44). See also Wehrli (1946), who traces the genesis of the "low" or "thin" style (ischnon, lepton) back to the fifth-century criticism of tragedy (24 - 25). 21. 1895,1:127. 22. See Paley's edition (1860, 3): Euripides seems to have aimed "at the grandiloquent and Aeschylean style of diction more than was his wont." 23. See U. v. Wilamowitz (1895,1:119): "Der Kiindiger des weiblichen Herzens hat sich in den wenigen Reden, die er Megara geliehen hat, nicht verleugnet." He saw Megara's Leidenschaft even in her anacolutha (2:20), a conclusion rightly denied by Bond (1981,77). 24. 61: