Lost Dramas of Classical Athens: Greek Tragic Fragments 0859897524, 9780859897525

Citation preview

LOST DRAMAS OF CLASSICAL ATHENS GREEK TRAGIC FRAGMENTS Papyrus finds over the last hundred years have drastically altered and supplemented our knowledge of ancient Greek tragedy. The large body of Greek tragic fragments now known to us gives access to an enormous amount of information both about the tragic genre and the society in which it was produced; recent publication of editions of some of these fragments means that they are now readily available for study.

Lost Dramas of Classical Athens offers an exciting range of new and traditional approaches to fragmentary Greek drama. Its main focus is on the lost works of the three most famous Athenian tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Incorporating cutting-edge work by world authorities from the fields of tragedy, tragic fragments and beyond, the collection confirms the important role Greek fragments play in the study of ancient drama and their significance to disciplines as diverse as philosophy, cultural history and gender studies. The book also raises key questions about the contextualization, manipulation and definition of tragic fragments.

Editors: Fiona McHardy is Lecturer in Classical Civilisation at Roehampton University. She co edited Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization (2004) and is currently completing a book on revenge in ancient Greece. James Robson is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University and is currently completing a book entitled Humour and Obscenity in Aristophanes. David Harvey is a former Lecturer in Classics at the University of Exeter and has published widely on Greek antiquity; in particular he co edited University of Exeter Press’s Food in Antiquity (1995).

LOST DRAMAS OF CLASSICAL ATHENS GREEK TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

Edited by Fiona McHardy, James Robson and David Harvey

First published in 2005 by University of Exeter Press Reed Hall, Streatham Drive Exeter, Devon EX4 4QR UK www.exeterpress.co.uk

Reprinted 2008 © Fiona McHardy, James Robson, David Harvey and the individual contributors 2005 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 85989 752 5

Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

vii

Introduction

1

1

Fragments and their Collectors Rudolf Kassel, University of Cologne

7

2

Tragic Thrausmatology: the Study of the Fragments of Greek Tragedy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries David Harvey, formerly of University of Exeter

21

Euripidean Fragmentary Plays: the Nature of Sources and their Effect on Reconstruction Christopher Collard, The Queen’s College, Oxford

49

3

4

Lycians in the Cares of Aeschylus Antony G. Keen, Open University

63

5

Spectral Traces: Ghosts in Tragic Fragments Ruth Bardel, formerly of Somerville College, Oxford

83

6

Death and Wedding in Aeschylus’ Niobe Richard Seaford, University of Exeter

113

7

From Treacherous Wives to Murderous Mothers: Filicide in Tragic Fragments Fiona McHardy, Roehampton University

129

8

9

10

Tragic Fragments, Ancient Philosophers and the Fragmented Self Christopher Gill, University of Exeter

151

Aristophanes on How to Write Tragedy: What You Wear is What You Are James Robson, Open University

173

HY] Kronivwni ..... ..... .... po]levwn hJghvtora" ajndrw'n, Mivnw te kreivonta] divkaiovn te ÔRadavmanqun kai; Sarphdovna di'on] ajmuvmonav te krater[ovn te. ]edavssato mhtiveta Z[euv": Lukivh" eujr]eivh" i\fi a[nasse pov]lei" eu\ naietawvsa[" pol]lh; dev oiJ e[speto timhv megalhv]tori poimevni law'n. . . . he was about to . . . with trim ankled Europa . . . the father of men and gods . . . from the rich haired girl. So she bore sons to the almighty son of Cronus . . . leaders of cities and men, [Minos the ruler,] and just Rhadamanthys [and noble Sarpedon] the blameless and strong. . . . wise Zeus gave(?); . . . he ruled mightily over wide [Lycia] . . . cities filled with people . . . and great honour followed him . . . the great hearted shepherd of his people.79 (fr. 141 Merkelbach and West, 8 19 = fr. 52 Kobel = 209 Gött)

The appearance of this passage, followed by what seems a clear reference to Troy at line 23, and one to Hector at line 29, could be the earliest known association of Sarpedon with both Minos and the Trojan War. The significant amount of restoration is a problem; neither of the two names in which we are most interested, Sarpedon and Lycia, actually appear in the preserved text, though both are quite likely; nor does Minos. How far this tradition corresponded with any form of historical ‘reality’ is another question altogether. Though taken seriously by some scholars,80 the Cretan origin of the Lycians seems rather implausible. It probably 78 79

80

West (1985: 130 7). Translation adapted from Evelyn White (1914: 630 3). Evelyn White gives a much fuller restoration of the whole fragment, which makes the link with Europa and with Troy clear; but much of his restoration is no doubt based upon later authors. Bean (1978: 21); Bryce (1986: 29 32) considers the matter in an attempt to draw some historical conclusions.

78

ANTONY KEEN

derives from a meld in the Greek mind between contacts between Minoan Crete and the Lycians,81 and the connections with Miletus of both the Lycians and the Minoans.82 There was a historical tradition, represented in Thucydides (1.4, 1.8.1 2), that Minos had driven out Carian pirates and settled the Cyclades in their place.83 The link between the Lycians and Carians may preserve something more significant, however: the Hittite records of the second millennium BC attest to the existence of a people, or perhaps better a group of peoples, called the Lukka, clearly ancestors of the Lycians in some form. Where these lands lay is disputed, but it may well be that they covered much of what later became Lycia and southern Caria.84 Whatever lay behind it, this tradition certainly existed. Aeschylus’ Cares is probably not its earliest attestation, if one can accept the reconstruction of the Catalogue of Women. One may therefore conclude that Aeschylus did set the action of the Cares in Lycia, probably at Xanthus, and that the chorus is composed of leading local citizens, whom Aeschylus calls Carians rather than Lycians since, as far as he is concerned, the two are much the same. Why Aeschylus should choose Cares (Ka're") rather than Lycians (Luvkioi) is a question that is rather more difficult to answer. Perhaps we should trust Strabo here and assume that Aeschylus was simply following common poetic usage.85 It might be that calling Lycians ‘Carians’ is part of a similar process to Hall’s ‘barbarianizing’ of the Trojans (see above), ‘barbarianizing’ the people into whose mouths Homer felt able to place the clearest statement of the reciprocal relationship of a basileus to his subjects (Il. 12.307 30). On the other hand, Hall has also drawn attention to the probability of Euripides’ Bellerophon featuring a chorus of Lycians, and has suggested that Aeschylus chose Carians for this tragedy because of the role in the Athenian world of Carian women as professional mourners (Pl. Laws 800e2 3).86 She adds: ‘Perhaps Europa sang laments similar to those 81 82 83 84 85

86

See now Georges (1994: 70) on the Greek imposition of their own traditions on the Lycians. Recent excavations at Miletus have provided good evidence for significant Minoan presence at the site (Gates 1996: 302; 1997: 268). On Thucydides 1.4, see Hornblower (1991: 21); on 1.8, see Gomme (1945: 106 8). See Garstang and Gurney (1959: 75 82), Gurney (1954: 44), Keen (1998: 27, 214 20) for a full discussion It might be noted at this point that the comic poet Antiphanes also wrote a Carians (Ka're": fr. 113 Kock); but the only surviving fragment of this play tells us nothing about its plot. Hall (1989: 131).

LYCIANS IN THE CARES OF AESCHYLUS

79

delivered by Astyoche for her Mysian son in Sophocles’ Eurypylus.’87 The reference to Mylasa is a red herring as far as determining the play’s setting is concerned. We have absolutely no idea in what context or how often Aeschylus mentioned Mylasa in the play, or even why he chose to use the obscure form Mylasos indeed, we have no way of knowing whether elsewhere in the play Aeschylus used this or the more common form. However, a theory has been proposed that the name Mylasa preserves the element -mil- that is also found in Termilae, the Lycians’ name for themselves (Hdt. 1.173.3; Trm~mili in Lycian).88 One should also note Mylasa’s position directly between the supposedly Lycian foundations of Miletus and Idrias/Stratonicea. The appearance of Glaucus son of Sisyphus (who may be the subject of Aeschylus’ Glaucus Potnieus) in the genealogy of the eponymous hero Mylasus might also point in the direction of a Lycian connection. Glaucus was the father of Bellerophon (Hom. Il. 6.155), who of course has a strong Lycian connection;89 alternatively, there may be a confusion between this Glaucus and his greatgrandson (Hom. Il. 6.155, 196 7, 206) the Lycian Glaucus who served in Troy, a suggestion that might be supported by the passage of Herodotus quoted earlier, stating that some Ionian cities had kings descended from the Lycian Glaucus. There is a possible problem with a confusion of various mythological generations, but as will be seen, this is hardly uncommon in connection with the Lycian heroes, or indeed in other mythological genealogies or foundation stories. This citation of Mylasa, then, might be part of a list of the foundations made by Sarpedon and his Lycians, perhaps from a chorus dealing with Sarpedon’s glorious achievements (compare the account of Io in Suppl. 524 99), or from a speech by Europa to the same effect. Again, this most likely come from early on in the play which gives the impression that nobody read more than about the first few hundred lines (though I know of no exact parallel for this). Perhaps most of the play was lost at an early stage. There is some interest to be found in what Aeschylus tells us of Sarpedon’s life. Homer’s Sarpedon is the son of Zeus and Laodameia (see Il. 6.199 for Laodameia as his mother), the king of Lycia who falls to Patroclus at Troy; Herodotus’ Sarpedon is the brother of Minos who founds Lycia (as, perhaps, he is in the Catalogue of Women). Aeschylus’ 87 88 89

Cf. McHardy in this volume (pp. 149 50). Cited in Bean (1978: 21 2; 1980: 3, 13). See Bryce (1986: 244 5) for a full list of references, and see further Graves (1960: vol. I, 254); Harvey (1981: 19 n.1).

80

ANTONY KEEN

Sarpedon is both.90 This tradition may be perceptible already in Bacchylides, who has two references to Sarpedon, one (fr. 10 Campbell) to his role as son of Minos, and one seemingly (fr. 20E Campbell) a retelling of the removal of Sarpedon’s body after his death. However, since both references are fragments, one cannot be sure that Bacchylides thought of them as referring to the same individual. Later mythographers noted what they saw as the chronological difficulty of one man being both founder of the Lycians and their ruler at the time of the Trojan War, and explained it either through clearly distinguishing the two91 (Diod. Sic. 5.79.3 makes one the grandson of the other), or amalgamating them into one man who lived over a number of generations.92 What has probably happened is that Sarpedon, originally a single Lycian hero,93 had become the generic Lycian leader, who was linked with the Greek tales wherever they interacted with the Lycians and had to be associated with all things Lycian in much the same way that many ancient British sites are given some association with King Arthur. In the time of Homer perhaps Sarpedon was associated only with the Trojan War;94 by the time of Aeschylus, he had become associated with Lycia’s foundation as well, an association unlikely to have been an Aeschylean innovation.95 One last point perhaps remains: can we play the age-old game of trying to give a topical context to the Cares? I myself firmly believe that much, though certainly not all, of the drama of Aeschylus had some form of political intent behind it. Whether there was such an intent behind the Cares or not is, however, all but impossible to say. If we were to look for a contemporary context, then perhaps it might be sought in Cimon’s taking of Caria and Lycia for the Delian League some time c.470 BC (Diod. Sic. 90 91

92

93

94 95

Blass in Blass and Buechler (1880: 86). Compare Herodotus (2.43.1), who distinguishes a Greek and an Egyptian Heracles. Varro apparently distinguished between forty three different individuals; see How and Wells (1912: vol. I, 187). As early as Pindar (Pyth. 3.112) Sarpedon was being grouped with Nestor. Apollodorus (3.1.2) gives three as the number of generations; schol. Hom. Il. 6.198 9a1 Erbse gives six. See Bryce (1986: 21). Less plausible suggestions are found in Radice (1973: 213 s.v. ‘Sarpedon’), that there were originally two Lycian heroes, conflated in some accounts into one, and in Asheri (1988: 365), that a Lycian Sarpedon has become confused with a Cretan Sarpedon. Frei (1978) argues that the involvement of Sarpedon in the Trojan War is entirely an invention of Homer; see now Hiller (1993: 110). Bergk, on the other hand (Bergk and Kock 1880: 248), argues that Homer invented Laodameia as a means of squaring the chronology.

LYCIANS IN THE CARES OF AESCHYLUS

81

11.60.4). But once again, not enough information survives and, as already noted, we have no date for the play; so speculation cannot be any more than that. To get any further with the Cares will need the discovery of a new fragment.

Appendix: KARES H EURWPH96

1.

Katavlog. 33; fr.144a Mette: Ka're" h] Eujrwvph. Carians or Europa.

2.

Pap. Didot., Louvre inv. 7172; fr. 99 Radt; fr. 145? Mette; fr. 50 Weir Smyth (see Lloyd-Jones 1957: 599 603 for older literature); Diggle 1998: 16 17:97 text and translation at p. 64 above.

3.

(Stob. jEkl. 4.10.24 Hense; fr. 100 Radt; fr. 146 Mette; fr. 51 Weir Smyth): Aijscuvlou Karw'n: ‘ < > ajllÅ “Arh" filei' ajei; ta; lw'/sta pavntÅ ajpanqivzein stratou'’. Aeschylus in the Carians: EUROPA (?): . . . But Ares loves to pluck all the fairest flowers of an armed host. (trans. Weir Smyth 1926: 418)

96

97

The texts of the fragments have been compiled from Weir Smyth (1926), Lloyd Jones (1957), Mette (1959), Radt (1985) and Diggle (1998); except in the case of fr. 2, Radt’s text has generally been preferred. The list aims to be comprehensive rather than critical. Hence frs 5 6 are included although they are of uncertain origin; they are ascribed to the Cares by Meineke and Hartung respectively. Radt’s numeration preserves that of Nauck (1889), also used by the old OCT of Sidgwick (1899).

82

4.

ANTONY KEEN

(St. Byz. 461.16 s.v. Muvlasa; fr. 101 Radt; fr. 147 Mette): povli" Kariva", ajpo; Mulavs{t}ou tou' Crusavoro" tou' Glauvkou tou' Sisuvfou tou' Aijovlou. levgetai kai; ‘Muvlaso"’, wJ" Aijscuvlo" ejn Karsi;n h] Eujrwvph/. Mylasa: A Carian city, named after Mylas[t]us son of Chysaor son of Glaucus son of Sisyphus son of Aeolus. It is also called ‘Mylasus’, as [by] Aeschylus in the Carians or Europa.

5.

(Str. 8.7.5, with St. Byz. 707.13 s.v. “Wleno";98 fr. 284 Radt; fr. 403, 403A, 284 Nauck; fr. 231 Weir Smyth;): Bou'ravn qÅ iJera;n kai; Keruvneian, JRu'pa", Duvmhn, JElivkhn, Ai[gion hjdÅ Ai[geiran thvn tÅ aijpeinh;n zaqevan [Wlenon Hallowed Bura and Ceryneia, Rhypae, Dyme, Helice, Aegion, Aegeira and precipitous, sacred Olenus (trans. Weir Smyth 1926: 503, adapted)

6.

(Clem. Alex., Strom. IV 7, 48, 4; fr. 315 Radt; fr. 175 Weir Smyth;): tw'/ ponou'nti dÅ ejk qew'n ojfeivletai tevknwma tou' povnou klevo" To him that toileth, God oweth glory, child of his toil.99 (trans. Weir Smyth 1926: 486)

98 99

Aijscuvlo" Karsivn th;n aijpeinh;n zaqevan [Wlenon. Since it is uncertain whether this passage belongs to Cares at all, it is pointless to speculate on the context and meaning.

5 SPECTRAL TRACES Ghosts in Tragic Fragments† RUTH BARDEL

Before giving a brief outline of this chapter, I would like to draw an analogy between ghosts, the subject matter of this study, and fragments, the source in which they are found. As vestiges of lost (and arguably, dead) dramas, fragments provide tantalizing, and sometimes frustratingly cryptic, glimpses of what was once an entire (living, that is, performed) play, reminders of a vast, but now lost, corpus of literature. Ghosts are also vestiges of a past, ‘spectral traces’, reappearing in the present, often intriguing and sometimes inscrutable. Both fragments and ghosts are ‘out of context’: generally speaking, a ghost suffers from temporal and spatial dislocation from its ‘true’ time and place, just as a tragic fragment is temporally dislocated and separated from its immediate context by being cited, for example, as a linguistic oddity or a literary tour de force by other authors, or even used as a school exercise.1 As misplaced vestiges of the past emerging in the present, both ghosts and fragments need to be, if possible, contextualized. Homeric epic provides a frame of reference for †

1

I am grateful to David Harvey for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. All of the material discussed in this paper is examined in greater detail in my doctoral thesis which focuses on the stage ghost (Bardel 1999). This chapter was completed before the publication of Daniel Ogden's Greek and Roman Necromancy (2001). Fr. 273 (Radt) of Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi, for example, is cited in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1266). Aristophanes puts the line into the mouth of Euripides who uses it in his attempt to prove that Aeschylus is a bad lyric writer. Fr. 273a (Radt) of the same play comes from a school exercise of the first or second century BC by a pupil called Maron: see Kramer (1980: 14 23).

84

RUTH BARDEL

the three ghosts in extant tragedy Darius, Clytemnestra and Polydorus which have thus far been the focus of my research.2 I shall use Homeric epic and these three dramatic ghosts as reference points for the contextualization of ghosts in certain fragments, namely Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi and Sophocles’ Polyxena. Although this chapter deals specifically with tragic ghosts, some references to fragmentary comedies which deploy ghosts are introduced, as testimony to the genre-transcendent nature of the ghost. A number of relevant vase-paintings, one of which is very fragmentary indeed, will also be discussed. Since Ruby Hickman’s 1938 monograph, Ghostly Etiquette on the Classical Stage, there has been no comprehensive study of ghosts in ancient drama. Ghosts are an integral part of theatrical performances from Aeschylus onwards but, despite the recent work on drama which has been stressing the importance of the visual and performative dimensions, ghosts remain a neglected group of dramatic characters. Samuel Johnson once wrote, ‘There is no great merit in telling how many plays have Ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must show how terror is impressed on the human heart.’3 Admittedly, Johnson was not referring specifically to ghosts in ancient Greek tragic fragments, and Greek literary and dramatic spectres did not seem to prompt terror, yet I believe that it is important to be aware, as far as possible, of how many plays and fragments feature the appearance of a ghost, since, on the misleading basis of extant tragedy, it could be argued that ghosts are a minor group of dramatic characters confined to Aeschylus’ Darius in the Persae, Clytemnestra in the Eumenides and Euripides’ Polydorus in the Hecuba: the fragmentary evidence, both textual and visual (and archaeological), suggests however that the ghost theme was a popular one. In the late and unreliable Vita, Aeschylus is celebrated for a number of remarkable theatrical innovations including ghosts (ei[dwla) and Erinyes: unlike the Erinyes, stage ghosts do not seem to have caused miscarriages.4 Far from frightening the audience out of their wits, the appearance of a ghost on stage seems to have been a popular type of episode: it is the 2 3 4

See Bardel (1999). Cited in Stanford (1940: 84). Vita Aeschyli 9 ( T A1.30 2 Radt OCT ed. Page 1972: 332.10 13) ‘Some say that in the performance of the Eumenides, by bringing on the chorus one by one, as he did, he terrified the audience so that children swooned and foetuses were aborted.’ For the suggestion that this anecdote is not mere ‘foolish invention’ see Calder (1988: 554 5). This ties in with the question of whether or not women attended the theatre: the evidence is set out in Podlecki (1990: 27 43). See also Goldhill (1994: 347 69), with references to earlier literature (n.1).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

85

necromantic ritual in Aeschylus’ Persae that captures the attention of Dionysus in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1028 9) especially when he heard the chorus lament (qrh'non) for Darius as they clapped their hands and cried ijauoi'.5 Furthermore, contrary to Johnson’s assertion, some ghosts are indeed ‘better’ than others as a discussion of Sophocles’ Polyxena will reveal. Finally, is it possible to show from the fragmentary evidence how, in Johnson’s words, ‘terror is impressed on the human heart’? Do dramatic ghostly appearances, whether spontaneous or the result of a deliberate evocation, ‘terrorize’ either the other dramatic characters or the audience (whose various responses may be mediated through, or articulated by, the dramatos prosôpa)? I. Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi (frs 273 8 Radt) The date of this play is unknown but, because of its subject matter, the Psychagogoi is often speculatively thought to be part of a tetralogy including the Ostologi, Penelope and the satyric Circe.6 In the Psychagogoi, the chorus help Odysseus raise the souls of the dead a dramatization of the Odyssean nekyia an assumption reinforced by the suggested tetralogy concluding with the satyric Circe.7 The title is significant, both in dramatic terms and in a wider, literary (and perhaps social) context. Phrynichus, the rhetorician and lexicographer of the second century AD, said that the ancients used the word yucagwgov" in referring to those who brought up the souls of the dead through certain wailings, and added that the name of Aeschylus’ play had this significance.8 Like the chorus of the Choephori, the chorus of 5 6 7

8

On the necromancy scene in the Persae see Hall (1996: 151 3 and 23 with n.139) who discusses the ‘huge variety of “meaningless” cries expressing despair or agitation’. Cf. e.g. Gantz (1980: 151 3). Jouan (1981: 417). A red figure pelike in Boston (34.79 (ARV2 1045.2 (by the Lykaon Painter) Boardman 1989: fig. 150) dated to around 440 BC shows Odysseus, Hermes and the ghost of Elpenor rising from a pit. The Lucanian ‘Teiresias Vase’ of the early fourth century BC (Trendall 1967: 102 no. 502 (Dolon Painter) Trendall 1989: fig. 79) also illustrates this scene: Odysseus is seated sword in hand, between his feet lies the head of the ram killed as a sacrifice. In the bottom left hand corner, at the feet of Odysseus and the figure on the left (Perimedes: Eurylochus may be the figure on the left), is the head of Teiresias’ ghost, looking up at them, rising from the depths of Hades. This vase painting, in particular the ghost of Teiresias, is often linked to a fragment from Crates’ Heroes (fr. 12 Kassel Austin): to;n aujcevn j ejk gh'" ajnekav", eij" aujtou;" blevpwn (‘turning his head towards them from the ground’). See further Riess (1897: 193). Did Crates’ play also feature a necromancy or the spontaneous appearance of a ghost or ghosts? h{rw" can be translated as ‘revenant’, ‘one returned from the dead’: cf. Plato (Rep. 558a4 8). oiJ dÅ ajrcai'oi tou;" ta;" yuca;" tw'n teqnhkovtwn gohteivai" tisi;n a[gonta".

86

RUTH BARDEL

Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi are defined by what they do. The word yucagwgoiv is also explained by Pausanias (3.17.7) and the scholion on Euripides’ Alcestis 1128 where Heracles, as a guest of Admetus, denies being a necromancer (ouj yucagwgo;n tovndÅ ejpoihvsw xevnon). The scholia also cite the Spartan Pausanias as enlisting the aid of psychagogoi to exorcise the ghost of a young girl haunting the temple of Athena Chalcioecus. A (possible) Euripidean fragment (fr. 379a Kannicht: bavskanon mevgiston yucagwgovn, ‘greatest sorcerer and necromancer’) links psychagogos to baskanos, a derogatory term, meaning sorcerer or wizard.9 Elsewhere in Euripides (Bacc. 234 and Hipp. 1038), ejpw/dov" (enchanter) is associated with govh" (charlatan) and later sources present the necromancer as foreign, reflecting perhaps a general lowering in the status of both the inquirers and the ghosts they consult.10 In Aristophanes’ Birds (1553 64)11 Peisander consults a necromantic (yucagwgei', 1555) establishment presided over by Socrates, bringing a strange victim, a camel-sheep: Peisander’s object is to have communion with his soul, which deserted him some time ago. The necromancy is unsuccessful in that the ghost who comes to drink the blood is Chaerephon (nicknamed the ‘Bat’) who is enough like a Homeric ghost, as Rose puts it, to ‘pass muster’.12 The operation is here seen as simultaneously suspect and ridiculous, but in Plato’s Laws (909b1 5) necromancy (yucagwgei'n) is a serious crime in a passage which, like the Euripidean passages, also connects ejpw/dai'" and gohteuvonte". This is certainly the case in Python’s fragmentary satyric Agen (fr. 1 Snell), conjecturally dated to 326 BC, in which barbarian magi (barbavrwn mavgoi) persuade Harpalus that they could conjure up the soul of the dead hetaira Pythionike (th;n yuch;n a[nw th;n Puqionivkh").13 In Lucian’s satirical Menippus, the necromancer Mithrobarzanes utters ‘foreign-sounding meaningless polysyllabic words’ (barbarikav tina kai; a[shma ojnovmata kai; polusuvllaba, 9). Such characterizations seem to have influenced critics, for example Headlam, who sought to interject the necromancy in

9 10 11 12 13

th'" aujth'" ejnnoiva" kai; tou' Aijscuvlou to; dra'ma Yucagwgov" (de Borries, Praep. Soph. 127, 12). See also Max.Tyr. (8.26) on the livmnhn “Aornon where there is a mantei'on a[ntron kai; qerapeuth're" tou' a[ntrou a[ndre" yucagwgoiv, ou{tw" ojnomazovmenoi ejk tou' e[rgou: here the psychagogoi are also defined by their activity. Jouan (1981: 420). Kannicht attributes this fragment to E. Eurystheus Satyricus. Rose (1950: 268 70, 280). Cf. Dunbar (1995: ad loc., 710 5). Rose (1950: 262). See Snell (1964a: 99 138).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

87

Aeschylus’ Persae with improvised ‘long-drawn, magical, outlandish incantations’ not evidenced by the manuscripts.14 Fr. 273 (Radt) of the Psychagogoi most probably comes from near the beginning of the parodos, where the chorus explains itself: ÔErma'n me;n provgonon tivomen gevno" oiJ peri; livmnan (‘We, who dwell by the lake, honour Hermes as our ancestor’).15 It has been suggested that this chorus’ activities are comparable to the psychagogoi gooi of the chorus in the Persae.16 However, it would seem that Aeschylus is at great pains to make it clear that the chorus of the Persae are primarily Elders asked to perform a task with which they are unfamiliar perhaps this explains why it is such a ‘struggle’ (Pers. 688, 690, 633 8) to raise the ghost of Darius. In Headlam’s view, however, this would be an inadequate explanation: the chorus of elders had to be magi for, as he states ‘no one ever raised a ghost by dancing; you might dance for a day without bringing a corpse up: and imagine these aged venerable men skipping and scoring the ground with their old hoofs!’17 Ritual incantation can be very effective, for song and dance can raise the dead as it does in the Persae: Aeschylus places his necromancy in a very barbarian context in the Persae but the fragmentary Psychagogoi suggests that necromancy was not perceived as being an exclusively barbarian practice. Verdicts such as Headlam’s clearly delight in the exotic, foreign and, above all the outlandish and ‘supernatural’ explanations of the ghost-raising motif, associations which are ultimately restrictive.18 The consultation of the dead, from the witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28.6 25) to a modern individual’s consultation of a medium, is a prominent motif that transcends time and space.19 14 15 16 17 18

19

Headlam (1902: 57). Taplin (1977: 447). Jouan (1981: 417 19). Headlam (1902: 58). Headlam seems to have demonized the chorus of elders in his imagination! Jouan thinks Broadhead (1960) and Rose (1950) go too far in denying all magic in the Persae since, in its Homeric precedent, the necromantic ritual is dictated by Circe and was executed in conditions which placed Odysseus outside the community of mortal men. Headlam’s argument for a magical interpretation (1902: esp. 55 and n.11, which mentions E. fr. 912 Kannicht) was suspected by Eitrem (1928) and refuted by Lawson (1934), who showed that the chorus are not magi, that their utterances are genuine prayers and that there is no reason to assume that appeals to the dead of this nature were in any respect ‘not Greek’. The idea of raising a ghost would not, according to Dakaris (1963), have been alien to the ancient Greeks. These arguments have been more fully discussed in Bardel (1999: ch. 3). On the biblical necromancy see West (1997: 550 3) and for near Eastern parallels see West (1997: 50 1). Both these instances share the notion of mediumship: Saul consults the witch of Endor at the height of his political/power struggle with David,

88

RUTH BARDEL

The precise location of the evocation in the Psychagogoi has been much disputed there are three possibilities: lake Avernus, lake Stymphalus or Thesprotia. That the chorus come from the area where the play is set is suggested by fr. 273 (above, and Taplin 1977: 447) and made more explicit by fr. 273a20 (see below) in which they address Odysseus as a stranger and therefore as unfamiliar with the locale. Hermes was closely associated with lake Stymphalus, even though it was not the known site of a nekyomanteion,21 unlike Thesprotia which did house one and which, from an early date in antiquity (Pausanias 1.17.5, 9.30.6), was associated with Odysseus. This location has scarcely more justification than has, for example, the localization of the Homeric entrance to Hades at Cumae, or other places of ancient worship of the dead at, for example, Pylos,22 and it is clear that cultic ‘reality’ impinged in some way upon the literary and dramatic material. Excavations of the nekyomanteion at Thesprotia were once thought to have revealed evidence of offerings to the dead (such as those made by the Queen in the Persae) and cogged winches found there were believed to have been used for raising ‘ghosts’ aloft from a cave below the room in which the ‘evocation’ took place,23 but this interpretation has now been disputed.24 The tyrant Periander was said to have conjured up the ghost (ei[dwlon) of his wife Melissa, whom he had killed, at Thesprotia (Hdt. 5.92.2 4). Could the Thesprotis (part of the epic cycle) and Alexis’ comedy Thesprotians help reinforce the connection between this oracle of the dead and Odysseus? One fragment of Alexis’ Thesprotians (fr. 93 Kassel Austin)

20 21 22 23 24

and West argues that the dead prophet Samuel is not visible to Saul even though he can hear the prophet’s words. Modern mediums and their consultants find themselves in a similar position: for an interesting appraisal of how modern technology influenced the language of mediums see Connor (1999: 203 25). Attributed to Aeschylus by its first editor, Kramer (1980) and accepted by Rusten (1982). Farnell (1909: 3 5). Rohde (1925: 73 with n.53). Burkert (1985: 114 15). See Dakaris (1963: 35; 1971: 81) for the archaeological evidence for this oracle of the dead. Burkert (1985: 115) discusses the cogged winches and iron rollers which, it is suggested, were used to produce ghostly appearances in the form, perhaps, of puppets. This interpretation has now been challenged by Wiseman (1998: 12 18 with further bibliography on 77), who argues that the machinery found on the site belongs to third century BC catapults housed in the complex which he takes to be a fortified farmstead. In conclusion, Wiseman does admit the possibility of ‘multiple interpretations’ (18) and it would seem that the site (and, perhaps the machinery?) was used at different times, for different purposes: future exploration may reveal some conclusive evidence confirming Dakaris’ identification of the nekyomanteion.

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

89

consists of two lines which may have formed part of the evocation in a ghost-raising scene. Arnott discusses the play’s date (mid-fourth century) and subject matter and suggests that this fragment may ‘open a speech or even a scene in which one or more prophetic ghosts were conjured up. Such a scene, with its opportunities for theatrical display and tragic parody . . . would have been most effective at a climactic point in the plot.’25 The oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia may also have played a part in another of Alexis’ comedies of a slightly earlier date, Trophonius, in which one of the actors calls on the chorus to dance.26 Although it has been suggested that the motif of raising a ghost was an inspired and ‘staggeringly effective’ use of limited resources in a period when one actor worked with a chorus,27 it is clear that the persistence of the motif in both tragedy and comedy transcends issues of limited theatrical resources. Fr. 273a (Radt) of the Psychagogoi contains anapaestic instructions for a sacrifice to the dead, spoken by the chorus (or chorus leader) to Odysseus, addressed as ‘stranger’ (w\ xei'nÅ): a[ge nu'n, w\ xei'nÅ, ejpi; poiofuvtwn i{stw shkw'n fobera'" livmna" uJpov tÅ aujcevnion laimo;n ajmhvsa" tou'de sfagivou poto;n ajyuvcoi" ai|ma meqivei donavkwn eij" bevnqo" ajmaurovn. Cqovna dÅ wjgugivan ejpikeklovmeno" cqovniovn qÅ ÔErmh'n pompo;n fqimevnwn [aij]tou' cqovnion Diva nuktipovlwn eJsmo;n ajnei'nai potamou' stomavtwn, ou| tovdÅ ajporrw;x ajmevgarton u{dwr kajcevrnipton Stugivoi" na[s]moi'sin ajnei'tai. Come, stranger, stand on the grassy precincts of the fearful lake and, when you have cut the throat of this victim, let the blood fall into the dim depths of the reeds for the lifeless ones to drink. Invoking ancient Earth and

25 26

27

Arnott (1996: 243 6). Webster (1952: 25) and Arnott (1996: 669 76). See Pausanias (9.39.2) on the Oracle of Trophonius and the curious manner of entry and exit feet first in both instances practised there. This peculiar mode of entry and exit would have offered plenty of scope for comic (mis)representation. Green (1994: 18 9).

90

RUTH BARDEL

chthonian Hermes, conveyor of the dead, beg Zeus of the underworld to send up the swarm of the night wanderers from the mouths of the river, this miserable water which washes no hand, of which a branch has been sent forth by the streams of the Styx.

Odysseus is to stand at the edge of the ‘fearful lake’, sacrifice an animal (probably a sheep as in Od. 11.35 6) and ‘let the blood fall into the dim depths of the reeds, for the lifeless ones to drink’. Ancient Earth, chthonian Hermes and Zeus of the Underworld are the gods to be invoked ‘to send up the swarm of the night-wanderers’ from the ‘miserable water’ of the Stygian tributary. Although anapaests are used in a variety of contexts, it is interesting to note that anapaestic metre occurs frequently in connection with necromantic ritual: the anapaestic instructions for a sacrifice to the dead in fr. 273a can be compared to the anapaestic introduction of the chorus’ lyric necromantic hymn in the Persae (623 32). Recitative anapaests are also found in a Euripidean fragment (fr. 912 Kannicht) which connects evocation, apparition and prediction and includes libations and various offerings: the libations are accompanied by an invocation to Zeus or Hades ‘whichever name you prefer’ (Zeu;" ei[tÅ ÅAivdh" ojnomazovmeno" stevrgei", lines 2 3). The fragment continues, ‘Send to the light of day the souls of the dead (pevmyon dÅ ej" fw'" yuca;" ejnevrwn) to those who want to know in advance the trials awaiting them (toi'" boulomevnoi" a[qlou" promaqei'n povqen e[blaston), where they come from and what is their source’ (lines 8 12). Unfortunately, it is not possible to allocate this fragment to any particular play, nor is it possible to say whether or not this evocation actually took place on stage and whether a ghost appeared: it is tempting to think of Odysseus here too, ‘if only a suitable play were known’.28 An unknown fragment with musical notation in an Oslo papyrus (1413, ‘A’), copied at the end of the first, or the beginning of the second century AD, contains an eyewitness account of an appearance of Achilles’ ghost in anapaestic metre.29 Fr. 275 (Radt) is part of the raised Teiresias’ speech prophesying Odysseus’ death:30 28 29

30

Rusten (1982: 33). The account is narrated by a ‘person of lower social standing’ who addresses Deidameia as despovti (line 11). For a full account see Eitrem, Amundsen and Winnington Ingram (1955). See now also West (1992: 281, 311 13 no. 30). David Harvey pointed out to me that this prophecy sounds more like an Aristophanic

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

91

ejrw/dio;" ga;r uJyovqen potwvmeno" o[nqw/ se plhvxei nhduvo" kenwvmasin: ejk tou'dÅ a[kanqa pontivou boskhvmato" shvyei palaio;n brevgma kai; tricorruev". For a heron, in its flight on high, shall smite thee with its dung, its belly’s emptyings; a spine from out this beast of the sea shall rot thy head, aged and scant of hair. (trans. Weir Smyth 1926: 474).

It can be safely assumed that Teiresias’ prophecy was addressed to Odysseus himself (as it was in the Odyssey, 11.134 7, although the fragment’s version is different from that of the Odyssey). Was the ghost of Teiresias the only ghost conjured up in this dramatic nekyia? Or can we assume that, as in Homer, the ghosts (ei[dwla) of Elpenor, Anticleia and Heracles were also summoned up? Fr. 274 (Radt) (kai; skeuoqhkw'n nautikw'n tÅ ejreipivwn, ‘arsenals and wreckage of ships’) may refer to the hardships Odysseus and his crew are being warned they may encounter on their way home should they slaughter the cattle of the Sun (Od. 11.108 13; 12.327 402). Fragments 276 (staqerou' ceuvmato", ‘standing water’), 277 (Dai'ra, ‘Persephone’) and 278 (drwvptein, ‘to tear cheeks in mourning’) are, perhaps, too scanty to be particularly helpful. Both the ‘Teiresias Vase’ and the title of Aeschylus’ fragmentary play the ghost-raisers reinforce the notion that Odysseus does not have a literal katabasis. The adverb e[mpedon, ‘steadfast’, is used of Odysseus’ position in the Odyssey (11.628, 152) and implies immobility. In the Odyssey, it is Persephone who sends up the souls of the dead.31 Through certain rituals, Odysseus raises the dead, the ghosts come up, just as Darius in the Persae does. Staging a katabasis would not have been impossible: spatial locations can be fluid in tragedy (and especially in comedy, for example, Aristophanes’ Frogs) and the audience can be imaginatively transported to Persia, Thebes or Hades. Aristotle (Poetics 1456a1 2) mentions tragedies of

31

parody of a tragic passage: if this is so, then it is a prime example of ‘theatrical display and tragic parody’ (see Arnott cited above) and may not belong to this play. Odyssey (11.37, 213 24, 226, 634 5) where the word w[truna (‘rouse’, ‘spur on’, ‘urge forward’) is used. At Od. 11.476 however, Achilles asks Odysseus why he dared to come down (katelqevmen, 475) to Hades. Clark (1979: 201) suggests that Odysseus does not have a katabasis, which is why he is not mentioned in a series of visitors (Heracles, Pollux, Theseus, Orpheus and Dionysus) to the underworld who preceded Aeneas (Aeneid 6.119ff). Gardiner (1978: 79) proposes that in the context of the fifth century theatre ajnabaivnein and katabaivnein were considered technical terms corresponding to our terms ‘upstage’ and ‘downstage’.

92

RUTH BARDEL

a particular type which are set in Hades as a sub-species of spectacular tragedy but, unfortunately, he cites no examples. Fr. 277 (Radt) of Aeschylus’ Psychagogoi which mentions Dai'ra (Persephone), may suggest that she performs a similar function in both the Odyssey and the Psychagogoi that of a stage manager(ess): Vermeule notes that ‘Homer is as much the choreographer of a beloved, familiar drama as his Persephone is an operatic director, arranging the entrances and exits of the souls with great skill.’32 It is in connection with the imaginative transportation of the audience to various locations that the title of Aeschylus’ fragmentary play is significant. Yucagwgevw can also denote persuasion, the act of winning over the souls of the living: if the emotional aim of poetry is to entrance (yucagwgei'n; cf. Aristotle Poetics 1450b16), is not the poet-dramatist a necromancer (yucagwgov"), raising dead (mythical) figures of the past, presenting them on stage and beguiling the souls (yucapavth") of his audience? In the Phaedrus (261a6 7), Plato asks, ‘is not rhetoric in its entire nature an art which leads the soul by means of words?’ (tevcnh yucagwgiva ti" dia; lovgwn my italics).33 Can we read the fragmentary Psychagogoi as another Aeschylean example, alongside the Persae, of the performative potential of language which has the demonstrative power literally to conjure up ghosts of the past? One aspect of the late and unreliable Vita has hitherto been overlooked: among the theatrical innovations, which include Erinyes, said to have been introduced by Aeschylus, ghosts (eijdwvloi") also feature. Was Aeschylus the first dramatist to produce such a dramatic character? Aeschylus’ penchant for ghosts and necromancy parts of his infamous and alarming stage effects may have been turned on him in Pherecrates’ fragmentary Crapatali (fr. 100 Kassel Austin) in which he appeared as a ghost himself, announcing that he built a great craft (that of tragedy) and handed it over for the next generation to exploit (or, we might suggest, revive?).34 II. Sophocles’ Polyxena (frs 522 28 Radt) Only sixteen lines of Sophocles’ Polyxena survive. The precise setting of 32 33

34

Vermeule (1979: 29). More generally Plato states ‘it is the function of speech to lead souls by persuasion’ (lovgou duvnami" tugcavnei yucagwgiva, 271c10). See further Rosenmeyer (1955: 233 8). It is not clear whether at least part of the play took place in Hades, or whether Aeschylus was summoned to this world.

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

93

the play is unknown and the dramatis personae can ‘only be guessed at, though we know that they included Polyxena, Agamemnon, Menelaus (frs 522 and 524 Radt), the ghost of Achilles (523 Radt), a messenger to report the sacrifice: the identity of the chorus is obscure (presumably they were either Greek sailors or Trojan captives)’.35 Fr. 522 mentions preparations for a sacrifice: su; dÅ au\qi mivmnwn pou katÅ jIdaivan cqovna / poivma" jOluvmpou sunagagw;n quhpovlei (‘Stay here then, in the land of Ida, / And gather the flocks of Olympus together and sacrifice . . . ’).36 This may be, as its context in Strabo (10.3.14) suggests, part of the argument between Agamemnon and Menelaus: according to Homer (Od. 3.141 5) Agamemnon wished to stay in Troy until he had offered sacrifices to Athena.37 Mossman, however, suggests that the argument centred on whether or not Polyxena should be sacrificed; ‘presumably . . . Agamemnon’s reluctance to leave was prompted by his unwillingness to sacrifice her’.38 Fr. 524 is assigned to Agamemnon, identified by the reference to his military office (prw/ravth" stratou'), who defends himself against some criticism on the basis that not even Zeus could please everyone. That the ghost appeared in the play is made clear by fr. 523: ajkta;" ajpaivwnav" te kai; melambaqei'" lipou'sa livmnh" h\lqon, a[rsena" coa;" ÅAcevronto" ojxuplh'ga" hjcouvsa" govou" I have come, leaving the cheerless and darkly deep Shores of the lake, the mighty stream Of Acheron echoing with weeping from fierce blows . . .

Mossman suggests that ‘presumably the ghost went on to demand the sacrifice of Polyxena’ prompting the argument between Agamemnon and Menelaus: ‘Agamemnon’s reluctance to leave was prompted by his unwillingness to kill her.’39 The similarities between the opening of this ghost’s speech to that of Euripides’ Polydorus are striking: indeed, as has been suggested, the ‘idea of the stage-ghost for Polydorus derives perhaps from that of Achilles in Sophocles’ Polyxena.’40 The words, ajkta;" . . . lipou'sa livmnh" h\lqon (‘I have come, leaving the cheerless and darkly 35 36 37 38 39 40

Mossman (1994: 42). All translations of Sophocles’ fragments are from Mossman (1994). Cf. Hickman (1938: 48). Mossman (1994: 45). Mossman (1994: 43). Collard (1991: 130) on E. Hec. 1 58.

94

RUTH BARDEL

deep’, fr. 523) are similar to those of Polydorus’ ghost, (1 2): h{kw nekrw'n keuqmw'na kai; skovtou puvla" lipwvn, (‘I have come from the hiding place of the dead and the gates of darkness’). But the suggestion that this fragmentary spectral speech is made by the ghost of Achilles is rendered less likely by the feminine ending of the participle lipou'sa: the feminine participle is unusual as compared with the masculine subject of Hec. 1, Pers. 686, Od. 11.90 and Bacchylides 5.78. Pearson therefore states that there is no apparent reason for the abnormal gender but suggests that lipou'sa may agree with (the implied) yuchv.41 This seems to be a feasible hypothesis: in the Iliad (16.855 7) we find that yuchv determines the feminine lipou'sÅ (yuch; dÅ ejk rJeqevwn ptamevnh “Ai>dovsde bebhvkei, / o{n povtmon goovsa, lipou'sÅ ajndroth'ta kai; h{bhn; ‘His soul left his limbs and flew down to the house of Hades, mourning its fate and leaving behind its manly youthfulness’). Is the issue of the feminine ending of the participle an ‘English problem’? If this is not the ghost of Achilles speaking, whose ghost is it Polyxena’s? A well-established literary tradition concerning the appearance of Achilles’ ghost suggests that fr. 523 must, however, be spoken by the ghost of Achilles. Proclus’ summary of the lost epic Nostoi states that Achilles’ eidolon appeared as Agamemnon was setting sail and tried to prevent his departure by foretelling the future (tw'n de; peri; to;n ÅAgamevmnona ajpopleovntwn ÅAchillevw" ei[dwlon ejpifane;n peira'tai diakwluvein prolevgon ta; sumbhsovmena, Nostoi 108.24 6 Allen). Polyxena’s sacrifice was known as early as the Iliupersis (108.6 8 Allen) and both epics separated the appearance of Achilles’ ghost from the sacrifice. The ghost of Achilles demanding Polyxena’s death occurs, as far as we can tell, in Simonides.42 Pseudo-Longinus states (De Subl. 15.7) that the appearance of Achilles above his tomb (profainomevnou toi'" ajnagomevnoi" uJpe;r tou' tavfou) was a scene which he doubts anyone had depicted more vividly (h}n oujk oi\dÅ ei[ ti" o[yin ejnargevsteron eijdwlopoivhse) than Simonides. Some ghostly appearances are evidently aesthetically better than others, contra Dr Johnson whom I cited earlier. The ghost who speaks fr. 523 of Sophocles’ Polyxena is most likely to be that of Achilles. Can we assume, from the pseudo-Longinus passage, that Achilles’ ghost actually appeared above his tomb on stage in Sophocles’ Polyxena? First, it is clear that the ghost spoke: fr. 523 ‘shows clearly that, whether

41 42

Pearson (1917: ad loc.); cf. Mossman (1994: 46, n.64). Mossman (1994: 31).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

95

visible or not, the ghost was heard to speak’.43 Although fr. 523 is in the first person, this does not rule out the possibility that the appearance of Achilles’ ghost was reported. This prompted Hickman to conclude that Achilles in the Polyxena was an off-stage ghost whose speech was reported by another character.44 In two plays dealing with the same subject matter, Euripides’ Hecuba and later Seneca’s Troades, Achilles’ ghost speaks in the first person although quoted by another character. However, the fragment in question is embedded in Apollodorus Atheniensis’ Peri; tw'n qew'n, and he states that Sophocles brought on (eijsavgei) the ghost of Achilles speaking (levgousan). This is revealing; a speaking ghost must, it seems, be a visible ghost. It is also, I believe, sufficient evidence to support the proposal that Achilles’ ghost was, like the eidola of Darius, Clytemnestra and Polydorus, a visible stage ghost. The way in which Euripides underplays Achilles’ ghost in the Hecuba not only suggests that his is the later play, but also that the appearance of Achilles’ ghost in Sophocles was the ‘highlight of the play’.45 When and where did Achilles’ ghost actually appear? Schlesinger proposed that it would have been more ‘appropriate’ if Achilles’ ghost appeared early in the play (not as a prologue) before the sacrifice of Polyxena.46 Others, for example Weil, have proposed that Achilles’ ghost appeared in a grande finale at the end of the Polyxena, after Polyxena’s sacrifice.47 Nothing in the fragments provides any evidence to support an appearance either at the end or at the beginning of the play. Calder, in his extensive and highly speculative reconstruction of the fragmentary play dismissed the idea that Achilles’ ghost delivered the prologue, a suggestion, however, which Taplin thinks is ‘highly probable’.48 In defence of his view, Calder argues that there is no extant example of an introductory monologue in Sophocles and that we need not assume one here a dialogue would be ‘more typically Sophoclean’.49 Can we discard the possibility of a Sophoclean introductory monologue as untypical on the basis of the small number of extant Sophoclean dramas? Achilles’ ghost as a prologue is an attractive proposal. If only the date of the Polyxena were known, Achilles’ ghost, as presented by Sophocles, would contrast effectively with the pathetic prologue appearance of 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Campbell (1881: 526). Hickman (1938: 45 7). Mossman (1994: 45 6). Schlesinger (1927: 15). Weil (1868: 204). Calder (1966: 44); Taplin (1977: 447). Calder (1966: 44).

96

RUTH BARDEL

Polydorus’ ghost in Euripides. But I think Euripides’ representation of Achilles’ ghost is more subtle than this. Calder suggests that Achilles’ ghost may have featured twice in the play once as a stage ghost reciting a speech which included fr. 523, and later in another character’s report of a second appearance.50 But there is nothing in the fragments that suggest this alleged second appearance.51 Besides, if the highlight of the play was the appearance of Achilles’ ghost on stage rather than the (reported) sacrifice of Polyxena, then a second reported appearance would, ultimately, be redundant. There is one other proposition that must be considered, one which unites the notions of Achilles appearing above his tomb, the fragmentary evidence and the centrality of this figure to the play’s action. Blumenthal states, on the basis of fr. 523, that in Sophocles the ghost ‘auf der Szene aus dem Grabe steigt’ (‘rises from the grave on the stage’).52 This implies a tomb on stage above which Achilles’ ghost would appear: might it also imply a necromancy as in the Persae? What of the flocks collected in fr. 522 what was the nature of the sacrifice? Does fr. 523, in particular the last line ‘the sound of wailing that accompanies fierce blows’ that is, the cries of mourners as they beat their breasts and heads, suggest that Achilles’ appearance was the result of an anacletic hymn? If this is the case, Achilles’ ghost can neither deliver the prologue nor appear at the end of the play in a grande finale. Darius’ ghost appears in response to shrill cries that summon the dead (yucagwgoi'" ojrqiavzonte" govoi", 687) as the earth groans under beating and scratching (stevnei, kevkoptai, kai; caravssetai pevdon, 683), which are two ritual actions:53 Achilles’ ghost appears as the nether regions still echo to the sound of ‘wailing that accompanies fierce blows’ (ojxuplh'ga" hjcouvsa" govou"). Pearson compares this line with Cho. 23 (ojxuvceiri su;n ktuvpw/) and Ajax 630 3 (ojxutovnou" me;n wj/da;" qrhnhvsei), both highly suggestive contexts. Was Achilles’ ghost raised as Darius was in the Persae and consulted as to what should be done about the Greeks’ delayed departure due to unfavourable winds? Was the ghost’s demand that Polyxena be sacrificed indeed the cause of the argument between Menelaus and Agamemnon? Perhaps it is significant that there is no mention of shrill cries or groaning earth in either the speech of Clytemnestra’s ghost or Polydorus’ 50 51 52 53

Calder (1966: 42). Cf. Mossman (1994: 44). Blumenthal (1927: 1073.22ff); cf. Taplin (1977: 447). See further Hall (1996: 157) and the note on Persae 683 with further references. Also Pers. 697: ‘Since I came here from below in obedience to your laments’ (ajllÅ ejpei; kavtwqen h\lqon soi'" govoi" pepeismevno").

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

97

prologue both are unsolicited ghosts, appearing spontaneously and silently, prompted solely by the dramatist.54 The reported accounts of Achilles’ ghost in the Hecuba also depict its appearance as silent: however, in the Oslo papyrus 1413 (lines 1 5), a crash and din (ktuvpo") precede the appearance of his ghost.55 Frs 526, citwvn sÅ a[peiro", ejnduthvrion kakw'n (‘an inextricable tunic, a garment of evil’) and 527, paravrruma podov" (‘a covering for the foot’) are often assigned to Achilles’ ghost on the basis that they probably refer to the manner of Agamemnon’s death which he predicted.56 Fr. 528, hjkrwthriasmevnoi (‘mutilations’), which Harpocration (s.v. hjkrwthriasmevnoi) explains as oiJ lumainovmenoiv tisin perikovptousi ta; a[kra (‘those who inflict outrages on others, lop off their extremities’) may, Pearson suggested, be a reference to the mutilation of Deiphobus:57 however, the earliest authority for the mutilation of Deiphobus is Virgil’s Aeneid (6.494ff). It is far more likely that this fragment refers to the mutilation (maschalismos) of Agamemnon’s dead body by Clytemnestra, referred to in the Choephori (439) and Sophocles’ Electra (445) and, we may plausibly add, by Sophocles in his Polyxena.58 Given that Achilles’ ghost foretells the storm that breaks up the fleet (ajpÅ aijqevro" de; kajpo; lugaivou nevfou", fr. 525), and that he predicts the manner of Agamemnon’s murder down to the detail of his mutilation59 might it not be more instructive to draw an analogy between Sophocles’ ghost and that of Aeschylus’ Darius whose interpretation of events leads him to foretell the misfortunes of the Persians at Plataea? Is it possible that Sophocles was drawing not only on (now lost) epic accounts of Achilles’ ghost but also upon the memorable raising of Darius’ ghost in 54

55 56 57 58

59

Perhaps the groans of the earth suggest that some noise accompanied the appearance of Achilles perhaps thunder or a slight earthquake, a supposition which contravenes the code of ghostly etiquette (Hickman 1938: 47). In the eighteenth century world of the London theatre, the noise of the trap rising and the trap doors opening was covered by the noises of thunder and lightning. In Fielding’s satire on the theatre, Pasquin (Little Haymarket, 1736) three ghosts are sent up in succession. ‘Pray Mr. Fustian’, Sneerwell, one of the characters, cuttingly enquires, ‘why must a Ghost always rise in a storm of thunder and lightning?’ (Hume 1980: 95). There is a seismov" (earthquake) at Achilles’ ascent and ajstraphv (lightning) at his descent in Philostratus (Apoll. Tyan. 4.16). Pearson (1917: 163); Braginton (1933: 52); cf. Mossman (1994: 44). Pearson (1917: ad loc.). The vexed problem of the practice of maschalismos within the context of the lex talionis and the non appreance of Agamemnon’s ghost is fully discussed in Bardel (1999: ch. 4). Devereux deems Sophocles to be ‘manifestly interested’ in the practice of maschalismos (1976, 223).

98

RUTH BARDEL

the Persae and therefore also upon the audience’s relatively recent theatrical experience literary and dramatic sources/conventions which Euripides ultimately explodes?60 And, for this proposal to function properly, it is essential that Achilles’ tomb was the focus of the dramatic action so that he could, in pseudo-Longinus’ words, ‘appear above his tomb’. A single appearance of Achilles’ impressive ghost as the highlight of the play prior to Polyxena’s sacrifice seems to be far more likely. This would also support the brevity with which Euripides dismisses his ghost of Achilles, relegating it to, in Hickman’s terms, ‘the realm of the offstage ghost’;61 it would also explain Euripides’ focus on the sacrifice of Polyxena and, most of all, it explains the prominence given to the pathetic figure of Polydorus’ eidolon. Aeschylus’, Sophocles’ and Simonides’ ghosts were magnificently represented (or, in Simonides’ case, described) and would, no doubt, have pleased Johnson (whom I cited earlier). The Hecuba’s three descriptions of Achilles’ ghostly apparition are not mentioned by pseudo-Longinus ‘no wonder, for they include little that could be called sublime . . . Terror and awe are conspicuously absent even from the longest and most explicit of the three descriptions.’62 If the reported sightings of Achilles’ ghost are less impressive (appearances mediated through the character’s responses), embedded, as they are in the Hecuba, in the demands of the present dramatic situation, does this mean that for a ghost to have its full impact, it must be present on stage? The answer must be an emphatic ‘yes’. Sophocles seems to accept Homer’s evaluation of Achilles’ temper as presented in his ‘great rampage’ in Iliad books 20 22 and, on the basis of the Sophoclean ‘heroic temper’ (to invoke Knox’s 1964 appraisal) we may, I think, safely conclude along with other critics63 that Achilles did indeed appear as an implacable ghost in the Polyxena.64 Critical interest in the pseudo-Longinus passage has focused on its 60 61 62 63 64

We do not know the date of the Polyxena, but the Persae was a famous play in the later fifth century. See further Hall (1996: 2). Hickman (1938: 47). King (1985: 51). Those who think Achilles’ ghost appeared on stage include Pearson (1917: vol. II, 163); Willem (1932: 204); Braginton (1933: 52). On the frequently vengeful nature of Greek hero ghosts such as Polites mentioned by Pausanias (6.6.4 11) and Strabo (6.1.5), it could be argued that Sophocles depicted a causal link between the appearance of Achilles’ ghost and the sacrifice of Polyxena. See King (1985: esp. 49 and 52). King takes into account Tosi’s 1914 article which posits a causal link between ghost and sacrifice. For summaries of several other hero ghosts, both beneficent and vengeful, see Rohde (1925: 132 8). On the late tradition of Achilles’ ghost, see Arrian (Periplus 23) and Philostratus (Heroicus 748 9).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

99

apparent confirmation that Achilles did indeed appear above his tomb in Sophocles’ Polyxena. Hickman resists the interpretation that Achilles was a stage ghost, ranging her arguments against what she calls the ‘literal interpretation’ of the pseudo-Longinus passage supported by ‘Longinus’ unquestioning believers’.65 I hope to have shown that there is evidence, derived from the fragments themselves, that this resistance is misplaced. I would also like to draw attention to the very language that pseudoLonginus deploys in his description of Simonides’ inimitable representation of Achilles’ ghost. Pseudo-Longinus combines the terms o[yi", ejnargevsteron and eijdwlopoiiva (15.7). Elsewhere in his treatise, pseudo-Longinus uses similar terminology to designate the way in which the poet of the Aspis has made (ejpoivhse) the image (ei[dwlon) of Achlus repulsive (9.5). In both instances, the author is describing the success or failure of a poetic image, a vivid presentation by which the poet seems to see what he is describing and brings it vividly before the eyes (o[yi") of his audience, processes which he calls fantasivai but others call eijdwlopoiivai (15.1: cf. 14.1 2). Simonides’ vivid image (ei[dwlon) of Achilles’ ghost (ei[dwlon) is a sublime example of image/ghost-making (eijdwlopoiiva) and is the most vivid (ejnargevsteron) of all the other images of Achilles’ ghost (eijdwlopoiiva in both senses of the term). As in the Homeric material, it is the spectacle (o[yi") and the conspicuity (ejnargev") of the image (ei[dwlon) created by the poet which are striking. Furthermore, this is a prime example of the inter-, or intra-textuality that is a defining feature of the ei[dwlon in both senses of the word, image and ghost. It also draws attention to the palimpsestic nature of the poetical space in which these images of dead figures are inscribed. A striking image of Achilles’ ghost created by Simonides haunts subsequent depictions (and critical appraisals of that and subsequent images). Like the ei[dwlon of Homeric and dramatic texts, the ghost of Achilles in Sophocles’ Polyxena and the little that we can deduce from the fragmentary evidence, always refers (back) to something else which helps to place this ghost in context. Eijdwlopoiiva has very specific connotations in forensic oratory: eijdwlopoiiva is a figure of speech which represents a famous person who is really dead and no longer able to speak (hJ provswpon me;n e[cousa gnwvrimon. teqneo;" de; kai; tou' levgein pausavmenon), created in order to reanimate the past (Aphthonius Progymnasmata 11.10 13).66 Aphthonius 65 66

Hickman (1938: 42 7). In the Sophist (236c6 39d4), Plato distinguishes between two types of ‘copy making’ (eijdwlopoiikh'") ‘likeness making’ and ‘appearance making’ (eijkastikh;n kai; fantastikhvn): an ei[dwlon is a copy, a reproduction. Homer is a ‘creator of

100

RUTH BARDEL

cites Eupolis’ Demes and Aristides’ In Defence of the Four (uJpe;r tw'n tessavrwn) as prime examples of eijdwlopoiiva.67 This is essentially an imaginative reconstruction of a (fictional or real) character: whether or not Pericles and other Athenian statesmen were stage ghosts (ei[dwla) in Eupolis’ fragmentary Demes (Ael. Arist. Or. 3.365, Eupolis frs 99 146 Kassel Austin) is debatable. What is important is that the dramatist engages in a process of artistic and quasi-rhetorical representation in order to reanimate the past and that (in a brilliant twist) Eupolis focuses on the raised statesmen’s oratorical/rhetorical skills (for example in fr. 102 and 103 Kassel Austin). A full discussion of the Demes is beyond the scope of this chapter: suffice it to note that Eupolis was known for his ‘remarkable powers of creating illusion (eujfavntasto") in his plots . . . showing himself able to restore dead law-givers to life’ (ajnagagei'n iJkano;" w[n ejx ”Aidou nomoqetw'n provswpa, Platonius, p. diaf. car. Kassel Austin V.299 [Eupolis T 34]) a marvellous comment on the dramatist’s creative and necromantic powers.68 III. Fringe Figures: Ghosts and Vase-paintings Let us begin, somewhat anachronistically, but nevertheless in deference to one of the eidolon’s defining features, by discussing the well-known ‘Medea vase’, which will demonstrate the marginality of the stage ghost. The only figure in Greek vase-painting which can with absolute certainty be identified as a tragic ghost is the figure labelled ‘EIDOLON AHTOU’ in a fourth-century vase by the Underworld Painter, inspired by an unknown Medea tragedy.69 According to Siebert, Aeetes’ clothes mark him as barbarian and the column of smoke beneath his feet marks him as a tragic ghost:70 apart from these two signifiers there is little to denote ‘spectre’. Trendall and Webster thought the ‘column of smoke’ beneath the eidolon’s

67

68 69 70

phantoms’ (eijdwvlou dhmiourgov", Rep. 599d3) at the head of the poetic tribe who are ‘imitators of images of excellence’ (mimhta;" eijdwvlwn ajreth'", Rep. 600e5), ‘fashioning phantoms far removed from reality’ (ei[dwla eijdwlopoiou'nta, Rep. 605c3). The scholiast on Aphthonius (Walz 1968: 646) states that Aristides ‘holds forth on democracy by staging these long dead men’ (kai; uJpokrinovmeno" ejkeivnwn ta; provswpa pavlai teqnewvtwn, polla; peri; dhmokrativa" dhmhgorei') and states that Eupolis did the same in writing the Demes. Scholars are divided between a necromancy and a katabasis in the Demes: Storey (2000) argues convincingly for a necromancy. Trendall and Webster (1971: 110, no.III.5.4). Siebert (1981: 67).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

101

feet was a rock,71 but whatever the case, it does seem significant that the eidolon of Aeetes is the only figure in this representation who stands, for want of a technical expression, on a wobbly, smoke-like rock. All the other figures are, as it were, ‘firmly grounded’. Aeetes’ ghost looks as substantial as the other figures in the vase-painting, played as he must be by a very live actor. The eidolon may have, as Taplin suggests, delivered the prologue or he may have returned, as Shapiro states, ‘in spirit to remind his daughter of the betrayal of her hearth and home that has brought her ultimately to this sorry state’.72 Whether at the beginning or at the end of the narrative, the eidolon often stands outside the temporal sequence of the (literary, dramatic or pictorial) narrative proper. The title of this section was inspired by Bieber’s comment on this particular figure above whose head the inscription EIDWLON AHTOU is clearly visible: the ‘Charonian staircase . . . certainly goes back to a classical tradition. The earlier ghosts may have appeared not in the centre but at the edge of the classical orchestra as seems to be indicated by the Medea vase . . . sometimes only the heads or the upper part of persons emerged from the ground.’73 And hence the title and subject of this section fringe figures ghosts or eidola ontologically unstable beings relegated to at least the fringes of the representational, if not the theatrical space. Whatever the role of Aeetes’ eidolon, it is clear that the artist has compressed time and space: the painter has, as Shapiro notes, ‘combined at least three distinct scenes into one multi-level composition, with subsidiary figures who may allude to several more’.74 The eidolon itself, in many significant ways, acts within the representational or even theatrical space as a marker of this compression of time and space, a figure from the past whose gaze seems to be directed downwards (as in this representation), towards the final sequence in the narrative present. Aeetes’ eidolon stands at the fringes of the pictorial space, spanning two of the three distinct scenes. Unlike the other figures on the vase, who all seem to be interacting with, or in response to, at least one other character, the eidolon’s isolated, marginal position is, therefore, all the more marked and one suspects that he has little or no relation to the dramatic action unfolding around him, and is thus very much the ideal candidate for a prologue speaker. This eidolon of an elderly barbarian king stands on the fringes of the dramatic action, helpless to intervene. ‘Pictures and 71 72 73 74

Trendall and Webster (1971: 110). Taplin (1997: 80); Shapiro (1994: 181). Bieber (1961: 78). Shapiro (1994: 181).

102

RUTH BARDEL

descriptions of ghosts are not easy to come by’75 and the ghost is rarely so easily identified as is Aeetes’ eidolon. In a recent article, Taplin suggests that only two fifth-century vasepaintings can be plausibly claimed to show a play in performance and both are early, from the era of Aeschylus.76 One of these is the Basle crater (BS 415, Boardman 1975: fig. 333), the other is the hydria fragments from Corinth (discussed below). The Basle crater, an Attic vase dated to around 490 BC, depicts six youths dancing in unison before a bearded and shrouded figure who rises behind, or from, a structure which has been variously interpreted as a tomb, an altar or a monument. Apparently ‘indecipherable lettering’, interpreted as the chorus’ song, issues from the open mouths of these ‘Basle Dancers’: Schmidt says that the legible lettering consists of IE which, he suggests has parallels with the exclamatory ijhv and that under the arms of the first pair AOOIO and FE. . . SEO can be seen.77 This ‘indecipherable’ lettering is perhaps essential to the interpretation of the vase (see below). It seems clear that these six youths are a masked chorus:78 as Taplin notes, ‘their identical hair, headdresses and features are suggestive of masks, though there is no decisive indicator. And their military costumes, with some indications of ornate decoration, appear to be a signal of their mimetic role as soldiers (bare feet seem to be standard for choruses)’.79 Taplin suggests that the structure they are dancing in front of (or around) seems to be a tomb rather than an altar and that the facing figure may be rising from the tomb rather than standing behind it. If this is so, then ‘we would have a ghost-raising scene, as, for example, in Aeschylus’ (lost) Psychopompi where Odysseus’ men summoned the dead prophet Teiresias’.80 The chief interest in the Basle crater has focused on choral formation, costume and choreography but it is also an important piece of fifthcentury Athenian evidence for the ghost-raising motif in tragedy:81 the two facets of the vase can be harmoniously combined if one bears in mind the 75 76 77 78 79

80 81

Winkler (1980: 160). Taplin (1997: 69 70). Schmidt (1967: 71 with n.4). Robertson (1977: 81 with n.5); Green (1991: 34 5); (1994: 17 18 with n.5). Taplin (1997, 70). Green (1991: 35) interprets the line on the left ankles of the nearer figures as indicating footwear: this would have been a strange item of footwear indeed, as all the chorus members’ toes are very clearly delineated. Taplin (1997: 70, n.2). As Schmidt (1967: 74) notes, ‘Solche Beschwörung der Toten war in der Tat in äschyleischer Zeit ein beliebtes Tragödienmotiv.’ See also Green (1991: 37); (1994: 17 8).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

103

active role of the chorus in the necromancy scene of Aeschylus’ Persae. This chorus is ‘surely raising the ghost of a dead hero’ as the ‘indecipherable’ letters of their song suggests.82 Who does this ghost represent? Is it, as Taplin suggests (above), the dead prophet Teiresias summoned by Odysseus’ men? The figure rising from the structure appears to be veiled perhaps one of Aeschylus’ infamous veiled and muffled figures derided in Aristophanes’ Frogs (911 13). The analogy between veiling and death is strong in literature and seems to serve as iconographic short hand for a dead figure. Whatever the specific performance this vase-painting refers to, it probably does demonstrate the existence of the motif in ancient Greek drama before Aeschylus’ Persae of 472 BC. Green uses this vase and three others to demonstrate that there were ‘at least four other plays which contained the raising of a dead hero earlier than the Persae, beginning from very early in the [fifth] century’.83 This proposition seems highly likely in the case of the Basle crater, but can the same claim be made for the three other vases a Boston askos, a Munich lekythos and six hydria fragments from Corinth that Green adduces? The ghost-raising motif in ‘abbreviated form’84 is depicted on an Attic red-figure askos (Boston 13.169 = Vermeule 1979: 33 fig. 25) dated to between 480 and 470 BC. Vermeule describes the image as follows: a ‘dead soldier-hero rises in armour above his grave mound, perhaps attracted to the surface by the fresh fillets and gifts of those who still remember him; he has an alert expression and makes an active gesture.’85 Clearly, as both Vermeule and later Peifer suggest,86 there is a correlation between the appearance of the dead hero warrior and the belief that such figures were active in the vicinity of their tombs a belief which perhaps lies behind the little eidola flitting around Patroclus’ tomb in vase-paintings. Peifer has also drawn attention to the half-in, half-out position of the emerging figure which is, it seems, characteristic of many ‘Geistererscheinungen’ depicted in vase-paintings the ghost of Elpenor emerges at knee-level from the reedy marshes, the only part of the dead Teiresias that can be seen is his head87 and the emerging figure from the 82 83 84 85 86 87

Green (1991: 35). Green (1994: 18). Green (1991: 35). Vermeule (1979: 31 with fig. 25). Peifer (1989: 113 with fig. K 51). In this depiction of Odysseus’ consultation with Teiresias (cf. n.7 above), Teiresias is reduced to a head, very much a fringe figure emerging from the decorative border of the vase and reminiscent of the oracular head of Orpheus. To the two examples cited

104

RUTH BARDEL

tomb on the Basle crater can only be seen from the waist up. This is, I believe, an important point which may shed light on the very different interpretations of the six hydria fragments from Corinth discussed below. In the introduction to his essay, ‘Anodoi’, Bérard states that there is a comparison between scenes depicting anodoi and necromancy, like that on the Elpenor vase: this correspondence is graphically expressed by the emerging figure, more often than not half-in and half-out of the earth, marsh, structure or whatever.88 The concealment of part of the dead person’s body image suggests, as Bérard notes, vertical movement and these two aspects are wonderfully brought together on a late Roman Imperial engraved gem, said to depict the ghost of Protesilaus (in the form of a bust) embraced by his still living and devoted wife Laodameia.89 What is striking about the image on the Boston askos is that it is a rare example of an askos decorated with one integral scene extending under the handle over the entire circular breast of the vase. In Beazley’s words, ‘the regular decoration of the Attic askoi is a single figure placed on either side of the vase, so that the two figures are separated by the overarching handle and the blank area below it. The most natural decoration of the segment was a figure broader than high; a human figure flying, creeping, seated, reclining, or the figure of an animal.’90 The handle of this particular askos seems to mark off the realm of the dead the tomb from that of the living, the space into which this warrior hero emerges.91 Davies thought that this might represent the dead hero Sthenelus appearing to the Argonauts at his tomb (Ap. Rhod. 2.911 29 with schol. ad loc.) or Polites, the son of Priam, as a living lookout for the Trojans at the tomb of Aesyetes (Il. 2.791 4).92 Whatever the interpretation, the vase-painter has made superb use of the normally clearly divided spaces on this particular askos.93 There can be no doubt that this askos lid depicts the ghost-raising

88 89 90 91 92 93

above may be added the various depictions of necromantic scenes on Etruscan gems, such as those in Richter (1968: figs 781, 782), portrayals which obscure much of the summoned dead person’s body. Bérard (1974: 28, cf. 44). So Richter (1971). Beazley (1921: 329). Bérard suggests that in anodoi scenes, ‘le protagoniste ne sort pas du milieu du champ mais bien directement de la frise decorative qui limite le bas de la scène’ (1974: 27). Davies (1985: 94). First appearing around 480 BC and continuing into the fourth century BC, the function of askoi is intriguing: they may have been used to pour oil and perhaps even vinegar and used together with lekythoi as oil/vinegar containers on the table. If this is so, then the subject matter of our Boston askos seems to be rather odd for daily table use: other illustrations such as Theseus and the Boar, reclining Maenads, a goat

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

105

motif, but is Green right to use this particular vase-painting as evidence of ‘at least four other plays which contained the raising of a dead hero’? It seems to me unlikely. The image of the dead warrior hero rising from his tomb on the askos lid is too detached: there is no contextual evidence the presence of a chorus or aulos player as in the Basle crater or the hydria fragments from Corinth, for example to suggest a play in performance. What this vasepainting suggests, then, is that the motif of raising a ghost or the appearance of a dead hero at his tomb, in response to offerings made by the living, was not confined to dramatic contexts: this image clearly draws on commonly held beliefs and narratives regarding the dead warrior hero and forms part of the cultural repertoire in the discourse between the living and the dead. The Basle and Boston vases seem to provide ‘good parallels for an interpretation along the lines of a hero being summoned from his tomb’,94 but not necessarily in a dramatic context. Green adduces these representations to support a similar interpretation of the painting on a black-figure lekythos (Munich 1871 inv. 6025 = ABV 470, 103; Green 1991: pl. 7b), dated to the early fifth-century BC. Ivy tendrils decorate the upper part of the scene in which three men kneel, each of their right hands touch their foreheads, their left hands outstretched towards the earth; the central bearded figure kneels before what looks like a herm with a criss-cross, net-like pattern over which are scattered red dots. The head on the top of this ‘herm’ sports a ‘fine red beard’.95 Hackl thought that the scene showed three men doing obeisance before an Egyptian mummy on the basis of the similarity of the criss-cross markings to bandaging:96 this is, however, doubtful as there is no indication of bandaged feet. Hourmouziades reads the same vase-painting as a tragic chorus around a herm with a Dionysus head:97 the absence of a phallus and arm-stumps somewhat rule out this notion. Green adduces the ‘curious curved line at the neck’ of the kneeling figure on the viewer’s right that ‘may just hint at a mask’ and the lines running across the legs a little above the ankles suggesting footwear as evidence for a theatrical context.98 If Taplin’s statement (cited earlier) that choruses are usually barefoot is correct, Hourmouziades’ and indeed Green’s interpretation 94 95 96 97 98

and a satyr or a youth with a lyre appear to be far more appropriate subject matter. Green (1991: 37). Green (1991: 36). Hackl (1909: 195 203). Hourmouziades (1972: 355 with n.64). Green (1991: 37).

106

RUTH BARDEL

of the three men as a tragic chorus is misleading. The block-like form of the body seems to rule out both a mummy and a herm: it also, I propose, rules out the ‘hero being summoned from his tomb’ interpretation given by Green, especially when comparison is made with the form of the dead figures rising from the tomb/tumulus on the Basle and Boston vases. The block-like body before which the central figure kneels on the Munich lekythos seems far too slender a construction to be a tomb: its shape is closer to that of grave stelae or herms. The crisscross markings are also problematic: a similar pattern may, as Hackl pointed out, be found decorating altars on Tyrrhenian amphorae,99 but is this sufficient evidence to call this structure a tomb? There can be no doubt that kneeling is associated particularly with the earth and the dead, and that the three figures on this vase gesture towards the earth, but this is not sufficient to warrant Green’s interpretation of the vase. The context of the image on the Munich lekythos appears to be a Dionysiac one the ivy, the bearded head on top of the column. The connection between Dionysus and the dead is one which is endemic to tragedy, but this does not necessarily imply a dramatic context for the image on the Munich lekythos, neither does it appear to merit the interpretation, ‘hero being summoned from his tomb’. It might be more constructive to invoke the crude shapes of archaic cult statues and interpret the block-like form of this body as a quasi-aniconic representation of Dionysus:100 the kneeling figures on this vase may simply be performing a lament (given their gestures) at, or around, a representation of Dionysus. Six fragments by the Leningrad painter in Corinth (Corinth T 1144, ARV2 238, 1),101 dated to between 480 and 450102 are, according to Taplin, the second of only two fifth-century vase-paintings which can be plausibly claimed to show a play in performance: the other is the Basle 99 100

101

102

Hackl (1909). As Spivey (1995: 451) points out, the ‘ambivalence of representation’ is neatly captured in the thirteenth fable of Babrius: a sculptor makes an image of Hermes and offers it for sale either as grave marker or an image of the god. Disturbed by this, Hermes says to the sculptor, ‘Well, did you intend me to be a corpse (nekrov") or a god (qeov")?’. The clearest photo of these fragments is in Hammond (1988: plate I Hammond and Moon 1978: 374). Hammond and Moon have allocated letters a e to the five fragments and I have used these same letters to identify them. Since they were published by Beazley in 1955, another fragment has been found: see Roller (1984: 262 3 with fig. 3) who interprets these fragments as depicting Croesus on his pyre. This sixth fragment is designated as f. Beazley (1955: 309 19).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

107

crater.103 The hydria fragments have attracted two main interpretations: when Beazley first published these fragments, he suggested that they might be evidence for a ‘Croesus’ tragedy during the first quarter of the fifth century.104 Considerably later, Hammond and Moon proposed that the fragments showed Darius rising from his tomb, as in Aeschylus’ Persae.105 On one hydria fragment (a) an aulos player, in the costume of an aulêtês, indicates that a tragedy or a dithyramb (also accompanied by the aulos) is being represented. The three other figures, as far as they are visible, are in Persian or oriental, though not necessarily theatrical, costume.106 This much is clear. Dispute over the interpretation focuses on two fragments, one which shows the base of a structure from which small flames seem to rise (d) and another (b) on which a figure in oriental dress is poised halfin, half-out of the top of the same structure which, like the base, appears to be on fire. Beazley read these fragments as depicting a burning pyre and subsequent scholarship has invoked the Croesus vase by Myson (Paris, Louvre G 197, ARV2 238 = Boardman 1975: fig. 171) to support the ‘Croesus on his pyre’ interpretation; the ‘delineation of logs’ on the hydria fragment ‘reproduces that in Myson’s version of the Croesus story.’107 Similar comparisons can be made between the hydria fragment in question and two depictions of Alcmene on her pyre108 as well as the funeral pyre of Patroclus on an Apulian red-figure volute crater.109 In the latter three vase-paintings, the pyres are a tightly and neatly packed pile of logs more so than in Myson’s rendering of Croesus’ pyre and all of these contrast starkly with depictions of Heracles’ funeral pyre which consists of roughly hewn logs stacked in a fairly random fashion. However, both the top and the foundation layer of the ‘pyre’ on the hydria fragments (b and d) are rather more monumental110 than that of the other 103 104 105 106 107 108

109 110

Taplin (1997: 69 70). Beazley (1955). Hammond and Moon (1978). So Hammond and Moon (1978: 373), but Green (1991: 35) expresses doubts about the theatricality of the costumes depicted. For example, Hall (1989: 65 with n.36). A red figure calyx crater by the Painter of the Birth of Dionysus (Taranto 46000), RVAp I 36, no. 2/11 Trendall (1989: fig. 55) and a Paestean bell crater signed by Python from S. Agata (London BM F 149), RVP 2/239, pl. 88 Trendall (1989: fig. 367). A red figure volute crater by the Darius Painter (Naples 3254), RVAp II 495, no. 18/39 Trendall (1989: fig. 204). Hammond (1988: 17). The conflation of altar and tomb in tragedy also problematizes or perhaps elucidates? the interpretation of the hydria fragments:

108

RUTH BARDEL

pyres cited, suggesting that the ‘logs’ of the ‘pyre’ on the hydria fragments may be decorative rather than functional. Also significant is the fact that in the representations of Croesus, Alcmene and Patroclus, the pyres are either unlit or in the process of being ignited. Heracles, typically, is an exception: on the Munich vase,111 he rides off in a chariot beside Athena, leaving behind the flaming funeral pyre in the centre of which lies his breast armour. Furthermore, none of these figures is half-in and half-out of their pyres: Croesus sits squarely on his throne on top of his pyre; Alcmene sits elegantly atop hers; Patroclus is represented by his helmet and breast armour on top of his pyre; and, if Heracles is not being driven off to Olympus, he too sits on top of his newly and roughly made pyre which is covered by his lionskin.112 If the hydria fragments from Corinth do depict Croesus on his pyre, why has the Leningrad painter chosen to portray him half-in, half-out of a burning pyre? Is this figure rising or falling? Are we to imagine the half-in half-out Croesus figure to be rising, Phoenix-like, from the burning pyre, rescued at the last minute by divine intervention?113 Why, when other vase-paintings depict figures on their unlit or newly ignited funeral pyres, does the Leningrad painter of these Corinth fragments choose to place ‘Croesus’ in a very vulnerable and dangerous position? Taplin remarks, ‘It is hard to see what this [the Corinth fragments] can be other than a picture based on a particular scene in a tragedy even though it is hard to see how the pyre would have been staged.’114 Quite. Are we to attribute the odd position, half-in and half-out of a burning pyre, of ‘Croesus’ on the Corinth fragments to an innovative vase-painter or to an innovative dramatist? Might the vase-painter be illustrating a scene from a messenger speech from a play about Croesus? If the vase-painter’s illustration of a ‘particular scene in tragedy’ was a faithful one, just how was this staged? Theatrical pyrotechnics and contrivances can be fatal, whether for historical, mythical or spectral figures: ‘any actor’s clothing would have caught fire and he would have been severely burnt’.115 Are the so-called

111 112 113

114 115

see further Rehm (1987: 264 74, esp. 264 with n.6, 273 with n.48). An Attic red figure pelike by the Kadmos Painter (Munich 2360) ARV 1186, 30 Boardman (1989: fig. 311). As on an Attic red figure psykter (New York, Private Collection) Carpenter (1991: fig. 229). In Bacchylides’ ode Croesus, his wife and his daughters all mount the pyre and, just as the fire begins to shoot through the wood (3.53 4), a Zeus sent rain cloud quenches the flames (3.55 6). Taplin (1997: 71). Hammond and Moon (1978: 373). In 1736 after a particularly serious accident during

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

109

flames on the hydria fragment incorporated under the rubric of artistic licence? Hammond and Moon proposed that ‘the small flames are those of incense; they issue also from the foundation layer’ in the fragment depicting the base of the structure.116 This is, they claim, a phenomenon occurring in other vase-paintings, for example, in one of a scene from Aeschylus’ Sphinx where there are round holes at the base of the tumulus with small flames emerging from them. It has been argued that the smoke issuing from the holes in the tumulus at ground level was ‘the place where most of the smoke of incense issued during the ritual enactment of the raising of the dead’; the ‘ritual was no doubt real and contemporary, including the incantations, dances, tearing of the ground and incense’.117 In support of this, the sickle- or scythe-shaped item in front of the base of the structure (fragment d: a similar item also features on fragment f) is interpreted as being used to scratch and tear the ground during the evocation ceremony. As supporting evidence for this aspect of necromantic ritual, Hammond and Moon (as above) state that ‘so was the Ghost of Melissa raised from the dead by Periander at the Nekyomanteion of the river Acheron in Epirus (Hdt. 5.92)’. If only Herodotus had been so explicit about the manner in which the dead Melissa was resuscitated! We do know that incense was burnt by those about to seek oracular advice from Hermes Agoraeus (Paus. 7.22.2 3), by those sick people consulting an oracle of Demeter (Paus. 7.21.12 13) and by those propitiating Eileithyia (Paus. 2.35.11: cf. 6.20.3).118 In all of these instances,

116 117 118

a performance of the Fall of Phaeton an ill omened title, perhaps the Daily Advertiser for 2 November noted that ‘The Director [of Drury Lane] has resolv’d, for the future, to suffer no living Persons to be concern’d in any Flights, or hazardous Machinery, but to have Figures made for that purpose’. In the world of the eighteenth century theatre, the trapdoor was the standard entry point for ghosts and spirits but innovative dramatists had clearly contravened this convention: one figure in an illustration holds a scroll which reads, ‘Pray sir, don’t boil spirits in this manner . . . the cauldron is . . . for the purpose on Incantation not as a stewpot for Ghosts. Pray open your trap doors and let them rise in a more natural way.’ Hammond and Moon (1978: 373). Hammond and Moon (1978: 373 4 with n.16). The use of incense as part of sacrificial ritual seems to have been an archaic one for, as Pausanias (5.15.10) states, the Eleans ‘sacrifice in the ancient manner’ (quvousi de; ajrcai'ovn tina trovpon); ‘they burn on the altars incense with wheat which has been kneaded with honey’. In Plato’s Laws (847b c), the legislator states that: ‘Frankincense and all such foreign spices for use in religious rites, and purple and all dyes not produced in the country, and all pertaining to any other craft requiring foreign imported materials for a use that is not necessary, no one shall import.’ The use of incense in sacrifice is also attested by various passages in Aristophanes (e.g.

110

RUTH BARDEL

cognates of the verb qumiavw (to burn so as to produce smoke) are used: different substances may have produced different effects but it is quite possible that some would initially flare up and then smoulder and smoke.119 In Seneca’s Oedipus (admittedly a late source) we are given some idea as to how the burning of incense worked: Teiresias makes a prophetic sacrifice (302) and asks Manto to pour oriental incense on the altars (305). Manto reports that the flame ‘flashed up with sudden light, and suddenly died down’ (subito refulsit lumine et subito occidit, 308). Hammond and Moon’s proposal that the flames on the hydria fragments are those of incense cannot be dismissed, especially given not only the ritual use, but also the oriental connotations, of both incense and necromancy (most evident in the latter instance in later literature, for example Pliny NH 30.14 and Strabo 16.2.39). In theatrical terms, the flashing, smouldering, or smoking of incense external to the structure in question would be a much safer, and equally effective, mode of staging and there would be no need to pipe the smoke from the skene as Hammond and Moon suggest.120 Euripides’ Trojan Women is often thought to have had smoke rising from the skene in a play which ‘brings flames into the theatre’ at significant points:121 the production of smoke within the theatre of Dionysus for dramatic effect cannot be ruled out. If we accept that the flames and smoke issuing from the monumental structure on the hydria fragments are those produced by incense, and link this with the chthonic associations of the half-in, half-out posture (discussed earlier), apparently characteristic of ‘Geistererscheinungen’, might not the fragments from Corinth make more sense? The six hydria fragments from Corinth are perplexing evidence for a dramatic performance from the early fifth century. Nothing seems to cohere. The iconographic markers for ‘figure on a pyre’ seem to preclude the Croesus interpretation and the very details that prompt this reading problematize the ‘ghost rising from a tomb’ interpretation. Whether or not these fragments portray either the necromancy in the Persae or a

119

120 121

Clouds 426, Frogs 871, 888, Wealth 1114, Wasps 96 and 861). Adonis and Aphrodite were major recipients of aromatic offerings. In the late eighteenth century, the inventor, physicist, student of optics and consummate showman Étienne Gaspard Robertson dazzled Parisian audiences with his ‘Fantasmagorie’: his necromantic displays depended upon the use of various chemicals which, when thrown onto burning coals in a brazier, produced a heavy smoke. The coal burning brazier stood on a sort of altar in front of the audience and Robertson would summon figures from the dead, spirits whose faces would appear in the smoke. See further Castle (1995: 144 50). See Enright (1994: 43, 454) for ghosts placated by incense and sweet smells as spectral phenomena. Hammond and Moon (1978: 374). Wiles (1997: 119 20).

SPECTRAL TRACES: GHOSTS IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

111

comparable scene in another play such as Phrynichus’ Phoenissae cannot be asserted with absolute certainty. Beazley resisted the temptation to equate these fragments with Aeschylus’ Persae, but Hammond argues strongly (fragmenting, or dissecting, the evocation scene in the Persae to correspond exactly to the hydria fragments), if somewhat tendentiously, for an equation between these fragments and Aeschylus’ Persae, concluding that ‘the fragments . . . are overwhelming evidence that a brilliant painter . . . painted the epiphany of the Ghost of Darius as he had seen it in the Dionysiac theatre either in 472 or at a subsequent revival of the play before 450.’122 Green’s confident assertion that the ‘Basle, Boston and Corinth vases, and perhaps the Munich vase give us clear evidence’ that the necromantic theme was not new to Aeschylus’ Persae and that by 472 BC ghost-raising was a traditional dramatic motif is misleading.123 It would seem that only the Basle crater and the Corinth fragments ‘can plausibly’, to use Taplin’s phrase, lay claim to the representation of a play in performance: in order to adduce the Corinth fragments as evidence of a dramatic necromancy prior to Aeschylus’ Persae, they must not only be shown plausibly to represent a ghost-raising scene from a play other than that of Aeschylus, but they must also positively represent just such a scene. The uncertainty surrounding the interpretation of these fragments is too great, I think, to deploy them in the manner that Green does. Similarly, for reasons discussed earlier, neither the Boston askos nor the Munich lekythos can be used as conclusive evidence for the ghost-raising motif in dramatic performances. The significance of lamentation, a ritual identification with the dead, is perhaps all that can be claimed for the Munich lekythos. What the Boston askos suggests is the general notion of the dead acting in response to the ritual activity of the living, a communication between the living and the dead so vividly portrayed in Aeschylus’ Persae. Was the stage-ghost merely a stunning theatrical device, designed to seduce and enchant, or even terrorize, the spectators? The audience’s collusion in such a theatrical event suggests that behind the actual staging of raising a hero from the dead there lies ‘quite a primitive element in which the heroes or successful leaders of the past are summoned by those in need of leadership and direction in the present’; in its fifth-century context, ‘in some broad and not necessarily very clearly expressed sense it 122

123

So Hammond (1988: 5 22, esp. 21). See Gow (1928: 150) on the putative revival. If the hydria fragments are a depiction of a revival of Aeschylus’ play, might this help to explain the iconographic confusion of this allegedly ‘brilliant’ painter? Green (1991: 37); (1994: 17 18).

112

RUTH BARDEL

reflects a yearning for days gone by and a yearning for direct leadership when a democratic government has taken control and Athenians were faced with arguments rather than command decisions’124 just as in the Demes. The dramatists themselves were not immune to such summonses, as Aristophanes’ Frogs comically demonstrates:125 the ghost, or eidolon, of the raised hero is thus simultaneously a marvellous piece of theatre and a powerful and concrete metaphor for (and of) the past with the ability to influence the present and, perhaps, even the future. The fragmentary evidence, both textual and visual, discussed in this chapter implies two things: first, that the motif of ghostly appearances was more common than the extant corpus of Greek tragedy (and comedy) suggests, and secondly that this motif was fairly widely used prior to Aeschylus’ Persae produced in 472 BC. In short, there is great merit ‘in telling how many plays have ghosts in them’.

124 125

Green (1994: 18). It may well be that by the time Aristophanes produced the Frogs (405 BC), the motif of consulting the ghosts had become a hackneyed device and that Aristophanes was, as it were, flogging a dead horse with its own whip (to use a mixed metaphor).

6 DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

RICHARD SEAFORD

Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus king of Sipylus in Asia Minor, married Amphion of Thebes and had numerous children. Because she boasted of her superiority to Leto (mother of only two children), her children were killed by the children of Leto (Artemis and Apollo) and she herself was transformed into an ever-weeping rock on Mount Sipylus. Aeschylus’ lost drama Niobe was long known only from a few brief fragments and some information preserved by other authors. This knowledge included the important fact that the scene of the drama was the tomb of Niobe’s children, almost certainly at Thebes. Then, in 1933, a papyrus fragment was published. It consisted of twenty-one incomplete lines, some of which were already known to be from Aeschylus’ Niobe. It has also been recognized that several southern Italian vase-paintings depict a scene or scenes from the drama. My concern here is not with the numerous problems of reconstructing the drama,1 but rather to pursue, in the papyrus and the vase-paintings, a single (albeit complex) strand that embodies an interesting general feature of Greek tragedy. The first eleven verses of the papyrus fragment are as follows.2 hJ dÅ ouj]de;n eij mh; patevrÅ ajnastevn[ein e[cei to;n d]ovnta kai; fuvsanta Tantavlou b[ivan, 1 2

A recent attempt to reconstruct it, and bibliography, is Moreau (1995). I reproduce the text and translation by Lloyd Jones (1957). The most recent text is by Diggle (1998).

114

RICHARD SEAFORD

eij" oi|]on ejxwvkeilen ajlivmenon gavmon. pant]o;" kakou' ga;r pneu'ma prosb[avlle]i dovmoi": aujtai; ] dÅ oJra'te toujpitevrmion gavmou. tritai']on h\mar tovndÅ ejfhmevnh tavfon tevkn]oi" ejpwvzei zw'sa toi'" teqnhkovsin, qrhno]u'sa th;n tavlainan eu[morfon fuhvn. broto;]" kakwqei;" dÅ oujde;n a[llÅ eij mh; skiav. au\qi"] me;n h{xei deu'ro Tantavlou biva, ejpÅ ajg]kovmistra th'sde kai; pefa[smevno". But she can only lament over the luckless marriage, one that proved no haven, into which mighty Tantalus, the father that begot her and gave her away, forced her fortune’s ship. For the blast of all manner of evil is striking against her house, and you yourselves can see the conclusion of the marriage. This is the third day she has sat by this tomb, wailing over her children, the living over the dead, and mourning the misfortune of their beauty. Man brought to misery is but a shadow. Mighty Tantalus will in due course come here; to bring her home will be the purpose of his coming. (PSI 1208 = fr. 154a Radt)

In an earlier paper I described the interpenetration, in several tragedies, of wedding ritual with death ritual.3 In Greek life the two rituals are similar in certain respects. Both bride and dead girl are washed, anointed, dressed in a special robe and crown, and transported from home on a cart in a procession, with torches and song, in order to be irreversibly abandoned by their kin to an unknown, alien bed. Further, the wedding may actually express funereal emotions, in the lamentation of the bride reluctant to make the marital transition. In the end this funereal tendency is transcended by the successful incorporation of the bride into her new home. Characteristic of tragedy, on the other hand, is that the deaths of maidens, and male-female unions that result in death, are frequently described in terms of wedding ritual in which the funereal elements of the wedding are not transcended but rather prevail: the negative tendency of the ritual prevails over the positive, the wedding turns into its opposite. This phenomenon can be further illuminated by its occurrence in Niobe. The first eight verses of the papyrus fragment describe the lamentation of Niobe sitting on ‘this tomb’. Various unresolved problems, such as the basic question of who speaks the lines, need not concern us here. In the first three verses Niobe laments over the ‘harbourless marriage’ into which 3

Seaford (1987).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

115

she was ‘run aground’ by her father Tantalus.4 There are good reasons for believing that the wedding journey of the bride in a cart to her new home might be envisaged in nautical terms.5 The gavmo" (wedding or marriage) is frequently called an ‘end’ or ‘completion’ (teleuthv, tevlo").6 It is as if Niobe’s bridal journey, far from arriving at a (metaphorical) harbour as it should have done, has ended with lamentation at a tomb: ‘you can see’, we read in verse 5, ‘the ending (toujpitevrmion) of the gavmo"’.7 In this way the catastrophic ending of the marriage evokes its beginning (the wedding). Hence the prominence in Niobe’s lamentation of her father Tantalus, ‘he who gave her (in marriage)’ (2).8 It is moreover said in verse 10 that Tantalus ‘will come here’. That his purpose in coming is to take her back to Sipylus, to which she is said to return in other extant versions of the myth from the fifth century onwards,9 is confirmed by ejpÅ ajg]kovmistra th'sde (‘to bring her back’) in the next verse. In the wedding the bride is escorted by the groom and by her own kin to her new home.10 The arrival of Niobe’s father to take her back to his home puts this central element of the wedding into reverse. Also negatively evocative of the wedding may be verse 8: . . . usa th;n tavlainan eu[morfon fuhvn (‘wretched physical beauty’). This may with, say, qrhno]u'sa (Lloyd-Jones) refer to the beauty of the dead children. But the previous lines have described the lamenting Niobe, and the unspecified ‘beauty’ is more likely to be hers, whether we read something like thvko]usa, ‘wasting’, skoto]u'sa, ‘darkening’, or skevpo]usa,

4 5

6 7

8

9 10

gavmon is a correction in the papyrus for bivon. This is a frequent association in tragedy: A. Ag. 690 2, 1178 81, S. OT 420 3, E. IT 370 1, Tro. 569 71. Cf. also A. Ag. 227, E. IA 667 70, Hipp. 752 63, Tro. 455 6; Dionysus apparently travelled to his wedding at the Anthesteria in a cart shaped like a ship: Seaford (1987: 124). e.g. Od. 1.249, 20.74; Pi. Pyth. 9.66; A. Eum. 835; S. Ant. 1241; E. fr. 773.58 Kannicht; Pollux 3.38. The same irony occurs at e.g. A. Ag. 745; S. OT 420 3; E. Med. 1388. For the root term , see E. Phoen. 1352 3; Pi. Pyth. 9.113 14. With the implication of the lamenting Niobe run aground at the tomb cf. the suppliants lamenting at the ‘shore’ of the altar at S. OT 184 5; and the idea of the ‘shore’ of the tomb over the body of the ‘sea captain’ Agamemnon at A. Cho. 722 4. See the Greek quoted above (n.2), which seems to say that she laments for Tantalus. But, in the words of Lloyd Jones (1957: 560), ‘the speaker means to say “She can only weep for the disastrous marriage which Tantalus made for her”; but this is expressed by means of the common construction exemplified, e.g. by Eur. Med. 37, devdoika dÅ aujth;n mhv ti bouleuvh/ neovn.’ Sophocles (Schol. T on Il. 24.602); Pherecydes 3 FGrH F38 Jacoby; Apollod. 3.5.6. Oakley and Sinos (1993: 22 37).

116

RICHARD SEAFORD

‘covering’.11 The latter two would refer to something reported by all the witnesses to the drama, from Aristophanes onwards, namely the fact that Niobe was, in her mourning, veiled. We know that the Greek bride was unveiled in a ceremony called anakalypteria. It is uncertain at what point in the wedding ritual this occurred (and anyway practice may well have varied). A likely moment is at the feast, shortly before the procession escorting the bride to her new home.12 The anakalypteria is ironically evoked in various tragic contexts of death or lamentation. I will confine myself to two examples.13 First, in Euripides’ Phoenician Women Antigone emerges from the maiden quarters to appear with the corpses of her mother and brothers, and sings as follows (1485 92): Not covering [ouj prokaluptomevna] the delicacy of my grape like cheek, nor feeling maiden shame at the crimson under my eyes, the redness of my face, I am carried on, a maenad of the dead, throwing the covering [kravdemna] from my hair, relinquishing the saffron luxury of the garment, led, sighing much, by the dead.

This lament evokes the admiration of the beauty of the bride that would have accompanied the anakalypteria,14 together with the processional escort of the bride (here ‘by the dead’) that followed it.15 One should bear in mind that in an actual wedding the bride might lament, before being successfully incorporated into her new home. In the case of the bridal Antigone it is the lamentation that has prevailed. Another tragic passage that in my view evokes the erotic admiration of the bride at the anakalypteria is the account of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father in 11

12 13 14 15

The first of these supplements was suggested by Camerer, the latter two by Pfeiffer (1934: 10), who prefers skevpo]usa to skoto]u'sa (cf. S. Aj. 85). However, with skoto]u'sa cf. Eustathius cited by Radt (1985: 266) Aijscuvlo" . . . thvn te Niovbhn kai; a[lla provswpa oJmoivw" ejschmavtise . . . ouj ga;r movnon blevpesqai ajpaxioi' oJ ejn a[kra/ qlivyei, ajllÅ oujde; blevpei, wJ" oi|a nuvkteron bivon aiJrouvmeno" h] kai; uJpovgaion (‘Aeschylus . . . constructed Niobe and other characters similarly . . . For the person in extreme grief refuses not only to be seen, but even to see, as choosing a life as if of night or even underground’). So Sinos and Oakley (1993: 25 6); Seaford (1987: 124 and n.180). See also A. Ag. 690 2, 1178 9; S. Trach. 1078; Seaford (1987: 124). General erotic admiration for the bride at the wedding: Ar. Pax 1337 40, 1352; Men. Rhet. Epid. 404.11 12; 405.31 2; 406.32; 407.6. For detailed argumentation see Seaford (1993: 119 21).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

117

Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (227 47).16 It is clear from Aristophanes’ Frogs (911 26), and from later reports, that in the first part of the drama Niobe sat veiled and silent on the tomb of her children.17 Now of course veiling and silence are an appropriate expression of mourning. And yet the number of respects in which the wedding is evoked, even within the few lines preserved by chance on the papyrus, suggests that the veiling and silence of Niobe may not only express mourning but also evoke the wedding.18 The interpenetration of these two rituals (based on their similarity) is, we have observed, a constant feature of tragedy. Whether or not Niobe unveiled herself (as is likely) in the course of the drama, we have, even in the little that we know of the drama, a combination of elements that is to be found also in the wedding: the female veiled, silent, beautiful, lamenting, eventually escorted by her kin to a new home. But it is, in tragedy, the lament that prevails: Niobe’s veiling, silence and (then) lamentation express irreversible mourning, as opposed to the bridal lamentation that comes to an end; her beauty has in the end done her no good;19 the journey on which her father intends to take her is (back) to her natal home. Similarly, the Euripidean Antigone unveils her beauty and imagines herself led off, lamenting, by her dead kin. The purpose of Athenian marriage was stated, in the betrothal ceremony, to be ‘for the ploughing of legitimate children’.20 With the death of her children, Niobe’s wedding ceremony is seen to have been in vain, and so is now put into reverse. Characteristically of tragedy, the catastrophe of a marriage is seen in terms of the reversal of the ritual by which it was constituted. Of this phenomenon it is worth mentioning (before moving on to the vase-paintings) one last example, from Euripides’ Medea. The catastrophe of Medea’s marriage is her abandonment by her husband Jason, whom she 16 17 18

19

20

Seaford (1987: 124 5). The material is collected by Radt (1985: 265 6). For the tomb of Niobe’s children at Thebes see E. Phoen. 159 60. That the veiled bride was silent is likely enough. There are also indications that she remained silent after the unveiling as well: Seaford (1994: 35 6). This would add a further frisson to the silence of Iphigenia at A. Ag. 235 43 (see above). Her beauty is tavlaina, a word that may refer not only to ‘suffering’ but also to the disastrous excess in action and speech that brings suffering (especially in Aeschylus: Pers. 719, Sept. 262, Ag. 223, 385, 1107, 1247, Cho. 604, PV 469). And so used of Niobe here it evokes not only the poignant bridal combination of beauty and misery but also the sense that even her beauty (praised in a bride, good for a marriage) was in fact disastrous. Men. Perikeir. 1013 14, Dysk. 842, and Gomme and Sandbach (1973: ad loc.) for further refs.

118

RICHARD SEAFORD

punishes by killing their children. In my earlier paper I identified two passages as evoking the negative tendency within the wedding (specifically, the death wish of the bride), one from the nurse’s speech that opens the play (39 41), the other from the parodos (148 53).21 I now add a third passage from the same speech by the nurse: she says that Medea, since hearing of the wrong done her by her husband, has been without food, in pain, in constant tears, looking constantly downwards, ‘for all the attention she gives to being advised by her friends, she is like a rock or a sea-wave, except when turning (away) her all-white (pavlleuko") neck she laments to herself her dear father, and her land, and the home that she betrayed and left with the man who now holds her in dishonour’ (28 33). There is a multiple similarity here with the grief of Niobe:22 like Niobe (see below) Medea is like a rock, deaf to advice, turned in on herself. Both Medea and Niobe lament their departure from their natal home, with in both cases the Greek implying lamentation for the father (Medea patevrÅ ajpoimwvxh/, Niobe patevrÅ ajnasten[). Why is Medea described by the rare word pavlleuko"? It occurs later in the play of the adorned bride Glauce (1164). The poignant combination of beauty with lamentation at the loss of natal home is a characteristic of the bride, as well as of Medea and Niobe.23 A dozen or so vase-paintings, all of them from southern Italy of the fourth century BC, have been identified as representing Niobe on a tomb. Certain correspondences with what remains of Aeschylus’ Niobe, together with the frequency of Aeschylean drama in vase-painting of this kind, make it likely that the paintings are influenced by Aeschylus’ play.24 This likelihood is treated in effect as a certainty in two separate discussions that appeared in 1978, by Eva Keuls and Anneliese Kossatz-Deissmann, of the seven paintings at that time identified (two of them tentatively) of Niobe at a tomb.25 Since 1978 there have come to light five further such vase21 22 23 24

25

Seaford (1987: 122 3). The similarity is noted by Schadewaldt (1960: 149), but he does not make any connection with the bride. Medea casting her eyes to the ground (27 8) is yet another point in which she resembles the bride: cf. Seaford (1994: 35 6, esp. n.23 and n.24). Trendall (1972). Aeschylean influence is denied by Fracchia (1987) on the odd grounds that ‘there is no indication that Aeschylus dealt with Niobe’s petrification . . . Niobe’s hybris and subsequent punishment were the focus of the Aeschylean tragedy’ (but only a tiny proportion of the play survives!), and that ‘in any event Aeschylus did not consider Niobe a great tragic heroine’ (for this remarkable claim she cites Cho. 594 623). Keuls (1978: 41 68), reprinted in Keuls (1997: 169 99); Kossatz Deissman (1978: 75 88). The vases they discuss are LIMC 10 (Apulian amphora, Taranto 8935); LIMC 11 (Campanian hydria, Sydney, Nicholson Mus. 71.01); LIMC 12 (Apulian loutrophoros,

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

119

paintings, again all of them from southern Italy of the fourth century BC.26 My concern is not to describe the vase-paintings in detail27 or to discuss the various problems of their interpretation, but rather to pursue the strand that we have already identified in the fragments of the drama. In almost all the paintings Niobe is veiled. In one she is sitting on a tomb, in most of the others she is standing in a naiskos, a small shrine with four columns, which in Italiot vase-painting regularly represents a tomb. In seven paintings an old man, undoubtedly her father Tantalus,28 directs towards her a gesture of pleading, which in some of the paintings29 she seems to be rejecting by raising her hand. Remarkably, in all those paintings in which she stands in a naiskos the use of white paint makes it clear that part of her has turned into stone.30 What are we to make of all this? First, we should note that vasepainting may show different moments from a drama in a single scene. Secondly, the arrival of Niobe’s father to take her home (in the papyrus), together with her apparent rejection of her father’s plea and her metamorphosis into a statue (in the vase-painting), suggest that in the event she refused to return to Sipylus and became a statue in Thebes. How, in the other versions of the myth, did Niobe end up?31 In the Iliad (24.614 17), and in numerous subsequent texts, she is petrified on Mount Sipylus. But from the fifth century onwards, again in many texts, she lives at Thebes and her children are killed and buried there. In Sophocles’ play (as well as in the mythographers Pherecydes and Apollodorus) the con-

26

27 28 29 30

31

Naples H 3246); LIMC 14 (Apulian dish, Taranto 8928); LIMC 16 (Apulian amphora, Bonn 99). Kossatz Deissmann tentatively added LIMC 17 (Campanian lekythos, Berlin Staatl. Mus. F 4282) and LIMC 21 (Apulian hydria, British Mus. F 93). LIMC 13 (Apulian hydria, Geneva private collection); LIMC 15 (a fragment from tomb 24 at Roccagloriosa showing the mourning Niobe on a plinth: Trendall 1985: 138); LIMC 18 (Apulian loutrophoros, Malibu 82.AE.16); LIMC 19 (Apulian hydria, ‘Zurich market’: Trendall 1985: 136, fig. 10); LIMC 20 (Apulian loutrophoros, Princeton Art Mus. y 1989 29). In particular I omit description and discussion of the figures (other than Tantalus) surrounding the tomb. He is in some cases clearly marked as an oriental king by costume, sceptre and attendant. The Sydney hydria; the Naples loutrophoros: Kossatz Deissmann (1978: 80 1). This was shown by Trendall (1972). It is conceivable that she is being transformed from a statue, as is maintained by Schmidt, Trendall and Cambitoglou (1976: 43), who believes that there was a version in which Niobe was petrified twice. But even if there was, it would be inept for tragic drama and is inconsistent with Niobe’s rejection of her father’s plea. See Kossatz Deissmann (1978: 77, 79 80). A good discussion and collection of the material is by Barrett in Carden (1974: 225 7).

120

RICHARD SEAFORD

tradiction is resolved by having her return eventually to Sipylus.32 In our vase-paintings she rejects the pleas of her father and is petrified not into a mountain but into a statue on a tomb, apparently at Thebes. The only extant text in which she is said to be petrified at Thebes is Ovid’s Metamorphoses: she sits down among the corpses of her children, turns into stone and is taken off by a wind to her native land, where she is set on a mountain peak and continues to weep (6.301 12). We do not know how Aeschylus ended his drama. Since it is likely that our vase-paintings reflect it, we must consider the possibility that he had her transformed into a statue at Thebes, perhaps with a subsequent prediction or command that she be transferred to Sipylus. The possibility is strengthened slightly by a short, mutilated and corrupt papyrus fragment that may well be from a tragedy about Niobe (probably Aeschylus’ or Sophocles’).33 It contains, within the space of eight lines, the phrases li]qourge;" eijkovnisma (‘an image of worked stone’), kwfai'sin ei[kelon pevtrai" (‘like the mute rocks’), ]ugrw/ kavlubi koimhqhvsetai (‘she will be laid to rest in a wet (if uJgrw'/ not l]ugrw'/) covering’), qavmbo" (‘amazement’), and oijktra; sumfora; davptei frevna" (‘pitiable disaster consumes the mind’). It might seem that our paintings, taken together with this papyrus fragment, are good evidence for the transformation of Niobe into a statue in Aeschylus’ drama. However, the papyrus fragment is not certainly about Niobe. And even if it is, the speaker may be merely comparing her to a statue or merely mistaking her for one. Certainly all three possibilities metaphor, mistake and actual transformation would, with the grieving Niobe the constant focus, be dramatically effective. Moreover, there are two factors which complicate any inference from the vase-paintings back to the drama. One is that a metaphor in the drama may be transformed by the painter into a reality. Of this there is a fine example in another late fourth-century Apulian vase-painting of Clytemnestra, dressed as a maenad, attacking Orestes, who is attacking Aegisthus.34 Clytemnestra’s maenadic costume is almost certainly inspired 32 33

34

See n.9 above. P.Oxy. 213 fr. 1. For the case for Aeschylus see Reinhardt (1960). An edition and further bibliography are given by Barrett in Carden (1974: 236). Barrett offers the alternative theory that the reference is to Medusa and the effects of her severed head. But he seems to have written without knowledge of Trendall’s (1972) demonstration of the petrification of Niobe into a statue in the Italian paintings, which (it has been noted by others) increases the likelihood that the papyrus fragment is from Aeschylus’ Niobe. Oinochoe, Bari 1014; Kossatz Deissman (1978: 99 and plate 18).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

121

by passages of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in which she is associated with maenadism.35 Aeschylean metaphor often seems more than just metaphor. And indeed, Clytemnestra is not compared to a maenad, but called a maenad (Ag. 1235); her activity is not compared to maenadism but called maenadism (Cho. 698). We may well imagine that a powerful Aeschlyean description of the stoniness of Niobe’s grief (prefiguring and perhaps alluding to her subsequent petrification) was transformed by the imagination of the vasepainter into the actual petrification of her body. The second complicating factor is that representation of the drama is unlikely to be the only purpose of the vase-painting. In particular, it has been argued that the purpose of many depictions of tragedy on Apulian vases of this period was consolatory to imply a message of hope for those in whose tombs the vases were placed.36 Eva Keuls argued that the five depictions (known to her when she wrote) of Aeschylus’ Niobe do in fact represent different phases in the transformation of stage scene into consolatory funerary image.37 In one painting Niobe sits on her children’s tomb (as in Aeschylus), but in the other four she stands inside a naiskos, which must (given the conventions of Apulian vase-painting) be her own tomb. It is only in these latter four that she is represented as petrified. In one of these four (representing a further phase of transformation) the persons around the naiskos are not Niobe’s mourning kin, and do not wear theatrical costume as they do in all the other paintings, but are stereotypical female bearers of offerings. Moreover, the white colour with which part of Niobe is painted must be related to the convention by which, in numerous southern Italian (especially Apulian) vase-paintings, the naiskoi and the figure or figures within them are distinguished from all that is outside the naiskos by being painted white, presumably, it is maintained, to indicate stuccoed limestone or marble,38 but also to express the self-contained world of the dead.39 35 36 37 38

39

Argued by Seaford in (1989). See esp. Smith (1976); Keuls (1997: 154 67). Keuls (1997: 158 61, 176, 188 9). I summarize a complex account. Trendall in Mayo and Hamma (1982: 19); Schmidt in Mayo and Hamma (1982: 24); Schmidt, Trendall, and Cambitoglou (1976: 26). Fragments of life size marble statues have been found in Tarentine graves. Schmidt, Trendall and Cambitoglou (1976: 27): ‘das Fürsichsein, die Eigenwelt der Toten’. In the various depictions of this world are to be found elements of the heroic, the idyllic, the mystic (ibid. 27 35). Schmidt writes (in Mayo and Hamma 1982: 24) that ‘ . . . the groups in the buildings are regarded as representations of grave reliefs or statues like those erected on real tombs. It may well be, however, that this rational explanation covers only one side of the meaning, since the men and women in the painted naiskos seem to express greater vitality than lifeless marble statues, and their

122

RICHARD SEAFORD

Our paintings of Niobe being transformed into a statue may therefore represent a remarkable and felicitous combination of influences on the one hand of Aeschylus’ drama (whether she was compared to, mistaken for, or transformed into stone), and on the other hand of the conventions of southern Italian vase-painting (the dead painted as white statues over their tombs). We may accordingly be confident in seeing the influence of the drama only where we also have literary evidence, as with the arrival of Tantalus at the tomb to take Niobe away. Other details of the paintings can be evidence only for the imaginative reception of Aeschylus’ drama, not for the drama itself. To escape from this impasse we must note that Aeschylus’ drama almost certainly contained some connection between the grief of Niobe and her eventual petrifaction, and ask: what exactly is the sense of such a connection?40 Most obviously, the isolated stillness and silence of grief may seem like stone: we have seen, for example, that Medea is explicitly compared to a stone; and the first stages of Niobe’s transformation into stone can seem, in Ovid’s description, to be nothing more than symptoms of grief (deriguitque malis, etc.). But Niobe also, from at least as early as the fifth century, prays to be turned into a stone.41 What is desirable about being made of stone? For a mourner it might be the relief brought by insensibility.42 And yet Niobe will, in a sense, even when incorporated into Mount Sipylus, continue to mourn: the water, her tears, will continue to flow for ever. These two powerful desires, the desire for insensibility and the desire to mourn for ever, are in a sense contradictory. But this contradiction does not mean that they cannot both be felt by a mourner. And indeed part of the power of the image of the eternally weeping mountain may derive precisely from its mediation of this basic contradiction. Female long-term persistence in mourning, which is to be found in some parts of rural Greece today,43 was in the ancient city-state restrained by legislation.44 In extant tragedy it is expressed most notably by the Sophoclean Electra, whose relentlessness the chorus try in vain to soften. Similarly in Aeschylus, to judge from our vase-paintings, Tantalus tries in

40 41 42 43 44

world appears to be wider and more complex than the narrow space of a tomb would permit.’ For interesting remarks on mythical petrification in general see Steiner (1995). Pherecydes FGrH 3 F38 Jacoby; Apollod. 3.5.6. Cf. E. HF 1397, Med. 1297. Danforth (1982: ch. 5). Cf e.g. Plut. Mor. 609f. Seaford (1994: ch. 3).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

123

vain to soften the relentlessness of the mourning Niobe; and the chorus (reflected perhaps in the females depicted around the naiskos) may have done so too. In rejecting the chorus’ advice Electra sings ‘Oh, allsuffering45 Niobe, you I consider a deity, inasmuch as you in a rocky tomb, alas, weep.’46 For Electra to call Niobe a deity expresses her admiring emulation of Niobe’s unending lamentation. But there is, I think, more to Electra’s words than that. There is one other Sophoclean passage in which someone compares herself to Niobe Antigone on her way to her rocky tomb. The chorus then seem to contradict Antigone (S. Ant. 834 7): ‘But she is a deity and born from deities, whereas we are mortals and born from mortals. And yet it is a great thing for a dead woman to have even the renown of sharing the fate of those equal to deities, in life and then after death (zw'san kai; e[peita qanou'san).’47 That Niobe is a goddess is, Andrew Brown remarks in his Commentary (1987), ‘an extraordinary assertion, blandly presented as if it were a truism. No doubt Niobe was “of the race of the gods”, being a granddaughter of Zeus . . . but her myth is one of the classic tales of the punishment of human presumption.’ Can we explain this ‘extraordinary assertion’? The chorus had remarked that Antigone is unique among mortals in going down to Hades aujtonovmo" zw'sa (‘of her own free will, living’, 821). What this refers to is the fact that Antigone is unique in taking part in her own funeral procession, not carried (as a corpse) but by her own motion, still alive.48 In response, Antigone immediately (h[kousa dh; . . . , 823ff) thinks of Niobe. The point of comparison is not just that Niobe is enclosed by rock (petraiva blavsta davmasen) but that Niobe, like Antigone, suffered a living death. However, for Niobe, though not for Antigone, this state of life-in-death (or death-in-life) was also immortality. This (and not just, as Brown maintains, ‘exaggeration’) is why the chorus contrasts Niobe as a ‘deity’ with the mortal Antigone, whose best hope is to obtain fame by association, ‘in life and then after death’. For the Greeks to mourn is to share, temporarily, in the state of the dead.49 With Niobe this death-in-life is perpetuated by her transformation into the permanence of rock. But this permanent death-in-life, so apt for one whose isolated grief is so 45 46 47 48 49

pantlavmwn. The word tlavmwn, like tavlaina (n.19 above), can refer to excess in doing as well as in suffering, and this may colour Electra’s use of it here. S. El. 150 2, reading aijai' (aijai' fere codd.: aije;n V, ajei; Zc), though in fact aijei; is not impossible (despite the corresponding aijai' in 136). Some editors print a lacuna before ‘in life and then in death’. Seaford (1984b: 253 4). e.g. Aristotle fr. 101 Rose; Seaford (1994: 86).

124

RICHARD SEAFORD

intense that she cannot re-emerge from it, is also life-in-death, a kind of immortality. This is the paradox expressed by Electra calling Niobe a ‘deity . . . in a rocky tomb’ (my emphasis). I suspect that Aeschylus’ drama ended with Niobe’s immortalization. And so the paradigm of Niobe may represent not just mediation between the desire for insensibility and the desire to lament unendingly, but also the consolation of the immortality that is tenuously (and paradoxically) implicit in the death-in-life of unending grief.50 The chorus sternly deny that consolation to Antigone, while allowing her the consolation of renown in sharing a similar fate to the famous stone deity on Sipylus. Stillness, isolation, insensibility, immortality: these are the qualities that we have discovered as connecting stoniness to grief. But there is a further point of connection, which is the practice of placing stone images of the dead over graves. We have noted that in Aeschylus the stoniness of Niobe may have taken the form of a metaphor (perhaps with allusion to her eventual stoniness on Sipylus), of mistaking her for a statue, or perhaps even of her transformation into a statue, and that our painters seem to have combined the influence of such passages or scenes of Aeschylus with the conventions of their own artistic tradition. Given the unusually funerary focus of Aeschylus’ Niobe, our paintings are able to combine theatrical influence with funerary convention. In the drama the tomb at which Niobe sits and mourns is the tomb of her children. But in the vase-paintings, in which she is being turned into a standing statue, the tomb over which the statue stands seems to be (according to the conventions) her own. We have seen how the petrification of Niobe’s death-in-life into life-in-death implies an unusual kind of immortality (and renown). With the barely noticeable petrification of the still, silent mourner Niobe into a statue over her own tomb, this immortality (and renown) becomes of a more conventional kind the immortality, such as it is,51 of the dead person that is embodied in her image publicly displayed over her tomb. The beautiful funerary statue of Phrasicleia is inscribed with the words ‘ . . . I will be called a maiden for ever . . . ’.52 Most surviving southern Italian vases seem to have been made for funerary use. Not only the paintings of naiskoi or of underworld scenes, even the mythological scenes seem often to have a consolatory message. 50 51 52

Even as early as the Iliad (24.602 17) the mythical paradigm to console apparently unending grief is Niobe, though in a quite different way. Vernant (1991: 161 3). On this famous statue see e.g. Svenbro (1993).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

125

In interpreting from this perspective various paintings influenced by tragedy,53 Eva Keuls maintains that our Niobe paintings too offer a message of consolation. The white paint, she believes, symbolizes immortality. Moreover, she suspects that the closing lines of the drama announced Niobe’s happy reunion with her children in the afterlife, and that the paintings of Niobe allude to such consolation, rather as on two Apulian vases Megara is united with her murdered children in the underworld.54 The problem of finding a consolatory note in the gloomy myth of Niobe is especially interesting in the case of the Apulian dish (Taranto 8928), which shows not only Niobe being petrified in her naiskos but also, immediately above, Andromeda tied up (for the sea-monster) in a tableau inspired by tragedy (Sophocles’ or Euripides’ Andromeda). Keuls asks ‘What inspired the artist to combine these two disparate tragedies and what was the sepulchral factor shared by the two motifs?’ In answer she notes various similarities between the two dramas (the opening tableau; each heroine delivers a long lament and is likened to a statue; her father is involved; Niobe is petrified and Perseus petrifies the monster). As for the sepulchral factor, ‘Andromeda is miraculously saved and returned to life, Niobe dies and is granted eternal peace, probably by means of some favor or grace from the gods. One is a happy ending with symbolic implications, the other is a consolatory one.’ And yet the nature of this supposed ‘consolation’ remains obscure, so obscure that Kossatz-Deissmann is even able to propose the opposite view that the Niobe scene symbolizes death, release from which is symbolized by the Andromeda scene.55 Light on the problem may be shed by the theme of the interpenetration of wedding and death ritual that we discovered in the fragments of Aeschylus’ drama. First, let us return for a moment to the Antigone, in which we saw that Antigone compared herself to Niobe as alive (and lamenting) in a rocky tomb. There is in fact another point of comparison, implied by Antigone calling Niobe not by her name but simply ‘the Phrygian stranger, 53

54 55

We cannot answer the fascinating question whether the dramatic performances themselves were sometimes envisaged by the audience as conveying consolation for death. One thinks of Sophocles’ Ajax, in which the focus is on a despair no less total than Niobe’s, followed by a consoling recognition of the interpenetration of opposites as a cosmic law (646 92). Keuls (1997: 162 3, 188). For the connection of the white paint with immortality she provides no real evidence. For Schmidt the Niobe scene, being a transformation from stone, is easily parallel to the deliverance of Andromeda. But cf. n.30 above.

126

RICHARD SEAFORD

(daughter) of Tantalus’ (824 5), as if Niobe had never married Amphion.56 For Antigone is characterized by putting loyalty to natal kin above marriage.57 This scene, in which the maiden Antigone moves alive to her tomb and says that she would not have performed for her husband or children the death ritual that she did for her brother, is pervaded by the same interpenetration of wedding and death ritual that we found in Aeschylus’ Niobe along with the arrival of Tantalus to take his daughter back to Phrygia. Normally the death-in-life of mourning is temporary. Temporary too is the death-in-life of the normal bridal lament, for it is the transition to the marital home that prevails. But the laments of Niobe and Antigone are assimilated to bridal laments in weddings in which it is the element of death that prevails. And so their laments do not end (except in so far as Antigone, as the chorus point out, will die). The interpenetration of opposites normally ends with the prevalence of the positive (in the wedding marriage over death, in mourning life over death). In the case of Niobe and Antigone this prevalence is reversed, except in so far as Niobe achieves, in her rocky death-in-life, a paradoxical form of immortality. It seems that dramatization of the rescue from death of Andromeda by her future husband Perseus lent itself to the interpenetration of death ritual and wedding ritual. In a fragment of Euripides (122 Kannicht) she complains that she has a binding song rather than a marriage hymn. In many representations of the bound Andromeda (some of them clearly influenced directly or indirectly by tragedy, and some of them Italiot) she is made to seem like a bride.58 Further, the vase-paintings indicate that in at least one tragic version the bound Andromeda appeared along with a number of objects that could be either offerings for the dead or accoutrements of the wedding: vases, caskets, loutrophoroi, mirrors, etc.59 In our painting Andromeda and Niobe, each wearing a crown (Andromeda also a bridal tiara), are each centrally placed, with figures on either side. Between the figures in the two scenes there are correspondences. In both scenes the heroine’s father, a king in oriental dress and attended by a youth, expresses a plea (to Perseus, to Niobe). 56 57 58

59

See further Seaford (1990: 87). An unmarried woman is normally named with her father in the genitive, a married one with her husband in the genitive. For this theme see Seaford (1990) and McHardy in this volume. The evidence for bridal Andromeda is collected (with bibliography) by Barringer (1995: 104 5 n.37, 117 19). Keuls (1997: 192 3) notes this, and refers to ‘the symbolic equation of death and marriage which pervades Apulian funerary vases’, but fails to connect this with Niobe. Barringer (1995: 118); Seaford (1994: 388).

DEATH AND WEDDING IN AESCHYLUS’ NIOBE

127

And in both scenes she is brought offerings, Andromeda an open casket, a mirror and a ball, Niobe an open casket, a rosette-chain and a ball. These are offerings for the dead, but in the case of Andromeda at least, with her bridegroom Perseus depicted at her side, they also seem to be accoutrements of the wedding or gifts for the bride. Some of our other paintings of Niobe at the tomb too show as offerings objects, such as loutrophoroi, that would also have been appropriate at the wedding.60 Whence we may infer that in Aeschylus’ drama offerings were placed at the tomb, offerings which, in the context of the theme of the wedding-inreverse that we detected from the papyrus fragment, might have acquired for the audience the same ambiguity (between funeral and wedding) as the offerings brought to the apparently doomed Andromeda.61 And so each of the two scenes in our painting, Andromeda and Niobe, embodies the same interpenetration of opposites. But the scenes are also in a sense opposite to each other. With Andromeda the negative tendency of the wedding (bridal lamentation) is exotically justified, but in the end it is the positive tendency (union with the bridegroom) that prevails. With Niobe, on the other hand, the wedding that seemed long ago to be positively concluded has in fact ended in shipwreck and eternal lamentation. And yet, beyond even this opposition, the scenes are perhaps connected by indications of immortality and renown. Behind the head of Andromeda there is a nimbus, which may be a sign of her eventual transformation into a constellation.62 The petrification of Niobe may also, in the complex way we have described, imply immortality and renown.63

60 61 62 63

Cf. e.g. Taranto 8935 with Oakley and Sinos (1993: fig. 119, Attic red figure pyxis, Berlin Staatl. Mus. 3373). For the ambiguity of objects (props) generally in tragedy see Seaford (1994: 388 95). Schauenburg (1960: 64 7). A further possible factor, beyond the scope of this paper, is the tendency for female funerary statues to be (like the kovrai in sanctuaries) of girls of bridal age, like Phrasicleia. Such a context, in which it is bridal liminality that is made permanent, may have given special point to the fragment of Euripides (125 Kannicht) in which the bound Andromeda is imagined to be a statue.

7 FROM TREACHEROUS WIVES TO MURDEROUS MOTHERS Filicide in Tragic Fragments† FIONA McHARDY

In this chapter I discuss the depiction in tragedy of women who murder their own children and analyse the representation of their actions in fragmentary plays. Similarities between several of the story patterns concerning mothers who kill their children have been noted by scholars in the past. In particular, Fontenrose (1948) has shown that the problems caused by the introduction of a second wife into the family underlie the various versions of the myths of Ino and Procne. In these story patterns the jealousy of a first wife or the scheming of a second wife presents a threat to the safety of a man’s children. Mills (1980) argues that the myth of Medea may also be usefully viewed in this way. A second motive linking the stories of child-murdering Procne and Althaea has been emphasized by Visser (1986), who shows that the women’s decision to kill their sons is based on their preference for their natal kin (father and siblings) over their husband and sons.1 To these two can be added Iliona and Astyoche (discussed in the final section of this chapter) who send their sons to their death in order to help their natal families. These kinds of explanation highlight the rationality of the behaviour of the women in electing to attack their children in order to get revenge on their husbands or to provide help for their own kin. However, a close examination of the fragments reveals that the actions of mothers who kill their offspring are frequently associated with irrationality in some way: †

1

I would like to thank Barbara Goff, Jenny March, Richard Seaford and my fellow editors for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. I have discussed the problems of wifely allegiances in detail in my PhD thesis (McHardy 1999: ch. 2).

130

FIONA McHARDY

either divinely inspired madness in particular Bacchic frenzy or emotional madness brought about by excessive rage, grief or jealousy. Even where the women are not raving, the vocabulary of madness creeps into the plays. These descriptions in the fragments suggest a way to understand how the Athenian audience would have perceived tragic filicide. It is a common pattern of thought in many cultures that a woman must be mad to kill her own children. In modern terms, we tend to talk of depression or other mental illnesses when discussing infanticide, and we cannot conceive of a rational woman desiring to kill her own offspring.2 Harming kin was also seen as a form of madness in antiquity (maniva, Is. 1.20). Stephanie West explains the logic of this kind of deduction with reference to Herodotus’ representation of Cambyses, who is called mad (ejxemavnh, Hdt. 3.33) for killing his brother and sister/wife, among other atrocities. She states: [Herodotus] reminds us repeatedly that Cambyses was mad. The diagnosis has no exculpatory force, but conveys the difficulty of coming to terms with a disregard of normally accepted standards apparently beyond understanding West (1999: 121)

A similar explanation can be applied to Clytemnestra’s accusation that Agamemnon must be mad for wanting to kill his own daughter (memhnwv", E. IA 876). In this scenario, a speaker seeks to explain what appears to be an irrational action by using a metaphor of madness. In tragedy, madness is frequently manifested literally in stories where a mother kills her offspring after being driven raving mad by a god. This is a mythic expression of the popular notion that someone must be mad to kill their own children. In these stories, there is an attempt to explain away the seemingly irrational murder by placing the blame on an external agent. Child-killing of this nature is frequently inspired by Dionysus,3 most famously in Euripides’ Bacchae, where the divinely maddened Agave (e.g. manivai" 33, ejmmanei'" 1094), who has rushed to the mountains as a maenad, kills her son Pentheus believing him to be a wild beast. Here, as in other myths on a similar theme there is a correlation between the divinely maddened state of maenadism and filicide.4 The portrayal of mothers slaying their sons in tragedy can therefore be understood as a 2 3 4

Cf. Deliyanni (1985: Discussion and Comparison 4 5), McHardy (1999: ch. 1.1a) for recent expressions of the notion that someone must be mad to kill kin. See Burnett (1998: 177 8 and n.3) on Tereus and Dionysiac rituals. See Seaford (1993: 121 2), (1996: 27, n.16) and in this volume (pp. 120 1).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

131

Dionysiac theme and one which is especially suited to tragedy. Further support for this notion can be found in a vase-painting where Tragedy, part of the retinue of Dionysus, is represented as a maenad (RML III 2115).5 This could explain the prominence of filicide in the plots of tragedy, where it is absent or muted in earlier versions of the same myths.6 I will start my investigation of murderous mothers with fragmentary plays concerning stepmothers, who are frequently deemed a threat to the children of a predecessor. There is no connection here between murder and madness, since the efforts of a stepmother to promote her own offspring at the expense of her rival’s children is seen as perfectly rational. From there, the discussion moves to the problems associated with the jealousy of a first wife when a second wife is introduced into the household. Here the passionate response of the first wife which leads to disaster is frequently associated with ideas of madness and frenzy, although the woman may not be portrayed as divinely maddened. The greater loyalty of women for their natal kin over their husbands and sons forms the final part of the discussion. Here again it appears that tragic mothers were depicted as filled with angry passion and associated with madness when they attempted revenge for misdemeanours against their own family perpetrated by their husbands or sons.7 I. Ino As pointed out by Fontenrose, the problems caused by the introduction of a second wife into the family are a favourite theme in Greek myth.8 In the popular imagination evil stepmothers seem to have been thought to constitute a likely threat to their husband’s children. This idea is expressed clearly in a fragment of Euripides’ Aegeus: pevfuke gavr pw" paisi; polevmion gunh; toi'" provsqen hJ zugei'sa deutevra patriv. For it is only natural that a woman will be hostile to the children of the first marriage bed, when she is the second wife of their father. (E. Aegeus fr. 16 Jouan and van Looy = fr. 4 Kannicht, my trans.)

The fragmentary remains of this play do not allow anything more than a 5 6 7 8

Burkert (1985: 185); cf. Padel (1995: 190). Seaford (1993); cf. Belfiore (1998: 140). Aristotle states that kin killing is the best plot for tragedy, but does not cite this reason (Poet. 1453b19 22). Cf. Harris (2001: 64, 344) on the connection of anger to madness. Fontenrose (1948: 125).

132

FIONA McHARDY

speculative reconstruction of the plot, but Webster (1967: 77 80) suggests that the story could have been similar to that found in Apollodorus (Epit. 1.4 6).9 This would make Medea the hostile stepmother attempting to persuade her husband Aegeus to murder his unrecognized son, Theseus. Euripides’ Melanippe Desmotis also featured the theme of a jealous stepmother. In this play, Siris asks her brothers to kill her stepsons in order to promote the interests of her own children, but the plot fails.10 The anxiety concerning stepmothers arises from the idea that they will be attempting to promote their own children in preference to those that their husband has had with another woman, and therefore is not an unnatural or illogical fear. The correlation between the introduction of a second wife (or mistress) and the (attempted) slaughter of children is at the heart of Fontenrose’s analysis of Ino and Procne. Several versions of the myth of Ino include the schemes of a stepmother who wishes to rid herself of the children of her rival. In one variant Ino herself appears as the second wife of Athamas who plots the death of Phrixus and Helle, the children of Athamas by his first wife Nephele. However, their mother sends them a golden ram on which they make their escape. Scholars speculate that this version was used by Sophocles in one of his two Athamas plays.11 The very fragmentary hypotheses for Euripides’ Phrixus A (P.Oxy. 3652) and Phrixus B (P.Oxy. 2455) show that Ino was a hostile stepmother to Phrixus and Helle in these plays too.12 There is, however, no mention of her killing her own child(ren).13 In his Ino, on the other hand (if the summary written by Hyginus truly reflects Euripides’ play),14 Ino is the first wife and it is Themisto who is the stepmother plotting the death of 9 10

11 12

13 14

Burnett (1968: 312 13) criticizes Webster’s reconstruction of this play. Cf. Jouan and van Looy (1998: 4 9) for several attempted reconstructions, all based on Apollodorus. Cf. Euripides’ Ion, in which Creusa worries that she will automatically be implicated in the murder of Ion since she will be seen as a jealous stepmother (1024 5). Cf. also Euripides’ Andromache in which Hermione threatens her rival’s son with death. The failure of all these schemes involving hostile stepmothers is noteworthy. Pearson (1917: vol. 1, 1); Fontenrose (1948: 127, n.4); cf. Lloyd Jones (1996: 10 11). See, most recently, Diggle (1998: 161 and 164) for texts of these hypotheses. Cf. Turner (1962: 32 69); Cockle (1984: 22 6); van Rossum Steenbeck (1998: 19, 20) for discussion of the papyri. See Webster (1967: 131 6); Jouan and van Looy (2002: 347 56) for attempted reconstructions of these plays. Some scholars deny that Hyginus is recounting the plot of Euripides’ play (cf. Page 1938, on line 1284). However, Webster (1967: 98 101) bases his attempted reconstruction on Hyginus. Cf. Jouan and van Looy (2000: 189 95) for other reconstructions of this play.

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

133

her rival’s children (Fab. 4). Hyginus tells us that Athamas remarries after his wife Ino disappears. His new wife Themisto bears him two further sons, but wishes (as a typical evil stepmother) to rid herself of Ino’s two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. However, her plans do not come to fruition. For Athamas discovers that Ino is still alive and brings her home in disguise. Themisto mistakes her for a slave and enlists her in her plan to kill Learchus and Melicertes. She asks Ino to dress her own sons in white and Ino’s sons in black.15 Ino reverses the clothing and thus Themisto unknowingly kills her own sons. Interestingly, the plot shifts from the threat a stepmother brings to her stepchildren to the threat that a mother’s irrational emotions may bring to her own children. This element is even clearer in a version of the Ino story found in Plutarch (Mor. 267D). He maintains that Ino became maddened by jealousy after learning of her husband’s affair with a slave and this led her to kill her own son (hJ ga;r ÅInw; zhlotuphvsasa douvlhn ejpi; tw'/ ajndri; levgetai peri; to;n uiJo;n ejkmanh'nai, ‘For Ino, struck by jealousy of a slave-girl on account of her husband, is said to have vented her madness on her son’).16 This version is closely comparable to the situation we find in Euripides’ Medea, which shares a similar combination of the problems of a second wife and the slaughter of children, as noted by Mills (1980). Indeed, the chorus of the Medea compares Medea to Ino (1282 9). Ino is said to have killed her two children (in an unspecified way) and to have committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea after being driven mad by Hera. Here, however, an important distinction is apparent. Whereas Ino is described as driven mad by the gods (ÅInw; manei'san ejk qew'n, 1284), Euripides’ Medea is sane and knows what she is doing.17 The distinction here is between divinely inspired madness (which appears to offer an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable actions of Ino) and the terrible choice of Medea, who acts out of passion rather than divinely inspired madness. I return to the Medea story in greater detail below. The version of Ino’s filicide as it appears in Euripides’ Medea where she is said to have killed both children appears to differ from the well-known accounts of Ovid (Met. 4.464 542) and of Apollodorus (3.4.3).18 In 15 16 17

18

Webster (1967: 100) speculates that Hyginus is inventing the colours of the clothing. Cf. E. Ino fr. 403 (Kannicht), for the dangers of jealousy. Cf. Foley (2001: 258); Mastronarde (2002, on line 1282). This point is apparently missed or ignored by March (2000) in her analysis of the Euripidean choral passage. Newton (1985) also ignores the significance of the madness. Euripides may refer to the killing of two children by Ino so as to draw a more exact parallel with the killing of the two children by Medea (cf. Newton 1985: 500 1; Jouan

134

FIONA McHARDY

Apollodorus’ version, Athamas hunts Learchus taking him for a deer, while Melicertes dies when Ino throws him into a boiling cauldron after both Athamas and Ino are driven mad by Hera for rearing the infant Dionysus. It is possible (although this is highly speculative) that this version formed the plot of Aeschylus’ Athamas since one fragment refers to someone being cast into a cauldron:19 to;n me;n trivpou" ejdevxatÅ oijkei'o" levbh" aijei; fulavsswn th;n uJpe;r puro;" stavsin: The one was cast into the three legged cauldron of the house, that ever kept its place above the fire. (fr. 1 Radt; trans. Weir Smyth 1926)

In Ovid (as in Hyginus’ account of Eurpides’ Ino) Athamas kills Learchus, while Ino jumps into the sea with Melicertes. At the end of his account Hyginus states that Ino was deified after leaping into the sea.20 While Ovid makes both parents act through divinely inspired madness, Hyginus’ account is less explicit. Although he specifies that Athamas was driven mad, it is unclear whether we are to understand that Ino was maddened when she jumped into the sea or whether she was attempting to flee from Athamas in order to save her son.21 However, evidence from elsewhere may confirm that Ino was maddened in Euripides’ Ino. Wilamowitz has plausibly attributed two fragments which refer to Ino to a Euripidean deus ex machina:22 povntou plavnhte" Leukoqevan ejpwvnumon wanderers on the sea [shall worship you] as Leukothea

19

20

21

22

and van Looy 2000: 186 n.4). For discussion of the possible meaning of the cauldron either as a way of preparing a cannibalistic feast (e.g. the feast of Tereus) or as a method of giving someone immortality (e.g. Medea and the daughters of Pelias), see Farnell (1916: 41 2). Cf. Fontenrose (1948: 128); Lloyd Jones (1996: 10 11). Ino appears briefly in her sea goddess incarnation in Homer’s Odyssey, but without any mention of the slaughter of her children or the reason for her transformation (5.333 5). The differing versions of epic and tragedy will be discussed in further depth below. See Farnell (1916) for an account of Ino as sea deity. Newton (1985: 500) sees Ino’s jump as a paradoxical attempt to rescue Melicertes from his father. An attempt at rescue is certainly not apparent in the text of Euripides’ Medea upon which Newton is commenting. The assumption is perhaps based on Hyginus, in particular Fab. 239, which states that Ino jumped while fleeing Athamas. Cf. also Paus. (1.44.7 8) where Ino is said to flee Athamas. Wilamowitz (1935: 201).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

135

semno;" Palaivmwn nautivloi" keklhvsetai he shall be called holy Palaimon by sailors (ades. frs 100 and 101 Kannicht and Snell; trans. Webster 1967: 100)

These fragments are cited by Athenagoras (Suppl. pro Christ. 29) who says that Ino was made into a goddess after suffering from madness (maniva). If Wilamowitz’s attribution is correct and Athenagoras can be relied upon,23 it seems that in his Ino Euripides did portray Ino as killing her son while maddened. In the varying versions of the Ino myth, two common elements appear. First, problems arise when Athamas takes a second wife. The problems are caused by jealousy and insecurity about whose children are being favoured. The implication of these storylines is that it is dangerous to take more than one wife, as the second wife will plot against the first wife’s offspring. It seems that fears about the dangers of a stepmother were grounded in reality, as Plato (when devising rules for his ideal Cretan city) advises men not to bring in a stepmother because of the problems that may be caused by a new wife and children (Leg. 930b).24 Second, divinely inspired madness appears to have been a common factor in the tragic plots in which Ino is said to have killed her own child(ren). This appears to be a mitigating factor, explaining how an otherwise loving mother could kill her own offspring. II. Medea Many playwrights, including Seneca, have chosen to represent Medea as raving mad when she slaughters her own children.25 However, in Euripides’ famous version, although Medea is represented as succumbing to her passion, she is not raving.26 In fact, in Euripides’ play she does not even use the language of madness in order to distance herself from the killing.27 Indeed, Euripides shows Medea rationalizing her choice in that

23

24

25 26 27

It seems likely enough that Athenagoras, though a comparatively late source (2nd century AD), refers to the play from which the fragments are drawn when he describes Ino as mad. Indeed, modern statistical analyses show that children are at greater risk from step parents than from natural parents (Daly and Wilson 1988: 83 8). This point is not appreciated by Easterling (1977) in her analysis of the infanticide in the Medea. Cf. Costa (1973: 8); Gill (1997: 216 25). See also Mastronarde (2003: 18 n.33) on vase paintings where frenzy accompanies Medea in the infanticide. Gill (1997: 219 20); Burnett (1998: 194). Gill (1997: 221), although Neophron’s Medea does: see below.

136

FIONA McHARDY

she feels this is how she can best punish Jason.28 However, we should not expect that the audience would have sympathized with Medea’s choice. This is made clear by the chorus who condemn Medea’s acts as wicked (Med. 1279 92). Medea’s motives for killing her own children are not immediately comprehensible to us. While it is possible to compare her situation to that of Ino in that both involve the difficulties which arise from the introduction of a second wife, in the Ino myth the jealousy of the wronged wife tends to be aimed against her rival’s children. Only in the version of Plutarch can the Ino story be more closely compared to that of the Eurpidean Medea. Perhaps in the chorus’ lyrics where they sing of Medea’s terrible passion and compare her to the maddened Ino (1282 92), we can get a glimpse of their understanding of Medea’s mentality in committing this terrible act.29 Her excessive jealousy (shown in Plutarch’s version of the Ino myth as the cause of ‘insane’ filicide) leads to her decision to kill her sons. By this comparison, the chorus suggest that although Medea is not divinely maddened, she is in some ways like maddened Ino, in that her actions appear to be mad and driven by excessive passion. (See Gill in this volume on Medea’s passion.) Modern scholars are fond of saying that Medea’s deliberate slaughter of her own children was a Euripidean innovation. Certainly, this is an element which does not seem to appear in epic versions. Medea is not mentioned by Homer, although the death of the children does appear in other early versions.30 Pausanias tells us that in Eumelus’ epics,31 Medea takes all the children she has by Jason while ruling in Corinth to the sanctuary of Hera Acraea to ‘hide’ (katakruvptein) them in an attempt to make them immortal (fr. 3A Davies = Paus. 2.3.11).32 The attempts fail and the children die. Jason leaves Medea after discovering what she has been doing. Here Medea is responsible for the death of her children, but she does not kill them on purpose. In another version which can reasonably be assumed to pre-date Euripides,33 the relatives of Creon kill 28 29 30 31

32 33

See e.g. Seeck (1968). See also Gill in this volume. Medea is also described as an Erinys at 1260. It is unclear when Medea became involved in the story of the Argonauts (Huxley 1969: 61). Several epics are attributed to Eumelus, a Bacchiad dated to the second half of the eighth century BC (see Huxley 1969: ch.5). West (2002) has argued that the poems do not date to this time, but were composed between the seventh and mid sixth century. Cf. schol. Pindar Olympian 13.74, in which Hera is said to promise Medea immortality for her children, but they die. Page (1938: xxiv) argues that Euripides knew this version (cf. Med. 1303ff).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

137

the children after Medea brings about his death (Creophylus FGrH 417 F 3 Jacoby = schol. on E. Med. 264).34 Alternatively, the Corinthians are said to have killed the children out of hostility to Medea (Parmeniscus’ version: schol. on E. Med. 264).35 A common factor in the varying versions of the myth is that the children die at the shrine of Hera Acraea in which Euripides’ Medea buries her sons (1378 83).36 Again, Medea is indirectly responsible for the death of her children in these versions, although she does not murder them herself. In Creophylus’ version the relatives are accused of spreading a rumour that Medea killed the children herself. Page sees this as the possible stimulus for Euripides’ decision to have Medea perform the killing, but Mastronarde is doubtful about the authenticity of this particular, which is probably late.37 At least one tragedy did deal with an apparently innocent Medea who was accused by the Corinthians of killing her children. Aristotle (Rhet. 1400b) tells us that in Carcinus’ Medea, Medea was accused of the murder, but she maintained her innocence, saying that she had only sent them away. Medea apparently defended herself in the play by claiming she would have killed Jason as well if she had killed the children.38 It is not possible to detect whether Medea spoke the truth here, nor can we tell from these details to what extent Carcinus was creating an entirely new plot or simply recreating one of the older versions in which Medea did not kill the children herself. Certainly, his Medea’s arguments as expressed by Aristotle reflect thinking which is in line with well-known proverbs about revenge.39 While Medea was connected with the children’s deaths in earlier versions of her story, her decision to kill the children herself does not 34

35 36 37 38

39

Cf. Pausanias (2.3.6) where the children are stoned to death by the Corinthians after Medea murders Glauce. Apollodorus (1.9.28) also gives this version after recounting the Euripidean one. See Mastronarde (2002: 50 2) for details of all these differing versions. See Iles Johnston (1997) on the relationship between the Corinthian cult and the infanticide. Page (1938: xxiv); Mastronarde (2002: 51). Xanthakis Karamanos (1980: 35 6) notes that in this detail, Carcinus was apparently responding to Euripides’ version and possibly criticizing it. Cf. Webster (1954: 301). Webster sees Carcinus as a great innovator who created his own variations of familiar plots. Here Carcinus appears to have reversed the proverb nhvpio" o}" patevra kteivna" pai'da" kataleivpei, (‘foolish to kill the father and spare the sons’) from the lost Cypria (Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 7.2.19; Aristotle Rhet. 1376a6 7. Cf. also Hdt. 1.155.1; S. El. 964 5; E. Andr. 519 22; El. 19 42; Hec. 1138 44; HF 168 9; Hcld. 1006 8; Supp. 545 6; Tro. 723).

138

FIONA McHARDY

seem to have been current before its incarnations in tragedy. However, that is not to say that Euripides was the first to introduce the deliberate filicide. In the hypothesis of Euripides’ Medea, it is maintained that his play was in fact a modified version of Neophron’s earlier drama (to; dra'ma dokei' uJpobalevsqai para; Neovfrono" diaskeuavsa", ‘Euripides seems to have passed off the drama as his own, having revised it from Neophron’). The sources cited for this claim are Dicaearchus’ Life of Greece and Aristotle’s Commentaries (Hypothesis Eur. Medeae 25 7 Diggle).40 Much of the scholarly debate on the subject of which play came first rests upon the credibility of these two sources. Page, who dismisses the claims, has been most influential in persuading others that Neophron post-dated Euripides. Much of his argument rests on linguistic claims based on the three substantial remaining fragments of Neophron’s Medea (frs 1 3 Snell).41 However, he also suggested that the play was mistakenly attributed to an earlier instead of a later Neophron. Thompson (followed by Michelini) has argued that the ancient sources should be believed when they say that Euripides based his drama on Neophron’s play.42 Thompson points out that it seems highly unlikely that a fourth-century source (such as the author of the Aristotelian Hypomnemata) should mistake a fourthcentury playwright (perhaps his own contemporary) for a fifth-century one.43 Thompson goes on to suggest that the transferral of the slaughter of the children from the Corinthians to Medea makes sense in light of Neophron’s Sicyonian origin.44 40

41

42

43

44

Other sources (Suda s.v. Neovfrwn; Diogenes Laertius 2.134) make a more advanced claim that Euripides plagiarized Neophron’s play but, as Mastronarde points out (2002: 60), these claims are exaggerated and not worthy of serious consideration. Page (1938: xxx vi). Thompson (1944: 12 13), Manuwald (1983: 52) and Michelini (1989: 115) argue against the linguistic claims. In particular Page’s claims that the quality of the poetry indicates it is not from the mid fifth century BC should be dismissed (cf. Thompson 1944: 12; Michelini 1989: 115). Thompson (1944); Michelini (1989); cf. Manuwald (1983: 50 6); Snell (1971a: 199 205). Mastronarde in his recent commentary appears to be arguing for doubt on the issue (2002: 57 63), but concludes that Neophron is most likely post Euripidean (64). Thompson (1944: 10 11, 13); cf. Michelini (1989: 115). However, see n.72 below for an Aristotelian error in attribution. The other much cited argument for the primacy of Neophron is the fact that Medea is the only Euripidean tragedy which requires only two actors. This perhaps suggests that Euripides was basing his play on an earlier model (Page 1938: xxxi; Thompson 1944: 11). See Mastronarde (2002: 57, n.94) on a new piece of papyrus evidence which claims that Euripides reworked a Medea to eliminate the onstage murder of the children. Neophron is not mentioned. This evidence could disprove claims that the Romans were the first to portray the infanticide on stage (Cleasby 1907; cf. Horace Poet. 185). Thompson (1944: 11). Cf. the report of Parmeniscus that Euripides was bribed by the

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

139

One of the fragments from Neophron’s play makes it clear that his Medea makes the decision to kill her children, although it is difficult, in order to repay wrongs which have been done to her: ei\eJn: tiv dravsei", qumev… bouvleusai kalw'" pri;n ejxamartei'n kai; ta; prosfilevstata e[cqista qevsqai. poi' potÅ ejxh'ixa" tavla"… kavtisce lh'ma kai; sqevno" qeostugev". kai; pro;" tiv tau'ta duvromai, yuch;n ejmh;n oJrw'sÅ e[rhmon kai; parhmelhmevnhn pro;" w|n ejcrh'n h{kista… malqakoi; de; dh; toiau'ta gignovmesqa pavsconte" kakav… ouj mh; prodwvsei", qumev, sauto;n ejn kakoi'"… oi[moi, devdoktai: pai'de", ejkto;" ojmmavtwn ajpevlqetÅ: h[dh ga;r me foiniva mevgan devduke luvssa qumovn. w\ cevre" cevre", pro;" oi|on e[rgon ejxoplizovmesqa. feu', tavlaina tovlmh", h} polu;n povnon bracei' diafqerou'sa to;n ejmo;n e[rcomai crovnw/. Well. What will you do, [my] spirit? Make your plans well before doing wrong and making the dearest things most hateful. Where in the world have you rushed madly, wretched one? Prevail over your temper and god hated strength. And why do I lament these things, seeing my soul alone and abandoned by those who ought least to do it? But am I becoming soft from suffering such evils? You will not betray yourself, my spirit, in your troubles. Ah me. It is decided. Children, leave my sight. For now a murderous madness has descended upon my great spirit. Oh hands, hands, to such a deed we arm ourselves. Alas, unhappy for my boldness. Truly I go to destroy my long labor in the briefest time. (Neophron fr. 2 Snell; trans. Celia Luschnig 1999)45

Clearly this fragment is closely comparable to the great monologue in Euripides’ Medea in which Medea decides to kill her children.46 As in Euripides’ play, Medea is motivated by a perception of dishonour done to

45 46

Corinthians to transfer the murder to Medea (schol. E. Med. 9). This tale is dis credited by all the commentators. Cf. also Diggle (1998: 180 1). For comparison and close analysis of the fragment see Michelini (1989). For linguistic parallels see Page (1938: xxxiii).

140

FIONA McHARDY

her and is determined to react against those who have mistreated her.47 Although he is not mentioned by name in this fragment, it seems clear that the person who is neglecting her, although he least ought to, is Jason.48 It is perhaps suggested here that the murder of the children is motivated by a desire to make Jason feel as deserted as Medea has been. Certainly in Euripides’ play Medea’s aim is to accomplish the complete annihilation of Jason’s line and the greatest amount of suffering for him (817). She does this because the destruction of a man’s kin and the loss of his descendants is the worst possible fate for a Greek man.49 Significantly, in the fragment a link is made between the filicide and madness when Medea says h[dh ga;r me foiniva mevgan / devduke luvssa qumovn (‘For now a murderous madness has descended upon my great spirit’). While Medea appears to be debating the options quite rationally, her mention of luvssa seems to refer to the kind of madness that is connected with kin-killing elsewhere in tragedy (cf. E. HF 822ff).50 Michelini claims that Neophron allows his Medea to ‘resign herself to madness’.51 This is not an adequate account of what Medea says. Instead, it seems that the word luvssa symbolizes the nature of her impending actions. The playwright makes the connection between madness and kinkilling even though Medea is not portrayed as divinely maddened. Although the connection between madness and infanticide is indicated, Neophron’s Medea is not raving. The Roman poets, on the other hand, appear to have preferred to show Medea in that way. In Seneca’s play, Medea is frequently compared to a maenad (e.g. 123 4, 382 6, 806 7, 849 52) and believes that she can see the Furies and her brother’s ghost urging her on to commit the murder (958 71).52 Scholars speculate that Seneca could well have based his play on the lost Medea of Ovid, a play of which only two fragments survive.53 In fr. 2 (Lenz = Seneca Suasoriae 3.7) a character, thought to be Medea, is associated with divine madness: feror 47

48

49 50 51 52 53

Cf. Knox (1977) for Medea as a Sophoclean style hero. Cf. also Burnett (1998: 273ff); Foley (2001: 243ff); Gill (in this volume) on interpretations of Medea’s great monologue in Euripides’ Medea. He is discussed in fr. 3 (Snell) where Medea predicts that he will suffer a shameful death by hanging because of his evil deeds. This element certainly differs from Euripides’ play. Cf. Loraux (1998: 51). The father’s loss of his children is the loss of his ‘hope’ (Padel 1995: 208). Cf. Hdt. 6.86, 8.104 6. For luvssa as madness inspired by Dionysus see E. Bacch. 851. Cf. Harris (2001: 344). Michelini (1989: 133). See Gill (1997: 222) on the difference between Senecan and Greek conceptions of madness. Cleasby (1907).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

141

huc illuc ut plena deo (‘This way and that I am carried like one possessed by the god’). Perhaps both these versions rely on the idea that murderous mothers are often depicted as divinely maddened in Greek tragedy. In this respect, it would be interesting to see what Ennius made of Medea’s madness, since Cicero claims that his Medea was a translation of Euripides’ play.54 Unfortunately, though, nothing of the great monologue remains. Whether the fragments of Neophron come from an earlier play or not, it is overconfident to insist that Euripides was the first to introduce the deliberate filicide. However, I think that Medea’s decision to kill her own children is particularly appropriate to tragedy. Certainly, as we have seen, in epic versions and other earlier versions this aspect is absent. Here the preoccupation appears to be based on two familiar and inter-related themes which occur frequently in tragedy. The first is the problem of the need to introduce a dangerous ‘alien’ bride for the procreation of children.55 The second is the idea that the husband is more closely related to his children than the wife is.56 Again, as in the story of Ino, a mother is portrayed as being a threat to her own children through her excessive emotion (jealousy which leads to rage and a desire for revenge). Although Medea is not portrayed as maddened by a deity when she acts, but instead deliberately decides to murder the children and her rival, nevertheless in the plays of both Neophron and Euripides she is filled with passion and is associated with madness when she contemplates and commits the deed. III. Procne Similar ideas appear to underlie the myth associated with Procne. In the earliest versions of her myth Procne, in her incarnation as Aedon (nightingale),57 is said to act out of jealousy against a rival (this time her sister-in-law) and to kill her son by accident.58 In Pherecydes’ version, dating to the sixth century BC (FGrH 3 F124), we are told that Aedon had intended to kill the son of her brother-in-law, Amphion, because she was jealous that his wife [Niobe] had so many sons. However, she killed her own son, Itylus, by mistake. For this reason, Zeus pitied her and changed 54 55 56 57 58

Although Brooks (1981: 185ff) notes that Ennius made adaptations to suit his play to a Roman audience. Cf. Seaford (1990: 151). Cf. Seaford (1990: 152). Loraux (1998: 55) says that ‘feminine wrath threatens the son, because he stands in for the father’. Cf. esp. A. Eum. The transformation into a nightingale is a constant in all the Greek versions of the story. This aspect is derived from an aetiology of the nightingale’s lament. See Fontenrose (1948) for parallels between the myths of Ino and Procne.

142

FIONA McHARDY

her into a nightingale. It is possible that this version lies behind Homer’s rather stark account which shares the same names as Pherecydes’ version.59 In the Odyssey, Aedon is said to have killed her son Itylus (Od. 19.518ff), but no motive is given for the murder. Instead, she is said to have killed him di’ ajfradiva" (523). It is unclear whether this means ‘accidentally’ or ‘senselessly’. But the version of Pherecydes (cited in the scholia ad loc.) implies that we should understand di’ ajfradiva" as ‘accidentally’.60 Notably, Aedon does not intend to kill her son in either version and there is no reference to the revenge of the sisters nor to the dreadful banquet. Indeed, the intentional filicide and cannibalism do not appear to have been part of the story before tragedy.61 Aristophanes’ Birds (281 2) refers to two tragedies inspired by this myth both entitled Tereus: one by Sophocles62 and one by Philocles.63 A hypothesis, which could refer to one of these plays, survives on an Oxyrhynchus papyrus (P.Oxy. 3013).64 The hypothesis summarizes the elements of the story which are familiar to us through the famous version of Ovid (Met. 6.424ff). The characters now take on different names: the heroine is Procne,65 an Athenian princess, daughter of Pandion, her sister 59 60

61

62

63

64

65

Aedon’s father is named as Pandareus, her husband as Zethos and her son as Itylus. A similar version is recorded in very stark form in Pausanias (9.5.9) who tells us that Zethos’ son was killed by his own mother ‘for some fault’ or ‘though some error’ (kata; dhv tina aJmartivan). Zethos is said to have died of grief. Or before Euripides’ Medea, if one is persuaded by the arguments of Jenny March (2000) who claims Euripides’ play influenced Sophocles’ decision to make Procne kill her son. March demonstrates that the intentional murder and the feast do not occur in extant versions that predate tragedy. Cf. also Fitzpatrick (2001: 91 and n.7). Dobrov (1993: 213, n.54) argues that Euripides’ Medea must have been inspired by Sophocles’ Tereus and not the other way around, as the infanticide is indispensible to the myth of Procne because of the aetiology for the call of the nightingale. However, as I have noted above, both women unintentionally kill their sons in earlier versions of the myth, so this argument is not conclusive. Numerous reconstructions of this play have been attempted. These include: Welcker (1839); Pearson (1917); Calder (1974); Sutton (1984); Kiso (1984); Hourmouziades (1986); Dobrov (1993); Burnett (1998); Fitzpatrick (2001). March (2000) discusses the nature of the plot without full reconstruction. The scholiast informs us that Sophocles’ play pre dated that of Philocles. Some fragments of Tereus plays by Livius and Accius survive, but it is unclear whether they are based on Sophocles’ play or not. Cf. Parsons (1974: 46 50); Kiso (1984: 57 8); Dobrov (1993: 198); van Rossum Steenbeck (1998: 21 2) for discussion of the hypothesis. Most scholars believe that this is the hypothesis of Sophocles’ play. Most recently, Fitzpatrick (2001: 91) argues for its reliability. She is named in fr. 585 (Radt).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

143

is Philomela, her husband is Tereus, King of the Thracians66 and her son is Itys. In the hypothesis we are told that Procne asked her husband to fetch her sister from Athens. However, when Tereus had taken Philomela from her father, he raped her and cut out her tongue to prevent her from telling her sister. Nevertheless, Philomela manages to reveal what happened by means of a piece of weaving.67 When she learns what has happened Procne is said to be stung by jealousy (ejpignou'sa de; hJ Pr[ovknh th;n ajlhv]qeian zhlotup[iva/ th'/ ejscavth/] oijstrhqei'sa) and to have killed her son and served him up as a feast for his father.68 There are difficulties with reading this part of the hypothesis, but it seems that Procne could have been described as a Fury when she committed the murder.69 If these elements were indeed part of Sophocles’ play, it seems that a woman ‘maddened’ by jealousy towards her husband reacted by killing his son. This element is not clear from Ovid’s version (which is otherwise very like the hypothesis) in which Procne is described as angry rather than jealous. Nevertheless, her participation in Bacchic revels makes a link between Ovid’s Procne and the maenadic mothers who kill their offspring (Met. 6.587 8). Dobrov suggests that this was an aspect of Sophocles’ play, based on his understanding of fr. 586 (Radt) speuvdousan aujthvn, ejn de; poikivlw/ favrei, which he interprets as meaning ‘in great haste, dressed in a maenad’s attire’.70 In Dobrov’s reconstruction of the play both Procne and Philomela are dressed as maenads when they set about killing Itys.71 Although there can be no certainty about this, the suggestion seems plausible. The hypothesis concludes with a list of the transformations of the 66

67

68 69 70 71

Fr. 582 (Radt) ( {Hlie, filivppoi" Qrh/xi; prevsbiston sevla") strengthens the case for a Thracian location for Sophocles’ play. Cf. Thuc. (2.29) for a discussion of the location. Cf. also Dobrov (1993: 216). This aspect is linked to Sophocles’ Tereus by Aristotle who comments on the ‘voice of the loom’ (hJ th'" kerkivdo" fwnhv) as a means of recognition (Poet. 1454b36 fr. 595 Radt). See above on Ino where the motivation is also zh'lo". Cf. Ach. Tat. (5.5.6) in which Procne is motivated by jealousy and Philomela by the violence done to her. See Parsons in Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. 42 (1974: 50) for discussion of the text. For the association of Erinyes with revenge and madness, see Padel (1992: 172ff). Dobrov (1993: 205 6). Lloyd Jones’ translation ‘coloured coat’ (1996: 295) is misleading. ‘Dappled’ is perhaps best for poikivlo". Dobrov also places Accius fr. 647 (Warmington) in this context: deum Cadmogena natum Semela adfare et famulanter pete (‘entreat in servile fashion the god, son of Cadmus’ daughter Semele’). Cf. Ribbeck (1875: 579ff) on Accius’ play. Burnett (1998: 182, 187) argues against Dobrov’s suggestions and claims that there is no connection with Dionysiac ritual in the play.

144

FIONA McHARDY

protagonists: the sisters become a nightingale and a swallow, while Tereus becomes a hoopoe.72 Once again, it seems that in this play a woman acting under the influence of excessive passion associated with madness was depicted murdering her own son. Significantly, Procne’s actions are represented as irrational and it is condemned as being worse than the act of her husband. a[nou" ejkei'no": aiJ dÅ ajnoustevr karterovn. o{sti" ga;r ejn kakoi'si qumwqei;" brotw'n mei'zon prosavptei th'" novsou to; favrmakon, ijatrov" ejstin oujk ejpisthvmwn kakw'n. He is mad! But they acted still more madly in punishing him by violence. For any mortal who is infuriated by his wrongs and applies a medicine that is worse than the disease is a doctor who does not understand the trouble. (fr. 589 Radt; trans. Lloyd Jones 1996: 297).73

I follow the majority of scholars who assign this speech to the deus ex machina, although some think it was spoken by a messenger.74 Either way, I believe that the Athenian audience would have concurred with the view that Procne and Philomela’s actions were an excessive response to Tereus’ original crime. Here again, the introduction of a second ‘wife’ causes trouble for a husband, whose son is consequently killed. Scholars have argued that in acting as she does, Procne supports the claims of her father (whose trust has been violated according to the hypothesis) and sister above those of her husband when she plots her revenge. By killing Tereus’ son, Procne, like Medea, aims to achieve greater vengeance on her husband than by killing him, for his son represents his future prospects, as he will carry on 72

73

74

Tereus’ transformation into a hoopoe is Sophoclean (Ar. Av. 100 1). Aeschylus says Tereus became a hawk (Supp. 60 2). In fr. 581 (Radt) Tereus’ transformation into a hoopoe is described. This fragment is attributed to Aeschylus by Aristotle (HA 633a17) and so may not belong to Sophocles’ play at all (cf. Burnett 1998: 183, n.22). It is possible that this could be a fragment of Philocles’ play. Fitzpatrick (2001: 99, n.58) notes Philocles’ kinship to Aeschylus, which he claims could explain Aristotle’s mistake. Cf. Accius’ version, which may have been based on Sophocles’ play, in which Tereus’ lust for Philomela is described as a form of madness and his act is condemned (frs 639 42 Warmington). See Kiso (1984: 72 3) for references.

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

145

the patrilineal line.75 The particularly brutal revenge in which the child is not only killed, but served up as a meal to his father, is condemned through an association to ‘maddened’ behaviour, explicitly in the text, and perhaps visually in the behaviour and costumes of Procne and Philomela as well. If Dobrov is right in his suggestion that the women were depicted as maenads on stage, the association between Dionysiac cult, tragedy and filicide seems to be strong in this play. Certainly, it seems that the intentional filicide driven by passion occurred first in tragedy, whereas in earlier versions the death of Itys was accidental. IV. Althaea The story of Althaea who kills her son to avenge her brother(s) featured in lost plays by Phrynichus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as several other minor poets. A full version of the tale occurs in Bacchylides (5.93 154), which is dated to around 476 BC.76 In Bacchylides’ poem, Meleager explains that he died when fighting erupted between the Aetolians and the Curetes over who should receive the hide of the Calydonian boar they had united to fight and kill. In the ensuing brawl, Meleager kills his mother’s brothers accidentally. She is angered by this turn of events and decides to burn the brand which preserves Meleager’s life, whereupon he dies in the fighting before the walls of Pleuron. Carl Robert speculated that this plotline was shared by Phrynichus’ Women of Pleuron.77 This story is also briefly mentioned at Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers (602 11), where it is said that Althaea killed her son by casting onto the fire the magic firebrand that guaranteed his life. The chorus make it clear that Althaea acted deliberately (provnoian), not accidentally, in causing the death of her son, although Aeschylus does not specify any motive for Althaea’s action.78 The magical brand was apparently a part of Phrynichus’ play, since Pausanias (10.31.4) tells us that Phrynichus was the first to dramatize the story of how Althaea burnt the brand given to her by the Fates in her fury against her son. Again, Althaea is conceived of as acting wilfully and is 75 76 77

78

Cf. Padel (1995: 208) who states that eating one’s own child is like eating one’s own future. See also Apollodorus (1.8.2 3); Hyginus (Fab. 174); Ovid (Met. 8.267ff). See Robert (1898) for an attempted reconstruction of the play. Phrynichus is the earliest tragic poet for whom fragments remain. Problems exist with his dating (cf. West 1989), but he seems to have been an approximate (probably slightly older) contemporary of Aeschylus. Cf. Garvie (1986: on lines 606 7).

146

FIONA McHARDY

condemned for her actions. This is made clear in fragment 6 (Snell). kruero;n ga;r oujk a[luxen movron, wjkei'a dev nin flo;x katedaivsato dalou' perqomevnou matro;" uJpÅ aijna'" kakomacavnou For cold doom he did not escape, but a swift flame devoured him when the brand was destroyed by his terrible mother, the contriver of evil (Phrynichus fr. 6 Snell, my trans.)

Pausanias (loc. cit.) suggests that because Phrynichus only touches on the brand without any detailed explanation, the story must already have been current in Greece at the time.79 We do not possess any earlier version which refers to the brand and there is a great difference of opinion among scholars about whether the story is an ancient folk-tale80 or whether it was a post-Homeric invention, perhaps by Stesichorus in his Suoqh'rai (Boarhunters).81 Certainly, the story of the brand appears to be connected with other tales in which fire is deemed capable of making children immortal,82 but this does not necessarily make it early. Bremmer is probably right to associate this tale with sixth-century Calydonian fire-festivals.83 Certainly the brand does not occur in Homer.84 The Homeric version entails certain difficulties, as Phoenix tells the story in order to convince Achilles that he should accept Agamemnon’s apology and return to fight the Trojans (Il. 9.565 72). As such, several elements of the story are designed to parallel Achilles’ situation.85 For this reason, Althaea (who corresponds with Agamemnon) is first shown cursing her son in her anger and later pleading with him to return to the battle. Because of this latter detail it is unclear whether Althaea in this version intends to kill her son, or whether she shouts out in a moment of grief and rage (cf. Theseus in E. Hipp.). Nevertheless, Homer tells us that the Fury hears her curse, implying that Althaea’s curse was the cause of her son’s death. This is certainly how Pausanias interprets the line (10.31.4). We do not hear of Meleager’s death in this episode and it seems 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Recently, scholars have interpreted this as meaning that the events of the play did not focus on the story of Meleager, but on later events (cf. Snell’s note ad loc.). Kakridis (1935). Croiset (1898: 77 80). Bremmer (1988: 45) says this cannot be proved. Swain (1988) detects two early versions: an epic ‘heroic’ version and a folk tale version. Garvie (1986: on lines 603 12). Bremmer (1988: 45 6); cf. Burkert (1985: 63). Cf. also March (1987) who argues that the story of the brand is post Homeric. Cf. Willcock (1964: 149 52); March (1987: 30 2); Hainsworth (1993: 130 40).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

147

that his mother’s involvement in it is only indirect, although she must bear a degree of responsibility for her emotional outburst.86 Elsewhere in epic (in the Eoiai and the Minyad, as Pausanias 10.31.3 informs us), Althaea is not involved in Meleager’s death at all. Instead, he is killed by Apollo while fighting against the Aetolians (Hes. fr. 25.9 13 Merkelbach West).87 Homer informs us that Althaea is angry because Meleager killed her brother. March believes that this detail was an innovation of Homer, but Bremmer has argued that the hunt with maternal uncles is related to initiation and is, therefore, early.88 Furthermore, his death at the hands of Apollo appears to be related to initiation. In this respect, the killing of his maternal uncles is symbolic of Meleager’s separation from his mother.89 It has been suggested that Sophocles’ Meleager could have been based on the Homeric version. Few fragments of the play remain,90 but a scholion on the Homeric passage tells us that Sophocles’ chorus was made up of priests, who formed part of the embassy to Meleager in the Iliad. It is unclear what role Althaea played in Sophocles’ play. Pliny (Nat. Hist. 37.11.40) says that Sophocles represented the metamorphoses of Cleopatra and Althaea into birds who wept tears which turned into amber for Meleager after he died on the battlefield. The metamorphosis of Althaea can therefore be added to the list compiled by Seaford, who notes the link between infanticide and metamorphoses into birds.91 More can be said about Euripides’ Meleager, from which a number of fragments survive.92 Euripides’ play featured Atalanta who joins in the hunt for the Calydonian boar (fr. 530 Kannicht).93 Atalanta is mentioned in Hyginus’ account (Fab. 174), where we are told that Meleager killed his uncles deliberately out of desire for the hide of the Calydonian boar, as he wished to give it to his beloved, Atalanta (cf. also Apollod. 1.8.2; Ovid Met. 8.267ff). Webster speculates that this aspect was part of Euripides’ play and that Althaea and Meleager originally argue in the play about 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

In Apollodorus’ account of this version Meleager dies while fighting and Althaea kills herself (1.8.3). Jebb (1905: 469 70) has noted the difference between the epic and tragic versions. Cf. also Bremmer (1988: 43). March (1987: 35); cf. Hainsworth (1993: 132); Bremmer (1988: 42). Bremmer (1988: 48 9). One refers to the boar sent by Artemis (fr. 401 Radt). Seaford (1993: 124). Procne and the Minyads are transformed into birds, while Agave is associated with a swan. Cf. also Harpalyce (Nonnus Dion. 12.71ff). For reconstructions of this play see Welcker (1839: vol. II, 752 63); Page (1937); Webster (1967: 233 6); Jouan and van Looy (2000: 406 11). Atalanta is also present in Accius’ play. In frs 438 9 (Warmington) Meleager announces that he has given the boar’s hide to her.

148

FIONA McHARDY

Meleager’s love for Atalanta.94 The fragments of Euripides’ play do not make it clear what happened at the boar hunt or what Althaea’s reaction was, but one fragment suggests she could have committed suicide.95 Several scholars have relied on the fragments of Accius to fill in this gap, although it is by no means certain that his Meleager was based on Euripides’ play.96 In Accius’ tragedy Meleager’s death was certainly caused by the magical firebrand (frs 444 5 Warmington) apparently thrown into the fire after Althaea becomes maddened in her fury: heu cor ira fervit caecum, amentia rapior ferorque! (‘Oh! My blind heart seethes with anger! By madness am I borne and hurried on’, fr. 443 Warmington). Here again the connection is drawn between anger, kin-killing and madness. Although it is not possible to say whether this was an element of Euripides’ play, it seems likely enough that Accius derived this idea from Attic tragedy. In these plays Althaea’s anger towards her son is prompted by his murder of her brother(s). The lengthy preservation of the precious firebrand by Althaea demonstrates her initial motherly care for her son, but her revenge springs from her preference for her brothers over her son. Before the death of her brothers, Althaea plays the role of caring mother, concerned for the safety of her son. It is only when forced to choose which to support that Althaea demonstrates stronger loyalty to her brothers.97 Although a similar feeling of loyalty and grief for her brother is apparent in Homer, it is not until the tragic versions that Althaea is represented as deliberately killing her son. Unfortunately, there is a lack of evidence for the way that Althaea was portrayed in either Sophocles or Euripides’ play (even whether she played any part in the death of Meleager at all), although perhaps the association of filicide with madness found in Accius’ play is derived from these plays. However, the clear condemnation of Althaea’s acts by Phrynichus and Aeschylus indicates how the filicide would have been received by the Athenian audience.

94 95 96

97

Webster (1967: 235) cf. Page (1937: 179). Fr. 533 (Kannicht); Webster (1967: 236); cf. Page (1937:180); Jouan and van Looy (2000: 411). Cf. Apollod. (1.8.3); Ovid (Met. 8.267ff). Both Webster and Page use the fragments of Accius to reconstruct Euripides’ Meleager. Warmington (1936: 470) speculates hesitantly that Accius’ play could have been based on Euripides’ Meleager; cf. Ribbeck (1875: 506ff). However, Lloyd Jones (1996: 213) notes a similarity between a Sophoclean fragment (402 Radt) and a fragment of Accius (433 4 Warmington). Cf. Ovid’s version of Althaea’s great speech which is similar to the great monologue of Euripides’ Medea (Met. 8.478 511). Althaea is portrayed wavering between choosing her brothers or her son (pugnat materque sororque, 8.463).

FILICIDE IN TRAGIC FRAGMENTS

149

V. Iliona and Astyoche Two other characters from lost tragedies show a more subconscious preference for their natal families. Iliona is the daughter of Priam, married to the Thracian Polymestor, while Astyoche is the sister of Priam, married to Telephus, King of Mysia. Both are called on for favours by Priam. Pacuvius’ Iliona appears to have shared the same plot as the story of Iliona in Hyginus (Fab. 109).98 We are told that Priam sent his son Polydorus to be raised by Iliona when he was still a baby (cf. frs 199 201 Warmington). In frs 215 17, Iliona explains that her own son and her brother Polydorus were exactly the same age. Iliona decides to raise her brother as her son and her son as her brother. This decision benefits her brother, as Polymestor decides to kill Polydorus when he is bribed by the Achaeans. However, as a result of his wife’s cunning substitution, he slays his own son instead. Iliona’s decision is interesting, in that it informs us of her distrust for her husband, as well as her preference for her brother, who is protected by her act. The Greek model for Pacuvius’ play is unknown, although there are some similarities with Euripides’ Hecuba. In both plays Polymestor’s son or sons are killed and he is brought to ruin himself because of his greed.99 However, in some central particulars the plots differ substantially. In the Hecuba Polymestor succeeds in his plot to kill Polydorus and there is no mention of Iliona.100 Neither does Iliona appear in Homer, where Polydorus is killed by Achilles on the battlefield at Troy (Il. 20.407 18). In Sophocles’ Eurypylus Priam bribes his sister, Astyoche, to send her son, Eurypylus, to help him fight at Troy. Astyoche is persuaded by her brother and impels her son to go to his death at Troy (cf. Homer Od. 11.519 22 and schol.).101 However, this play seems to have exhibited the difficulties that this choice of loyalties presented to mothers, as in fr. 211 (Radt) Astyoche laments her son saying that she ought not to have been 98 99

100 101

See Dietze (1894: 24). However, Wilamowitz (1883: 258) denies any direct relationship between Hyginus and Pacuvius. Also both plays contain a ghost. In Pacuvius’ play the ghost is Iliona’s son, who appeals to his mother to bury him (frs 205 10 Warmington). At the beginning of Euripides’ Hecuba the ghost of Polydorus appears to his mother Hecuba. Both ghosts appear in dreams. Cf. Bardel in this volume on ghosts in Attic drama. Steuart (1926: 277) thinks that by being selective about his material, Pacuvius created a better plot for his tragedy than Euripides had done for the Hecuba. The betrayal of Amphiaraus by Eriphyle shares common features with the story of Sophocles’ Eurypylus, in that in both stories a brother asks for help from his sister when seeking wartime allies. She betrays her husband to help her brother. This is referred to in a fragment possibly from Sophocles’ Epigoni (fr. 187 Radt).

150

FIONA McHARDY

persuaded by her brother. These mothers bring about the deaths of their sons through their support of their natal kin. Although the mothers do not intend to kill their children, their preferred allegiances lead to the death of their sons. The lack of fragments of these plays allows no firm conclusions on the matter, but perhaps the detachment of these mothers from the actual killing would not have attracted a metaphor of madness. Conclusion Although scholars have emphasized reasons for understanding why mothers kill their children in tragedy, a close reading of the fragments of plays reveals that frequently there is a connection between filicide and mad, irrational behaviour. This madness can be manifested as divinely inflicted, an external force which helps us to explain the irrationality of the mother’s action. Alternatively, the idea of excessive passion which leads to violence is connected with metaphors of madness which indicate how the mother’s behaviour would have been viewed not only by the characters in the plays, but also, we may reasonably presume, by the Athenian audience. Where an act is characterized as mad, it can be understood to be beyond the bounds of normal human behaviour, and in certain respects, inexplicable. Hence, even where a mother makes a conscious decision to kill her child, an association is made between the filicide and madness. In some ways, the conclusion that mothers shown killing their children in tragedy are frequently connected with ideas of madness is not surprising. Today we would immediately characterize such an act as ‘madness’. However, I would like to push the idea slightly further to suggest that there is a close connection between the use of maddened mothers and the festival of Dionysus, in which the tragedies were performed. The implications of this for understanding the prominence of filicide in tragedy are important. If we draw together the various stories of mothers killing their children in tragic plots and compare them to other earlier versions of the same story, there seems to be a strong argument for suggesting that the development of the motif of deliberate filicide springs from tragedy, whereas in earlier versions of the same myths the children tended to be killed accidentally or by people other than their mothers. My suggestion here is that through the influence of ideas relating to Dionysiac cult (especially maenadism) the portrayal of mothers killing their own children was deemed particularly suitable for tragic performances.

8 TRAGIC FRAGMENTS, ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS AND THE FRAGMENTED SELF† CHRISTOPHER GILL

In this chapter, I explore certain lines of connection between ancient philosophy and Greek tragic fragments. Some of these relate to ancient thought about self-division hence the reference in my title to the ‘fragmented self’. First, I consider how tragic fragments are, typically, cited and used by ancient thinkers in ethical philosophy. Because many poetic fragments are preserved in ethical philosophy, or in anthologies that draw on ethical philosophy, it is useful to analyse the criteria of selection that determine why poetic passages are cited and how they are deployed. Ancient philosophers are generally interested in the detachable message of such poetic passages rather than their meaning in the original context. However, in some cases, philosophical concerns lead the ancient thinkers to examine the content of the passages with special attention and perceptiveness. This is true, I suggest, of an ancient debate about passion and self-division preserved in Galen, which I discuss in the second part of this chapter. Although the key text in this debate is a surviving play (Euripides Medea 1078 80), ancient philosophers also make suggestive comments about some tragic fragments on psychological division. In the third part of this discussion, I take up a different aspect of the †

I am grateful to Fiona McHardy and her fellow organizers for inviting me to take part in the Exeter conference on tragic fragments. I would also like to thank very warmly David Harvey for an exceptionally acute and helpful set of comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

152

CHRISTOPHER GILL

relationship between ancient philosophy and tragic fragments. Bruno Snell has suggested that we can make sense of the fragments of Euripides’ first Hippolytus by relating them to Seneca’s (surviving) Phaedra. He thinks that we can reconstruct the psychological core of Euripides’ lost play by referring to Seneca’s portrayal of the passionate, self-conflicted figure of Phaedra. I question this view, arguing that Seneca’s picture of Phaedra’s subjection to her love reflects a specifically Stoic conception of passion, and that we need to use a different psychological pattern to reconstruct the lost Euripidean drama. In this way too, ancient philosophy bears on the study of Greek tragic fragments, by enabling us to determine what should count as an appropriate or an inappropriate type of interpretation. I . Citation of Fragments in Ancient Ethical Philosophy The citation of tragic passages by Greek and Roman philosophers exemplifies a tantalizing feature of much ancient quotation of literature, including the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs. It is clear, from at least Plato’s Republic onwards, that philosophers are capable of recognizing that dramatic speeches need to be interpreted in the light of the specific fictional situation and the character of the figure making the speech. However, they often treat poetic passages as detachable sayings or exemplary statements which are significant only because of their ethical content.1 This is not from sheer crassness, although it sometimes seems to be. There is ample evidence in ancient philosophy of a high level of sophistication about what is involved in interpreting, and misinterpreting, the content of poetry. This comes out clearly, for instance, in the subtle and outrageous misreadings of Simonides’ poem offered in Plato’s Protagoras (339a 347a). It is evident in later antiquity from the complex strategies of reading found in rhetorical criticism, which develop partly from Aristotle’s approach in the Poetics and Rhetoric.2 The way that philosophers use poetic passages reflects, in part, ancient attitudes about what is appropriate for different areas of discourse within the culture. What is generally taken to be relevant to ethical debate is the 1

2

Plato (Rep. 386a 392a) implies this recognition (which is more fully explicit in Arist. Poet. chs 6, 15), though Plato also there treats poetic comments as significant for their detachable ethical content; see further Gill (1993: esp. 44 7). A particularly striking aspect of this contrast is the way that the subtlety and irony of Plutarch’s use of poetry, especially in Gryllus and the Life of Demetrius, outruns the moralistic recommendations about reading in On the Education of Children and How the Young should Listen to Poetry; see Zadorojnyi (1999).

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS AND THE FRAGMENTED SELF

153

detachable content of poetic passages, which acquires its significant context within philosophical debate. For this purpose, Greek thinkers often de-emphasize a point which they themselves sometimes recognize elsewhere, that we can only understand the full ethical content of a passage if we take account of the dramatic situation within which it occurs. However, in some cases, the philosophical issue itself leads thinkers to pay closer than normal attention to the specific content and context of the passage cited. My main example is a famous passage from an extant tragedy: the close of the great monologue in Euripides’ Medea (1078 80). But the perceptiveness shown by ancient philosophers in this case suggests that we can, in principle, hope to find a similar level of attentiveness to the fictional context in the citation of material from plays which are now lost but which ancient philosophers could read as a whole.3 Here, first, are some examples of philosophers introducing tragic passages for their detachable ethical content.4 The word proendhmei'n (dwell on beforehand) means to Posidonius to imagine, as it were, in advance, and to prefigure in one’s mind what is going to happen, and to bring about a gradual habituation to it, as to something that has happened before. That is why he cited here the story about Anaxagoras, that when someone brought the news that his son was dead, he said with great composure, ‘I knew I had fathered a mortal’; he also mentioned how Euripides took this idea and portrayed Theseus as saying: ejgw; de;