Surviving Greek Tragedy 9781472540195, 9780715631232

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For Pat Easterling

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And sooner or later their talk gravitated towards his central passion – the Fragments of Sophocles. Some day … he would edit them. At present they were merely in his blood. With the zeal of a scholar and the imagination of a poet he reconstructed lost dramas – Niobe, Phaedra, Philoctetes against Troy, whose names, but for an accident, would have thrilled the world. ‘Is it worth it?’ he cried. ‘Had we better be planting potatoes?’ And then: ‘We had; but this is the second best.’ E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey (1907, 176f.)

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Acknowledgements The idea for this book originated with Pat Easterling’s observation (1996, 1542): ‘The surviving Greek plays have had a profound influence on subsequent literature and culture, and the detailed story of their reception and influence is still waiting to be told.’ What I have attempted here, however, is not primarily the story of their reception and influence, but rather that of their physical survival through the process of transmission, even though the two phenomena cannot be fully disentangled. Indeed it would be naïve to suppose that one can discuss transmission without engaging many of the problems that the study of reception entails. Moreover, understanding the history of transmission can, I believe, help us to understand more critically the assumptions underlying the modern reception of classical antiquity. I am aware of the presumptuousness of this undertaking. I have, after all, constantly strayed into fields where others have lingered to think deeply and exhaustively. It is my hope that they will not suppose that I have slighted their labours and that the attempt to bring tragedy’s transmission under a single roof will have done some good. In the end it remains a work in progress. Though the book is primarily addressed to the general reader, the flagged notes and appendices are intended to be of value to the scholar. My work draws on so many previous researchers that it would be impossible to enumerate all my debts. Thanks to the Oxford-based Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, the study of the performance tradition of tragedy has become a truly collaborative venture – and a model of its kind in the field of contemporary scholarship. I should, however, like to name those scholars whose pioneering zeal helped to make this undertaking possible: James Diggle, Pat Easterling, Edith Hall, Lorna Hardwick, Bernard Knox, Fiona Macintosh, Oliver Taplin, Martin West and Nigel Wilson. Above all, I owe an incalculable debt to Pat Easterling, not only for a year in Cambridge spent under her supervision more than thirty years ago but also for the fine critical eye which she ran over an earlier draft of this project, patiently relieving me of innumerable misperceptions, while never once intimating that I had bitten off more than I could chew. All remaining errors and omissions are mine, and I gladly assume all responsibility for them.

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Acknowledgements The support of friends at Cambridge has facilitated this project from the start, especially Paul Cartledge, who read and commented expertly on the original proposal. It was made possible with the indefatigable assistance of the Interlibrary Loan service of Colgate University, and I should like to express my gratitude to Ann Ackerman for her help with all my requests. I also wish to thank Warren Wheeler for his excellent work with the photography. I drew the project to a conclusion as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. My special thanks go to Deborah Blake and Ray Davies for the thoroughness with which they saw a complicated manuscript through the press at a time of great change at Duckworth. All remaining errors are unqualifiably mine. Finally, I am grateful to the following for allowing me to read their forthcoming publications: Gonda van Steen for ‘Playing by the censors’ rules? Classical drama revived under the Greek Junta (1967-74)’; Teresa Morgan for ‘Tragedy in the papyri’; and Pat Easterling and Edith Hall for Greek and Roman Actors (Cambridge 2002).

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Honoris Causa Hi sunt pauci quorum ab industria tragoedia Graeca usque ad aeternitatem adservatur Lycurgus of Boutadae, conservationist Aristotle, literary critic Ptolemy II Philadelphus (or III Euergetes), thief Callimachus of Cyrene, cataloguer Aristophanes of Byzantium, textual critic Didymus, scholiast St Basil of Caesarea, defender of secular literature Demetrius Triclinius, ‘the first modern critic of tragedy’ (Wilamowitz) Francesco Petrarch, humanist Niccolò Niccoli, collector of manuscripts Giovanni Aurispa, hunter of manuscripts Aldus Manutius, publisher Erasmus of Rotterdam, translator Richard Porson, textual critic Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, classical scholar Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher Gilbert Murray, translator Max Reinhardt, theatre director Alexander Turyn, codicologist

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Preface For every sheet of parchment or papyrus which has been preserved to the present day, it is safe to say that thousands of such sheets have been destroyed for ever. The ravages of time, the excesses of military conquest, the bigotry of religious zealots, the fury of fire and flood, and the carelessness of the ignorant and unthinking have all taken their toll, and what is left is but a fragment of the records once written in ages past. D.C. McMurtrie, quoted in D. Diringer, The Hand-Produced Book (1953, 239)

We are indeed fortunate that Greek tragedy is still with us. Perhaps it sounds fatuous but I will say it anyway: I cannot imagine how we would have faced up to the horrors of the twentieth century (and now of the twenty-first) without the support of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Antigone, or Euripides’ Medea, Trojan Women and Bacchae. It is also a fair bet that without Greek tragedy we would not have Hamlet, which may owe something to Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers and Euripides’ Orestes, though their influence was probably mediated through Seneca. We could probably say goodbye to the French neo-classicism of Racine and Corneille, and there would be a big hole in our operatic repertoire from Pietro Francesco Cavalli in the mid-seventeenth century to Sir Harrison Birtwistle in the late twentieth century, and beyond. Had he not read Johann Gustav Droysen’s German translation of Aeschylus, Richard Wagner might never have been inspired to undertake his monumental musical tetralogy known as The Ring. It is not just the formal and substantive aspects of Greek tragedy that have influenced some of our greatest artists and writers. The poet Algernon Swinburne declared it to be ‘the greatest achievement of the human mind’. When asked by the classical scholar Sir Richard Jebb in what way Sophocles had influenced her, George Eliot replied, ‘In the delineation of the great primitive emotions’ (quoted in Lloyd-Jones 1982, 243). John Cowper Powys wrote in 1938, ‘The three great tragic dramatists of Athens have come to dominate … the imaginative culture of Europe … this same tremendous tradition … will still be found, like a submerged spirit under the ship’s keel of each powerful new book’ (quoted in Jenkyns 1980, 111). I could go on ad infinitum in this vein. Suffice it to say that without Greek tragedy we might be as psychologically stunted as the ancient Persians, whose denial of the black stuff that tragedy examines through the prism

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Preface of poetry was so profound, as Herodotus (1.137) tells us, that they could not conceive of anyone killing his father or his mother. My aim has been to trace the line of descent of the extant tragedies from the fifth century BC down to the present day with emphasis upon the groups that have pre-eminently been responsible for their transmission – actors, audiences, readers, textual critics, schoolteachers, monks, publishers, translators, theatre directors, and so on – though I acknowledge that their survival at any point in history is likely to be due to their multi-functionality, particularly in excerpted form, as tools in the teaching of rhetoric, as exemplars of Greek syntax and prosody, as sources of moral inspiration, and so forth. Like any cultural artefact Greek tragedy has held different meanings and values for the successive cultures that have been charged with its safe-keeping. As Goldhill (1997a, 327) has reminded us, ‘The language and transmission of a play cannot be understood in a (cultural, historical, intellectual) vacuum’, and that obviously holds good not only for the genre as a whole, but also for the plays individually. At the same time it is hardly the case that transmission is ever a textual process alone, and many factors may contribute simultaneously. Merely on the practical level the plays have at various times been performed, copied, quoted, emended, excerpted, analysed, studied, taught, translated, read, illustrated, censored, burlesqued, adapted or merely left to moulder undisturbed in a library, as each group or culture saw fit. Adaptations, though these have played a major role in keeping the ‘spirit’ of Greek tragedy alive, are largely ignored, even though it must be conceded that the defining line between translation and adaptation is extremely tenuous, particularly in the case of self-styled translations that are the work of writers who cannot read Greek. Nor shall I be investigating the respective debts of opera and French neo-classical drama. Transmission is a sufficiently large topic of investigation and this book represents only a first step in that direction. The story of the survival of the 32 extant tragedies constitutes but a small chapter within the larger history of the survival of the classical tradition itself – a tradition which has been on the receiving end of all the major cultural, political, religious and economic upheavals that have beset western Europe from 400 BC to the present. It is obviously impossible to tell that story without taking these upheavals into account, albeit somewhat impressionistically. For the first two thousand years we are talking of survival against great odds. These odds include simple ignorance, supine indifference and downright hostility, as well as the combined forces of the elements. It was certainly not decreed by the fates that Greek tragedy would survive. It has done so thanks to the resourcefulness, learning and zeal of numerous individuals, some well-known, others identifiable only by name, but the vast majority anonymous. Few if any were men of genius (we are talking almost exclusively of men as opposed to women) and what distinguished them most as a group was their passion-

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Preface ate commitment to a genre of Greek literature which until the nineteenth century consistently lagged behind almost every other in popularity. It was largely due to luck that over half the sample should be of the plays of Euripides, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost invariably been the most ‘popular’ of the three. Today no genre of classical literature is more nakedly in the public domain, largely as a result of the phenomenal popularity of the plays on the commercial stage where they have achieved the status of an international theatrical vernacular. Indeed it is probably the literary medium through which the largest number of people now encounter their classical heritage and we can confidently predict that it will survive as long as western civilisation itself.

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Introduction The irretrievable If you wanted an authentic Greek experience you would have to leave your slaves at home, and probably your wife, too, and head off to an amphitheatre (sic) with only the élite section of the male population. On the way you would have to cast off any ideas gleaned from Christianity, the Enlightenment, romanticism, feminism, modernism or postmodernism. It is almost impossible to see a play through the eyes of an Ancient Greek. Robert Butler, Review of Katie Mitchell’s The Oresteia at the Cottesloe Theatre (Independent, 5 December 1999)

Omitting the fact that it was not only élite males but all male citizens who attended the Greek theatre, Butler got it exactly right. We are not the audience for whom the plays were written and there’s nothing much we can do to rid ourselves of our cultural identity. But apart from acknowledging the layers of consciousness that we have acquired in the course of two and a half thousand years, we also need to acknowledge what is lost. To the extent that we are the heirs to Greek tragedy, we have come through ‘by the skin of our teeth’, to borrow Kenneth Clark’s (1969, 17) memorable phrase. Aeschylus, who barely made it through into the Renaissance, wrote at least 73 plays, of which only seven survive. Two of his extant plays, Suppliant Women and Libation-Bearers, have come down to us in a single manuscript, while Agamemnon and Eumenides have been transmitted by three and four manuscripts respectively. Likewise only seven out of at least 123 plays by Sophocles are extant (plus half of his satyric drama Trackers). Of Euripides, we have only 18 out of at least 92. Our most complete text of Bacchae survives in only one manuscript. Eight other tragedies by Euripides, plus his satyric drama Cyclops, are preserved in a single manuscript and its copy. The precariousness of the textual tradition is further demonstrated by the fact that the opening lines of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers are lost, Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis has a contaminated beginning and a spurious ending, and at least 50 lines are missing from his Bacchae. (Conversely, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King survives in about 200 manuscripts.) Since, moreover, no portion of any tragic text has survived which pre-dates the fourth century, it follows that ‘There can never be a definitive text of a Greek play, only improved ones’ (West

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Introduction 1987, 44). Even the notion of a definitive text is something of an anachronism, since playwrights may well have introduced revisions in the course of a performance or re-performance, not all of which were transmitted to posterity in a revised copy. The majority of these tragedies (seven attributed to Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles and nine by Euripides plus Rhesus) have come down via a ‘school’ edition (see p. 69; Appendix I). The other nine (plus Cyclops) ‘non-selected’ tragedies by Euripides have been transmitted without scholia (i.e. learned commentary upon a word or passage by an ancient scholar) via a different tradition.* Other than in excerpted form in florilegia, anthologies and the like, there was almost no knowledge of these plays from late antiquity until the fourteenth century (Browning 1960, 15). The non-selected plays are thought to have belonged to a complete edition of Euripides that originally existed in some eight or nine codices; that is to say, in the form of sheets folded over and fastened together at the spine, rather like a modern book. They were arranged by title in somewhat erratic alphabetical order. All that has survived, however, are those whose titles begin with the Greek initials epsilon, eta, iota and kappa (the so-called E-K group), which were presumably contained in a single codex. With the probable exception of Rhesus and the possible exception of Prometheus Bound, no tragedy by any other author has survived. Of the thousands of other plays by Greek tragedians, covering a period of about seven hundred years, we have only fragments. It goes without saying that there is no determining how representative of fifth-century tragedy our surviving sample is – let alone how it compares with that of any other period. The Athenians produced nine tragedies annually at the City Dionysia and perhaps four at the Lenaea. We know the names of 49 Greek tragedians of the fifth century BC and earlier, 44 of the fourth century, 34 of the third century, 26 of the second century, 25 of the first century, seven of the first century AD, nine of the second century, one of the third century, two of the fourth century, and two of the fifth century (as listed in TGF I). In short, the number of missing tragedies is incalculable. There are other less quantifiable factors that are irretrievable. To begin with, Greek tragedy, by which we mean predominantly Athenian or Attic tragedy, constituted a cultural product as well as a literary genre. As such it addressed the concerns of a particular audience at a precise moment in its political and social evolution. Like the democratic assembly known as the Ecclesia, the theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis provided a formal outlet for public speech. ‘That same people,’ H.D.F. Kitto (1939, 396) wrote, ‘which, in a practical and political mood, met a few hundred yards away to discuss and determine high matters of state, met in the Theatre, in a more exalted mood, to watch plays.’ Leaving aside the question whether the audience watched in an ‘exalted mood’, for which we *For a glossary of technical terms, see p. 194.

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Introduction haven’t the slightest evidence, on this basis Greek tragedy is irremediably alien, since no community in the modern world exhibits the same functional relationship between theatre-going and political decision-making. At the same time theatrical performances represented an act of devotion to Dionysus, the god of drama, and there can be little doubt that the purification, ritual slaughter and libations which preceded them had an effect upon some members of the audience in a way that we can scarcely imagine and certainly cannot hope to emulate in any modern staging. The audience which attended the theatre of Dionysus was not only vast by modern-day standards but also an exact representation of the administrative divisions within the citizen body, since its members sat in blocks allocated to their respective ten tribes. It is estimated that this theatre could accommodate between 14,000 and 17,000 spectators. This is arguably the largest number of spectators that gathered together on a regular basis anywhere in the Greek world, with the possible exception of the Olympic Games. Certainly no cultural event which requires its audience to sit in rapt attention for hours on end attracts so large a crowd today, apart perhaps from the revivals of Greek tragedy that are staged in some ancient theatres. But size alone is not the issue. It has been plausibly suggested that the conical shape of the theatron or ‘seeing space’ would have had the effect of funnelling concentration in a way that made spectating a more intense experience than it is today. Adding to this intensity was the fact that the majority of tragedies may well have been performed only once. This means that the audience which attended Aeschylus’ Oresteia in the spring of 458 BC had an experience which was comparable to that of a modern audience at a sporting event or rock concert in that there could be no certainty that it would ever be performed again – or at any rate not on the same lavish scale. Though we hear of revivals of popular tragedies at the Rural Dionysia in deme theatres by the middle of the fifth century, and of revivals of Aeschylus’ plays at the City Dionysia from 425 BC onwards (see below, p. 6), no tragedy ever enjoyed the equivalent of a modern ‘run’, which means that in most cases ‘composition and performance were coeval and co-terminous’ (Golder 1996, 189). There are also certain key elements of theatrical production that have not been transmitted. What we have is a text, and a text is not a record of performance. That might seem a trite point to make, were it not for the fact that Greek drama was not only words and action but also song and dance. Of the music accompanying the lyric passages performed by an aulêtês (or ‘oboe-player’) and sung by the chorus, only a handful of bars have survived from Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis and Orestes. Our knowledge of the dancing derives exclusively from vase-painting, which indicates merely that it was performed in ranks and blocks. Virtually no stage directions have survived. We cannot always be sure to whom lines should be ascribed. There are no production records and no reviews. We

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Introduction know very little about set construction, scene painting, or the mechanical devices that were occasionally used to create special effects. Our evidence for costume is based on references in the texts and on vase-painting. Playwrights were required to present three tragedies and a satyr play at the City Dionysia, but only Aeschylus’ Oresteia has survived as a complete trilogy. Almost all our other extant tragedies are isolated from their respective groups, even though most trilogies seem not to have been conceived around a unifying theme. Indeed many plays, including Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (if indeed Aeschylus is the author), and Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus, have a self-sufficiency which makes it virtually impossible to imagine how their impact might have been complemented (or perhaps counterbalanced) by what preceded or followed. Often we do not know where an extant play was situated within its trilogy or the names of the accompanying plays. Lastly, no surviving satyr play can be connected with any extant tragedy. The Roman poet Horace wrote, ‘Tragedy scorns to prattle inconsequential verses, but like a married woman who is commanded to go abroad on a public holiday, proceeds somewhat bashfully among wanton satyrs’ (Art of Poetry 231-3). Yet proceed it did among those wanton satyrs, at least in the fifth century and possibly later. The absence of any satyric drama linked to an extant tragedy leaves in question the extent to which these theatrical codas with their elements of farce might have blunted the impact of the tragic dramas that preceded them. De Romilly (1967, 132) has stated, ‘Every great work of Greek tragedy seems created more or less directly out of the meeting of the facts of old legends and a recent political experience.’ But even if this is the case, it is only occasionally that we can hazard a guess as to what might have prompted a playwright to select a particular myth as the vehicle for his ideas. And even where a link between tragedy and a specific contemporary event seems probable, the link is unlikely to be entirely straightforward. It used to be assumed that Euripides wrote Trojan Women, which was produced at the City Dionysia in 415, as a protest against the massacre of the inhabitants of Melos by the Athenians in the previous winter. However, time constraints make this seem unlikely (van Erp Taalman Kip 1987, 414-19). Although Euripides may well have had similar acts of Athenian barbarism in mind when he selected his subject (Green 1999, 102), we should be wary of making unjustified and perhaps facile assumptions about the reasons behind his choice. Even so, it is commonly acknowledged that tragedy played an important part in shaping civic identity on the one hand, and in exposing and exploring the tensions within civic thought on the other. It follows that audiences may well have read more into the mythical subject matter and its dramatic treatment than we will ever know, and have been more involved in its dénouement than we can legitimately assume. Little, too, is known about audience response. Fourth-century (and

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Introduction later) sources tell of actors being booed and pelted with fruit, which incidentally suggests that there was no ban on the consumption of food in the theatre. There is also an unlikely report that the appearance of the Furies in Aeschylus’ Eumenides was so terrifying that pregnant women miscarried on the spot, which, if we could believe it, would tell us worlds about suspension of disbelief. For three successive days at the City Dionysia the audience was expected to sit through four plays a day – or five if the tragedies and satyric drama produced in the morning were followed by a comedy in the afternoon, as some scholars believe. This amounts to about ten hours of spectating. Under such circumstances, how could an audience not become restless from time to time, particularly if the play was tedious or the production below par? Like so many aspects of Greek society, the theatre was a highly competitive institution. The tragedians whose plays were selected for performance were awarded first, second and third prize by a panel of ten judges chosen by lot. But what were the judges looking for? Was their verdict primarily influenced by the dramatic content and lyric beauty of the play, by the skill of the actors, or by the quality of the production? Since prizes were awarded not only to the dramatist but also to the wealthy individual (or chorêgos) who financed the chorus, the quality of the production must surely have been taken into account. Indeed it may occasionally have been decisive, as when the employment of a crude stage device antagonised the audience (Aristotle, Art of Poetry 1455a22-9). Could a poor production explain why the judges failed to award first prize to the group of plays that included Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and on another occasion relegated Euripides’ Medea to third place? What is also irretrievable is the thrill of a first performance, particularly in the case of innovative dramatic techniques. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, for instance, confounds the audience’s expectations by opening with a speech by a humble watchman. Libation-Bearers has Orestes’ companion Pylades, who is otherwise silent throughout, enjoin Orestes to kill his mother just when his resolve is faltering. Eumenides contains a scene change from Delphi to Athens, as Orestes seeks to escape the torments of the Furies. Such coups de théâtre would doubtless have astonished the original audience. Their inability to cause a similar stir today is not the least of what is irretrievable. Finally, behind every selection lies a de-selection. We’ll never know what prevented Euripides’ Andromeda or, more tantalisingly, Astydamas’ Hector and Theodectes’ Alcmaeon, from surviving into the Middle Ages, since all were hugely popular in antiquity. So the extent of what is irretrievable is unfathomable. The lives and afterlives of the tragedians Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BC), the earliest of the three great tragedians, was

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Introduction born at Eleusis, the home of the Eleusinian Mysteries, where he spent his early years. The anonymous Life states that he won 13 victories, whereas the Suda puts the number at 28. Likewise, the number of plays that he wrote is put at either 73 or 90. His first victory was in 484 BC. Aeschylus described his tragedies as ‘slices from the great banquet of Homer’, and his language is rich in similes and compound adjectives – very like Homer’s in fact. Persians, his earliest surviving tragedy, is the only extant play that deals explicitly with an episode from contemporary history. Aristotle (Art of Poetry 1449a15-18) claims that Aeschylus introduced the device of the second actor, which enabled dialogue to take place both between actor and chorus, and between two actors. His portrait was included in the painting of the battle of Marathon which was displayed inside the Painted Stoa in the Agora. He may also have fought at the battle of Salamis ten years later, which he vividly describes in Persians, and, less probably, at Plataea. In c. 476 BC Aeschylus became the first dramatist to receive an invitation to travel abroad. His host was the tyrant Hieron I of Syracuse, for whom he wrote the lost play Women of Aetna in celebration of the city’s foundation (Life 8-11). A few years later he revived Persians in Sicily, again at Hieron’s invitation (Life 68). It is not known whether he played any part in Athenian politics, though some scholars believe that Eumenides indicates that he supported the radical assault of Ephialtes upon the powers of the Areopagus. Aeschylus died at Gela in 456 BC at about the age of seventy – allegedly when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, which it mistook for a rock. He was granted burial at public expense by the citizenry of Gela and his monument became a shrine for those who made their living by performing tragedy. Pausanias (1.14.5) reports that he left instructions in his will that his tomb should record no other information than that he ‘had as witnesses to his valour both the grove at Marathon and the Persians who landed there’. His epitaph does not mention his work as a tragedian; only that he ‘slew the long-haired Medes at Marathon’. Some time before 425 BC the Athenians passed a decree permitting ‘anyone who wished’ to revive Aeschylus’ plays at the City Dionysia. Later sources inform us that this was in recognition of his status as ‘the father of tragedy’. They also, somewhat implausibly, allege that his dramas were occasionally performed in place of new tragedies. By the end of the fifth century, if we are to believe Aristophanes, Aeschylus’ popularity among the younger generation had declined sharply. In Frogs he is ridiculed for the long silences of his characters, the length of his choral odes, and the bombastic nature of his poetry. Pluto’s slave claims that ‘he did not hit it off with the Athenians’ (line 807). Some have seen in this remark a reference to the improbable allegation that Aeschylus was accused of divulging secrets pertaining to the Eleusinian Mysteries. True or not, the fact that he was the target of burlesque indicates that his plays were still sufficiently popular to enjoy revivals.

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Introduction Both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages Aeschylus was the least popular of the three tragedians, as is demonstrated by the fact that Suppliant Women and Libation-Bearers have been transmitted in only a single manuscript. The surviving play whose text is the least corrupt – Prometheus Bound – also happens to be the one whose authorship has been seriously challenged. Aeschylus was the last of the three to arrive in Italy in manuscript form in the fifteenth century, the last to appear in print in the sixteenth century, the last to be translated into English in the seventeenth century, as well as the last to be performed on stage. There were in fact no translations of his plays into any European language before 1600. Aeschylus’ fortunes revived in the nineteenth century when he attracted the attention of two important German translators, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1816) and J.G. Droysen (1832), as well as the support of the critics A.W. von Schlegel and his brother K.W.F. von Schlegel, and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In the twentieth century his reputation has soared, both as a poet and as a dramatist, and his Oresteia is now immensely popular on the international stage. Winnington-Ingram (1989, 295) has aptly said of him, ‘No poet has presented tragic evil with less mitigation than Aeschylus.’ Sophocles (497-406 BC) was the most successful of the three tragedians, winning 18 victories in all, and never slipping lower than second place. He won his first victory in 469/8 at the age of 28. The Life claims that he wrote 130 plays, whereas the Suda puts the total at 123. Our understanding of his development as a playwright is hindered by the fact that the only extant plays whose dates are securely attested are Philoctetes, which was produced in 409, and Oedipus at Colonus, which was produced posthumously in 401. Aristotle (Art of Poetry 1449a18f.) credits Sophocles with having introduced the third actor and scene painting, though both claims have been doubted. He also preserves Sophocles’ famous dictum, ‘I portray men as they ought to be, Euripides as they are’ (1460b33f.). Sophocles is said to have broken down the unified structure of the trilogy by making the three plays independent of one another, but there is evidence to suggest that he may have been anticipated by Aeschylus. He was also allegedly the first dramatist who declined to act in his own plays on account of the weakness of his voice (Life 4). The Suda claims that he wrote a lost work entitled On the Chorus. Unlike the other two dramatists, Sophocles had a public persona that we can at least reconstruct in outline. An ancient source claims that he owed his generalship in 441 BC to the success of Antigone, but it is just as likely that his generalship boosted his popularity as a playwright. He was a priest of the hero Halon and of the healing god Asclepius, and is said to have hosted the latter’s sacred snake when it first arrived in Athens. In 413 BC he served as one of the ten elderly probouloi (‘counsellors’) who were appointed to govern Athens following the disaster of the Sicilian Expedition. He had a reputation for being affable and easy-going. When

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Introduction news of Euripides’ death reached Athens, he is alleged to have dressed his chorus and actors in mourning. He himself died only a few months later. Sophocles is said to have been posthumously honoured as the hero Dexion, though whether he was the pious individual that some scholars have claimed is questionable. Mr Jackson in E.M. Forster’s novel The Longest Journey perhaps got it right when he pertinently observed (1907, 165), ‘Boys will regard Sophocles as a kind of enlightened bishop, and something tells me they are wrong.’ A portrait by the fifth-century BC painter Polygnotus, depicting the playwright playing the lyre in the company of Melpomene and Asclepius, was exhibited in the Painted Stoa in Athens. The epitaph on his tomb described him as ‘first in the writing of tragedies’. His reputation remained high in the fourth century BC and celebrated actors such as Polus and Theodorus included his works in their repertoires. Sophocles was the first of the tragedians whose works were printed by Aldus Manutius (1502). Over the next forty years editions appeared in Florence (1522), Paris (1529), the Hague (1534) and Frankfurt (1544). The Academicians of Vicenza chose Oedipus the King for the inauguration of their theatre in 1585. Sophocles’ reputation was extremely high among nineteenth-century German philosophers and poets, who regarded Antigone as his supreme masterpiece. In Concerning Female Characters in Greek Drama Freidrich von Schlegel wrote that in him Greek poetry ‘reached the utmost limit of its powers’, and in History of Old and New Literature that he ‘stands supreme not only in drama, but in the entirety of Greek poetry and spiritual development.’ Shelley, sent down from Oxford for atheism, drowned with a copy of Sophocles’ plays in his pocket. Coleridge declared that he was the ‘most perfect’ of the three tragedians (Table Talk, 1 July 1833). Christian moralists were predictably at odds with him, not least for the plot of Oedipus the King, which they found repulsive in its details and unedifying in its outcome. In 1844 the Anglican clergyman and poet John Keble, claiming to be ‘a careful student of Sophocles’, protested that he had been unable to detect ‘any one deep feeling and pervading passion running through the whole of his work’ (Lecture 28 [quoted in Dawe 1996, 226]). In an essay entitled ‘The Antigone and its moral’ (1856) George Eliot described Sophocles as ‘the single dramatic poet who can be said to stand on a level with Shakespeare’. Matthew Arnold, fighting a rearguard action against cultural anarchy, canonised him as the man who ‘saw life steadily and saw it whole’. Productions of Antigone and, later, of Oedipus the King were instrumental in paving the way for the entry of Greek tragedy onto the modern stage, though the latter was banned from the English stage for a quarter of a century on grounds of indecency (1886-1912). Sophocles continues to polarise modern critics, some seeing him as pious and conventional, others as a humanist with a strong pessimistic

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Introduction streak. As Easterling (1985, 296) has observed, he ‘undergoes transformation with every new book that is written about him’. Euripides (either 485/4 or 480 to 406 BC) was the least successful of the three dramatists, winning only four times during his lifetime and once posthumously. He has none the less fared far better than the other two, with 18 plays (one of them a satyr play) surviving out of a total output of about 92 (Suda s.v.). Aristotle, hardly his greatest admirer, accorded him the title ‘tragikôtatos’ (‘most tragic’). The claim made by comic poets and the anonymous Life that Euripides was helped in the writing of his plays by Sophocles is undoubtedly false. He is said to have composed in a cave on the island of Salamis, where his father owned an estate. Archaeological evidence which has recently come to light is alleged to corroborate this claim. He is not known to have held any public office. It was Euripides, more than any other dramatist, who brought Attic tragedy to the attention of a panhellenic audience. Andromache received its first performance abroad (scholion on line 445), and later the poet visited Magnesia in Thessaly ‘where he was honoured by an ambassadorship (proxenia) and exemption from taxes’ (Life 22). In 408 BC, following the production of Orestes, he received an invitation to reside permanently at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon. It was here that Euripides produced the non-extant Archelaus, seeking to legitimise Archelaus’ somewhat shaky dynastic claims by identifying his eponymous ancestor as a descendant of Heracles (Life 21-5). Notwithstanding Laches’ claim in Plato’s dialogue of that name that ‘anyone who thinks he can write a good tragedy does not dash around performing it in city states outside Attica but hastens here and performs it in Athens – and with good reason’ (183ab), the invitation to perform his plays outside Attica is proof of Euripides’ international repute. He is alleged to have been torn apart by Molossian hunting dogs, a fate that mirrored – and was undoubtedly based on – his description of the dismemberment of the disbeliever Pentheus in Bacchae. He was buried near Arethusa in Macedonia. Gellius (Attic Nights 15.20.10) reports that the Athenian delegates who subsequently arrived in Macedon to claim his remains were denied their request. The author of the Life asserts that Euripides was ‘hated by the Athenians’ – a claim that probably derives partly from his indifferent record in the dramatic contests and partly from his decision to withdraw from Athens at the end of his life. Euripides was the constant butt of humour at the hands of the comic poets. In Aristophanes’ Frogs he is repeatedly described as ‘sophos’, a word which denotes not only wisdom but also technical accomplishment of a flashy, suspect kind. The most cutting comment of all, however, is the one which Aristophanes puts into the mouth of Aeschylus to the effect that ‘his plays had died with him’ (line 868f.). If taken seriously, this would constitute the worst literary judgement ever made. From comments in the plays, as well as from his association with the

9

Introduction sophists Protagoras and Anaxagoras, it has been suspected that Euripides was an atheist. A late tradition alleges that he was indicted for impiety. Plutarch (Lycurgus 31.5) attempted to refute this by claiming that his tomb was struck by lightning ‘which only happened previously to the most beloved of the gods and the most pious of men’. Whatever his religious beliefs or lack thereof, Euripides was a product of the sophistic age and his plays are charged with the intellectual controversies of the time. The Life also describes him as a ‘hater of women’, a view that has only finally been debunked in the twentieth century. Indeed few dramatists have explored the female psyche with greater sensitivity. Jebb (1894, 209) commented, ‘no one has shown a finer appreciation of feminine tenderness or feminine strength’. Knox (1985, 329) said, ‘Euripides’ characters shattered the polite fiction about female docility which both men and women (in Athens) paid lip service to.’ Notwithstanding Euripides’ alleged unpopularity in Athens, his reputation soon became the stuff of legend. Plutarch (Nicias 29.2) tells us that the Sicilians ‘more than any other Greeks living outside mainland Greece’ developed a pothos (‘yearning’) for his verses and that some of the Athenians who were taken prisoner after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition owed their release to the fact that they had memorised his verses. Athens allegedly escaped destruction at the hands of the Peloponnesians in 404 BC owing to a moving recitation from his Electra (Plutarch, Lysander 15.3). The tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse acquired Euripides’ pen, writing-tablets and harp, in the hope that these would inspire his own indifferent poetic efforts. From the fourth century BC onwards Euripides has consistently been the tragedian of popular choice, as demonstrated by the quantity of theatrical revivals, vase-paintings inspired by his works, papyri containing fragments of his poetry, plays modelled on his plots, quotations found in later authors, and so forth. His influence was pervasive upon the tragedians of the Roman Republic. No fewer than 24 plays are said to owe their inspiration to his works, including 13 of the 15 plays of Ennius. The Stoic philosopher Dio Chrysostom gave precedence to Euripides before any other tragedian, as did the orator and literary critic Quintilian. Early Christian theologians, such as Clement of Alexandria, admired him for his gnômai (maxims). Dante, who passed over Aeschylus and Sophocles in silence, named him among the great poets of Greece. Euripides was the first of the Attic tragedians to be translated into Latin, the first to appear in print, and the first to be performed on the stage. He has been aptly described as ‘the Greek influence on French humanists’ (Stone 1974, 74). Racine, who was a master of tragic pathos, can be considered his disciple, and his Phèdre, based on Medea, represents the high-point of French neo-classicism. It is Euripides’ influence that predominates in John Milton’s Samson Agonistes, which arguably is closer in spirit to Greek tragedy than any

10

Introduction other work in the English language. Christoph Gluck turned three of his plays into operas, namely Alcestis (1767), Iphigeneia at Aulis (1774), and Iphigeneia among the Taurians (1779). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe went so far as to state that all the nations of the world had not produced a single dramatist ‘who was worthy to hand Euripides his slippers’ (Diary 22 Nov. 1831). Goethe’s, however, was a lone voice throughout most of the nineteenth century, particularly in Germany where Euripides’ plays were regarded as representing a marked decline from the classical ideal achieved by Aeschylus and Sophocles. Among his most outspoken critics were the brothers A.W. and K.W.F. von Schlegel, who disparaged the lack of unity in the dramatic structure of his plays and deplored his emphasis upon the emotional side of human behaviour. The essayist and historian Lord Macaulay judged him to be ‘the vilest poet that ever put pen to paper’, though in later life he confessed that Euripides had ‘made a complete conquest of him’ (quoted in Jenkyns 1980, 107). The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy (1872) branded him as the representative of ‘aesthetic Socratism’ (ch. 12). The poet Algernon Swinburne (1893, 252) described him as ‘the dreariest of playwrights’ and ‘the clumsiest of botchers’. The scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff in his valedictory essay castigated him for being ‘a middling poet and a poor tragedian’ (cited in Fowler 1990, 493). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, Euripides’ reputation underwent rehabilitation. It is the recollection of ‘a chorus-ending from Euripides’ that is sufficient to shake a man’s disbelief in God, according to Bishop Blougram in Robert Browning’s poem of that name (line 184). His wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning affectionately described him as ‘our Euripides, the human, with his drippings of warm tears’ (Wine of Cyprus 12). One of the most influential re-interpretations was that of A.W. Verrall (1895), who pointed up the perceived weaknesses of Euripidean dramaturgy in order to advance the hypothesis that the true meaning of the plays was discernible only to that element of the audience which was in sympathy with his unorthodox views. Gilbert Murray, who saw him as an agnostic and a promoter of social justice not unlike himself, noted (1918, 1) that Euripides was ‘even to this day treated almost as a personal enemy by scholars of orthodox and conformist minds’. Dodds (1944, xlvi) wrote, ‘There was never a writer who more conspicuously lacked the propagandist’s faith in easy and complete solutions.’ Knox (1979, 354) praised him for ‘that irresistible and unbearable assault upon the emotions that was Euripides’ special skill and that made him, in his own time, a poet greatly loved but also feared.’

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1

Readers and Star-Actors From the late fifth century onwards, texts of the tragedies began to circulate among the Greek reading public, which meant that their fate was no longer dependent upon the verdict of the judges in the annual competitions. In the following century the Athenians began to elevate Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the level of cultural icons. One important step in this direction was the re-performance of what was classified as ‘old tragedy’ on an annual basis at the City Dionysia. Somewhat later they placed on public record an official version of these works in order to secure them against corruption. In addition, lines and passages of Greek tragedy came to fulfil a multitude of functions in a variety of discourses, as they would continue to do throughout antiquity. If we concede that the fifth century BC witnessed what was perhaps the greatest efflorescence of tragedy that the world has ever known, it follows that everything subsequent is Nachleben. With the probable exception of Rhesus, not a single Greek tragedy survives from the fourth century, and the remnants from later periods are even more meagre. The loss of fourth-century tragedy should not, however, blind us to the fact that the genre continued to flourish, and we should be extremely wary of consigning ‘new tragedy’ to the ash heap of history merely because it was overshadowed by its illustrious predecessor. Though non-Athenian playwrights such as Ion of Chios and Achaeus of Eretria competed in dramatic festivals in the fifth century, their number now increases considerably, as does the prominence of non-Athenian actors as travelling players, who came to develop their own repertoires. By 300 BC tragedy had become a truly panhellenic enterprise and the plays were being staged throughout the Greek-speaking world, the most popular venues being southern Italy and Sicily. It is also possible that the theatre gradually lost something of its intimate tie with religion, since dramatic stagings now began to assume the identity of an art form tout court. Finally, the jottings of Aristotle which go under the name of the Art of Poetry constitute the earliest surviving attempt to define tragedy as a genre and to subject the plays to critical analysis. Their argument and presentation are indisputably predicated upon the availability of written texts for consultation. In conclusion, many factors contributed to the transmission of our extant plays in this period, in addition, of course, to the transmission of

13

Surviving Greek Tragedy numerous others no longer extant, including their use in education, their continuing popularity on the stage, their value as a point of cultural reference in formal and informal discourse, and their interest for the literary critic. The author’s autograph It is impossible to determine how many copies of a tetralogy (i.e. three tragedies and a satyr play) might have existed prior to a first performance. It is conceivable, however, that only the two (or later) three actors, the chorus leader, and the playwright possessed a text. The Eponymous Archon who determined which three tetralogies should be produced at the City Dionysia and the chorêgoi who financed them may also have been provided with copies, or they may have been content with a written (or even an oral) summary. It has been suggested that a copy of the sponsored plays was lodged in the public record office known as the Metroön in the Agora, but had this been the case it is difficult to see why there would have been a need to pass a decree ordering the establishment of an official text. Moreover, since the writing of plays tended to run in families – the relatives and descendants of Aeschylus being the most conspicuous example of this tendency – it is not improbable that copies were retained in the family archives. Written texts probably first became available to the public in the final decades of the fifth century. The comic poet Eupolis (fl. 420s-412 BC) alludes to a part of the Agora ‘where the books are on sale’ (fr. 327 Kassel-Austin). At his trial in 399 BC Socrates (Apology 26de) allegedly inquired, ‘Do you think that the jury is so illiterate as to be unaware that the books of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae are full of theories like these … – books which they can buy whenever they like in the orchestra [in the Agora] for a drachma at most?’ The only fifth-century reference to a written text of tragedy occurs in Aristophanes’ Frogs (line 54), where Dionysus mentions that he has been reading Euripides’ Andromeda during service as a marine in the Athenian navy. Even though the suggestion that Athenian marines had either the time or the inclination to read tragedies may be intentionally preposterous, we can at least conclude that by 406 BC at the latest texts of the plays were available on the open market. The earliest evidence for private libraries also dates to the end of the fifth century. Aristophanes, who has been described as ‘the first individual in European history whose private library can be catalogued in reasonable detail’ (Lowe 1993, 71), is thought to have possessed a substantial collection of tragedies because of the numerous allusions in his comedies to the tragedians.* Euripides, whom our sources depict as an avid reader *Aristophanes cites from 45 tragedies of Euripides, 21 of Aeschylus, and 17 of Sophocles. He also cites from two plays of Achaeus, one of Agathon, two of Ion of Chios, and one of Xenocles. See Rau (1967, 213-18).

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1. Readers and Star-Actors (Aristophanes Frogs 943, 1409; Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 1.3a), almost certainly owned a library of the works of his fellow-tragedians. Aristotle’s Art of Poetry, as we have noted, implies access to a large collection of tragedies. Finally, Alexander the Great is said to have ordered ‘many of the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus’ to be sent to him when he was campaigning in regions where no books were available (Plutarch, Alexander 8.3). Such individuals were no doubt exceptional, however, and the reading public, certainly in the late fifth and early fourth century, both in Athens and elsewhere, was probably limited to a small coterie of intellectuals, who may have been regarded with some suspicion by the unbookish majority. The commonest writing material throughout most of antiquity was papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), which had been used for this purpose in Egypt and Mesopotamia from 3000 BC onwards. Book rolls were produced by laying out stalks of papyri in parallel horizontal strips, over which a second layer was placed vertically. The strips were then pressed together and pounded with a flat stone so that they bonded together with the aid of their natural juices (Fig. 1). The average roll was some ten inches high and could accommodate about 1500 lines, with between 25 and 45 lines per column. It was read by unfolding with the right hand and re-rolling with the left (Fig. 2). In order to re-read the roll, therefore, the reader (or more likely a slave) had to ‘unroll’ the papyrus back to the beginning. The reading of a tragic text called for literacy of the highest order, since there were no word-divisions, no breathings and no accents (a written system of accents had not yet been invented). The majority of Greeks probably had to read aloud in order to decipher any written text, whether a book roll or an inscription. This may explain why word-division was deemed superfluous, though the high cost of papyrus may also have militated against ‘wasteful’ gaps. Probably, too, there were no punctuation marks. Though the iambic passages – that is to say, the spoken parts of the drama – were arranged in lines of verse just as in a modern text of Greek tragedy, it seems likely that the choral passages were initially written out in continuous lines like prose, irrespective of their verse structure, and that the practice of arranging them in the form of metrical cola was not introduced until the middle of the third century BC. A further challenge was the frequent omission of speakers’ names. In fact we do not even know for certain whether the double-dot (or dicolon), which indicates a change of speaker in later papyri, was in regular use from the beginning. If it was not, then most readers would probably have seen the play in performance themselves or else have studied it with someone who had. We know almost nothing about the mechanics of the Athenian book trade, but there is likely to have been a flurry of commercial activity immediately after the annual competitions to produce sufficient copies of the winning plays. Even so, though much may have initially depended upon the allocation of prizes, the judgement of the jury was not decisive in

15

Surviving Greek Tragedy

Fig. 1. Sheet of papyrus showing vertical and horizontal ribbons.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors

Fig. 2. Vase-painting depicting Sappho reading her book roll (Athens, second half of the fifth century BC).

guaranteeing survival in the long term. Many extant plays failed to win first prize. The earliest is Euripides’ Medea (431 BC), which came third. Thereafter at least two-thirds of our surviving corpus failed to win first prize. Multiple copies were probably produced by dictating to a room full of slaves, though even the largest ‘run’ would have been minute by modern standards. Commercial enterprises were extremely small in the Greek world, and there is no reason to suppose that the book trade was in any way exceptional. Papyri in frequent use had a limited life expectancy, and in order to remain in constant circulation texts had to be copied frequently. Anthologies containing excerpts from plays (known as kephalaia) also went on sale in the fourth century, particularly those including gnômai or maxims, initiating an important and long-lasting trend (cf. Isocrates 2.44; Plato, Laws 7.811a).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy There is at least one piece of evidence to suggest that playwrights were directly involved in the distribution and sale of their own works. We are told, for instance, that whenever the comic poet Anaxandrides (fl. 376-349 BC) failed to win first prize, he collected up all the copies of his plays on sale and ‘gave them to the incense seller to be cut up as wrapping’ (Chamaeleon of Heracleia in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 9.374ab). Whether Anaxandrides acted out of pique or injured pride, his tactic can have had little practical effect, for once even a single copy of a work was in circulation there was no way to prevent the sale of ‘unofficial’ versions, some of which may have contained actors’ interpolations (see below, p. 25). This is suggested by the fact that the terms most commonly applied to ‘publishing’ in the Greek world were ekdidonai and ekdôsis, which, as van Groningen (1963, 25) pointed out, ‘imply that the author “abandons” his work to the public’ (quoted in Easterling 1995, 20). Fifth-century tragedy in fourth-century discourse An important reason for the durability of Greek tragedy throughout history was the fact that from early on it began to infiltrate popular discourse in a variety of ways. There is evidence to indicate that the study of tragic verse constituted part of an Athenian school curriculum. For instance, the sophist Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue of that name (325e326a) states: When boys have learnt the alphabet and are ready to comprehend written works … the teachers set the works of good poets before them on their desks so they can read them and they make them learn them by heart – ones which contain much advice and many stories and panegyrics and encomia about good men of former times, so that the child becomes eager to imitate them and longs to be like them.

On a priori grounds we should expect ‘the works of good poets’ to include passages from tragedy. According to the comic poet Alexis, Heracles’ schoolteacher Linus had a substantial library that included books of tragedy, which he made available to his pupils (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.164b). Finally, in Aristophanes’ Clouds the dyed-in-the-wool Strepsiades complains that when he asked his son Pheidippides to ‘recite something from Aeschylus’, the latter, after heaping abuse on Aeschylus for being incoherent and bombastic, proceeded to deliver a rhêsis (‘speech’) from Euripides which dealt with an incestuous relationship between a half-brother and half-sister (lines 1353-72). The choice of the word ‘rhêsis’ suggests that a well-educated youth might have committed to memory not only the lyric passages of tragedy but also the iambics. Pheidippides’ reaction further implies that the subject matter of Aeschylean lyrics was no longer fashionable with the younger generation at the end of the fifth

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1. Readers and Star-Actors century and that Euripides was now all the rage. As we know from elsewhere, a large number of Athenians could recite by heart the lyric passages of Euripides’ plays (see above, p. 10), though to what extent this practice extended to Aeschylus and Sophocles, or indeed to other tragedians, is unclear. The agonistic speeches of Greek tragedy, being analogous to those which were delivered in the Ecclesia and the lawcourts, were models of imitation in the teaching of oratory and thus constituted an important feature of a citizen’s education. Euripides’ pre-eminence in this regard is suggested by Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric, which contains 17 quotations from his works, but only five from Sophocles and none from Aeschylus. When still learning the craft of oratory, Demosthenes is said to have engaged the services of famous actors such as Neoptolemus, Andronicus and Satyrus, and it would be strange indeed if his teachers had not required him to learn passages from tragedy ([Plutarch] Moralia 844f-845b; Plutarch, Demosthenes 7). Extracts from fifth-century tragedy were occasionally used to advocate civic ideals and demonstrate patriotism in politically motivated trials. For instance, the conservative statesman Lycurgus in Against Leocrates (336 BC) recites the entirety of Praxithea’s famous patriotic speech from Euripides’ lost play Erechtheus, prefacing it with the following assertion (1.100): For this reason we should justly praise Euripides because, apart from his other merits as a poet, he chose this story as the subject of his drama, believing that the actions of these characters would furnish an excellent example of citizenship, which they could look back on and contemplate, and which would accustom their hearts to love of their country.

To drive the point home, Lycurgus concludes with the comment, ‘On these lines, men of Athens, your fathers were brought up’ (101). His purpose in quoting from Euripides was evidently to appropriate the support of a venerated national figure, in much the same way as a US President might quote from Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. The works of the tragedians now became an integral part of the concept of paideia, which was to instil in the rising generation a consciousness of the same values that their fifth-century forebears had displayed when Athens’ power was at its height (Humphreys 1985, 216). As Wilson (1996, 315) has pointed out, however, this ‘idealisation of tragedy as a monumental icon of lost value’ ignores the intense questioning of received values that is a distinctive hallmark of tragedy. Euripides, in particular, might justifiably have objected to the use of his speeches to promote the ideals of self-sacrifice and patriotism, which suggests a highly reductive interpretation of his plays. Lycurgus was not alone in implicating the tragedians in the furtherance of his political aims. Aeschines quotes twice from Euripides in Against Timarchus (1.154), and his opponent Demosthenes recites at length from Sophocles’ Antigone in On the Embassy (19.247). Though the tragedians

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Surviving Greek Tragedy were not the only authors to be cited in support of a political or forensic agenda, their ranking alongside Homer, Hesiod, Tyrtaeus, Simonides and other ‘worthies’ indicates that they were fast acquiring the status of classics. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that orators had to tread a fine line in order to avoid alienating their audiences by laying themselves open to the charge of cultural élitism. Although there would have been no point in quoting from tragedy unless a majority of the audience could recognise the source, some Athenians might not have appreciated being reminded ‘that the orator was an educated expert who possessed abilities and training that set him above the average citizen’ (Ober and Strauss 1990, 250). Demosthenes (19.250), for instance, chides his political opponent Aeschines for ‘hunting down a verse which you never delivered on stage in order to trick the citizenry’. General references to the plots of Greek tragedy should be treated with caution as evidence of the popularity of fifth-century drama. For instance, when Andocides in On the Mysteries disparagingly refers to the offspring of his opponent Callias as ‘an Oedipus or an Aegisthus’ (129), we are not entitled to assume that he had plays by Sophocles and Aeschylus in mind – or that he was necessarily thinking of tragedy at all. The ability to quote rhêseis, including no doubt those from tragedy, was judged to be an important accomplishment of educated guests at a symposium (Theophrastus, Characters 15.10, 27.2). Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle, describes a word game in which the first player recited a verse from poetry and the second had to cap it by quoting the next line; and another in which one player recited a passage of poetry and the next had to provide an instance from another poet who had spoken to similar effect (e.g. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12.537d). Such games would be eminently well-suited to the iambics of tragedy. It is also possible that dramatised readings of tragedies occasionally took place at symposia, as later was the case in Roman times. Finally, it is highly probable that maxims from tragedy were cited in everyday speech, as we see from Plato’s dialogues. Even though they were frequently quoted without attribution and perhaps without knowledge of the original context, rather as Shakespeare is today (Green and Handley 1995, 94), the dissemination of famous tags demonstrates the perennial usefulness of the genre in antiquity as a storehouse of wise saws and modern instances, a function which was to prove extremely important for its survival up until the advent of printing. Fourth-century tragedy The prominence of fifth-century tragedy in fourth-century discourse raises inevitable questions about the status and health of fourth-century tragedy. At the beginning of Aristophanes’ Frogs, Dionysus, who is on the point of

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1. Readers and Star-Actors descending to Hades in search of ‘a clever (dexios) poet’, asserts that ‘all the good poets are dead and those who are still alive are worthless’ (lines 71ff.). When Heracles suggests that Sophocles’ son Iophon shows some merit, Dionysus replies that only time will tell whether he is capable of writing without the assistance of his deceased father. Heracles’ next choice, Agathon, is described by Dionysus as ‘a decent (agathos) poet who will be missed by his friends’, with an obvious pun on his name. His third choice, Xenocles, is cursed, and Pythangelus, the fourth, dismissed without comment. Dionysus rejects all the rest as ‘leafage and chatterations who disappear double-quick after their first chorus, having pissed on tragedy the first time around’ (lines 92-5). The premiss underlying Aristophanes’ comic fantasy – that by 405 BC Greek tragedy was spiritually defunct and could only be revived by exhuming a dead poet – has had a long run for its money. Sixty years ago Kitto, alluding to the fact that Oedipus at Colonus (401 BC) may be the last extant Attic tragedy (1939, 397f.), wrote: ‘Tragedy comes home to die … at Colonus the birthplace of Sophocles, not two miles from the Theatre of Dionysus.’ Many other scholars have adopted a similar view. Lucas (1959, 560), for instance, recalling the anecdote that Sophocles dressed his chorus in mourning to commemorate the death of Euripides, observed wistfully, ‘Perhaps he suspected that their black clothes could well symbolise grief not only for the death of a great poet … but mourning for tragedy itself.’ Similarly Knox (1985, 342) declared Dionysus’ estimate of the state of tragedy in Frogs to be ‘prophetic’. Such judgements seriously underestimate the popularity, if not the quality, of fourth-century tragedy. Scholars such as Easterling (1993; 1997a) have therefore probed beneath the facile schematisation which depicts Greek tragedy as growing from the raw material of Aeschylus into the perfected humanistic grace of Sophocles before being transformed into the mannered decadence of Euripides, whereupon (gasp!) it peacefully expired. For manifestly tragedy did not die at Colonus in 401 BC. Indeed if the sheer quantity of plays that were being produced is anything to go by, it continued with undiminished vigour. The anecdote about the young Plato burning, on Socrates’ suggestion, a tragedy that he had written for performance at the festival of Dionysus further testifies to the influence and importance of the genre as seen through the eyes of one of its severest critics (Diogenes Laertius 3.5; Aelian, Variae Historiae 2.30). In fact Greek tragedy survived into the fifth century AD, and, as the titles of plays indicate, heroic subjects and the more familiar myths continued to provide their staple diet (TGF I, nos 199-200). A characteristic of fourth-century tragedy is a marked increase in the complexity of plot structure, which became more and more dependent upon devices that are commonplace in late-Euripidean drama, namely multiple reversals, coincidence and character development. The prevalent mood now seems to have become one of escapism. Xanthakis-Karamanos

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Surviving Greek Tragedy (1980, 41) has suggested that this was because life had become so miserable that audiences ‘could hardly face true tragedies’. Accordingly, what the playwrights offered was second-rate melodrama, which, though providing a temporary distraction, had no staying power as literature. Second-guessing the collective ‘mood’ of a community is, however, a hazardous enterprise. It was, after all, the twentieth century, hardly short of its own horrors, which witnessed an unparalleled resurgence of Greek tragedy on the stage. At least three tragedians of renown were active in the earlier part of the fourth century BC: the younger Carcinus, the younger Astydamas and Theodectes. Together they composed some 450 plays. The Athenians so admired Astydamas’ Parthenopaeus that they erected a statue of the playwright in the Theatre of Dionysus (TGF I, no. 60 T8b) – some ten years before they accorded the same honour to the great three (see below). It seems likely that Astydamas’ Hector was still being read in the third and second centuries BC (TGF I, no. 60 T9). Aristotle in Art of Poetry treats fourth-century tragedy as fully the equal of its fifthcentury predecessor, commending in particular Astydamas’ Alcmaeon, Carcinus’ Thyestes, and Theodectes’ Lynceus and Tydeus. The fact that Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, won a victory for his tragedy at the Lenaea in 367 BC also indicates the repute of the genre and in particular its popularity in Sicily, since Dionysius would hardly have bothered to put himself forward, had not the prize conferred considerable international prestige (Mette 1977, 146). Moreover, interest in theatrical entertainments burgeoned in the fourth century, as instanced by the fact that theatres now accommodated larger audiences than ever before. A huge theatre was built at Megalopolis – the biggest in Greece according to Pausanias (2.27.5) – in the 360s BC. The theatre in Athens underwent major reconstruction in the 330s BC, a fact which, as Cartledge (1997, 35) notes, ‘bespeaks a determined conviction of the likely central importance of drama to Athens (as to the rest of Greece) for the foreseeable future’. Aigeira, Dion, Eretria, Elis, Isthmia, Lato, Maroneia, Orchomenos, Trachones and Vergina, among other communities, acquired theatrical structures in the fourth century (Green 1989, 21-2). By the end of the third century most major cities and sanctuaries had their own theatres, including such out-of-the-way places as Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan and Salmous on the border between southern Pakistan and Iran (Revermann 2000, 457). Though performances of tragedy, both new and old, were only one of a number of varied public events that were staged in these multi-functional structures, there is epigraphical evidence to indicate that festival productions were common throughout the Greek-speaking world.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors Revivals of ‘old tragedy’ From 387 BC it became an annual custom to revive an ‘old tragedy’, i.e. one of the works of the fifth-century tragedians, at the City Dionysia and possibly also at the Lenaea. By the second half of the fourth century the further step was taken of performing an ‘old tragedy’ as a prelude to a production of new plays. By what administrative process a particular tragedy was selected for revival is unclear, though it is not improbable that descendants of ‘old’ tragedians were instrumental in promoting the works of their ancestors, particularly as so many were dramatists themselves. Submissions may have been made to the Eponymous Archon, as was the case with new tragedies. A further impetus for revivals probably derived from the actors, who increasingly came to develop their own repertoires, consistent with an enhancement of their political and social status (see below). The most celebrated may have volunteered their own choices when they entered into contracts with foreign cities or individuals. It is unclear to what extent an ‘old tragedy’ would have been invested with a contemporary interpretation and provided with up-to-date staging, though it is not improbable that the decision to revive a particular play was in large part based on its perceived relevance and topicality. Epigraphical, literary and iconographical data all provide evidence of revivals. Especially valuable is an inscription found on the south side of the Acropolis known as the Didascaliae, which gives a record of performances of tragedy and comedy at the City Dionysia and Lenaea. Its modern title stems from the belief that the records are connected with a lost work of this name compiled by Aristotle (frr. 618-30 Rose). The name derives from the fact that the poet was said ‘to teach’ (didaskein) his drama in his capacity as its producer. The extant portion of the inscription covers the years from 472 to 328 BC. Each year’s entry begins with the name of the Eponymous Archon. This is followed by those of the victorious poet and his fellow competitors, alongside the titles of their plays, which are listed in order of success. The names of the protagonists (or main actors) are also inscribed. The entry concludes with the name of the victorious actor. In 341 BC Euripides’ Iphigeneia (we do not know whether it was at Aulis or among the Taurians) was revived at the City Dionysia. The next year Orestes was revived and the year after that another Euripidean drama whose title is not preserved. The Didascaliae reveal that by 340 BC the competition between the new tragedies took place after the satyric drama and old tragedy had been performed, and that each dramatist now competed with only two plays instead of three. Needless to say, they do not offer any suggestion as to what may have prompted these changes. In addition, revivals of old tragedy continued to take place in deme theatres throughout Attica in the fourth century, as they had done in the fifth. We hear, for instance, of revivals of Sophocles’ Antigone, Euripides’ Phoenix (Demosthenes 19.246),

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Surviving Greek Tragedy and of Aeschylus’ Propompoi or Escorts (Alciphron, Letters of Parasites 3.12.1). The division between contemporary practitioners of the art and their illustrious predecessors has been justly regarded as marking the first step towards the establishment of a dramatic repertoire that ultimately came to form the basis of all subsequent productions of Greek tragedy. It has also been unfairly adduced as evidence of the decline in the quality of fourthcentury drama. More plausibly, however, it is an indication of the increasing professionalism of the Greek theatre, since actors were now beginning to specialise in the playing of ‘star’ roles (see below). Even so, it seems inevitable that the division did in time come to have a constraining effect upon the labours of contemporary poets, by establishing a standard which in Baldry’s words (1978, 131) ‘must be copied by all but could be equalled by none’. An anecdote relating to the younger Astydamas suggests that he and his peers may well have come to resent the fact that their productions were compared unfavourably with those of their predecessors. On the base of the bronze statue which was erected in his honour in the theatre of Dionysus, Astydamas is said to have composed the following epigram (TGF I, no. 60 T2a): I wish that I had been living when they were alive or that they were living in my time – the ones who are reckoned to be the first in giving pleasure through language – for truly I would have been reckoned as competing side by side, whereas now they have the start on me, and envy does not follow them.

Even if the anecdote is apocryphal, it none the less reveals an acute awareness of the sensitivity that tragic poets came to feel in respect to their craft. Moreover, the fact that Astydamas was elevated above his contemporaries by being put on a pedestal alongside, if not on the same level as, the great three, merely adds to its poignancy. Towards the formation of a repertoire Although Demosthenes poured scorn on his rival Aeschines for being a tritagonist – what we might call today a bit-part player – and, to add to the insult, one who belonged to an inferior troupe of actors dubbed ‘Roarers’ or barustonoi (19.246-50), there is compelling evidence to indicate that the prestige of the acting profession was increasing in the fourth century in line with the rise in popularity of Athenian drama throughout the Greek world. Some fourth-century actors enjoyed the respect of the Macedonian monarchy, whereas others amassed large fortunes and had their portraits painted by leading artists, though Aristotle’s assertion (Rhetoric 1403b31-5) that actors ‘were now more important (meizon dunantai) than poets in the poetic contests’ is likely to have applied only to a select few.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors The increased prestige of the acting profession undoubtedly had a beneficial effect upon the fortunes of old tragedy. Timotheus of Zacynthus, who is thought to have flourished around the turn of the fifth century, was so celebrated for his rendition of Ajax’s suicide that he was given the name Sphageus or ‘Slayer’ (scholion on Sophocles, Ajax 864). Polus, a contemporary of Demosthenes, was famed for his interpretations of Oedipus in Sophocles’ two plays of this name (Stobaeus, Florilegium 522 [97.48]). Allusions to the tragedians in comic writers from the late-fifth century onwards have been adduced as evidence for the popularity of individual plays among the theatre-going public, on the sensible grounds that they would not have served any comic purpose unless a sizeable proportion of the audience recognised their source (Pertusi 1956, 122-6). Aristophanes, as we noted earlier, cites from 45 dramas of Euripides, most frequently from Telephus, Helen, Andromeda, Medea, Hippolytus, Bellerophon, Alcestis and Sthenoboea. Menander cites from about 40 of his plays, with Hippolytus, Orestes, Medea, Antiope, Ion, Andromache, Alcestis and Phoenician Women heading the list. Whatever value we put on such statistics, we should, however, bear in mind that the tragedies most commonly quoted by comic writers are likely to have been those which were susceptible to parody. The argument from frequency must therefore be treated with caution. As a result of its popularity in performance, old tragedy now became subject to actors’ interpolations. (Indeed it is conceivable that interpolations were already being introduced in the fifth-century revivals that took place in deme theatres.) There are many reasons why an actor might have interpolated a line or a whole passage. For instance, he might have ‘updated’ a play in light of current events, given clarification to an otherwise obscure passage, or, last but not least, expanded a speech in order to demonstrate his histrionic talents to greater advantage. It is generally agreed that the endings of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and Euripides’ Phoenician Women suffered particularly severely, as did Euripides’ Descendants of Heracles throughout. The extant play which probably contains the most interpolations is Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis, an indication of its popularity in the fourth century, though some may be of later date. But while it is true that the tragedies may well have ‘sustained more damage in the first century of their existence than in the following twenty-three altogether’ (Csapo and Slater 1995,1), it remains doubtful whether an actor’s interpolations have modified any play in a way that fatally distorts the text. The Lycurgan version To counter the tendency mentioned above, some time between 340 and 336 BC Lycurgus of Boutadae introduced a law to the effect that:

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Surviving Greek Tragedy the tragedies [of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides] be written down and kept in the public treasury (en koinôi) and that the state secretary (ton tês poleôs) read them out to the actors and that they are not permitted to act other than in accordance with these texts ([Plutarch], Moralia 841).

This ruling, which amounted to a kind of official canonisation, may be said to mark an important advance in the immortalisation of our extant tragedies. It also furnishes compelling evidence of the imminent threat which actors’ interpolations were seen to pose to the integrity of the texts. Indeed it is not inconceivable that if Lycurgus’ bill had not been passed precisely at this moment, the plays might have suffered irreparably. The

Fig. 3. Marble head, possibly of Aeschylus.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors

Fig. 4. Marble head of Sophocles, possibly deriving from the statue erected by Lycurgus (c. 340-330 BC).

bill also included a provision to the effect that bronze statues of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides be set up in the Theatre of Dionysus. Though the originals have not survived, some of the later copies may derive from prototypes which were contemporary with the originals (Figs 3-5). The elevation of fifth-century tragedy was consistent with other reforms introduced by Lycurgus and his supporters as part of a highly conservative political agenda whose aim was to revive the image of Athens’ glorious Periclean past. The emphasis upon the theatre as an integral part of polis life was, moreover, one of its most enduring legacies (Humphreys 1985, 219). The establishment of the Lycurgan version poses a number of interesting questions. For instance, what arguments were advanced in the Ecclesia to limit the scope of the law to the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles

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Surviving Greek Tragedy

Fig. 5. Marble head of Euripides, probably deriving from the statue erected by Lycurgus (c. 340-330 BC).

and Euripides? Were the merits of any other tragedians advocated? Who was authorised to provide the state secretary with the ‘official’ version of the texts? What measures were taken if the law was violated? Were all the 300-odd plays protected or only a select number of ‘classics’? One thing at least seems certain. If a canon of plays had already begun to emerge, its existence was presumably due more to their popularity in performance than to a consensus on the part of the reading public, which still remained extremely small. Lycurgus’ law did not call for a recension of the texts based on the collation of papyri and an examination of variant readings, a scholarly refinement which is unlikely to have been conceived of by this date. It merely sought to prevent their further deterioration, not to restore them to their pristine condition. In other words, it had the limited aim of establishing a yardstick by which subsequent interpolations could be authoritatively rejected. Whether it was entirely successful in this aim seems, however, improbable. Certainly the eminently impracticable system of requiring the state secretary to read out the text to actors before they began rehearsing can have done little to guarantee theatrical adherence to the official version. And even if the law succeeded in curbing actors’ interpolations in Athens, its chances of controlling the bands of touring actors who performed elsewhere were negligible. We might at this point spare a thought for the fifth-century tragedians who had the misfortune to test their poetic skills against Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and for whom the passing of Lycurgus’ law

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1. Readers and Star-Actors constituted just one more nail in their respective coffins. They included Philocles, who wrote 100 plays and was victorious when Sophocles produced Oedipus the King; Neophron of Sicyon, who wrote 120 plays and was, according to the Suda, the first to introduce paidagôgoi (tutors) and the torture of slaves on stage; Achaeus, who was sometimes numbered among the top five tragedians; Ion of Chios, who also contended for a place in the top five; and, finally, Agathon, the most celebrated tragic poet outside the canonical three, whose victory celebration in 416 BC provides the setting for Plato’s Symposium. Perhaps the ghost of Ion of Chios was able to draw some crumb of comfort from the fact that his plays continued to be read in Roman times, although Longinus’ observation that ‘No one in his right mind would consider all of Ion’s works put together as the equivalent to Sophocles’ Oedipus’ makes all too clear by how wide a margin the best of them fell short of the very best (On the Sublime 33). ‘A huge longing for Euripides’ Though Aeschylus was accorded the singular honour of a decree passed shortly after his death permitting ‘anyone who wished’ to produce his plays at the City Dionysia, before the end of the fifth century he had already ceded place to Euripides in popularity. It is, after all, no less an authority than Dionysus, the patron god of drama, who in Aristophanes’ Frogs confesses that ‘a huge longing for Euripides is devouring me’ (lines 66-7), even though he ultimately awards the palm of victory to Aeschylus. Dionysus’ testimony apart, we know from other sources that by the time of his demise Euripides had attained greater celebrity than any other playwright living or dead. To begin with, the fact that he spent the last two years of his life at the court of Archelaus is proof not only of the high regard in which he was held throughout the Greek-speaking world during his lifetime, but also of the cultural prestige of Athenian tragedy abroad, since, as Revermann (2000, 454) has recently pointed out, his sojourn is clear evidence of ‘an attempt to dispel the stigma of cultural inferiority’ in Macedon’s quest for cultural self-assurance. Numerous anecdotes indicate that the lyric quality of Euripides’ poetry was well-nigh irresistible. Plutarch claims that when a bard from Phocis sang the opening chorus from Electra at a symposium attended by Peloponnesian delegates following Athens’ defeat at the battle of Aegospotami in 404 BC, the latter were so moved by the heart-rending description of the heroine’s plight that they refrained from destroying Athens on the grounds that it would have been an outrage to destroy ‘so great a city which produced so great men’ (Lysander 15.2-3). Plutarch also reports that the fourth-century tyrant Alexander of Pherae, who was not averse to having his opponents buried alive or sewn into the skins of wild boars, was so overcome by a rendition of Trojan Women that he was forced to leave the theatre before the play was over. He later sent his apologies to the actor,

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Surviving Greek Tragedy explaining that ‘it was not out of contempt for his acting that he had left the theatre but rather because he was ashamed to let the citizens see him, who had never pitied any of the men he had put to death, shedding tears over the sufferings of Hecuba and Andromache’ (Pelopidas 29.4-6). The orator Isocrates is said to have died declaiming the opening lines from Euripides’ Archelaus, Iphigeneia among the Taurians and Phrixus shortly after learning of Athens’ defeat at Chaeronea in 338 BC ([Plutarch], Moralia 837e). Alexander the Great, whom our sources depict as highly enamoured of Euripidean tragedy, recited from memory a speech from the lost Andromeda at his last banquet (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12.537d). The Sicilian tyrant Dionysius the Elder purchased Euripides’ harp, pen and writing tablets from his heirs and dedicated them in the Temple of the Muses in the forlorn hope that this act of homage would benefit his own lacklustre poetic efforts; he also acquired Aeschylus’ writing desk (Life of Euripides 9; Lucian, Adversus Indoctum 15). Finally, the satirist Lucian claims that during the reign of Lysimachus (323-281 BC) the people of Abdera in Thrace fell ill of a fever brought on by an emotionally overpowering production of Andromeda that took place during a heat-wave. They allegedly ‘went crazy with tragedy and shouted iambics and created an uproar, mostly singing solos from [the play]’ (How To Write History 1). Since the Abderites were famed for their stupidity, the story may have been intended in part as a comment upon their susceptibility to exaggerated displays of emotion. Though some of these anecdotes are likely to be apocryphal, the trope of the irresistibility of Euripidean poetry tells us much about its universal appeal. It is, moreover, amply substantiated by epigraphical evidence. As we have seen, it was Euripides’ plays that were successively chosen for revival at the City Dionysia in 341, 340 and 339 BC. Importantly, too, the repertoire of a travelling actor who specialised in old tragedy and set up an inscription in Tegea commemorating his victories in a number of highly prestigious dramatic contests was predominantly Euripidean: at the City Dionysia he won with Euripides’ Orestes; at the Soteria in Delphi with Heracles and Archestratus’ Antaeus; at the Heraea at Argos with Heracles and Archelaus; and at the Naia in Dodona with Archelaus and Chairemon’s Achilles (SIG3 1080; Csapo and Slater 1995, no. 163). Euripides’ elevation to the status of preferred tragedian in the fourth century seems all the more remarkable in light of his unorthodox viewpoint and his tendency to polarise audiences. In part, surely, it is due to the tenor of the new age which succeeded him and which in some measure he had helped to create. As Knox (1985, 339) has written, ‘The world became Euripidean as the chaos of fourth-century Greece paved the way for Macedonian conquest.’ At a time when the city states found themselves at the mercy of their Hellenistic rulers, audiences identified with characters who inveigh against the arbitrary exercise of power, such as we regularly encounter in his plays. In addition, the anti-authoritarian subject matter of his dramas must have fuelled keen debate about social and

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1. Readers and Star-Actors civic identity, as the claims of the city-state to exclusive allegiance increasingly came to be challenged. Finally, Euripides’ appeal may also have been due to the music which he composed, as well as to the fact that his lyrics and iambics readily adapt themselves to excerption. Tragedy illustrated No Greek ever bothered to record his impressions after attending a theatrical event, or if he did, his testimony has not survived. Nor has any actor left us an account of how he sought to interpret his role. There is no hint of a suggestion as to how, if at all, a playwright or producer might have attempted to invest his production with a specific interpretation. Vase-painting, however, does shed some light, albeit a very hazy one, upon performances of tragedy, though scholars are sharply divided about which illustrations allude to a specific theatrical performance and which owe a more general debt. The two camps have been dubbed by Taplin (1993, 21) philologist-iconographers, i.e. those who in his words ‘tended to think of vase-painters as holding a papyrus-roll in one hand and a brush in the other’, and autonomous iconographers, i.e. those who maintain that vase-painters depicted the subject matter of tragedy without reference to specific performances. Although numerous vases are illustrated with mythological scenes that may derive from tragedy in performance, very few can be proven to do so.

Fig. 6. Vase-painting depicting an actor holding the mask of a tragic king (Taranto, c. 340 BC).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Only where there is incontrovertible evidence of ‘theatricality’, as, for instance, in the inclusion of a stage or a mask or a messenger, can we be fairly certain that the painting was directly inspired by a dramatic performance (Fig. 6). And even where a theatrical origin is claimed on precisely these grounds, there still remains room for scholarly disagreement. Vase-paintings, after all, are never literal transcriptions of the phenomenal world, so we can never be entirely sure how much of what is depicted is what the vase-painter actually witnessed and how much is what he thought he witnessed or decided to invent (Green 1991, 41). Nor should the popularity of a vase-scene be taken as proof of the popularity of the tragedy that it illustrates. After all, a pictorial representation may acquire a life of its own on grounds of its iconographical attractiveness. Lastly, a large number of vases which are tragedy-related were intended to be placed in the grave. Hardly surprisingly, therefore, there is a preponderance of vase-paintings apparently inspired by tragedy which reflect issues regarding the afterlife. Only two fifth-century vase-paintings indisputably depict tragic performances. The earlier, a red-figure column kratêr (or ‘mixing bowl’) in Basle dated c. 490 BC, shows six youths dressed as warriors dancing in step with their arms upraised. The youths are apparently invoking the spirit of a dead hero who is rising from behind (or out of) a rock (Fig. 7). The later

Fig. 7. Vase-painting depicting a warrior chorus (c. 490 BC).

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1. Readers and Star-Actors

Fig. 8. Vase-painting depicting a maenad and aulos-player (c. 470 BC).

vase, a pelikê in Berlin dated c. 470 BC, depicts the elaborately dressed aulos-player who accompanied a tragic chorus. He is piping to a maenad who is holding a sword in her right hand and the leg of a kid in her left (Fig. 8). Though numerous vase-paintings of the fourth century and later seem to draw their inspiration from tragic performances, relatively few meet the exacting criteria demanded by the most sceptical critics. One of these is a fragmentary calyx kratêr dated c. 330 BC by an artist dubbed the Capodarso Painter (Fig. 9). The kratêr depicts a columned building resting on a platform which is thought to represent a stage set. Standing on the platform at the far left is an old man facing outwards, as an actor faces an audience, who gestures dramatically with his outstretched left arm. To his right stands a bearded figure holding a sceptre of royalty in one hand and stroking his chin thoughtfully with the other. On the far right a woman raises her veil in a gesture that suggests alarm. Two small girls are also depicted. As Trendall and Webster (1971, 66) first suggested, the painting is surely inspired by the scene from Oedipus the King in which the Corinthian herdsman brings news to Oedipus that Polybus, king of Corinth, has just died. Oedipus has no sooner expressed his relief at discovering that he did not kill his father as the oracle prophesied, than

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Surviving Greek Tragedy

Fig. 9. Vase-painting inspired by Sophocles’ Oedipus the King: the Corinthian Messenger reveals to Oedipus that he is not the son of Polybus (Syracuse, c. 350-325 BC).

the herdsman reveals that he was not Polybus’ son but a foundling (lines 924-1072). What is depicted is the moment when Jocasta first comprehends the true horror, which yet remains hidden from Oedipus. The two little girls are their children Antigone and Ismene, although in Sophocles’ play they do not appear until the final scene. Possibly the artist included them because he had a contemporary production in mind; more probably he is adhering to the artistic convention of representing consecutive events as if they are taking place simultaneously.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors

Fig. 10. Vase-painting inspired by Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers depicting Orestes at Delphi surrounded by the Furies (Paestum, c. 350 BC).

Green (1999, 37-63) has recently identified a group of about fifty-three vases primarily manufactured in Tarentum in the third quarter of the fourth century BC which depict the stage figure known as a paidagôgos, who variously filled the role of tutor, herdsman and messenger. The character is depicted holding a staff as a ‘signifier’ of his identity, while gesturing with his right hand as if addressing the audience. Since only a handful of the representations derive from surviving plays, they provide important evidence for the popularity of fourth-century tragedy, as well as,

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Surviving Greek Tragedy more generally, for the vitality of the dramatic tradition in Tarentum. (They are also illustrative of the changing theatrical fortunes of the paidagôgos himself, whose importance evidently increased as that of the chorus diminished.) Finally, the many hundreds of south Italian vases which are illustrated with mythological themes were probably purchased by a public whose knowledge of their subject matter derived in part from the theatre (Taplin 1993, 27; Fig. 10). They thus demonstrate not only that Athenian drama was popular in the region, but also that illustrations of tragic suffering and loss constituted an important source of consolation for the bereaved. Aristotle’s Art of Poetry The evident intention behind Lycurgus’ law was to place the texts of tragedy beyond the vagaries of any particular production or troupe of actors. It is perhaps not wholly fortuitous therefore that precisely at the time when Lycurgus was establishing the primacy of text over performance, Aristotle was drafting his Art of Poetry. In it Aristotle offers an analysis of epic poetry, tragedy and comedy viewed not so much from the standpoint of performance – though he does provide a few rather perfunctory and somewhat disparaging remarks about scenery, costume and stage machinery – but rather from that of plot construction. Aristotle mentions Euripides 20 times by name, Sophocles 12 times and Aeschylus five times, and this ranking may well reflect their respective popularity on the contemporary stage. He also demonstrates familiarity with the works of a number of (to us) lesser known tragedians, some of whom he evidently held in high regard. The fact that he considered the genre to be very much alive is demonstrated by the advice he gives to contemporary practitioners of the art (e.g. 1455a22-b15). We should also be aware of the fact that he probably had at his disposal hundreds of texts which have now perished. Though he judged Sophocles’ Oedipus the King to be the supreme work in the genre (1454b8, 1455a18, etc.), he declared Euripides to be ‘the most tragic (tragikôtatos) of the dramatists’ (1453a2830), and such judgements have had an enormous impact to this day. Indeed the Art of Poetry has probably had more influence on the way we interpret Greek tragedy than any other work, remaining, as Beard and Henderson (1995, 89) note, ‘the single most important piece of literary criticism in Western culture into the twentieth century’. For obvious reasons it is unlikely to be a reliable guide to the response of a fifth-century Athenian audience to Greek tragedy, and we cannot assume that it is representative in its assessment. A particularly vexed area of debate is Aristotle’s theory of the tragic hero’s hamartia, most commonly rendered as ‘tragic flaw’. If the philosopher ever proposed a definition of this fundamental analytical concept, it has failed to reach us through the highly condensed, lecturenote format of his work.

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1. Readers and Star-Actors Though Aristotle rarely makes mention of any specific performances, we should not for this reason suppose that he was indifferent to the appeal of the theatre and it is probable that he attended scores of productions during the course of his life. The fact remains, however, that ‘opsis’, the visual dimension of tragedy, is for Aristotle ‘the least artistic and least integral part of the poet’s art’, even though he concedes that it is the mimetic element which ‘best seduces the spirit (or psychê)’ (1450b16-18). He further asserts that tragedy should be able to achieve its effect ‘without being seen’ (1453b1), and that it does not depend upon performance in order to achieve its ‘effect’ (literally ‘the thing of itself ’) since ‘from reading it is clear what it is’ (1462a12f.). Even so, the observation that ‘through pity and fear [tragedy accomplishes] the catharsis of such emotions’ (1449b27f.) indicates that he was susceptible to tragedy’s effect in performance, though what precisely he meant by ‘catharsis’ is also unclear. While the importance of tragedy in the theatre in no way diminished in the fourth century, with Aristotle its reception enters an important new phase, consequent upon its availability in written form. The dissemination of the Art of Poetry within the Peripatetic School ensured that many of his students became familiar with the constituent parts of tragedy and alert to their function and impact. It thus inaugurated a tradition that was to prove decisive for the survival of Greek tragedy, which now became a subject for analysis by professional critics and informed readers. Indeed it is largely due to the insights and methodology which Aristotle first brought to bear upon it that in the following century the scholarly investigation of Greek tragedy took such fertile root in Alexandria.

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2

Librarians and Kings The Hellenistic era is one of the most complex periods of Greek history in its political, cultural and social dimensions. A highly significant development was the emergence of a phenomenon known as cultural patronage. One of the most spectacular examples is the Museum or House of the Muses, which Ptolemy I Soter instituted and financed in 295 BC. Its great library, which was initially confined to the palace, attracted men of letters and science from all over the Hellenistic world, eager to avail themselves of its unrivalled facilities. This was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Alexandria was a new foundation, whose population mainly comprised an assortment of soldiers, sailors, traders and bureaucrats. It was in this city, however, that Greek literature was for the first time subjected to line-by-line investigation, though tragedy never seems to have exercised the same fascination as either epic poetry or Attic comedy. The labours of the Alexandrians, which mainly survive in fragmentary form through the scholia (or critical commentaries) that are found in medieval manuscripts, mark the inauguration of an uninterrupted tradition that was to last for about five hundred years. Credit for the transmission of our texts in this era must therefore largely go to the men who selected which of the tragedies were deserving of commentary, although it is important to note that many non-extant tragedies survived into the Roman era. We should also pay tribute to their royal patrons who financed their scholarly endeavours for over two hundred and fifty years. Conventional wisdom once held that Greek tragedy in performance, now drained of almost all its political significance, henceforth functioned merely as a way of distracting the masses. This view has been challenged in recent years in line with a general re-assessment of the implications of the loss of Greek independence following the battle of Chaironea (338 BC). For though the Macedonian victory did indeed eclipse the autonomy of the Greek city states, no diminution in the relevance of questions having to do with civic identity ensued. Indeed there is every reason to suppose that tragedy continued to provide audiences with an instructive education in civic values, even though it could no longer function as a conduit for the articulation of more urgent political concerns. At the same time, it is suspected that the plays were increasingly presented to the public in excerpted form, a development which began in the fourth century. Finally, the growing popularity of Greek tragedy among the reading

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Surviving Greek Tragedy public is indicated by its prominence among the papyri which have come to light in vast quantities in Egypt from the late-fourth century onwards, though we should be wary of assuming that Egyptian reading taste is representative of the entire Hellenistic world. The Library at Alexandria However effective or ineffective it may been as the performance text to which all acting troupes had to defer, the Lycurgan version soon came to acquire an international reputation, as we discover from an anecdote reported by the Greek physician Galen (AD 129?-199/216). Galen alleges that the Egyptian king Ptolemy – he does not indicate whether he is referring to Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reigned 282-246 BC) or Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246-221 BC) – was so eager to acquire ‘all the ancient books’ he could lay his hands on that he issued an edict requiring every ship that docked in Alexandria to be searched. Any books that were discovered on board were then copied by his scribes and these copies handed back to the owners.* Meanwhile the originals were deposited in warehouses pending their accession to the Library. They were labelled ‘from the ships (ek ploiôn)’ to distinguish them from books which had been purchased in foreign markets by Ptolemy’s agents. However, as Galen (Hippocrates on Epidemics 3.2 [Kühn 17a607]) goes on to explain, in his bibliomaniacal zeal the king now proceeded to commit a brazen act of theft: He gave the Athenians 15 talents of silver as collateral and took the books of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus on the pretext that he merely wished to copy them and would immediately return them in good condition. But after preparing an expensive copy on the very finest quality of papyrus, he retained the books that he received from the Athenians and sent back the copies he himself had prepared, urging them to keep the 15 talents and take new books for the old ones that they had given him.

The Athenians had no alternative but to accept the substitute and pocket the bond, which was a huge sum by ancient standards. There can be little doubt that the books in question constituted the version that had been authorised by Lycurgus. These now became the property of the first institution in the history of western civilisation to dedicate itself to the preservation of a literary tradition – an institution, as Turner (1980, 102) aptly put it, ‘directed towards salvage’. For it was here in Alexandria that the purity of the textual tradition was established as the overriding principle of all literary criticism. The Library accommodated a large number of scholars, each provided *The provision that copies rather than the ‘originals’ should be returned to their owners is interesting evidence of the recognised importance of textual corruption by Ptolemy.

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2. Librarians and Kings with free board and lodging, a generous salary, personal slaves, and a private study. These details are important for the history of scholarship because they enable us to visualise, and perhaps even to envy, the ideal working conditions of the men whose goal was to bring order to the vast collection that Ptolemy and his successors accumulated – some 400,000 ‘compound’ and 90,000 ‘simple’ books in all, according to the Byzantine scholar Johannes Tzetzes.* As Pfeiffer (1968, 97) has wryly remarked, the scholars would have had plenty of opportunity for quarrelling with one another, though the nature of their quarrels must happily remain a matter of speculation. Though their energies were initially directed to Homer, they ultimately came to examine the entire corpus of Greek literature. Regrettably only scraps of their work on tragedy have survived – far less than we have on Homer and the comic dramatists. Our knowledge of Alexandrian criticism has been transmitted almost exclusively through scholiasts of the Late Roman and Byzantine era who themselves compiled extensive commentaries upon the plays and often quote the Alexandrians. They do so largely via the compendia of authors such as Didymus, the last Hellenistic critic of any note. Since they regularly report the judgments of earlier commentators, they provide an invaluable glimpse into the scholarly preoccupations of the Hellenistic era, though regrettably they mention individuals by name only when an interpretation is under dispute. Whether or not the anecdote about the theft of the Lycurgan version is true in all its details, the founding of the Library at Alexandria marks the end of Athens’ role as primary caretaker of the tragic canon. Moreover, though the City Dionysia continued to host revivals of old tragedy as late as 150 BC (see below), by then its lead had long since been followed by the Greek-speaking world at large. Alexandrian criticism It is likely that a close intellectual affinity initially existed between the philosophical school established by Aristotle in Athens known as the Lyceum and the new cultural centre of Alexandria. Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor as head of the Lyceum, was invited to teach in the Museum (Diogenes Laertius 5.37), and Theophrastus’ pupil, Demetrius of Phaleron, who was a close friend of Ptolemy I, may have been responsible for the latter’s decision to found a library, since it is commonly believed that Aristotle’s large personal library was the inspiration for the one that was established in Alexandria. However, we do not know to what extent his Art of Poetry set the criteria by which scholars judged the merits of *Tzetzes’ distinction between ‘compound’ and ‘simple’ has been much discussed. It is possible that ‘compound’ meant books which contained more than one work (Barnes 2000, 64).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy individual plays, nor how it may have influenced their choice as to which were worthy of commentary. In attempting to give an account of the work of the Alexandrians in the field of Greek tragedy we need to remember Slater’s caution (1987, 38) that ‘we should perhaps admit to knowing even less about ancient scholarship than we think we do’. Of the once voluminous commentaries that constituted the fruits of their learning all that remains is what has been preserved in medieval manuscripts, received through the filter of Byzantine copyists and scholars. Next to nothing is known of the criteria for excerpting these commentaries either in late antiquity or in early Byzantine times. Moreover, there is an understandable tendency to ascribe the concerns which we read of in the scholia to the first generation of scholars, in light of the vulnerability of the texts prior to the establishment of the Lycurgan version. However, we cannot be certain that their successors did not continue to question the received text even after the Lycurgan version had become widely established. What follows, therefore, is necessarily speculative. The first task of the Alexandrians was to catalogue all the papyrus rolls in the Library according to their separate genres. In the case of tragedies and satyr plays, they also had to identify works which they considered to be spurious and works which appeared under duplicate titles. This was made more time-consuming by the fact that the titles and authors’ names were given, if at all, at the end of the roll rather than at the beginning. Unless a roll happened to be already supplied with a label, therefore, the reader had to unroll it in order to discover its author and title. Since the site of the Library has yet to be identified, we know little about its physical arrangements. Private collectors stored their rolls in buckets, sometimes with small labels attached (Fig. 11), but clearly a much more efficient and elaborate system of storage was necessary for a collection of perhaps as

Fig. 11. Book-box containing rolls with labels attached.

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2. Librarians and Kings many as half a million rolls. There is also evidence to suggest that rolls were shelved in alphabetical order as far as the initial letter of their title. The second undertaking was to establish an authoritative text. Since the Alexandrians were extremely alert to the possibility of textual corruption, they probably did not limit their investigations to the Lycurgan version, but collated from other manuscripts at their disposal. They were particularly forthright in exposing what they took to be actors’ interpolations, and their often unflattering comments are indicative of the tensions which existed between themselves and the acting profession. Sometimes they castigate actors for introducing interpolations because of some misunderstanding or confusion, at other times for doing so deliberately. A rather comical instance of over-interpretation is found in the scholion to Euripides’ Orestes (lines 1366-8). The scholiast claims to have detected an inconsistency between the mode of exit described by the chorus, who state that a Phrygian slave is about to leave through the front door of the palace, and that of the slave himself, who claims that he jumped off its roof. The argument reads as follows: One would not readily concede that these three lines [of the chorus] are by Euripides, but rather [one would say they are] by the actors, who, so as not to injure themselves by jumping off the palace roof, open the door a little and come out wearing the Phrygian’s costume and mask. They added these lines, then, so that they would seem justified in exiting through the door (tr. Csapo and Slater).

Evidently the scholiast believed that actors were fearful of injuring themselves by jumping off the roof. However, a simpler and more straightforward explanation is that Euripides assigned the lines to the Phrygian as a way of introducing him to the audience. The third task of the Alexandrians was to provide a selected group of plays – we have no means of knowing how many – with hypomnêmata (or ‘commentaries’) in order to make them accessible to other scholars, as well as to teachers and their pupils. To this end they supplied information on textual, philological, antiquarian, topographical and other matters, and attempted to interpret difficult passages, sometimes by merely paraphrasing them. The Alexandrians also concerned themselves with the ‘plausibility’ and ‘economy’ of the plot. The scholion on Phoenician Women (line 96), for instance, praises Euripides for having devised a character who can ‘plausibly’ identify the foreign commanders to Antigone before the assault on Thebes. Likewise, the scholia on Oedipus the King are appreciative of the careful and studied way in which Sophocles engineers the dénouement of the plot (lines 287, 378, 710, 716, etc.). Sophocles is regularly commended for supplying background information via the prologue in an economical manner (e.g. scholion on Ajax 42),

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Surviving Greek Tragedy while Euripides is castigated for writing prologues which are often verbose and contrived (e.g. scholia on Phoenician Women 88, Trojan Women 36). Although the scholia have come in for sharp criticism, not least for the fact that they occasionally talk nonsense, this is partly due to the fact they have so frequently been quarried by modern scholars for snippets of information on a variety of arcane topics, as Falkner (2002, 343) has pointed out. Tragic scholia exhibit a persistent concern for the integrity of the text, despite the fact that their methods are somewhat crude when judged beside the principles of modern scholarship. Since, however, there is no cultural context in which to situate an observation, we need to bear in mind that the predominance of philological concerns may well reflect the preoccupations of Byzantine rather than Hellenistic scholars. Certainly, the hypotheseis (or ‘introductions’ to the plays), as well as some of the scholia, demonstrate a shrewd awareness of the importance of theatrical effects, not least in their interest in what stimulated ekplêxis (or ‘amazement’). No doubt Alexandrian scholars regularly attended the numerous productions which were staged in their city and were alert to what constituted good drama. No Alexandrian scholar appears to have attempted to offer an overall interpretation of any drama or to comprehend its significance as a unified work of art. Unlike the Jewish exegetical tradition, which through the Midrash and the Mishna seeks to explore the meaning of obscure or complex passages with a sense of the Hebrew Bible as a unified whole, the Alexandrians were content to exercise their ingenuity in elucidating individual elements within a text whose meaning particulatim was in danger of fading from view. Though we do not know when they began to achieve consensus as to which texts were worthy of commentary, the effort to identify canonical works is likely to have been a central activity from the start. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the Alexandrians focused exclusively upon Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. We simply do not know what critical attention, if any, they paid to other celebrated tragedians such as Achaeus and Ion of Chios, both of whom sometimes appear in a ‘canonical’ list of five. In sum, their precise role in canon-formation remains obscure, and such ideological battles as they may have waged on behalf of specific texts have left no trace in our records. It can hardly be doubted, however, that the plays which they commented upon had a much better chance of survival than those which they ignored. That is because the tragedies which were studied in schools would eventually have come to reflect the influence of Alexandrian scholarship, since it is far easier to teach a text provided with a commentary than one without. It is unclear what steps the Library took to circulate the work of its scholars among the reading public at large. Any edition of a play or set of plays probably existed in only a single master copy available for consultation and copying by members of the public. In addition, however, scholars

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2. Librarians and Kings may have promulgated their research by giving lectures or seminars. The fact that ‘hypomnêma’ literally means ‘reminder’ is a possible indicator that commentaries originally served as lecture notes. Praxiphanes Praxiphanes (fl. c. 300 BC), who is described by Clement of Alexandria (Strômata 1.309) as ‘the earliest grammarian’, may have been the first Alexandrian to explicate obscure passages of tragedy since he is praised in the scholion to Oedipus at Colonus (line 900) for having explained a certain phrase ‘best of all the commentators’. However, it is unlikely that he wrote fully-fledged hypomnêmata on Sophocles. Alexander of Aetolia The twelfth-century Byzantine polymath Johannes Tzetzes (Prolegomena to Comedy I, 11a p. 22 Koster = CGF p. 19, Kaibel) alleges that it was Alexander of Pleuron (also known as Alexander of Aetolia), who in c. 285 BC undertook at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus the task of diorthôsis (‘correction’) of the texts of tragedy, comedy and satyric drama. Alexander is never mentioned in the scholia, however. He may have done some preliminary work in assembling the texts of Greek tragedy and satyric drama, but he was hardly in a position to collate the manuscripts or to eliminate any pseudepigraphical works, which was to become the work of the next generation. Diorthôsis should, therefore, be interpreted somewhat loosely and, as Fraser (1972, I p. 449) has suggested, his editorial work may well have been ‘largely an imaginative exercise in “improving” his authors’. Callimachus of Cyrene Callimachus of Cyrene (c. 310 – c. 240), who began his career as an elementary schoolteacher, made it his task to catalogue the entire corpus of Greek literature genre by genre. The fruits of this monumental labour, entitled the ‘Pinakes (‘Tables’) of all those who were distinguished in every kind of paideia (‘genre’) and of their writings in 120 books’ (Suda s.v. Callimachus), is rightly seen as the foundation upon which all future research in the Library depended. It would be fascinating to know how ruthlessly Callimachus excluded texts which in his view lacked distinction, and what implications their exclusion might have had for their survival. He is also likely to have been the first scholar to identity spurious plays and plays with duplicate titles. In particular, he thought Rhesus was a genuine Euripidean drama. Though Callimachus’ contribution to the transmission of Greek tragedy was primarily one of organisation, we should not underestimate the

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Surviving Greek Tragedy magnitude of his achievement. Working with rolls was, as earlier noted, an extremely arduous undertaking, and, because many of them may have contained more than one play by the same author or even plays by different authors, he and his assistants would have had to unroll every one. It was ultimately thanks to Callimachus that readers could locate works in the Library, the essential pre-requisite to any research project. All that is extant of Callimachus’ tables of tragedy is fragmentary lists of the titles of plays by Aeschylus and Euripides. Since so little of his work has been preserved overall, we do not know how much detail his entries contained. Probably authors were arranged alphabetically with some limited biographical information, including place of birth, father’s name, teacher’s name, and the dialect in which they wrote. A list of their literary output, also arranged alphabetically, followed, together with the first line (or ‘incipit’) of each work. A brief summary of the plot of each play came last, together with a few remarks about its authenticity (or doubts thereof). Callimachus’ work provides our best evidence for the influence of the Aristotelian school, since he seems to have made use of the Didascaliae (above, p. 23). This can be deduced from the fact that he was unable to supply the date of Euripides’ Andromache, which Aristotle omitted from his catalogue because the play did not receive its first performance in Athens (scholion on Euripides, Andromache 445). Aristophanes of Byzantium Aristophanes of Byzantium, librarian at Alexandria from c. 195 until his death in 180 BC, is reckoned to have been the first scholar to establish a critical text of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. To judge from his text of Homer, of which we have considerable knowledge, Aristophanes did not expunge lines that he considered spurious. Rather he incorporated them by using a sophisticated system of symbols to indicate his doubts about their genuineness. So far as we know, he never resorted to conjecture. His edition included little punctuation and no word-divisions. He may have been the first scholar to supply abbreviated names to indicate changes of speaker. He certainly added breathings, marked instances of elision, and included some accentuation. Aristophanes has also been credited with being the first scholar to arrange the lyrical passages in the form of metrical cola (sections of rhythmical periods written out as lines), instead of setting them out uninterruptedly like prose as had previously been the practice. However, the discovery of a papyrus of Stesichorus dated c. 250 which already exhibits evidence of colometrisation suggests either that this claim is false or that Aristophanes’ date must be revised upwards. It was due largely to Aristophanes that the plays of the great three were henceforth secure against further textual corruption, other than that

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2. Librarians and Kings produced by repeated copying. Even so, we should be wary of assuming that his edition drove all other editions out of circulation or that all the medieval manuscripts which have come down to us are necessarily descended from it. It is entirely possible that it initially existed in a single text and that some time elapsed before other libraries acquired their own copies. We know for a fact that variant readings continued to exist and that later scholars did not invariably accept all of Aristophanes’ emendations (e.g. scholion on Euripides, Orestes 1038, 1287). In theatrical circles, where no reverence for his edition will have existed, changes no doubt continued to be introduced in line with histrionic or directorial considerations and some may have been incorporated into the textual tradition. These provisos aside, textual criticism is generally understood to be the effort to restore the edition attributed to Aristophanes, since there is no earlier direct evidence for the texts, other than in the form of fragmentary papyri. Aristophanes may also have been the first scholar to provide the plays with short hypotheseis or ‘introductions’, though which are attributable to him remains a matter of conjecture (cf. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson 1990, xiv). The more informative hypotheseis give plot summaries, allude to treatments of the same subject by other tragedians, state where the action is set, identify the chorus and the speaker of the prologue, supply the date of the first production and the result of the competition, and offer a brief critical judgement upon the play. The hypothesis to Euripides’ Hippolytus, for instance, reads as follows: The setting for the play is Thebes. It was produced during the archonship of Epameinon in the fourth year of the eighty-seventh Olympiad. Euripides came first, Iophon second, and Ion third. This is the second Hippolytus and it also bears the title Wreath-Bearer. It was obviously written second, for what was indecorous and deserving of censure has been rectified in this version. It is one of his best plays.

Occasionally hypotheseis offer insights into the circumstances of composition. The hypothesis to Oedipus at Colonus states that Sophocles wrote the play ‘in order to gratify both his country and his deme’. Some provide valuable information about the chronology and the plots of lost plays. A papyrus containing the hypothesis to Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women, which came to light in 1952, revealed that the play, previously believed to have been composed as early as 500 BC, did not pre-date the 460s BC (P. Oxy. 18.2256.3). If Aristophanes also wrote hypomnêmata, they must have been somewhat abbreviated, given the immense scale of his other labours. The only evidence that points in this direction is a handful of comments that contain references to actors, though conceivably these may derive from lectures or seminars which his pupil Callistratus delivered and subsequently published.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Aristarchus of Samothrace Aristarchus of Samothrace, who was librarian from c. 153 BC until shortly before his death in 144 BC, was accorded the title ‘extremely scholarly’ (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 15.671f). Though he is known to us primarily for his critical recension of Homer, Hesiod and other poets, he also compiled hypomnêmata on Aeschylus and Sophocles, among other writers. However, his commentary on Aeschylus is known only from a single allusion in a scholiast to Theocritus (Idyll 10.18e), and that on Sophocles from three interpretations which are cited by lexicographers and scholiasts (Troilus fr. 624 Pearson; Chryses fr. 728 Pearson; Electra 6). The fact that Aristarchus wrote a hypomnêma on the spurious Rhesus has suggested to some scholars that he also wrote commentaries on the plays of Euripides. Didymus The latest Alexandrian scholar of note is Didymus (c. 65 BC – AD 10), whom Quintilian (1.8.20) describes as ‘the most prolific writer of all time’. Didymus is credited with having written a total of either 3,500 or 4,000 books, a feat which earned him the titles chalkenteros or ‘with brass bowels’ and bibliolathas or ‘forgetful of the books [he wrote]’ (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.139c). Although Didymus primarily directed his energies to editing Homer and Attic comedy, he is also known to have compiled commentaries on tragedy. In addition, he wrote a book entitled Lexeis Tragikai (or Tragic Expressions). He is cited seven times in the scholia to three of Sophocles’ plays and eighteen times in the scholia to six of Euripides’ plays. There is no mention of him in the Aeschylean scholia. Though Didymus has been much maligned by modern scholars for his derivative and at times slipshod work, Pfeiffer’s (1968, 279) estimate of him as ‘the most efficient servant of an ancient intellectual community’ is well-deserved. Greek tragedy’s debt to him is therefore likely to be considerable and he has a secure place in the history of its transmission. The great age of Alexandrian scholarship comes to an end around the middle of the second century BC, though the tradition continued, albeit with diminished intellectual vigour, for several centuries more. In fact it is impossible to pinpoint with any accuracy the cut-off point of Alexandrian scholarship, since the scholia draw on the work of so many periods. Performances of tragedy in the Hellenistic world The theatre continued to be extremely popular in the Hellenistic world throughout mainland Greece, the islands of the Aegean, Asia Minor, Sicily and Magna Graecia. Indeed many new dramatic competitions were insti-

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2. Librarians and Kings tuted in this era. Though comedy was unquestionably the most popular form of dramatic entertainment, tragedy, both old and new, continued to attract large audiences. Even so, it is unclear how much influence should be ascribed to a play’s popularity in performance within the history of transmission, if it lacked the imprimatur of the Alexandrian critics. The disappearance of Euripides’ Andromeda, which appears to have been one of the most frequently performed tragedies, suggests that the approval of the theatre-going public alone was not sufficient to guarantee a play’s survival. Evidence dating to the beginning of the Hellenistic period demonstrates that the genre’s prestige was high throughout the Greek world. Alexander the Great founded competitions of tragic actors and also of tragic performances (Plutarch, Alexander 4.6, 29.1). At the beginning of the Hellenistic era revivals of Greek tragedy began to be performed on an annual basis at the City Dionysia. An inscription from Delos tells us that in 282 BC no fewer than six tragic chorêgoi were appointed for the festivals of the Dionysia and Apollonia. This is the largest celebration of tragedy of which we have record from any period in antiquity. Whether these festivals were celebrated on an annual basis is unknown, but the choice of location suggests that they were expected to attract playgoers from all over the eastern Mediterranean. An inscription from Tegea dated between c. 276 and 219 BC records revivals of Euripides’ plays in Athens, Argos, Delphi, Dodona and Alexandria. An Athenian festival whose name is not preserved awarded prizes in 255 BC to ‘the best old tragedy’ and ‘the best old satyr play’, as well as to ‘the best old comedy’. The inscription recording the winners in the contests at the City Dionysia breaks off around 150 BC, though it is suspected that they may have continued for another thirty years. At the Sarapieia held at Tanagra in c. 90-80 BC prizes were awarded inter alios to a tragic poet and tragic actors. Likewise at the Amphiaraea held at Oropos in 86-85 BC the poet of a new tragedy and the tragic actors were honoured. The same era witnessed the emergence of travelling troupes of actors known as technitai (or ‘those practising the art’) of Dionysus, who make their first appearance in c. 330 BC. Technitai did not confine their performances to the festival season, but were invited to perform on an ad hoc itinerant basis. An inscription from Delphi dated 194 BC records that an aulos-player named Satyrus of Samos performed the lyric passages assigned to the god Dionysus in Euripides’ Bacchae (SIG3 648 B). Another from the same city dated 165 BC honours a tragôidos (‘tragic singer’) called Nikon of Megalopolis for an outstanding performance at Delphi (SIG3 659). An honorary decree from Coronea in Boeotia, dated to the mid-second century BC, praises the tragedian Zotion of Ephesus for having composed and delivered an akroasis or ‘recitation’ (TGF I, no. 12). As their name suggests, tragôidoi specialised in the lyric component of tragedy. Although some sang the excerpts to the accompaniment of the original music, others,

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Surviving Greek Tragedy particularly in Roman times, borrowed the themes of the original dramas and wrote new lyrics which they set to their own compositions. Sometimes they also set to music the iambic passages, which were originally written for spoken delivery. But while the theatre flourished in the Hellenistic era, the quality of new tragedies seriously declined. Over 60 Hellenistic tragedians are known to us by name. Of these the most prolific were Sosiphanes (73 tragedies), Timon (70 tragedies), and Homer (45 tragedies). Virtually nothing of their work has survived. Exagôgê, the only partially extant tragedy, based on the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, is of indifferent quality. The author, whose name was Ezekiel, probably lived in Alexandria in the second century BC and wrote for a mixed audience of Jews and Greeks. The most notable exponents of the tragic art were the group of seven dramatists known as the Pleiad. The titles of their plays suggest that mythological themes (including many that had not previously been treated) remained popular, though some, such as Lycophron’s Marathônioi (‘Men of Marathon’), were evidently modelled on historical events. Whatever brilliance the Pleiad achieved in their day, however, soon faded, and of their entire output less than fifty lines have survived. As Page (1951, 37) memorably remarked, ‘Nothing in the history of the transmission of Greek drama is much more remarkable than the earliness, totality and permanence of the eclipse of Hellenistic tragedy.’ Though we should be wary of assuming that the loss of any individual text offers conclusive proof of its deficiency, no critic has yet tried to rescue the collective efforts of the Hellenistic tragedians from the verdict of history. The evidence of papyri The earliest physical evidence for the survival of tragedy takes the form of fragments of papyri which have come to light in the sands of Egypt where conditions greatly favour their survival (Fig. 12). Literary fragments that once belonged to book rolls have been preserved on scraps of papyrus which were subsequently used as tax returns, death certificates, private letters, and the like. Others were written on the back of business documents. Still other papyri have been discovered in tombs, where they had been recycled in the manufacture of cartonnage, the pâpier-maché-like substance in which mummies were encased. Papyri range in date from the end of the fourth century BC, when Ptolemy I seized Egypt, to the Arab conquest in the seventh century AD. Almost all are in Greek, the language in which government was conducted and the language of the literate population. Most belong to the second and third centuries AD when the Graeco-Roman occupation of Egypt was at its height. From the fourth century AD onwards they diminish sharply in quantity, consistent not only with the decline of Roman civilisation but also with the spread of Christianity, which, as we shall see in the next chapter,

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2. Librarians and Kings

Fig. 12. Papyrus fragment from Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, third/fourth century AD.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy looked somewhat askance at pagan literature. None have been discovered in Alexandria, since papyri cannot survive underground in the Nile Delta. The biggest cache, over 50,000 thus far (70% of all surviving literary papyri), comes from the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus (the name means ‘The city of the sharp-nosed fish’), which lies about 100 miles south of modern Cairo. We know nothing about the copying or the sale of papyri. Some must have sold in bookshops, others were presumably copied on commission. Nor do we know for certain where scribes went for their master copies, though by the late fourth century a number of cities boasted libraries which are likely to have owned texts of standard works (Casson 2001, 57). Judged overall, the contribution of papyri to our knowledge of nonextant tragedy is somewhat disappointing. No complete tragedy has been preserved which has not come down to us via the medieval manuscript tradition. The largest fragment consists of 340 lines of Euripides’ Hypsipyle. The play was written on a papyrus roll whose back provides an account of receipts and expenditures (P. Oxy. 6.852). It is dated c. AD 90 and probably formed part of a scholar’s library in the third century AD (Cockle 1987, 22). We also possess papyri containing fragments of tragic poets other than the great three, though none is sufficiently extensive to enable us to form a reliable estimate of the author’s talent. In fact papyri have added more to our knowledge of the satyric dramas with which each trilogy concluded than they have to our knowledge of tragedy itself. One, for instance, preserves about half of Sophocles’ Trackers. We also have fragments of several of Aeschylus’ satyr plays.* Whereas papyri overall have proved immensely valuable for textual critics, only rarely do they preserve a reading in a tragedy which is thought to be superior to the ones which have been transmitted via our medieval manuscripts. This circumstance does at least enable us to conclude that the textual tradition remained largely stable from Hellenistic to medieval times. (A notable exception is P. Oxy. 18.2180, which contains several important readings for Oedipus the King that are not preserved in the manuscript tradition.) Occasionally, too, papyri have vindicated a reading that is preserved in a manuscript against the ingenious efforts of textual critics to emend it. One of the most important uses of tragic papyri is as a tool of statistical analysis, the assumption being that the number of surviving fragments of any play is likely to be a guide to its prominence on the school curriculum. *One of the earliest surviving literary papyri is a late fourth-century BC fragment of Timotheus’ Persians, a so-called citharodic nomos (i.e. a song written to the accompaniment of the aulos) containing a prologue by Euripides, which came to light in a wooden sarcophagus at Abusir, just below the Nile Delta. Its discovery provides evidence of acquaintance with Greek poetry which may pre-date the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great. (It also indicates that choral lyrics were written out as prose in the fourth century, regardless of metrical structure: see above, p. 46).

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2. Librarians and Kings As a general principle, however, papyri can be used to corroborate certain tendencies only if we have evidence for those tendencies from elsewhere. The Leuven database, the most up-to-date database of all Greek literary papyri, contains 301 entries for tragedy dating from the third century BC to the seventh century AD. No fewer than 249 of these are fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (Morgan, forthcoming). Of these, 176 are of Euripides, 38 of Sophocles, and 35 of Aeschylus. Of the 150 or so authors whose works are preserved on papyri, Euripides ranks third overall – after Homer and Demosthenes. Papyri thus confirm Euripides’ overwhelming pre-eminence among the canonical three tragedians and indeed among Greek literature as a whole. Wherever the evidence for the survival of tragedy is slight, it is almost invariably the case that Euripides alone is represented. In addition, more fragments – 28 in all – exist for his Phoenician Women than for any other tragedy, or indeed for any other drama whether tragic or comic, which confirms what we know from elsewhere about this play’s immense popularity. The next most popular are Orestes and Medea (20 and 19 fragments respectively). Of the remaining 52 tragic papyri, most are attributable to fifth-century playwrights such as Agathon and Ion of Chios. This, too, corroborates our suspicion that Hellenistic tragedy was not held in high esteem. Highly informative though papyri are as a tool of statistical analysis, it is important to allow for the fact that new discoveries may radically alter our existing picture. In addition, our sample is confined to provincial Egypt, whose reading taste may not be typical of the Greek world nor even of metropolitan Egypt, where no papyri have come to light. Even so, papyri do provide important information about the degree to which Greek tragedy penetrated the hinterland of Egypt. Of the 224 tragic papyri whose findspots are recorded, no fewer than 133 are from Oxyrhynchus, consistent with the numbers of literary papyri of every description that have come to light in this town. More interestingly, however, a fragment of Astydamas’ Hector has been discovered in Socnopaei Nesus, and one of Sophocles’ Inachus in Tebtynis, both villages on the edge of the desert (Turner 1980, 81). This would seem to suggest a fortiori that tragedy was being studied and read in more densely populated regions, both in Egypt and elsewhere. Since it is estimated that a roll of papyrus cost the equivalent of one or two days’ wages, the reading public is likely to have been confined to the well-to-do, as was doubtless the case in the fifth and fourth centuries BC (Lewis 1974, 133). Papyri also indicate that anthologies of Greek tragedy were circulating in Egypt by the third century BC, a practice which, as Aristotle (Art of Poetry 1450a29-31) seems to suggest, may have begun in the fourth century. No fewer than eight of the nine anthological papyri of third and second century date listed by Gentili (1979, 19-21) contain excerpts of Euripides. Gentili may well be right, therefore, when he states that Hellenistic culture was ‘fundamentally “anthological” even with regard to

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Surviving Greek Tragedy those playwrights like Euripides, who were particularly popular’. Anthologies served various functions: some contained selections of lyric odes, others preserved a variety of thematically related passages, and still others formed collections of aphorisms. Though their primary use was probably in the classroom, they may also have been employed by theatrical companies, which increasingly specialised in performances that gave prominence to virtuoso soloists (see below). Lastly, papyri alert us to the fact that many non-extant plays were still being read and studied, and perhaps performed, as late as the first and second centuries AD (Morgan, forthcoming). It is particularly interesting, for instance, that the vast majority of Aeschylean papyri, 35 in all, contain fragments from the non-extant plays. No less significant is the fact that three of his extant plays, Persians, Libation-Bearers and Eumenides, are not represented at all. Similarly, three of Euripides’ extant plays, Descendants of Heracles, Suppliants and the satyric Cyclops, do not survive on papyri. The 38 Sophoclean papyri are distributed among at least 20 different plays, whereas at least 50 plays are represented in the 176 Euripidean papyri. This suggests that schoolteachers still had at their disposal a wide selection of texts provided with commentaries and, correspondingly, that the surviving canon of plays was still extensive. The biographical tradition Several ancient manuscripts, as well as a few papyri, preserve biographies of the tragic poets. They are thought to derive from material which had been circulating since the fifth century BC and which, some time in the third or second century BC, was incorporated into a narrative. The data which they draw on primarily derive either from the dramas themselves or from anecdotes that were recounted by the comic poets. For instance, the following claim made by Satyrus, author of a Life of Euripides, has its source in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae (P. Oxy. 9.1176 fr. 39 col. x.1-15 and xi.15-30): Euripides was hated by all the men because he was a misanthrope, and by the women because of his criticisms of them in his poetry. He got into considerable danger with both groups. … For he was acquitted on the earlier-mentioned charge of impiety brought by Cleon the demagogue; and the women plotted against him at the Thesmophoria festival and came in a mob to the place … (tr. Csapo and Slater).

Crude though the Lives are, they do have a limited historical value and continue to be used selectively by scholars. The most sophisticated is the anonymous Life of Sophocles, which demonstrates a limited understanding of the principles of source-criticism. For instance, the author plausibly rejects the tradition that Sophocles was the son of a tradesman

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2. Librarians and Kings on the grounds that he would hardly have been elected general in the same year as Pericles and Thucydides, ‘the most important men in the city’, if he came from such a humble background. Overall, the Lives contain much that is malicious as well as much that is absurd, notably in the reports of the deaths of the three poets – Aeschylus being struck on the head by a tortoise dropped by an eagle, Sophocles choking on an unripe grape, and Euripides being mauled to death by a pack of hunting dogs. Though it seems improbable that there was any intellectual affinity between the scholars who toiled in the Library at Alexandria and the Hellenistic biographers who grubbed around for gossip, the latter were aware of the work of their illustrious counterparts, as we see from the fact that the author of the Life of Sophocles quotes from three pupils of Callimachus. To be fair to their efforts, we should also bear in mind that biography was in its infancy at the time when they were compiling. We do not know what readership they had in mind but their fondness for anecdote suggests that they were writing primarily for the general public. The birth of this literary genre therefore provides evidence of a continuing interest in tragedy at a popular level, as well as of a new and revolutionary fascination with the relationship between a literary artefact and its author.

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3

Teachers and Churchmen Greek tragedy’s impact upon Roman culture dates from the time of the first contact between the two civilisations in the early decades of the third century BC. Tragedy is aptly numbered among the literary genres which the Romans learned from the Greeks, though the degree to which the early practitioners of the art either copied or adapted from the originals is impossible to assess. From the second half of the first century BC onwards, the plays were being read and translated by the cream of Rome’s intellectual élite, among them Julius Caesar, Cicero and Ovid. Private readings occasionally took place in educated circles, though understandably the evidence for this practice is hard to come by. The plays also continued to be performed on the stage by tragici cantores, whom we mentioned in the preceding chapter in their guise as tragôidoi. In addition, the plots of Greek tragedy formed the subject matter of pantomime. Euripides retained his pre-eminence throughout the Roman era, judging from the predominance of papyri and the frequency of quotations that are found in anthologies and other writings. Interest in the plays probably continued in scholarly circles, though precise evidence for critical inquiry is difficult to trace. Around AD 200 a consensus began to emerge, possibly among educators in Byzantium, that a representative selection of 24 tragedies should be made for use in the classroom. Evidence for theatrical productions also begins to disappear, though this should not be taken as unequivocal proof that none took place. The formal aspects of Greek tragedy, namely the Attic dialect and the iambic metre, held a strong appeal for teachers of Greek, since the ability to construe in prose and poetry was regarded as an important educational accomplishment. The gradual marginalising of Greek tragedy from the school curriculum in the fourth century probably came about partly in consequence of the Christianisation of the Roman empire under the Emperor Constantine. Even so, many Church fathers were sensitive to the appeal of classical literature, and, thanks largely to the advocacy of St Basil of Caesarea, Christians eventually acknowledged that the study of pagan Greek literature was not inconsistent with the spiritual aspirations of their religion. From the fifth century AD onwards, knowledge of Greek tragedy increasingly survived in the attenuated form of excerpts and popular quotations (known as paroimiai or sententiae), which were preserved in

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Surviving Greek Tragedy anthologies and florilegia. Providentially, however, this development was preceded by the invention of parchment, whose durability was to ensure the survival of the plays throughout the ensuing Dark Ages. Roman tragedy All the evidence suggests that the impact of Greek tragedy upon Roman sensibilities was immediate, decisive and profound. It can hardly be fortuitous that the earliest productions of Roman tragedy are dated to within a generation of Rome’s first contact with the Hellenistic world. Horace (Epodes 2.1.161-6), for one, acknowledged that the Roman genre derived from the study of Thespis, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Direct influence was also received via the repertoire of tragedies that were performed in the Greek theatres of southern Italy and Sicily. Since so little Republican tragedy survives, however, the precise extent of the borrowing remains obscure. We certainly do not have enough to enable us to deduce whether the Roman concept of the tragic was analogous to the Greek. Prima facie, however, it is unlikely that the tragic vision of the Greeks was taken over without modification, since a Roman was bound to the state by ties of obligation and duty which hardly permitted him the free exploration of the kind of conflicts that typically confront a Greek tragic hero. Indeed Cicero (Tusculan Disputations 2.21.49), offering a rare critical judgement on a Greek tragedy, tells us that Marcus Pacuvius significantly improved upon Sophocles’ non-extant Niptra by making his Ulysses less prone to woeful weeping than the Odysseus of Sophocles’ play. Moreover, although the titles of many Republican tragedies are identical to fifth-century precursors, the fragmentary nature of the evidence rarely permits us to do more than acknowledge that they derived from the same mythic subject matter. Indeed the genre as a whole may have displayed as wide a spectrum of fidelity or infidelity to the originals as do modern adaptations and versions. Nor can we assume that when a Roman tragedy has the same title as one by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, theirs was the exclusive or even dominant influence. Accius’ Philocteta, for instance, may derive from plays by all three fifth-century dramatists, as well as from one by Theodectes. What follows, therefore, is a list of the suppositious. Livius Andronicus’ Ajax the Whip-Bearer may have affinities with Sophocles’ Ajax. Quintus Ennius’ Nemea and Eumenides may have been inspired by Aeschylus, and his Ajax by Sophocles’ play. His Andromeda, Hecuba, Iphigeneia at Aulis and Medea in Exile are likely to have been structurally modelled on Euripides, since there is sufficient evidence to suggest that he followed the Greek originals in his division of scenes. Though Cicero (On Ends 1.4) describes Medea in Exile as a ‘literal translation’ (ad verbum) of Euripides’ play, the surviving fragments do not conform closely to the phrasing of the original. Ennius is also thought to have imitated tragedies by dramatists

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3. Teachers and Churchmen other than Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Lucius Accius’ Prometheus and Myrmidons probably owe something to Aeschylus, his Antigona, Eurysaces and Tereus to Sophocles, and his Bacchae, Phoenician Women and Telephus to Euripides. Gnaeus Naevius perhaps borrowed from Aeschylus’ Lycurgus and from Euripides’ Iphigeneia among the Taurians. Pacuvius’ Niptra and Chryses may have been modelled on plays by Sophocles (though it is possible that the latter was satyric rather than tragic), and his Antiopa on a play by Euripides. Republican tragedy effectively comes to an end with the death of Lucius Accius in 90 BC, though revivals were occasionally staged over the next forty years or so at least (cf. Cicero, On Ends 5.63). Tragedy’s most celebrated exponent in the Imperial era was Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65), adviser to the Emperor Nero, who composed at least nine tragedies. The Greek tragedians were, however, merely one of many points of reference in the rich dramatic and poetic traditions from which Seneca drew. Each of his plays is packed with textual allusion and metaliterary language, thereby constituting what Boyle (1997, 89) has aptly described as ‘a multi-referential text’. Their titles are as follows: Agamemnon (very loosely corresponding to Aeschylus’ play but with a very different Aegisthus and a very different ending) Hercules Furens (derives from Euripides’ Heracles) Hercules Oetaeus (derives from Sophocles’ Women of Trachis) Medea (derives from Euripides’ play of that name and, possibly more directly and extensively, on a lost play by Ovid – see below) Oedipus (derives from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King) Phaedra (derives from Euripides’ Hippolytus but with a shameless Phaedra, and from a lost play by Sophocles) Phoenician Women (combining elements of Euripides’ Phoenician Women and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus) Thyestes (possibly based on lost works by Sophocles and Euripides) Trojan Women (combining elements of Euripides’ Andromache, Hecuba, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Trojan Women and Hecuba, and Sophocles’ Polyxena) Senecan tragedy is vastly removed from the spirit and structure of Greek tragedy, notably in its macabre blood-thirstiness, its debt to Stoic philosophy, and its division of plot into five separate acts. Even so, it represents a vital link in the chain of transmission since it was primarily due to the influence of Seneca that the genre was revived on the Renaissance stage. Scholars, however, remain sharply divided as to whether his plays were ever performed in the Roman theatre – or indeed whether he actually wrote them for performance, given among other things the discontinuity of their plot-structure. It is quite possible that they were recited in

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Surviving Greek Tragedy private houses or halls, either by one reader taking all the parts or by a cast of readers. Greek tragedy among the Roman élite From the first century BC onwards Greek tragedy came to occupy a prestigious place in Roman high culture. It was cited in literature and correspondence, imitated in Latin translations that were never intended for stage performance, and discussed in educated circles. Several major Roman poets allude to passages from Greek tragedy. In some cases their allusions imply detailed familiarity with the text, though we cannot always be certain whether this had been gained from first-hand reading of the plays or via an intermediary. Euripides’ influence is once again to the fore. Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things begins with a vivid description of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, which echoes the opening chorus of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Later he incorporates a passage from Euripides’ lost play Chrysippus (2.991-1001). There is evidence for the influence of Trojan Women and Hecuba in Vergil’s description of the fall of Troy in Aeneid 2, which, as in the Euripidean originals, focuses primarily upon the plight of victims of war. Aeneid 4 shows a profound debt to Euripides’ Hippolytus and Medea for its characterisation of Dido, though this may have been mediated via Apollonius of Rhodes’ epic poem Argonautica. Vergil’s comparison of the lovesick Dido to the maddened Pentheus and the deranged Orestes shows borrowings from Euripides’ Bacchae and Aeschylus’ Eumenides (4.469-73). More than once Vergil quotes from Sophocles’ Ajax, as when Aeneas tells his son Ascanius to ‘emulate him in virtue but not in fortune’, which is exactly what Ajax tells his son Eurysaces before taking his life (12.435f.; cf. Ajax 550f.). Ovid was also greatly indebted to Euripides, notably in Metamorphoses, where he summarises the plots of a number of plays, including Bacchae, Hecuba, Hippolytus and Iphigeneia among the Taurians. However, these summaries may derive from a Latin anthology. The search for specific borrowings from Greek tragedy is by no means the whole story in assessing one poet’s dependency upon another. As Holford-Strevens (1999, 233) has pointed out in his discussion of Vergil’s debt to Sophocles, ‘One must also allow that [Vergil] may have been stimulated by something that has left no visible trace in his verses and yet played its catalytic part in their composition’ – and the same holds true for all his contemporaries. The influence of Greek tragedy is also evident in other literary genres. In his Parallel Lives, for instance, Plutarch (c. AD 50-120) demonstrates an appreciation of the shaping of human destiny that is comparable to the reversals of fortune which are commonplace in tragedy. For instance, the change of fortune which Demetrius Poliorcetes (‘The Besieger’) experienced towards the end of his life is likened to a transition from the comic

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3. Teachers and Churchmen to the tragic stage (Demetrius 28). In addition, Plutarch makes occasional allusions to performances of Greek tragedy, which implies that his readers could at least envision these works in performance (see below, p. 64f.). The translation of Greek tragedy enjoyed a considerable vogue among the Roman élite, for whom it represented an exacting linguistic challenge. In Tusculan Disputations (2.8.20-2), for instance, Cicero shows off his skill by translating a number of passages into Latin. The lengthiest is the speech of the dying Heracles in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis (lines 10461102), which he cites in order to demonstrate the principle that even the greatest of Greek heroes was broken by grief. Cicero also reports that his brother Quintus dashed off ‘four tragedies in sixteen days’ and asks of him, ‘Are you borrowing something from anyone else?’ (Letter to his brother Quintus 3.6.7). Incidentally, Quintus was so powerfully affected by the genre that he claimed to have had a vision of the elderly and infirm Oedipus when he visited Colonus in Athens (On Ends 5.3). Julius Caesar is said to have included an Oedipus among his youthful compositions (Suetonius, Divine Julius 56.7). His younger contemporary, the historian C. Asinius Pollio, was also well known as a tragedian (Horace, Satires 1.10.42-3). Ovid, too, wrote a version of Medea, which has been described as ‘probably the finest tragedy ever written for recitation and not for stage performance’ (Coffey and Mayer 1990, 12). The younger Pliny claims to have written a graeca tragoedia at the tender age of fourteen (Letters 7.4.2). The taste for translating and adapting Greek tragedy extended as far as the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Plutarch states that Artavasdes II of Armenia (ruled 55-34 BC) composed tragedies which were still extant in his day (Crassus 33.1). Latin translations sold in bookstores alongside copies of the originals. ‘Who is so contemptuous of the Roman name,’ Cicero demands, ‘as to despise or reject the Medea of Ennius or the Antiope of Pacuvius on the grounds that he enjoys the same plays of Euripides but dislikes their Latin equivalents?’ (On Ends 1.4-5). Cicero’s question suggests that some Romans did indeed prefer to read Greek tragedy in the original language, as does his further observation that Atilius’ translation of Sophocles’ Electra, though a poor piece of work, was none the less ‘worth reading’. Gnomic utterances served as sententiae much as they had done in Classical times. In On Duties (3.21.82-3), for instance, Cicero claims that Julius Caesar was forever quoting the following couplet from Phoenician Women: ‘If one must break the law, it is best done for the sake of kingship. In all else one should respect the gods’ (lines 524-5). In this way the insights of the tragedians managed to filter down into everyday speech, a phenomenon which facilitated their survival in a generally unrecognised form. There is, however, no way of knowing how many Romans read the plays at first-hand nor how deeply their knowledge ran. Dio Chrysostom (AD c. 40 – c. 114), in the course of a learned comparison between Sophocles’

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Philoctetes and two lost plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, claims to have read all three one morning after breakfast ‘in the manner of a judge awarding the prize to the foremost tragic choruses’ (Discourse 57). But should we take him at his word? In Attic Nights the miscellanist Aulus Gellius (born c. AD 125) compared some verses from Euripides’ Hecuba to those from Ennius’ play of that name (11.4). Elsewhere he accused Plato of having falsely attributed to Euripides a line which was actually written by Sophocles. For good measure he quoted a second line that occurs in both Sophocles and Euripides, and a third that is almost identical in both Aeschylus and Euripides (13.19). Clearly there would have been no reason for such pedantry, were it not for the fact that familiarity with Greek tragedy constituted a type of cultural capital among his readers. However, the fact that Gellius’ concerns are solely with single lines, primarily with sententiae, suggests that his insights may derive from a close reading of an anthology. Greek tragedy played a significant part in the training of a Roman orator, just as it had done in the Classical era and would again do in the Byzantine world. This was largely due to the set-piece debates that are common in Euripides, which were reckoned to provide a valuable training for lawyers and politicians alike. Given the importance of oratory in the late Republican and early Imperial era, it is likely that it was through oratorical training that many Romans encountered the genre. Quintilian (AD c. 35 – c. 95), who was himself an advocate and an authority on rhetoric, recommended the study of Euripides to those who were bent upon a career in the lawcourts, claiming that ‘he stood comparison with any orator who has distinguished himself in the courts, whether as a prosecutor or as a defence lawyer’ (10.1.67). Dio Chrysostom, also an orator, recommended the study of Euripides by anyone in public life, on the grounds that his plays contain a rich variety of characters and incidents, as well as an abundance of gnomic utterances suitable for every conceivable situation (Discourse 18.7). The survival of Greek tragedy in the Latin-speaking world was largely due to the fact that it served a variety of cultural and pedagogical functions. Even so, the fact that it was so highly prized among the élite may indicate that its appeal was rather restricted. The data which we possess relating to reading taste are, as always, mainly confined to the Greekspeaking population of Egypt. These demonstrate that although the number of tragic papyri from the first centuries BC and AD shows a steep decline in line with that of all literary Greek papyri, in the second and third centuries AD their number increases sharply. In fact no fewer than 143 of the 301 surviving tragic papyri date to this period. However, this phenomenon may chiefly be a product of the literary flowering which occurred in the Fayum basin and its environs, and it should not be taken as representative of the Roman Empire as a whole.

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3. Teachers and Churchmen Greek tragedy in performance ‘Theatrum populusque Romanus,’ Cicero observed in his speech on On Behalf of Sestius (116), wittily adapting the acronym SPQR to the taste of the time. However, though the theatre continued to host a spectrum of entertainments as late as the fourth century AD, it is unlikely that Greek tragedy was much performed in the Latin-speaking West in a manner that evoked the experience of sitting in the theatre of Dionysus. Instead solo performances by virtuosi, set-piece scenes from favourite plays, and a new art form known as pantomime are likely to have been the media by which the theatre-going public remained on nodding terms with the genre. Horace (Epistles 2.1.180-213) in fact implies that as early as the beginning of the Principate serious drama had been driven off the Roman stage by bears, boxers, white elephants, and other exotic forms of entertainment. Even when we encounter an allusion to a performance of tragedy, it rarely enables us to determine whether the author is referring to a Greek original or Roman adaptation; if the former whether it was a new tragedy or the revival of an old one; and whether it was staged as a complete play or in excerpted form. ‘That was no gale but the Alcmene,’ says a character in Plautus’ Rudens (line 86), alluding to the stir caused by a celebrated production of Euripides’ tragedy in c. 190 BC. Even so, what blew the audience away is more likely to have been a stunning rendition of the choral lyrics, rather than a performance of the whole play. In a discussion about theatrical masks Quintilian (11.3.73) states, ‘In tragedy Aerope would be sad, Medea fierce, Ajax confused and Hercules bad-tempered.’ Is Quintilian referring to the works of the Attic tragedians? And if so, did he actually attend performances of their plays? He does not actually claim to have done so and the fact that he uses the subjunctive (‘would be sad’) suggests that he is merely imagining enactments on stage. Tragici cantores departed from traditional practice by chanting the iambic trimeters that were originally intended to be spoken. To the dismay of Lucian (born AD 120), they even sung the messenger speeches, whose gruesome descriptions of violent death and dismemberment lent themselves to bravura displays by soloists, no doubt eager to milk the top notes for all they were worth (On Dancing 27). They dressed in long-sleeved garments, wore tragic masks, and performed either on stilts or in high boots (Fig. 13). Occasionally they accompanied themselves on the lyre, just as Homeric aoidoi (or singers) had done almost a thousand years earlier. It says much about the inflexible rules of gender in antiquity that we know of no women singers even at this date. The career of a certain Themison of Miletus (fl. AD 150), who ‘set to music (melopoiein)’ extracts from the plays of Sophocles, Euripides and Timotheus, and who achieved no fewer than 94 victories in his long and distinguished career, is perhaps typical (Broneer 1953, 193). Tragici cantores were popular even on the fringes of the Roman world. Athenaeus, for instance, tells us that an Argive tragôidos

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Surviving Greek Tragedy

Fig. 13. Ivory statuette of a tragic actor (Roman, imperial period).

named Leontos performed Euripides’ Hypsipyle before Juba II of Mauretania, a contemporary of Augustus (Deipnosophistae 8.343ef). Juba, who was educated in Italy, is known to have been eager to introduce Greek and Roman culture to his countrymen, so his decision to host Leontos is evidence of the importance of such entertainment in this era. (Evidently the king was a discriminating critic – he is said to have written a book on drama – for he complained that Leontos had ruined his vocal cords by eating too many artichokes!) An important literary source for Greek tragedy in performance is Plutarch, though he, too, does not provide evidence for anything other than excerpted performances. For instance, he reports that the Athenian politician Demosthenes, having been poisoned, told his assassin that he ‘could not be too hasty in playing the part of Creon in the tragedy [Antigone] and casting out his body unburied’ (Demosthenes 29.5). Plutarch also claims that the head of the slaughtered Roman general M. Licinius Crassus

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3. Teachers and Churchmen served as a grisly prop when a tragic actor by the name of Jason of Tralles was performing ‘the part from Bacchae which is about Agave’ at the court of Artavasdes II (above, p. 61). When the assassin brought in the head to present to the king, Jason took hold of it and delivered the following lines from Euripides’ play: ‘We bring from the mountain a newly cut shoot to the palace – o happy was our hunting!’ (lines 1169-71). Plutarch ends by saying, ‘Thus Crassus’ life ended, just like a tragedy’ (Crassus 33; cf. Polyaenus, Stratagems 7.41). The last writer to refer to a production of Greek tragedy is Arnobius, a late second-century AD teacher of oratory, who refers to a performance of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, though he may be drawing on a rhetorical model deriving from Cicero (Against the Nations 7.33). The wall paintings that decorated Roman houses provide evidence for tragic performances, though, as with illustrations on Greek vases, this needs to be handled with caution. A painting in Pompeii depicts a scene from Euripides’ Hippolytus in which Phaedra’s nurse seeks to detain her stepson after having revealed her mistress’ illicit passion (Fig. 14). Another in Ephesus reproduces the scene from Euripides’ Orestes in which Electra is conversing with her sick brother (lines 211-315; Fig. 15). While it is tempting to assume that these illustrations were inspired by recent performances, they may derive from earlier pictorial prototypes or allude to performances of long ago. A vestigial knowledge of tragedy was preserved through the medium of pantomime, a popular form of theatrical entertainment which flourished from the late first century BC onwards and whose subject matter was drawn primarily from the plots of Greek tragedy. Pantomime was performed by an actor wearing a silk costume and mask who mimed all the parts of the drama through expressive dance movements and hand gestures. He was accompanied by musicians and assisted either by a fellow-actor or, more commonly, by a chorus who sang popular songs based loosely on the original choral lyrics. In the course of time the dances, which were lascivious and even indecent, came to incur the wrath of the church, though the entertainment was not banned until the Council of Trullo, which met in 691/2. Pantomime therefore provides a faint echo of Greek tragedy in popular culture, long after it has all but disappeared from the stage. Lastly, catalogues of dramatic festivals from the Greek-speaking East continue to record the names of winners as late as the second century AD, though we do not know how closely such productions conformed to classical theatrical practice. An Athenian by the name of Thrasycles won a prize for a new tragedy at the festival of the Dionysia in Delphi in c. 30 BC (Mette 1977, 199). New tragedies were being performed in the first century AD at the Great Panathenaea in Athens (IG II2 3157). Prizes were awarded to tragic singers at a dramatic contest held at Oenoanda, Lycia, in AD 124. The liveliest theatrical venue seems to have been Boeotia, judging from the catalogues of dramatic festivals which have been found in Orchomenus,

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Fig. 14. Drawing of a wall-painting from Pompeii depicting a scene from Euripides’ Hippolytus (first century AD).

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Fig. 15. Wall-painting from Ephesus depicting a scene from Euripides’ Orestes, second century AD.

Oropus, Tanagra and Thespiae. A catalogue from Thespiae dated AD 160 relating to a festival of the Muses provides the latest record of joint performances of old and new tragedies (Mette 1977, 60). Finally, an acting copy containing extracts from Euripides’ Cresphontes, preserved on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, suggests that recitations were still being given in Egypt as late as the third century AD (P. Oxy. 27.2458). Post-Alexandrian scholarship and Roman libraries The bronze-bowelled Didymus may or may not have lived long enough to witness copies of his 3,000 books go up in flames in the burning down of the Museum at Alexandria, said to have been accidentally caused by Julius Caesar during his siege of 47 BC. Though Mark Antony allegedly made good the deficiencies after the latter had been re-built (Plutarch, Anthony

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Surviving Greek Tragedy 58), nothing could be done to restore Alexandrian scholarship to its former glory, even though it was not eclipsed altogether. Though no centre of scholarship emerged comparable in vigour and originality to that of Alexandria, Pergamum, whose library was founded by the Attalid king Eumenes II (197-158 BC), came close. However, no Pergamene who devoted his energies to Greek tragedy is known to us by name, and there is little evidence of any significant contribution to the study of the genre. An anonymous Pergamene drew up his own Pinakes to rival that of Callimachus but it was rarely quoted and never once on Greek tragedy (Pfeiffer 1968, 133). In the Roman era the evidence of scholarly interest becomes even murkier, though a fragmentary work entitled On Poems by the Epicurean Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110-40/35 BC) preserves a few observations, particularly on Euripides. As we have seen, interest in Greek tragedy continued at a quite sophisticated level in informal circles, though whether this led to any serious scholarly work is unclear. By the beginning of the first century BC several major cities, including Athens, Antioch, Rhodes and Berytus, had come to possess libraries with important holdings of Greek and Latin literature. It was Rome, however, which acquired the largest collection of all, dispersed, by the middle of the fourth century AD among no fewer than 29 public libraries. Julius Caesar’s plans to build a library were interrupted by his death. The historian C. Asinius Pollio, also familiar to us as a writer of tragedy, provided the city’s first public library close to the Forum shortly after 39 BC. In 28 BC the Emperor Augustus founded a library on the Palatine Hill, with a section for Greek books and a section for Latin books. A few years later he founded one in the Campus Martius known as the Porticus Octaviae, again with two separate sections. His successors Tiberius, Vespasian and Trajan also built libraries in the capital. As Casson (2001, 88f.) has suggested, very likely these libraries attracted scholars, lawyers, philosophers and historians from all over the Roman world. Whether they attracted the general reading public is less certain. That probably did not happen until baths were built with libraries attached to them, an innovation that says much about the increase in literacy from the late first century BC onwards. Provincial cities throughout the empire also came to acquire their own libraries as a matter of civic pride from the first century AD onwards. In addition, many wealthy Romans owned collections of books. Probably any major public library which included Greek literature among its holdings possessed a copy of the Aristophanean version of the Attic tragedians. Outside Italy, however, only provincial libraries in the Greek-speaking East are likely to have preserved copies of Greek tragedy. In time the majority of Alexandrian commentaries no doubt perished as a result of natural wastage, coincident with the decline in the number of tragedies that were studied in schools.

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3. Teachers and Churchmen The elusive ‘Byzantine schoolmaster’ According to the influential hypothesis proposed by the German scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1889, 196-203), whose contribution to our understanding of the transmission of Greek tragedy remains unparalleled, in the late second century AD an unknown Byzantine schoolmaster made a selection of 24 plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. He also provided them with the commentaries which are the basis of our scholia by incorporating the scholarly tradition that originated with the Alexandrians, the researches of later scholars, and the glosses of contemporary critics who largely contented themselves with paraphrasing difficult passages. The 24 plays in question comprise seven by Aeschylus (Suppliants, Persians, Prometheus Bound, Seven against Thebes, Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers and Eumenides); seven by Sophocles (Ajax, Electra, Oedipus the King, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus); and ten attributed to Euripides (Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenician Women, Hippolytus, Medea, Andromache, Alcestis, [Rhesus], Trojan Women, and Bacchae). Wilamowitz further observed that the titles of Euripidean plays which lacked scholia had been arranged in alphabetical order. From this he concluded that these plays belonged to a complete edition which had been accidentally preserved, whereas the plays that were provided with scholia had been the subject of scholarly attention on a regular and sustained basis. He deduced the date of the edition from the fact that whereas Lucian, who died in AD 195, frequently cites from lost tragedies, L. Flavius Philostratus, who died in c. AD 250, was the last Roman author to demonstrate more than a passing acquaintance with the plays that fall outside the selections (excluding the compilers of anthologies and lexica, discussed below). Wilamowitz’s assumption that the selections were made by the same man resided partly in the fact that the subject matter of the plays demonstrates a marked preference for legends dealing with the houses of Atreus and Laius – ten out of 24 in all. Attractive though Wilamowitz’s theory is, the evidence of papyri, which was not available to him in the late nineteenth century, suggests that the true picture, at least as far as the dating of the selection process is concerned, is likely to have been rather more complicated. In particular we need to take note of the fact that the selected plays of Euripides had already begun to oust the non-selected (or alphabetic) plays as early as 200 BC. What happened now, therefore, may have been no more than ‘a symptom of a well-established trend’ (Easterling 1982, 244). Moreover, while the majority of the fragments of lost tragedies of which we have record do not postdate the second century AD, this is no less true of other genres of Greek literature for which no similar selection process has ever been claimed. We should, therefore, perhaps think not so much in terms of a single, conscious and deliberate act by one teacher, but rather of a

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Surviving Greek Tragedy gradual process of canonisation reached by a number of teachers over an extended period of time. This said, it can hardly be denied that a fatal narrowing of the canon does seem to have taken place around AD 200. Of the non-extant plays we have substantial fragments of second century date of Aeschylus’ Netfishers and Spectators at the Isthmian Games, Sophocles’ Eurypylus and Niobe, and Euripides’ Alexander, Cretans, Hypsipyle and Phaethon. The only non-extant plays of which we have fragments that postdate AD 200 are Euripides’ Phrixus and Melanippe Bound. The Emperor Julian (reigned 361-3), who sought to encourage the revival of pagan literature and who was widely read in the Greek classics, cites frequently from Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Bacchae and Orestes, as well as occasionally from Aeschylus and Sophocles. However, the citations are proverbial and do not imply any first-hand familiarity with the texts, and only very rarely does he quote from plays outside the selection. In conclusion, we do not know, and probably never will know, on what grounds the 24 plays were selected. Very likely they served an assortment of purposes in the schoolroom at various levels of academic accomplishment, including grammatical, rhetorical, moral and philosophical. As anyone who has ever sat on a curriculum review committee can corroborate, conflicting paedagogical needs and goals may well have contributed to the end result. Moreover, though Byzantium has strong claims to having initiated the process, it may well be that the selection eventually emerged as part of a far more widespread and extensive educational tendency. Nor should we overlook the fact that it was the product of a process which ultimately began in the 330s BC when the Athenians took it upon themselves to prevent further deterioration in the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, thereby effectively ‘de-selecting’ the works of other playwrights. In short, many factors – and many agendas – are likely to have played their part. Tragedy and the Christians One of the theories that has occasionally been advanced to explain the disappearance of certain pagan texts is that the Church regarded them with disapproval and took active steps to have them banned. But though the Christians did indeed disapprove of some authors, they were by no means proof against the attractions of classical literature overall, and though isolated examples of hostility to specific works occurred from time to time, many leading churchmen advocated a policy of tolerance, and it was this policy which ultimately prevailed. A clear indication of tolerance is the prevalence of quotations from Greek authors that are found in Christian writings from the second century onwards, even though many of them are either unattributed or falsely attributed. A major explanation for the tolerance of the Church lay in the fact that Greek literature could

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3. Teachers and Churchmen readily be put in the service of Christian goals, most notably via the medium of inspirational and uplifting maxims, which if put in context often turn out to be either ironic or subversive. Even the assumption of a polytheistic world-view posed no insurmountable hurdle to Christians eager to avail themselves of tragedy’s insights and to use it as a propaedeutic to theology, since that world-view could, with consummate ease, be transformed into one that recognised the existence of a single ‘divine will’. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215), one of Christianity’s most forceful advocates and a scholar who devoted much of his energy to demonstrating the superiority of Christianity to paganism, grudgingly conceded in Exhortation to the Greeks (7.64), ‘The Greeks received some vague appreciation of the divine word and gave utterance to a few scraps of truth.’ Of the extant plays of Euripides, he cites from Alcestis, Bacchae, Heracles, Iphigeneia among the Taurians and Orestes, praising the playwright for ‘attending to the truth and disregarding the audience’ (7.65). Illustrative of the cultural prestige enjoyed by Greek tragedy is Clement’s use of quotations for the purpose of bolstering a moralising argument or illuminating a point of Christian doctrine. For instance, in his discussion of ‘man’s innate fellowship with heaven’ in Strômata (or Miscellanies), he recalls two sayings of Euripides, even though he does not seem to recognise their source (2.22). Later, when he is investigating the nature of God’s divinity (6.59), he quotes approvingly Euripides’ line, ‘He is all-seeing but Himself unseen.’ Clement also attributed to Sophocles the following lines, which Richard Bentley, a distinguished eighteenth-century textual critic, later demonstrated to be of either Jewish or Christian origin (below, p. 250): There is one god, one god in truth, who created heaven and the broad earth, the glistening wave of the sea and the force of the winds. But we mortals, who stray far in our hearts, have fashioned images of gods from stone or bronze or gold or ivory as a consolation for our woes. And to them we sacrifice and hold vain festivals in the belief that we are acting piously (7.63).

It is obvious that this morally uplifting observation would not have been attributed to Sophocles by a Christian author, were it not for the fact that the pagan poet was held in high esteem. Clement’s most extensive allusion to tragedy, however, takes the form of a tirade against the moral bankruptcy of paganism, in particular the Dionysiac Mysteries, as they are described in Euripides’ Bacchae. Though exceedingly vitriolic, the tirade none the less reveals a close reading of the text. Evoking the scene where the Theban king Pentheus, dazzled by Dionysus, sees ‘twin suns, twin Thebes’ (lines 918f.), Clement proceeds to heap scorn on a religious system which not only condones the worship of idols but also advocates the search for salvation through intoxication. The mountain of God, he declares, is not Cithaeron, but ‘a wineless mountain,

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Surviving Greek Tragedy shaded by sacred groves, devoted to the dramas of truth’ (Exhortation to the Greeks 12.91-2). There can be little doubt that his hostility was due in part to the fact that the drama of the Dionysiac Mysteries presented a serious rival to the passion of Christ. As we know from elsewhere, Bacchae occupied a pivotal place at the intersection between Christian and nonChristian thought, not least because its subject matter deals with the rejection of a deity, paralleling the rejection of Jesus by the Jews. Bacchae not only had a significant influence on the authors of the New Testament, but also, as we shall see in the next chapter, served as the major inspiration for a Byzantine poem known as Christus Patiens. Clement’s intent was not to extinguish the habit of reading the Greek classics, but rather to secure their permanent subordination to Christian theology and philosophy. By demonstrating his familiarity with classical literature, including Greek tragedy, he was, moreover, able to refute more effectively his pagan contemporaries, who in general tended to regard the Christians as somewhat uncultivated. The wealth of quotations and allusions to poetry, as well as to philosophy, speaks eloquently of a world that continued to be dominated by its pagan past. The battle for supremacy hardly ended with Clement, however. On the contrary, it was still being waged in the late fourth century, with tragedy still a major target, as we see from the writings of St John Chrysostom (c. 347-407), archbishop of Constantinople. In the following passage he seems to pour scorn upon what the Church may well have regarded as some of the most notorious Greek tragedies, namely Euripides’ Hippolytus, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and Aeschylus’ Oresteia, although he does not name them specifically (Homily on I Thessalonians 5): Their dramas were replete with adultery, lewdness and corruption of all kinds. … One man loved his stepmother, a woman her stepson and in consequence hanged herself. … Would you see a son married to his mother? … The wife of a certain one fell in love with another man and with the help of the adulterer killed her husband on his return. The majority of you will know this story. The son of the murdered man killed the adulterer and after him his mother, then he himself became mad and was haunted by furies. After this the madman himself killed another man and took his wife. What can be worse than these disasters? (tr. Easterling and Miles).

All their doubts and hostility notwithstanding, the early Christians never made a concerted attempt to establish an educational system that was based exclusively on the study of biblical texts. Nor was the abuse which they occasionally heaped upon the unedifying subject matter of Greek tragedy any more bitter than that which they lavished upon other branches of Greek literature. One of the strongest advocates of the view that pagan Greek literature could be of advantage to Christians if studied in moderation was St Basil (330-79), archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, whose acceptance of it was both deep and unwavering. This is

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3. Teachers and Churchmen demonstrated by a short essay which he wrote in his old age for the benefit of his nephews entitled Address to Young Men: How They Might Benefit from Reading Greek Literature. The essay, which was destined to have a profound influence upon the history of education in late antiquity and beyond, argues forcefully for the selective reading of classical texts that are in accordance with Christian morality, so that ‘having accustomed ourselves to seeing the reflection of the sun in the water, we may then direct our gaze to the true light’ (2.8). St Basil also compared the technique of selecting appropriate texts of Greek literature to the labour of bees, which light upon certain plants and leave others well alone (4.7-8). Though he is generally supportive of the reading of poetry, he makes no mention of the tragedians other than in an oblique and disparaging reference to the immoral antics of the gods ‘which we shall leave to theatrical folk’ (4.5). It is therefore highly improbable that his essay would have actively stimulated the study of Greek tragedy, though it would have helped promote a climate in which such an exercise, undertaken for purposes of spiritual enlightenment, would have been countenanced by the Christian hierarchy. St Basil’s appreciation of pagan Greek literature derived from the education which he received in Athens, where it still formed the mainstay of the curriculum as late as the fourth century. Even so, his reading appears to have been very limited, as we see from the fact that most of his citations are confined to Homer, Hesiod and Plato. Only very occasionally does he cite from a tragedian, as in Letter 63 which begins with a quotation from Euripides: ‘I deem the wise man to be my friend, even if he dwells outside my country and even if I may never gaze upon him with my eyes’ (N2 902), which he probably culled from an anthology. It is conceivable, therefore, that by the fourth century the study of Greek tragedy had been largely eliminated from the curriculum even in the city which had originally brought it to birth. Christian hostility to the theatre is an equally complicated and vexed issue. Though leading churchmen expressed their concern about its effects upon popular morality, there is no evidence that they ever tried to close the theatres down. St Augustine (354-430), for instance, is characteristically ambivalent about its psychological impact upon audiences. He writes (Confessions 3.2): Why is it that men enjoy feeling sad at the sight of tragedy and suffering on the stage, although they would be most unhappy if they had to endure the same fate themselves? Yet they watch the plays because they hope to be made to feel sad, and the feeling of sorrow is what they enjoy. … But what sort of pity can we really feel for an imaginary scene on stage? (tr. H. Chadwick).

This passage and others like it reveal the extent to which its author felt himself vulnerable to the seductive appeal of the theatre. In fact perform-

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Surviving Greek Tragedy ances of tragedy and comedy, although rare in this era, may have owed their continuation in part to what Green (1994, 171) calls ‘the old-fashioned purity and elegance of the words and language’, notwithstanding the fact that the Christian apologist Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220), who denounced the theatre for its uncleanliness, took tragedy and comedy to task for being ‘bloody and lascivious, impious and prodigal’ (On Spectacles 17). ‘Why,’ he demanded, ‘should it be permissible to see what it is unlawful to do?’ The Christians did not, however, have it entirely their own way. On the contrary, the pagan apologists continued to fight a rearguard action long after the Roman Empire had become Christianised. In particular they ridiculed the belief that tragedy provoked its audiences to emulate the immoral practices which it often portrays, by proposing a counter-argument to the alleged corrupting effects of art which continues to be aired to this day (cf. Libanius, Orations 64.73; Choricius, 32 [Oration 8] 141-2 T). Anthologies and lexica As late as the fifth century AD excerpts from numerous non-extant tragedies continued to be included in anthologies or were the subject of on-going lexicographical inquiry. John of Stobi, more commonly known as Stobaeus, published two anthologies drawn from earlier compilations of quotations called Eclogae and Anthologium, both of which he dedicated to his son Septimus for the purpose of his education. They include excerpts from seven non-extant plays of Aeschylus, 33 non-extant plays of Sophocles (two of them satyric), and 49 non-extant plays of Euripides (three of them satyric), as well as from all the 32 extant plays.* The excerpts, which are arranged under various headings having to do with moral philosophy, politics, the insecurity of fortune, the natural world, and so forth, vary considerably in length, some consisting of only a single line, others of thirty or more. As we might expect, they do not require any knowledge of the context from which they are taken. On the contrary, their applicability to a wide variety of circumstances constitutes the reason he selected them. Stobaeus thus spared his readers the onus of having to address the moral ambiguities in which the plays abound. Instead he served them up bland morsels of pious hope in divine benevolence or rousing appeals to the display of nobility, such as regularly occur in Greek tragedy at moments of impending disaster. In fact the universal appeal of the passages which he cites made them applicable to Christian and pagan readers alike. Around the same time Hesychius of Alexandria compiled a lexicon of rare words found either in poetry or in Greek dialects, ambitiously entitled Alphabetical Collection of All Words. It includes citations from 39 non*Stobaeus provides a total of over 1,000 citations, many unidentified, from lost tragedies. 651 are from Euripides, 156 from Sophocles, 27 from Aeschylus, 23 from Chaeremon, 11 from Agathon, 11 from Theodectes, 9 from Moschus, and 6 from Carcinus.

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3. Teachers and Churchmen extant plays of Aeschylus (four of them satyric), 58 non-extant plays of Sophocles (two of them satyric), and 25 non-extant plays of Euripides (two of them satyric). Hesychius’ quotations mostly take the form of a single word or phrase, which he glosses for the benefit of his readers. Though it is possible that his lexicon, like Stobaeus’ anthologies, is predominantly a compilation of earlier scholarship, he claims in his preface to have made an original contribution. Moreover, the fact that he provides definitions of words for readers who would not have encountered them other than in their original (i.e. tragic) context suggests that he may have had access to some of the non-extant plays from which he cites. Anthologies of tragedy had already been circulating in Hellenistic Egypt as early as the third century BC (see above, p. 53), and many of the excerpts were probably culled from previous collections or had survived popularly in the form of unattributed sententiae. Attenuated though the link with Greek tragedy had become in this format, however, anthologies enabled the philosophical and ethical musings of the tragedians to continue to inform popular discourse. The invention of the codex In the early centuries of the Christian era the papyrus roll continued to serve as the traditional medium through which Greek and Latin literature were transmitted. From the late first century AD onwards, however, the roll gradually began to give way to the codex; that is to say, to a collection of sheets which were folded over and fastened together at the spine and (usually) protected by wooden covers. The invention of the codex, which almost certainly took place in Rome, the centre of the book trade, has been aptly described as ‘the most momentous development in the history of the book until the invention of printing’ (Roberts 1954, 169). The codex had several advantages over the roll, chief of which was the fact that its pages were written on both sides, whereas one side of a roll was left blank. It also facilitated research, since the reader could more easily find a specific passage that he was looking for. Hardly less important was the invention of parchment, a writing material made from the skin of lambs, calves or kids, which is much more durable and adaptable than papyrus. Since parchment was extremely expensive, however, papyrus continued to be used long after the latter’s invention, even for the leaves of new codices. Indeed there are many examples of papyrus codices of classical texts. The change-over to the new-style book was in fact extremely slow, with papyrus roll, papyrus codex and parchment codex co-existing for some two hundred years. As finds from Egypt indicate, the codex finally began to oust the roll in the fourth century, though initially only in the case of Christian literature. The process occurred first in the Latin West and was almost certainly initiated by the Church, which had a growing need for a more compendious

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Surviving Greek Tragedy means of preserving sacred literature than that afforded by the papyrus roll. A book which could be read by merely turning over the pages obviously had a great advantage over a roll, particularly when, as Kenyon (1932, 113) aptly noted, ‘it was a question of dealing with works on which the salvation of the soul depended’. Not until the fifth or sixth century, however, did the parchment codex begin to predominate. The durability of parchment was destined to prove crucial for the survival of classical literature, since it guaranteed its preservation through centuries of neglect. Classical texts first began to be transcribed on to codices in the third century AD. One of the earliest examples is a leaf which contains lines from Euripides’ lost play Cretans (Berlin Museum 217). It was in codex form that the majority of classical literature survived into the Middle Ages. It is possible that the decision to reduce the selection of school texts of the Greek tragedians to three – the so-called Byzantine triads (see next chapter) – was determined by the capacity of the codex. Because of the greater width of its margins, moreover, the codex led to an important innovation in the transmission of the scholia accompanying the plays, since these now came to be written around the text in a smaller and less neat script than the text itself, rather than in separate volumes, as had previously been the case. For obvious reasons this development is also likely to have led to the abbreviation of scholia, since only a limited amount of space was now available for their preservation. Exactly when the change occurred is disputed, though it is possible that it did not predate the Carolingian revival in the tenth century, as seems to have been the case with the Latin scholia (Reeve, s.v. ‘scholia’ in OCD3). Whatever the date, the texts of plays provided with commentaries probably continued to be copied alongside those without for a considerable period of time, depending perhaps in part upon instructions received from the purchaser.

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4

Barbarians and Scribes The upheavals that came about as a result of the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century posed a severe threat to the survival of Greek tragedy, notwithstanding the fact that the plays continued to be taught in the schools, as we know from the fact that they were copied sporadically onto papyri and parchment. Many tragedies which had not been incorporated into the school ‘edition’ of 24 are likely to have perished in this era. Moreover, around AD 500 the number was reduced from 24 to nine – the so-called Byzantine triads – indicative of a further decline of interest in the genre. So, too, the commentaries on the plays became more rudimentary. It was also in the fifth century that the composition of tragedies written in Greek came to an end, if we are to believe the testimony that Synesius of Cyrene and Timotheus of Gaza were tragedians, thereby bringing to an end a tradition that had endured for almost a millennium (TGF I, nos 199-200). Despite the efforts of the early Byzantine Empire to preserve its classical heritage, the study of Greek literature at the higher level was imperilled by an edict which the Emperor Justinian passed in 529 banning the teaching of philosophy and law in Athens. As the large quantity of medieval manuscripts of the triads suggests, however, it is unlikely that the prohibition extended to the teaching of Greek tragedy, which now served the more basic needs of the grammarian and rhetorician. Even so, those who were acquainted with the plays at first-hand probably comprised only a minute fraction of the population, since few received any education at all. Meanwhile, the western half of the former Roman Empire was undergoing a series of invasions by Goths and Vandals, who sacked Rome and destroyed its libraries. Mainly because of their doctrinal differences, relations between the Byzantines and the Latins became increasingly strained from the seventh century onwards as each regarded the other with undisguised hostility and suspicion. This situation was to have important consequences for the transmission of classical literature. Largely due to the increasing barbarism of the age, secular literary papyri, tragic included, disappear in the sixth century. For the next three hundred years virtually nothing is known of the fate of Greek tragedy. It is thus extremely fortunate that the texts which were previously preserved on papyri had already been transcribed onto parchment, a process which may already have begun in the fourth century AD. Around the turn of the

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Surviving Greek Tragedy ninth century Byzantine scribes began to transliterate secular texts from capital letter script into the new minuscule.* The encyclopaedias, lexica and florilegia that were produced in the ninth and tenth centuries provide evidence of continuing interest in Greek tragedy, at least in the form of gnômai. Like Stobaeus and Hesychius, however, their authors probably drew mainly on earlier compilations. The revival of a limited scholarly interest in the genre eventually took place in the eleventh century, as evidenced by the writings of Michael Psellus and Eustathius. Many classical texts are likely to have been lost during the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. Even so, we should not assume that any extant tragedies perished once and for all in the conflagration. Though this catastrophic event led to the fragmentation of the Byzantine Empire and profoundly affected Byzantine learning, less than a century later a remarkable recovery had begun to take place. In Constantinople and Thessalonica a group of scholars emerged who displayed some understanding of the principles of textual criticism, which they now applied to the study of Greek tragedy. Outside these centres of learning, however, little knowledge of the plays will have existed since monastic teaching concentrated chiefly on philosophy and theology. Even so, it is the accommodating attitude of the Byzantine Church and the scholarly tradition of Byzantine philologists which are ultimately responsible for the eagerness of the Italian humanists of the fifteenth century to acquire manuscripts. Consistent with a general decline in the performing arts which dates from the early Byzantine era, no Greek tragedy, so far as we know, was performed on stage throughout this long period, though informal readings may have taken place in private houses. The evidence of papyri and the Byzantine school curriculum The number of surviving Greek literary papyri reaches a peak in the third century and thereafter declines sharply. From the end of the fourth century, they represent less than a tenth of all surviving papyri. The dearth of tragic papyri is consistent with this trend. Of the extant plays of Euripides, we have papyrus fragments of fifth-century date (and possibly later) of Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Medea, Orestes and Phoenician Women, all selected plays. Of Euripides’ non-extant plays, we have a fourth- or fifth-century papyrus fragment of Melanippe Bound, and two leaves from a fifth- or sixth-century parchment of Phaethon, which was re-used as a palimpsest in a sixth-century copy of The Epistles of St Paul. In addition, an Armenian text provides us with the plot of his Peliades. Of *The fact that there are very few literary manuscripts dating from the sixth to ninth centuries, and none at all of tragedy predating the middle of the tenth, is perhaps due to the fact that minuscule caught on so rapidly that it quickly rendered its predecessor obsolete.

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4. Barbarians and Scribes Sophocles we have fifth- or sixth-century papyrus fragments of Ajax and Oedipus the King, and sixth- or seventh-century fragments of Electra. There are no papyri of Aeschylus of comparably late date. The selection of a ‘triad’ of works by each of the three Attic tragedians, probably made in Byzantium c. 500, resulted in a drastic narrowing of the school curriculum. Each triad comprises the first three plays in the original ‘edition’ of 24 (see Appendix I). As the plays were arranged in order of popularity, we may infer that Prometheus Bound, Ajax and Hecuba were the most commonly read. Moreover, since Euripides was the most popular dramatist, Hecuba would have been the best-known tragedy. Some time later Agamemnon and Eumenides were added to the Aeschylean triad, making an edition of five. As was the case with the original selection of 24 plays, we should probably be thinking in terms of a protracted process which took several decades, rather than of a single, deliberate act. Precisely what function the plays served in the schools is impossible to determine, though it is probable that they were used in the teaching of basic grammar and the principles of rhetoric. Another likelihood is that students were instructed in the imitation of the iambic passages of Greek tragedy, which became something of a pastime among the educated élite (see below). Most students, however, would probably have studied only set speeches or set scenes; very few can have had the expertise or the staying power to read a whole play. Tragedy’s darkest hour The Emperor Justinian’s edict forbidding the teaching of philosophy and law in Athens does not seem to have extended to the teaching of Greek literature as a whole, and we know of no specific hostility towards the tragic poets. As Browning (2000, 867) has noted, moreover, it would have been an impossible undertaking for the Church to set up its own schools in opposition to those which continued to rely on the texts, commentaries and lexica that had been handed down for hundreds of years. Even so, the disfavour in which some Christians of the sixth century held pagan literature was presumably one of the reasons why pagan authors were no longer copied onto papyri, though this factor may have been less influential than the general deterioration in educational standards which the age witnessed. Around the middle of the sixth century education began to decline in the Greek-speaking East. Schools which had flourished in the early centuries of the Christian era now closed their doors for good. By AD 529 probably only Constantinople, Thessalonica and Alexandria continued to function as centres of higher learning. In the Latin-speaking West knowledge of Greek disappeared altogether from Spain, Britain, Ireland, Gaul and Africa. Books ceased to be copied and many authors who had survived from late antiquity were in danger of disappearing. In the seventh century there

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Surviving Greek Tragedy was hardly anyone, even in Ravenna, the capital of the Byzantine Exarchate of Italy, sufficiently competent in Greek to correspond with the court in Constantinople. The decline in bilinguality was reciprocal: Latin was no longer understood in Constantinople. Sicily, which had originally been settled by Greeks, became the last bastion of the Greek language in the West, a status which it probably retained until the Arab conquest in the ninth century when most Greek-speaking Sicilians migrated to Italy. Henceforth, knowledge of the language was confined to the monasteries of southern Italy and later to those of Calabria alone. Though monastic learning was put mainly to the purpose of reading ecclesiastical texts, we have evidence that a few monks were interested in secular literature. The Arab conquest of Alexandria in 641 did not terminate the supply of papyrus. In Constantinople it continued in use as late as c. 1100, though increasingly superseded by parchment (Lewis 1974, 92). All the more telling, therefore, is the absence of any tragic papyri later than the seventh century. In fact patristic, biblical and liturgical works form the bulk of all Greek manuscripts which pre-date the ninth century. Virtually nothing is known about the survival of Greek tragedy in Constantinople and its outriders from the sixth to ninth centuries. There are, however, one or two glimmers of light. George of Pisidia (also known as Pisides), who was deacon of Hagia Sophia in the first half of the seventh century, was so accomplished in composing iambic trimeters that in later times it was debated whether he or Euripides was the greater poet (see below, p. 83). It was largely due to Pisides that the iambic trimeter now became a popular vehicle of poetic expression, even for epic narrative. This imitation of the metre and style of Greek tragedy, sometimes interpreted as an impoverishment of creativity, also demonstrates a determination among a select group of Byzantines to preserve their classical heritage. In addition, leading theologians continued to champion the cause of pagan literature. Just as St Basil of Caesarea had defended it in the fourth century, so St John of Damascus (c. 675 – c. 749) asserted that Christians were justified in flavouring the message of salvation with the sweetness of pagan learning ‘in the manner of bees sipping honey from flowers’ (PG 94.524c-525a). The situation in the West was undoubtedly much bleaker: very probably the papal collection contained no pagan Greek texts at all. The introduction of minuscule script In the middle of the ninth century a revival in learning took place in both Eastern and Western Europe. Ancient codices, which had been stored in Byzantine monasteries and cathedral libraries, were re-discovered and copied for the first time in several hundred years. Among them were a number containing the selected plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, many with commentaries in separate codices. In addition, a

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4. Barbarians and Scribes handful may have been copied containing the non-selected plays of Euripides. These codices, none of which has survived, were destined to serve as the exemplars of our earliest medieval manuscripts. In the East this revival, known as the ‘Second Hellenism’, was symbolised by the re-founding of the University of Constantinople, a secular institution, by the assistant emperor Bardas in 863. In the West it was fostered by the political achievements of Charlemagne (768-814). It was monasteries which took the lead in the transmission of our classical legacy. As Lucas (1923, 89) memorably phrased it, ‘hidden away in the dust of libraries there ever sat, owlish, blear-eyed, forgetting life, some monk, some pedant’, who now began re-discovering and copying out manuscripts. Lucas goes on to state that the monks ‘probably understood as much “as a sow in the matter of spicery” ’ about what they were copying, but this is to be belittle their intellect and curiosity. Though we lack portraits of these monks, we catch a glimpse of them at work in the numerous Renaissance paintings which depict scholars writing in their studies dressed in the guise of one of the Church Fathers, most commonly as St Augustine or St Jerome. The replacement of capital script by minuscule greatly facilitated the process of transmission. The earliest securely dated minuscule manuscript is the Uspensky Gospels of AD 835 (Leningrad gr. 219). As its writing shows considerable accomplishment, however, scholars suspect that the new script had been adopted at least half a century beforehand. Minuscule script had two crucial advantages over its predecessor: first, it took up less space, and secondly it speeded up the process of transcription. Once a text had been transliterated, therefore, its chances of survival were far greater than ever before, since copying from minuscule was much less laborious than copying from capital script. Minuscule also facilitated the task of reading, since word-separation and punctuation, though not uncommon in capital script manuscripts, now became obligatory (Barbour 1981, xxvixxvii). Its invention is therefore likely to have contributed significantly to the spread of literacy. Even so, it would be falsely optimistic to assume that the world was suddenly flooded with books. To guard against fire, artificial light was forbidden in monasteries, which meant that the work of copying had to be confined to the daylight hours. A scribe is thought to have required about four months to copy a manuscript of 300 folios. It follows that the number of manuscripts which he would have transcribed in his working life should be reckoned ‘in the scores rather than in the hundreds’ (Mango 1975, 44). We do not know what criteria were used to determine which writings should be transliterated into minuscule. Nor do we know at what date scribes first began to copy secular, as opposed to sacred, texts. They presumably did so, however, at the behest of wealthy patrons, since only those who were relatively well-to-do could afford them. Though monastic scriptoria undertook most of the copying, we also hear of individuals who

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Surviving Greek Tragedy describe themselves as professional calligraphers in the colophons of manuscripts undertaking private commissions. As their signatures suggest, it was these professionals, either working for private clients or under ecclesiastical patronage, who copied most of the secular manuscripts, whereas monks mostly copied religious texts. Even so, it says much about the high regard in which secular literature was held that the Church permitted such activity to be conducted under its roof. There seems to have been considerable variation in the way that codices were transcribed. Some scribes were instructed to copy a codex faithfully, whereas others were free to correct it where necessary. This is indicated by the formulae that are occasionally preserved on manuscripts – that ‘it has been copied as accurately as possible from the prototype’, or that the scribe’s task was ‘first to correct, then to copy’. In general, however, it is probably safe to assume that the emphasis before the eleventh century was upon reproducing the exact appearance of the originals (Irigoin 1975, 25f.), even though the earliest surviving manuscript of Greek tragedy, which is dated to the tenth century, already shows signs of correction (see below, p. 90). These formulae also indicate that scribes did not follow dictation, which in turn implies that each scriptorium probably made only a single minuscule transliteration. Byzantine education and scholarship: ninth to twelfth centuries In the first half of the ninth century Greek tragedy was once again attracting the attention of scholars. Photius (c. 810 – c. 893), the patriarch of Constantinople, discusses numerous single words, phrases and passages from Greek tragedy in his Lexicon. His work contains 144 citations from Euripides (94 from extant plays), 190 from Sophocles (50 from extant plays), and 111 from Aeschylus (47 from extant plays). Very occasionally he cites from tragedians whose works have not survived, including Phrynichus (once), Ion of Chios (four times), Achaeus (four times), and Astydamas (once). Arethas of Patras (c. 860-935), archbishop of Caesarea and one of the leading bibliophiles of his day, quotes from Euripides in his anthology entitled the Cycle, though his private library, whose contents are well-documented, did not include any manuscripts of Greek tragedy. Ignatius, the metropolitan of Nicaea, whose career spanned the early decades of the ninth century, was the author of an iambic dramation (‘dialogue in verse’) between Adam, Eve and the serpent, which includes many verbal echoes, as well as direct quotations, from Sophocles and Euripides. Lastly, the Suda, an encyclopaedia compiled at the end of the tenth century, contains a vast storehouse of information on a wide variety of subjects culled in part from Greek tragedy. Sophocles far outstrips the other two dramatists in popularity, claiming nearly 700 entries, compared with some 80 entries on Euripides and less than 40 on Aeschylus. Ajax

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4. Barbarians and Scribes (179) heads the list, followed by Electra (149), Oedipus at Colonus (124) and Oedipus the King (106). Philoctetes (52) is the next most popular, with Women of Trachis (19) and Antigone (1) at the bottom. Very likely the author (or authors) consulted Sophoclean manuscripts at first-hand. All of Euripides’ selected plays are quoted, but only four of his non-selected ones. Of Aeschylus, only Agamemnon, Eumenides, Prometheus Bound and Seven against Thebes are cited. How many schoolchildren studied Greek tragedy in this period? It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the population were completely illiterate and that most of the remaining one-tenth received only a very basic education in reading, writing and arithmetic, so the answer may well be under one per cent. By now, moreover, spoken Greek had evolved so far from its classical roots that the latter may have seemed like a foreign language. It was probably only in Constantinople that ancient Greek was taught at the higher level. Ignatius, who, in addition to being a metropolitan was also a grammatikos or ‘teacher of literature’ (Suda s.v.), may have taught Greek tragedy either in the Imperial University or in the Patriarchal Academy, but no other teacher is known to us by name. The opening decades of the eleventh century demonstrate a continuing paucity of Byzantine scholars, indicative of the widespread intellectual impoverishment throughout the empire. Around 1050, however, the tide begins to turn. Homer, didactic poetry and some prose writers are now being read and studied, though there is little evidence to indicate whether tragedy and comedy are also back on to the curriculum. Especially intriguing, however, is a letter from an unknown Byzantine schoolteacher to a friend, requesting that the latter return his copy of Sophocles, possibly because he needed it for teaching purposes (Laordas 1954, 196). Given the fact that private libraries were small, comprising on average no more than two dozen codices, students may well have passed down their books to the class below them. It is perhaps because manuscripts of Greek tragedy were regarded as rather commonplace items that none has survived from this period. From the middle of the eleventh century onwards there is evidence of a sustained scholarly interest in Greek tragedy for the first time in over five hundred years. Leading this movement is Michael Psellus, who in 1059 was forced to resign as professor of philosophy at the University of Constantinople on account of his excessive devotion to Platonism. Psellus is the author of a short essay entitled, ‘In response to the question: “Who was the better poet, Euripides or Pisides?” ’ In it Psellus cites from Prometheus Bound and Persians, as well as from Hecuba and Orestes, the first two plays in the Aeschylean and Euripidean triads. On matters of detail, Psellus’ level of criticism is rudimentary. For instance, he takes issue with Euripides for allowing Odysseus, ‘a man of noble birth and an orator’, to be beaten in argument by Hecuba, ‘a slave’ (lines 95-9; cf. Hecuba 218ff.). He does, however, demonstrate some sensitivity to literature, albeit in

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Surviving Greek Tragedy rather general terms. In particular, he characterises the language of Aeschylus and Sophocles as ‘more solemn’ than that of Euripides and their work as a whole as ‘extremely elegant’ (lines 55-7). He praises Euripides for the ‘grace and charm’ of his poetry (line 65), and the way in which he adapted musical rhythms and tempi to the requirements of plot (lines 78-90). Psellus may also be the author of a Byzantine treatise entitled On Tragedy, structured along the lines of Aristotle’s Art of Poetry, in which a range of topics connected with Attic tragedy are discussed, including subject-matter, plot structure, metre, division of choral odes, dance movements, and musical instruments. In the following century Johannes Tzetzes (c. 1110-80), a noted polymath who ran a school in Constantinople, wrote a poem entitled On Tragic Poetry, which is thought to derive in places from the same source as Psellus’ On Tragedy. Eustathius, who was a lecturer in rhetoric at the Patriarchal Academy and metropolitan of Thessalonica from 1175 to 1192, possessed a more extensive knowledge of Greek tragedy than anyone of whom we have record since the fourth century AD. He is also the only Byzantine scholar to demonstrate familiarity with the non-selected plays of Euripides before the fourteenth century. Eustathius is the author of two works normally referred to as Commentary on Homer’s Iliad and Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. In them he cites 325 times from Euripides, most frequently from the Byzantine triad (60 times from Hecuba, 39 from Orestes, and 39 from Phoenician Women). He also quotes liberally from the non-triadic Hippolytus (48 times) and Medea (28 times). However, he does not cite from any other Euripidean play more than twice. His purposes in quoting are varied: to distinguish a Homeric from a Euripidean idiom, to explain the etymology or accent of a word, or to articulate a bon mot. Finally, the Christus Patiens, a cento in the form of a dialogue which is falsely ascribed to Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), may also date to this era, though some scholars assign the work to the sixth century. The subject is the betrayal, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The dramatis personae include Mary the Virgin, Jesus, John, Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus. The chorus consists of Galilean women. The author filched lines from seven of Euripides’ plays, as well as from Agamemnon and Prometheus Bound, and Lycophron’s poem Cassandra. His most significant borrowings occur in the central scene of the cento where the Virgin weeps over the body of her dead son. This is closely modelled on the scene in Bacchae where Agave weeps over the dismembered head of her son Pentheus (1280ff.). The Christus Patiens can hardly have been intended for theatrical production given its unwieldy dramatic structure. Even so, the author’s appropriation of the language of tragedy, which, it seems fair to conclude, was reckoned to have been ‘the most beautiful language of the world by the standards of the age’ (Puchner 2002, 319), is clear evidence of the high regard accorded to the iambic metre and a striking example of the usurpation of a pagan archetype to explicate the

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4. Barbarians and Scribes passion of Christ. Any opposition that may have been directed to Greek tragedy by the Church was now effectively laid to rest and none is recorded hereafter. The Palaeologan Renaissance The sack of Constantinople by the Venetians and their allies during the Fourth Crusade had a profound impact upon the transmission of Greek culture. Quite aside from the human toll that the army of Christ inflicted upon the inhabitants of the capital of Christian civilisation, many monasteries, churches and libraries were laid to ruin. Indeed it is entirely probable that the libraries in Constantinople suffered more losses at the hands of the Crusaders during their three-day rampage in 1204 than they did two and a half centuries later at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Over the course of the next half-century the Byzantine emperors were reduced virtually to the status of vassals. Against all odds, however, just when the Ottoman invaders were advancing into the heartland of the empire, and as Greece and the western Balkans were being divided among the Franks, Serbs, Catalans and Bulgars, an intensification of cultural and scholarly activity got underway in Constantinople and Thessalonica, manifested in part by a renewed interest in pagan literature. This extraordinary phenomenon, which is truly remarkable given the insecurities of the age, is known as the Palaeologan Renaissance. It is named after the Emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus (1259-82), though its origins lie in the period immediately following the Fourth Crusade. As Zuntz (1965, 282) memorably expressed it, ‘It is as though Providence had enabled the Byzantines, in extremis, to hand over to their heirs the treasures which they had guarded for a thousand years.’ Michael VIII, who re-captured Constantinople in 1261, re-founded the Imperial University and the Patriarchal Academy. In addition, a number of schools sprang up. It is likely that the Palaeologan Renaissance was generated in part by the flow of manuscripts to Constantinople from the gradually shrinking Byzantine world, as refugees fled to the capital from remote areas, bringing with them their precious codices. Scribes with genuine pretensions to being scholars now began to take an interest in classical texts. Their philological activities were largely confined to the reign of Andronicus II Palaeologus (1282-1328), whose court was lauded by a contemporary scholar and theologian called Nicephorus Gregoras for being ‘a prytaneum of education of all kinds, surpassing the Academy, the Lyceum and the Stoa’ (quoted in Nicol 1969, 34). The most important of these scholars in our field were Maximus Planudes and Manuel Moschopulus, who taught in Constantinople, and Thomas Magister and Demetrius Triclinius, who taught in Thessalonica. Though their interests were by no means confined to tragedy, it is highly likely that they included tragic texts in their teaching. Maximus Planudes

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Surviving Greek Tragedy (active c. 1280 to after 1332), who was probably the senior member of the group, was by training a civil servant. Following the accession of Andronicus II, he abandoned his career and dedicated himself to a life of scholarship within the confines of a monastery. Planudes’ expertise in Latin, which was highly unusual in the East in the thirteenth century, enabled him to translate several theological works into Greek. He also has the distinction of being the earliest commentator on the Byzantine triads of Euripides and Sophocles. His pupil Manuel Moschopulus (born c. 1265), who wrote a book on Greek grammar, also wrote scholia on the same Byzantine triads. However, the belief that either he or his (probably) younger contemporary Thomas Magister undertook a full-scale recension of either Sophocles or Euripides has largely been discarded (Dawe 1973, I ch. 2), though they did introduce some emendations to the texts. Undoubtedly the most important of the four was Demetrius Triclinius (c. 1280 to after 1332), who possessed several manuscripts of Sophocles and refers to their variant readings (Browning 1960, 14). Triclinius was also the first Byzantine scholar to acquire a secure knowledge of Greek metrics, which he used – not invariably to good effect – to emend passages which he regarded as unsound. It was he who discovered that the lyric strophes and antistrophes of Greek tragedy agreed with each other metrically – a principle which we now call ‘responsion’. As Turyn (1957, 23-52) suggested, his contribution and work habits can perhaps be best appreciated by studying a manuscript of the Euripidean triad in the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome (greco 14). The manuscript in question, which he thoroughly revised, was copied from an edition compiled by Thomas Magister. Triclinius incorporated into the text what the original scribe had omitted, i.e. the ancient hypotheseis, the scholia and the glosses, and added the scholia and glosses which Manuel Moschopulus had introduced. He also re-wrote the lyric passages, going so far as to tear out the original leaves and to replace them with new ones inscribed in his own hand. Finally, he added scholia of his own, mostly on metrical matters. It was also Triclinius who first assembled the ten selected and nine non-selected plays of Euripides in a single edition. A manuscript in Naples (Biblioteca Nazionale II.F.31) containing Agamemnon, Eumenides and the Aeschylean triad, together with numerous scholia, is believed to have been written by him (Fraenkel 1950, I p. 3 and pl. 1). In addition, Triclinius edited the extant plays of Sophocles. It is generally agreed that before the Palaeologan scholars began their labours the texts of Greek tragedy had remained fairly faithful to their Aristophanean ‘archetype’, as is suggested by the evidence of the papyri, which occasionally provide checks to the readings of medieval manuscripts. It was due to their somewhat high-handed efforts to emend unintelligible or difficult readings that many errors were now introduced. Their misplaced zeal is most evident in the plays that constitute the Aeschylean triad, which suffered heavily at their hands. Even so, we

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4. Barbarians and Scribes remain hugely indebted to this generation of scholars for reviving a serious scholarly interest in Greek tragedy, as well as for preserving readings that would otherwise have been lost. The work of the Palaeologan scholars probably generated renewed interest in the teaching of classical poetry in schools. Judging by the quantity of editions and scholia that they produced, the Byzantine triads of Sophocles and Euripides were among the most commonly read classical texts in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, along with the first two books of the Iliad and some idylls of the bucolic poet Theocritus. Turning our attention to the West, the Greek monks of the abbey of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata in Tusculum, near Rome, were copying out manuscripts on Byzantine liturgy and music in the eleventh century and later. However, ignorance of Greek literature among the Italian prehumanists was such that a certain Pace of Ferrara (fl. c. 1299 to after 1317) believed Sophocles to be the author of the Iliad and Odyssey. Some knowledge of Greek literature, including an interest in Greek tragedy, was, however, preserved in the formerly Byzantine regions of southern Italy and Sicily. The most important centre was the monastery of St Nicolas of Casole in Otranto, at the southern toe of Italy, whose library preserved secular Greek manuscripts which are thought to have been copied in its scriptorium (Wilson 1967, 75). They include the Sophocles palimpsest known as manuscript G dated 1282 which contains four plays with scholia (Laur. Conv. Sopp. 152), and a palimpsest of three plays of Euripides dated c. 1300 (Vat. gr. 1135).* Manuscripts of Greek tragedy There are approximately 150 surviving manuscripts of Aeschylus, 200 of Sophocles, and 300 of Euripides. The earliest, dated c. 950, is the Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9, which contains the seven extant plays of Aeschylus. Manuscripts range in date mainly from c. 1000 to 1600, but, for reasons which are unclear, very few belong to the period c. 1000 to c. 1300. No surviving manuscript containing Greek poetry pre-dates the second quarter of the tenth century BC. The vast majority belong to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The best represented century is the fifteenth, clear evidence that the genre was now attracting widespread scholarly interest.

*Other manuscripts of classical works copied in Otranto in the thirteenth century include Homer’s Odyssey (1201), Lycophron’s Alexandra (1255), and Hesiod’s Works and Days (1287). The earliest Greek manuscript copied in Otranto is dated 1154. See Jacob (1977, 278) and West (1978, 83). It is unclear, however, whether these texts were used for teaching Greek. Scribes were also copying out Greek manuscripts at the Angevin court of Naples and at the Hohenstaufen court of Palermo in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although there is no evidence that any of them transcribed any texts of Greek tragedy. See Weiss (1950, 195-226) and Mann (1996, 15).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy There are also a few manuscripts which date from the sixteenth century and some of later date.* Manuscripts are conventionally divided into ‘veteres’ and ‘recentiores’. As Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990, xi) have pointed out, however, a better name for the veteres would be Palaeologan, since they were mainly written at the end of the Byzantine period (c. 1261 – c. 1350). Despite the inevitable prejudice in favour of the veteres, the age of a manuscript does not necessarily offer any guarantee of its accuracy. On the contrary, it has now become an agreed principle of textual criticism that each manuscript must be judged on its own merits, though some later ones can, of course, be demonstrated to be copies of surviving exemplars. It used to be believed that all the surviving manuscripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides derive from a single transliteration from capital letter to minuscule, but this is now doubted at least in the case of Sophocles and Euripides, whose manuscripts probably derive from two or more independent transliterations. The vast majority of surviving manuscripts of Attic tragedy contain the plays of the Byzantine triads. There are also some which contain the first (or first two) plays of the triads. As we noted earlier, the fact that Euripides is represented by 19 plays, whereas only seven of Aeschylus and Sophocles survive apiece, owes much to chance notwithstanding Euripides’ greater popularity, since there are only two medieval manuscripts of his nine non-selected plays. The texts of the selected plays are accompanied by a heterogeneous compilation of scholia. Some of these date to the period of Alexandrian scholarship and later antiquity, others are of Palaeologan date, and still others represent a compilation of both. Of this collection as a whole, Page (1938, xliv) wrote, ‘Now stupid, now acute and sensitive; now learned, now careless and ignorant; it must be treated often with sympathy and always with caution.’ Recently, however, scholars have found much of value in them, not least for what they tell us about the reception of Greek tragedy (above, p. 44). In contrast, the non-selected Euripidean plays are provided with brief, uninformative notes of little importance that were jotted down by late readers. As we noted at the end of the previous chapter, perhaps as late as the eighth century AD text and commentary were still being written on separate rolls, as was the case in Hellenistic times. Subsequently it became common practice to use the ample margins of the codex for substantial annotations, and this was the form in which the scholia were transmitted to the medieval manuscripts. A manuscript of Euripides’ Hecuba, for instance, which is dated 1438, contains a scholion which begins beneath the text and continues on the top left-hand side of the manuscript (lines 885-8). Some manuscripts also furnish us with a cata*Turyn (1957, 3-9; 1952, 5-9; 1943, 6-9) lists 269 manuscripts of Euripides dating from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, 29 of which are in England; 193 of Sophocles, 15 of which are in England and one in Scotland; and 133 of Aeschylus, eight of which are in England.

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4. Barbarians and Scribes logue of the playwright’s tragedies and satyr plays, his biography, and the Alexandrian hypotheseis which introduce them. Little is known of the whereabouts of Greek manuscripts before they arrived in Italy since only a few Byzantine libraries were in the habit of marking their property. An exception is Vaticanus graecus 1333, a fourteenth-century copy of Pindar and Sophocles, which is marked ‘from the Patriarchate’ (fol. 74v), i.e. from the Library of the Patriarch in Constantinople. We may assume that the University and Imperial libraries also possessed sets of the extant Greek tragedies, some of which may have survived the sack in 1453. Several monasteries possessed modest collections of pagan works, including Greek tragedy. Outside Constantinople, locations include Thessalonica, Mount Athos, the monastery of St John on Patmos, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the church at Caesarea in Cappadocia. As noted above, the monastery of St Nicholas of Casole also possessed classical texts. In addition, some pagan texts were in private hands, though most collections were very small. Among a collection of 27 codices from Thessalonica, which are thought to have belonged to a physician since they mostly comprised theological and medical works, was one which contained the works of Homer, Sophocles and Euripides. The majority of manuscripts are now housed in European libraries and museums. The largest number are in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome. Sizeable collections are also to be found in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the British Library in London, the University Library in Cambridge, and the Bodleian in Oxford. All the manuscripts of Greek tragedy which remain in Greece are of fifteenth-century date or later. Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9 Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9, which is sometimes known simply as ‘Mediceus’ or ‘the Medicean’, is in the Medicea Biblioteca Laurenziana (known to English speakers as the Laurentian Library) in Florence. It consists of 264 leaves (i.e. 528 pages) and is written on vellum. It was probably copied in a scriptorium in Byzantium. On palaeographical grounds the codex has been dated to the middle of the tenth century (Diller 1974, 522), though it could be a decade or so later. It is thus the earliest and arguably the most illustrious of all surviving manuscripts of Greek tragedy. It was acquired in Constantinople by the Sicilian manuscript hunter Giovanni Aurispa some time before November 1423 on behalf of the humanist collector Niccolò Niccoli, who brought it to Venice (see below, p. 100). Like most other manuscripts, the Medicean is a compilation of books. The book known as M contains the only text of the seven plays of Aeschy-

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Surviving Greek Tragedy lus, while the book known as L contains the seven plays of Sophocles and Apollonius Rhodius’ epic poem Argonautica. Originally the texts of Aeschylus and Apollonius were bound separately; the text of Sophocles was added later as a prefix and the leaves re-numbered. The number and age of the hands have been much disputed. The general consensus, however, is that the texts of Sophocles and Apollonius, as well as that of Aeschylus up to line 705 of Persians, are by the same hand, whereas the remainder of Aeschylus is by a second hand. All the texts are provided with copious scholia and interlinear glosses. As Fraenkel (1950, 1) wrote, ‘Any student of Aeschylus, however young and inexperienced, should attempt to make himself familiar with the clear and easy script of this great book’. Denniston and Page (1957, xxxviii) characterised M as ‘a descendant – not of the first generation – of a manuscript written in uncials (i.e. capital script) not later than c. AD 800 and perhaps (or even probably) much earlier’. It contains a number of corrections and additions of scholia which are contemporary with the transliteration but written in another hand (Ms); others are thought to date to the fourteenth century and to have been made in consultation with an unidentified manuscript of that date (M2). In places these corrections have made the text illegible. As was common practice, the original scribe – or scholar as he should perhaps be called – indicated variant readings by writing only those letters which differed from the text above the line and enclosing them between dots. M is not only our sole authority for Suppliant Women and LibationBearers, but also the most accurate text for the five other extant plays of Aeschylus. Regrettably, it is missing fourteen leaves. As a consequence, we have only lines 1-310 and 1067-159 of Agamemnon and lack the opening lines of Libation-Bearers. It is probable that the mutilation took place before the arrival of the manuscript in Italy. M was consulted in Florence in 1424 by Ambrogio Traversari, a Camaldolensian monk and textual scholar, who confused Agamemnon and Libation-Bearers as one play, as, too, did the early translators of Aeschylus. Robortellus (Francesco Robortelli) appears to have consulted M for his edition of 1552, though he does not state which manuscript he used. In the nineteenth century M was considered by some scholars to be the source of all the other manuscripts of Aeschylus. However, it is now recognised that there are several instances where it has an inferior reading, whether as a result of a misplaced or omitted line or by the inclusion of a gloss which in other manuscripts sometimes appears above the text, and this in turn demonstrates that it cannot be the archetype (West 1990, 322; 1998, v). The Sophoclean manuscript known as L was corrected at the time of writing, probably under the eye of a diorthôtês (or ‘corrector’). It was rarely used by scholars before Peter Elmsley, who described it as ‘pre-eminent both from the point of view of age and of quality’ and who collated it for his

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4. Barbarians and Scribes 1820 edition of Oedipus at Colonus (Jebb 1897, xliii). Until recently it was believed to be the best manuscript for Sophocles but, as in the case of M, it is now generally agreed that its readings are occasionally inferior. Mediceus Laurentianus 32.2 Mediceus Laurentianus 32.2 is on paper and dated c. 1310. It is thought to have been written by two scribes of contemporary date who worked in the same scriptorium in Thessalonica. One of these has been identified by Turyn (1957, 225 and 229) as Nicolaus Triclines, who may have been a relative of Demetrius Triclinius. The identity of the other is unknown. The book within the codex known as Zg contains six plays of Sophocles without scholia. The book known as L contains three plays of Aeschylus (Prometheus, Seven Against Thebes and Persians lines 1-922) with scholia, and all the extant plays of Euripides, except for Trojan Women. Bacchae is preserved only as far as line 755, after which there are some blank pages in the manuscript, indicating that for some reason the scribe stopped copying at this point. Corrections were made to the text after transcription, probably by the original copyists in consultation with the exemplar. These corrections are for the most part fairly minor and are thought to represent the pre-Byzantine tradition. The book known as L also contains a text of Hesiod’s Works and Days (identified as y12 in West’s edition). Later another hand made numerous conjectural emendations, especially to the Euripidean plays, in some places obliterating the original text, as well as adding glosses and notes. Turyn (1957, ch. 9) identified these corrections as the work of Demetrius Triclinius, partly on the grounds that they include changes in the colometric division of the lyrics, of which Triclinius alone had some knowledge in this period, and partly on the grounds of handwriting. Later Zuntz (1965, 283ff.) demonstrated that Triclinius had made his corrections on three separate occasions – first in dark ink, then in grey, and finally in brown. On the basis of an anonymous autobiographical note, it has been deduced that Laurentianus 32.2 was once the property of Simon Atumanus, a monk of the monastery of St John the Studite in Constantinople who was appointed bishop of Gerace in Calabria in 1348 and bishop of Avignon the following year. In c. 1348 Atumanus added the autobiographical note, the hypotheseis to the plays, and the scholia, all in his characteristic script (Fig. 16). He may have acquired the manuscript in Thessalonica from the metropolitan Eustathius before he came to Italy. It later came into the possession of the Library of San Marco, before being acquired by the Laurentian. In the interim it may have been owned by both Petrarch and Niccolò Niccoli (Wilamowitz 1875, 5).

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Fig. 16. Page from Laurentianus 32.2, c. 1310. The hypothesis to Sophocles’ Electra added by Simon Atumanus (c. 1348).

Vaticanus Palatinus graecus 287 and Laurentianus Conventi Soppressi 172 An almost exact copy of L in Mediceus Laurentianus 32.2, also dating to the fourteenth century, exists on parchment. It is in a clearer, bolder hand but much inferior in textual quality, notably in respect to metrical errors. It was checked by a contemporary corrector. It contains six plays of

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4. Barbarians and Scribes Sophocles (in a manuscript known as Zo), three of Aeschylus (Ga), all the extant plays of Euripides (P), and two homilies of St John Chrysostom. In c. 1420 this manuscript was divided into Vaticanus Palatinus graecus 287, which is in the Vatican Library, and Laurentianus Conventi Soppressi 172, which is in Florence. The plays of Euripides and Sophocles are divided between the two codices, whereas Aeschylus is confined to Palatinus 287. The symbol P is sometimes applied to the Palatine part of Euripides and sometimes to both parts. (Here it will be applied to the Palatine part.) Palatinus 287, which is the only surviving manuscript to contain the whole of Bacchae, was once owned by the Cretan typographer Marcus Musurus, who used it, together with a copy of L, as the basis for the Aldine edition of 18 plays of Euripides (see below, p. 107). It contains many corrections, which may have been made by Musurus himself. The relationship between L and P The relationship between the Euripidean text transmitted in L and that in P has been a subject of intense scholarly debate. Wilamowitz (1889, 208) claimed that both manuscripts derive from the same archetype, which he believed to be the edition by Aristophanes of Byzantium. Wecklein (1899, 313ff.), on the other hand, argued on palaeographical grounds that P is a direct copy of L, at least in the non-selected plays. Turyn (1957, 288), who identified the corrector of L as Demetrius Triclinius, returned to the view of Wilamowitz, arguing in favour of the existence of ‘one comprehensive manuscript (as) the common source of LP’. Subsequently Zuntz (1965, 1-15) demonstrated to the satisfaction of most scholars that P was a direct copy of L (cf. Diggle 1994, 298-304). On the basis of differences in the colour of the ink, Zuntz concluded that Triclinius had made corrections to L on three different occasions (Tr1, Tr2 and Tr3). However, only the corrections made by Tr1 re-appear in the text of P. He thus concluded that P had been copied from L after correction by Tr1 and before correction by Tr2 and Tr3. L and P are the only manuscripts that preserve the nine ‘alphabetic’ plays of Euripides, namely Helen, Electra, Descendants of Heracles (Herakleidai), Heracles, Suppliants (Hiketides), Iphigeneia at Aulis, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, Ion and Cyclops (Kyklops). They are thought to owe their position to their initial letter (E-K), though they are not arranged in strict alphabetical order. Moreover, not all the plays that were written by Euripides which begin with epsilon and iota are included. In particular, the manuscript lacks the lost plays Epeus, Erechtheus, Eurystheus, Ino and Ixion. Plays beginning with the letter theta are thought to have belonged to another volume, as indicated by an inscription dated to the end of the second century BC (IG II2 2363). The satyric Cyclops was perhaps included in the group because of its brevity. Especially intriguing is the inclusion of Bacchae, which survives only in L (as far as line 755, as noted) and in P. Scholars none the less believe that

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Bacchae formed part of the selection made in c. 200, first because it does not belong alphabetically within this group, and secondly, because it is quoted much more frequently than any of the alphabetic plays. One possible explanation is that it was the last play in the selected group and, as often happens at the end of manuscripts, either became mutilated or was omitted altogether. As we have seen, the only Byzantine scholar to demonstrate direct acquaintance with the nine non-selected plays of Euripides is Eustathius. Prior to being appointed metropolitan of Thessalonica in 1178, Eustathius held a teaching position in the Patriarchal Academy and it is possible that he acquired a manuscript of both the selected and non-selected plays of Euripides before leaving the capital. If so, there is a high degree of probability that his manuscript was either the immediate source of LP or the source from which LP was copied; that it was, in other words, the manuscript to which both Nicolaus Triclines and Demetrius Triclinius had access, following a period of neglect in a local library of Thessalonica that perhaps lasted one hundred and fifty years. Palimpsest Codex no. 36 Palimpsest Codex no. 36 (also known as Hierosolymytanus taphou 36), which is in the Patriarch’s Library at Jerusalem, contains the text of six plays of Euripides, namely Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenician Women, Andromache, Medea and Hippolytus. It is dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century and is written in a neat, clear hand. Corrections were added later, some by a different scribe. Gilbert Murray (1902-13, I xiv) said of it, ‘Apart from many new errors, it offers scarcely anything new.’ The value of its variant readings was, however, vindicated by Horna (1929, 418) who characterised the manuscript as follows, ‘Our Euripides is not a luxury edition nor a showpiece for a library … but a pocket edition with copious commentary.’ The manuscript takes its name from the fact that the Greek text is partly obscured by a commentary on the Old Testament prophets which was written over it in the thirteenth century.

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Refugees and Publishers Although, as we saw in the previous chapter, some interest in Greek tragedy is detectable in southern Italy in the late thirteenth century, nothing is known of its fate in that region in the century which followed. Indeed knowledge of the Greek language virtually died out in Italy in the early fourteenth century. Even so, once the Palaeologan Renaissance came to an end, the story of the survival of Greek literature transfers wholly to the West and is largely determined by the energy and enterprise of a handful of individuals. The most prominent among these were Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine diplomat who taught Greek in Florence, the Sicilian Giovanni Aurispa, who brought back the largest cache of manuscripts from the East, and the Venetian Aldus Manutius, who pioneered the printing of Greek. The study of Greek was fostered in part by the desire to translate the numerous quotations which are cited in Latin authors such as Cicero. It was initially promoted by statesmen and men of letters and did not become a broad-based educational movement until the editiones principes of classical texts began to roll from the presses at the end of the fifteenth century. Euripides was the first of the three tragedians to appear in print, Sophocles the second, and Aeschylus the third – an order which reflects their popularity among teachers of Greek, the majority of whom were refugees from the encroaching Ottoman Empire. The importance of these refugees for the transmission of Greek literature can hardly be exaggerated: they not only taught the language but also compiled grammars and copied manuscripts. The revival of interest in Greek tragedy was hardly more than a footnote to the Renaissance. The Tuscan poet and scholar Petrarch, who attempted to re-invigorate Christianity by infusing into it lessons learned from Greece and Rome, was eager to obtain manuscripts of the tragedians, though his attempt to learn Greek ended in failure. We know of only three manuscripts of Aeschylus, five of Sophocles and seven of Euripides in Italian libraries by the middle of the fifteenth century. This compares with 20 of Plato and 40 of Aristotle. By the end of the fifteenth century, however, that number had risen to 80, the majority of which were located in Florence, Rome and Venice.* *Appendix II provides a list of manuscripts in the catalogues of private collectors and public libraries from 1417 to 1500. As noted in the previous chapter, only two manuscripts of Greek tragedy are recorded in the West in the thirteenth century.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Though the re-discovery of the tragedians was doubtless greeted with enthusiasm by a highly select group of scholars, the only work which we know to have been studied was Hecuba. Even so, few can have attempted to read it before about 1495, when the editio princeps of four Euripidean plays appeared. Translations into Latin, which were intended to promote and facilitate the study of Greek tragedy, quickly followed. Shortly afterwards the plays were translated into Italian, French, German and, rather later, into English. In theatrical circles Roman drama attracted far more attention than its Greek counterpart, with the comedies of Plautus and Terence leading the charge. In fact it was Seneca, rather than the Attic tragedians, who was destined to become the model for Renaissance tragedy. The sixteenth century saw the first stagings of Greek tragedy in modern times. With one notable exception, however, the audiences were restricted to scholars and members of the court. The subject matter of the dramas played little part in the visual arts of the Renaissance, largely because scenes from classical mythology inspired by Ovid and other pagan writers had already come to dominate the pictorial repertoire. The revival of Hellenism in Italy The revival of Hellenism in Italy, like the birth of Humanism, is intimately associated with Petrarch (1304-74). Though Petrarch was capable of appreciating Greek literature only via the medium of Latin translations, this did not deter him from evincing an avidity bordering upon the monomaniacal to acquire Greek manuscripts. We may picture him turning the pages of a codex much as an archaeologist might lovingly run his fingers over an inscription in a language that had not yet been deciphered, in awe of what mysteries it might contain. Petrarch possessed manuscripts of both Plato and Homer and wrote earnestly to his friend Nicholas Sygerus, a Byzantine envoy to Avignon, requesting manuscripts of Hesiod and Euripides (On Family Matters 18.2). He also attempted to acquire texts of Euripides and Sophocles from his friend and teacher, Leontius Pilatus (Leonzio Pilato), a Greek-speaking Calabrian. As soon as he learnt that the latter had been struck by lightning while standing at the mast on his return voyage from Constantinople, his obsession was such that he raced down to the quay in order to discover whether the manuscripts he had requested were among the dead man’s belongings (On Later Years 6.1, p. 807). Leontius Pilatus is a notable figure in his own right. He arrived in Florence to take up the chair of Greek in the new Universitas Studiorum in 1360, marking ‘the first known official teaching of Greek in an Italian city’ (Mann 1996, 16). While in residence, Pilatus produced an interlinear word-for-word Latin translation of lines 1-146 of Hecuba, which is preserved in Codex Laurentianus 31.10. The opening lines read as follows (Fig. 17):

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Fig. 17. Page from Laurentianus 31.10, c. 1320. Euripides’ Hecuba with Latin translation and marginal notes by Leontius Pilatus (a. 1362). Venio mortuorum profunditatem et obscuritatis ianuas linquens, ubi infernus sine habitatur deis, ego Polydorus ….

Pilatus’ translation may leave much to be desired in terms of literary accomplishment, but he probably undertook the exercise in order to provide his pupil with a crib, since its rigid adherence to the word order of the original would have made it extremely useful for someone who was still learning the basics of Greek. The margin of the text contains a number of notes by Pilatus. In the note to line 41 he addresses a certain ‘Musarum cultor Johannes’, thought to be Giovanni Boccaccio (1314-75), author of the Decameron, who probably commissioned his translation. Pilatus also copied a corrected version of lines 1-396 of Hecuba into Codex Laurentinus San Marco 226, which was formerly owned by Boccaccio and later by Niccolò Niccoli (1364-1437). Much later Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), a humanist and Latin poet who served as secretary to the Venetian legation at Constantinople, translated the first scene of Hecuba, as, too, did a certain Pietro da Montagnana (fl. 1432-78). Hecuba was chosen in both cases because it was the first play of the Byzantine triad. There is no evidence of any other translations of Greek tragedy that were undertaken before the sixteenth century. An important stimulus to the learning of Greek was the arrival in

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Venice in 1394 of the Byzantine diplomat and scholar Manuel Chrysoloras, seeking aid against the Ottoman Turks. Though his diplomatic mission failed, Chrysoloras made such an impact on the scholarly community that two years later the Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati, eager to consolidate his city’s image as the centre of the humanist movement, invited him to Florence to teach Greek. During the four years that he spent in the city from 1396 to 1400, Chrysoloras’ magnetic personality attracted some of the leading humanists of the day. The Tuscan Leonardo Bruni, who studied under him and later became papal secretary and chancellor, effusively claimed, ‘The knowledge of Greek literature, which had disappeared from Italy seven hundred years ago, has been recalled and brought back’. As a result, he continued, Florentines could now perceive the great philosophers and orators ‘not through a glass darkly but face to face’ (RIS ns. XIX.3, 431). Chrysoloras was the first teacher to reduce the complexities of Greek grammar to decent order, which he laid out in a celebrated textbook called Erotêmata or ‘Questions’. Over the next twenty years many Greek prose authors were translated into Latin, including Plutarch, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Lucian, Aristotle and Plato. With the exception of Homer, however, the Greek poets attracted little attention. Within the space of a generation interest in the Greek language had spread from Florence to other Italian cities, including Venice, Milan, Padua and Rome, all of which hosted important Greek visitors. Hellenic studies received a further boost from the Council of Florence in 1439, whose ostensible purpose was to achieve a reunion between the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Since a number of notable Greek scholars attended the Council, including George Gemistus Plethon, who was later instrumental in the foundation of the Platonic Academy of Florence, the occasion did much to facilitate contact with intellectually curious Italians. Not long afterwards a number of refugees, many of them qualified to teach Greek, began to arrive in Italy, eager to escape the Ottoman advance. It was thus largely due to the sack of Constantinople in 1453 that many educated Italians began to study Greek. By the final decade of the fifteenth century, the Republic of Venice, though it had initially been somewhat slow to respond to the challenge of the studia humanitatis, had become the undisputed centre for the Hellenic revival. There are several reasons for this. Venice occupied a favoured position as the port of entry from the East, which meant that almost all refugees disembarked there on arrival in Italy. And because the city offered numerous opportunities for employment, many of them settled in the city permanently. In addition, Venice had long-standing political and economic ties with Constantinople, where, as we have seen, classical Greek had remained a central part of the higher educational system. Following the Crusader sack of the city in 1204, Venice had acquired a number of Greek possessions, including many of the islands in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, several fortresses in the Peloponnese, and – what was

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5. Refugees and Publishers to prove decisive for the re-birth of Greek literature – the island of Crete. Crete in this period was a cultural mecca, and the Venetian Senate encouraged promising young Greek scholars to further their studies in their city. The neighbouring University of Padua, which had been incorporated into the Republic in 1405, adopted a similar policy. One beneficiary of the programme was a young Cretan scholar called Marcus Musurus (c. 1470-1517), who became the editor of a number of editiones principes for the Aldine press. Venice was not the only Italian city to promote Greek learning in this period. By the 1490s Hellenic studies were enjoying considerable prestige in Florence, where Platonic philosophy was revived under the patronage of the Medici; in Ferrara, which established an important school for the teaching of Greek and Latin; and in Rome, where a number of Greek authors were translated into Latin. There were, however, no centres of Greek studies in northern Europe before 1500 (see below, p. 113). The hunt for manuscripts As we saw earlier, only a handful of manuscripts are known to have existed in Italy in the late twelfth century. Precisely when others began to arrive from the East is unclear. In a letter dated c. 1130, Moses of Bergamo, an Italian scholar who had visited Constantinople, wrote to his brother claiming that his collection of Greek manuscripts, which he had purchased for the price of eleven pounds of gold, had been destroyed in a fire. If his testimony is to be believed, it pre-dates by nearly three hundred years any other evidence of an Italian returning from the East with manuscripts. True or not, however, Moses of Bergamo’s letter proves that there was knowledge among Italians of their existence in Constantinople in the early twelfth century, as well as an awareness of their monetary worth. The quest for Greek manuscripts seems not to have begun in earnest until the early decades of the fifteenth century. The first to arrive probably did so in the possession of Greek refugees. Some time later the humanists sent out their agents in hot pursuit. The following, rather romanticised anecdote, recorded by a pupil of Boccaccio called Benvenuto Ramboldi da Imola, which describes his teacher’s visit to the famous monastery of Monte Cassino, halfway between Rome and Naples, captures the thrill of the chase, even though the setting happens to be Italy and the quarry is Latin, rather than Greek, manuscripts: Being eager to see the library, which, he had heard, was very noble, [my master] humbly besought one of the monks to do him the favour of opening it. Pointing to a lofty staircase, the monk answered stiffly: ‘Go up; it is already open.’ Boccaccio stepped up the staircase with delight, only to find the treasure-house of learning destitute of door or any kind of fastening, while the grass was growing on the window-sills and the dust reposing on the books and bookshelves. Turning over the manuscripts, he found many

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Surviving Greek Tragedy rare and ancient works, with whole sheets torn out, or with the margins ruthlessly clipped. As he left the room, he burst into tears, and, on asking a monk, whom he met in the cloister, to explain the neglect, was told that some of the inmates of the monastery, wishing to gain a few soldi, had torn out whole handfuls of leaves and made them into psalters, which they sold to boys, and had cut off strips of parchment, which they turned into amulets, to sell to women (quoted in Sandys 1908, II p. 13).

The earliest Italians to visit Constantinople in search of Greek manuscripts were all pupils of Manuel Chrysoloras. The first appears to have been a Florentine humanist called Giacomo Angeli da Scarperia (born c. 1360), though the results of his quest are unknown. In 1410 Guarino da Verona, founder of the first humanistic school in Venice, returned from Constantinople with a substantial collection of Greek texts, including, possibly, a manuscript of Sophocles. The most important figure in the recovery of Greek manuscripts was Guarino’s contemporary, the Sicilian Giovanni Aurispa (1376-1459). Though he briefly held the chair of Greek at the University of Florence, Aurispa was not a notable scholar. It was while he was on the island of Chios serving as a tutor that he discovered a manuscript containing the plays of Sophocles and Euripides, which he purchased on 21 April 1413, as he states in an epigram commemorating this event. He returned with his manuscript to Italy and sold it four years later to Niccolò Niccoli. It later passed into the hands of Cosimo de’ Medici and is now in the library in Florence which was established by Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. In 1423 Aurispa made a trip to the East in order to acquire more manuscripts – a truly momentous venture in the transmission of Greek literature. He came back with no fewer than 238 manuscripts, almost all in Greek. Even allowing for duplicate copies, this was probably the largest single influx ever to arrive in Italy. An inventory dated 1459 lists all the codices in his collection. It included the earliest surviving manuscript of Greek tragedy, Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9 (see above, p. 89). Aurispa was such an inveterate hunter that he claimed to have temporarily bankrupted himself in the pursuit of books: I gave all my efforts, all my money, and even my clothes to acquire books. When I was in Constantinople, I remember giving my clothes to those little Greeks so as to get codices (translated from the Latin in Schrade [1960, 17]).

However, Cosimo de’ Medici, learning of his straightened circumstances, summoned him to Rome and redeemed the manuscripts. Given his importance in the survival of Greek literature, it is all the more regrettable that we know so little about Aurispa’s methods and business associates. Another significant figure was Francesco Filelfo (above, p. 97), who returned to Venice in 1427 with a manuscript containing seven plays of Euripides. Filelfo also owned a fifteenth-century codex containing plays by all three

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5. Refugees and Publishers dramatists (Laur. 31.1), which was copied for him by a priest called Angelos (Turyn 1943, 81; see references in Appendix II). Not much is known about the immediate fate of Greek manuscripts after their arrival in Italy. Although the majority of quests were undertaken at the instigation of a wealthy patron who would presumably have purchased the entire cache, sooner or later some codices must have found their way on to the open market. Pride of place among the early collectors goes to Niccolò Niccoli, chancellor of Florence, who sent his friends in pursuit of manuscripts. Niccoli was the first owner of the Medicean, which he purchased from Aurispa in 1424. He also owned at least four other manuscripts of Greek tragedy. Following the destruction of Constantinople, the flow of manuscripts from the East dwindled. By now, however, the majority of codices of classical texts were probably in the West, though Janus Lascaris, who was the librarian of Lorenzo the Magnificent, is said to have acquired some 200 from Mount Athos as late as 1491. In addition, several manuscripts now in British libraries were purchased from the monks of Mount Athos in the eighteenth century.* Renaissance libraries As the account of Benvenuto’s visit to the monastery at Monte Cassino makes clear, by the fifteenth century even the greatest monastic libraries in Italy had fallen into disrepair, and the monks were in no position to increase their holdings by purchasing more books. Greek manuscripts chiefly graced the libraries of scholars such as Petrarch, Niccolò Niccoli and Antonio Corbinelli, all incidentally sons of successful merchants. Later they entered the magnificent collections of princes and prelates. One of the most notable of these was Cardinal Bessarion, an extremely learned Byzantine scholar who applied himself to the task of resolving the conflicts between Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy and who employed numerous scribes to copy manuscripts for him. All the greatest libraries of the High Renaissance were in fact princely collections. The largest belonged to the popes, for whom they served as symbols of power and prestige, just like the enormous palaces which they built in an effort to outbid their rivals. The idea of making manuscripts available to the public for consultation seems to have originated with Petrarch, who originally intended to leave his collection to the Republic of Venice in the hope that ‘later from time to *Monasteries on Mount Athos still possess a handful of manuscripts of Greek tragedy (as listed in Saunders and LaHood 1957). They include the monastery of Dionysius: Euripides, Hesiod et al. (no. 334); the monastery of Iviron: Euripides (no. 145), Sophocles and Euripides (no. 185), and Euripides (no. 194); and finally the monastery of Vatopedi: Aristophanes, Sophocles and Aeschylus (no. 33), Sophocles, Euripides, Homeric Hymns et al. (no. 671), and Euripides (no. 738).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy time this glorious city will add other books at public expense and also that private individuals … will follow the example and leave in their wills a part of their books to the church of San Marco; in this fashion it might easily be possible to establish a large and famous library, equal to those of antiquity’ (quoted in Mommsen 1957, 45). However, negotiations with the Republic fell through and on his death in 1374 Petrarch bequeathed his estate to his son-in-law, Francescuolo da Brossano, who disposed of it piecemeal. Nearly a hundred years were to elapse before Cardinal Bessarion left the bulk of his collection to the Republic in 1468. Following the sack of Constantinople, Bessarion had played a leading part in the failed attempt to persuade the Venetian authorities to join a new Crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Bessarion’s donation of 482 Greek and 264 Latin manuscripts eventually became the basis of the Biblioteca Marciana. They were intended primarily for the benefit of the Greek refugees resident in the city. In his letter to the Doge Cristofero Moro and the Venetian Senate which accompanied his gift, Bessarion spoke passionately of his life-long efforts to acquire as many books as he could in every kind of discipline, with a particular emphasis upon the acquisition of what he described as ‘codices pulcherrimi’. These efforts, he went on to say, had been redoubled ‘after the destruction of Greece and the deplorable captivity of Byzantium’. Bessarion chose Venice as the home for his collection in the hope that it would become ‘a second Byzantium’. In the event his manuscripts remained in packing cases for the better part of a century before they were eventually put to the purpose for which he had intended them. The inventory of the Biblioteca Marciana lists seven manuscripts of Greek tragedy which had once been in Bessarion’s library. Three contain the plays of Euripides, three those of Sophocles, and one a selection of all three tragedians.* The Florence of Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) also boasted an extremely impressive collection of classical manuscripts, which eventually came to be housed in the library attached to the Convent of San Marco (Fig. 18). This beautiful building was constructed by Michelangelo in 1523 on the orders of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII. It is often described as the first public library of modern times. The collection was established in line with Cosimo’s goal of making Florence the cultural centre of the Renaissance. The nucleus of its holdings was the manuscripts that had once been owned by Niccolò Niccoli. By the terms of his will Niccoli left his entire collection, consisting of at least 400 manuscripts, to the Convent on condition that they should be made available for consultation by the public, as they had been during his lifetime. At his funeral Niccoli’s fellow-humanist Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, *For details see Appendix II. One of the reasons that Aldus Manutius chose to set up his printing press in Venice was, no doubt, Cardinal Bessarion’s legacy of Greek manuscripts to the Republic.

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Fig. 18. The Library attached to the Convent of San Marco, Florence.

Papal Secretary and Chancellor, who had made several highly profitable trips to Greece in search of manuscripts, paid his friend this moving tribute: Niccoli shared his books even with strangers. He made them available to those who wanted to read or transcribe them, and did not refuse them to anyone who was learned or seemed to want to become learned. In consequence, his house was thought of as a kind of public library and a nurturing place of talent (translated from the Latin in Ullman and Stadter [1972, 7]).

Niccoli’s collection was frequently moved about in the wake of the disturbances orchestrated by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who in 1494 sought to establish a theocratic democracy in Florence in order to prohibit the reading of pagan texts. Indeed it is a wonder that it has survived at all. The catalogue of 1500, which was made after the Convent of San Marco had been pillaged in 1498, lists at least two manuscripts formerly in the possession of Niccoli. One of these was Laurentianus San Marco 226, which, in addition to the text of eight plays of Euripides, contained Leontius Pilatus’ Latin translation of Hecuba. Niccoli probably acquired this manuscript, either directly or indirectly, from Boccaccio. Eight other manuscripts of Greek tragedy are listed in the

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Surviving Greek Tragedy catalogue. Two contain plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles, one plays by Euripides and Sophocles, and one plays by Euripides and Aeschylus. In addition, there is a manuscript of Aeschylus and another of Sophocles, and one which includes plays by all three tragedians. The largest and most comprehensive fifteenth-century library belonged to the Vatican. Though destined in the High Renaissance to exceed all others in size, its beginnings were extremely modest. The bulk of the collection of the Avignon popes had been lost at the time of the Great Schism and on their return to Rome the pontiffs had to re-build their library afresh. Nicholas V (pope 1447-55), who was the greatest bibliophile to occupy the papal throne and the founder, too, of the Vatican’s collection of classical Greek manuscripts, had as a priest drawn up a standard book catalogue at the request of Cosimo de’ Medici, and this catalogue later served as a model for the establishment of libraries throughout Italy. Nicholas dispatched his agents in search of classical manuscripts to both Europe and the Greek East. His passion was such that he threatened to excommunicate those who refused to hand over their possessions on demand. By the time of his death in 1455 the Vatican had acquired about 800 Latin and 400 Greek manuscripts. Among the latter were eight manuscripts of Greek tragedy, five containing plays of Sophocles. Nicholas also engaged the services of the most distinguished scholars of his day to translate Greek texts into Latin, though not of any tragedies. The Vatican’s collection was greatly enlarged by Nicholas’ successor Sixtus IV (pope 1471-84), best known for building the Sistine Chapel. A catalogue compiled in 1475 lists 2,527 volumes, among them twenty codices of Greek tragedy. Sophocles is the best represented, followed by Euripides and then Aeschylus. Sophocles’ pre-eminence in the Vatican should hardly surprise us, given the fact that his moral and spiritual viewpoint is, superficially at least, arguably most in tune with that of Christianity. The popes were promoters of the new humanist learning, which they saw as bestowing considerable prestige upon the papacy. They were eager not only to acquire classical texts but also, in the case of Greek literature, to make it available to the general public by sponsoring Latin translations. From the time of its foundation the Vatican Library was therefore available for consultation by the public. It also lent out its holdings. The earliest loan of a manuscript of Greek tragedy from the Library of Sixtus IV reads as follows: ‘I, Stephanus Platon, received from the deacon a copy of Plato and Euripides on paper with a broken cover on 14 November 1477. – He returned it on 22 June 1478’ (Müntz and Fabre 1887, 278). During the Counter Reformation ecclesiastical texts were given much higher status than classical texts and the belief that pagan and Christian works could be reconciled to one another was abandoned. In the previous century the Vatican Library’s contribution to science, scholarship and the free flow of ideas had been unparalleled.

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5. Refugees and Publishers Fifteenth-century owners of manuscripts of Greek tragedy include the humanists Antonio Corbinelli and Antonello Pertrucci, Battista Guarino, the teacher of Aldus Manutius, the philosopher Giorgio Valla, Duke Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino, and the translator Francesco Filelfo. Duke Federigo had one of the finest libraries in Italy and was not ashamed to have himself painted in the guise of a scholar, albeit one who wore his armour in his study, as befitted his dignity as a Renaissance prince. We do not know when manuscripts of Greek tragedy first made their way to countries outside Italy, but this development is unlikely to have taken place before the early decades of the sixteenth century. Though the court, colleges and universities became the chief purchasers from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards, learned clerics also acquired their own libraries of secular works. However, none is known to have owned any manuscripts of Greek tragedy. The Aldine Press Though the invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in the survival of classical learning, its initial impact upon the study of Greek was somewhat limited. Whereas most major Latin authors had already been published by the early 1490s, few Greek authors had appeared in print.* The reason for this disparity is not hard to find. Relatively few Italians could read Greek, and the Greeks who were resident in Italy hardly constituted a lucrative market, being either itinerant subjects of Venetian Crete or Byzantine refugees. In addition, there was the difficulty of deciphering the texts. Given the age and condition of most manuscripts, and the fact, too, that palaeography was in its infancy, decipherment was a laborious and time-consuming undertaking. Undoubtedly the biggest problem faced by the printer, however, was the transfer of Greek script into a complex typeface which required over a thousand separate pieces in order to accommodate all the possible combinations of letters, accents and breathings. The first printed edition of tragedy contained Euripides’ Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis and Andromache (in that order). It was published in Florence in 1495 by Janus Lascaris who used a capital typeface based on Greek inscriptions. He was assisted by the Venetian printer Lorenzo di Alopa. Interestingly, none of the plays belonged to the Byzantine triad, which indicates a new pedagogical departure for the first time in about a thousand years. Lascaris also published Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and Lucian, as well as the scholia to Homer and Sophocles (Proctor 1900, 78-82). *As Botley (2002, 206-11) notes with regard to the Aldine Press, priority was initially given to the publication of elementary Greek texts. The earliest editiones principes were the parodic imitation of Homer entitled The Battle of the Mice and Frogs, published perhaps as early as 1474 in Brescia, and Aesop’s Fables in parallel Latin and Greek, published c. 1478 in Milan.

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Fig. 19. Portrait of Aldus Manutius with typograph mark of the dolphin and anchor.

By far the most important figure in the history of the early printing of Greek was Aldus Manutius (Fig. 19). Aldus, whose real name was Teobaldo Manucci, set up his printing press in Venice in 1494 or 1495. He made it his goal to publish the entirety of Greek literature in the original language. This was all the more ambitious an undertaking, given the fact that Venice lagged behind both Milan and Florence in the printing of Greek at the time. Realising that he would need the collaboration of gifted scholars as well as skilled printers, in 1500 he founded the Neakademia, whose objective was in part to determine the order in which the authors should be published and to address the philological difficulties which each text presented. There were some 36 or 39 permanent members of the Neakademia, about half of whom were Greek. The majority were Cretan refugees. In August 1502 Aldus published the first edition of the seven plays of Sophocles, in addition to four other editiones principes of Greek authors. (This, incidentally, was also the earliest edition bearing the famous subscription ‘Venetiis in Aldi Romani Academia’.) A letter which Aldus wrote in that year to Janus Lascaris not only reveals the difficulties which he

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5. Refugees and Publishers faced in this publishing venture, but also testifies to his practice of consulting other scholars: As I’m now at the point of publishing seven tragedies of Sophocles, I’d like it if they could appear from our Neakademia under the protection of your name, as a kind of monument to the great affection in which I hold you. But I haven’t been able to print the scholia. They will appear a bit later, God willing. Shortly afterwards, the explanation of the metrical structure will come out. I wish in the name of God that I could have had them earlier and before the publication of the tragedies was completed, because, despite all the care that I have devoted to this painful labour, it’s the verses, particularly in the choral passages, which leave much to be desired and which I could have improved, at least to some extent. As for you, my dear Lascaris, I hope that you love me as much as I love you (translated from the Latin in Firmin-Didot [1875, 212f.]).

In February 1503 Aldus published the first volume of the editio princeps of the surviving plays of Euripides. Though the title page to the first volume advertises seventeen plays, by the time he came to typeset the second volume in 1504, Hercules had been discovered, which brought the total (including the spurious Rhesus) to eighteen. Accordingly Hercules was placed at the end of the second volume, without any explanation. (Electra, the last remaining tragedy of Euripides, was first published in 1546 by the Italian scholar Petrus Victorius, whose assistants discovered it in a manuscript in Florence.) The principal editor of both the Aldine Euripides and Sophocles is believed to have been John Gregoropoulus. In both cases Gregoropoulus collated at least two different manuscripts, though he did so very unsystematically. The labour and expense forced Aldus to charge three times as much for his Greek authors as he did for his Latin ones. Issued in convenient pocket-size octavo editions known as ‘libri portales’, the tragedians were clearly intended to be carried about and read, in distinction to the cumbersome and much more costly folios which the Aldine Press also produced – the sixteenth-century equivalent to the modern coffee table book. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the octavos were sold ‘at a price at which poor scholars could afford to buy them’, as Bühler (1950, 210) fancifully suggested, least of all in the case of the tragedians, whose sales are likely to have been limited. The average size of an Aldine print-run is generally put at 1000 copies, though certain editions are thought to have been smaller. But whatever the number printed, it goes without saying that it would have been far in excess of what the medieval scriptoria could have produced. For the first time since the invention of the book, therefore, ‘learning was no longer tied to the apron-strings of the copyist’ (Bolgar 1954, 279). Though the main markets for Greek classics were Italian humanists and the Greek refugee community, a number of copies were sold abroad, as we know from the fact

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Surviving Greek Tragedy that the reputation of the Aldine press fast became international. The Library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, established in 1517, possessed an Aldine Euripides donated by its founder Richard Fox. The French Royal Library also owned a copy of the Aldine Euripides. The protagonist in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) states that he introduced the inhabitants of that fabulous island to the Greek language via the Aldine octavos, including those of Euripides and Sophocles, which he happened to be carrying in his luggage. In the following century the playwright Jean Racine acquired an Aldine Sophocles, and sketched the characters of his heroines in the margin of his Electra. From a scholarly and typographical point of view, the quality of Aldine editiones principes has been much criticised. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1990, 1), for instance, state that the editio princeps of Sophocles is ‘not a notable achievement in the annals of scholarship, and very rarely earns a mention in a modern apparatus criticus’. Indeed the rapidity with which Aldus worked has suggested to some that his primary goal was to earn credit as the first publisher of the corpus of Greek literature. Aldus has also been criticised for his choice of Greek type. This derived from contemporary cursive, since he wanted to make his printed texts resemble hand-written manuscripts as closely as possible (Fig. 20).* These objections notwithstanding, Aldus Manutius undoubtedly did as much as anyone in the history of publishing to stimulate the study of the Greek language and literature. Indeed it is no exaggeration to state that his publishing activities transformed the face of learning in Europe. As Hexter (1998, 156) has pointed out, it is entirely due to his efforts that Greek scholarship now moved ‘beyond the local battles of a master lecturer or commentator jockeying for one chair in a single city’. Before printed texts became available, interested students often had to travel considerable distances to receive instruction – even as far as Constantinople, as we have seen. Now their opportunities for study were greatly increased. It is highly probable that the editiones principes were published on the recommendation of teachers, as the market for student texts is likely to have been quite profitable (Botley 2002, 201). However, there is little evidence to suggest that the Greek tragedians occupied a central place in the curriculum (see below, p. 114). When Aldus commenced his activities, barely a dozen classical Greek texts had been published, the majority of them books of grammar. By the time of his death, he had seen 39 Greek authors through his press. As a result of his initiative no fewer than seven editions of Euripides appeared in the sixteenth century, the majority published in Basle, Heidelberg and * Wilamowitz (1921, 28), for instance, condemned it for its ‘barbarousness and unsuitability’. Proctor (1900, 15), who complained of ‘luxuriance of contortion and extravagance of meaningless abbreviations’, went so far as to claim, ‘The enormous vogue of his publications and the great number of them exercised an overwhelming influence, affected the whole future history of Greek printing, and inflicted on its aesthetic side a blow from which it has never recovered.’

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Fig. 20. Title page of the Aldine editio princeps of Aristophanes’ Birds.

Frankfurt.* Aldus thus deserves full credit for the fact that Greek tragedy now became part of a Europe-wide intellectual enterprise that has continued to the present day. At the same time we seriously misjudge him if we conceive of him merely as a high-minded dilettante for whom Greek was the ruling passion. His venture would hardly have succeeded had he not maintained a delicate balance between his humanist ideals on the one hand and a shrewd understanding of the market forces to which any commercial enterprise is subject on the other, even though we can hardly doubt that he nourished a deeply held conviction in the worth of the enterprise for its own sake. When Aldus Manutius died in 1515, the only major Greek author still awaiting publication was Aeschylus, due mainly to the extreme linguistic difficulty of his plays. In 1518 an editio princeps finally appeared under the editorship of Aldus’ father-in-law Andrea Torresani and his brothersin-law. It was advertised as containing six extant plays, since Agamemnon and Libation-Bearers were thought at the time to be one play. The Aldine Aeschylus is considerably inferior to the Aldine Euripides and Sophocles, because Torresani quarrelled with the scholars upon whose guidance and expertise Aldus had heavily relied. It was roundly criticised by later sixteenth-century editors including Robortellus, who accused Toressani of being interested only in financial gain. Even so, its publication ensured *We may note in passing that the only Greek text to be printed in Britain in the sixteenth century was an edition of St John Chrysostom (1543) [J.H. Trapp in CHBB III, 289].

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Surviving Greek Tragedy that Aeschylus’ name began to circulate among humanists, albeit far behind those of the other two tragedians. By way of postscript, it is important to emphasise that the introduction of printing did not lead to the immediate demise of copying. On the contrary, the two practices co-existed for well over a century. This is exemplified by the career of Zacharias Kallierges, who from 1499 to 1524 not only copied manuscripts in Venice and Rome but also printed books there as well. Some sixteenth-century manuscripts were actually transcribed from the printed editions that were circulating at the time, as is demonstrated by the fact that they propagate errors identical to those found in the printed editions. Characteristic features include ornate lettering for the first line of the play and capital initials for proper names. Moreover, on mainland Greece manuscripts were still being copied in the late nineteenth century (Barbour 1981, xxiv). However, apart from the sixteenth-century manuscript of Sophocles known as Q there are few later than the fifteenth century which are cited in any modern apparatus criticus of Greek tragedy. Translations into Latin Eagerness among the humanists to master the Greek language was largely fuelled by the desire to comprehend the texts that had had such a major impact upon Roman authors, because Latin was judged to be superior to Greek. Since, moreover, Latin was the lingua franca of Renaissance Europe, the first published translations were into Latin. Almost from the moment of their re-discovery, therefore, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been more widely read in translation than in the original. A translation of Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis by the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus was published in Paris by Badius Ascensius in 1506. Erasmus’ choice of Hecuba is evidence of the play’s continuing popularity among the Byzantine scholars who taught Greek in Constantinople and, later, in Italy. However, it is not altogether clear why he selected Iphigeneia, which was not in the Byzantine triad, although from now on the play becomes popular both in translation and, later, in stage versions. It is thought that Erasmus may have checked his manuscript against a copy of the Aldine editio princeps which is preserved in the Library at Lincoln College (Wilson 1973, 88). Erasmus wrote to his friend Archbishop William Warham of the many challenges he had had to face (Letters 188). Translating Greek into Latin required great expertise in both languages. The rhetorical devices in the plays were so numerous that Euripides almost seemed to be declaiming, while the choral odes were so dense that they required ‘an Oedipus’ to interpret them. Then there was the corrupt nature of the text, the scarcity of manuscripts, and the fact that there were no earlier translations to consult. Even so, the poet’s eloquence had kept him involved, and he hoped

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Fig. 21. Frontispiece of the Aldine edition of Erasmus’ Latin translation of Euripides’ Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis (1507).

that his critics would forgive him for being an ‘inexperienced translator (novus interpres)’. Erasmus concludes by declaring that he has attempted a line-for-line and almost word-for-word translation, since he would prefer to be criticised for lack of brilliance and beauty than lack of fidelity to the original.* After discovering numerous misprints in the first edition, Erasmus forwarded a copy of his translations to Aldus Manutius in the hope that the latter would undertake to re-publish them. In his accompanying letter he acknowledged his ‘great audacity’ in attempting such a labour and left it to Aldus to determine whether his efforts were justified (Letters 207). He also pointed out that the friends whom they had in common were in support of the venture. In a later letter Erasmus granted Aldus editorial freedom to correct any mistakes which he discovered (Letters 209). Aldus complied with the request and a revised version appeared in 1507 (Fig. 21). *Interestingly, in a letter dated 1516 Erasmus describes his translations of the plays of Euripides as mere ‘trifles’ (Hillerbrand 1970, 100).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy In the preface the publisher included the following address to the ‘Friends of Literature’: Erasmus of Rotterdam, who is as learned in Greek as he is in Latin, has recently completed a translation into Latin verse of the Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis of Euripides, with as much fidelity as elegance. At the request of an eminent scholar and equally dear friend, I have hastened to publish them, as much to serve as a model as to provide explanation and interpretation of the text. It is hardly possible to over-estimate their worth. Formerly we lacked books and now more and more teachers know one or other language. Now, thanks to God, we have an abundance of good books and of learned men in Italy and elsewhere, to the extent that one even goes looking for professors in England (translated from the Latin in Firmin-Didot [1875, 294]).

The allusion to English professors may or may not be intentionally disparaging – England in fact lagged far behind the Continent in the reception of humanist ideals – but either way it is likely that Erasmus and his publisher were seeking the patronage of the English court, since the Aldine edition also included odes in honour of England, King Henry VII and his son Henry, as well as an ode on old age. Whether they were successful in their aim is not recorded, though it is worth noting that the young Henry VIII, who came to the throne in 1509, was highly supportive of the study of Greek, establishing Regius Chairs in the language at both Oxford and Cambridge. Numerous Latin translations followed over the course of the next hundred years. In the 1540s the Scottish humanist George Buchanan, who taught Michel de Montaigne Latin, translated Euripides’ Alcestis and Medea for performance at a school in France. However, though the Aldine Sophocles had preceded the Aldine Euripides, no Latin translation of Sophocles appeared until the Dutchman George Rotaller published Ajax, Antigone and Electra in 1548. Sanravius (Jean de Saint-Ravy) published a Latin translation of ‘the six extant tragedies of Aeschylus’, which was widely disseminated. In 1558 Naogeorgius (Thomas Kirkmayer) published the first Latin translation of the seven plays of Sophocles, an undertaking which he described as ‘magnum et difficile’. In 1562 Caspar Stiblinus translated Euripides’ Phoenician Women into Latin. In 1567 Petrus Victorius (Piero Vettori) edited an anthology of previously published Latin translations of Aeschylus and Euripides by various scholars including Erasmus and Buchanan. In 1581 Thomas Watson translated Antigone, attempting to reproduce the metre of the choruses. In 1614 Pierre de la Rovière published a bilingual Greek and Latin anthology of Greek tragedy. In 1623 Theodore Goulston published a translation of Aristotle’s Poetics. Though we know very little about their circulation, it goes without saying that these translations would have made the works of the tragedians available to a wide readership throughout Europe. Their number, too,

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5. Refugees and Publishers suggests that interest among the educated élite ran high and that a ready market was available. Leading Elizabethan playwrights possessed some knowledge of Greek tragedy, as did their European counterparts, though Seneca was their dominant influence. Ben Jonson owned a copy of the Pierre de la Rovière anthology, as well as a two-volume Latin translation of Euripides. Thomas Decker claimed to have read Euripides in Latin. The extent of Shakespeare’s familiarity with Greek tragedy is, however, tantalisingly obscure and scholars remain sharply divided on the question whether he had any first-hand acquaintance. Though he may have drawn inspiration from the heroes and heroines of Greek tragedy, notably for Hamlet, who has an affinity with Orestes, and for Lady Macbeth, who has points in common with Medea, it was probably the exposure to Seneca at his grammar school, either in Latin or in Jasper Heywood’s translation entitled The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca (1581), which first stimulated his taste for the genre. Greek tragedy was also translated into several other European languages, notably French, Italian and Spanish (see Appendix III). No fewer than twenty translations of Euripides were made before 1600, including six of Hecuba and four of Iphigeneia at Aulis, as well as fifteen translations of Sophocles, including five of Antigone and four of Oedipus the King. However, no translation of Aeschylus into any European vernacular was undertaken before the seventeenth century. I also know of no published translation of Greek tragedy into English in the sixteenth century. The study of Greek tragedy outside Italy in the Renaissance Though knowledge of the Greek language had largely been confined to Italy in the fifteenth century, by the turn of the century interest had spread to Spain, Germany, France and England. As early as 1462 the study of Greek at Oxford was being fostered by George Neville, twice chancellor of the university and archbishop of York, who is thought to have retained a Greek scribe to copy out manuscripts. Other important figures in the fostering of the language include John Shirwood, archdeacon of Richmond, and William Grocyn, who gave the first public lectures in Greek at Oxford. However, neither of them owned any manuscripts of Greek tragedy. In Cambridge Hellenic studies received a considerable boost from the arrival of Erasmus, who lectured at Queens’ College from 1511 to 1514 while he was working on the text of his Greek edition of the New Testament. It is perhaps not too fanciful to assume that Erasmus prescribed to his pupils the two plays of Euripides which he had translated into Latin. Then in 1517 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, appointed a praelector (or ‘Reader’) in Greek. The incumbent was expected to teach Euripides and Sophocles, as well as Aristophanes, Theocritus, Pindar and Hesiod, though we may doubt how much energy he was able to devote to each author, given

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Surviving Greek Tragedy the size of the curriculum (Binns 1978, 131). In the 1530s the study of Greek was introduced to several other Oxford colleges. The Regius Chair of Greek was established in Cambridge in 1540. In consequence of a visitation by Edward VI in 1549 the study of Euripides, Homer and Demosthenes was mandated at Oxford University (Mallet 1924, II p. 85). Despite all this, however, no Greek textbook was printed in England in the first half of the sixteenth century and, compared with Latin, the study of the language remained somewhat fitful and irregular. In the same period Greek began to be taught in a number of other European universities, including Alcalà (c. 1513), Leipzig (1515), Paris (1517) and Wittenberg (1518). The teaching of tragedy at university level must have depended largely upon the initiative and enthusiasm of a handful of inspired teachers, since Greek poetry was low on the list of curricular priorities. None the less, the availability of translations in Latin indicates that the number of students studying the plays must have been fairly healthy, since, then as now, classical authors needed to be prescribed as ‘set’ texts in order for their publication to be financially viable. One of the most enthusiastic advocates of Greek tragedy was the German theologian and reformer Philipp Melanchthon (Schwartzerd), who became the first professor of Greek at Wittenberg University in 1518. On taking the chair, Melanchthon delivered an address entitled ‘On the Improvement of Studies’, in which he called for a return to both classical and Christian texts. Significantly he based his argument partly on the premise that the ethical content of Greek tragedy was entirely consistent with Christian values: Often when thinking of the ways and customs of men, I marvel at the decision of the Greeks who first showed tragedies to the people not so much that they consider it a source of enjoyment but more importantly that by means of a contemplation of atrocious examples and misfortunes tragedies might turn our rude and fierce passions toward moderation and curbed desires, since in these misfortunes of kings and states they showed the weakness of human nature, the inconstancy of fortune, the irenic outcome of truly good deeds and inversely the very sad wages of crime …. Consequently, there is no doubt that the reading of tragedies is most useful for adolescents, as much for impressing upon their minds the many obligations of life and the restraint of their immoderate desires as for [teaching] eloquence (quoted in Stone 1974, 41-2).

Melanchthon is known to have lectured on Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis (very likely he prescribed Erasmus’ translations of the plays, particularly since the two men knew each other), and also on Sophocles, though we cannot assume that his courses were particularly extensive or detailed. What degree of familiarity with the works of the tragedians was attained outside university is difficult to judge, though Euripides was on the

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5. Refugees and Publishers curricula of some Elizabethan schools. In On the Purpose of Study (1511) Erasmus, who, like Melanchthon, was greatly interested in educational theory, as well as being of the conviction that classical wisdom remained an invaluable guide to the conduct of a moral life, prescribed the study of Greek and Roman authors, including Euripides. In 1508 he had published the first edition of his Adages, a collection of Greek and Roman proverbs drawn from his extensive reading of classical literature accompanied by detailed and learned commentary. He continued to expand the collection until shortly before his death in 1536, by which time there had been no fewer than six editions and the number of entries had swollen to 4,251. Many Elizabethans, we may suspect, would have become acquainted with the gnomic utterances of the Attic tragedians via the Adages, which remained popular reading for decades (Botley 2002, 219). Roger Ascham, tutor to Elizabeth I, read Sophocles and Euripides with his tutor Sir John Cheke and may have done so in turn with his royal pupil (Tilley 1936, 438). In addition, in the 1550s Lady Jane Lumley produced a translation of Iphigeneia at Aulis with the title The Tragedie of Euripides called Iphigeneia translated out of Greake into Englisshe. Lady Jane, who was the daughter of the Earl of Arundel, belonged to one of the great humanist families of the English Renaissance, who sought to model themselves on their Italian counterparts and regarded facility in the classical languages as a sign of good breeding. Such families were hardly representative, though we should not rule out the possibility that they provided an educational model which others sought to emulate. Sixteenth-century productions of Greek tragedy The few sixteenth-century performances of Greek tragedy of which we have record were mainly staged by amateurs, primarily schoolteachers, university dons, and members of the nobility. Very often, therefore, the productions were attended by dignitaries or members of royalty. Erasmus’ Latin translation of Hecuba was produced in the Collège du Porc, Louvain, in either 1506 or 1514 under the direction of a certain Hadrianus Barlandus. Melanchthon directed his students at Wittenberg in a performance of Hecuba in 1525 or 1526, again using Erasmus’ translation. The University of Leipzig followed suit with Hecuba in 1535. There is evidence to suggest that Sophocles’ Philoctetes was performed at Cambridge University around the middle of the sixteenth century. In 1564 Ajax Flagellifer (‘Ajax the Whip-bearer’), a Latin version of Sophocles’ Ajax, was rehearsed at Cambridge for a performance that was scheduled to take place in the presence of Elizabeth I but cancelled at the last moment. A contemporary witness writes of the aborted attempt to stage it as follows: ‘Tired of going about to see the Colleges, and hearing of Disputations … she could not hear the said Tragedy, to the great Sorrow not only of the Players, but of all the whole University’ (Boas 1914, 97). It says much of

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Surviving Greek Tragedy the importance of royal patronage that these preparations came to naught and no future performance was planned for the benefit of students and scholars. It is also possible that Thomas Watson’s Latin translation of Antigone was performed at Cambridge in 1583. The most important English production of which we have certain knowledge is George Gascoigne’s and Francis Kinwelmershe’s Jocasta. It was produced in 1566 by the members of Gray’s Inn as part of their Christmas revels. As Jocasta is a translation of Lodovico Dolce’s Italian version Giocasta (1549), which is in turn an adaptation of a Latin translation, however, the authors’ claim that they had produced a translation of ‘a tragedy written in Greek by Euripides’ (namely his Phoenician Women) is somewhat tendentious. In Gascoigne’s collected works, the play is printed complete with stage directions, which enables us to re-construct the production in some detail. One of its most striking features was the inclusion of a dumb show at the beginning and a homily at the end. For instance, before Act I, ‘Sesostres king of Egypt figures “the greedie lust of man’s ambitious eye” ’. In this way the playwrights provided the audience with what Smith (1988, 223) has described as ‘a kind of moral gloss on the events of Euripides’ play’. Jocasta established the convention of rendering the iambic passages of Greek tragedy into blank verse and the choral strophes into rhymed stanzas, a practice to which almost all English translations conformed

Fig. 22. Fresco representing a scene from Edipo Tiranno, as performed at the Teatro Olimpico, 1585.

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5. Refugees and Publishers until the beginning of the twentieth century. Since Greek verse never rhymes and the nearest equivalent to the iambic trimeter is the Alexandrine metre, the convention was both arbitrary and misleading. Edipo Tiranno at the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza The most celebrated production of Greek tragedy in the sixteenth century was an Italian version of Sophocles’ play entitled Edipo Tiranno, which received its première in Vicenza on 3 March 1585 (Fig. 22). The audience’s enthusiasm was such that a subsequent staging took place on 6 March. A review written by a Vicenzan named Filippo Pigafetta for a friend whom he addresses as ‘illustrissimo signore e padrone asservatissimo’ presents a vivid picture of the spectacular production, which was attended by an audience of 3,000, among them the wife of the ambassador of France and one of her nieces. The production marked the inauguration of the Teatro Olimpico, which had been built from the architectural designs of Andrea Palladio. Palladio had modelled his design after an ancient Roman theatre in accordance with specifications laid down by Vitruvius, an Augustan architect and military engineer (Fig. 23). Though the choice, made by the members of the Vicenzan Accademia Olympica, had much to do with Aristotle’s judgement of the play as exemplary of the tragic genre and thus

Fig. 23. Sketch of the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy with Aristotle’s own status in this period, it also demonstrates the status and popularity which Sophocles currently enjoyed in his own right. The translation into (Tuscan) Italian was by a Venetian scholar, Orsatto Giustiniani, the music for the choral odes was composed by Andrea Gabrieli, and the staging was by Angelo Ingegneri. Ingegneri was the first in a long line of directors to attempt to reproduce what he believed to be certain authentic features of classical staging. For the choreography he consulted entries in Pollux’s Lexicon and for acting technique he turned to the Roman grammarian Quintilian. However, he rejected the convention of masks, in part because the Venetian gentry used them to achieve anonymity at carnival time, which happened to coincide with the time of the production. He also dressed his actors and chorus in contemporary costumes. Pigafetta states that the chorus, who wore the uniforms of the bodyguard of the Ottoman Emperor, delivered their lines clearly and harmoniously ‘so that one could hear almost every word – no mean accomplishment when it comes to tragedy’. Ingegneri presented the drama as a pageant, Oedipus being attended by a guard of 28 archers, Jocasta by a company of 25 ladies-in-waiting and pages, and Creon by an escort of six. Innovative and ambitious though it was, Ingegneri’s Edipo Tiranno did not start a fashion, and no other stagings of Greek tragedy on anything approaching such a grand scale were mounted for over two hundred years.

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Philologists and Translators About half a century after the publication of the editiones principes, scholars began to question more systematically the accuracy of the texts which had been printed, in line with a growing awareness of the complexity of the manuscript tradition and an increasing mastery over the language itself. But though the second half of the sixteenth century saw the publication of numerous editions of Greek tragedy, serious scholarly interest in the genre waned around 1700. In fact little work of distinction was produced until the end of the eighteenth century, when there was a general rise in interest in classical philology, which now came to assume pride of place among classical scholars. The ascendancy of this discipline, which was in large part based on the textual criticism of Greek tragedy, was especially pronounced in Germany, England, France and Holland. In the early nineteenth century Greek tragedy came to be regarded as the supreme achievement of Hellenic culture, and scholarly editions of the plays abounded. Ten of Euripides alone appeared in England and no fewer than 25 in Germany. Greek tragedy also began to exert an influence beyond the confines of the Academy, not least in the construction of the novels of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. The Victorians may be said to have enjoyed a special relationship with the genre, which on one level seemed to complement their belief in divine purpose, and on another to highlight the growing spiritual uncertainties of the age. The most highly regarded Attic tragedian was Sophocles, with pride of place going to Antigone. In the last quarter of the century new theoretical approaches sought to provide a broader cultural context for the study of Greek drama. The resulting methodological divide between philologists and their opponents was intensified by the publication in 1872 of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Die Geburt der Tragödie (The Birth of Tragedy), which generated bitter controversy between its author and his fellow-countryman Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Importantly, too, Euripides’ reputation, which had been lagging behind that of Sophocles, now underwent a dramatic re-habilitation. Those aspects of his work which had repelled earlier scholars, namely his complex characters, down-to-earth realism, scepticism, and unorthodox religious viewpoint, spoke eloquently to a mood of increasing pessimism. In the twentieth century a diversity of critical approaches was brought into play, attracting scholars of widely differing intellectual backgrounds

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Surviving Greek Tragedy and interests. Partly because Greek drama is now perceived as an intrinsic function of the Athenian democratic process, it today occupies a central position in any Classics curriculum. Though the writing of commentaries continues apace, particularly among scholars trained in the Oxbridge tradition, theoretical and philosophical approaches now dominate research. Indeed judging by the number of publications and seminars, the scholarly investigation of Greek tragedy has never been healthier. Likewise the quantity of translations that are produced, some by scholars, others by leading playwrights and poets, provides evidence of its importance for the general public. The pioneer in this field was Gilbert Murray, whose translations of Euripides brought a new awareness of Greek tragedy to the English-speaking world. Other distinguished translators include Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, Jean Cocteau, T.S. Eliot, Dario Fo, Athol Fugard, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Louis MacNeice, Eugene O’Neill, Ezra Pound, Wole Soyinka, and W.B. Yeats. Textual criticism Literature being the work of the human mind with all its frailty and aberration, and of human fingers which make mistakes, the science of textual criticism must aim for degrees of likelihood, and the only authority it might answer to is an author who has been dead for hundreds or thousands of years. … Reason and common sense, a congenial intimacy with the author, a comprehensive familiarity with the language, a knowledge of ancient script for those fallible fingers, concentration, integrity, mother wit and repression of self-will – these are a good start for the textual critic. … Textual criticism is the crown and summit of scholarship. ‘AEH’ in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love, Act 1 (p. 38)

The observation which Tom Stoppard puts into the mouth of the deceased A.E. Housman encapsulates the philosophy espoused by classicists of the nineteenth century, no matter that ‘AEH’ is alluding to Latin rather than to Greek texts. It is a philosophy which, though less in favour today, cannot be lightly brushed aside since classical scholarship depends on the accuracy of the textual tradition. As Taplin (1995, 110) has remarked, ‘We cannot, and should not, evade the question of how sure it is – or is not – that the text we have (or use) goes back to the playwright – or rather goes back to the performance which he supervised.’ Impeccable though this objective may be in theory, however, in practice it is almost impossible to achieve. To quote Page (1938, li), ‘We may approximate to the Alexandrian archetype but not to the ultimate fifthcentury archetype, since the evidence for pre-Alexandrian readings other than those incorporated in the Alexandrian text has almost totally disappeared.’ A further important consideration is that the playwright may have

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6. Philologists and Translators decided to introduce corrections during rehearsal or even after the first performance which never became incorporated into the tradition (a practice, incidentally, adopted by Tom Stoppard) so that the question as to which of these variant texts is ‘authentic’ has little meaning (Dawe 1982, 23). The surviving text of Euripides’ Hippolytus is a revised version of the first play, and it is possible that other playwrights also re-wrote their plays. In such circumstances the search for a text that ‘goes back to the playwright’ may at times be somewhat self-defeating. Behind textual criticism looms the fugitive spectre of a putative archetype from which all medieval manuscripts are derived and to which they can be linked in the form of a stemma or family tree indicating their affiliation (or stemmatic relationship) to one another. Since every manuscript contains errors, and since the copyist may or may not detect these errors in the process of correction, the transmission of a text inevitably leads to variant readings that are cited at the bottom of the page in the apparatus criticus (Fig. 24). Some of these may make sense, though not the sense the author intended, whereas others may not. It is partly upon the basis of shared errors that manuscripts can be classified, though the principle is by no means foolproof, especially if the stemmatic relationship is based on a restricted number of readings. The modern tendency has therefore been to allow for more openness in the manuscript tradition, particularly in regard to Greek tragedy, which has served so many different purposes over the centuries and thus been particularly subject to contamination. A major cause of disagreement among textual critics until the second half of the nineteenth century was the enormous difficulty of

Fig. 24. Apparatus criticus from Euripides’ Hippolytus (Oxford Classical Text).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy collating manuscripts in an age before the invention of photography. Microfilm, which was introduced in the 1940s, has further facilitated their labours. For the history of textual criticism in a nutshell, one can hardly improve upon Michael Reeve (1996, 1491): ‘Heath added ge, Cobet atticized, Jachman deleted, Housman flayed other textual critics, geese hiss at Housman.’ Indeed few branches of classical scholarship arouse deeper passions or provoke more lasting enmity among their exponents. The distinguishing attitude of the majority, as Dawe (1990, 243) has aptly observed, is ‘Of course I am right; it is just that you are too stupid to see it.’ Richard Porson, for instance, described the Dutch scholar Cornelis de Pauw, who produced an edition of Aeschylus in 1745, as ‘a miserable critic, in whom singular ignorance and as singular arrogance were combined’ (quoted in Clarke 1945, 62). Particularly scathing of the work of his predecessors was Eduard Fraenkel, the author of a towering three-volume commentary on the Agamemnon (1950), who described the same Cornelis de Pauw (op. cit., 44) as ‘a very unpleasant character, [who] was in the habit of making a fool of himself, though he did not do so invariably’. F.A. Paley, whose Oresteia appeared in 1845, is damned with faint praise for being ‘no genius, but a solid worker and an honest man’ (op. cit., 52). Fraenkel’s most stinging rebuke, however, was directed at the German scholar Nicolaus Wecklein, whose 1888 commentary on the trilogy manifests ‘language and thought [that] often reach such a depth of crude vulgarity that even the most hardened scholar may find it difficult not to lose his temper’ (op. cit., 56). This sort of thing, ever so slightly muted, continues today, albeit often directed to those long gone. Dawe (1990, 384) has observed that ‘None of [Porson’s] conjectures on tragedy exudes the quality of a laserlike mental penetration’. M.L. West (1990, 372) dismisses the list of emendations by other scholars assembled by Dawe and Wecklein as amounting to ‘a quantity of rubbish’. Given the arduousness and sheer boredom of the copyist’s task, we should not be surprised at the alleged frequency of textual errors. Indeed, considering the number of times ancient texts were copied, it is perhaps a wonder that manuscripts are not more corrupt than they are. Though a manuscript dating to the eleventh century is in principle likely to be more accurate than one dating to the thirteenth, there are notable exceptions, and this fact militates against any assumption of quality based on the criterion of age alone. This is strikingly illustrated by the analogy with papyri which, though centuries earlier than the earliest medieval manuscripts, do not invariably provide the best readings. To complicate matters further, as we saw earlier, Byzantine scholars took it upon themselves to alter what they regarded as errors. A frequent error in tragic texts arising from the complexity and difficulty of the language is the gloss. A gloss starts life as an attempt on the part of a scribe or commentator to explain what is obscure in the text. In time, however, it becomes incorporated into

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6. Philologists and Translators the text and may be passed down through generations of manuscripts. Also frequent is the so-called vitium Byzantinum, according to which a paroxytone word (a word with an acute accent or stress on the penultimate syllable) is transposed to the end of an iambic trimeter so that the line has the characteristic cadence of Byzantine verse. It cannot be denied that the texts of the tragedians have been greatly improved by the removal of hundreds if not thousands of corruptions that cluttered the medieval texts, even if progress has not invariably been upwards. There has, however, been a sharp decline in the number of successful emendations introduced over the last fifty years. This decline had already begun by the final decades of the nineteenth century, when the detection of interpolations became a measure of philological accomplishment, particularly in Germany and England. No one understood the pitfalls of this tendency better than R.C. Jebb, who in his edition of Oedipus at Colonus (1899, lii) declared, ‘The purification of these texts, though still incomplete, has now reached such a point that, if any real advance is to be made, reserve and delicacy of judgement must be cultivated.’ Moreover, though textual criticism remains at the very core of the attempt to arrive at a secure appreciation of the diction and poetry of Greek tragedy, the importance of certain disputed readings has at times been wildly exaggerated. Some in fact have become so contested that in extreme cases the interpretation of an entire play has been thought to depend upon them. In addition, philology’s claim to be a progressive science has been tempered by the recognition that it is an interpretive exercise, just like any other humanistic discipline. Scholarly editions Nearly half a century was to pass after the publication of the Aldine editiones principes before the need for more accurate texts began to be recognised, coincident with the establishment of chairs of Greek at leading universities. A tradition of scholarly emendation now got underway which has remained unbroken to the present day. No fewer than 200 men – no women incidentally – have attempted to emend the text of Aeschylus alone (West 1990, 370). It goes without saying that neither the pace nor the quality of scholarship has remained constant. An important development dating to the first half of the eighteenth century was the emergence of a series of editions intended for use in public schools, indicating that Greek tragedy now occupied a pivotal position in the curriculum. It is impossible to do more than offer a very abbreviated summary of the history of scholarly editions of Greek tragedy. In 1545 the Italian scholar Victorius published the editio princeps of Euripides’ Electra, which had been discovered by two of his pupils. Two years later he produced an edition of Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Women of Trachis by collating manuscripts in Florence. Turnebus (Adrien Turnèbe), Director of

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Surviving Greek Tragedy the Royal Press in Paris, published an edition of Aeschylus in 1552, using M and introducing many emendations which have been retained to the present day. In the same year Robortellus, who held professorships at various Italian universities, independently produced an edition of Aeschylus in Venice, together with the editio princeps of the scholia. In 1553 Turnebus published an edition of Sophocles which was based on the recension by Demetrius Triclinius, together with the Triclinian scholia. In 1558 Victorius published the first complete text of Aeschylus, together with their scholia and a brief commentary, in which he demonstrated that Agamemnon and Libation-Bearers are two different plays. (The Aldine editio princeps had printed them as one because it was based on M: above, p. 109). The French scholar Auratus (Jean Dorat) made numerous unpublished emendations to Aeschylus’ text, many of which are still accepted. A manuscript copy of his Prometheus (1548) survives in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Willem Canter of Utrecht published editions of Euripides (1571), Sophocles (1579) and Aeschylus (1580). These were the first in which the lyric passages of Greek tragedy were correctly divided into metrically responding pairs of strophe and antistrophe. Relatively few editions appeared in the seventeenth century, partly due to the Thirty Years’ War, which had a debilitating effect upon continental scholarship. Thomas Stanley brought out the first complete edition of Aeschylus in English in 1663. His text included some 300 emendations, many deriving from the unpublished work of his friends Henry Jacob and John Pearson, though whether he consciously plagiarised is still disputed. He also included a Latin translation, the scholia, fragments of the lost plays, and a commentary. His was also the first edition to provide line numberings to the plays. In 1694 Joshua Barnes produced the first English edition of all the extant plays of Euripides. Unfortunately Barnes included letters purporting to have been written by Euripides, although, as the great textual critic Richard Bentley had already demonstrated, these were forgeries perpetrated many centuries after the poet’s death. An important development in eighteenth-century England was the growth of a market for editions of Greek tragedy aimed at schools. One of the earliest ventures in this direction was that of Thomas Johnson, a master at Eton College, who produced editions of Sophocles from 1705 to 1746. These included the Greek text, a Latin translation, the scholia, the notes by Demetrius Triclinius, and notes collated from four manuscripts of Sophocles in Oxford which contained the Moschopulean commentary. Johnson also glossed a few words in English and added his own notes in Latin at the back. Such an ambitious text can hardly have been utilised to the full by every pupil, the majority of whom probably studied only a few set passages with the aid of the gloss. In 1729 B. Barker edited Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers, Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra for Westminster School. A little later Thomas Morell edited Alcestis (1748), Philoctetes (1757) and Prometheus (1767) for Eton College.

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6. Philologists and Translators In Holland Cornelis de Pauw re-edited Stanley’s edition of Aeschylus and added his own commentary (1745). Samuel Musgrave, who produced an important edition of Hippolytus (1756), later agreed to produce editions of the complete plays of Euripides for Oxford University Press on condition that it include readings from the Aldine text. In 1763 Jeremiah Markland, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, edited Euripides’ Suppliants, pessimistically noting in his own copy, ‘Probably it will be a long time (if ever) before this sort of learning will revive in England’. In 1786 the French scholar Richard Brunck produced a two-volume edition of Sophocles in which he boldly asserted that eighteenth-century editors had done little to improve the text of Sophocles. He also announced that he had abandoned the practice, first adopted by Turnebus, of working from the Triclinian recension and that he was reverting to the Aldine edition, on the grounds that it was based on superior manuscripts. The greatest textual critic working in England at the end of the century was Richard Porson, whose marble image, looking somewhat seedy beside those of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, adorns the antechapel of Trinity College. Though his scholarship was of the highest quality, Porson was also given to drink, boorishness, and neglect of his person (Figs 25a, 25b). Lord Byron, who detested him, wrote: ‘Of all the disgusting brutes, sulky, abusive and intolerable, Porson was the most bestial as far as the few times that I saw him went. … He used to recite or rather vomit pages of all languages, and could hiccup Greek like a Helot.’ Shortly after graduating, Porson was invited by the Syndics of Cambridge University Press to produce a new edition of Aeschylus. He later abandoned the project on discovering that he would not be permitted to make any alterations to the text which Thomas Stanley had published one and a half centuries before. The Syndics can have had little appreciation of what textual criticism entailed, for when Porson applied for a modest subvention so that he could travel to Florence and collate the great Medicean, the Vice-Chancellor dismissed his request with the words, ‘Let Mr Porson collect (sic) his manuscripts at home.’ Eventually A. Foulis, a pioneering Glasgow publisher, printed what is generally believed to be Porson’s uncompleted text without his name in a folio edition of 1795, which included 31 plates by the illustrator John Flaxman (Fig. 26). Subsequently a two-volume octavo edition containing a Latin translation was printed in 1794, though it was not published until 1806. However, both the folio and the quarto editions lacked the preface, notes, scholia, and fragments which the author had assembled. Porson introduced over fifty emendations to the text of Aeschylus, most of which are accepted to this day. It is, however, for his work on Euripides that Porson is chiefly renowned. He produced masterly editions of Hecuba (1797), Orestes (1798), Phoenician Women (1799), and Medea (1801). A second edition of Hecuba with a much enlarged preface was published in response to a rival commentary by the German scholar Gottfried Hermann in 1802. It was here

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Fig. 25a. Portrait of Richard Porson (engraving by C. Turner).

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Fig. 25b. Opening page of Euripides’ Phoenician Women in Porson’s own hand.

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Fig. 26. John Flaxman’s illustrations for Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Libation-Bearers (1795).

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6. Philologists and Translators that Porson established the rules of iambic and trochaic metre which go under the heading of Porson’s Law. He had originally intended to edit all the plays of Euripides but turned his attention instead to the copying of Greek manuscripts (see Fig. 25b). Towards the end of his life he is said to have observed, ‘I am quite satisfied if, three hundred years hence, it shall be said that one Porson lived toward the close of the eighteenth century, who did a good deal for the text of Euripides’ (quoted in Sandys 1908, II 429). In the early decades of the nineteenth century a group of Trinity Fellows took up where Porson had left off. The most prominent were J.H. Monk, who edited Euripides’ Hippolytus (1811) and Alcestis (1816), and who after a long interval went on to publish Iphigeneia in Aulis (1840) and Iphigeneia among the Taurians (1845); and C.J. Blomfield, Bishop of Chester and later of London, who completed editions of five of Aeschylus’ plays from 1810 to 1824. Samuel Butler, headmaster of Shrewsbury School, produced an edition of Aeschylus based on Stanley’s outdated text for the Syndics of Cambridge University Press which has been aptly described as ‘a monument of vain labour’ (Clarke 1945, 91). The first volume appeared in 1809 and is chiefly memorable for the fact that it used a new typeface known as Porson Greek (so-named because it derived from Porson’s hand as a copyist), which has become the most widely used of all Greek types (McKitterick 1984, 110). Peter Elmsley, who published editions of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (1811) and Oedipus at Colonus (1823), was the first to recognise the value of Zg (above, p. 91). He later produced editions of Euripides’ Descendants of Heracles (1813), Medea (1818) and Bacchae (1821). Gottfried Hermann, with whom the great age of German philology dawns, is said to have improved the text of Aeschylus ‘in far more places than anyone else before or since, excepting only Turnebus’ (West 1990, 367). Though many German scholars elevated philology to new heights, the work of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff remains paramount. He was the first scholar to elucidate the historical context in which the plays were written and produced, to recognise the dependency of the text upon the conditions of performance, and to treat the transmission of the texts as a subject of scholarly importance in its own right. His commentary on Euripides’ Heracles, which circulated privately in 1879, was eventually published in a revised version ten years later. It was largely due to Wilamowitz that Euripides’ apparent shortcomings and dramatic inconsistencies were recognised as evidence of his peculiar genius, as he noted in this characterisation of the playwright: A feverish urgency, a comfortless, restless … mood, and with it a creative power and boldness, a tireless straining after new problems and new solutions, an ever-youthful receptivity to all that is new – one cannot adequately

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Surviving Greek Tragedy describe the human soul that was capable of producing the series of contradictory works (tr. Michelini 1987, 16f.).

The first volume of Wilamowitz’s edition is prefaced by an introduction to Greek tragedy entitled Die Einleitung in die attische Tragödie (An Introduction to Attic Tragedy), which remains to this day required reading for anyone interested in the subject of transmission. It was here that Wilamowitz advanced his influential hypothesis that an anonymous schoolmaster was responsible for the ‘Byzantine edition’ of 24 plays. Notwithstanding his distaste for collation – ‘I detest feeding on the dust of libraries,’ he wrote in the preface to this edition – Wilamowitz was also one of the first scholars to apply himself to this task in the wake of the invention of photography, and he managed to collate fourteen manuscripts of Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers (1914). He also demonstrated that genuinely ancient scholia existed in manuscripts of Aeschylus which were missing from M. In the final decades of the nineteenth century Sir Richard Jebb, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, produced editions of Sophocles (1883-96) consisting of text, commentary and translation which have been described as ‘the yardstick by which all subsequent ones are measured’ (Dawe 1990, 241). The eighth volume, containing the fragments, was published from his papers by A. Pearson in 1917. Fittingly, the memorial brass in the antechapel of Trinity College pays Jebb the tribute of being ‘the most exquisite interpreter of Sophocles’. He saw the plays of Sophocles as the epitome of all that was best in Hellenic culture. Euripides, by contrast, seems to have held little appeal for him. In the words of A.W. Verrall (1907, 467), his younger contemporary, who did much to promote Euripides by his audacious interpretations, Jebb ‘could not speak of Euripides without pain in his voice, and seldom, without necessity, spoke [of him] at all. He had no strong desire, I think, to comprehend such a person.’ In the introduction to his three-volume Oxford Classical Text of Euripides, Gilbert Murray (1902-1913, I xi) wrote: In my view Euripides requires interpretation rather than emendation, nor do I think that a man, however learned, can interpret him well, unless he knows something about the dramatic art … unless he constantly focuses not only upon the verses and their sentiments but also upon the dramatis personae, what they’re up to, what pain they’re in, what they’re afraid of, and what they’re angry about.

This declaration of faith in the importance of the dramatic structure of the plays was an idea whose time had truly come. It was, moreover, destined to have a profound influence on the study and reception of Greek tragedy in the twentieth century. It bore fruit in an influential study of Sophocles published by the German scholar Karl Reinhardt in 1933. Reinhardt argued that a dramatist’s art evolves progressively, notably in his handling

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6. Philologists and Translators of dialogue. He was particularly interested in the chronology of Sophocles’ plays and it is due to his findings that Women of Trachis is generally regarded as one of the earliest and Electra one of the latest. In 1933 Alexander Turyn produced the first comprehensive catalogue of the manuscripts of Aeschylus, though the stemma he proposed was later demonstrated by R.D. Dawe (1964) to be flawed. In 1972 Denys Page collated 26 manuscripts for a new edition of Aeschylus in the Oxford series. In the introduction (op. cit., v) he described the task of Aeschylean recension as ‘opus … perdifficile ne dicam paene desperandum’ and continued soberly, ‘Even if the text of his plays existed perfectly free of corruption, it would sorely exercise the ingenuity of his interpreters. Since, however, the plays have come down to us corrupted by every kind of scribal error and ineptitude, the textual critic approaches his already thorny task with all the more diffidence.’ In 1973 R.D. Dawe produced an edition of the Sophoclean plays of the Byzantine triad in which he went so far as to express the belief that, with the exception of the two main witnesses, ‘the relationships between the manuscripts in question cannot be meaningfully represented in stemmatic form’. M.L. West (1990a) was the first scholar to collate all the forty-odd manuscripts of Aeschylus dating from the fourteenth century or earlier. Of the numerous commentaries upon individual plays, it is possible to mention only two. Dodds’ introduction to the Bacchae (1944) is generally recognised as one of the most penetrating analyses of Greek religion ever written. In the words of Lloyd-Jones (1982, 24), it ‘makes the most eloquent and tasteful advocacy of those who argue that Euripides was “for” or “against” Dionysus seem shallow and immature.’ Arguably the greatest commentary of all is Fraenkel’s Agamemnon, which is unsurpassed in its philological exactitude. Like every commentary, however, it, is a creature of its times. At the point in the drama when Agamemnon agrees against his better judgement to step upon the purple tapestries which Clytemnestra has spread before him, Fraenkel comments, ‘in his reluctance to get the better of a woman … he proves a great gentleman’. It is an observation which, as Goldhill (1997a, 327) has remarked, ‘says far more about Fraenkel’s ideas of social interaction than about Greek ideas of gender or persuasion’. Nietzsche versus Wilamowitz The interpretation of Greek tragedy took a radically new direction in 1872 when Friedrich Nietzsche published The Birth of Tragedy, probably the most influential discussion of Greek tragedy after Aristotle’s Art of Poetry, in which he set out to demolish the facile assumption that a people who invented tragedy could ever have been sunny and serene, as the great art-historian J.J. Winckelmann had naïvely proclaimed a century earlier. Nietzsche advocated a philosophical, quasi-poetic and anti-historicist in-

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Surviving Greek Tragedy terpretation, which arguably laid the foundations for several modern critical approaches to tragedy. The publication of The Birth of Tragedy, exactly at the moment when the German philological tradition was at the height of its prestige, also heralded its decline, even though it was to continue until 1933, the year in which the Nazis came to power in Germany. Nietzsche, a young professor of Classics at Basle University, put forward the hypothesis that Greek tragedy arose from an elegant synthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian elements, representative of reason and irrationality respectively. That synthesis, he argued, is vital to an individual’s well-being. However, since the era of Euripides and Socrates man has been ruled exclusively by the Apollonian principle, which sacrifices life and art on the altar of a kind of desiccated knowledge that is no substitute for truth. Evoking what he judged to be the etiolated and passionless world of Hellenistic scholarship, Nietzsche wrote, ‘In vain does one accumulate the entire “world literature” around modern man for his comfort; in vain does one place oneself in the midst of the art styles and artists of all ages, so that one may give names to them as Adam did to the beasts: one still remains eternally hungry, the “critic” without joy and energy, the Alexandrian man, who is at bottom a librarian and corrector of proofs, and wretchedly goes blind from the dust of books and from printers’ errors’ (tr. W. Kaufmann 1967, 113f.). The Birth of Tragedy was treated with derision by German philologists, most notably by Nietzsche’s former schoolmate, the 24-year-old Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Wilamowitz heaped scorn on Nietzsche’s antihistoricist crusade in a scathing pamphlet ironically entitled ‘Zukunfstphilologie!’ or ‘Philology of the Future!’, which came out in June 1872. He jeered at the tone and style of the work, as well as at Nietzsche’s scholarship, which he characterised as that of an ignorant charlatan. For instance, where Nietzsche, declaring Greek tragedy to be the product of hostile and contradictory artistic impulses, states: And here the sublime and celebrated art of Attic tragedy and the dramatic dithyramb presents itself as the common goal of both these tendencies [i.e. the Apollonian and the Dionysian] whose mysterious union, after many and long precursory struggles, found glorious consummation in this child – at once Antigone and Cassandra (tr. W. Kaufmann 1967, 47).

– Wilamowitz (op. cit., n. 32) contemptuously commented, ‘Whoever explains these last words … receives a suitable reward from me.’ In response to Wilamowitz’s assault, the composer Richard Wagner wrote an emotional defence of his friend in a letter to a Swiss newspaper, claiming that classical philologists knew nothing of contemporary art or culture, and that they were stifling interest in Greek antiquity. The only scholar who sought to defend Nietzsche was Erwin Rohde, later the author

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6. Philologists and Translators of an immensely influential work entitled Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks (1897), who wrote an open letter castigating Wilamowitz for presumptuousness and malevolence. Nietzsche eventually replied to Wilamowitz in ironical vein with a pamphlet entitled ‘We Philologists’, in which he contrasted the withered tradition of classical philology with the vital and enduring spirit of ancient Greece. The battle lines were drawn and to some extent have remained in place to this day, in that modern critical approaches to tragedy continue to debate the value of the philological tradition of inquiry with its emphasis upon syntactical and semantic analysis. Indeed the intemperate altercation between these two giants is, in the words of Silk and Stern (1981, 100), ‘the epitome of all controversy between the defenders of “pure” scholarship and the spokesman for learning in the service of art and life’. The Birth of Tragedy is less a work of scholarship than an imaginative re-construction of the origins of the genre. It represents a milestone in the history of the reception of Greek tragedy, not least in terms of the insight which the author shows into the nature of Greek divinity and its intervention into human affairs. Even more important, however, was its effect upon literary criticism. The dominance of textual criticism had been so overwhelming in the nineteenth century that little attempt had been made to offer a more broadly-based interpretation. Instead the text had been treated as a locus for the discussion of discrete linguistic problems which were thought to be soluble in isolation. Nothing more succinctly epitomises the emergence of modern literary criticism than the conviction which grew out of this controversy (and, incidentally, to which Wilamowitz himself subscribed) that the text constitutes an artistic entity which has to be interrogated both as a coherent unity and as a product of historical circumstance. Whatever the shortcomings of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, the work undoubtedly set in motion ‘The Philology of the Future’. Modern critical approaches The past half-century has witnessed the birth of a plethora of interpretations of Greek tragedy, mostly by British, French and American scholars. These offer the widest possible variety of critical theories – anthropological, sociological, historicist and anti-historicist, psychological, structuralist, deconstructionist, Marxist, feminist, linguistic and performance-oriented. In fact it may be argued that although classicists in general have shown some resistance to modern critical theory, this is least the case among exponents of Greek tragedy. There are, no doubt, many reasons for this: first, because Greek tragedy cannot be understood in isolation from so many aspects of Athenian, and also Greek, civic life; secondly because it is at the intersection between the specialised discipline of classics and contemporary culture; and thirdly, because the genre is itself concerned to stimulate debate on received social values.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Anthropology, whose relationship with the Classical tradition continues to be somewhat tempestuous, first made an impact through the work of the so-called Cambridge Ritualists, a group of classicists whose most prominent members included Jane Harrison, Gilbert Murray and Francis Cornford. Eager to explore the links between the two disciplines, they sought to identify underlying patterns between the performance of Greek tragedy and the ritual of Greek religion. In 1918 Murray published Euripides and his Age, in which he drew an analogy between Greek tragedy and the medieval mystery play, both of which (so his argument ran) deal in ‘death-and-resurrection’. The most explicit account of this obscure theory reads as follows (op. cit., 29f.): … tragedy originated in a dance, ritual or magical, intended to represent the death of the vegetation this year and its coming return in triumph next year. … Vegetation is to us an abstract common noun; to the ancient it was a personal being, not ‘it’ but ‘He’. His death was our own deaths, and his re-birth a thing to be anxiously sought with prayers and dances. For if he were not re-born, what would happen? Famine, and wholesale death by famine, was a familiar thought, a regularly returning terror, in these primitive agricultural villages …. The Year Daemon – Vegetation Spirit or Corn God or whatever we call him – waxes proud and is slain by his enemy, who becomes thereby a murderer and must in turn perish at the hands of the expected avenger, who is at the same time the Wronged One re-risen.

Wilamowitz had no more time for the Year Daemon than he had for Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. He declared himself to be curious about what he called Murray’s ‘mystical doctrine of tragedy’ and went on, ‘The more I think about religion, the less mystic I become, which is something opposed to the taste of our time’ (quoted in Wilson 1987, 155). Though the assumptions of the Cambridge Ritualists have been discarded, many classicists have followed their lead in seeking to identify elements of ritualised behaviour both within the phenomenology of tragedy and within the narrative structure of individual plays. René Girard (1977), for instance, interpreted tragedy as a dramatisation of the rite of sacrifice whose purpose was to expiate the violence within society which continually threatens its survival. Tragedy’s underlying purpose as a cultural institution, he argued, was to re-enact the restoration of that order. Girard’s theory works best for plays such as Oedipus the King and Bacchae, where Oedipus and Pentheus can be seen as scapegoats who must be banished from the community in order to appease the gods. ‘For if we neglect to feed the god,’ Girard (op. cit., 266) commented, ‘he will waste away; or else, maddened by hunger, he will descend among men and lay claim to his nourishment with unexampled cruelty and ferocity.’ Structural anthropology, which examines the polarities that are embedded in society’s deep structure, has served to identify the way in which tragic texts confront, manipulate and resolve such polarities. A case in

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6. Philologists and Translators point is Sophocles’ Antigone, whose plot is shaped around a series of binary oppositions which include male and female, family and state, the living and the dead, public and private, secular law and religious law, and so forth. One of the most influential scholars working within this tradition is J.-P. Vernant, who proposed that tragedy is the product of a precise socio-historical moment in which a conflict of value systems is taking place. Such, according to his thesis, was the case in late sixth- and early fifth-century Athens, which witnessed an abrupt transition from an aristocratic to a democratic society. The plays illustrate this conflict by their emphasis upon marginality, abnormality and ambiguity. Though tragedy deploys the coded structures of the social order (life and death, man and god, man and beast, male and female, family and polis, etc.), it also deals in the dissolution of those structures. Scholars following Vernant’s lead have investigated topics which have bearing on our overall understanding of the genre in respect of social practice, with the aim of linking form to content. These include the paradramatic ceremonies that were enacted at the festivals, the mentality and sociology of the Athenian audience, the dynamic interplay between tragedy and satyr plays, the political nature of Athenian tragedy, and, last but not least – a question that harks back to Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy – the logic underlying Athens’ choice of Dionysus as patron god of drama. The socio-anthropological approach has been challenged by scholars who are deeply sceptical of assigning to Greek tragedy any meaningful cross-cultural component. Proponents of the Historicist School, for instance, have investigated Greek tragedy for information relating to the political concerns of the Athenian citizenry, the crisis in religion brought about by the sophists, the breakdown of civilised forms of conduct, and so forth. It is, moreover, on the basis of alleged allusions to political events that many of the plays have been dated. The absurd lengths to which some allusion-seeking classicists have been prepared to go have been roundly denounced by Zuntz (1955, 59; cf. 1958, 54-61) who observed, ‘when the scholar cross-questions [tragedy] to extract some acknowledgement of transitory trifles, the answer is only the echo of the questioner’s voice’. More recently, historicism has been assailed by the anti-historicist school known as New Criticism, which advocates detailed textual analysis in order to explore tensions and ambiguities within a single work. New Critics dismiss discussion of all externals, including the author’s biography and the epoch in which he lived, as ill-conceived and irrelevant. Their goal is to isolate each literary work from its historical context and to focus exclusively upon its internal coherence. Accordingly they pay close attention to the pattern of imagery contained within a single play as a way of illuminating its major preoccupations. An influential pioneering work which anticipated the movement by twenty years, is Karl Reinhardt’s Sophocles (1933), mentioned previously, which proposed a broadly thematic reading of the plays in order to explicate ‘the relationship … between

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Surviving Greek Tragedy man and god and between man and man … as it develops scene by scene, play by play, period by period’ (op. cit., 1). Historicism none the less continues to flourish in opposition to New Criticism and few scholars would maintain that the plays have nothing to tell us about contemporary political concerns and social practice, even though the link is unlikely to be straightforward (e.g. Romilly 1965, 108-32; Bowie 1997, 39-62). New Historicism, which encourages a parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, represents a compromise between these opposing views, even though, critics argue, this ideal goal is difficult to achieve in the field of Greek tragedy. Psychoanalytic criticism has obvious applicability to Greek tragedy, given the fact that many of the plays offer studies of characters who are psychologically disturbed. The pioneer in this field was Sigmund Freud, who interpreted the Oedipus legend as a mythological realisation of a son’s infantile mother-fixation which generates an unconscious desire to murder his father. Freud had already spoken of ‘being in love with one parent and hating the other’ as holding pride of place ‘among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses’ in On the Interpretation of Dreams which was published in 1900. However, the classic definition of his theory did not appear until 1923 in The Ego and the Id (pp. 31-2 in Standard Edition, vol. 19): At a very early age the little boy develops an object-cathexis for his mother …; the boy deals with his father by identifying himself with him. For a time these two relationships proceed side by side, until the boy’s sexual wishes in regard to his mother become more intense and his father is perceived as an obstacle to them; from this the Oedipus Complex originates. His identification with his father then takes on a hostile colouring and changes into a wish to get rid of his father in order to take his place with his mother.

The assumptions of psychoanalytic criticism were called into question by Tycho von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ’s posthumously published doctoral dissertation entitled Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (1917), which claimed that Sophocles gave no weight to the motivational consistency of his characters and subordinated their actions to the needs of the plot. Even so, scholars continue to employ Freudian theory, especially in the interpretation of plays such as Hippolytus and Bacchae. Charles Segal, who adopted an eclectic set of strategies for interpreting Greek tragedy, used psychoanalytically-based criticism to explore the character and behaviour of Pentheus (1978-9, 140f.): Read psychoanalytically, the Bacchae presents a son’s fantasy-solution to his oedipal rivalry with his father. The threatening, vigorous, biological and sexual father is absent. The paternal figure who replaces him, the aged grandfather, Cadmus, is old and weak and has relinquished his (royal) power or kratos to his son. The mother is left to concern herself entirely with the

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6. Philologists and Translators son, who is offered infantile dependence on her, the ‘luxury’ of being held once more, like a baby in her arms. The play, however, ends with the reassertion of the reality principle.

Since the 1960s the depiction of women in Greek tragedy has become a major focus of interest. Slater (1968, 410) saw Athenian tragedy as an expression of the social pathology of a society which promulgated highly negative images of women and sought to alleviate its guilt through the dramatisation of myths that explored ‘sex antagonism, maternal ambivalence, gynephobia and masculine narcissism’. Feminist criticism, which originated in the 1970s, brought more subtle insights by exploring the mechanisms of patriarchy embedded within the plays. Zeitlin (1978, 150), for instance, claims that the Oresteia ‘stands squarely within the misogynistic tradition which pervades Greek thought, a bias which both projects combative dialogue in male-female interactions and which relates the mastery of the female to higher goals’. She has also explored elements of latent femininity within the framework and the narrative structures of Greek tragedy which are culturally defined as ‘feminine’, including elaborate clothing, excessive emotionality, deceitfulness and physical weakness. Rehm (1994) has pursued a similar line of inquiry that leads to rather different results, claiming that ‘tragic women frequently challenge the values and modes of behaviour represented by male authority, and tragic men often come to new understandings through a feminizing process’. Performance criticism, which represents a reaction against the more straightforward and traditional literary-critical approach that dominated discussion for nearly a century, insists on the importance of the nontextual aspects of production, including, perhaps most controversially, those which can only be inferred. Taplin (1978, 3), one of its leading exponents, states, ‘When we read a play, what we are doing – or what we should be doing – is hearing and seeing the play in the theatre of the mind. … As we read we must also feel the presence of the audience: not only because every sound and movement is ultimately directed at them, but also because their shared experience is part of the play as a whole.’ Drawing upon discoveries in archaeology and iconography, performance critics have investigated such topics as ‘the grammar’ of exits and entrances (Taplin 1977), the symbolic value of stage space organised around the stage building with its antithesis between inside and outside (Padel 1990; Wiles 1997; Rehm 1999-2000), and the conventions of masking (Frontisi-Ducroux 1991, 1995; Marshall, 1999). The assumptions of performance criticism have themselves been challenged by poststructuralists. Goldhill (1993, 2 and 9f.), for instance, has argued that ‘theatrical performance can only be understood adequately if an attempt is made to see the performance within its cultural context’, and further that the significance of what takes place on stage is ‘always subject to constructive interpretations’. Some merging of the two methodologies

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Surviving Greek Tragedy can be seen in the claim that Classical Athens was itself a ‘performance culture’, in which theatre and theatrically-related spectacle played a central and defining part. The structural and thematic affinities between the theatre, Assembly and lawcourts, as well as other aspects of Athenian life, have proved a fertile subject of investigation in the work of Goldhill (1990), Ober and Strauss (1990), Rehm (1992), and Cartledge (1997). There are, however, concerns about the legitimacy of modern concepts such as ‘intimacy’ and ‘display’ as applied to Athens. Both performance criticism and poststructuralism invite us therefore to question the evidential priority of the text, though it remains a matter of debate as to what should supplement it. It goes without saying that every critical approach is provisional and partial, and, further, that a single interpretive discourse is neither possible nor desirable. Accordingly, some of the most exciting work over the last twenty years is in the form of collections of essays by scholars who bring very different critical perspectives to their discussions, in tacit acknowledgement of Silk’s (1996, 3) claim that ‘there is no current consensus on how, precisely, tragedy should best be defined or understood, or indeed on how Greek tragedy should best be defined or understood’.* The diverse and often divergent approaches within one and the same collection have brought students of Greek tragedy to a greater awareness and self-consciousness about the ways in which they can interpret these complex meditations upon mortality, irrationality, unpredictability, reversal, retribution, and the like. English translations: eighteenth century to 2001 The translator today has, as he never had before, a moral responsibility towards his readers. They rely on him absolutely: they have no valid check on his activities. He can no longer, if he is honest, indulge in poetic dilettantism, turning his original into some fashionable form of English verse. Peter Green, ‘Some versions of Aeschylus’ (1960, 205)

Though many classicists would concur with Green’s observation, what he calls ‘poetic dilettantism’ has, for good or ill, increasingly come to dominate the contemporary market in translations of Greek tragedy. The buzz word on any dust jacket or blurb today is ‘accessible’. The variety of styles currently in vogue is matched by the variety of terms used to describe them. They include ‘cultural translation’, ‘account’, ‘adaptation’, ‘version’, ‘realisation’, ‘transplantation’ and ‘transfiguration’. Au fond, however, *These include Segal, Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (1983), Winkler and Zeitlin, Nothing To Do With Dionysos? (1990), Goff, History, Tragedy, Theory: Dialogues on Athenian Drama (1995), Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic (1996), Easterling, The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (1997), Goldhill and Osborne, Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (1999), and finally Cropp (et al.), Euripides and Tragic Theatre in the Late Fifth Century (2000).

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6. Philologists and Translators translations of Greek tragedy are either literal, close, or free, and this has largely been the case from the sixteenth century onwards. As Hardwick (2000, 21) has pointed out, moreover, translation is more than merely searching for an ‘equivalent’ form of words. Rather it functions ‘as a metaphor for a whole web of cultural activities’. It follows that translations shed an important light upon the age that produced them, since they play a major part in constructing and re-defining cultural identity. This is particularly evident in the case of Greek tragedy, which can be made to bear any number of contradictory interpretations. A weakness shared by many translations is their failure to convey crucial information relating to the performative aspects of the texts, including which parts of the drama were sung and which were spoken. As the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge observed at the end of the eighteenth century, ‘while Pope’s Homer was in everybody’s hand, the translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were found only in the libraries of those who did not want them and made scarcely any impression on the community at large’. The forced strain which characterised translations of this era is evident in the work of Robert Potter (1777-88), which Dr Johnson roundly condemned as ‘verbiage’. In part the reason for the failure of Greek tragedy to attract the attention of any translator of distinction before the middle of the nineteenth century was the fact that it offended the aesthetic and moral sensibilities of the age. To quote Coleridge again, ‘of all the Athenian dramas there is scarcely one in which the absurdity is not glaring, of aiming at an object and utterly failing in the attainment of it’. Coleridge was not alone in his verdict. David Hume complained that Greek tragedy displayed ‘a want of humanity and decency’. Even such a staunch advocate as William Francklin, author of A Dissertation on Tragedy (1809), used words such as ‘licentious’, ‘ungoverned’ and ‘uncultivated’ to describe the plays of Aeschylus. Though Shelley wrote a sequel to Prometheus Bound entitled Prometheus Unbound (1819) which created a stir among his poetic contemporaries, no major English poet attempted to translate Greek tragedy until 1871 when Robert Browning published a verse translation of Alcestis, which was narrated in Balaustion’s Adventure. The poem includes a description of a performance of the play, as well as a critical interpretation and stage directions. He also ‘transcribed’, as he phrased it, Euripides’ Heracles (1875). Browning aspired to being ‘literal at every cost save that of absolute violence to our language’, rather than seeking ‘an impossible transmission of the reputed magniloquence and sonority of the Greek’ (Agamemnon of Aeschylus 1883, ix-x). As a consequence his translations are often awkward, not least in word order, to the point of impenetrability. In the early Victorian era translations of Greek tragedy were undertaken by politically engaged young women, some of whom subsequently made use of their authority to gain prominence in the fight for political and

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Surviving Greek Tragedy social reform. In fact it is evident that they chose to translate Greek tragedy partly because mastery of its linguistic difficulties was thought by the male establishment to provide evidence of a ‘masculine intellect’ (Hardwick 2000, 31-40). The trend was initiated by Browning’s future wife Elizabeth Barrett, who published a translation of Prometheus Bound in 1833. In the next generation Anna Swanwick, an advocate for woman’s suffrage and the education of the poor, published a translation of the Oresteia (1865) which won the praise of leading classicists such as R.C. Jebb. Her contemporary, Augusta Webster, who also supported women’s education, translated both Prometheus Bound (1866) and Medea (1868). At the beginning of the twentieth century Gilbert Murray, Professor of Greek at Glasgow University, began translating Euripides for a series published by George Allen entitled ‘The Athenian Drama: a Series of Verse Translations … for English Readers’. Its aim was to make the plays accessible to the widest possible readership, but Murray also saw it as an opportunity to restore Euripides’ reputation at a time when its standing was low. Other scholars were commissioned to translate the Oresteia and the Theban plays of Sophocles but Murray’s work proved by far the most popular. His earliest translations, of Hippolytus, Bacchae and Frogs, were published in 1902. The latest, of Ion, was published in 1954, just two years before he died. Many were used in stage performances, where they proved immensely popular (see Chapter 7). However, though they were praised by such distinguished figures as Bertrand Russell and George Bernard Shaw, Murray’s highly decorative style has not stood the test of time and long before he died it had fallen into disfavour. One of his most severe critics was T.S. Eliot (1920, 74f.), who famously criticised him for having ‘simply interposed between Euripides and ourselves a barrier more impenetrable than the Greek language’, and who dismissed him as ‘merely a very insignificant follower of the pre-Raphaelite movement.’ But though his translations sound toothless to our ears, by the time an omnibus edition appeared in 1954 over 400,000 copies had been sold. It was therefore very largely due to Murray that Greek tragedy was first introduced to the educated English-speaking public. With Murray accessibility became a respectable objective for the first time. The poet W.B. Yeats has been described as the first translator of Sophocles who aimed to produce a translation ‘for speaking in the theatre, not for reading in the library’ (Stanford 1977, 99). In 1904 he had asked Murray to provide him with a literal translation of Oedipus the King but the latter had declined, and the project was not completed until 1926 when Yeats’ own translation, entitled King Oedipus, was performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It was Yeats’ aim to produce what he called ‘a plain man’s Oedipus’. In an article in the New York Times (January 1933), he described how he spoke out every sentence, very often from the stage, so that the words should sound natural and fall in their natural order, and that every sentence should be a spoken, not a written sentence. As he put

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6. Philologists and Translators it ,‘The one thing I kept in mind was that a word unfitted for living speech, out of its natural order or unnecessary to our modern technique, would check emotion and tire attention’ (quoted in Knox 1979, 57). In 1954 Ezra Pound, interned in a psychiatric hospital after being indicted for treason, published a version of Women of Trachis that was intended to subvert the preciosity which, in his view, still surrounded the genre. It includes lines such as ‘’Arf a mo Ma’am!’ (Messenger’s opening remark to Deianeira) and ‘Am I cracked, or did I hear someone weeping?’ (Chorus’ comment prior to their discovery that Heracles’ wife Deianeira has killed herself). These eccentricities notwithstanding, the choral passages, for which Pound specified a low cello accompaniment, achieve heights of poetic intensity that have rarely been matched in translation. A memorable example is the first stasimon, in which the chorus describe the battle between Heracles and the sea god Acheloüs, rivals for the beautiful Iole (lines 517-25): and wrack, Horns into back, Slug, grunt and groan, Grip through to bone. Crash and thud Bows against blood Grip and grind Bull’s head and horn. BUT the wide-eyed girl on the hill, Out of it all, Frail, Who shall have her? To stave her and prove her, Cowless calf lost, Hurtled away, Prized for a day? ROCK

Also highly innovative is Tony Harrison’s Oresteia, which was written for Peter Hall’s English National Theatre production in 1981 (see below, p. 182). In the introduction Harrison describes it as ‘a rhythmic libretto for masks, music and an all male company’. His translation contains numerous Anglo-Saxon neologisms such as ‘bloodgrudge’, ‘bed-bond’, ‘ghost-sops’, ‘wave-grave’ and ‘grudge-hound’, which seek to capture what he described as ‘the physicality of Aeschylus’ language … its cragginess and momentum’ (quoted in the Sunday Times Weekly Review 29 November 1981). Harrison’s preferred metre is the amphibrachic tetrameter, which has been characterised as the word ‘Darjeeling’ repeated four times. He deploys so much alliteration and assonance that the drama critic Michael Billington aptly likened its effect to rain on a corrugated roof (Guardian 30 November 1981). Here is a typical couplet (op. cit., 93):

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Surviving Greek Tragedy My bloodgrudge should boost you back into action. Bloodgrudge is a goad to upholders of bloodright.

In the choral passages, Harrison employs an insistent rhythmic beat, as when the chorus dither on stage helplessly while the murder takes place inside the palace (op. cit., 40): 1. In my opinion we ought to bring the whole city here to help the king. 2. And I say rush in, break down the door catch them with swords still dripping with gore. 3. I’m also for action. I’ll second that. Any action at all’s better than that. 4. It’s quite clear, I mean quite clear to me their action’s a prelude to tyranny!

Another characteristic is what Parker (1986, 350) has identified as ‘the breaking of linguistic decorum’, particularly in the penultimate line of a delivery, as when Clytemnestra’s ghost instructs the Furies to ‘fart fire through your flues till he [Orestes] flops like a fruitrind’ (op. cit., 93). Greek tragedy presents a particularly severe challenge to the translator, notably in the rendering of what Green (1960, 207) has fittingly described as ‘the solemn enunciation of the obvious’. A.E. Housman’s parody entitled Fragment of a Greek Tragedy brilliantly captures not only the style of the Greek but also the strained attempts of translators to render it into English: In speculation I would not willingly acquire a name For ill-digested thought; But after pondering much To this conclusion I at last have come; Life is uncertain. This truth I have written deep In my reflective midriff On tablets not of wax, Not with a pen did I inscribe it there For many reasons: Life, I say, is not A stranger to uncertainty.

As Bernard Knox (1979, 59) observed, ‘The translator of Aeschylus has no pilot to help him steer a course between the Scylla of archaic silliness and the Charybdis of swiftly obsolescent colloquialism’, and the translators of the other dramatists face equally severe challenges. However, the versions that tend to make the biggest impact, at least in the short term, are often highly eccentric and idiosyncratic, like Ted Hughes’ Alcestis, which deploys all manner of late twentieth-century idioms and cultural references, such as nuclear bombs, molecules and lasers. Translations are

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Fig. 27. Cover of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, translated by P. Meineck (Hackett Publishing Co., 1998).

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Fig. 28. Cover of Euripides’ Bacchae, translated by P. Woodruff (Hackett Publishing Co., 1998).

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6. Philologists and Translators now a species of commercial merchandise and need to make their way in a highly competitive market. The ‘relevance’ of Greek tragedy is therefore very much a point at issue. The cover of Peter Meineck’s translation of the Oresteia (1998) shows General MacArthur parading in triumph at the end of the Korean War, while Paul Woodruff ’s translation of the Bacchae shows a mug shot of Elvis Presley displaying his military number (Figs 27 and 28). It is not difficult to fathom an explanation for the allusions: both Agamemnon and MacArthur hawkishly promoted war and subsequently paid a heavy price; both Dionysus and Elvis Presley symbolise the counterculture. In this way the reader is encouraged to enter into a dialogue between the present and the past. Finally, the problems faced by English translators are, of course, no different from those faced by any others. Especially admirable is the practice adhered to by the Italian Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, which commissions joint translations by a philologist and a professional writer for its productions in the ancient theatre of Syracuse. They are then tested in the Istituto’s Actors’ School and ‘modified according to the particular demands of fluency and actability’ before being finally approved (Monaco 1987, 222).

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7

Producers and Playgoers From the seventeenth century onwards the transmission of Greek tragedy becomes increasingly subordinate to its reception on the public stage.* With their survival no longer in doubt, the plays began to acquire an independence from the scholarly tradition that enabled them to move progressively into mainstream culture. Now, finally, the commercial theatre began to discover latent possibilities in the genre, albeit in adapted form. This development was prompted by the realisation that characters such as Clytemnestra, Electra, Hecuba, Iphigeneia, Jocasta, Medea and Phaedra offer outstanding roles for leading actresses. Even so, few dramatists seem to have had much first-hand knowledge of the plays. The further important discovery was made that with some re-writing the plots could be invested with a contemporary political significance. Many adaptations were staged which voiced the social and political concerns of the day, including several which offered a critique of the British monarchy. The tradition of using Greek tragedy to articulate contemporary issues was merely the resumption of a process that originated in antiquity. It has continued with increasing vigour and daring to the present day. Audiences first began to respond enthusiastically to unadapted stagings of Greek tragedy around the middle of the nineteenth century. A landmark production was Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone (1841), which immediately spawned a number of burlesques on the London stage, proving that the theatregoing public was familiar with the style and structure of Greek tragedy. In the 1880s, and largely as a result of increasing interest in Hellenic culture in educated circles, universities in Britain and the United States began staging the plays in the original Greek. They did so in a manner which, in some respects at least, conformed to what was believed at the time to be authentic fifth-century practice. At the beginning of the twentieth century Greek tragedy became the common property of playgoers throughout Europe and, to a somewhat lesser extent, in the United States as well. This highly significant moment also marked tragedy’s appropriation by the middle classes. It was Gilbert Murray whose translations of Euripides demonstrated the principle that Greek tragedy could be invested with a political agenda without any *The focus of this chapter is primarily on productions of Greek tragedy in England. See Appendix IV for a play-by-play summary which includes productions on the international stage.

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Fig. 29. A set for the production of a Greek tragedy (Munich, 1851).

re-writing whatsoever. Moreover, productions no longer took domestic politics as their point of reference. Instead they served to voice international concerns. In fact the genre soon became one of the theatre’s most eloquent vehicles of protest against oppression, as it was used to explore faultlines in the contemporary consciousness. Over the past thirty years the intense theoretical scrutiny to which the plays have been subjected has

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7. Producers and Playgoers also made a profound impact on their staging, resulting in many instances of fruitful collaboration between scholars and theatre directors. Currently the plays are being performed in a variety of theatrical styles, both traditional and non-traditional, in every continent and in almost every performative context, including mainstream commercial, experimental, fringe and student, as well as cinematic and televisual. Commercial productions: seventeenth to nineteenth century Despite the success enjoyed by Angelo Ingegneri’s Edipo Tiranno at Vicenza in 1585, Greek tragedy did not re-appear on the European stage until the second half of the seventeenth century. Even then it was heavily adapted, notably by the introduction of sub-plots and minor characters. These adaptations tell us much about the sensibilities of the age. The most notable French examples are Jean Racine’s Andromache (1667) and Phèdre (1677), and Pierre Corneille’s Oedipe (1695). The earliest English example is John Dryden’s and Nathaniel Lee’s Oedipus: a Tragedy (1678).* In their preface the authors are at pains to point out that they have ‘followed [Sophocles] as close as possibly we cou’d’, adding, however, ‘Custom … has obtain’d, that we must form an under-plot of second Persons.’ Many of the elements which they introduced were borrowed from Seneca’s Oedipus and Corneille’s Oedipe, as well as from Shakespeare and Euripides. They include a conspiracy by a deformed Creon to de-throne Oedipus, multiple interventions by the ghost of Laius, a romantic sub-plot, Jocasta’s killing of her children on discovering the terrible truth, the killing of the lovers by Creon and his henchmen, the killing of Creon himself, and, to crown it all, a joint suicide on the part of Jocasta and Oedipus. In 1662, following the Restoration of Charles II, actresses were required by royal patent to take women’s parts on the stage, and plays with female protagonists thus became much in demand. To satisfy this need, dramatists turned to Greek tragedy, though what they produced was usually adapted very loosely from the original dramas. Charles Gildon, the author of Phaeton; or, The Fatal Divorce (1698) which was based on Euripides’ Medea, states in the introduction (p. 2) that he altered the heroine’s character due to an apprehension that ‘as Euripides represents her, [it] *Dryden’s and Lee’s play has had a colourful history. In October 1692 an actor called Sandford, who was playing Creon, mortally wounded Powell, who was playing Adrastus, having inadvertently been given a real dagger by the property man, instead of one that runs the blade into the handle. In the early eighteenth century an actor called Thomas Elrington, when feigning Oedipus’ distraction upon discovering his true identity, was immediately afflicted with a real madness, which never left him. The play was last revived in 1755, with Thomas Sheridan in the title-role. See M. Summers, ed., Dryden: The Dramatic Works ([London 1932] 346-50).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy would shock us’. He continues: ‘When we hear of her tearing her brother to pieces, and the Murdering of her own Children, contrary to all the Dictates of Humanity and Motherhood, we shou’d have been too impatient for her Punishment, to have expected the happy event of her barbarous Revenge.’ The eighteenth century witnessed a continuing focus on tragedies with strong female parts, into which a tone of high moral purpose was injected. Edmund Smith, author of Phaedra and Hippolitus (1711), describes himself in the Epilogue as An Oxford man, extremely read in Greek Who from Euripides makes Phaedra speak And comes to town to let us Moderns know How women loved two thousand years ago.

In the event there is little of Euripides in his play and his chief borrowings are from Racine. In the ‘Advertisement’ to Creusa, Queen of Athens (1754) William Whitehead, while acknowledging his debt to Euripides’ Ion, admits that he ‘thought himself at liberty to make the story his own’. He does this in part by ending the play with a family reunion between Creusa and her son just when Creusa is expiring from a self-administered dose of poison. (Whitehead may have intended to offer a mock-serious reflection upon the plight of women, since the epilogue, spoken by the actress who played Creusa, urged the ladies in the audience ‘to choose a House of Commons of our own’.) Richard Glover’s Medea (1761) contrived to interpret Jason’s abandonment of his wife as a momentary lapse in an otherwise blameless life. Jason even goes so far as to apologise to Medea in the most morally upright, gentlemanly manner – Look on me, hear me, trust me once again …. Deign to cast One glance on Jason, on thy suppliant husband Return’d in tears of penitence and shame, But with redoubled tenderness and truth

– just before she reveals her hands stained with their children’s blood. In the final scene, Jason is urged not to give way to ‘unmanly desperation’ by turning his sword on himself and given assurance that he will ultimately receive ‘blessings’ for his ‘generous deeds’, as well as ‘peace of mind’.* In light of such transformations, it was appropriate that the correspondent who signed himself ‘Cantab’ in the Gentleman’s Magazine (February 1773) *It would be fascinating to know what the audiences made of this kind of drama. There is some indication that they attended out of a sense of duty. It is reported, for instance, that James Thomson’s Agamemnon of 1738, which primarily derived from Seneca’s play, ‘had the fate which most commonly attends mythological stories and was only endured, but not favoured’ (Baker and Reed 1812, II 7f.).

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7. Producers and Playgoers deplored the fact that no play by Sophocles had ever been performed at the Theatre Royal, and suggested that ‘this new species of drama’, as he called it, would be popular with the public (quoted in Mandel 1981, 133). Around the beginning of the nineteenth century interest in Greek antiquity received a considerable boost from the discovery of archaeological remains. An important catalyst in England was the publication of James Stuart’s The Antiquities of Athens (1794), which stimulated an intense interest in Greek architecture and also gave rise to the neo-classical style. It was a style which adapted itself well to theatre-construction. An impressive example is the façade of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, designed by John Kemble, which is based on the Parthenon. Completed in 1809, the Theatre Royal was to become the preferred venue for London productions of Greek tragedy. Plays were staged with backdrops and scenery which sought to evoke Greek antiquity, and this in turn influenced the choice of dramas that were mounted in them (Hall 1999, 57). In Germany the highly privileged status which classical scholarship enjoyed among intellectuals, and the rising tide of nationalism which saw itself idealised in the achievements of classical antiquity, both helped to promote the genre. A pioneer in this movement was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who staged Ion (1802), Antigone (1809), and Oedipus Rex (1813) at his theatre in Weimar. Goethe was ahead of his time in his belief that the purpose of performing Greek tragedy was not only to offer a reading of a classical text but also to articulate a new vision of classical antiquity. His efforts initially met with some bewilderment. When the audience tittered at the actors’ difficulties in handling their masks on the first night of Ion, the great man is said to have barked, ‘Don’t laugh!’ Public interest was further fuelled by the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. A production of Oedipus the King, which was staged at the West London Theatre in that year, was billed as the play’s ‘first appearance these 2400 years’. Primarily, however, English adaptations of Greek tragedy addressed parochial concerns. A notable success was Thomas Talfourd’s Ion, which was performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1836. Talfourd’s Ion nobly commits suicide on discovering that he is a hereditary monarch, thereby paving the way for the establishment of a republic. Written in the wake of the Great Reform Act of 1832, which nearly doubled the size of the British electorate by enfranchising the upper middle classes, the play appealed to a public which had grown disenchanted with its detached and self-absorbed monarchy. The most influential mid-nineteenth-century staging was Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone, which was first performed at the Hoftheater in the Neuen Palais, Potsdam, on 28 October 1841 (Fig. 30). The production was sponsored by Frederick William IV of Prussia, who personally took the decision to enlist Tieck’s services. Tieck did everything to incorporate the most up-to-date knowledge of Greek theatrical practice, including stage design, music, chorus and costumes (Flashar 1991, 60-81). Adopting the

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Fig. 30. A scene from Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone (Covent Garden, 1845).

principles of classical stage architecture laid down by H.C. Genelli in Das Theater zu Athen (1818), he extended the acting space beyond the proscenium arch into the stalls so that it approximated to the shape of an ancient orchêstra (or ‘dancing space’), thereby enabling the action to be viewed unhindered from every seat in the auditorium. A thymelê (or altar) stood centre-stage to hide the prompter. The translation was by J.J. Chr. Donner and the choral passages were revised by August Böckh, a distinguished professor of philology at Berlin University. Much of the celebrity of the production derived from the orchestral introduction and choral settings by Felix Mendelssohn, who made a special study of Greek metre for the project. Though Mendelssohn’s composition did not meet with universal favour – his compatriot Richard Wagner condemned it as ‘dreadful dinner music’ – it became extremely popular at soirées in fashionable salons throughout Europe, so much so that the production became popularly known as Mendelssohn’s Antigone (Stoneman 1999, 327).

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7. Producers and Playgoers Tieck was of the belief that he had revived, rather than merely reconstructed, Greek tragedy. Later he wrote: The noble will of a great king has brought it about that Sophocles’ Antigone has been performed before the public. It had an uplifting effect on most of the spectators. A man of understanding said that it was remarkable how a work which school, lectures, and learned endeavour always relegated to a far, hazy distance in our imagination, now through this performance came convincingly close to us, fresh and lively as if it had been written today (quoted in Schadewaldt 1955-6, 289).

Steiner’s observation (1984, 8f.) that Tieck’s production ‘swept Europe’, thereby creating ‘a veritable cult of Sophocles’, is no exaggeration. The influential writer and critic Théophile Gautier, who attended a performance at the Paris Odéon in 1844, wrote, ‘This lofty and simple art, this voice from the past resounding in our ears through the language of the present, this poetry dead and alive at once, produced a marvellous effect on the audience’ (quoted in Jones 1950, 95). In January 1845 the production came to the Theatre Royal, where it received mixed reviews. The insufficiently trained chorus was derided by the newly founded satirical magazine Punch (vol. 8 [18 January 1845] 34; Fig. 31), which put the following observation into the mouth of Sophocles’ disconsolate shade: I can stand as much as most men, and have seen my plays murdered in some of the provincial Greek cities, with great equanimity. But I was not prepared for that dreadful chorus! Instead of my stately twelve, in their magnificent Dionysiac robes, I beheld a mob of some thirty, swathed in unseemly garments that an Athenian tapster would have disdained to wear. … Worse than all this, this miserable troop was still further degraded by the introduction of certain dancing girls. Till then I had raged – from that moment I blushed. How I found my way back to Hades I know not.

In similar vein the Illustrated London News (18 January 1845) observed that Antigone ‘never was in such wretched plight as she is now made to appear’ and referred to ‘the wretched reduction of the Greek tragedian’s powers into a weak dilution of his poetry’. However, The Annual Register, or a A View of the History and Politics of the Year 1845 (London 1846, 3), though also critical, at least took the measure of the audience’s response: The performance of the music and chorus was as wretched as that of the dialogue was admirable, and prevented that entire satisfaction which would undoubtedly have been experienced had the two portions been equal in merit. The tragedy, however, succeeded most triumphantly in spite of the music, and though the choruses were hissed with great intensity of purpose, the impression left on the whole of the audience at the fall of the curtain seemed to be that they had witnessed a great work, new to them from its extreme simplicity, and striking by its deep solemnity.

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Fig. 31. Cartoons from Punch depicting scenes from Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone (Covent Garden, 1845): Opposite page: Antigone in discussion with her sister Ismene, Creon interrogating the sentry, Antigone being led off to death; Above: Sophocles fulminating at the playing of the Chorus.

The Covent Garden production ran for forty-five performances – a huge theatrical success for those days – before transferring to Edinburgh and Dublin. It also enjoyed a royal command performance at Buckingham Palace in the presence of Queen Victoria. It has even left a permanent mark on the London theatre scene, for when the artist Albert Joseph Moore was commissioned to paint a frieze for the proscenium at the new Queen’s Theatre in 1867, the subject he chose was ‘An Ancient Greek Audience watching a Performance of Antigone by Sophocles’. The celebrity of Tieck’s Antigone was such that in February of the same year a burlesque by Edward Leman Blanchard entitled Antigone Travestie was produced at the New Strand Theatre. Apart from introducing a happy ending, Blanchard’s play, spiced with topical allusions, followed Sophocles’ plot closely. In the wake of its success, burlesques of all three tragedians became popular until the 1870s when the fashion died out (Hall, 1999b, 37-55). One of the most successful was J.R. Planché’s adaptation of Apollonius of Rhodes’ epic poem Argonautica and Euripides’ Medea, entitled The Golden Fleece; or Jason in Colchis and Medea in Corinth, which opened at the Haymarket Theatre. As the play parodies the conventions and plot-structure of Greek tragedy, its success depended on the audience’s familiarity with the genre. High-brow culture now entered into a symbiotic relationship with burlesque in a manner which was commercially beneficial to both, recalling the parodies of Euripides in Aristophanes, since, in the words of the Illustrated London News, Planché’s burlesque was ‘in

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Fig. 32. Jean Mounet-Sully in Oedipus the King (Comédie Française, 1881).

every way calculated to foster the taste for the Greek drama called up by the revival of Antigone’ (29 March 1845). The following mock-tragic response on the part of Jason to the discovery that his bride-to-be has been murdered by Medea is typical of Planché’s brand of paratragic humour: How now? what more of ill Has Jason now to dread? The King’s a tinder; And I am left, a poor unhappy spark, To go out miserably in the dark Where is the wicked worker of these woes? (Planché 1986, 169)

A highly influential nineteenth-century French production was Jules Lacroix’s Oedipus the King (Théâtre Français, Paris, 1858). It enjoyed frequent revivals, notably at the Roman theatre in Orange. In 1881 the lead role was taken by Jean Mounet-Sully, an outstanding actor of his

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7. Producers and Playgoers generation who specialised in tragic roles (Fig. 32). Mounet-Sully’s interpretation had an influence that went well beyond theatrical history, since it was witnessed by the young Sigmund Freud (above, p. 136). Academic productions Very rarely in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was Greek tragedy produced in the Academy. The Gymnasium of Strasbourg performed Ajax in German in 1608 and Prometheus Bound in Latin the following year (Mandel 1981, 126f.). Thomas Goffe’s The Tragedy of Orestes, performed by the scholars of Christ Church, Oxford, between 1609 and 1619, owed something to all three Attic dramatists, as well as to Seneca and the Jacobean play of revenge. In 1714 ‘Mr Low’s Scholars’ performed Oedipus Tyrannus – or more likely extracts thereof – in Greek at Mile End Green, East London. In 1720 the Royal ‘Free’ Cavan School near Dublin performed Hippolytus under the direction of Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the famous Restoration playwright, followed five years later by Philoctetes. The pupils of Stanmore School, London, under the direction of the Rev. Samuel Parr, staged Oedipus Tyrannus, Women of Trachis and Philoctetes in the 1770s. Christ’s Hospital, Merchant Taylors’ and Shrewsbury followed suit. Though it is doubtful whether any of these productions were of whole plays, this venture into the unknown indicates enormous enterprise on the part of a handful of teachers. The most celebrated school productions of the early nineteenth century were those staged by Dr Richard Valpy, who inaugurated a triennial festival at Reading School in Berkshire. The earliest was Oedipus the King (1806) and the latest Hecuba (1827). No plays of Aeschylus were performed in the twenty-odd years of the festival, which indicates his continuing lack of popular appeal. Though the Reading Greek Play was extremely popular with many of the local townsfolk, some, if the truth were known, were less than enthralled. Mary Russell Mitford, the essayist and playwright, who wrote enthusiastic reviews for the local newspaper, privately confessed to a friend after attending Euripides’ Orestes in 1821, ‘I never yawned half so much in my life. The language is beautiful … but even that won’t do for four hours, and it lasted little less. Everything that evening crept, drawled, “trailed its slow length along” ’ (quoted in Hall 1997, 72). Few academic productions seem to have been mounted in the following half-century. Even so, in the aftermath of the furore created by the publication in 1872 of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, scholars now came to realise that mounting a Greek play enabled a director not only to propose his own interpretation, but also to enhance the audience’s understanding of ancient theatre. In the words of H.C. Fleeming Jenkin, a professor of engineering at Edinburgh who also ran his own private theatre, the time had come to make a serious attempt ‘to draw attention

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Surviving Greek Tragedy to the extraordinary merits of some Greek plays as dramas fit for representation on the stage’ (quoted in Campbell 1891, 320). The genre became an important channel for bringing Greek civilisation to life at a time when Hellenism was enjoying a considerable vogue among Victorian aesthetes. This burgeoning of interest was aided by the foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1879, which enabled current trends in Greek scholarship to circulate more effectively and be brought to the attention of a wider readership. If all had gone according to plan, Newnham College, Cambridge, would have had the distinction in 1877 of staging Sophocles’ Electra in the first revival of a tragedy in ancient Greek. However, the Principal called off the production at the last moment, objecting to the actresses’ exposure of bare flesh. It thus fell to the Oxford University Dramatic Society to be first with Agamemnon, which was performed in the hall of Balliol College in 1880 (Fig. 33). Some of the most distinguished artists of the day were consulted about stage design, costuming and scenery, including Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederick Leighton. In the words of its producer Alan Mackinnon (1910, 60):

Fig. 33. Engraving of the stage design by Edward Burne-Jones for Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, as performed at Balliol College, Oxford, 1880.

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7. Producers and Playgoers … the result was more successful than the actors or their friends had dared to anticipate. An audience composed of all Oxford and some of Cambridge discovered that not only could a Greek play be acted, not only were the characters human beings and not mere abstractions, but that this particular play possessed an engrossing dramatic interest.

The Balliol Agamemnon set a precedent which was enthusiastically adopted elsewhere. In 1881 Oedipus the King was performed in Greek at Sander’s Theatre, Harvard University, and in the following year at Notre Dame. The response of the audience was so enthusiastic that sponsors were emboldened to stage the production at the Booth Theatre, New York. It was not a success, however, and reviewers, while acknowledging the worthy efforts of the cast, were critical of both the production and the playwright. The New York Mirror, for instance, wrote: Oedipus cannot be justly treated as a dramatic performance – there is nothing dramatic about it … [T]o the average theatergoer it is a decided bore … The argument of the drama is brief, but overflowing with the most horrible and immoral incidents. … In Sophocles’ time, such trifling matters as a man’s committing homicide, marrying his mother, and putting his eyes out afterwards was merely an indication of the culture, taste, and artistic appreciation of the Athenian audience to which his pen was devoted (quoted in Hartigan 1995, 8).

The reaction of the New York Tribune was equally facetious: ‘King Oedipus certainly carries more woe to the square inch than anybody else that ever walked upon the stage. And it is woe of the very worst kind – without solace, and without hope’ (quoted in Levine 1988, 41). It was thirty years before another attempt was made to mount a production of Greek tragedy in a commercial theatre in America. In 1882 Alcestis was performed at Bradfield College, Berkshire, where productions in Greek continue to this day on a triennial basis. A miniature theatre was constructed out of a disused chalk pit, using the proportions of the great theatre at Epidaurus.* In the same year Cambridge University mounted a production of Ajax, thereby marking the inauguration of the Cambridge Greek Play (Fig. 34). Despite the gloomy prognostication of the Daily Chronicle (1890) that ‘Greek plays are a fashion not likely to last’, the tradition has never been more alive than it is today. In 1883 an all-female cast performed Sophocles’ Electra at Girton College, Cambridge – the first-ever production of its kind. In 1887 the Oxford University Dramatic Society produced Alcestis with Jane Harrison, then a freelance *In 1904 a much more grandiose and imposing theatre, also based on the proportions of the theatre at Epidaurus, was built at the University of California at Berkeley with a seating capacity of 8,000. The project was financed by the newspaper tycoon William Randolf Hearst. A theatre modelled on Greek lines has also been constructed in the village of Togamura in Japan.

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Fig. 34. Chorus from Sophocles’ Ajax (Cambridge Greek Play, 1882).

writer living in London, in the title role (Fig. 35). The Cambridge Review criticised Harrison for thinking it necessary ‘to keep her voice at such an artificially high pitch that it became monotonous and almost expressionless’ (quoted in Beard 2000, 50), a mannerism which seems to have been typical of Victorian productions. Judged overall, the importance of these amateur efforts to reproduce some of the conventions of fifth-century Athenian stagecraft can hardly be over-estimated, even though their influence was largely limited to the Academy. Distinguished scholars confessed that seeing the plays on stage transformed their readings and interpretations. One of their most enthusiastic supporters was R.C. Jebb (1887, 201), who lavished praise on the Harvard production of 1881, which he knew of only by report, for its ‘thorough scholarship, its archaeological knowledge and the artistic skill which presided over that performance’, claiming, too, that ‘details of stage-management and of scenic effect, which a mere reading of the text could suggest to few, became clear and vivid’. After attending the Cambridge Ajax in 1882, Jebb went so far as to declare, ‘I felt that I had never understood the play before’ (quoted in Easterling 1999a, 33). At the same time it is important to point out that these productions did not aim to realise all the features of classical stagecraft. They were rarely staged in open-air theatres, none employed masks, and the number of actors was not restricted to three, as in antiquity. Moreover, for all their well-meaning efforts, directors felt constrained to produce a theatrical

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Fig. 35. Chorus from Euripides’ Alcestis (Oxford University Dramatic Society, 1887).

experience which, from the perspective of today’s audience, would have appeared highly artificial. This is especially true in regard to the chorus, who, as Easterling (1984, 91) has put it, marched about ‘waving their arms and singing in what we would probably find a quite grotesque manner’. Just how grotesque they looked can be appreciated from the poses they struck in contemporary photographs (Figs 34 and 35). The delivery of lines was also monotonous – ‘like clergymen reading lessons’ as one reviewer said.* Gilbert Murray and the popularisation of Euripides Gilbert Murray’s aim in translating Euripides was not only to bring his plays to the attention of a broad-based English-speaking readership; he also wanted to introduce them to mainstream theatre-going audiences. It *Productions of tragedy in Greek continue to be staged on a regular basis at Cambridge University, Bradfield College, and, since 1954, King’s College London, the last under the auspices of the London Festival of Greek Drama. Wellesley College, Massachusetts, also has a long-established tradition of performing one Greek and one Roman play each year in the original language. In addition, the Aquila Theatre Company in New York, which was founded in 1991 by Peter Meineck, has toured extensively with productions of Greek tragedy. The greater willingness of women to act in Greek tragedy ensures that plays with a female chorus are today most frequently performed in the Academy.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy was in fact largely due to Murray that Greek tragedy now established itself as a permanent feature of the theatrical landscape. As the actress Sybil Thorndike (1960, 153) observed, ‘To him the Greek plays were never mere archaeological studies. They were living, burning thoughts, giving us inspiration and guidance for our own time.’ Murray’s translation of Hippolytus was performed at the Royal Court in 1904. It proved so popular that other productions followed in quick succession: Trojan Women (Royal Court) in 1905, Electra (Royal Court) in 1906, Medea (Savoy) in 1907, Bacchae (Royal Court) in 1908, and both Oedipus Rex (Covent Garden) and Iphigeneia among the Taurians (Kingsway) in 1912. The plays in his translations continued to be performed intermittently until World War II, touring America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Prominent personalities, including Sybil Thorndike and the actor-manager Harley Granville-Barker, were among their most enthusiastic promoters (Fig. 36). It was due to the dedication and vision of this

Fig. 36. Sibyl Thorndike as Hecuba in Euripides’ Trojan Women (The Old Vic, 1919).

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7. Producers and Playgoers pair that Medea was first performed in the original version, rather than in adaptations that sought to mitigate the full horror of the heroine’s coldblooded infanticide (see below, p. 225). Much of Euripides’ popularity resided in the fact that audiences and directors were quick to read his plays as commentaries upon current events, though their interpretations did not always conform to Murray’s own political views. Sometimes, too, productions were overtaken by current events. Maurice Browne, who staged Trojan Women at the Chicago Little Theatre, relates how on the night of 7 May 1915, following the sinking of the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat with considerable loss of life, ‘I stepped in front of the curtain with an evening paper in my hand and held up the monstrous headline and said: “This play is about a deed like that.” ’ Extracts from Murray’s translation of Medea were performed by the Actresses’ Franchise League at suffragette meetings to celebrate what he once described (1906, 86) as ‘the coming triumph of Woman in her rebellion against Man’, even though Murray was not unequivocably supportive of the suffragette movement and did not subscribe to the view that all women were oppressed (Wilson 1987, 181). From the start, the effort to stage Greek tragedy before the general public had its high-minded detractors. T.S. Eliot, who had criticised Murray’s translation of Medea, was no less scathing about the 1907 production. Conceding that Sybil Thorndike’s Medea was ‘a success’, Eliot (1920, 72) castigated the rest of the cast as follows: The nurse was quite a tolerable nurse of the crone type; Jason was negative; the messenger was uncomfortable at having to make such a long speech; and the refined Dalcroze chorus had mellifluous voices which rendered their lyrics happily inaudible. All this contributed toward the high-brow effect which is so depressing; and we imagine that the actors of Athens, who had to speak clearly enough for 20,000 auditors to be able to criticise the versification, would have been pelted with figs and olives, had they mumbled so unintelligibly as most of this troupe. But the Greek actor spoke in his own language, and our actors were forced to speak in the language of Professor Gilbert Murray. So that on the whole we may say that the performance was an interesting one.

Max Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King and the censorship debate Gilbert Murray was also instrumental in the staging of the first production of Oedipus the King in London, an event that was a long time in the making. In 1886 Greek tragedy had found itself thrust to the centre of a controversy about indecency when the Lord Chamberlain’s Office prohibited an attempt by the Shelley Society to mount a production of Shelley’s play The Cenci, since it features both incest and parricide. As a result,

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Fig. 37. Programme for Max Reinhardt’s production of Oedipus the King (Covent Garden, 1912).

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Fig. 38. Crowd scene from Max Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King.

Oedipus the King became tarred with the same brush. The public campaign to lift the ban gathered momentum in the wake of a celebrated Parisian performance of 1904, in which the title role was taken by the veteran actor Jean Mounet-Sully (above, p. 157). A formal application to stage Sophocles’ play was made to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office in 1910. Leading the charge was Murray, now Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University, who had recently completed his own translation. Though Sir John Hare, a member of the Advisory Board on Stage Plays which considered the application, commented in a letter to the Lord Chamberlain that granting the play a licence might lead ‘to a great number of plays being written … appealing to a vitiated public taste solely in the cause of indecency’ (November 1910), the ban was at last lifted.* Oedipus the King in Murray’s translation opened at the Theatre Royal in January 1912 (Figs 37-9). It was directed by Max Reinhardt, whose original German production, in a translation by the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, had its première at the Musikfesthalle, Munich, in September 1910, before transferring to the Zirkus Schumann, Berlin. Later *It is salutary to note that the lifting of the ban on Oedipus the King did not usher in an era of unfettered freedom for the British theatre. In granting a licence to Sophocles’ play the Lord Chamberlain’s Office merely succeeded in securing its own stay of execution, by having demonstrated that it could discriminate between high and low art (Macintosh 1995, 68). Paradoxically, therefore, the immediate consequence of lifting the ban was the imposition of a more repressive régime. It was not until 1968 that the Lord Chamberlain’s Office was finally abolished.

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Fig. 39. Lillah McCarthy as Jocasta in Max Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King.

the production travelled to Riga, Stockholm, Prague, Zurich, Amsterdam, St Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw, Kiev and Odessa, before arriving in London. Its initial London run was for two weeks but this was extended for a third by popular demand. Hailed in the programme note as ‘the first performance of the play in England since the seventeenth century’,

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7. Producers and Playgoers Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King was one of the most memorable theatrical experiences of the early twentieth century. Reinhardt originally wanted to stage the play at the Royal Albert Hall, but permission was denied and his second choice was the Theatre Royal. Two massive bronze doors were attached to the proscenium in imitation of the façade of the palace at Thebes. A flight of steps as wide as the proscenium led down to the orchestra pit whose roof was covered over, as were the front rows of the stalls. This created a vast acting space which Reinhardt used to the full. In addition, a broad gangway led down from the stage to the back stalls. These modifications were introduced in order to accommodate a chorus of three hundred extras consisting of Boy Scouts and students of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, who represented the citizenry of Thebes. The Telegraph described their entry as follows: Moans and cries and shouts set the air throbbing, and crowd upon crowd of people surges in, and there the light breaks upon them, and they fall down suppliant and stretch out their hands, a whole nation of them, to one man – white-robed, bronze-breastplated – standing high above them, calm and stately, god-like.

This weakening of the traditional barrier between acting space and auditorium – a device which Reinhardt called Sprengung des Bühnenrahmens (or ‘bursting out of the frame’) – was intended to give the audience the illusion of being personally implicated in the tragedy. By all accounts it succeeded brilliantly. In the words of The Times, ‘As the crowd raised their white arms – a sea of white arms it was – in agonised supplication, we felt their agony … we shared their anticipatory, conjectural terror’. In the intervals between scenes one heard ‘eerie sounds as of wailing in the distance, sad cries that penetrate the auditorium from heaven knows where, significant whisperings in all the air which seem to strike a fearsome feeling’ (John Bull). One of the most memorable effects was Oedipus’ departure at the end of the play, as he groped his way sightlessly through the auditorium. It was so realistic that some of the audience found it necessary to avert their gaze from his blood-stained face. Reinhardt’s Oedipus was the first Greek tragedy to attract the attention of the popular press, much of which was openly chauvinistic in its comments. The Weekly Times and Echo confessed to ‘an inclination to laugh’ and the Weekly Dispatch spoke of ‘great dull spaces of monotony’. The People wrote: ‘The clever German producer has nothing to offer which enhances the mysterious fascination and the fascinating gloom of the original.’ Similarly the Referee: ‘The plain truth is that the methods of the famous German producer are misapplied to this austere Greek tragedy.’ Yet another critic objected that Sophocles had managed to make do with only fifteen chorus members, whereas Reinhardt needed three hundred. Despite these complaints, Reinhardt’s production educated the London

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Fig. 40. Chorus of Oceanids from Aeschylus’ (?) Prometheus Bound (First Delphic Festival, 1927).

theatre-going public into an awareness of the heightened emotional energy that is the particular hallmark of Greek tragedy. Equally important, there was a feeling that the dusty cobwebs which had previously enveloped the entire classical tradition had finally been blown away. As Murray himself commented, Reinhardt succeeded in conveying ‘real early Greece … not

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7. Producers and Playgoers the Greece of the schoolroom or the conventional art studio’ (Carter 1914, 221f.). W.B. Yeats praised it for being ‘the most imaginative production of a play I have ever seen’ (Clark and McGuire 1989, 33). Largely due to the bold conceptions which Reinhardt introduced, innovative theatrical managers would henceforth risk staging a recognised Greek classic in return for the artistic prestige that accrued as a result. Festivals of Greek tragedy Festivals of Greek drama have been a regular feature of the European theatre scene from the early decades of the twentieth century, and their continuing success in a number of venues is one of the strongest indications of a continuing commitment to this art form by producers and audiences alike. Leading pioneers in this enterprise were the director and poet Angelos Sikelianos and his wealthy American wife Eva Palmer who, as part of the Delphic Festival which they sponsored from their own funds, mounted a celebrated production of Prometheus Bound in the ancient theatre in 1927 (Fig. 40). Palmer wove the dresses on her own loom, copying, among other devices, sea forms from Mycenaean vases. She also trained the chorus of fifty Oceanids. They are said to have greatly affected the audience through their compassion for the tormented hero, who was nailed to a rock with outstretched arms like a crucified Christ. Fearing at the last moment that the production would be poorly attended, Palmer offered to pay travel expenses, as well as food and lodging, for two thousand spectators to be bussed in from Athens. In order to suggest historical continuity between classical antiquity and pre-industrial Greece, folk music was played and a display of folk art was mounted in a local village. In addition, military dancing and a pentathlon contest were staged in the stadium above the theatre, imitating the format of the ancient Pythian Games which were celebrated in Delphi. A major influence on Palmer and Sikelianos was Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche’s championing of Aeschylus was in fact largely responsible for their decision to stage Prometheus. Angelos Sikelianos, who was of a mystical inclination, had expectations that Greek tragedy would play a significant part in the forthcoming cataclysmic upheaval which, he believed, would engulf the civilised world. He wrote: Tragedy will be reborn, and this, her new birth – since, as we know, any birth is bloody – cannot but emerge out of the greatest bloodshed in History. … Whether she will come out with her tunic cleansed in it, like the robes of the saint in the Apocalypse, is another matter (quoted in Walton 1987, 206).

Following the success of the First Delphic Festival Eva Palmer entered into negotiations with the Greek Ministry of Education in the hope of

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Surviving Greek Tragedy establishing a permanent festival at Delphi. However, negotiations foundered on her insistence of coupling it with the establishment of what she called a Spiritual University. Even so, her feminist and folk-oriented vision of Greek tragedy has retained a significant place in the modern staging of tragedy. It was also largely due to her initiative that ‘place became a component of theatrical meaning’ (Wiles 2000, 186), since she was one of the first to recognise Greek drama’s dependency upon landscape. One of the liveliest venues for Greek and Roman drama today is the theatre at Syracuse in Sicily. The Syracuse Festival was inaugurated in 1914 by Count Mario Tomas Gargallo with Ettore Romagnoli’s production of Oresteia. In 1925, following a performance of Antigone mounted there in his honour, the Dictator Benito Mussolini placed the festival in the hands of the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico with the aim of promoting a fascist propaganda. The Syracuse Festival, which produces two Greek plays at two-year intervals, now attracts about 80,000 spectators for its two to three weeks’ season and has a reputation second to none. As Monaco (1987, 220), a former director, has stated, the Istituto is committed to the aim of acknowledging ‘the socio-cultural milieu and the sensibility of the audience to which the spectacle is presented … without violating and profaning the work of others, even if the latter lived many centuries ago’. The Segesta Declaration of 1995 called upon member states of the European Community to ‘enhance the value of ancient places of performance by recognising them as places for artistic production’. Of about 790 ancient theatrical structures which have been identified throughout the Mediterranean, some 55 are currently in use, 16 of them in Greece and the Greek islands. Among the most important are the Roman theatre of Herodes Atticus in Athens, home to the Festival of Athens since 1955, and the classical Greek theatre at Epidaurus in the northeast Peloponnese, home to the Festival of Ancient Greek Drama since 1954. We may note, however, that the use of ancient theatres for the staging of Greek tragedy is not without its own political agenda, consistent with the patriotic claim that they constitute ‘the most suitable spaces to promote the genre in all its importance and magnitude’ (Roilou 1999, 194). The politicisation of Greek tragedy In the nineteenth century the popularity of individual tragedies on the London stage was linked to their political relevance for contemporary audiences. A notable example is Medea, adaptations of which became popular following the passing of legislation in 1857 granting women the right to sue for divorce in British courts. As we have seen (above, p. 163), the trend continued in the early twentieth century with politically charged productions of Euripides’ plays. Trojan Women came to prominence as European society became increasingly preoccupied with the futility of war.

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7. Producers and Playgoers Notable early productions condemned the Boer War and the First World War, later ones the dropping of the atomic bomb and the Vietnam War. Bacchae became popular in the 1960s, when it served to articulate the acute tensions between the US Government and opponents of the Vietnam War. The tendency to politicise Greek tragedy in the twentieth century was such that hardly any agenda, whether of the left or of the right, was not at some time promoted in this way (see Appendix V). The most notorious appropriation of Greek tragedy was a Nazi staging of the Oresteia at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, in February 1936 – the same year that the city hosted the infamous Olympic Games. The director Lothar Müttel interpreted the trilogy as the story of mankind’s emergence from darkness into light, symbolic of the eventual victory of the Aryan races over the Untermenschen. A colossal statue of Athena dominated the stage in Eumenides, symbolising the power of the nascent democratic state of Athens (Fig. 41). Müttel drew an analogy between the self-conscious ritual of Nazi propaganda and the conversion of the Furies into the Kindly Ones with which the trilogy concludes, thereby investing the new National Socialist order with a quasi-religious justification. The translation was by the recently deceased Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. It no doubt made him turn in his grave. Jean Anouilh’s Antigone served as covert propaganda against the Nazi Occupation of France when it was first performed in Paris in 1944. However, it is so even-handed and sympathetic in its portrayal of Creon as a leader who does all in his power to save Antigone from herself that on the opening night it was applauded by both the French and the Germans in the audience (Knox 1982, 36). The key to Anouilh’s interpretation is Creon’s words: ‘Polyneices was only a pretext. For her [Antigone] the most important thing was to die.’ Bertolt Brecht directed a notable adaptation of Sophocles’ play entitled Antigonemodell 1948, using Friedrich Hölderlin’s translation, at Chur, Switzerland, in 1948, setting the action in Berlin 1942 and overtly identifying Creon with Hitler (Fig. 42). Probably at no time or place, however, has the link between Greek tragedy and contemporary politics been more suggestive than in Greece itself under the military junta (1967-74). At the beginning of his fasciststyle dictatorship in 1936, Ioannis Metaxas banned Antigone on the grounds that the play was liable to incite public unrest. Under the military junta productions of the works of all three tragedians, as well as those of Aristophanes, became subject to approval by the Committee for the Control of Theatrical Works. The Committee was placed under the supervision of Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos, who sought to promote plays in praise of God and family, to which ideals Greek tragedy obviously bears little affinity. In the summer of 1967 stagings of Prometheus Bound by the Helleniki Skini and of Phoenician Women and Suppliants by the Greek

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Fig. 41. A giant Athena, symbol of Aryan supremacy, dominates the set of Lothar Müttel’s Nazi-style production of Aeschylus’ Eumenides (Berlin, 1936).

National Theatre were banned, on the grounds that they included musical accompaniments by the communist composer Mikis Theodorakis. Towards the end of the rule of the junta, however, Greek directors began to devise ways of exploiting classical drama in order to express their opposition to military rule. As a result censorship began to have the paradoxical consequence of encouraging subversive interpretations by alerting audiences to what could be viewed as seditious. In Takis Mouzenidis’ staging of Persians at Epidaurus in 1971, for instance, the Persian king Xerxes, and by implication the military junta, were presented as ‘men whose blind ambition causes their own tragic downfall and that of their followers’ (van Steen 2001, 146). Audiences are reported to have applauded enthusiastically when they heard the description of the paean which the

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Fig. 42. Illustrations for Bertolt Brecht’s Antigonemodell 1948 (Chur, Switzerland, 1948).

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Surviving Greek Tragedy Greeks sung before the battle of Salamis: ‘Sons of Greece, free your fatherland, free your children, your wives, the temples of your fathers’ gods, and the tombs of your ancestors. The battle is for you all.’ It is scarcely an exaggeration to state that the use of Greek tragedy for the purpose of raising political consciousness now constitutes one of the contemporary theatre’s most popular ways to generate political discussion. Whether this amounts to a form of theatrical ‘prostitution’, as has been occasionally suggested, remains a matter for individual judgement. Certainly it could be argued that an excessive intrusion of contemporary ideological, political, social and religious concerns into tragedy threatens to filter out the pagan tragic experience altogether (Decreus 1999, 236). Tragedy on the screen: some case studies Cinematography operates from within a very different set of parameters from those which govern the theatre. Though a film director can in theory position his camera at the same spot throughout the shooting, if he does he will almost certainly alienate the audience, who expect it to direct their gaze. He therefore needs to be selective in a way that a theatre-director cannot be. He will also need to vary the location in order to avoid visual monotony. Both the chorus and the gods are an obvious liability when portrayed on the screen. Cinema audiences tend to be intolerant of long speeches, which means that much of the essential information that is conveyed verbally has to be presented as action, often in the form of flashbacks. Except in the genre of experimental film, film directors are subject to financial constraints which exceed those confronting most theatre companies. Lastly and most obviously cinema is more closely allied to melodrama and romanticism than it is to tragedy. Given these constraints, it is hardly surprising that Greek tragedy’s enormous popularity on the international stage over the last thirty years has not been matched by a comparable rush on the part of Hollywood studios to convert it to the silver screen. The plays which have been made into films include Euripides’ Bacchae, Electra, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Medea and Trojan Women, and Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus the King. The most popular era for filming preceded the last thirty years, and, apart from television productions mounted by the BBC, the trend has virtually died out. Tragedy’s heyday in the popular cinema coincided with two very dark chapters in modern history, namely the suspension of Greek democracy and the Vietnam War, which gave it special relevance for Greek and American audiences alike. Michael Cacoyannis’ The Trojan Trilogy, which is based on three unconnected plays of Euripides, represents the most sustained attempt to bring Greek tragedy to the screen, even though the plays were not filmed in sequence and do not convey a strong sense of unity. Electra (1961) was filmed in black and white, whereas Trojan Women (1971) and Iphigenia

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Fig. 43. Agamemnon (Patrick Magee) and Helen (Irene Papas) make eye contact in Michael Cacoyannis’ Trojan Women (1971).

(1976) were shot in colour. Electra and Iphigenia are in modern Greek, whereas Trojan Women is in English. All three, however, exploit the dramatic possibilities of the Mediterranean landscape and in all three Cacoyannis uses the heroic world evoked by the plays in order to offer a commentary on recent political events. The score in each case is by Mikis Theodorakis. Electra, which stars Irene Papas, is shot in the barren landscape of southern Greece. It begins with an invented prologue which shows Agamemnon being lured into his bath by Clytemnestra, who is poised to wield her axe over her doomed husband’s head. Years pass, Electra is a grown woman, and we see Argive peasants being beaten as they labour in the fields. We understand that they are living under a brutal tyranny. Other devices are used to tilt the audience’s emotions in favour of Electra’s and Orestes’ act of revenge. Whereas in Euripides’ play Aegisthus is murdered as he performs a sacrifice to the nymphs, in Cacoyannis’ film he is murdered while attending a riotous festival of Dionysus. At the end, however, we are left with the impression that the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus has not only destroyed Electra’s and Orestes’ chances of achieving happiness, but also stirred deep unrest among the peasants. In the last scene, instead of a deus ex machina appearance by the Dioscouroi

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Fig. 44. Agamemnon (Kostas Kazakos) bounds up the steps of the altar in a bid to prevent the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia in Michael Cacoyannis’ Iphigenia (1976).

to join Electra and Pylades in marriage as in Euripides’ play, the three young people go their separate ways in silence. Trojan Women has an all-star international cast which includes Katherine Hepburn (Hecuba), Vanessa Redgrave (Andromache), and Irene Papas (Helen). Cacoyannis omits Euripides’ prologue in which Athena strikes a shabby deal which will ultimately lead to the punishment of the Greeks and instead presents the information that their fleet will be shipwrecked on its way home in the opening frames of the film with the words, ‘Oh fools, the men who lay the city waste, so soon to die themselves.’ The only other clue to the fate of the Greeks is provided by the seemingly incoherent ravings of Cassandra. Cacoyannis’ use of his chorus of Trojan women, who resemble a ragged army, is also highly idiosyncratic. When they declaim, we see close-ups of their faces as the camera moves from one to another. Their most memorable line is, ‘This land is ours, it always has been ours’, which at one point they chant repeatedly. It is not a line from Euripides’ play. Whereas in Euripides’ play Helen makes only a single appearance, in the film she is a constant presence. Especially memorable is the scene in which she beguiles her guard into giving her water so that she can bathe before the arrival of her husband Menelaus, while the

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Fig. 45. Thanos (Raf Vallone) and Phaedra (Melina Mercouri) celebrate the launching of the passenger ship Phaedra in Jules Dassin’s Phèdre (1961).

Chorus, who watch in anger and hatred, are denied water to drink. Later Cacoyannis does what the original masked production could not do: he has Helen and Menelaus make eye contact (Fig. 43). ‘You haven’t changed,’ Helen says to her husband with a wry smile. In sum, Cacoyannis’ film offers a poignant portrayal of female misery, helplessness and guile, set against a background of male impotence, insecurity and self-interest. Iphigenia (based on Iphigeneia at Aulis) commences with a prologue depicting horsemen riding ceaselessly back and forth across a barren landscape. It is so lengthy that Knox (1979, 352) charged the director with having invented a new genre – ‘the souvlaki western’. The opening scene takes place on a male nudist beach, where an army of extras mingles with the bathers. After Agamemnon has agreed to sacrifice his daughter in accordance with the seer Calchas’ interpretation of an omen, we are transported to the royal palace where Iphigeneia is preparing herself for marriage to Achilles – the excuse which Agamemnon invents to justify summoning her to Aulis. The scene change not only increases the pathos

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Fig. 46. The blind Oedipus observed in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Edipo Re (1967), starring Franco Citti.

of her predicament but also injects a romantic element into the plot. At the end of the film Cacoyannis introduces an unexpected twist by revealing that Calchas fabricated the interpretation for his own purposes. Learning of the deception that has been practised upon him, Agamemnon bolts up the steps leading up to the altar upon which Iphigeneia is being sacrificed in a failed last-minute bid to rescue her (Fig. 44). In the final frames we see a sinister close-up of Clytemnestra, intimating that the tragedy has yet to run its full course. Like Trojan Women, Cacoyannis’ Iphigenia lays emphasis upon the suffering of women, which once again is generated by male cowardice, deception and double-dealing. Jules Dassin’s Phèdre (1961), based on Hippolytus, is set predominantly in modern Greece, though it also uses other locations such as Paris (Fig. 45). Theseus is a wealthy shipping magnate called Thanos, whose wife, played by Melina Mercouri, succeeds in consummating her adulterous relationship with her stepson. Dassin’s film serves as a parable on the callous indifference of the rich, whose petty, self-inflicted torments, caused by adultery, contrast with a larger and more ‘genuine’ tragedy resulting from the sinking of a passenger ship owned by Thanos, to which the main characters, absorbed in their own world, are largely indifferent. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s self-reflexive Edipo Re (1967) is notable for its enactment of all the incidents which Sophocles leaves out, including

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7. Producers and Playgoers Oedipus’ visit to the Delphic Oracle, his killing of his father, his interrogation by the sphinx, and his love-making with his mother (Fig. 46). The prologue attempts to give an explanation for the Oedipus Complex, though Pasolini was at pains to deny that he was offering a Freudian interpretation. We first see a baby being delivered. In the next scene we see the baby being clasped to its mother’s breast. The mother is at first serene, then troubled. In the third scene the father looks down at his son thoughtfully. We hear the words, ‘You will steal the woman I love.’ We then see the mother and father making love. The child looks on anxiously. Later the father rises from the bed and goes over to his son. He lifts the infant and squeezes him by the ankles. In the epilogue Oedipus, a young man in modern dress, is playing a flute. Some of the scenes from his infancy presented in the prologue are repeated. Finally, we hear the words, ‘I have arrived. For life ends where it begins.’ Pasolini’s epilogue seems to imply that Sophocles’ play is to be read as a dream sequence which a ‘modern’ Oedipus must struggle to incorporate into his personality. Pasolini also made a ‘documentary’ film entitled Appunti per un’ Orestiade africana (Notes on an African Oresteia 1970), in which he interpreted the Oresteia as a commentary on the painful birth of a new Africa in the immediate aftermath to colonialism. It is perhaps the most daring transformation of Greek tragedy ever to be brought to the screen, and certainly the one which has sought most boldly to draw contemporary equivalences with the original. Seeking to point out a resemblance between an African tribal culture in the throes of modernisation and the society of archaic Greece evoked by Aeschylus, the director used graphic news footage from the Biafran War, including heaps of corpses, as an analogue for the slain in the Trojan War. Before a gruesome scene of execution in which we see the victim’s body writhing as it is riddled with bullets, Pasolini’s voiceover comments in hushed tones, ‘Here is a note on the violent death that Cassandra’s vision prophesied. But here I have no words for commentary.’ The film ends enigmatically: ‘But how to conclude? Well, the ultimate conclusion does not exist: it is suspended. A new nation is born and the problems have no solutions .…’ The past half-century and beyond Until the 1950s the countries most committed to producing Greek tragedy were Italy, France, Germany, Greece and Britain, and to a lesser extent the United States, all of which had a strong tradition in classical scholarship. Increasingly over the past half century, however, the plays have been performed in countries where the Classics have a much weaker hold, if indeed any at all. They include Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Israel, Algeria, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, India, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Japan. Outside Europe and the USA, Greek tragedy

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Surviving Greek Tragedy is most popular in Japan. As the Guardian (29 August 1992) noted, one of the consequences of the collapse of communism has been the staging of Greek tragedy in Eastern Europe (cited in Goff 1995, 33). Only very rarely has it been staged in the Islamic world, notably in Algeria, Egypt and Jordan. The spread of Greek tragedy beyond the West demonstrates that it has now largely shed its identification with the imperialistic cultures which brought about its revival. Sybil Thorndike’s observation (1960, 167f.) that the staging of Gilbert Murray’s Medea in South Africa in 1928-9 was remarkable for the ‘intense interest of the African theatre-cleaners in the rhythmic speech and movement of the Chorus’ is indicative of a society which could hardly have imagined its immense international popularity and prestige today. Nor, one suspects, could that society have acknowledged the legitimacy of productions that were not based on translations by a leading Oxbridge Hellenist. It hardly needs pointing out that adjustments are sometimes made to ensure the communicability of the play to local audiences. To cite a rather comical example, Luo Niansheng (1989, 79), who translated Oedipus the King for the 1986 production by the Chinese Central Drama Academy, states that he took the decision to call all the gods Apollo, ‘since this name was familiar to the Chinese through the American space project’. The fact that Greek tragedy is now an almost world-wide phenomenon has in turn sparked a lively debate as to what extent modern productions provide indicators of national theatrical fashions. Golder (1996, 185), for instance, has taken the English theatre to task for squeezing the plays into what he calls ‘Elizabethan collars – straitjackets that strangle and stop their blood’. Likewise McDonald (1999, 164) claims that ‘Many British use Greek tragedy to flaunt their cultural power, and in most performances we hear an upper class accent.’ Accurate or not, such comments reveal legitimate concerns about the appropriation and control of the plays by a dominant theatrical tradition. Greece, which regards her theatrical heritage as central to her role as the torch-bearer of Western civilisation, takes an understandably proprietary view of Greek tragedy, not least because since the end of the eighteenth century classical drama has played a major role not only in the birth of her indigenous theatrical tradition but also in the forging of her national identity (Patsalidis and Sakellaridou 1999, 22). The theatre first became a symbol of Greece’s yearning for independence from the Ottomans in the writings of Rigas Velestinlis (died 1798), the most important forerunner of the Greek revolution of 1821, and, from 1814 onwards, in the policy adopted by the Philiki Hetaiereia (‘Friendly Society’), which fostered the growth of drama in order to fan the flames of rebellion. The journalist Yorgos Sariyannis (1999, 131) has recently stated, ‘The Greek interpretation of its ancient drama … is conceived under the same sky as those who have written the plays and staged them in the same

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7. Producers and Playgoers ancient theatres in the language which has the same sounds as ancient Greek and so has the right to claim a higher level of authenticity.’ Given the sheer volume of productions that are mounted annually, it is no longer possible to offer anything approaching a synoptic view of the variety of theatrical styles currently in use around the world. Even less can we predict what form the staging of the plays may take in the twenty-first century. Often it is only with hindsight that path-breaking productions can be identified. In recent years a number of databases have been set up to facilitate the work of scholars and critics, and it is only with access to such resources that the detailed story can be told. Even so, the abundance of data raises problems of its own, not least for the compilers of the databases themselves, since it is not a given how best the information should be stored. We are in danger, in other words, of an information overload. There is, moreover, an urgent need to establish parameters within which a regulated scholarly discourse can take root and flourish. Given the ephemerality of theatrical productions in general, we need to achieve some sort of consensus about what we wish to (and can) preserve, as well as to establish criteria by which the merits and qualities of individual productions and theatrical tendencies can be noted and discussed. One pronounced tendency among avant-garde directors over the past thirty years has been the use of eclectic elements from a diversity of cultures and theatrical traditions. A pioneering production in this vein was Beno Besson’s Oedipus the King, which had its première in the Deutsche Theater, East Berlin, in 1967. As Flashar (1991, 229) reported, ‘Indicators of Asiatic and African culture were blended in the mix … African drumbeats, wild dancing by the chorus, Oedipus in the costume of a Buddhist monk, Jocasta like an Indian squaw, Teiresias like a medicine man … The actors wore fantastic leather masks … and delivered their lines in an unnatural singsong monotone without any emotional expression.’ Pasolini’s Edipo Re (1967) was set to Romanian and Japanese music. Equally eclectic was Ariane Mnouchkine’s 1992 production of Les Atrides, which used a multi-national cast of actors from some twenty different countries wearing costumes from India, Japan, the Middle East and the West (Fig. 47). The music, which was composed by Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, has been described as a farrago of ‘Greek and Asia Minor mountain music …, Balinese dance music, Indian Kathakali (the stutter step) music, Kabuki aragoto, and for good measure … the small fragment of music that we have extant from the ancient period’ (Chioles 1993, 5). Modern directors also combine plays by different authors in order to give a modern interpretation. Mnouchkine, for instance, prefaced her production with Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis so as to provide more sympathy for Clytemnestra. Her tetralogy thus preserves the structure of the Athenian original, but with the ‘satyr’ play preceding the tragic trilogy. A comparable tendency has been to give the plays a highly formalised

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Fig. 47. Chorus of old men in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides, Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, 1992).

staging in order to lay emphasis upon those ritual elements which are without parallel in our modern desacralised theatrical spaces. These have most frequently been sought in oriental styles of acting, such as Japanese Kabuki and Noh, the former a stylised song and dance entertainment, the latter a dance drama based on heroic themes. This has the special benefit for Western audiences of evoking a sense of ‘otherness’ and hence disjunction from the modern world. Yukio Ninagawa’s Medea, for instance, which was first performed in Tokyo in 1978, used dramatic techniques borrowed from Kabuki theatre in order to create a fusion between Eastern and Western dramatic traditions. One of the most innovative English productions of recent years was Peter Hall’s Oresteia, which opened at the Olivier Theatre in November 1981 (Fig. 48). Hall, who judged the Oresteia to be ‘the great pre-Freudian play of all time’ (quoted in Parker 1986, 354), attempted to convey the spirit of the ancient theatre by using masks in the belief that ‘Greek plays are impossible without the mask’. The twelve-man chorus delivered their lines with frequent alternations between speakers, often within the same line of verse. Tony Harrison’s translation, which was written for the production (see above, p. 141), is dense with northern idioms and syntactical forms, and the actors too used a northern accent. The music, by Harrison Birtwistle, consisted of percussion, an acoustic harp and three clarinets. At the end of the trilogy, which lasted for four and a half hours,

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Fig. 48. The bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra displayed on stage in Sir Peter Hall’s National Theatre production of Agamemnon (Olivier Theatre, London, 1981).

an extra chorus of women entered from the rear of the auditorium and invited the audience to ‘Stand and be silent while the Kind Ones pass’. This theatrical device was intended to convey the original sense of communal well-being which Aeschylus’ audience might have been expected to experience back in 458 BC. Despite certain archaising features, the National Theatre’s Oresteia was not devoid of its own political agenda, since both Hall and Harrison interpreted Aeschylus’ trilogy as an attempt to justify male ascendancy ‘at a moment when matriarchy had given way to a male-dominated society’ (Hall 1993, 313). In June 1982 it became the first-ever production in English to be performed in the ancient theatre at Epidaurus before a Greek audience. Innovative and the subject of much

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Surviving Greek Tragedy commentary, Hall’s Oresteia did not, however, generate many imitators, though it did herald an English Renaissance in the staging of Greek tragedy. Classical scholars have become infinitely more broad-minded and relaxed in their approach to the theatre in recent years. Helena Foley (1999, 10), for instance, writes, ‘In my undergraduate days at Swarthmore College, some classicists came to our student production of Hippolytus and sat through it following the Greek in their texts rather than observing the action on stage.’ Twenty years ago Bernard Knox (1979, 70) confessed: ‘Most productions of Greek tragedy, though I should be the last person to say so, are a crashing bore.’ It is unlikely that any leading authority in Greek tragedy would now suggest that an assessment of the merits and particularities of contemporary productions lies outside the discipline’s concerns. In fact classical scholars have embraced the modern theatre in a way that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago and have become increasingly preoccupied with problems in staging Greek drama. Many, through collaboration with professional directors, have become conversant with those problems at first-hand.* Even so, when it comes to Greek tragedy, what for one person is the theatrical experience of a lifetime may for another be a dog’s dinner. Indeed no species of drama seems to polarise critical judgement more. Consider the mixed bag of critical responses to Katie Mitchell’s English National Theatre production of the Oresteia (1999): Alastair Macaulay (Financial Times, 6 December 1999) complained that it ‘abounds in modish theatrical cliché’ and is ‘neither true to the original nor to itself ’, Peter Stothard (The Times, 2 December 1999) credited Mitchell with having discovered in the text ‘truths and triumphs that are as gripping as any seen in a classical play on the English stage in recent years’, Charles Spencer (Daily Telegraph, December 1999) accused her of having ‘turned an inexhaustible masterpiece into a glib anti-morality play’, John Gross (Sunday Telegraph, 5 December 1999) commented, ‘Overall it is a flop – laboured, gimmick-ridden and quite often plain boring’, Jane Edwards (Time Out, 8 December 1999) spoke of ‘flashes of inspiration [mingled] with moments of elephantine clumsiness’, Paul Taylor (Independent, 6 December 1999) called it ‘a production of genius’, John Peter (Sunday Times, 11 December 1999) said it was ‘a dismal disappointment’. So who’s right – and does it matter? Forty years ago a conference was held in Athens to debate whether Greek tragedy should in the words of its organiser ‘be faithfully reconstituted or, on the contrary, approached with regard to the sensibility of the modern playgoer’ (Walton 1999, 325). That question would arouse little controversy today, since the issue has long ago been decided in favour of *British classicists who have collaborated with directors in the professional staging of Greek tragedy in recent years include Paul Cartledge, Pat Easterling, Graham Ley, Helen Morales, Oliver Taplin and Margaret Williamson.

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7. Producers and Playgoers ‘modern sensibility’ and the theatrical avant-garde. The overwhelming majority of theatre critics and classicists acknowledge that the experience of watching Greek tragedy ‘as a Greek might have watched it’ cannot be usefully mimicked, least of all by the imposition of masks, hieratic gestures, and high boots. Even so, while it is relatively easy to concur with the statement that ‘every production is about the present’, there is little agreement as to what, if anything, deserves to be, and should be, preserved from the past. Though the value-judgements of an outmoded élitism (e.g. ‘travesty’, ‘distortion’, ‘violation’, ‘exploitation’) are no longer applicable to the current discourse on the reception of Greek tragedy, there is some danger of excessive permissiveness. Just as some productions work whereas others don’t, it is surely equally true that some productions are legitimate whereas others are not.* For even if we concede that there is something universal and timeless about Greek tragedy, we also need to acknowledge that there is something indelibly alien and culture-specific about it as well. Granted, therefore, that it is the job of a director or translator to make the plays ‘accessible’ to playgoers by engaging with the text and not merely ‘reproducing’ it, we may experience some twinge of unease at attending a production which makes us feel too much at home in our post-modern consciousness. In sum, we need to be alert to the dangers of reconstructing the Greeks in our own image. So there has to be a caveat, and a large one at that, as we celebrate the survival of tragedy into the third millennium. We fail the Greeks when we assimilate them wholly to ourselves, since their cultural products are never merely anticipatory of the contemporary. They are and they are not like us, but it is the difference that often matters most, as the drama continues to unfold.

* See, for instance, Patsalidis’ and Sakellaridou’s criticism (1999, 17) of a 1997 production of Euripides’ Bacchae by the State Theatre of Northern Greece, which they accused of having ‘(mis)interpreted the play … to a point beyond recognisability’. The spirited exchange between Taplin and Golden (Arion 5.3 [1998] 155ff.) demonstrates the polarity of scholarly responses to the quality of contemporary productions. See also Monaco (1987, 217-24), Chioles (1993, 1-28), Goetsch (1994, 75-95), and Foley (1999, 1-12). For a positive evaluation of the contemporary scene, see McDonald (1992) who writes, ‘I think these modern adapters do what dramatists should do – that is to depict the world in which we live. The world they depict is fragmented; they litter their stages with the débris of modern “life”.’ Conversely, Hardwick (2000, 142-4) claims that Katie Mitchell’s staging of the Oresteia in Ted Hughes’ translation dissipated the production’s intensity ‘in a pastiche of twentieth-century referents’ (Chorus in wheelchairs attended by uniformed nurses, etc.). For the problems in staging ancient drama in the modern theatre with particular reference to music and the chorus, see Kouroupos (1989, 177-82). As an example of the contempt that is now sometimes directed towards more ‘traditional’ productions of Greek tragedy, one might consider Chioles’ observations (1993, 2) about ‘unspeakable pseudo-museum renditions’ and particularly his characterisation of Karolos Koun (op. cit., 24) as ‘obsessed with the original texts of the tragedians’.

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Conclusions Tragedy would have us know that there is in the very fact of human existence a provocation or paradox; it tells us that the purposes of men sometimes run against the grain of inexplicable and destructive forces that lie ‘outside’ yet very close. To ask of the gods why Oedipus should have been chosen for his agony or why Macbeth should have met the Witches on his path, is to ask for the reason and justification from the voiceless night. There is no answer. Why should there be? If there was, we would be dealing with just or unjust suffering, as do parables and cautionary tales, not with tragedy. And beyond the tragic, there lies no ‘happy ending’ in some other dimension of place or time. The wounds are not healed and the broken spirit is not mended. In the norm of tragedy, there can be no compensation. George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy (1961, 128f.) The ‘dead’ Greek lives. It screams the perfect combination of real emotion and theatrical artifice. Philip Howard, Review of Sophocles’ Electra (2001 Cambridge Greek Play) in The Times, 25 October 2001

Greek tragedy has come down to us, albeit by the narrowest of arteries, because it speaks to the raw reality of human experience. We live in an age that has addressed similar questions to the voiceless night. Its common currency is the worst we are capable of imagining. Whether the black stuff is inside or outside us, whether it takes the form of the negativity of the self, the trauma of marital, parental or filial dysfunction, or the brutality of war, it is the only speech we have for what is otherwise unspeakable. As the sixteenth-century French humanist and scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (Seven Poetical Books 3.97) observed, what it deals in are ‘murders, lamentations, hangings, exiles, bereavements, parricides, incests, fires, battles, blindings, wailings, shriekings, complaints, funerals, eulogies and dirges’ (quoted in Burian 1997, 232 n. 15). As we struggle to come to terms with a century of unparalleled horrors in a world devoid of metaphysical consolation, the tragic vision of life offers a palliative to our sickness. Attic tragedy grew out of a specific set of historical conditions and addressed a particular socio-political reality. That socio-political reality was the city-state or polis, an idiosyncratic Greek institution for which there exists no parallel. Like its twin, Attic comedy, it was in a dialectical

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Surviving Greek Tragedy relationship with its audience. It was an audience which believed in the gods, tended to regard women as intellectually inferior, distrusted nonGreeks, took slavery for granted, and was uniquely pre-occupied with a sense of civic and collective identity. But it was also an audience that was prepared to have its assumptions challenged in the most radical way. It is arguably because the right of expression has in our century been entrusted to a broader spectrum of humanity than ever before that Greek tragedy today holds such a prominent place on the international stage.* And yet that is only a small part of the story. Uniquely powerful though the plays are in performance, that fact alone would not have been sufficient to guarantee their survival down through the ages. From the fifth century BC onwards they have served many other purposes. They were valued for their aphoristic content, and even when all other knowledge of them had been obliterated from the popular consciousness, famous tags were still being quoted in letters and essays, and no doubt, too, in conversations.† The tense exchanges of Euripidean drama were highly instructive in the teaching of rhetoric. The lyrics, and the music which accompanied them, whether or not it was composed by the original playwrights, were the nearest thing to pop music that the ancient world possessed. The iambic passages were deployed in the teaching of Attic Greek. The subject matter of Greek tragedy constituted an important compendium for the transmission of many important myths, thereby guaranteeing that some knowledge of their plot structure survived even if the plays themselves were no longer read. In excerpted form they could be interpreted as condoning submission to the divine will, which assured them a place in Christian teaching. The textual emendation of Greek tragedy provided one of the severest challenges to the classical philologist. The female roles are as diverse and powerful as any in the Western theatrical canon and provide insights into the female psyche that are scarcely equalled even by Shakespeare and Molière. The plays are also capable of endless adaptation. Their subversive quality makes them particularly valuable for the conveying of a left-wing political agenda. Their expressive emotionality makes them ideal vehicles for composers of opera, ballet and other musical genres. And so on. Excluding the elements and an intermittent indifference to high culture, Greek tragedy has acquired remarkably few enemies over the centuries, apart from St John Chrysostom, Tertullian, Savonarola, the British Censor and the Greek military junta. In Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia *As Hall (1997, 125) points out in allusion to the choruses, ‘Tragedy postulates in imagination a world rarely even hoped for in reality until very recently … It is a world in which characters of diverse ethnicity, gender, and status all have the same right to express their opinions and the same verbal ability with which to express that right.’ †Sadly only one line of ‘Aeschylus’ (Prometheus Bound 88), one of Euripides (Hippolytus 612) and three of Sophocles (Ajax 550, Antigone 332 and Oedipus at Colonus 1225) make it into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (Oxford, etc. 1959).

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Conclusions the tutor Septimus Hodge predicts that ‘the missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language’ (Act 1 Scene 3). I vehemently hope he’s right. To be continued …

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Chronology BC

530s 492 472 468 458 456 455 449 441 415 406/5 after 406 401 387/6 367-322 358 c. 340 295 c. 246 c. 195-180 20s

AD

c. 200 330 395 c. 500

A competition in tragedy is introduced at the City Dionysia, with first prize being awarded to Thespis. Phrynichus is fined for writing a tragedy about the sack of Miletus. Aeschylus wins first prize with a trilogy including Persians. Sophocles wins his first victory in a tragic contest. Aeschylus’ trilogy Oresteia (with the satyr play Proteus) is awarded first prize – the playwright’s eighteenth and final victory. Aeschylus dies at Gela in Sicily. Euripides first competes in a dramatic contest. The prize for best actor is instituted at the City Dionysia. Euripides’ first victory. Euripides’ Trojan Women wins second prize. Death of Euripides. Death of Sophocles. Euripides’ Bacchae wins first prize. Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis wins first prize. Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus is produced posthumously. Revivals of ‘old’ tragedy are first performed at the City Dionysia. Aristotle writes Art of Poetry. The theatre of Epidaurus is built. Lycurgus decrees that an official version of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides be lodged in the public treasury in Athens. The Library at Alexandria is founded. Ptolemy III Euergetes (?) acquires the Lycurgan version for the Library at Alexandria. Aristophanes of Byzantium edits the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. The last known production of a ‘new’ tragedy takes place at the City Dionysia. A selection of 24 tragedies begins to circulate. Constantinople is founded. The Roman Empire is divided. A selection of nine tragedies (the so-called ‘Byzantine triads’) begins to circulate.

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Surviving Greek Tragedy 568 692 c. 750-800 c. 830 c. 950 c. 1000 1204 c. 1300 1360-62 1396 1413 1427 1453 1468 c. 1474 c. 1495 1502 1503 1507 1518 1525

1537 1545 1552 1553 1555 1556 1558 1585 1597

Theatrical performances are banned in Rome. Theatrical performances are banned in Constantinople. Minuscule begins to replace capital letter script. Photius compiles his Lexicon, which includes numerous citations from Greek tragedy. The date of Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9, probably the oldest surviving manuscript of Greek tragedy. The Suda is compiled. The sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. Maximus Planudes writes the first commentaries on the triads of Sophocles and Euripides. Leontius Pilatus translates lines 1-466 of Hecuba into Latin. Manuel Chrysoloras begins teaching Greek in Florence. Giovanni Aurispa acquires a manuscript containing three plays of Euripides and three of Sophocles from the island of Chios. Francesco Filelfo brings a manuscript of Euripides to Venice. The fall of Constantinople. Cardinal Bessarion makes a donation of 482 Greek manuscripts to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. The first book is printed in Greek. Janus Lascaris publishes the editio princeps of Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis and Andromache in Florence. Aldus Manutius publishes the editio princeps of Sophocles in Venice. Aldus Manutius publishes 18 Euripidean plays (including Rhesus), 14 of which are editiones principes. Aldus Manutius publishes Erasmus’ Latin translation of Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis. The Aldine Press publishes the editio princeps of Aeschylus; Janus Lascaris publishes the editio princeps of the scholia of Sophocles in Rome. Fernán Pérez de Oliva translates Sophocles’ Electra into Spanish, the first translation of a Greek tragedy into a European vernacular. The Biblioteca Laurenziana is founded. The Biblioteca Marciana is founded. Victorius publishes the editio princeps of Euripides’ Electra in Rome. Turnebus and Robortellus independently publish editions of Aeschylus; Robortellus publishes the editio princeps of the scholia of Aeschylus. Turnebus publishes an edition of Sophocles in Paris. Sanravius publishes the first translation of ‘the six extant plays of Aeschylus’ into Latin in Basle. George Gascoigne’s and Francis Kinwelmershe’s Jocasta, based on Euripides’ Phoenician Women, is staged in Gray’s Inn, London. Victorius establishes that Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Libation-Bearers are two separate plays. Edipo Tiranno is staged at the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza. Portus publishes an edition of 19 plays of Euripides ‘plus the

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Chronology

1663 1679 1694 1774 1797-1801 1816 1832 1841 1872 1880 1881 1882 1886 1889 1912 1946 1950 1967-74 1971 1981 1992 1999 2000

beginning of a twentieth known as Danae’, later discovered to be a late fourteenth-century forgery. Thomas Stanley publishes an edition of Aeschylus. John Dryden’s and Nathaniel Lee’s Oedipus: a Tragedy is produced in London. Joshua Barnes publishes an edition of Euripides. Christoph Gluck’s opera Iphigenia in Tauride is produced in Paris. Richard Porson publishes editions of Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenician Women and Medea. W. von Humboldt publishes a German translation of Agamemnon. J.G. Droysen publishes a German translation of Aeschylus. Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone is staged in Potsdam. Friedrich Nietzsche publishes The Birth of Tragedy. Agamemnon is performed in Greek at Balliol College, Oxford. Alcestis is performed in Greek at Bradfield College; Oedipus the King is performed in Greek at Sander’s Theatre, Harvard University. Ajax is performed in Greek at Cambridge University; Oedipus the King is performed in Greek at Notre Dame University. Oedipus the King is banned by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff publishes Introduction to Greek Tragedy. Max Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King is produced at Covent Garden. Laurence Olivier performs in Oedipus the King at the Old Vic. E. Fraenkel publishes a three-volume commentary on Agamemnon. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes are blacklisted by Greece’s military junta. Michael Cacoyannis films Trojan Women. Peter Hall’s Oresteia is produced at the Olivier Theatre, London. Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides is produced at the Théâtre du Soleil, Paris. Katie Mitchell’s Oresteia is produced at the Cottesloe Theatre, London. John Barton’s Tantalus: an Ancient Myth for a New Millennium is produced in Denver, Colorado.

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Glossary affiliation: stemmatic relationship between a related group of manuscripts. ‘alphabetic series’: term used to describe the ten plays of Euripides that have survived without scholia in roughly alphabetic order (also known as the ‘nonselected plays’). apparatus criticus: list of variant manuscript readings and editorial suggestions or corrections usually cited at the bottom of a page of an edited Greek or Latin text (see Fig. 24). archetype: putative ancestor of all surviving manuscripts of the same text. chorêgos: literally ‘chorus driver’; a wealthy Athenian (or resident alien) who paid the production expenses for the performance of tragedy; also ‘chorus leader’. citharodic nomos: type of song involving harmony and rhythm sung to the accompaniment of the kithara or lyre. City Dionysia: festival of Dionysus celebrated in Athens at the end of March at which three tragedians competed, each with three tragedies and a satyr play, and five comic poets, each with a single play. codex: forerunner of the modern book – sheets folded over in quires and fastened together at the spine. collation: critical comparison of manuscripts of the same text. colometrisation: practice of dividing lyric passages into cola (see below) in keeping with their metrical structure. colon: term used in prosody (the study of metrical versification) to describe a section of a rhythmical period written out as a line. conspectus siglorum: list of abbreviations used to describe manuscripts in a critical edition of a text. deuteragonist: literally ‘second competitor’, i.e. the second most important actor. didascaliae: literally ‘teachings’; the term used to describe the inscription recording the details of Athenian dramatic productions; also, the name of a lost work by Aristotle. didaskalos: title given to the writer of tragedy or comedy in his capacity as poet-teacher (of the chorus). diorthôtês: ‘corrector’ of a manuscript who supervised the work of scribes. editio princeps: first printed edition of a literary work. emendation: proposed restoration of a corrupt word or phrase. epideixis: virtuoso recital of excerpted parts of a tragedy by a tragôidos (see below), possibly with choral accompaniment; also known as akroasis. gloss: word or phrase added above the line or in the margin of a text to explain a difficult passage. hypomnêma: literally a ‘reminder’; a commentary on a play. hypothesis: scholarly introduction or preface to a play. interpolation: insertion of a line or passage into a text, usually by an actor. Lenaea: festival of Dionysus held in January or February; the tragic contests

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Glossary appear to have been less prestigious than those of the City Dionysia with only two tragedians competing, each with two tragedies; its choregoi (see above) were metics or resident aliens. minuscule: lower-case lettering that was introduced in the late eighth century AD. ‘old tragedy’: term which designated the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides from 386 BC onwards in order to distinguish them from ‘new’ or contemporary tragedy. palimpsest: book whose pages have been scraped clean to remove the original writing so that it can be re-used. pantomime: literally ‘all mime’, a type of theatrical entertainment; also, the non-speaking actor of a pantomime. protagonist: literally ‘first competitor’ or chief actor. recension: task of collecting and critically evaluating manuscripts of the same text; also, the promulgation of a version of a text that is intended to update and replace all pre-existing versions. satyr play: originally the final play of a tragic tetralogy; the name derives from the fact that the plot is woven around the antics of a chorus of drunken and lecherous satyrs. scholiast: writer of scholia (see next entry). scholion: note of explanation or comment upon a word or passage of an ancient text. scriptorium: room attached to a monastery where the copying of manuscripts took place. siglum: conventional sign of a manuscript; most sigla take the form of an uppercase Greek or Roman letter in the conspectus siglorum (see above). stemma: genealogical tree that connects manuscripts of the same text based on the assumption that all surviving manuscripts had a common ancestor or archetype (see above). stemmatics: principles by which a genealogical tree of manuscripts is established. tetralogy: four plays (three tragic, one satyric) that constituted an early Greek tragic performance. tragoedia saltata: pantomime. tragôidos: literally ‘tragic singer’, an actor who performed excerpts of Greek and Roman tragedy (Latin: tragicus cantor, tragoedus). triad: selection of three plays by the same tragedian which became popular c. 500 BC, probably first in Byzantium. tritagonist: literally ‘third competitor’; the third most important actor. uncial: term occasionally applied to capital script lettering in manuscripts.

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Appendix I

The Surviving Tragedies Aeschylus Persians (472) Seven Against Thebes (467) Suppliant Women (c. 463) Oresteia, comprising Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers and Eumenides (458) Prometheus Bound (date uncertain, authenticity disputed) Sophocles Ajax (date uncertain) Antigone (date uncertain) Women of Trachis (possibly 438-32) Oedipus the King (possibly 430-28) Electra (possibly 413) Philoctetes (409) Oedipus at Colonus (produced posthumously in 401) Euripides Alcestis (438) Medea (431) Descendants of Heracles (possibly 430) Hippolytus, revised version (428) Andromache (possibly 425) Hecuba (possibly before 423) Suppliant Women (possibly 423) Ion (possibly 418) Heracles (possibly c. 417) Electra (possibly before 415) Trojan Women (415) Iphigeneia among the Taurians (possibly c. 413) Helen (412) Phoenician Women (possibly 409) Orestes (408) Iphigeneia at Aulis (produced posthumously in 405) Bacchae (produced posthumously in 405) Of unknown authorship Rhesus (date uncertain)

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The Surviving Tragedies The selected plays Aeschylus: Suppliants, Persians, Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes, Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides Sophocles: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus the King, Antigone, Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus Euripides: Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenician Women, Hippolytus, Medea, Andromache, Alcestis, [Rhesus], Trojan Women, Bacchae The ‘alphabetic’ or non-selected plays of Euripides Helen, Electra, Heracles, Descendants of Heracles, Ion, Cyclops (satyr play), Suppliants, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Iphigeneia among the Taurians The Byzantine Triads Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Persians, Seven Against Thebes Sophocles: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus the King Euripides: Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenician Women Fragments of non-extant tragedies Fragments of non-extant tragedies survive on papyri, as well as in anthologies and more generally in quotations, for all three tragedians. The first edition of all the tragic fragments then known was by A. Nauck in 1889. This was reprinted in 1964 with a Supplement by B. Snell. The one-volume edition has now been updated in four parts by B. Snell, S. Radt and R. Kannicht (1971-), though we still await the fifth volume on Euripides. The most substantial fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides have been recently edited by Diggle (1998). Lloyd-Jones (1996) provides a collection with translation of the fragments of Sophocles. For the fragments of some plays of Euripides, together with introductions, translations and commentaries, see Collard, Cropp and Lee (1995). For date-estimates of the lost plays of Euripides, see Cropp and Fick (1985, Table 5.1 [p. 70]). For the history of the discovery and collecting of the tragic fragments, see H. van Looy, Acta Classica 32 (1963), 170-84, and R. Kassel, Fragmenta Dramatica (ed. Hofmann and Harder), 243-52. Of Aeschylus the lengthiest papyri fragments are of Net-fishers and Spectators at the Isthmian Games (both second century AD). Of Sophocles we have lengthy fragments of Eurypylus and Niobe (both second century AD). Of Euripides we have lengthy fragments of Alexander (second century AD), Cretans (second century AD), Hypsipyle (first century AD), Phaethon (second century AD and fifth or sixth century AD), Phrixus (third century AD) and Melanippe Bound (fourth or fifth century AD).

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Appendix II

Manuscripts of Greek Tragedy in Italian Libraries in the Fifteenth Century This is a list of all the seventy-odd manuscripts of Greek tragedy located in private and public libraries up to and including the year 1500 that I have been able to trace. (Some changed hands, as noted.) I have adopted Bolgar’s system of assigning undated manuscripts ‘to the year in which their first known owner died unless there is external evidence to suggest an earlier date’ (1954, 456). Ex libris Niccolò Niccoli, dated 1413-37: 1. Sophocles’ Ajax, Electra and Oedipus the King; Euripides’ Hecuba, Orestes and Phoenician Women (part). Bought by Aurispa in Chios in 1413 and sold to Niccoli in 1417. Later catalogued as Cod. Laur. C.S. 71 (Sabbadini 1891, 11; Browning 1986, 46; Woodhouse 1986, 56) 2. Euripides. Bought by Niccoli from Aurispa in 1417 (Traversari, Letters 6.8) 3. 7 plays of Aeschylus and 7 of Sophocles. Sent by Aurispa to Niccoli. Later catalogued as Cod. Laur. 32.9 (Sabbadini 1931, 163) 4. Euripides’ Hecuba, part of Orestes, Medea, Phoenician Women, Alcestis, Andromache, Rhesus. Marked as ‘property of Niccoli’. Later catalogued as Cod. Laur. (San Marco) 226 Ex libris Antonio Corbinelli, dated 1425 (as cited in Blum [1951, 88 and 115-16]). Numbers in brackets refer to the accession nos. of the Biblioteca della Badia Fiorentina, which later acquired Corbinelli’s library: 6. (no. 45) Tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides on paper in a medium-sized volume with a red cover 7. (no. 46) Tragedies of Euripides and Aeschylus on paper in a medium-sized volume with a black cover 8. (no. 38) Tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus on paper in a mediumsized volume with a red cover 9. (no. 39) Tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides in a medium-sized volume with a red cover 11. (no. 44) Tragedies of Aeschylus and Dionysius’ Orthography on paper in a medium-sized volume with a red cover The monastery library possessed two other manuscripts of Greek tragedy not from Corbinelli’s collection: no. 40 (Euripides, Dionysius and Porphyrius) and no. 49 (Sophocles).

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Manuscripts of Greek Tragedy in Italian Libraries in the 15th Century From the Catalogue of the Library of Pope Nicholas V in the Vatican, dated 1455, s.v. ‘Libri gramatices (sic)’ (as cited in Müntz and Fabre [1887, 337f.]): 1. Item: another on paper with a red cover bearing the title ‘Some works of Plato, some of Homer, some History, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Hesiod, Blemides, Damascenus, the Letters of Libanius’; much of this, however is worthless 2. Item: another on paper bearing the title ‘Aristophanes and Sophocles’ 3. Item: another on paper with a red cover, bearing the title ‘Pindar (and) Sophocles’ 4. Item: another on paper with a red cover, bearing the title ‘Sophocles and Euripides’ 5. Item: another on paper with a red cover, bearing the title ‘Tragedies of Euripides’ 6. Item: a single volume consisting of four cartae of folio size on paper with a red cover, bearing the title ‘Tragedies of Euripides’ 7. Item: another on paper with a red cover, bearing the title ‘Sophocles’ 8. Item: another on paper with simple postes, bearing the title ‘Aristophanes and Esquilus’ Ex libris Giovanni Aurispa, dated 1459, s.v. ‘Descriptio bonorum hereditatis quondam domini Iohannis Aurispe’ (as cited in Franceschini [1976]): 18. Item: Eschillus, written in Greek, in a book of paper with white covers 128. Item: Sofores (for ‘Sophocles’?) 131. Item: Euripides, in Greek, in a silken book with white covers 181. Item: The tragic poet Euripides, on paper 237. Item: Euripides, a Greek poet, on paper with white covers 292. Item: Sofochles the tragic (poet), on paper, with white (covers) 313. Item: Euripides, in Greek, on paper with white (covers) 343. Item: Euripides, on paper, in Greek, with white (covers) 411. Item: A book of Sofocles, on paper in Greek, with white (covers) 452. Item: The tragic poet Eschillus Ex libris Battista Guarino of Verona, dated 1460, s.v. ‘Index librorum graecorum manu descriptorum qui in Bibliotheca Bapt. Guarini Veronensis reperti sunt et nunc Ferrariae adservantur’ (as cited in Omont [1892, 79f.]): 14. Sophocles with scholia 22. Some tragedies of Euripides Ex libris Cardinal Bessarion and given to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, dated 1468, s.v. ‘Index librorum graecorum’ (as cited in Omont [1894, 167f.] and Labowsky [1979]): 450. Oppian On Fish and On Hunting, three tragedies of Aeschylus, six of Sophocles, and three of Euripides, on paper 454. Dionysius the Cosmographer and five tragedies of Euripides, on paper 457. Seven tragedies of Sophocles, on paper 460. The Arithmetica of Nicomachus, one tragedy of Sophocles, a great deal of

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Appendix II grammar, the Heroics of Philostratus and the Hecones of the same author, the speeches of the philosopher Maximus, two books of Homer with commentary, and various other writings, on paper 461. Euripides and Cleomedes, on paper 462. Euripides, on paper 465. Three comedies of Aristophanes and four plays of Sophocles, on paper From the Catalogue of the Library of Pope Sixtus IV in the Vatican, dated 1475, s.v. ‘Graeca opera poeticae et grammaticae’ (as cited in Müntz and Fabre [1887, 225-7]): 1. Some (plays) of Sophocles, and Dionysius’ Description of the Earth. On paper without hard covers 2. Sophocles, Theocritus, and Hesiod 3. Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Pyndarus. On paper 4. Sophocles. On paper in a black (cover) 5. Sophocles. On paper in a green (cover) 6. Oppian and Euripides. On paper in a black (cover) 7. Aristophanes and Eschylus. On paper in hard covers 8. Euripides. On paper in two volumes, one incomplete 9. Euripides. On paper in a white (cover) 10. Some (plays) of Aristophanes and Sophocles, etc. On paper in a black (cover) 11. Sophocles. On paper in a red (cover) 12. Sophocles. On paper in a red (cover) 13. Pindar and Sophocles. On paper in a black (cover) 14. Euripides. On paper in a red (cover) 15. Sophocles. On paper in a black (cover) 16. Eschylus, Aristophanes, Sophocles. On paper between hard covers 17. Euripides. On paper in a red (cover) 18. Sophocles and Euripides. On paper in a red (cover) 19. Euripides. On paper in a red (cover) 20. Eschylus. On paper in a red (cover) Ex libris Francesco Filelfo, dated before 1481 (as cited in Bandini [1764-68, II p. 72, and Traversari [1759] Letters 24.32]): 1. 7 tragedies of Aeschylus, 6 tragedies of Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus omitted) and 9 non-selected tragedies of Euripides plus Bacchae and [Rhesus]. Later catalogued as Cod. Laur. 31.1 2. Aeschylus; Euripides’ [Rhesus], Iphigeneia among the Taurians, Iphigeneia at Aulis, Bacchae, Suppliants, Cyclops, Descendants of Heracles, Heracles, Helen, Ion and Electra. Later catalogued as Cod. Laur. 31.9 3. 7 tragedies of Euripides Ex libris Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, dated before 1482, s.v. ‘Graeci’ (as cited in Guasti [1863, 454]): 690. Sophocles’ tragedies; bis 691. Euripides’ tragedies

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Manuscripts of Greek Tragedy in Italian Libraries in the 15th Century Ex libris Antonello Pertrucci, dated before 1487 (as cited in Delisle [1868, I pp. 229 and 239]). Pertrucci’s manuscripts were later acquired by the Biblioteca Napolitana and are now owned by the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: 1. Sophocles’ Ajax, Electra and Oedipus the King; Euripides’ Hecuba, Orestes and Phoenician Women. Later catalogued as Cod. Paris gr. 2795 2. Euripides’ Alcestis, Andromache, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Medea and Orestes. Later catalogued as Cod. Paris gr. 2809 3. Aesop, Aristophanes and Euripides. Later catalogued as Cod. Paris gr. 2902 Ex libris Giorgio Valla, dated 1490 (as cited in Heiberg [1896, 122]): 75. Euripides’ Hecuba, Orestes and Phoenician Women, etc. 80. Several tragedies of Sophocles Ex libris Lorenzo de’ Medici, dated before 1492, s.v. ‘Poietica’ (as cited in Müller [1884, 371]): 1. 1 manuscript of Aeschylus 2. 1 manuscript of Sophocles 3-5. 3 manuscripts of Euripides From the Catalogue of the Convent of San Marco in Florence, dated 1500 (as cited in Ullman and Stadter [1972]): 226. 8 tragedies of Euripides (see s.v. Niccolò Niccoli no. 4) 1197. The tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus, and the Argonautica with commentary, on parchment 1198. Oppian On Fishing, Sophocles, Dionysius the poet, on paper 1200. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Lycophron’s Cassandra 1202. Some tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, on parchment 1208. 6 tragedies of Sophocles, 18 of Euripides, 3 of Aeschylus, the works of Hesiodus 1210. Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, on paper 1211. A damaged copy of Dionysius…, some damaged texts of Aeschylus, on paper 1215. Some tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles

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Appendix III

Notable Translations of Greek Tragedy Languages are arranged in chronological order according to the first known translation into each. My primary source is The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints (Mansell: 1971). Hirsch (1964, 138-46) lists 75 Greek and Latin editions of Euripides prior to 1600, compared with 48 of Sophocles and only 15 of Aeschylus. The earliest vernacular edition of Aeschylus is a French translation of his selected plays published in 1730. Germany produced the most editions of tragedy before 1600 (63), followed by France (41), Italy (15) and the Low Countries (15). The leading centres were Paris, Basle, Frankfurt, Strassburg, Venice, Florence, Louvain, Antwerp and Leiden. See also Highet (1949, 120f.) and Bolgar (1954, 508-25) for translations of the tragedians prior to 1600. Latin 1506 1544 1548 1555 1556 1567 1581 1614

Erasmus: Hecuba and Iphigeneia at Aulis George Buchanan: Medea George Rotaller: Ajax, Antigone and Electra Sanravius: ‘The six extant tragedies’ of Aeschylus Coriolano Martirano: Medea, Electra, Hippolytus, Bacchae, Phoenician Women, Cyclops and Prometheus Victorius: anthology of selected plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides by various translators Thomas Watson: Antigone Pierre de la Rovière: bilingual Greek and Latin anthology of Euripides and Aeschylus by various translators

French For translations of Sophocles dating to the eighteenth century, see S. Saïd and C. Biet in Dawe (1996). c. 1507 François Tissard: Medea, Hippolytus and Alcestis (unpublished) 1537 Lazare de Baïf: Sophocles’ Electra 1544 Bochatel: Hecuba 1549 T. Sibilet: Iphigeneia at Aulis 1573 Jean-Antoine de Baïf: Antigone 1692 André Dacier: Oedipus the King and Electra 1718 Voltaire: Oedipus the King 1761 M. Dupuis (or Dupuy): Sophocles 1785 F.J.G. de la Porte du Theil: Aeschylus (latest edition 1924) 1818 Marie-Joseph Chénier: Oedipus the King 1846 Alexander Dumas père: Oresteia 1893-5 Paul Claudel: Agamemnon 1903 Paul Mazon: Oresteia (latest edition 1925)

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Notable Translations of Greek Tragedy 1922

Jean Cocteau: Antigone

Italian 1525 Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici: Oedipus the King (unpublished) 1532 Luigi Alamanni: Antigone 1543-51 Lodovico Dolce: Hecuba, Medea, Iphigeneia at Aulis and Phoenician Women 1560 Giovanni Giorgio Trissino: Hecuba 1585 Orsatto Giustiniani: Oedipus the King 1821 F. Bellotti: Aeschylus 1826 F. Bellotti: Sophocles 1829 F. Bellotti: Euripides 1914 E. Romagnoli: Agamemnon Spanish 1528 Fernán Pérez de Oliva: Sophocles’ Electra under the title Revenge for Agamemnon 1533 Fernán Pérez de Oliva: Hecuba 1883 F. S. Brieva Salvatierra: Aeschylus 1909 E. Mier y Barbery: Euripides German For translations of Sophocles dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, see Stoneman (1999, 307-29). For Hölderlin’s translations, see W. Schadewaldt and R.B. Harrison in Dawe (1996). 1584 H. Bebst: Iphigeneia at Aulis 1636 Martin Opitz: Antigone 1740s J.E. Schlegel: Sophocles’ Electra 1804 Friedrich Hölderlin: Oedipus the King and Antigone (published under the title Die Trauerspiele des Sophokles) 1816 Wilhelm von Humboldt: Oresteia 1832 Johann Gustav Droysen: Oresteia (latest edition 1841) 1841 J.J.C. Donner: Antigone (revised by A. Boeckh in 1884) 1845 J.J.C. Donner: Oedipus at Colonus 1852 J.A. Hartung: bilingual Greek and German translation of Aeschylus 1861 G. Ludwig: Euripides 1866 A. Wilbrandt: Sophocles Dutch 1639 Joost van den Vondel: Sophocles’ Electra 1955 Van B. Lier: Ajax English For translations published between 1700 and 1830 see Clarke (1945, 235ff.). 1714 Anonymous translation of Sophocles’ Electra dedicated to Lord Halifax 1714 Lewis Theobald: Ajax and Electra 1726 Richard West: Euripides’ Hecuba 1754 Thomas Francklin: Sophocles (latest edition 1890) 1759 Charlotte Lennox: five plays of Euripides 1773 Thomas Morell: Prometheus Bound 1777 Robert Potter: Aeschylus (latest edition 1892)

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Appendix III 1781-3 Robert Potter: Euripides (latest edition 1860-61) 1788 Robert Potter: Sophocles (latest edition 1820) 1833 Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Prometheus Bound 1849 T.A. Buckley: Aeschylus (latest edition 1911) 1849 T.A. Buckley: Sophocles (latest edition 1891) 1850 T.A. Buckley: Euripides (latest edition 1897-99) 1865 Anna Swanwick: Oresteia 1866 Augusta Webster: Prometheus Bound 1868 Augusta Webster: Medea 1868 E.H. Plumtre: Aeschylus (latest edition 1916) 1875 Robert Browning: Heracles (in Aristophanes’ Apology) 1877 Robert Browning: Agamemnon 1881 E. H. Plumtre: Sophocles (latest edition 1938) 1901 R.C. Jebb: Sophocles 1902 G. Murray: Hippolytus, Bacchae 1906 L. Campbell: Aeschylus (latest edition 1949) 1906 J.S. Blackie: Aeschylus (latest edition 1931) 1926 W.B. Yeats: King Oedipus 1934 W.B. Yeats: Oedipus at Colonus 1937 Hilda Doolittle: Ion 1952 G. Murray: Aeschylus 1954 Ezra Pound: Women of Trachis The English translations most widely used today include those edited by William Arrowsmith in the University of Chicago Press series. Highly regarded, too, are Robert Fagles’ translations of The Three Theban Plays (1982) and The Oresteia (1966), published by Penguin. The Penn Greek Drama Series, which includes both comedy and tragedy, offers in its own words ‘the first comprehensive series of classical Greek drama in translation for more than half a century.’ Sammons (2001) provides a survey of all the English language translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides currently in print. Easterling (1997, 355-8) gives a list of texts, commentaries and translations into English of each of the tragedians published in the second half of the twentieth century. Greek (Modern) 1834 K. Ralles: Eumenides 1839 N. Dukas: Aeschylus 1885 A.R. Rhankabes: Persians 1911 I. Grupares: Oresteia Under the military junta (1967-74) translations of Greek tragedies and comedy by K. Varnalis, V. Rotas and F. Yiofillis were banned on the grounds that they had tainted the original texts (van Steen, 2001). Danish 1840 C. Wilster: Euripides 1844 P. Oluf: Oresteia 1893 Thor Lange: Antigone Czech 1862 Vaclav Nebesky: Eumenides 1869 J. Niederle: Ajax

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Notable Translations of Greek Tragedy Swedish 1866 J.E. Nyström: Antigone 1947 E. Zilliacus: Oresteia Polish 1873 Z. Weclewski: Aeschylus (latest edition 1934) 1875 Z. Weclewski: Sophocles 1881-2 Z. Weclewski: Euripides Russian 1884 N.P. Kotelov: Antigone Yiddish 1897 J. Gordin: Medea 1912 L. Bergman: Prometheus Bound Catalan 1911 S. Vilaregut: Alcestis 1932-34 Charles Riba: Aeschylus 1951 C. Riba Bracons: Sophocles Serbo-Croatian 1913 Koloman Rac: Sophocles 1918 Koloman Rac: Aeschylus 1919 Koloman Rac: Euripides Arabic 1920 Taha Husayn: Aeschylus and Sophocles Norwegian 1926 P. Nilson: Oresteia 1928 P. Ostbye: Euripides Irish 1926 1935

P. De Brún: Antigone P. De Brún: Iphigeneia at Aulis

Breton 1928 R. Hemon: Prometheus Bound Slovak 1940 A. Zarnov: Antigone Hebrew 1941-42 B. Benshalom: Prometheus Bound Turkish 1943 Ahmet Cevat Emre: Agamemnon 1943 H. Tanpinar: Medea 1946 S. Ali: Antigone 1949 L. Kerman: Hippolytus

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Appendix III Basque 1946 J. Zaitegui y Plazaola: Sophocles Chinese 1946 Luo Niansheng: Persians, Oedipus the King and Iphigeneia among the Taurians Welsh 1950 W. J. Gruffyd: Antigone Albanian 1950 S. Papahristo: Prometheus Bound 1956 S. Papahristo: Medea 1957 S. Papahristo: Antigone Indonesian 1974 W.S. Rendra: Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus, and Oedipus the King (from English)

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Appendix IV

The Production History of Greek Tragedy At least 25 of the 32 extant tragedies are now regularly performed the world over. The past thirty years have seen a huge increase in the number of productions and a comprehensive history would now run to several volumes. This Appendix merely offers a few highlights, together with some notable ‘firsts’. In most cases I give only the date and place of the première of any production. The best way to access information is by consulting one of several databases (listed below), though I hope that this selection may prove helpful in the initial stages of research. My bias is in favour of English-speaking productions and plays that are more or less faithful to the original texts. However, ‘more or less’ is a sliding scale and I have included a few notable adaptations. I also include a few examples of the numerous musical and artistic compositions that are based on Greek tragedy. Since the myths which inspired the Attic tragedians have been transmitted through a variety of sources, the attempt to identify the direct influence of a specific tragedy upon a writer, composer or artist is often an inexact science. The obvious impediment to an objective assessment of the quality of any production is ‘the ephemeral nature of the performance itself … [and] the short life of much of the contemporary evidence created alongside it’ (Hardwick 1998). Important general sources include The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama (1984), The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s (1993), J.M. Walton, ed., Living Greek Theatre: a Handbook of Classical Performances and Modern Production (1987). See also O. Franke, Euripides bei den deutschen Dramatikern des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (1929), H. Flashar Inszenierung der Antike: Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit 1585-1990 (1991), and F. Macintosh, ‘Tragedy in performance: nineteenth- and twentieth-century productions’, pp. 284-323 in Easterling, ed. (1997). R. Zinar, ‘The use of Greek tragedy in the history of opera’, pp. 80-95 in Current Musicology 12 (1971), lists over 170 operas based on Greek tragedy (predominantly Euripides) dating from the middle of the seventeenth century to the 1960s. Barely a dozen of these have made it into the repertoire. There are many studies of the production history of individual countries. Hartigan (1995) discusses all the major stagings in the US from 1882 to 1994 in their cultural context. For early productions in the American Midwest, see Hartigan (1994, 373-87). Such is the popularity of contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedy in the US that, as Foley (1999, 1) has noted, ‘The Classic Stage Company, an off-Broadway theater group devoted to performance and adaptation of Western classics, currently receives more scripts that re-work Greek tragedy than any other category of drama.’ For stagings of Sophocles in Germany from the nineteenth century onwards, see Schadewaldt (1996, 283-308). For Greece, Bulgaria and Italy, see Mercouris (1998). For Greece, see Phessa-Emmanuel (1999, 31-77) and Walton

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Appendix IV (1987, 268-95), who lists productions in Athens, Epidaurus and Dodona from the 1950s onwards. For Greek companies on tour, see Sariyannis (1999, 131-55). For Holland, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, see Mavromoustakos (1999). For China, see Jinlin (1989, 131-6) and Kedui (1989, 78). For Africa, India and Southeast Asia, see the relevant articles in Proceedings of the International Meeting of Ancient Greek Drama at Delphi 8-12 April 1984 and Delphi 2-25 June 1985 (Athens 1987). For the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Greece, Israel, etc., see Patsalidis and Sakellaridou, eds, (1999). E. Hall’s and F. Macintosh’s Greek Tragedy and the British Stage (Oxford) is shortly to be published. The most important database is The Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, which was set up in Oxford by Edith Hall and Oliver Taplin in 1996 in order to co-ordinate research directed to the international production and reception of classical plays from the Renaissance onwards (Gowen 1999, 157f.). Productions are arranged by country, year, playwright, title of play, language of production, translator, director, company, theatre, musical accompaniment, etc. Another important database, not limited to drama, is The Reception of the Texts and Images of Ancient Greece in Late Twentieth-Century Drama and Poetry in English, which is based at the Open University and whose project director is Lorna Hardwick. The University of Athens is also collecting performance data. Photographic archives have been set up in the Universities of Sydney and Oslo and at the Institute of Classical Studies in London. An electronic journal called Didaskalia, which is distributed from the University of Warwick, provides details about forthcoming productions of Greek drama, as well as reviews. Commencing in 2001, the Cambridge Greek Play, which also has a website, has announced its intention to hold interdisciplinary performance symposia devoted to discussion of the myth, text and performance of its annual play. It is also assembling a database of past productions. Some of the most stimulating productions of recent years have combined tragedies by different playwrights, thus recalling the experience of attending a tragic trilogy in Athens. They include John Barton’s The Greeks (Royal Shakespeare Company, The Aldwych, 1980), which drew on Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles, as well as on seven plays by Euripides; Andrei Serban’s An Ancient Trilogy, comprising Medea, Trojan Women and Electra (Bucharest, 1990), performed in ancient Greek; The Clytemnestra Project (Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, 1992), which combined Iphigeneia at Aulis, Agamemnon and Sophocles’ Electra, as well as the ghost of Clytemnestra from Eumenides; The Thebans (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1992), which combined Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus; and John Barton’s Tantalus: an Ancient Myth for a New Millennium (Denver Center for Performing Arts, Colorado, 2000). The plays of Aeschylus Oresteia The Oresteia (Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers and Eumenides), which, together with the lost satyr play Proteus, won first prize at the City Dionysia in 458, is the sole extant trilogy. Its survival is little short of miraculous, given the fact that none of the plays was included in the Aeschylean triad. Though it is often cited as demonstrating support for the constitutional changes of the 460s pioneered by Pericles and Ephialtes, scholars remain divided about Aeschylus’ political viewpoint on those changes. Goethe famously described the Oresteia as ‘a primaevally

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy giant figure, shaped like a monster’; Algernon Swinburne regarded it as ‘the greatest spiritual work of man’. An international conference entitled ‘Agamemnon in performance 458 BC – 2001 AD’ was held in Oxford in September 2001. Agamemnon is the only ancient drama regularly to be performed in Russia in the twentieth century (Trubotschkin, forthcoming). Agamemnon is also the tragedy to which directors have repeatedly turned, to mark beginnings and, recently, to express millennial Angst (Foley, forthcoming). In popularity it now runs a close second to Medea. The Oresteia is seen as one of the greatest theatrical challenges facing any director and over the past thirty years has come to be regarded almost as a rite of passage for avantgarde theatre directors, many of whose productions are veritable marathons. (Luca Ronconi’s Oresteia lasted more than seven hours. Peter Stein’s, with two one-hour intervals, was nine hours in length.) See Chioles (1993, 1-28), Bierl (1997, passim), and U. Albini, ‘Four theatrical interpretations of Oresteia’, pp. 100-8 in Proceedings of the International Meeting of Ancient Greek Drama at Delphi 8-12 April 1984 and Delphi 2-25 June 1985 (Athens 1987). The claim that a company known as the Admirals’ Men produced two plays, rather than one, by Thomas Decker and Henry Chettle entitled Agamemnon and Orestes’ Furies in London in 1599 (for which see Schleiner 2000, 34-37) is now doubted. It is also uncertain whether what they performed derived from Aeschylus at all (Ewbank, forthcoming). James Thomson’s Agamemnon (part Senecan, part Aeschylean) was performed at the Theatre Royal, London, in 1738. The Balliol College Agamemnon of 1880 was the first staging of a tragedy in ancient Greek since antiquity (see p. 158f.). Sydney University’s 1886 Agamemnon was the first production of a tragedy in ancient Greek in Australia. Agamemnon was the Cambridge Greek Play in 1900. Hans Oberländer’s Oresteia (Theater des Westens, Berlin, 1900) in a translation by Wilamowitz was the first modern staging of the entire trilogy. In 1903 the trilogy was produced in Greece by the Basilikon Theatron Company under the direction of Georgios Soteriades. Max Reinhardt’s Oresteia (Musikfesthalle, Munich, 1911) subsequently toured throughout Europe. It sought to give the tragedy a popular appeal by introducing spectacular effects. It was revived in 1919 in the Grosses Schauspielhaus, Berlin. Ettore Romagnoli’s Agamemnon (Syracuse, 1914) was the first production to be mounted in an ancient Greek theatre in modern times. Libation-Bearers followed in 1921. The choice of (a slightly abridged) Oresteia as the Cambridge Greek play in 1921 marked the resumption of that tradition after a hiatus of eight years. Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (Guild Theatre, New York, 1931), directed by Philip Moeller, is modelled on the Oresteia and set in New England after the American Civil War. Agamemnon was the first play to be performed by the National Theatre of Greece in 1932. A Nazi staging of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in Wilamowitz’s translation took place at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, in 1936 (above, p. 171; Fig. 41). Louis MacNeice’s Agamemnon premièred at the Westminster Theatre, London, in 1936. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les mouches (‘The Flies’) takes its title from the chorus of Furies in Eumenides (Paris, 1943). Mabel Whiteside’s Oresteia (Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Virginia, 1954) was the first production of the trilogy to be staged in an American university, as well as the first in Greek and the first with an all-female cast. Jean-Louis Barrault’s Oresteia (Paris, 1955) was inspired by voodoo rites. Tyrone Guthrie’s Oresteia (Stratford, Ontario, 1955) was influenced by Christian passion plays. Wayne Richardson’s Agamemnon (Theatre Marquee, New York, 1957) was the first commercial American production of the trilogy. An outdoor Oresteia was staged in

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Appendix IV Upsilanti, Michigan, in 1966. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Notes for an African Oresteia (1970) is the only documentary version of a Greek tragedy (above, p. 178f.). Luca Ronconi’s Oresteia (Belgrade 1971) interpreted the trilogy as a demonstration of the fragmentation of the individual. Steven Berkoff ’s Agamemnon (described by the author as ‘a grotesque, surreal, paranoiac view of life … the schizoid personality of man as he undoubtedly is’) was first performed at Greenwich Theatre in 1976. The 1979 BBC production of Kenneth McLeish’s and Frederick Raphael’s play known as The Serpent’s Son, based on the Oresteia, was watched by 4-5 million viewers. Peter Stein’s Oresteia (Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer, Berlin, 1980), based closely on the original Greek text, utilised different periods and costumes. It offered a commentary upon the limitations of democracy as a political ideal. (In 1994, following the break-up of the Soviet Empire, Stein brought the production to Moscow.) Peter Hall’s Oresteia (Olivier Theatre, London, 1981) was the first staging of the trilogy in a London theatre (above, pp. 182-4; Fig. 48). A video of the production, originally made for Channel Four television, is commercially available. In 1985 Franco Parenti in collaboration with Emanuele Sverino staged the trilogy in Milan, giving an existentialist interpretation to the Eumenides. In 1990 José Carlos Plaza directed La Orestíada amid the ruins of a tenement block in Madrid as a condemnation of society’s collective apathy. Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, 1992), translated by Hélène Cixous, was one of the most admired productions of Greek tragedy ever staged (above, p. 181; Fig. 47). In 1991 a Finnish company entitled Raging Rose produced the trilogy with an all-female cast. Romeo Castellucci’s Oresteia (una commedia organica?) (Staatsschauspiel, Dresden, 1995) was an experimental theatre piece charged with numerous metatheatrical references. Katie Mitchell’s two-part Oresteia (Cottesloe Theatre, London, 1999), in a translation by Ted Hughes, drew a parallel between the curse of the house of Atreus and events in the Balkans. Notable musical compositions include Martha Graham’s Three Choric Dances for an Antique Greek Tragedy (1933) and Clytemnestra (1958), Darius Milhaud’s L’Orestie (1913-25), written to accompany Paul Claudel’s translation, and Iain Hamilton’s Agamemnon (1967-69). Notable artistic works include John Flaxman’s drawings to illustrate Richard Porson’s edition entitled ‘The Oresteia’ (from The Tragedies of Aeschylus 1795; Fig. 26), John Collier’s ‘Clytemnestra’ (1882), William Richmond ‘An Audience in Athens during the Presentation of the Agamemnon’ (1884), Gustave Moreau’s ‘Orestes and the Furies’ (1891), John Singer Sargent’s painting with the same title (1921-25), Giorgio de Chirico’s series of surrealistic paintings depicting Orestes and Pylades (1954-73), and Francis Bacon’s ‘Triptych inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus’ (1981). Persians Persians is the only surviving tragedy based on an historical event. Dated 472 BC, it is also the earliest extant tragedy. It was second in a tetralogy of unrelated plays (Phineus, Persians, Glaucus of Potniae, Prometheus the Fire-Maker), which won first prize at the City Dionysia in 472. Pericles served as the chorêgos. Twentiethcentury producers have frequently used the tragedy to express their outrage over aggressive militarism. In 1908 Gilbert Murray approached W.B. Yeats with the suggestion that they collaborate on a production of Persians at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which Yeats and Lady Gregory had founded one year previously, with the intention of providing it with ‘a seditious innuendo’, but Yeats declined and the project never

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Fig. 49. Chorus of Persian elders in Aeschylus’ Persians (The Greek National Theatre, 1934). came to fruition (Clark and McGuire 1989, 9). In 1942 Persians was staged in Göttingen as a morale booster when the German army was experiencing severe hardship (Flashar 1991, 169 and 360 n. 16). The Greeks stood for the Germans, who, it was suggested, were destined to rid themselves of the foreign ‘invader’, just as their counterparts had done by defeating the Persians. An East German production, intermittently revived between 1961 and 1969, was originally inspired by US involvement in Korea and later by the Vietnam War. Karolos Koun’s 1960s Persians, which toured extensively throughout Europe, has been described as ‘the first major achievement [in the staging of Greek tragedy] since Reinhardt’ (Chioles 1993, 24). Takis Mouzenidis’ Persians (Epidaurus 1971), though not overtly critical of the Greek military junta, was interpreted as such by audiences (above, p. 171f.). In 1991 the American director Peter Sellars staged the play as a protest against the Gulf War, equating the Iraqis with the ancient Persians. Prometheus Bound Prometheus Bound is the first, or possibly the second, play in a trilogy (Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-bringer). Though ancient critics regarded it as the work of Aeschylus, modern scholars have cast serious doubts upon its authenticity. In the early decades of the nineteenth century the character of Prometheus was viewed as exemplifying the plight of the Romantic hero. Lord Byron, who wrote an ‘Ode to Prometheus’ (1816), confessed that he could ‘easily conceive [the play’s] influence over all … that I have written’ (Letters and Journals, ed. R. Prothero [1898-1901] IV 174). Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Appendix IV was subtitled The Modern Prometheus (1818). Her brother wrote a sequel to the play entitled Prometheus Unbound (1819). Johannes Sturm’s Prometheus was performed in the Gymnasium, Strassburg, in 1609. Sikelianos’ and Palmer’s celebrated production, which inaugurated the Delphic Festival in 1927, was the first performance of a Greek tragedy to be captured on film. Tony Harrison’s film Prometheus (1999), which sets the action in the 1980s in a Yorkshire mining village, deals with the social consequences of pit closure (Hardwick 2000, 131-9). A ballet entitled Prometheus with choreography by Ninette de Valois and music by Beethoven had its première at Sadler’s Wells in 1936. John Lanchbery’s Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus), with choreography by Frederick Ashton and music by Beethoven, premièred in Bonn (1970). A painting by Benvenuto Garofalo (Seminario Arcivescovile, Ferrara, 1540), which depicts Prometheus lying on the seashore while Oceanus rises out of the waves to pity his fate, is thought to have been inspired by the editio princeps (Raggio 1958, 57 with pl. 9b). John Flaxman’s series of drawings entitled The Tragedies of Aeschylus included illustrations to ‘Prometheus Chain’d (1795). Paul Manship’s sculpture entitled ‘Prometheus’ (1950) stands at the Rockefeller Center, New York. Seven Against Thebes Seven Against Thebes was aptly described by the sophist Gorgias as ‘full of Ares’. It came third in a tetralogy (Laius, Oedipus, Seven Against Thebes, Sphinx), which won first prize at the City Dionysia in 467. Suppliant Women Suppliant Women (c. 463) was the first play of a tetralogy (Suppliant Women, Egyptians, Danaides, Amymone). It was produced by Sikelianos and Palmer at the Delphic Festival in 1930, along with a revival of their Prometheus (see above). The plays of Sophocles Ajax Ajax is probably the earliest extant play of Sophocles. The other plays in the tetralogy are unknown. Ajax was the subject of one of two paintings by Timomachus of Byzantium which Julius Caesar purchased for the huge sum of 480,000 denarii and placed inside the Temple of Venus Genetrix (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 35.136). Ajax was the most frequently read Sophoclean play in the Byzantine era, as indicated by the fact that it headed the Byzantine triad and survives in more manuscripts than any other. According to Arethas, a learned Byzantine bishop who flourished around the turn of the ninth century, it was the play that ‘every schoolboy knew’ (Kougeas 1913, 142). In 1882 Ajax was chosen as the first Cambridge Greek Play (Fig. 34). In 1986 the American director Peter Sellars set the Ajax in the wake of an unidentified American victory which recalled the recent invasion of Grenada.

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy Antigone The other plays in the tetralogy are unknown. Demosthenes (19.247) alleges that Aeschines frequently played the part of Creon in fourth-century BC revivals. G.W.F. Hegel in his lectures on aesthetics (1820-9) described Antigone as ‘one of the most sublime, and in every respect consummate works of art which human effort has ever brought forth’ (quoted in Steiner 1984, 4), and his verdict was echoed by numerous nineteenth-century poets, philologists and philosophers. The historian Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Athens: its Rise and Fall [London 1837] I 551) commented that if Antigone were ever to be staged ‘we might have demanded more reference to her lover’, but Sophocles’ lack of interest in exploring the romantic attachment between Antigone and her fiancé Haemon has proved no bar to the play’s success in modern times. As Griffith (1999, vii) writes, ‘Since the late eighteenth century, Antigone has been one of the most widely read, translated, performed, discussed, adapted, and admired of all classical Greek texts.’ For the play’s reception see Steiner (1984). For its production history, see Jones (1950, 91-100) and Hamburger (1962, 189-212). A Latin translation by Thomas Watson may have been performed at St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1583. A free version by Friedrich Rochlitz was produced by Goethe at the Weimar Theatre in 1809. Ludwig Tieck’s Antigone, with music by Felix Mendelssohn (Potsdam, 1841), was one of the most influential nineteenthcentury productions of Greek tragedy (see above, pp. 151-5; Figs 30-1). E.L. Blanchard’s Antigone Travestie, which burlesqued the 1845 London production, was first performed at the New Strand Theatre in the same year (above, p. 155). Jean Cocteau’s adaptation (Théâtre de l’Atelier, Dullin, 1922) had a set designed by Picasso, costumes by Chanel, and music by Arthur Honegger (Fig. 50). A

Fig. 50. Title page of Jean Cocteau’s 1923 translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, depicting the face-off between Antigone and Creon.

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Appendix IV production of Antigone was staged in honour of Benito Mussolini in the ancient theatre of Syracuse in 1925. Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, which introduced a significant love element, had its première in Paris in 1944 (above, p. 171). Bertolt Brecht’s Antigonemodell 1948 premièred at Chur, Switzerland, in 1948 (above, p. 171; Fig. 42). A revival of Anouilh’s Antigone (New Theatre, London, 1949) was directed by Laurence Olivier, who played the chorus single-handedly. Antigonemodell 1948, directed by Julian Beck and translated by Judith Malina, was revived in London by the Living Theatre Company in 1967 as a protest against the Vietnam War. Stagings of Antigone in Prague over the past half-century have been described as ‘the barometer of political permutations in Czech society’ (Merritt 1999, 180). Athol Fugard’s The Island included a scene in which the prisoners of Robben Island acted out the confrontation between Creon and Antigone. The Island toured extensively, serving as an indictment of the brutality of the apartheid regime (Mezzabotta, 2000). M. Ramaswamy’s Tamil adaptation of Antigone (India, 1984) was inspired by alleged police brutality against a Tamil extremist. The Polish director Andrej Wajda set the play in a Gdansk shipyard, identifying the chorus as shipbuilders and Antigone as their leader (1984). Under the direction of L. Kastelan the Croatian National Theatre performed Antigone in Zagreb in 1985. Nikos Koundouros’ Antigone, subtitled ‘A Cry for Peace’, was staged on the borders of Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic in 1994 as a pacifist protest at a time of rising nationalist tension in the region. In 2002 a production of Antigone in modern Greek with surtitles by the National Theatre of Greece took place on Broadway. Many orchestral compositions, operas, cantatas and incidental music have been inspired by Sophocles’ play. Among the most celebrated are Mendelssohn’s incidental music (1841), Carl Orff ’s Antigonae for voice and piano (Salzburg, 1949), and Mikis Theodorakis’ opera Antigone (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1959). Electra The other plays in the tetralogy are unknown. Already in antiquity Sophocles’ Electra was regarded as a vehicle for a ‘star’ and it has retained that reputation to this day. The fourth-century BC actor Polus, who played the title role, is said to have borne on stage an urn containing the ashes of his own dead son in the scene where Electra laments her brother’s death (Gellius, Attic Nights 6.5). It is not known whether Sophocles’ or Euripides’ play of this name has chronological precedence. See F. Dunn, ed., Sophocles’ Electra in Performance (= Drama 4 [1996]), and E. Hall, ‘Sophocles’ Electra in England’ (1999d, 261-306) for productions and translations. A symposium on Sophocles’ play, with emphasis upon recent productions, was held at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in October 2001. An adaptation by the Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel was performed at the Municipal Theatre, Amsterdam, in 1639. Adaptations, albeit unperformed, were popular in England among Royalists following the execution of Charles I owing to the political appeal of the theme of the grieving sister who rouses her brother to avenge their father’s death. A notable example is Christopher Ware’s Electra (1649), which was addressed to Charles I’s daughter Elizabeth. Sophocles’ play was performed at the Theatre Royal, London in 1714 and 1744. William Shirley’s adaptation was refused a licence for performance in 1762 because of its alleged pro-Whig, anti-royalist sentiment. Peter Bayley’s extravaganza Orestes in Argos was performed at the Theatre Royal in 1825. Talfourd’s Electra in a New Electric Light was a popular London entertainment in 1859. A planned all-female production by the students of Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1877, was can-

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Fig. 51. Zoë Wanamaker as Electra in David Leveaux’s production of Sophocles’ Electra (Donmar Warehouse, London, 1997).

celled by the Principal, who refused to countenance women dressing up as men (above, p. 158). The 1883 Girton College, Cambridge, production, directed by Ethel Sargant, is thought to be the earliest unadapted staging of Sophocles’ play in Greek in modern times, as well as the earliest to be acted entirely by women (Hall, 1999d, 291). Electra, directed by D. Rondiris in 1938, was the first production in modern times to be staged in the ancient theatre of Epidaurus. In 1966 Antoine Vitez directed the play in a Roman theatre in Algeria, shortly after the country had been given independence. Fiona Shaw’s production was first performed at the Barbican in 1989. The next year it opened in Derry, in the same week that nine people were shot in sectarian violence. Shaw reports, ‘On the first night, at the end of the play, the audience stood. In silence. They didn’t clap … They stood not for us, of course, but for themselves and for their grief ’ (Dunn 1996, 133). David Leveaux’s production (Donmar Warehouse, London, 1997) starred a trench-coated, crop-headed Zoë Wanamaker as Electra (Fig. 51). Electra, directed by Jane Montgomery, was the Cambridge Greek play in 2001. It was the first time that a Greek tragedy had been performed with English surtitles. Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra (Dresden, 1909), with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is the outstanding operatic work of the twentieth century inspired by a Greek tragedy. It also represents Strauss’s ‘furthest point as an avant-garde

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Fig. 52. Scene from Bob Telson’s and Lee Breuer’s play The Gospel at Colonus (Brooklyn, New York, 1983).

The Production History of Greek Tragedy composer’ (William Mann, programme notes to Decca recording of 1988, p. 10). Ernestine Schumann-Heinck, who played Clytemnestra in the Dresden production, complained, ‘We were all acting like mad women, and becoming mad ourselves!’ The Covent Garden production in 1910, conducted by Thomas Beecham, was billed as ‘The opera that will “elektrify” London.’ It was a sensational success. For a history of the opera’s reception see Goldhill (2002, 108-77). Oedipus at Colonus Oedipus at Colonus was produced in 401 BC by Sophocles’ grandson, five years after the playwright’s death. Together with the other plays in its group, whose names are unknown, it won first prize. It is improbably claimed that in old age Sophocles’ sons took their father to court on a charge of mental incompetence in order to prove him incapable of handling his own finances, and that he rebutted the charge by declaiming one of the choruses (lines 668-93; cf. Cic. On Old Age 22; Plu. Mor. 785e). Unless Rhesus is a work of the fourth century BC, Oedipus at Colonus (or alternatively Bacchae and Iphigeneia at Aulis) is the latest surviving Greek tragedy. Oedipus at Colonus was the Cambridge Greek Play in 1950. It was staged at Bradfield College in 1955. From the nineteenth century onwards Christian writers have regarded the elderly and blind Oedipus as the epitome of a soul in torment, seeking redemption for his sins: Bob Telson’s and Lee Breuer’s adaptation called The Gospel at Colonus (Brooklyn, New York, 1983) is within this tradition, being ‘an oratorio set in a black Pentecostal service, in which Greek myth replaces Bible story’ (Breuer 1989, xv; Fig. 52). Sophocles’ play was performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, in 1994. Oedipus the King The other plays in the tetralogy are unknown. A late commentator claims that the group won second prize. Many scholars believe it to have been inspired in part by the plague which afflicted Athens in 430 BC. Aristotle regarded it as the outstanding work in its genre, and its fate, like that of Sophocles’ reputation, has been intimately connected with that judgement ever since. For eighteenth-century French adaptations, see C. Biet, Les transcriptions théâtrales d’Oedipe-Roi au dix-huitième siècle (PhD thesis, Sorbonne Nouvelle 1980). The play greatly offended Victorian taste. Sir Walter Scott (The Works of Dryden, Illustrated with Notes ([Edinburgh 1883] VI 127) commented, ‘In ancient times … such abominations really occurred as sanctioned the story of Oedipus. But the change of manners has introduced not only greater purity of moral feeling, but a sensibility, which retreats with abhorrence even from a fiction turning upon such circumstances.’ Fiona Macintosh is shortly to publish a book on the play’s reception. Edipo Tiranno (Vicenza, 1585) was by far the most celebrated sixteenth-century production of a Greek tragedy (above, p. 117f.; Fig. 22). John Dryden’s and Nathaniel Lee’s Oedipus: a Tragedy had its première at the Duke’s Theatre, London, in 1679 (above, p. 149). For the influence of André Dacier’s 1692 French translation of Sophocles’ play, see Vidal-Naquet (1981, 371-80). Voltaire’s Oedipe (Comédie-Française, Paris, 1718) was one of the greatest theatrical successes of its epoch. Goethe staged Sophocles’ play at the Weimar Theatre in 1813 in a version by August Klingemann (Schadewaldt 1996, 286f.). Karl Immermann organised dramatic readings of Oedipus the King in Düsseldorf between 1834 and 1837, but

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Appendix IV his attempt to mount a production failed. The French actor Jean Mounet-Sully’s interpretation of Oedipus in 1881 was witnessed by Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytical reading did much to catapult the play to fame at the turn of the nineteenth century. Oedipus the King (Harvard University, 1881), with incidental music by John Knowles Paine, was the first American production of a Greek tragedy performed in ancient Greek. In 1886 Wilbrandt produced a ‘Theban trilogy’ consisting of Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus at the Munich Hoftheater, the first occasion when an invented trilogy had been mounted. In 1887 Oedipus the King was the Cambridge Greek play. Because of its treatment of incest, the play was banned from the stage in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Its rehabilitation was largely due to the international success of Max Reinhardt’s King Oedipus (Musikfesthalle, Munich, 1910). In January 1912 his production opened at the Theatre Royal, London, in a translation by Gilbert Murray, establishing once and for all the viability of performing Greek tragedy in the commercial theatre (above, pp. 163-9; Figs 37-9). Oedipus the King was one of the most popular tragedies in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. It was produced at the Deutsche Theater, Berlin, in 1946 in a translation by Heinrich Weinstock and directed by Karl Heinz. In the same year Michel Saint-Denis mounted the play at the Old Vic Theatre, London, with Laurence Olivier in the title role (Fig. 53). It became famous for Olivier’s two blood-curdling screams on discovering his true identity. Sir Tyrone Guthrie’s

Fig. 53. Laurence Olivier as Oedipus in Oedipus the King (The Old Vic, 1946).

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy production at the New Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Ontario, 1955) marked a turning-point in the interest in Greek tragedy on the American continent. Guthrie’s 1956 Oedipus Rex is the first major production to be preserved on film. The Indian director E. Alakazi produced Oedipus the King in English in Bombay in 1958. Pier Paolo Pasolini made a semi-autobiographical film entitled Edipo Re in 1967 (p. 178f.). Anthony Burgess’ version of Oedipus Tyrannus, directed by Michael Langham at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, in 1972, was noteworthy for the fact that Oedipus blinded himself on stage. A student production at Beijing University in 1980 was the first Greek tragedy to be staged in China. At the end of Steven Berkoff ’s Greek (Half Moon Theatre, London, 1980) Oedipus confesses to his family, ‘Yeh I wanna climb back inside my mum. What’s wrong with that. It’s better than shoving a stick of dynamite up someone’s ass and getting a medal for it.’ He makes a valid point. In 1996 Sir Peter Hall produced a ‘ritualistic’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus using masks in a double bill entitled The Oedipus Plays. Blake Morrison’s Oedipus translated into Yorkshire dialect was first performed at the Viaduct Theatre, Halifax, in 2001. Musical compositions include Duprat de la Touloubre’s opera Oedipe (1791), which ends before the death of Jocasta and the self-blinding of Oedipus, Igor Stravinsky’s opera Oedipus Rex (1927) using libretto by Jean Cocteau translated into Latin, and Arthur Honegger’s incidental music to Oedipus Rex (Paris 1948). Philoctetes Together with the other plays in its group, whose names are unknown, Philoctetes won first prize at the City Dionysia in 409 BC. It may have been part of a connected trilogy. Mandel (1981, 121-49) offers a survey of the play’s reception from 15021896. The theme of Philoctetes has sometimes been used to exemplify the artist’s isolation from society, as in Alfonso Sastre’s Too Late for Philoctetes (unperformed, 1983), which addressed the conditions faced by artists after the re-establishment of democracy in Spain. A Latin version of Sophocles’ play may have been performed in Cambridge University c. 1550. Philoctetes, staged at Odessa in 1818 and on the Aegean island of Tinos in 1822, was the first Greek tragedy to be performed by Greek speakers in modern times. Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy (Guildhall, Derry, 1990), directed by Stephen Rea and Bob Crawley, offered a criticism of sectarian violence and bigotry in the context of Northern Ireland politics. Women of Trachis The other plays in the tetralogy are unknown. In the nineteenth century Women of Trachis was regarded as the least accomplished of Sophocles’ plays. A.W. Schlegel declared, ‘The Women of Trachis appears to be so very inferior to the other pieces of Sophocles which have reached us that I could wish there were some warrant for supposing that this tragedy was composed in the age, indeed, and in the school of Sophocles, perhaps by his son Iophon, and that it was by mistake attributed to his father’ (trans. in Dawe 1996, 159-77). For a brief account of the play’s reception, see Segal (1977, 101), who writes ‘Inferior, imperfect, “very poor and insipid”, gloomy, dark, puzzling, odd, nebulous, curious, bitter, difficult: these are its standard epithets.’ Recent criticism has been more sympathetic. Thanks to the enterprise of Fleeming Jenkin, an enthusiast of Greek tragedy who owned his own theatre, Women of Trachis was performed in Edinburgh in

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Appendix IV 1877. Ezra Pound’s free translation was first broadcast by the BBC in November 1954 (above, p. 141. Women of Trachis was the Cambridge Greek Play in 1983. George Frederic Handel’s oratorio entitled Hercules, with libretto by Thomas Broughton based on the text of Sophocles’ play, had its première at the King’s Theatre, London, in 1745. Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera Déjanire was first performed in Monte Carlo in 1911. The plays of Euripides Alcestis Alcestis is probably Euripides’ earliest surviving drama. It is the fourth play in a tetralogy (Cretan Women, Alcmeon in Psophis, Telephus, Alcestis) which won second prize after Sophocles. It has provoked a great deal of controversy, owing to the fact that, despite its position in the group, it is not actually satyric but, uniquely in our surviving corpus, ‘pro-satyric’; but though the theme is comic and the ending happy, the earlier scenes in which the doomed Admetus canvasses for someone to die in his place are treated with deep seriousness. Butler’s ‘Alkestis in modern dress’ (1937-8, 46-60) surveys poetic re-interpretations from the eighteenth century onwards. In Francis Talfourd’s Alcestis: the Original Strong-Minded Woman (Strand Theatre, London, 1850) the heroine runs off with Death rather than endure the financial ruin caused by her husband’s extravagance. Alcestis was the first play to be performed at Bradfield College in 1881. Jane Harrison took the title role in the celebrated production by the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1887. Alcestis, translated into demotic, inaugurated the foundation of the Greek Nea Skênê in 1901. As directed by Yannis Houvardas in 1984, Alcestis was the first modern-dress production of a Greek tragedy at the Epidauros Festival. It caused an uproar, with some members of the audience climbing on stage and assaulting the actors. The play was performed without incident by the English National Theatre in 2000 in a translation by Ted Hughes.

Fig. 54. Set for Euripides’ Alcestis (The Greek National Theatre, Epidaurus, 1963).

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy Hans Sachs’s non-extant Alcestis (1555) is the earliest known musical composition inspired by a Greek tragedy. Operas based on Alcestis were especially popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Zinar (1971, 89f.) lists 29. Among the most notable are Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Alceste ou Le triomphe d’Alcide (Saint-Germain, 1674) and C.W. Gluck’s Alceste (Burgtheater, Vienna, 1767) with Italian libretto by Ranieri Calzabigi. Andromache The names of the other plays in the trilogy are not known. The scholiast to line 445 states that it did not receive its first performance in Athens. Jean Racine’s Andromaque was first staged at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris, in 1667. An adaptation by John Crowne was performed at the Duke’s Theatre, London, in 1674. Ambrose Philips’ version The Distrest Mother was first staged at the Theatre Royal, London, in 1712. An anonymous burlesque of Racine’s play, The French Andromache, was performed at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1716. Gilbert Murray’s translation was performed at the Strand Theatre, London, in 1901. The play has inspired more operas than any other Greek tragedy – some 35 in all (Zinar 1971). Bacchae Bacchae was produced posthumously by the playwright’s son in a group that included Iphigeneia at Aulis and the non-extant Alcmeon. The tetralogy won first prize. On the basis of certain complimentary references to Macedonia, it has been suggested that it may have received its first performance at the court of King Archelaus (see most recently Revermann [1999-2000, 461-2]). A scene from Bacchae was performed at the court of Artavasdes II of Armenia in 53 BC (above, p. 65). Gilbert Murray’s translation was produced at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1908. Bacchae, often in free adaptations, became popular in the 1960s when the opposition between Dionysus and Pentheus was used to exemplify the contemporary debate between sexual liberation, anti-Vietnam war protests and hippie culture on the one hand, and the hawkish forces of law and repression on the other. A celebrated example is Richard Schechner’s New York extravaganza entitled Dionysus in ’69, which in Knox’s (1979, 71) words ‘splashed pints of stage blood on many square yards of female anatomy, and spiced the mixture with simulated fellatio and a naked New Guinea “birth ritual”, to produce a dish which would have given Euripides, that most civilised of dramatists, an acute case of indigestion’. Wole Soyinka’s Bacchae: A Communion Rite (English National Theatre, 1973) has been heralded as sounding ‘the opening fanfare of the awakening interest in Greek drama in the last part of the twentieth century’ (Hardwick 1998). Michael Lupu’s Bacchae (Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, 1987) is said to have watered the play down into ‘a prescription for a man to hold his temper’ (Hartigan 1994, 383). Musical compositions based on Euripides’ play include Alfred Bruneau’s ballet Les bacchantes (1888), Karol Szymanowski’s cantata Agave (1917), Giorgio Ghedini’s opera Le baccanti (1941-4), Hans Werner Henze’s opera The Bassarids (1966), with libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, and John Buller’s Bacchai (English National Opera, 1992), which is partly in ancient Greek and partly in translation.

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Appendix IV Descendants of Heracles The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not preserved. Wilamowitz castigated Descendants of Heracles as ‘the least impressive play we have from Euripides’ (quoted in Allan 2001, 21). Until recently productions have been extremely rare. The first modern production was an adaptation by John Delap entitled The Royal Suppliants, staged in London in 1781. Subsequently Descendants of Heracles was performed in Epidaurus in 1970 and 1971, and in Athens in 1971 and 1972. The first commercial production in the USA, under the title Children of Heracles, was by Peter Sellars at the American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, Mass., in 2003. It toured Germany, Italy and France the previous year. Sellars in an interview declared that he chose this play ‘because it forces us to consider one of the most pressing concerns of Euripides’ time and our own, the global refugee crisis’.* Electra The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not preserved. Plutarch (Lysander 15.2-3) claims that it was a moving rendition of Electra’s lament that saved Athens from destruction at the end of the Peloponnesian War (above, p. 10). Being of disputed authorship in the Renaissance, Electra was the last Greek tragedy to appear in print. Victorius, who published the editio princeps, objected to the structure of the play, though he did not doubt its authenticity (Euripidis Electra nunc primum in luce edita [Rome 1545] 4). A.W. Schlegel condemned it as ‘perhaps the very worst of all his pieces’ (1840, I 174-6; quoted in Hall 1997c, x). Gilbert Murray’s translation was produced by Harvey Granville-Barker at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1906. The Greek director Karolos Koun staged the play in London at the time when the military junta ruled Greece. Michael Cacoyannis’ film version was released in 1967 (above, p. 175). A triple bill consisting of Euripides’ Electra, Orestes and Iphigeneia among the Taurians (Gate Theatre, London, 1995) was directed by Laurence Boswell. Hecuba Being the first in the group of selected Euripidean plays, Hecuba was the most popular tragedy in the Byzantine era. It was also the first Greek tragedy to be translated into Latin. No fewer than 21 editions of the play (eight Greek, four Latin and nine vernacular) appeared before 1600 (Hirsch 1965, 139). In the preface to his 1562 edition Caspar Stiblinus writes: ‘This play, both on account of the excellence of its plot and the atrocious events of its tragedy, rightly holds pride of place (iure principem locum tenet).’ Heath (1987, 40-68) surveys the play’s reception. Erasmus’ Latin translation was performed at the Collège du Porc, Louvain, in 1506 or 1514, and at Wittenberg University in 1525 or 1526. Richard West’s Hecuba (Theatre Royal, London, 1725) has been described as ‘the only professional eighteenth-century attempt to stage a Greek tragedy in English translation rather than adaptation’ (Hall 2000, 70). The London-based Teatro Technis performed Hecuba in 2003, describing it as a play about ‘the complacent hypocrisy with which men justify cruelty in the name of military and political necessity’. *I am grateful to Michael Walton for providing me with information for this section.

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy Helen The non-extant Andromeda, which was extremely popular in antiquity, was in the same group as Helen. It has been fancifully suggested that Euripides wrote Helen in order to ‘distract’ his audience following the defeat of the Sicilian Expedition in 413, which occurred the year before the play was produced. A Greek company called Amphi-Theatre tool a production of Helen (billed as ‘an avant-garde play’) on tour in 1999. Notable musical compositions include Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène (1864), and Richard Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena, with libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Staatsoper, Dresden, 1928), in which Helen and Menelaus are depicted as contrasting archetypes of East and West. Heracles The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not known. Archibald MacLeish’s Herakles (1967) sets the tragedy in contemporary Greece with ‘Herakles’ as a world-famous physicist, just awarded the Nobel prize. Hippolytus Euripides wrote two plays under this title. Allegedly the first version met with disfavour owing to its lewd portrayal of Phaedra, depicted as aggressively seeking to seduce her stepson, so he decided to revise it. The second (extant) version won first prize. The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not known. Hippolytus was the inspiration for Seneca’s Phaedra, which in turn inspired Racine’s Phèdre (1677), commonly regarded as the greatest example of French neo-classical drama. Racine significantly altered the plot by introducing a character called Aricie as the beloved of Hippolytus. Aphrodite and Artemis, who play an important part in Euripides’ play, are also eliminated, as they were from Seneca’s version. Euripides’ play was performed in Oxford and later at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1904, in a translation by Gilbert Murray. One of the most famous twentieth-century adaptations is Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms (Greenwich Village Theater, New York, 1924). Modern adaptations have found it impossible to resist either the hint or even the explicit depiction of sexuality in the main character. In Robinson Jeffers’ The Cretan Woman, which was first performed in 1954, Hippolytus is presented as a repressed homosexual. In Jules Dassin’s film version entitled Phèdre (1961) he succumbs to Phaedra’s advances (above, p. 178; Fig. 45). The play has inspired several musical compositions, including Vladimir Senilov’s opera Hippolytus (1917) and Benjamin Britten’s cantata Phaedra. Ion The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not known. William Whitehead’s Creusa, Queen of Athens, based on Euripides’ play, was performed at the Theatre Royal, London, in 1754. A.W. Schlegel’s German translation, directed by Goethe, was produced in Weimar in 1803. A burlesque by Frederick Fox Cooper was staged at the Garrick Theatre, London, in 1836. Thomas Talfourd’s adaptation had its première in May 1836 at the Theatre Royal (p. 151). Ion, directed by Nicholas Wright, was produced at the Pit with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1994, and by Nick Philippou with the Actors’ Touring Company in the same year.

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Appendix IV T.S. Eliot’s verse drama entitled The Confidential Clerk, which was first staged in Edinburgh in 1953, is based on Euripides’ play. Iphigeneia at Aulis Iphigeneia at Aulis was produced posthumously by Euripides’ son. It belonged to the group that included Bacchae and the non-extant Alcmeon. It is thought to contain the largest number of actors’ interpolations, which is taken as testimony to its popularity in the fourth century BC. Iphigeneia (either at Aulis or among the Taurians) was revived at the City Dionysia in 341 BC. Iphigeneia at Aulis was one of the most popular Greek tragedies in the sixteenth century, being translated into French, Italian, German and English. Examples include Racine’s Iphigénie en Aulide (Versailles, 1674) and Abel Boyer’s Achilles; or Iphigenia at Aulis (Theatre Royal, 1699). Subsequently, however, its popularity dwindled. John William Calcraft’s adaptation was first staged in Dublin in 1846. In the last half-century there has been renewed interest in the play. An adaptation by Jack Lindsay was staged at the Mermaid Theatre, London, in 1967. Cacoyannis’ film version, entitled Iphigenia, was released in 1977. Ariane Mnouchkine prefaced Les Atrides (1992) with Euripides’ play. Iphigeneia at Aulis, like Iphigeneia among the Taurians, was a very popular subject for opera throughout the eighteenth century and in the first decade of the nineteenth. Zinar (1971, 90f.) lists over 25 examples. They include D. Scarlatti’s Ifigenia in Aulide (Teatro Domestico della Regina Maria Casimira di Pollonia, Rome, 1713) and C.W. Gluck’s Iphigénie in Aulide (1774). Iphigeneia among the Taurians According to a scholiast Iphigeneia among the Taurians did not receive its first performance in Athens. The play may have been revived at the City Dionysia in 341 BC. François-Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel’s Oreste et Pylade, based on Euripides’ play, was performed in Paris in 1697. John Dennis’ adaptation was produced in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, in 1699. Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) is the only eighteenth-century adaptation of a Greek tragedy that is still occasionally performed today (Burian 1997, 238). P.A. Robinson’s Iphigeneia in Tauris (University of Iowa, 1907) was the first staging of a Greek tragedy at a mid-western state university (Hartigan 1994, 373). Gilbert Murray’s translation was performed at the Kingsway Theatre, London, 1912, under the direction of William Poel. About 17 operas were composed on the theme of Euripides’ play in the eighteenth century (Zinar 1971, 90f.). Probably the most celebrated is W.C. Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (Académie Royale, Paris, 1779). Medea Medea was the first play in a tetralogy (Medea, Philoctetes, Dictys, Reapers), which won third prize in 431 BC, ceding place both to Aeschylus’ son Euphorion and to Sophocles. It thus has the distinction of being the earliest extant tragedy which did not win first prize. Its lyrical passages were performed in Egypt in the first century AD (Macintosh 2000, 2). An unfinished painting of Medea by Timomachus of Byzantium adorned the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum Julium (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 35.136 and 145). Along with the Oresteia, its performance history has

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The Production History of Greek Tragedy attracted more interest than that of any other Greek tragedy in recent years. Medea is the subject of a major study by E. Hall et al. (2000), which includes a listing of all the principal productions from 1540 to 2000 (assembled by David Gowen, 232-74), as well as articles on its adaptation into opera and film, etc. See also Hall (1999c), ‘Medea and British legislation before the First World War’. George Buchanan’s Latin translation was performed at Westminster School in the 1540s. Jean Bastier de la Péruse’s La Médée (part Euripidean, part Senecan) was produced in 1553. The students of Trinity College, Cambridge, performed the play in Latin in 1560 or 1561, and the students of Queen’s College, Cambridge, staged a production in 1563. Pierre Corneille’s Médée was performed at the Théâtre du Marais, Paris, in 1635. Not all audiences have been able to stomach Medea’s infanticide, which may well have been an invention on Euripides’ part. For a justification of its significance in theatrical terms, see Easterling (1977, 177-91). In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the deed was either omitted or significantly revised. In Charles Gildon’s adaptation entitled Phaeton; or, The Fatal Divorce (Theatre Royal, 1698) it is carried out by the locals without the knowledge of their mother, who, on learning of their deaths, goes insane and commits suicide. In Charles Johnson’s The Tragedy of Medea (Theatre Royal, 1730) Medea sends her children to Athens and then stabs herself. In Richard Glover’s Medea (Theatre Royal, 1767) Medea kills her children in a fit of madness. In Jack Wooler’s adaptation Jason and Medea: a Comic, Heroic, Tragic, Operatic Burlesque-Spectacular Extravaganza (Grecian Saloon, 1851) Medea and Jason are happily re-united at the end in domestic bliss. In Ernest Legouvé’s Médée (Lyceum, London, 1856) Medea takes the lives of her children in order to protect them from a crueller death at the hands of the Corinthians. A reviewer of the 1907 production in Gilbert Murray’s translation observed that ‘we are not able to feel that it is a living possible hatred’ (quoted in Hall 1997c, 46). Classicists have been equally condemnatory. ‘The murder of children … is mere brutality,’ wrote Page (1938, xiv). ‘If it moves us at all, it does so towards incredulity and horror.’ Modern producers seem on the contrary to relish her deed, which they regard as central to the dynamic of Medea’s personality and sufferings. An important nineteenth-century German production was that of Friedrich Bothe (Königliches Schauspielhaus, Berlin, 1843) in a translation by J. Chr. Donner with music by Carl Taubert. An adaptation by Ioannes Zabelios was performed in Constantinople by the Hellenodramatike Hetaira in 1869. A Russian version with scenery and costume designs by Léon Bakst was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, in 1902. Gilbert Murray’s translation was performed at the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1907, in a production by Harley Granville-Barker, who declared that he wanted ‘something sensational’ with which to begin his association with that theatre. It was the first time the play had been performed in unadapted form on the English stage. Sybil Thorndike memorably took the part of the heroine when it was revived in 1920. An Italian version was performed in the ancient theatre at Syracuse in 1927 under the auspices of the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico. Robinson Jeffers’ adaptation (New York, 1947) ran for 214 performances. In 1951 it became ‘the first American-born production of a Greek tragedy to be brought to Europe’ (Macintosh 1997, 312). Medea in a translation by Rex Warner was performed in Bombay, India, in 1961. In the same year the play, directed by N. Okhlopkov, was performed at the Mayakovsky Theatre, Moscow. A film version by Pasolini starring Maria Callas was released in 1967 – her only role in film (Fig. 55). Medea was selected for the first time as the Cambridge Greek Play in 1974. Yugio Ninagawa’s

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Appendix IV

Fig. 55. Maria Callas as Medea in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (1969).

celebrated Japanese production of Medea (Tokyo, 1978) travelled around Asia, before coming to Athens, Rimini, the south of France, London, Edinburgh and New York City. In 1996 the play was staged in Aman and Cairo. In 1981 Medea was performed in Zurich under the direction of Luca Ronconi, in Stuttgart under the direction of Roberto Ciulii, and in Munich under the direction of Ernst Wendt. In 1992 Diana Rigg starred in the title role in a production directed by Jonathan Kent at the Almeida Theatre, London, which became ‘the most commercially successful of all modern Medeas’ (Hall 1999c, 72). Tony Harrison’s Medea: A Sex-War Opera, commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1995, incorporated some of the scholia in order to suggest multiple versions of the myth. In 2000 Medea, starring Fiona Shaw and directed by Deborah Warner, premièred at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin (Fig. 56). Medea’s dead children looked so realistic that ‘some spectators fainted and others walked out’ (New York Times, 4 February 2001). In 2001 Jacques Lassalle produced Medea with Isabelle Huppert in the starring role, first in the open-air courtyard of Avignon’s Palace of the Popes, later at the Théâtre de Odéon, Paris. Le Monde’s critic praised Huppert for revealing ‘all the Medeas, the barbaric and the wise, the lover and the mother, the witch and the woman’.

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Fig. 56. Fiona Shaw as Medea in Deborah Warner’s Medea (Queen’s Theatre, London, 2001).

Some fifty operas have been inspired by the myth (Macdonald 2000, 100-18). Medea was the source for Pietro Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone (Venice 1649), the earliest surviving opera based on a Greek tragedy. One of the most recent is R. Liebermann’s Freispruch für Medea (Hamburg 1955), which portrays Jason as a western conqueror of the orient. Noteworthy depictions in art include Peter Paul Rubens’s The Flight of Medea (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam), which depicts the heroine escaping on her chariot; Eugene Delacroix’s Medea and her Children (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille), which shows Medea, armed with dagger, clutching her children; and Bernard Safran’s Medea (Fig. 57), which shows a doting mother embracing her children as she gazes with complicity at the viewer. Crouch (1990, 207) dubs Sethe, the heroine of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987) who kills one of her daughters to prevent her from living a life of slavery, ‘Aunt Medea’.

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Appendix IV

Fig. 57. ‘Medea’ by Bernard Safran. Orestes The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not known. Following the 408 production Euripides received an invitation from Archelaus to reside permanently at his court in Macedon. Orestes, with Neoptolemus as protagonist, was revived at the City Dionysia in 340. The fact that the tragedy drew criticism from Aristotle (Poet. 1454a, 1461b) may be evidence of the frequency of revivals. The hypothesis attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium states that the play was a favourite among theatre-goers, notwithstanding the fact that its dénouement is ‘somewhat comical’. Orestes was familiar to the Romans: Vergil (Aen. 4.471) and possibly Ovid (Am. 1.7.9-10) allude to Orestes’ on-stage fit of madness. (It is much less likely that they are recalling a staging of Libation-Bearers). The scene in which Electra cares for her sick brother is depicted on a wall painting of the second century AD in a house at Ephesus (above, p. 65; Fig. 15). Thomas Goffe’s The Tragedie of Orestes, which is partially based on Euripides’

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Fig. 58. Scene from Hansgünther Heyme’s production of Euripides’ Phoenician Women (Stuttgart, 1981).

play, was performed at Christ Church, Oxford, between 1609 and 1619. Jan Kott’s Orestes (University of Berkeley, California, 1966) was mounted as a protest against the Vietnam War. Charles Mee Jr. staged the play in San Diego and New York in 1986 as a comment upon the breakdown in American family values. Phoenician Women The other tragedies in the tetralogy were probably Antiope and Hypsipyle. There are more papyrus fragments of Phoenician Women than of any other play. Overall they cover more than a quarter of the entire text. Owing to its aphoristic content, Phoenician Women was one of the most frequently quoted plays by Christian writers. Its reputation was extremely high in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Stiblinus, who translated the play into Latin in 1562, described it as ‘most tragic and full of vehement passions’. An English version by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmershe with the title Jocasta was performed at Gray’s Inn, London, in 1566 (p. 116). In the eighteenth century, however, the play’s popularity declined. Hansgünther Heyme’s 1981 Stuttgart production treated the play as ‘an audiovisual concept’ (Flashar 1991, 268; Fig. 58). In 1995 Katie Mitchell directed Phoenician Women (Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon), using Georgian dance formations and Eastern European music.

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Appendix IV [Rhesus] The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not preserved. Most scholars believe Rhesus to be falsely attributed to Euripides. Its date is uncertain. Suppliant Women The names of the other plays in the tetralogy are not preserved. Rush Rehm’s production (Stanford University and Washington DC, 1993) coincided with the celebrations of 2,500 years of democracy. In the programme notes Rehm dedicated his work ‘to the people of Nicaragua, a people cruelly and systematically denied the chance to build their own democratic society by the United States of America’. Trojan Women Trojan Women is unique among the later extant tragedies in belonging to a connected trilogy (Alexander, Palamedes, Trojan Women, with Sisyphus as satyr play). The group won second prize in 415 BC. The relationship of the play to the Athenians’ massacre of the adult male population of the island of Melos remains a matter for speculation (above, p. 4). Trojan Women was one of the most frequently staged Greek tragedies in the twentieth century, since it was identified as a prime vehicle for anti-war sentiment. Gilbert Murray’s translation had its première at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1905. Harley Granville-Barker took it to Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and the College of the City of New York in 1915, where it became ‘the first professional production of a Greek play in America to be critically acclaimed’ (Macintosh 1997, 304). Of a production staged in a cinema in Oxford at the time of the Versailles negotiations in 1915, Sybil Thorndike (1960, 164) wrote that it ‘caught the mood of the after-war emotion of the time’. Of a later production at the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square, she said: ‘All the misery and awfulness of the 1914 war was symbolised in that play and we all felt here was the beginning of a new era of peace and brotherhood between nations.’ J.-P. Sartre’s adaptation (Théâtre National Populaire, Paris, 1965) was used to emphasise the threat and fear of nuclear war. Michael Cacoyannis’ 1971 film version begins by crediting Euripides with having written ‘a perennial indictment of the horror and futility of all wars’ – an obvious allusion to the Vietnam War – and ends by declaring, ‘We who have made this film dedicate it to all those who fearlessly oppose the oppression of man by man’ – a no less obvious allusion to the Greek military junta (above, p. 175; Fig. 43). Tadashi Suzuki’s production (Tokyo, 1974) depicted the Trojans as Japanese civilians at the end of the Second World War in the wake of the atom bomb. In 1983 an adaptation of Sartre’s Trojan Women was produced in Tel Aviv, Israel, by the German director Holek Freitag as a protest against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (Levy and Yaari 1999, 99-123). Trojan Women, directed by Jane Montgomery, was the Cambridge Greek Play in 1998.

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Appendix V

Productions of Greek Tragedy with a Political Agenda This appendix lists some memorable productions of Greek tragedy carrying a political or ideological agenda. There is further discussion in my article (2003). In principle, a theatre director has at her or his disposal the following devices with which to invest a production with a contemporary message: (a) the insertion of extraneous lines, either within the body of the text or in the form of a prologue or epilogue (b) directorial comments expressed in programme notes, interviews, etc. (c) the choice of setting, costume, scenery, props, etc. (d) the use of on-stage video clips or still photographs to provide a contemporary background and context (e) the choice of actors and actresses whose known leanings enhance the political significance of the production (f) combining plays by different tragedians or by the same tragedian in order to re-create a ‘lost’ trilogy or series of plays In addition, some productions acquire political significance as events overtake them or as audiences unprompted by the director interpret them as such. I am much indebted to theatre critics and previous researchers. 1738 1836 1856 1905 1907 1914 1914 1919 1925 1936 1944

James Thomson’s Agamemnon (Theatre Royal, London) [critical of the behaviour of King George II?] Thomas Talfourd’s Ion (Theatre Royal, London) [pro-reformist, critical of the British monarchy] Robert Brough’s Medea; or, The Best of Mothers, with a Brute of a Husband (Royal Olympic Theatre, London) [plea for women’s independence] Harley Granville-Barker’s Trojan Women (Royal Court, London) [antiBoer War] Harley Granville-Barker’s Medea (Savoy Theatre, London) [pro-suffragette] Maurice Browne’s Trojan Women (Chicago) [anti-First World War] Harley Granville-Barker’s Trojan Women (New York) [anti-First World War] Gilbert Murray’s Trojan Women (Cowley Road, Oxford) [critical of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles] Antigone performed in honour of Mussolini (Syracuse) [fascist] Nazi production of the Oresteia (Berlin) [pro-Aryan] Jean Anouilh’s Antigone (Paris, etc.) [anti-bourgeois]

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Appendix V 1948 1956 1960 1965 1966 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1973 1974 1980 1983 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1993 1994 1997 1999

Berthold Brecht’s Antigonemodell 1948 (Chur, Switzerland) [antiNazi, Marxist] Jules Dassin’s film Phèdre [Marxist] Vittorio Gassman’s and Luciano Lucignani’s Oresteia (Syracuse) [Marxist] J.-P. Sartre’s adaptation of Trojan Women (Paris) [anti-imperialist, pacifist, anti-nuclear bomb] Jan Kott’s Orestes (Durham Theatre, University of California at Berkeley) [anti-Vietnam War] Antoine Vitez’s Sophocles’ Electra (Algeria) [anti-colonialist] Michael Cacoyannis’ film of Euripides’ Electra [anti-Greek junta] Ola Rotimi’s Yoruban adaptation of Oedipus the King entitled The Gods are not to Blame (Nigeria) [condemnation of tribal allegiances in the region] Richard Schechner’s adaptation of Bacchae entitled Dionysos in 69 (New York) [anti-Vietnam war, pro-hippie culture] Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Notes for an African Oresteia [condemnation of the effects of neo-capitalism in the African continent] Michael Cacoyannis’ film version of Trojan Women [anti-Greek junta, anti-Vietnam War] Athol Fugard’s adaptation of Antigone entitled The Island (Cape Town) [anti-apartheid] Tadashi Suzuki’s Trojan Women (Tokyo) [anti-Vietnam War] Peter Stein’s Oresteia (Berlin) [critical of the fallibility and limitations of western democracy] Holek Freitag’s production of J.-P. Sartre’s Trojan Women (Tel Aviv) [anti-Israeli invasion of Lebanon] Andrej Wajda’s film version of Antigone [pro-Solidarity movement] Charles Mee’s Orestes (New York) [critical of American materialism] Hansgünther Heyme’s Oresteia (Essen) [Marxist-feminist] Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of Philoctetes entitled The Cure at Troy (Derry) [critical of the culture of violence in Northern Ireland] Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides (Théâtre du Soleil, Paris) [feminist] Peter Sellars’ Persians [anti-Gulf War] Nikos Koundouros’ Antigone subtitled ‘A Cry for Peace’ (borders of Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic) [protesting the military build-up in the region] David Leveaux’s Electra (Donmar Warehouse, etc.) [comment on civil disturbances ‘from the Balkans to the streets of Omagh’] Katie Mitchell’s Oresteia (National Theatre, London) [feminist]

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Notes Introduction 1

The irretrievable. For the practicalities of putting on a performance, see Gould (1985, 263-81). For the composition of the Athenian audience, see Goldhill (1997, 54-68). Wiles (2000, 109) suggests that ‘men probably had better hearing than today’ and would thus have ‘picked up more of the vocal delivery than a modern audience sitting in a Greek theatre does today’. There is a valuable collection of testimonia in Csapo and Slater (1995, 103-85). Revivals of fifth-century tragedy were staged at the Rural Dionysia in deme theatres at Anagyrous, Eleusis, Euonymus, Icarion, Thoricus and Mounychia. See Whitehead (1986, 215-20), Csapo and Slater (op. cit., 121-32), Wiles (1997, 23-33) and Taplin (1999, 36f.). On the function of music in tragedy, see Sifakis (2001, 21-35). For fragments of music belonging to Eur. Or. ll. 140-42, 338-44 and IA 784-92, see Turner (1987, no. 35), West (1992, 284-6), Irigoin (1997, 106f.) and Pöhlmann and West (2001, nos 2-4). As Pöhlmann and West (op. cit., 11) note, the fact that Euripides was regularly performed increases the likelihood that what has survived is his original composition. Occasionally the scholia supply useful information relating to music, as at Eur. Or. 176, which reveals a sensitivity to the interaction between text and melody (Falkner 2002, 345f.). Probably the playwrights omitted musical notation from their texts and taught it orally, which was no doubt how it was transmitted via professional musicians. An instance where the assignment of lines has caused controversy is Aes. Suppl. 291ff. (King Pelasgus questions the newly arrived Danaans – or vice versa). See further Rosenmeyer (1982, 20-3). On the relationship between tragedy and satyric drama, cf. Laurence Olivier’s reflections (1982, 155) on acting the title role in Oedipus the King and Mr Puff in Sheridan’s The Critic in the same production: ‘I could really sink my teeth into the Greek tragedy without reservation, secure in the anticipation of the joyous gaiety that was to follow it.’ For thematic links between tragic trilogies and satyr plays, see Seaford (1988, 22-4). On the complex relationship between tragedy and the polis, see Wilson (1996, 310) who describes it as ‘one combining displacement, sublimation, and distantiation with an intensely self-reflective focus’. On the dangers of hunting for false allusions to contemporary events, see Zuntz (1958, 59) who in regard to Euripides’ plays argues: ‘In them indeed is all the history of his time; but not in the form of a running commentary on the issues of the day.’ See also Meier (1993), who posits that the plays with a more obvious historical background, including Aes. Pers. and Eum., served the socio-political function of ‘repeating’ climactic moments in a way that helped integrate them into the community’s consciousness. He writes (op. cit., 214): ‘Tragedy helped the Athenians to work through difficulties, threats and uncertainties, which would otherwise have hampered them in their thinking, feelings and actions … and … to incorporate the ques-

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Notes to pages 5-9 tions and needs unleashed by politics into broader perspectives.’ A somewhat similar approach is taken by Bowie (1997, 61) who argues that in Eur. Suppl. and Soph. Phil. ‘particular historical events are made homologous with mythical stories in such a way that the action of the drama provides various models for viewing the events’. For the politics implicit in the ritual of the Dionysia, as well as the difficulty in extracting ‘political meaning’ from a polysemous text like the Oresteia, see Goldhill (2000, 34-56). On the audience’s expectations and the ‘mentality of participation’, see Cartledge (1997, 3-35). On its critical acumen, see Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 272-8). For the ‘performance’ of Athenian audiences, see Wallace (1997, 97-111), who believes that they became more demonstrative and raucous in the fourth century because ‘some artists deliberately played to the emotional side of the theatre audience’ (p. 109). Aeschylus. The Suda puts the number of Aeschylus’ plays at 90, whereas the 5 earliest extant Aeschylean manuscript puts it at 73 (Mediceus Laur. 32.9). Lloyd-Jones (LCL [Aeschylus II] 375-9) lists 83 possible plays. See also TGF III, 58-9. The larger number of his victories could include those which he won posthumously, if Phil. Life of Apoll. (6.11) is right in claiming that re-performances were allowed to compete with the plays of living poets. Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 86), however, suggests that the discrepancy may derive from the fact that some of Aeschylus’ victories were inscribed in his name, others in that of the chorêgos who financed the production. Aeschylus’ Life and the entry in Suda are reproduced in TGF III Testimonia A, 31-37. For revivals, see Life 12; Philostr. Life of Apoll. 6.11; schol. on Ar. Ach. 10 and Frogs 868; Quint. 10.1.66. For the allegation that he divulged secrets pertaining to the Eleusinian Mysteries, see Arist. NE 3.1, 1111a9f. OCT and Heracleides Ponticus fr. 170 Wehrli. For his stay in Sicily, see H. Berve, Die Tyrannis bei den Griechen (1967, 148-52); D. Asheri, CAH 52 1992, ch. 7. For the debate regarding the authenticity of Prometheus Bound, see Griffith (1977, 225), who goes so far as to state that if it had come to light as an anonymous play ‘few scholars would regard it as the work of Aeschylus’. Pattoni (1987) argues the contrary. TGF III, 29-108, provides a compilation of testimonia. For a survey of recent research, see Green (1989, 49-53; 1995, 83-4). Sophocles. The titles of Sophocles’ plays are listed by Lloyd-Jones in Sopho7 cles III (LCL), 3-9. The Life and Suda entry are reproduced in TGF IV Testimonia A, 29-41, and in Lloyd-Jones (Sophocles I [LCL], 6-15). Other information is supplied by Marmor Parium; Ar. Frogs 82; Arist. 1449a18-19; Phil. the Younger, Imag. 13. TGF IV, 29-95, provides a compilation of testimonia. Connolly (1998, 1-21) has recently argued that it is ‘unlikely’ that Sophocles received heroic honours as Dexion before the 330s and ‘entirely plausible’ that the report may even be a Hellenistic biographical invention. A.W. Schlegel’s essay ‘Life and political character of Sophocles’ (trans. in Dawe 1996, 159-77) is an interesting example of nineteenth-century historicism. For a survey of recent research, see Green (1989, 84; 1995, 83f.). Euripides. Kovacs (1994) provides a compilation of testimonia. P. Oxy. 9 9.1176 (= Kovacs op. cit., 3-11) preserves the third-century BC dialogue by Satyrus on Euripides’ life. For the poet’s withdrawal to Macedon, see Borza (1990, 172f.). For a reconstruction of the lost Archelaus, see Harder (1985). On the basis of certain complimentary geographical allusions, Easterling (1994, 73-79) has tentatively identified locations outside Athens which may have hosted Euripidean drama during the playwright’s lifetime, including Magnesia, Thurii, Macedon, Thessaly and Sicily. See also Taplin (1999, 43-8), who advances the

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Notes to pages 14-18 case for Thessaly. For the playwright as ‘sophos’, see Winnington-Ingram (1969, 127-42). Refs. include Ar. Clouds 1377f.; Frogs 776, 1413, 1434; Lys. 368; Thesm. 1130; and schol. on Clouds 144. For further testimony see Pl. Rep. 568a; Plu. Mor. 837e; Athen. Deipn. 12.537d; Luc. Ind. 15; Life of Euripides, passim. Page (1934, 9) suspects that IA was completed by a second hand a year or two after Euripides’ death. N2 fr. 286.1-2 is sometimes cited as evidence of the poet’s alleged atheism. For Euripides’ relationship with his fellow countrymen, see Stevens (1956, 87-94) who concludes that he was ‘a poet not without honour in his own country’ (p. 94). For the reception of Euripides up to the twelfth century, see Funke’s immensely learned article (1965-66, 233-79). For an account of Euripidean scholarship from the nineteenth century onwards, see Michelini (1987, 3-51). For a survey of recent research, see Green (1989, 54-7; 1995, 84-5). 1. Readers and Star-Actors 14

The author’s autograph. Two sons and a nephew of Aeschylus, Sophocles’ son, and either a son or a nephew of Euripides all wrote tragedy (Sutton 1987, 9-26). As Pat Easterling has suggested to me, members of the chorus may have learnt their parts in the course of their training, as did the choirs who sang dithyrambs and other types of lyric poetry, and therefore not required copies. For Aristophanes’ dependency upon written texts, see Lowe (1993, 63-83), who claims, on the basis of the second extant version of Clouds, that it was he ‘who first applies to verse the practice of revising performance scripts specifically for book production.’ For a discussion of papyrus roll manufacture, copying and distribution, see Kenyon (1932, 45-72), Maehler, s.v. ‘Books, Greek and Roman’, pp. 249-51 in OCD3, and Casson (2001, 25f.). On the prevalence of silent reading in antiquity, see Knox (1968, 412-35) and Svenbro (1987, 131-47). Svenbro (p. 134) claims that scriptio continua not only necessitated silent reading, but reinforced the practice. However, those who read prodigiously can hardly have needed to read aloud, even in the case of scriptio continua. For the introduction of indications of change of speaker, see Wilson (1970, 305) and Rosenmeyer (1982, 21). Though the earliest example of attributing names to speakers is found on a papyrus dated between the first century BC and first century AD (Turner 1987, 13), the convention does not seem to have been systematically applied until the fifth century AD. A papyrus of Stesichorus’ Thebaid dated c. 250 is the earliest surviving poem exhibiting colometrisation (see below). For the book trade in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, see Knox (1985, 8-14). For the book trade in the Hellenistic period, see Easterling (1985, 16-41). For the copyist’s craft, see Turner (1987, 1-23). For the cost of copying in the second century AD, see Turner (1980, 87f.). For an anthology of lyric passages from tragedies, see P. Strassb. 307 fr. (middle of third century BC) = Turner (1987, no. 30). For an estimate of the life-span of papyri, see Turner (op. cit., 7f.). Galen’s suggestion (18[2].630) that they could last as long as three hundred years in regular use is certainly exaggerated. 18 Fifth-century tragedy in fourth-century discourse. Sedgwick (1948, 9) was of the opinion that ‘familiarity with recent tragedy and certain old favourites … was acquired in social and civic life far more than from books, which at that time must have been rare and expensive, and would not give the music.’ For the interpretation of the word rhêsis, see K.J. Dover, Aristophanes’ Clouds (Oxford 1970) on line 1371. As Griffith (1977, 348 n. 59) points out, the plentiful allusions

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Notes to pages 20-23 in Aristophanes suggest that some of Euripides’ less notable productions ‘still made quite a stir’ and may have continued to be read by his devoted fans. For further discussion of the appropriation of fifth-century tragedy by fourth-century orators, see Perlman (1964, 155-72) and Wilson (1996, 310-31). For the complex relationship between tragedy, rhetoric and the Athenian polis, see Halliwell (1997, 121-41). On Euripides’ usefulness for those preparing to become orators, see Quint. 10.1.67-9. For lines from tragedy which may have been inscribed on a stone by an apprentice mason as a trial piece and which seem to provide evidence of the general public’s familiarity with tragedy in the late fourth or early third cent, see J. Bousquet, ‘Inscriptions de Delphes’, pp. 183-6 in BCH 116 (1992). Fourth-century tragedy. Webster’s (1954, 294-308) appraisal of the quality 20 of fourth century tragedy is still valuable. For Astydamas, see Easterling (1997, 216) and TGF I, no. 60. For Carcinus, see TGF I, no. 70. Arist. Poet. 1455a22-9 alleges that Carcinus was censured by the Athenians for the way in which he staged one of his plays. See further Green (1990, 281-5). For Theodectes, see TGF I, no. 72. On the evidence of vase-painting, Webster (op. cit., 297) hesitantly identifies the ‘common denominator’ of fourth-century tragedy as ‘excitement of story, scenic effects, good speeches for actors, and what today we call “theatre” ’. Similarly Kuch (1993, 548) suggests that it was characterised by ‘the tendency to bring suspense and distractions into tragic drama including the production of show-effects’. However, these descriptions are weakened by the fact that their evidence is largely based on Rhesus, which cannot be securely dated. For further discussion of the spread of Athenian tragedy outside Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries, see Taplin (1999, 33-57). For the various public spectacles staged in the theatre, see Chaniotis (1997, 224-6). Paus. 10.4.1 identifies the existence of a theatre as one of the defining characteristics of the polis – as indispensable as a gymnasium, agora and water-supply. Revivals of ‘old tragedy’. Easterling (1999, 164) aptly describes the intro23 duction of revivals as ‘the most telling theatrical event recorded in the generation after the Peloponnesian War’. Griffith (1977, 232) notes that the choice of plays for revival, the collection of didascalic information, and the fact that the sons of both Sophocles and Euripides were active dramatists, would have contributed to the fact that the three great tragedians ‘dominated the field’. For the Didascaliae inscription, see IG II2 2319-23 = Mette (1977, 82-158). The title of Aristotle’s lost Didascaliae is known only from the schol. on Ar. Birds 1379. In addition to tragedies, the inscription includes lists of dithyrambic performances and comedies. See also TGF I, 3-52. For further discussion, see Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 71-3), Pfeiffer (1968, 81), Csapo and Slater (1995, 41-2), and Easterling (1997, 214-16). For the revival of Or., see IG II2 2320.2 and 19 = Mette (1977, 91). The fact that Euripides’ plays were chosen for revival three times in succession is consistent with what we know from elsewhere about his popularity in the fourth century. Easterling (op. cit., 215) suggests that the significance of the new order of proceedings (first satyr play, followed by revival of old tragedy, and last of all the competition between the new tragedians) ‘may have been that it suggested continuity with old tradition while actually offering something different’. Wilson (1996, 317) aptly writes of Astydamas’ epigram, ‘For all its boastfulness, there is a deep-seated frustration here that the masters of the art are now beyond the agôn, that the glorious past of tragedy weighs too heavily on its contemporary practitioners.’ The epigram echoes lines 175-8 of Hesiod’s Works and Days, in which the poet bemoans the fact that he is living in the Age of Iron. As Pat

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Notes to pages 24-29 Easterling has suggested to me, Astydamas might have received this singular honour as a living playwright partly in recognition of his family’s long-standing contribution to the tragic art. Towards the formation of a repertoire. See Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 24 279-305), Csapo and Slater (1995, 221-74), and Easterling (1997, 211-24). Pertusi (1956, 121-7) lists allusions to Euripides in both Aristophanes and Menander. Though scornful of Aeschylus, Demosthenes is at pains not to demean the acting profession itself (Easterling 1999, 154-66). For the privileges enjoyed by fourth-century actors, see Webster (1954, 294 with n. 2). For their status as ‘stars’, see Easterling (2002, 327-41). For portraits of actors, see Pln. NH 35.93 and 100. The fullest discussion of actors’ interpolations is still that of Page (1934), who focuses upon Eur. IA. The scholia on Or. and Med. are particularly informative regarding the practices of actors (cf. Schwartz, Schol. in Eur. II, p. 406). Taplin (1995, 110) suggests that a touring company may have modified the ending of Eur. Med. Rosenmeyer (1982, 12) argues that Aeschylus would have been more able to protect his texts against the vagaries of actors than Euripides because he acted in his own plays. Even so, it can have afforded them only a temporary reprieve. Recent scholarship has tended to downplay the importance of actors’ interpolations. As Mastronarde (1978, 105-28) points out, ‘Interpolation arguments almost always depend in the end on the judgment of the critic; only rarely do objectively-established points decide the case for him.’ The Lycurgan version. As Wartelle (1971, 104-10) points out, it is extremely 25 unlikely that all the 300-odd plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were transcribed. Whatever the basis upon which the selection was made, it was certainly not limited to plays which had been awarded first prize. Sidwell (1996, 190) suggests that the framers of the decree ‘did not care two figs’ for the purity of the text and were only interested in preventing the exploitation of old tragedy by their political opponents at a time when Athens was divided about what response to adopt in the face of Philip II’s interference in Greek affairs. Certain roles lend themselves to improvisation, particularly in an age when actors are gaining an international repute. Easterling (forthcoming) has suggested that the Cassandra actor in TGF II, F 649 may have been expected to improvise at places in the text which bear the word ôidê (‘song’). The bronze statues of the three Attic tragedians were still visible in the second century AD (Paus. 1.21-2). For discussion of the surviving portraits, see Richter (1984, 74ff., 121ff., and 205ff.). Page (1934, 2) maintains that the well-established practice of adapting the text to the particular needs of the production continued unabated even after the Lycurgan version had been established. For minor fifth-century tragedians, see Knox (1985, 340-2). The canon of five never seriously rivalled the triad and its origins are shrouded in mystery. Achaeus’ place among them is somewhat baffling, since, according to Suda (s.v.), he won only a single victory out of some 44 plays. For Ion’s literary output, see Dover (1986, 1-12). ‘A huge longing for Euripides’. See further Xanthakis-Karamanos (1980, 29 32f.). The reason why Euripides loses out to Aeschylus in Ar. Frogs has been endlessly debated. Revermann (2000, 451) suggests that the playwright’s ‘prominence and notoriety’ in Frogs and Thesm. should be interpreted ‘as underlining Euripides’ status as a classic by the end of the fifth century’. Macedon’s interest in Euripides at a time when that country was emerging as a leading power in the Greek world may well have contributed significantly to the dissemination of his drama. For the performance of Electra’s lament before the Peloponnesian delegates, see Hall (1999a, 114f.). The anecdote caught the imagination of later poets,

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Notes to pages 31-40 notably Milton (Sonnet 8.12-14) and Browning (Aristophanes’ Apology). For Alexander the Great’s alleged fascination with Euripides, see Bosworth (1996, 140-66). Given the fact that Alexander’s life naturally lent itself to tragic interpretation, we should, however, be somewhat sceptical of the claim. The eighteenth--century novelist and essayist Lawrence Sterne tells an embroidered version of the effect of Euripides’ Andromeda upon the Abderites in A Sentimental Journey (1768) under the title ‘A Fragment’. For performances of Eur. Cresphontes and Hec., see Dem. 1.180 and 267. Tragedy illustrated. For the chorus of youths on the column-kratêr in Basle, 31 see Green (1991, 35). Trendall and Webster (1971) identified 89 illustrations of Aes., 57 of Soph., and 29 of Eur. dated to the fifth century; 58 of Aes., 29 of Soph., and 111 of Eur. dated to the fourth-century; 73 of Eur. and few of any other dramatist dated to the third or second century. Green and Handley (1995, 36-48 with figs 16-25) cautiously claim to identify illustrations on fifth- and fourth-century vases only of Aes. Edonoi, Eum., Ixion, Phineus, and Telephus; Soph. Andromeda and OT; Eur. Hipp., IA, Phoen., and Telephus. For the Capodarso Painter, see Taplin (1993, 27-9; 1997, 85-8) and Green (1994, 56-62). In his most recent discussion of the subject, Taplin (1999, 40f.) observes, ‘the highly popular scene of Orestes at Delphi (over forty known examples) must have been first drawn from Aeschylus’ Eumenides’, though he points out that this cannot be taken as proof of the play’s popularity on stage. The playwright who is most ‘reflected’ (Taplin’s word) is Euripides, and his ‘most reflected plays’ are Telephus, Andr. and IT. Aristotle’s Art of Poetry. See Taplin (1995, 95f.) for what he calls Aristotle’s 36 ‘fixation with this new-fangled “reading” ’. Webster’s (1954, 307) claim that the praise accorded to classical poetry ‘on every page’ contributed to ‘establishing the fifth-century tragedians as classics’ seems exaggerated. References to fourthcentury tragedy in Aristotle include: 1453b33 (Astydamas’ Alcmaeon), 1454b23 (Carcinus’ Thyestes), 1452a27, 1455b29 (Theodectes’ Lynceus), and 1455a9 (Theodectes’ Tydeus). Taplin (1977, 477) suggests that Aristotle was of the opinion that performance merely added ‘external embellishment’. For the concept of catharsis, see the debate between Segal (1996, 149-72) and Easterling (1996, 173-81). On the improvisatory nature of Art of Poetry Steiner (1996, 545 n. 5) writes, ‘I am prepared to wager that the young man who took the notes on Aristotle’s lecture was sitting very near the door on a very noisy day.’ On Aristotle’s ‘near-total displacement of the polis from tragedy’, see Hall (1998, 295-309), who claims (p. 305) that one of its most important effects was that it ‘made (tragedy) accessible to “everyman”, because its reader is encouraged to assess tragedy in complete dissociation from civic concepts’. Audiences, however, may have reacted differently. Though Aristotle occasionally allludes to other viewpoints, we should not assume that he is contesting with other critics in the formal sense of the word ‘critic’ (e.g. 1453a24, 1456a7). The work can be dated only very imprecisely to 367-322 BC. For its Nachleben, see Halliwell (1986, 286-323). 2. Librarians and Kings 40

The Library at Alexandria. Fraser (1972, I 325) identifies the thief as Ptolemy III Euergetes, though he later (p. 449) seems to accept Tzetzes’ claim that it was in the reign of his predecessor, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, that Alexander of Aetolia began ‘correcting’ the dramatic texts. Tzetzes is our major source of information for the library (In Aristoph. Proem = Kaibel, CGF 17-33).

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Notes to pages 41-48

41

45

46

48

For discussions of its physical arrangements, see Pfeiffer (1968, 96-9), Fraser (op. cit., 320-35), and Barnes (2000, 64-9). For a brief account of its history, see Casson (2001, 31-47). Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 6) compare conditions in the Library to that of life in an Oxbridge college. The image of an Alexandrian ivory tower, whose scholars devoted themselves exclusively to reading and took no account of contemporary performance, is effectively debunked by Falkner (2002, 346). L. Canfora, The Vanished Library (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1987) offers an imaginative reconstruction of its colourful history. Alexandrian criticism. See Pfeiffer (1968, 87-104), Turner (1980, 100-12), and Easterling (1985, 29-35). For the role of the Alexandrians in canon formation, see Easterling, s.v. ‘Canon’ in OCD3 and 2002, 22-5. As Easterling notes, the word ‘canon’, though Greek in origin, was not used in this way in antiquity. Common terms were hoi enkrithentes (the included) and hoi prattomenoi (the dealt with). My examples of comments in the tragic scholia are based on Meijerling (1987, 186-200). For an overall assessment of the quality of scholia, see Slater (1987, 40) who writes, ‘We should not assume want of sense, ignorance, or dishonesty a priori or alternatively discover virtues they did not possess, especially where there is so much that is false and must be wrong or inaccurate in our scholia and authors.’ For the varied rhetoric employed by Alexandrian scholars to castigate actors for their interpolations, see Falkner (2002, 353), who cites Med. 85, 148, 169, 228, 356, 380, 520, and 910. Most (1990, 55) lists the following possible motives behind the canonisation of any body of texts: ‘popularity, multifunctionality, ideological serviceability, and the personal taste of key figures … together with estimates of quality and, sometimes at least, claims for moral utility’. For hypomnêmata as lecture notes, see Turner (1980, 113). Praxiphanes. See Brink (1946, 19-25) for the testimonia. Praxiphanes’ place of origin was either Mytilene or Rhodes. See further s.v. in OCD3. Alexander of Aetolia. See Pfeiffer (1968, 105) and Fraser (1972, I 449f.). Alexander was a member of the Pleiad of Alexandrian tragic poets (see above, p. 50). Callimachus of Cyrene. See Dover (1968, ch. 11), Pfeiffer (1968, 128f.), Fraser (1972, I 452-6) and Turner (1980, 102-4). Griffith (1977, 233) surmises that Callimachus’ Pinakes ‘were apparently published for general consumption; they should be distinguished from the actual catalogues of the Library which must have existed in some form, for the use of the librarians and others who wanted to consult its contents’. For Callimachus’ Catalogue of the Plays of Aeschylus, see Wilamowitz, Aeschylus, ed. mai. (1914, 7f.); G. Murray, ed. II (1955, 375). For his Catalogue of the Plays of Euripides, see IG XIV.1152, IG II2 2363.38ff., P. Oxy. 27.2455, 2456, 2457 and 2462. Griffith (1977, 244f.) argues that it was Callimachus (or conceivably Alexander of Aetolia) who first attributed Prometheus Bound to Aeschylus. Aristophanes of Byzantium. See Pfeiffer (1968, 171-209). For the impact of the Aristophanean version, see Barrett (1964, 56). The only surviving tragic scholia which are actually attributed to Aristophanes are Or. 488, 714, 1038, 1287; Hipp. 171; Tr. 47 (as listed in Slater 1986, nos 386-91). On the possibility that Aristophanes may have written hypomnêmata, see Pfeiffer (op. cit., 210). Aristarchus of Samothrace. Pfeiffer (1968, 222-4) is of the opinion that Aristarchus remains the ‘likeliest candidate’ for laying the foundations for all later commentaries on the plays. There are also references to a hypomnêma on Rhesus by a certain Crates (schol. on Phoen. 208), and to hypomnêmata on the plays of Sophocles and

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Notes to pages 48-50 Euripides by Callistratus. Other Alexandrian critics of tragedy of which little is known include Timachidas (schol. on Med. I, 167), Parmeniscus (schol. on Med. 273), and Apollodorus of Tarsus (schol. on Med. 148). Didymus. Pfeiffer (1968, 277) claims that Didymus’ work ‘stopped at the 48 point beyond which he had no predecessors to draw on’. Barrett (1964,48) notes that Didymus’ commentaries seem to have been concerned ‘more with interpretation and literary comment than with textual criticism’. But ‘interpretation’ may be making too grand a claim for his scholarly endeavours. As West (1970, 288) indicates, he would have had to produce at the rate of two books per week for a total of thirty-five years to reach a total of 3,500. Performances of tragedy in the Hellenistic world. Le Guen (1995, 59-90) offers a vivid account of the continuing vitality of the theatre in the Hellenistic world. Green (1994, ch. 5) discusses the archaeological evidence for productions of tragedy in this era. There is also a useful selection of epigraphical data in Csapo and Slater (1995, 39-49). On the impact of theatrical performances on the mentality of the Hellenistic age and on the emergence of a tendency to interpret the lives of public figures and the destiny of states in tragic terms, see Chaniotis (1997, 219-59). A striking instance of Hellenistic ‘performativity’ is Agathocles’ melodramatic announcement of the death of Ptolemy IV to the army in 204 BC (Polyb. 15.26.1-3). For the inscriptions from Delos, Tegea, etc., see Mette (1977, 63ff., 198, 149ff., 53f.). For the inscription recording the performance by Satyrus of Samos, see Gentili (1979, 27f. with n. 37). On adaptations by tragôidoi, see Broneer (1953, 193). A house on the island of Delos, built c. 100 BC, contains a number of illustrations of Greek drama, including one (apparently) of Oedipus at Colonus (Strocka 1977, 53 n. 85). For the Exagôgê of Ezekiel, of which 269 lines survive, see TGF I, no. 128. Jacobson (1983) includes both text and translation. See also J. Weineke, Ezechielis Iudaei poetae Alexandrini fabula quae inscribitur Exagôgê fragmenta (Diss. Münster 1931). The excerpts are preserved by Eusebius from Alexander Polyhistor’s On the Jews (FGrH 273 F 19). Though primarily influenced by Euripides, Ezekiel also demonstrates familiarity with the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles (Jacobson op. cit., 23-8). For the origin of the name ‘Pleiad’, see Strab. Geog. 14.675. Only five of the seven names are regularly attested, viz. Alexander of Aetolia, Homer of Byzantium, Lycophron of Chalcis, Philicus of Corcyra, and Sositheus. They were nothing if not prolific: Homer of Byzantium is said to have written 45 plays and Lycophron 64. See further K. Ziegler in RE VI.A (1937) cols 1969-79, Pfeiffer (1968, 119), and Xanthakis-Karamanos (1993, 118-20). As Page (1951, 37) notes, a mere 22 lines of Hellenistic tragedy survived in anthologies up to time of the fifth-century AD encyclopaedist Stobaeus and only four in other sources. The evidence of papyri. See Turner (1980, passim). For re-constructions of 50 Eur. Hypsipyle, see Bond (1963) and Cockle (1987). Grenfell and Hunt (P. Oxy. 6.852) also provide a commentary. Of the fragment of Timotheus, Turner (1951, 5f.) writes, ‘it is a pleasing notion that this roll was the precious possession of a wandering singer, perhaps an Ionian, who could attract an audience even for modern Greek music in a foreign land’. An example of an anthology that served as a theatrical text is P. Oxy. 27.2458 (third century BC), which contains alphabetical sigla denoting the actors (Gentili 1979, 20 no. 9). A papyrus dated to the late second or early third century AD contains sixteen lines of a tragedy thought to have been composed in the early fifth century (Page 1951). It probably dealt with the usurpation of the Lydian throne by Gyges. Page (1941) provides a useful edition of selected tragic papyri, prefacing each

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Notes to pages 54-60 fragment with bibliography and introductory notes. Pack (1965) supplies an index of Greek (as well as Latin) literary papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt arranged alphabetically according to authors and their works, though without any chronological table. For the fragments of the tragic hypomnêmata, see Turner (1980, 119). The biographical tradition. For an attempt to establish criteria for the 54 historicity or otherwise of statements in ancient biographies, see Fairweather (1970, 231-75), who notes the tendency ‘to tie literary history in with fixed points in political history’ (p. 261). Examples include the battle of Salamis, in which Aeschylus fought, in whose celebrations Sophocles joined, and in the same year as which Euripides was born. Allegations of ignoble birth or immorality are also suspect. Euripides’ death – being torn to pieces by dogs – closely parallels the deaths of Heraclitus and Lucian as reported in the biographical tradition. In the fifth century BC Ion of Chios collected anecdotes about famous tragedians for a work called Epidêmiai (FGrH 392 F 4ff.). Satyrus, who lived before 150 BC, was a student of Aristotelian philosophy. See Momigliano (1993, 80). Lefkowitz (1981) provides a discussion and translation of all three Lives. Fraser (1972, I 453) is of the opinion that ‘The fashionable emphasis on pinacography seems to have stultified the development of genuine biographical writing.’ 3. Teachers and Churchmen 58

Roman tragedy. Conte (1994, 41) suggests that the guiding principle behind the Roman adaptation of Greek tragedy in the Republican period is likely to have been one of aemulatio, ‘competition’, with the original. See further Gratwick (1982, 133-7) and Holford-Strevens (1999, 221-27). Pertusi (1956, 129f.) lists 11 extant and 14 non-extant plays of Euripides, which he believes to be the principal inspiration for Roman Republican tragedies. Tarrant (1976, 10) argues emphatically against any possibility that Aeschylus’ Agamemnon served as Seneca’s model on the grounds that it shows no similarity in ‘characterisation, structure and themes’. For general discussion of Seneca’s antecedents, see Tarrant (1978, 213-63), who concludes that the dominant influence is Augustan tragedy. The relationship of his Oedipus and Hercules Oetaeus to their Sophoclean prototypes is discussed by Holford-Strevens (op. cit., 239-57). Macintosh (2000, 2) writes that Seneca’s Medea shapes the events of her tragedy ‘seemingly knowing the Euripidean version of those events’. The belief that Seneca’s plays were not intended for dramatic performance was first advanced by A.W. Schlegel in Readings on Dramatic Art (1809). For the contrary view, see Sutton (1986). The question continues to be hotly debated. Coffey and Mayer (1990, 15) are of the opinion that Seneca’s plays were primarily intended for animated recitation or declamation, though the possibility that they were performed in whole or in part ‘should not be excluded’. Finally, Hosidius Geta (c. AD 200) composed a Vergilian cento entitled Medea based primarily on Aen. 4, which also draws on Seneca’s Medea and possibly, too, on Ovid’s lost play of that name (McGill 2002, 143-61). 60 Greek tragedy among the Roman élite. References to Eur. Tro. in Verg. Aen. Bk. 2 have been detected at lines 31-4 (= Tro. 531ff.), 56 (= Tro. 45) and 325 (=Tro. 581-82). However, Servius (comment. ad loc.) maintained that Verg. was thinking of a lost play by Pacuvius when he quotes from Euripides and Aes. at Aen. 4.469-73. Lucretius, too, may have primarily based his description of Iphigeneia’s death on a painting rather than directly on Aes. Agam. For Cicero’s use of Greek tragedy in his rhetorical and philosophical writings, see Jocelyn

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Notes to page 63 (1973, 61-111). Tarrant (1976, 9), who is sceptical of the extent of knowledge of Greek tragedy among the educated classes, points out that there are no references in either Pliny the Younger or Statius. Citations of tragedy in Gellius include AN 1.15.16, 6.3.28, 12.11.6. Cf. also 15.20, where Gellius narrates the life of Euripides. For Plutarch’s ‘Platonic’ interpretation of tragedy, see de Lacy (1952, 159-71). For the tragic structure of Plu.’s Demetr., see Sweet (1951, 177-81), de Lacy (op. cit., 168-71), and Chaniotis (1997, 244f.). Dio Chrysostom cites from Eur. Antigone, Cresphontes, El., Hec., Her., Hipp., Or., Philoctetes, Phoen., and Protiselaus. He never quotes from Aes. or Soph., though he claims to be familiar with their work. For the ‘theatricalisation’ of culture in later antiquity, see the bibliographical note in Easterling (1997, 227). Greek tragedy in performance. See Weissmann (1972, 34) and Jones 63 (1993, 39-52). For tragici cantores, see Sifakis (1967, 75-9, 156-65), Gentili (1979, 22-7), Barnes (1996, 169-72), Easterling and Miles (1999, 96), and Hall (1999a, 103f.). Their performances were known as epideixeis or akroaseis. The inscription celebrating the career of Themison of Miletus states that he was ‘the only one and the first’ to engage in the type of musical composition in which he excelled, though it is not clear exactly what this means (Broneer 1953, 193). For pantomime, see Beacham (1992, 142ff.), Slater (1995, 263-92), Barnes (op. cit., 167-70) and Puchner (2002, 304-24). For Arnobius’ allusion to a performance of S. Trach., see Barnes 1996, 171, citing Cic. Tusc. 2.8.20 as a possible model. For Eur. Hypsipyle at the court of Juba II, see Cockle (1987, 41). It is unclear whether it took place in Rome during Juba’s period of residence at Augustus’ court or later in Mauretania itself. For Plutarch’s identification of Crassus throughout the Life as a ‘Roman Pentheus’, see Braund (1993, 468-74). For recitations of drama in the first century AD, see Stat. Silv. 2.1.114. For Eur. Ba. at the court of Artavasdes, see Hall (1999a, 114) who describes Agave’s victory song over Pentheus’ head as ‘a party-piece in antiquity’. For the Pompeian wall-painting depicting a scene from Eur. Hipp., see Schefold (1962, 93 with pl. 59.4). For the Ephesian wall-painting depicting a scene from Eur. Or., see Strocka (1997, 53f.). For a Pompeian wall-painting depicting Pentheus being attacked by his mother Agave (with the addition of two Furies in the background), see E. Pfühl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen (Munich 1923) vol. III pl. 641. For a wall-painting from Pompeii (Naples, Mus. Naz. inv. 9039) and another from Herculaneum (inv. 8987) which may illustrate scenes from Hypsipyle, see Cockle (1987, 147f. and 167 with pls 5 and 9). For new tragedy at the Great Panathenaea, see Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 56). Line 39 of a recently published inscription dated 162/1 BC listing victors in the Panathenaea has been tentatively restored by Habicht to refer to the first year for the staging of dramatic performances at this festival (Tracy and Habicht 1991, 203). If the restoration is correct, it indicates, in combination with IG II2 3157, that the tradition was a long-standing one. For the inscription from Oenoanda, see M. Wörrle, Stadt und Fest im kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasien (Munich 1988) 8, lines 41-3. For inscriptions from Boeotia, see Mette (1977, 53-61). Gossage (1975, 134) notes that the Thespian Museia was still being celebrated in the third century AD. For a possible ‘acting copy’ of Eur. Cresphontes, see Turner (1980, 81) and Ant. Class. 32 (1963), pp. 120ff. For archaeological evidence regarding theatres in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, see Green (1994, 161-3) who points out that there was extreme regional variance: the theatre at Vergina, for instance, was not used after the second century AD, whereas the one at Hierapolis in Asia Minor survived as late as the fifth or possibly even the sixth century.

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Notes to pages 67-75 67

69

70

74 75

Post-Alexandrian scholarship and Roman libraries. The evidence for post-Alexandrian scholarship is discussed in Reynolds (1974, 38f.). For the library at Pergamum, see Casson (2001, 48-52). For Philodemus of Gadara, see Janko (2000, passim). Theon, who lived during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, is believed to have carried out a recension of the text of Sophocles’ Trackers (Easterling 1982, 243). Allowance must be made for the possibility that interest in Greek tragedy generated considerable discussion among intellectuals in the Imperial period of which we have no record, even though efforts to improve the text may have been somewhat sporadic. For Roman libraries, see Richardson (1992, s.v. Bibliotheca) and Casson (2001, 80-92). For storage and cataloguing, see Casson (op. cit., 98-102). The elusive ‘Byzantine schoolmaster’. Barrett (1964, 50-53) suggests that a play’s popularity may have depended to a large extent on the existence of a suitable commentary. The precise period in which the selection was made is unknown. Wartelle (1971, 339-43) proposed the late second century on the grounds that this period witnessed a resurgence of interest in Greek literature. The dating of the fragments of the lost plays derives from Diggle (1998). Tragedy and the Christians. See Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 48-51), Green (1994, 169-71), Easterling (1995, 37-9), Barnes (1996, 170-3), and Easterling and Miles (1999, 95-111). The only attempt to introduce a totally non-pagan curriculum was short-lived and came about in reaction to the Emperor Julian’s persecution of the Christians in 362. There is no reliable evidence that the Christians censored any classical text, as Wilson (1983, 12-18) notes. For St Basil of Caesarea, see Lemerle (1986, 44f.). Moffatt (1972, 84) dates his Address to Young Men to 362/3. Origen in Against Celsus quotes four times from Phoen., and once from Ba. and Hipp. (1.42, 2.20, 2.34, 4.30, 4.77, 8.44). The fifth-century miracle-worker St Thecla (Miracles 13.7-8; 33.62-3), who was familiar with the works of several Greek authors, acknowledged her susceptibility to the power of Euripidean verse. Lemerle (op. cit., 49) writes of the Christian tolerance of Graeco-Roman literature, ‘Rather than a revolutionary overthrowing of existing structures, the genius of Christianity lay in choosing to accommodate itself to them, to make them one of the instruments of its victory, on the temporal plane as well as the spiritual.’ For the influence of Ba. on the New Testament, see Seaford (1996, 53 n. 115). Tert. Apol. 14.5 shows a superficial knowledge of the plot of Eur. Alc. As Wilson (1970, 70) notes, ‘even those who did not entirely share the liberal outlook of the early church towards pagan authors never overcame the forces of conservatism and inertia’. Anthologies and lexica. Hesychius’ Lexicon has survived only in a poorly preserved abridgement made in the fifteenth century (Marc. gr. 622). The invention of the codex. See further Kenyon (1932, 86-119), Roberts (1954, 169-204), Turner (1980, 8-12) and Casson (2001, 124-35). Roberts, adopting a suggestion made by Kenyon, argued that the Roman legal profession was, like the Church, a sponsor of the codex. He estimated that the average content of a codex was ‘perhaps six times that of the roll’ (op. cit., 202). For the incorporation of words from marginal commentaries into the text, see Barrett (1964, 49), Wilson (1967, 244-56) and Easterling (1982, 242f.). A papyrus of sixth-century date preserves a commentary on Eur. Phoen. written on a separate roll (P. Würz. 1; Pack2 419).

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Notes to pages 78-82 4. Barbarians and Scribes The evidence of papyri and the Byzantine school curriculum. See Lemerle (1986, 43-77). Major papyri include P. Oxy. 18.2159-64, 2178-9; 20.224556; 22.2333-4; P. Berol. 5005, 17051, 21180. Pertusi (1956, 131f.) provides a list of papyri of Eur., including those attributed to the fifth century AD or later. For Melanippe Bound (= P. Berol. 5514), see Diggle (1998, 124-6). For Phaethon (= Paris gr. 107B ‘Claromontanus’), see Diggle (1970, 33-4). For the Armenian text containing the plot of Eur. Peliades, see Reynolds and Wilson (1968, 50). Late papyri of Soph.: P. Berol. 2128 (Ajax); P. Antin. 2.72 (El.); and P. Oxy. 11.1369 (Soph. OT). For the popularity of Eur. Hec., see Heath (1987, 43). Tragedy’s darkest hour. Lemerle (1986, 81-120) provides an account of the 79 history of the University at Constantinople from the sixth to ninth centuries and detects no significant change in its curriculum. For the absence of manuscripts from the sixth to ninth centuries, see Devreesse (1954, 286ff.). For the cost of manuscripts, see Mango (1975, 39) and Wilson (1975, 3). It is not clear whether the holdings of the Patriarchal Library in Constantinople were exclusively ecclesiastical. For George of Pisidia, see Baldwin (1985, 106-11). In late ninthcentury England Euripides’ name was known to King Alfred, who described him as ‘mægister’ (Bately 1990, 53). The introduction of minuscule script. The scriptorium about which we 80 know most was attached to the orthodox monastery of St John the Studite in Constantinople. See Diringer (1953, 207f.), Lemerle (1986, 121-36) and Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 59-61). As Featherstone and Holland (1982, 258-60) note, the scriptorium prescribed penances for scribes who failed in their scriptorial duties. They include the following: for altering the accentuation, punctuation or spelling: 130 genuflections; for committing a passage to heart: a ban on church-attendance for three days. The monastery on the island of Patmos also possessed a scriptorium, as, very likely, did the monastery of St Nicholas at Casole near Otranto. There was probably one in Thessalonica (Wilson 1975, 10), and there were several on Mount Athos (Irigoin 1959, 181-93). As Lemerle (op. cit., 133) notes, minuscule seems to have spread ‘according to the degree of urgency’. For professional calligraphers, see Wilson (op. cit., 9f.) and Nicol (1969, 27f.). For the beginnings of ‘correction’, see Irigoin (1975, 25f.). Byzantine education and scholarship: ninth to twelfth centuries. For 82 the general background, see Hussey (1937, 37-72), Browning (1968, 401-10), Lemerle (1969, 576-87), Nicol (1969, 23-57) and Wilson (1970a, 68-77). The Imperial University was reformed in 1045. The foundation date of the Patriarchal Academy is disputed. John, patriarch of Constantinople in the early ninth century, ordered books to be brought from monasteries to the capital (Browning 1960, 12). The contents of Photius’ Lexicon have never been systematically analysed and the complete manuscript, which was found in Macedonia in 1959, still awaits publication. For the manuscripts owned by Arethas, see Lemerle (1986, ch. 8) and García (1991, 15). For Greek tragedy on the school syllabus in Constantinople, see Kougeas (1913, 142, 122), cited in Easterling (1982, 244 n. 20). For Ignatius, see Browning (op. cit., 405-10.), who sees evidence of a private club devoted to the reading of Greek tragedy in an invective written by Arethas in AD 907. The passage in question, which may contain an allusion to Eur. Hec., is, however, very obscurely worded, as Wilson (op. cit., 14f.) points out, and can hardly justify such a conclusion. Ignatius’ dialogue between Adam, Eve and the Serpent is reproduced without the prologue in Baldwin (1985, 134-41). It con78

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Notes to pages 85-87 tains quotations from (or at least verbal echoes of) Soph. OC and Phil., and Eur. Andr., IA and Alc. As Wilson (1983, 75) points out, interestingly Ignatius quotes from Eur. Or., a non-selected play. For the change in attitude towards classical culture from the ninth to twelfth centuries, see Kazhdan and Epstein (1985, 133-41). For Psellus’ devotion to Greek philosophy, see Hussey (1937, 73-88). For his essay comparing Eur. to George of Pisidia, see Dyck (1986). For Tzetzes, see Wilson (1983, 190-6). The numbers of citations from Eur. in Eust. are taken from Miller (1940, 422-8). His refs to the non-selected plays are listed in Turyn (1957, 304f.). As Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 70) note, Eust. was able to draw on manuscripts of Soph. that have since perished. For the Byzantine treatise On Tragedy, see Browning (1963, 67-81). For the Christus Patiens, see Tuilier (1969), Turyn (op. cit., 279 with n. 280), Rizzo (1977, 1-63), Swart (1990, 53-64), and Puchner (2002, 317-19). Approximately a third of its 2531 verses are lifted from Euripides. The text sheds some light on the lost part of Eur. Ba, though it is of limited value for textual criticism. See Dodds’ (1960) note on line 1329. Seaford (1996, 144-45) reproduces the relevant lines. On the strength of numerous errors which he detected in the manuscript, Garzya (1984, 237-40) proposed a much earlier date for the Christus Patiens. Lucas (1923, 85-87) objurgated its quality as follows: ‘There is not in literature a more loathsome example of a great culture in its last charnel-house decay.’ The Palaeologan Renaissance. For the movement of manuscripts in this 85 era, see Browning (1960, 11-19). As he notes (p. 11), we should not assume that scholars made exclusive use of minuscule manuscripts. For an assessment of Maximus Planudes’ scholarly output and contribution to education, see Constantinides (1982, 66-89). For his scholia on Soph., see Turyn (1949, 114-19). For his scholia on Eur., see Turyn (1957, 53-82). For Thomas Magister, see Dawe (1973, I 60ff.). For Demetrius Triclinius, see Dawe (op. cit., 80f.). Dawe (1973-8, I ch. 2) has argued against any genuine recension of Soph. by either Moschopulus or Thomas Magister. The order of seniority of the Palaeologan scholars continues to be disputed. See Wilson (1976, 172f.) and West (1977, 264-7). The list of most frequently cited authors in letters by an early fourteenth-century grammarian and rhetor named George Lakapenos includes Soph. and Eur. (Constantinides, op. cit. 144). For Pace of Ferrara’s ignorance of Soph., see Wilson (1992, 2). The manuscript of Soph. is inscribed over a psalter and contains Ajax, El., OT, and Phil. See Turyn (1952, 110-14) and Berschin (1988, ch. 12 n. 11). For Otranto as a centre for book-production, see Cavallo (1986, 495-612). Manuscripts of Greek tragedy. Gilbert Murray compared the experience 87 of poring over a manuscript of Eur. in Florence to that of being among ‘flowers and springing water’ (quoted in Wilson 1987, 115). For the absence of manuscripts of Greek poetry pre-dating the second quarter of the tenth century, see Garciá (1991, 15). For the library in Thessalonica that was possibly owned by a doctor, see Constantinides (1982, 143) and Wilson (1975, 7f.). For Byzantine libraries, see Browning (1960, 12f. with n. 11 [bibliog.]) and Wilson (1967, 53-80). For the size of monastic libraries, see Ward (2000, 170f.). Intriguingly Constantine Lascaris records in a spare leaf belonging to Madrid gr. 4677 that he had recovered his manuscript in Messina, having ‘lost’ it eighteen years previously (Wilson 1975, 4). Jebb (1897, xiv) lists the numbers of manuscripts of Sophocles as follows: Ajax 88; El. 82; OT 66; Ant. 27; Phil. 24; Trach. 20; OC 19. Though incomplete, it provides a useful yardstick of comparison by which to judge the overwhelming predominance of the Byzantine triad. Irigoin (1954, 510f.) has argued for two transliterations from capital letter to minuscule of Sophocles, and

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Notes to pages 89-96

89

91

92

94

Di Benedetto (1965, 147 and 153-6) for ‘more than one’ of Euripides. For the history of individual texts, Pasquali (1934) remains unsurpassed. A manuscript of Euripides in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (no. 403) may have arrived in England before the end of the fifteenth century (see F. Wormald and C.E. Wright, The English Library before 1700 [London 1958] 130). Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9. For M, see West (1990, 321-3) who writes of its contemporary corrector: ‘ “Scribe” is perhaps too mean a title: he was a scholar who paid attention to what he was copying … He appears as a very remarkable critic by Byzantine standards.’ Jebb’s discussion (1897, vii-xii), though dated, is still valuable. For the date of M, see Diller (1974, 317). According to Page (1974, 228), it ‘tops the list’ as the authority for the Aeschylean triad, having ‘about a dozen places’ where it uniquely preserves the correct reading. The belief that M is not a direct copy of a capital letter manuscript is supported by Dawe (1973) and Wilson (1976, 173). M is reproduced in a facsimile entitled L’Eschilo Laurenziano which was published in 1896 by the Italian Ministry for Public Instruction. L is reproduced in a facsimile edited by Thompson and Jebb (1885). Mediceus Laurentianus 32.2. For Eust. as the likely one-time owner, see Browning (1960, 15). On additions made by Simon Atumanus in his own hand, see Turyn (1972, I 209-14). As Turyn (op. cit., 213) noted, the latter owned several manuscripts of Greek literature, including Med. Laur. 31.8, which contains five plays of Aeschylus and two of Sophocles, as well as a text of Dionysius Periegetes and Lycophron. Johannes Chortasmenos, teacher at the Patriarchal Academy, owned a copy of Triclinius’ autograph manuscript of Euripides (Vat. Urbin. gr. 142; see Browning [1960, 13]). Vaticanus Palatinus graecus 287 and Laurentianus Conventi Soppressi 172. Robert (1878, 133ff.) was the first to postulate the integration of the Palatine and Florentine parts of P. See also Jebb (1897, xviii-xxv). The fullest discussion is that of Turyn (1957, 222-58, 303-6), who investigated the hypothesis that Eust.’s manuscript was the source – immediate or otherwise – for Triclinius. As Dodds (1944, lvi) noted, the author of Christus Patiens (above, p. 84) had at his disposal a text of Ba. that was more complete and, in places, more accurate than P’s. Palimpsest Codex 36. Horna (1929, 416-31) gives a history and publishes a list of its probably accurate readings. There is also a brief description in Page (1938, xlv-xlvi). For further bibliography, see Diggle (1991, 5). 5. Refugees and Publishers

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The revival of Hellenism in Italy. See Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 124-34) and Wilson (1992, 1-25, 54-7). For Petrarch and Leontius Pilatus, see Berschin (1988, 267-71) and Mann (1996, 15-17). Petrarch cites three times from Euripides in On Remedies (Rawski 1990, 291). He tried to learn Greek from a Calabrian monk named Barlaam. The hypothesis that Leontius Pilatus was the translator of Eur. Hec. in Laur. 31.10 was first advanced by Giuseppe Billanovich (Pertusi 1960, 101-52). For translations by Filelfo and Pietro da Montagnana, see Waszink (1969, 204f.). For manuscripts of Greek tragedies owned by Boccaccio, as well as for the later history of San Marco 226 and Laur. 31.10, see Mazza (1966, 67f.). For the impact of the arrival of Chrysoloras and his contemporaries on Greek studies in Italy, see Harris (1995, 120-22). For the cultural importance of Venice, see Geanakoplos (1962, 1-70) and Harris (1995, 57-62). Cardinal Bessarion in his letter to the Doge described Venice as ‘a virtual Byzantium’ (Geanakoplos, op. cit., 35-7).

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Notes to pages 99-105 The hunt for manuscripts. See Robathan (1939, 516-18) and Wilamowitz (1921, 20-5). For Moses of Bergamo, see Berschin (1988, ch. 11 n. 58). For Guarino da Verona, see Omont (1892, 78-81). For the travels of Aurispa, see Browning (1986, 46), Woodhouse (1986, 56) and Wilson (1992, 25-7). For Filelfo, see Wilson (op. cit., 48-53) with Traversari (1759). For Filelfo’s ownership of Codex Laur. 31.1, see Bandini (1768-70, II 72). A letter from Traversari to Filelfo indicates that he owned the plays of Eur., but not those of Soph. (Schrade 1960, 34). Renaissance libraries. On his death in 1387 Boccaccio left his library to the 101 Augustinian monastery of Santo Spirito in Florence. For Cardinal Bessarion, see Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 149-52), Wilson (1992, 57-67), and Harris (1995, 126-8). A friend and one-time secretary of Bessarion called Gaspare Zacchi claimed to possess manuscripts containing 72 plays by Aes., 53 by Soph. and 60 by Eur. It is inconceivable, however, that such a large corpus should have survived into the fifteenth century without any corroborating evidence, and Zacchi’s claim should surely be regarded as a joke, as Wilson (1992, 65) suggests. The entire text of the letter from Cardinal Bessarion to the Doge and the Venetian Senate is reproduced in Labowsky (1979, 147-56). On how Niccoli came to acquire San Marco 226, see Ullman and Stadter (1972, 90f.). Victorius probably used San Marco 1200 for his 1557 edition of Aes. (Turyn 1943, 110 n. 98). On the Vatican Library, see Grafton (1993, 3-46). The Aldine Press. See Firmin-Didot (1875), Proctor (1900, 93-106), Geanak105 oplos (1962, 128-32), Lowry (1979), Reynolds and Wilson (1991, 155-8), Wilson (1992, 127-48), Davies (1995) and Irigoin (1997, 111-21). For the MS. used by di Alopa for the four plays of Eur., see Irigoin (1997, 112). For the manuscripts used by Gregoropoulos and his co-editors for the Aldine Soph. and Eur., see Lowry (op. cit., 238f.), who writes, ‘As we watch them veer giddily from one source to another, or produce a correction to both exemplars from no source whatever, their method of procedure becomes more and more puzzling.’ Gregoropoulos did, however, make one important emendation that is still generally accepted, namely at Soph. Ant. 572. Parts of the manuscripts of both Soph. and Eur. from which he worked have survived (Vienna gr. 48, St. Petersburg gr. 731, Paris suppl. gr. 212 and 393). Aldus did not invent the portable book, as is sometimes alleged. Lowry (op. cit., 142) claims that ‘his policy was clearly to use the form for safe and popular titles rather than to treat it as a vehicle for the spread of new material’. His decision to adapt it to the texts of the tragedians thus shows peculiar boldness. An abstract of the price list issued by the Aldine press in 1498 is reproduced in Proctor (op. cit., 93f.). Aldus had his contemporary critics, notably Urceo Codro, whose complaints are discussed in Wilson (op. cit., 128). For an Aldine Euripides in the library of Corpus Christi, Oxford, see Liddell (1938, 408 no. 123). The 1589 catalogue records that the library also possessed ‘Some plays by Euripides’ (Florence, 1500), a Sophocles, and the scholia to seven plays by Euripides (ibid., nos. 124, 125 and 130). For the Aldine Euripides in the French Royal Library and for Racine’s copy of the Aldine Sophocles, see Lowry (op. cit., ch. 7, n. 116; 300). For Aldus’ overall contribution to the recovery and promotion of Greek tragedy, see Hexter (1998, 150f.). The quality of the Aldine Aeschylus is discussed by Mund-Dopchie (1984, 1-9), who identifies many errors. See also Turyn (1943, 28-29). Its most notorious misreading is that of an early line of Agam., where Menelaus and Agamemnon are fancifully compared to ‘vultures who in terrible pain for their feet (podôn) wheel high above their nests’, which, as Grafton (1991, 27) suggests, produces ‘a 99

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Notes to pages 110-113 striking image of vultures suffering from corns’. The true reading should be paidôn (children)! For ill-fated early attempts to publish classical texts in England, see Feather (1988, 57-60). For sixteenth-century hand-written transcripts made from printed editions of Euripides, see Turyn (1957, 377-83), who lists 15. Translations into Latin. See Schrade (1960, 25-32). Since few Latin trans110 lations of Greek texts have been edited, little is known about their circulation. Erasmus’ translations of Eur. are reproduced in Waszink (1969, 193-359). It is suspected that he used the Aldine edition of 17 plays by Euripides for these translations. Erasmus experienced the same difficulties in arranging the choral passages in Latin as Aldus had done in arranging them in Greek (cf. his letter to Aldus quoted in Schrade, op. cit., 27). A Latin version of Eur. Hec. by Giorgio Anselmi, which was published in Parma, appeared in the same year as Erasmus’ translation (Waszink 1969, 205f.). By the sixteenth if not the fifteenth century most of the English nobility and gentry were literate in Latin (Moran 1985, 150-61), though what proportion would have been interested in acquiring a Latin translation of, say, Euripides is unclear. It goes without saying that it is impossible to pinpoint Shakespeare’s direct source for any particular passage, which may be Greek tragedy, Seneca, or Ovid, though, as Arkins (1994, 3) points out, ‘Seneca was in the Elizabethan air.’ Arkins detects Seneca’s influence in Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Richard III and Macbeth. See also Carroll (1996, 254-5). For supposed Shakespearean allusions to Eur. Med., see Purkiss (2000, 41-7). On Shakespeare’s alleged borrowings from Aeschylus in Hamlet, see Schleiner (2000, 29-48), who postulates that the playwright either used Ben Jonson’s copies of the plays, and/or attended Thomas Decker’s and Henry Chettle’s theatrical production. Reports of the latter are, however, extremely vague, as Ewbank (forthcoming) points out, and it may be that the authors drew from Seneca rather than Aeschylus. The study of Greek tragedy outside Italy in the Renaissance. The 113 Council of Vienne (1311-12) decreed that teaching posts in Greek should be established in the universities of Bologna, Rome, Paris, Salamanca and Oxford, but this had never been put into effect. For knowledge of Greek outside Italy in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, see Harris (1995, 131-49). George Neville (1453-72) has claim to being the first English humanist to know Greek (Carroll 1996, 249). For Neville’s and Shirwood’s interest in Greek, see Harris (op. cit., 134-8, 140-1). For their libraries see BRUC 524f. and BRUO II, 828-30. For Erasmus’ Greek students, see Tilley (1938, 228-30). In an earlier period Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253) had secured a number of Greek manuscripts but none of tragedy (see R.W. Hunt, ‘The library of Robert Grosseteste’, pp. 121-45 in D.A. Callus, ed., Robert Grosseteste [Oxford 1955]), though he did own a copy of the Suda. I have not been able to find any evidence that Roger Bacon (d. 1292), who lectured on Aristotle and wrote a Greek grammar, was familiar with the tragedians. For the structure of university courses, see Botley (1999, 40-66). For a selection from Erasmus’ Adagia, see Barker (2001). Crane (1944, 233-38) was of the opinion that Lady Lumley did not use a Greek text at all, but relied wholly on Erasmus’ Latin translation of Eur. IT. As her translation is extremely free, however, the charge can hardly be addressed. It does not include the choral passages, perhaps because she found them too difficult. The manuscript, which exists in a single copy, is in the British Library (Royal 15. A IX Lumley). For possible contemporary political allusions to the career of her father, Henry Fitzalan, see Purkiss (1998, xv-xxv). It was eventually published in 1909 by H.H.

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Notes to pages 115-123 Child for the Malone Society. In the preface Child makes reference to a lost translation of an Euripidean drama by Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth I but there is no other evidence for this. Sixteenth-century productions of Greek tragedy. See Waszink (1969, 115 207) for productions of Eur. Hec. in Louvain, Wittenburg and Leipzig. For the importance of tragedy in the teaching of rhetoric and morality, see Stone (1974, 41-5). For Gascoigne’s and Kinwelmershe’s Jocasta, see Boas (1933, 34-5) and Smith (1988, 217-23). As Hall (1999a, 101) points out, the late sixteenth-century belief that all Greek tragedy was sung ‘was creatively implicated in the birth of European opera’, though it should be noted that the earliest operas were not based on the stories of Greek tragedy. Giovanni Trissimo’s Sofonisba, the first modern tragedy to be consciously modelled on the style and structure of a Greek tragedy, premièred in 1562. Edipo Tiranno at the Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza. On the choice of a Greek 117 tragedy in preference to a pastoral drama or Italian tragedy, see Gallo (1973, xix, xxi and 53-4). The production was sponsored by Leonardo Valmarana, president of the Academia Olimpica, whose members regularly met to read eclogues, pastorals, comedies and tragedies. It is likely that Giustiniani used the Aldine Oedipus the King for his translation. Pigafetta describes the play as ‘the most noble tragedy ever written’. His adulatory review is reproduced in Gallo (1973), who provides other correspondence relating to the production. A certain Antonio Riccoboni wrote a letter criticising the performance, which is translated in Dawe (1996, 1-12). Most of his comments are pedantic and obtuse (e.g. that the clothes worn by Oedipus and Jocasta should have been less bright in a time of calamity), though his observation that the choruses resembled contemporary polyphonic versions of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is likely to be accurate (Schrade 1960, 76). For further details, see Schrade (op. cit., 47-51), Vidal-Naquet (1986, 361-71) and Wiles (2000, 179-83). Vidal-Naquet (op. cit., 366) points out that Giustiniani’s translation underlines ‘the civic aspect of Sophocles’ text’ – perhaps in order to compensate for the fact that Vicenza, annexed by Venice in 1404, lacked an autonomous political identity. The Vicenzan production marks the beginning of the trend of injecting Greek tragedy with a contemporary political agenda. 6. Philologists and Translators 120

Textual criticism. Dover (1976, 307) quotes Friedrich Leo as having once advised the young Eduard Fraenkel ‘that he should choose between variant readings, or between acceptance and rejection of a proposed emendation, “as if the fate of his immortal soul depended on the rightness of his choice” ’. Reynolds and Wilson (1991, ch. 6) offer a brief history of textual criticism, as, too, does West (1973, 15-29). Reynolds and Wilson (p. 211) cite Triclinius on Eur. El. 435-7 as a celebrated example of faulty emendation. West (1990, Appendix 3) and Dawe (1990, 378-90) provide league-tables for the individual success-rates of textual critics. 123 Scholarly editions. See Sandys (1908, II 413-29), Clarke (1945, 48-101) and Irigoin (1997, 114-21). For sixteenth-century editions of Aeschylus, see MundDopchie (1984) and Gruijs (1984). Rosenmeyer (1982, 17-19) provides a useful overview. For Victorius and Robortellus, see Wilamowitz (1921, 30f.). West (1990, ch. 12) assesses the achievement of Auratus and Portus. Diggle (1984, v-xi) lists editions of Eur. from 1494 onwards. For commentaries on Soph., see Lloyd-Jones (Sophocles I [LCL], 19-22).

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Notes to pages 131-133 For Musgrave, see Carter (1975, 398-9), who describes his edition of Euripides as ‘one of the great achievements of English classical scholarship in the eighteenth century’. Though Richard Bentley did not edit Greek tragedy himself, he correctly identified a number of fragments. In addition, his Epistola ad Millium of 1691 famously condemned a spurious fragment of Sophocles in which the playwright supposedly expressed his belief in monotheism (Grafton 1991, 14f.; above, p. 71). Bentley also wrote a few brief notes on the text of Sophocles in the margin of his copy of the 1568 edition by Stephanus (see Classical Journal 13, 244-8). For Brunck’s Sophocles, see Jebb (1897, xlii). Porson’s transcriptions of Med. and Phoen. are in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Porson no. 4, R.4.62 and R.4.62a). For his biography, see Watson (1861). For his scholarly contribution, see Sandys (1908, II 424-30) and Dawe (1990, 376-88), who offers a muted tribute. An unappealing character who is editing Trojan Women in Mary Russell Mitford’s novel Atherton is thought to be based on Porson (Hall 1997, 71). For Wilamowitz’s Introduction to Greek Tragedy, see Fowler (1990, 498-500) who describes it as ‘the first modern commentary on a Greek tragedy, the one book every classical scholar must know’. For Jebb’s contribution to textual criticism, see Dawe (1990, 241-4). As Stray (1998, 219) has noted, Greek humanism held particular appeal for men like Jebb at a time when religious faith was on the wane in Britain. Textual scholars habitually dispute after their fashion who was the greatest of their predecessors. West, for instance, writes of Portus (p. 364), ‘If anyone is to contest with Turnebus for the title of the most important textual critic of Aeschylus before Hermann, it is he.’ Mund-Dopchie (1984, 149) praises Victorius for having produced ‘the first modern edition of Aeschylus’. Nietzsche versus Wilamowitz. Useful summaries of the controversy are to 131 be found in Lloyd-Jones (1982, 172-7) and Marchand (1996, 124-33). Silk and Stern (1981, 90-125) offer a more detailed analysis. Nietzsche’s ‘We philologists’, which he left unfinished, is translated in Arion n.s. 1 (1973). Wilson (1987, 155) characterises Murray’s theory of the Year Daemon as showing ‘The influence of Jane Harrison and Verrall at its most pernicious’. Modern critical approaches. As Goldhill (1997a, 346) states, ‘there is no 133 adequate study of critical approaches to Greek tragedy in English’, though his own essay, to which I am much indebted, does much to establish the parameters for such an investigation. Marshall’s (1999, 188) declaration – ‘Modern discussions of fifth-century drama focus almost exclusively on the words of the text’ – ignores much recent criticism. For a critique of Reinhardt’s Sophocles, see Lloyd-Jones (1982, 243-50). For the Cambridge Ritualists, see Schlesier (1990, 134f.). Goldhill (1993, 10-11) provides a succinct bibliography of performance criticism. More traditional approaches have not been entirely discredited. Winnington-Ingram (1983, xi), for instance, writes, ‘Literary criticism need not end, but should begin, with the attempt – desperate though it may be – to enter into the mind of the author.’ Occasionally, modern critical approaches do intersect with the world of theatre. Tony Harrison, for instance, has said of his translation of Oresteia, ‘Gradually the idea came to me that it should be, as it were, vacuum-sealed in maleness because the play seemed to have been written in order to overthrow the dynamic female images that seemed to dominate the imagination in the Athenian culture of that time, and to present some kind of male image liberated from the defeat of the female principle’ (quoted in McDonald 1992, 143). Heath’s observation (1987, 68) that ‘an understanding of the

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Notes to page 138 history of a text’s interpretation can help us to see more clearly and more critically the assumptions which underlie our own interpretations’ is au point. English translations: eighteenth century to 2001. Hardwick (1998) of138 fers some useful definitions of the terms that are currently employed for the different categories of translation. Forty years ago Green (1960, 195) observed, ‘I have recently perused every single English translation of the Agamemnon’ – some fifty in all – ‘and, with honourable exceptions, a more depressing experience could hardly be conceived by the mind of man.’ A persistent handicap, at least until the 1930s, was the perceived obligation on the part of translators to restrict themselves to elevated diction, in keeping with Ovid’s oft-quoted observation: ‘Tragedy exceeds every other genre of literature in seriousness (gravitas)’ (Tristia 2.381). For trends in the translation of classical works, see Hardwick (2000, 9-22). McDonald (2003, 125) claims that there are ‘probably more modern versions of Greek tragedy in English by the Irish than by any other English-speaking country.’ For the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Clarke (1945, 148-54), from which my quotations derive. For Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, see Wallace (1997, 174-7) who describes it as ‘a deliberate attempt to unbind Prometheus from Aeschylus, to find a completely new method and concept of translation’. For Browning’s treatment of the Heracles theme in Balaustion’s Adventure and Aristophanes’ Apology, see Galinsky (1972, 260-4). For his Agamemnon of Aeschylus, see Highet (1949, ch. 20 n. 31). Terence Rattigan’s play The Browning Version (1951) has as its central character a middle-aged classics schoolteacher who is fired with the desire to improve on Browning’s translation of Agam. Browning himself conceded that his ‘version’ represented a ‘somewhat toilsome and perhaps fruitless adventure’. Wilson (1987, 197) rightly condemns T.S. Eliot for his ‘condescending sacerdotal style [which is] quite as distasteful as any falsity to the original Greek in Murray’s translations’. However, contemporary scholars have hardly been more generous to Murray than Eliot was. Lloyd-Jones (1982, 205), for instance, taxes Murray with having replaced ‘the spareness and tautness of the Greek original’ with ‘faded and tawdry ornament’. Knox (1979, 57), too, talks of his ‘warped syntax, violent inversions, and, above all, fulsome padding’. For George Bernard Shaw’s debt to Murray’s translation of Ba. in Major Barbara, see Macintosh (1998, 64-84). For the controversy surrounding Pound’s Women of Trachis, see Davie (1964, 233-39). Lattimore commented on the translation, ‘Deianeira … talks through this version like a brassy, cocksure guttersnipe which, in this version, she seems to be. And all the other characters talk the same way’ (cited from The Pound Newsletter 5 [Berkeley 1955]). Reviewers of Ted Hughes’ ‘versions’ (as he styled them) of Greek tragedy have eagerly hunted down biographical references in both his Alcestis and Oresteia – inevitably, perhaps, given the fact that his life read rather like a Greek tragedy. R. Macfarlane (Independent, 31 October 1999), for instance, claims that ‘traces of [Hughes’] sickness are everywhere apparent’ in his Alcestis. Finally, few translations of Greek tragedy into any language have had a more profound influence than those of J.G. Droysen upon the composer Richard Wagner, whose musical tetralogy known as The Ring owes a considerable debt both to the Oresteia and to Prometheus Bound. Wagner described his first experience of reading Droysen’s translation as follows: ‘Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired me; and to the last word of the Eumenides, I remained in an atmosphere so far removed from the present day that I have never since been really able to reconcile myself with modern

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Notes to pages 149-157 literature. My ideas about the whole significance of drama and the theatre were no doubt moulded by these impressions’ (quoted in Goldhill 1992, 96). 7. Producers and Playgoers 149

Commercial productions: seventeenth to nineteenth century. See Walton (1987, 297-323), Hall (1999, 53-67), and Macintosh (1997, 284-8). For Dryden’s and Lee’s Oedipus: a Tragedy, see Hirt (1972, 61-8) and Konstan (1994, 16-23). In the Preface they tax Corneille with having ‘miserably fail’d in the Character of his Hero’. Despite many borrowings, the play in places follows Sophocles’ text very closely. For Gildon’s Phaethon, see Hirt (op. cit., 85-95). For the importance of female actors on the English stage in the eighteenth century, see Hall (2000, 58-60). Other adaptations include John Dennis’ Iphigenia (based on Eur. IT) and Abel Boyer’s The Victim or Iphigenia in Aulis, both produced in 1700. For Senecan debts in Thomson’s Agamemnon, see J.C. Greene, The Plays of James Thomson 1700-1748 (New York 1987), vol. 1, 115-18. For Goethe’s productions of Greek tragedy, see Franke (1929, 40f., 84-91, 134-42, etc.). For Tieck’s Antigone, see Walton (op. cit., 300), Macintosh (op. cit., 286), and Hall (1999b, 39-41). As Macintosh points out, Tieck’s decision to stage Sophocles’ play may have been determined in part by the fact that its subject matter conformed to Hegel’s idea of a ‘moral community (sittliche Gemeinschaft)’. An innovative interpretive aspect was the depiction of Creon as ‘a noble, tragically constrained, defender of the law’, which, in Steiner’s words (1984, 182), marked the beginning of ‘a long rehabilitation or, more precisely, a closer questioning of his character’. The setting for Antigone’s lament was played at Mendelssohn’s funeral. Boeckh’s revision of Donner’s translation represented a milestone in Sophoclean studies in Germany and was to inspire other scholars to undertake the challenge (Stoneman 1999, 327f.). The full title of the London production was An Imitative Version of Sophocles’ Antigone, with its Melo-Dramatic Dialogue and Choruses, as Written and Adapted to the Music of Dr Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy by W. Bartholomew. The set, which sought to evoke an ancient theatre, came in for criticism from the Athenaeum (11 January 1845, 50), which complained that it displayed ‘far too much of mere pantomime-scene quality in it – tawdriness without richness, and capricious freak without fancy, together with a mesquin taste throughout’. For the frieze on the Queen’s Theatre depicting a Greek audience watching Antigone, see Ashton (1992, 61-4). The auditorium was demolished in 1878 but the frieze has survived and was recovered in 1981. For Blanchard’s Antigone Travestie, see Hall (1999b, 41-4). For Planché’s The Golden Fleece, see Hall (1999b, 45-7; 2000, 86-92). 157 Academic productions. See Campbell (1891, 318-22) and Macintosh (1997, 288-94). For Thomas Goffe’s The Tragedy of Orestes, see Smith (1988, 231-5). For the Reading Greek Play, see Hall (1997, 59-81) who suggests that its significance lay ‘as much in its status as high point in the Berkshire civic and social calendar as in the niceties of the production itself ’. There is a detailed discussion of the origins and early years of the Cambridge Greek Play, together with an appendix listing productions from 1882 to 1998, in Easterling (1999a, 27-47). The early stagings aroused mirth among some members of the audience (op. cit., 41 n. 34). Clearly one of the reasons for choosing Ajax in 1882 was because it has only one female part. Jowett’s regulations for the OUDS are reported in a letter from W. Courtney to Evelyn Abbott in ‘The Jowett Papers’, Balliol College, Oxford. For the Harvard staging of Oedipus the King, see Hartigan (1995, 7-11). Notre Dame

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Notes to pages 161-174

161

163

169

170 174

University planned to present the same play in 1879 but was prevented by a fire. Pluggé (1938, 13-32) lists all the productions of Greek drama in American colleges and universities from 1881 to 1936. Hartigan (1994, 373-87) notes that the University of Iowa, which mounted productions of IT (1907), Hipp. (1913), Alc. (1914), and IA (1915), had originally intended to institute an annual production of Greek tragedy. The first American high school to put on a Greek play was Gloversville, New York, in 1896, whose pupils performed Eur. IT (op. cit., 5). Stanford University mounted a production of Ant. in the original Greek with Mendelssohn’s music in 1902 (see H.W. Rolfe et al., Antigone at the Leland Stanford Junior University [San Francisco 1903]). Gilbert Murray and the popularisation of Euripides. See Wilson (1987, 163-76). For the Hipp. production, Jane Harrison went looking for genuine wooden images of the gods to stand in as models for Aphrodite and Artemis (Schlesier 1990, 133). By no means all of the productions using Murray’s translations were a success. Wilson (p. 163) describes the 1908 Ba. at the Royal Court Theatre as nothing short of ‘disastrous’. There were even occasional revivals of Murray’s translations after World War II (Walton 1987, 341). Max Reinhardt’s Oedipus the King and the censorship debate. See Walton (1987, 306-11), Styan (1987, 78-85), Buchner (1987, 53-7), and Macintosh (1997, 298-9). Reinhardt intended the staging of Oedipus the King to conform to ‘the spirit of the times’ (quoted in Buchner, p. 53). Later he spoke of ‘a theatre of the people, a festival playhouse, a rite of worship, of purification and of joy’ (quoted in Taplin 1990, 52). Walton (op. cit., 306) has this to say of it: ‘The result was more in the mode of an elevated neo-romantic psychodrama than an expression of the spirit and style of Sophocles. Where the Greek play was universal, Reinhardt’s Oedipus was subjective; where the former was a vision of searing insight, the latter was rather more a spectacle of startling effects.’ But this rather ignores the impact which it had on audiences. Though Reinhardt staged other Greek tragedies during his long career, including two productions of the Oresteia, none was as influential as his Oedipus. The censorship debate can be traced in Censorship and Licensing (Joint Select Committee) Verbatim Report of the Proceedings and Full Text of the Recommendations (London 1909). For Hare’s letter, see Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Correspondence File: Oedipus Rex 1910/814 (British Museum). For further discussion, see Macintosh (1995, 60-8; 1997, 294-301). Festivals of Greek tragedy. For Palmer’s Prometheus, see Wiles (2000, 183-9) and Anton (1993, 103-19). For her Suppliants, see Anton (op. cit., 129-42). For the importance she attached to stage design, see van Steen (2001-2, 375-93). Her idea of a ‘spiritual centre at Delphi’ (which she also referred to as the Delphic Effort or Idea) is contained in the following lofty statement: ‘Delphi is engaged in an effort to make peoples see each other, cross national borders, with love in their eyes’ (Anton, op. cit., 137). For Sikelianos’ vision of realising the spiritual values of ancient Greece, see Sherrard (1979, 72-93). For the festival at Syracuse, see Macintosh (1997, 306-7). The politicisation of Greek tragedy. For nineteenth-century productions of Medea, see Macintosh (2000a, 75-99). For Brecht’s Antigonemodell, see Jones (1966, 103-11), Steiner (1984, 171-3), and Flashar (1991, 199-3). Tragedy on the screen: some case studies. See McDonald (1983, passim), Burian (1997, 276-81), and Solomon (2001, 259-74). There was a filming of eleven minutes of Prometheus Bound, staged at Delphi in 1927 by Palmer and Sikelianos. For the work of Cacoyannis, see McDonald and MacKinnon (1993, 222-33), who describe his trilogy as ‘a type of melodramatic universal’ (p. 233).

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Notes to page 179 His Iphigenia is discussed in detail by McDonald (1991, 127-41). Her essay is supplemented by a ‘photo essay’ of stills from the film selected by the director. Both Cacoyannis and the actress Irene Papas were blacklisted by the Greek junta. Vassiliki Kekelas of Hunter College, New York, informed me that when the director came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1999 to talk about his work, he was moved to tears by the loss of any surviving copies of Electra. However, it has since been discovered and re-released. Other important filmings of Greek tragedy include Tyrone Guthrie’s Oedipus Rex (Canada 1956), Jean Prat’s Les Perses (France 1961), George Tzavellas’ Antigone (Greece 1961), Takis Mouzenidis’ Electra (Greece 1962), Philip Saville’s Oedipus the King (UK 1967), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea (Italy, France and West Germany 1970), Jean-Louis Ughetto’s Electre (France 1972), and Miklós Jancsó’s Elektreia (Hungary 1975). For further details, see MacKinnon (1986). For Medea on film, see Christie (2000, 144-65). The past half-century and beyond. See Taplin (1995, 36-61) for a general 179 account. No fewer than five Greek theatre companies have toured abroad with productions of classical drama in their repertoires. They include the Greek National Theatre (founded in 1930), Theatro Technis (founded in 1942), Piraïko (founded in 1957), Amphi-Theatre (founded in 1975) and Attis (founded in 1986). The first to tour abroad was the Greek National Theatre, which brought Sophocles’ Electra and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (in modern Greek) to England and Germany in 1939. During the last thirty years the Greek National Theatre has toured in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, Japan, China, Belgium, South Korea and Serbia, as well as in Europe, with productions of all three tragedians. For Ninagawa’s Medea, see Smethurst (2000, 191-216). As Flashar (1991, 219) notes, tragedy is so popular in Tokyo today that there exists a ‘Greek Tragedy Study Club’. For Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides, see Chioles (1993, 4-5, 25-7) and Goetsch (1994, 75-95). For Hall’s Oresteia, see Parker (1986, 337-57) and Hall (1993, 310-15).

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Abbreviations and Index Locorum Aes(chylus), Agam(emnon), Eum(enides), Pers(ians), Suppl(liants) Aesch(ines) Ar(istophanes), Ach(arnians), Lys(istrata), Thesm(ophoriazusae) Arist(otle), N(icomachean) E(thics), (Art of) Poet(ry), Rhet(oric) Athen(aeus), Deipn(osophistae) Cic(ero), Tusc(ulan Disputations) Clement of Alexandria, Strôm(ata) C(omicorum) A(tticorum) F(ragmenta), ed. T. Kock C(omicorum) G(raecorum) F(ragmenta), ed. G. Kaibel Dem(osthenes) D(iogenes) L(aertius) Eur(ipides), Alc(estis), And(romache), Ba(cchae), El(ectra), Hec(uba), Her(acles), Hipp(olytus), I(phigeneia at) A(ulis), I(phigeneia among the) T(aurians), Med(ea), Or(estes), Phoen(ician Women), Tr(ojan Women), Suppl(iants) Eust(athius) F(ragmente der) Gr(iechischen) H(istoriker), ed. F. Jacoby H(ero)d(o)t(us) Hesych(ius) Hor(ace), (Art of) Poet(ry) I(nscriptiones) G(raecae) Luc(ian), (adversus) Ind(octum) N2, ed. A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, reprinted with Suppl. B. Snell Ov(id), Am(ores) P. Antin. (Antinoe Papyrus) P. Berol. (Berlin Papyri) P(atrologia) G(raeca) P. Oxy. (Oxyrhynchus Papyri)

P. Strassb. (Strassburg Papyri) P. Würzb. (Würzburg Papyri) Paus(anias) Phil(ostratus), Life of Apoll(onius) Phil(ostratus) the Younger, Imag(ines) Phot(ius) Pl(ato), Apol(ogy), Euthyd(emus), Gorg(ias), Prot(agoras), Rep(ublic) Pl(i)n(y), N(atural) H(istory) Plu(tarch), Mor(alia), Alex(ander), Ant(ony), Crass(us), Demetr(ius), Dem(osthenes), Lyc(urgus), Lys(ander), Nic(ias), Pel(opidas) Polyb(ius) Quint(ilian) Sen(eca), Med(ea) SIG3 Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. W. Dittenberger Soph(ocles), Ant(igone), El(ectra), O(edipus at) C(olonus), O(edipus) T(yrannus), Phil(octetes), (Women of) Trach(is) Stat(ius) Silv(ae) Stob(aeus) Str(abo), Geog(raphy) Sud(a) Tert(ullian) T(ragicorum) G(raecorum) F(ragmenta), ed. B. Snell, S. Radt, and R. Kannicht Theoc(ritus) Verg(il), Aen(eid) Aelian Variae Historiae 2.30, 21 Aeschines 1.154, 19 Aeschylus Suppl. 291ff., 233

278

Abbreviations and Index Locorum Alciphron Letters of Parasites 3.12.1, b, 24 Andocides On the Mysteries 129, 20 Aristophanes Ach. 10f., 234 Birds 1379, 236 Clouds 1353-72, 18; 1377f., 235 Frogs 54, 14; 66f., 29; 71ff., 92-5, 21; 82, 234; 776, 1413, 1434, 235; 807, 6; 868f., 9, 234; 943, 1409, 15 Lys. 368, 235 Thesm. 1130, 235 Aristotle Poet. 1449a15-18, 6; 1449a18f., 7; 1449b27f., 37; 1450a29-31, 53; 1450b16-18, 37; 1453a24, etc., 238; 1453a28-30, 36; 1453b1, 37; 1454b8, 1455a18, 36; 1455a22-9, 5, 236; 1455a22-b 15, 36; 1460b33f., 7; 1462a12f., 37 NE 3.1.1111a9f., 234 Rhet. 1403b31-5, 24 frr. 618-30 Rose, 23 Arnobius Against the Nations 7.33, 65 Athenaeus Deipn. 1.3a, 15; 4.139c, 15.671f, 48; 4.164b, 9.374ab, 18; 8.343ef, 64; 12.537d, 20, 30 St Augustine Confessions 3.2, 73 St Basil Address to Young Men 2.8, 4.5, 4.7-8, 73 Letter 63, 73 CGF p. 19 (Tzetzes), 45 Choricius Orations 8.141f., 74 Cicero On Behalf of Sestius, 116, 63 On Duties 3.21.82-3, 61 On Ends 1.4, 58; 1.4-5, 61; 5.3, 61; 5.63, 59 Letter to his Brother Quintus 3.6.7, 61 Tusc. 2.8.20-22, 61; 2.21.49, 58 Clement of Alexandria

Exhortation to the Greeks 2.22, 6.59, 7.64, 7.65, 12.91f., 71 Strôm. 1.309, 45; 2.22, 6.59, 7.63, 71 Demosthenes 19. 246-50, 24; 19.246, 23; 19.247, 19; 19.250, 20 Dio Chrysostom Discourse 18.7, 57, 62 Diogenes Laertius 3.5, 21; 5.37, 41 Eupolis fr. 327 Kassel-Austin, 14 Euripides IA 784-92, 233 Ba. 918f., 71; 1169-71, 65; 1280ff., 84 Hec. 218ff., 83 Med. 85, 148, 169, etc., 239 Or. 211-315, 65; 140-2, 176 Phoen. 524f., 61 N2 902, 73 FGrH 273 F 19, 240; 392 F 4ff., 241 Galen Hippocrates on Epidemics 3.2 [Kühn 17a607], 40 Gellius Attic Nights 11.4, 13.19, 62; 15.20,10, 9 Herodotus 1.137, xvi Horace Epistles 2.1.180-213, 63 Epodes 2.1.161-6, 58 Poet. 230-3, 4 Satires 1.10.42-3, 61 IG II2 2319-23, 236; 2363, 239; 3157, 65, 242 XIV.1152, 239 Isocrates 2.44, 17 St John Chrysostom Homily on I Thessalonians 5, 72 St John of Damascus PG 94.524c-525a, 80 Libanius Orations 64.73, 74 Life of Aeschylus 8-11, 6; 68, 6

279

Abbreviations and Index Locorum Life of Euripides 21-5, 9 Life of Sophocles 4, 7 Longinus On the Sublime 33, 29 Lucian How To Write History 1, 30 Ind. 15, 235 On Dancing 27, 63 Lucretius On the Nature of Things 2.991-1001, 60 Lycurgus Against Leocrates 100, 101, 19 Origen Against Celsus 1.42, 2.20, etc., 243 Papyrus Antinoe 2.72, 244 Papyrus Berolensis 2128, 5005, etc., 244 Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 6.852, 52; 9.1176, 54; 11.1369, 244; 18.2256.3, 47; 27.2455, etc., 239; 27.2458, 67 Papyrus Würzburg 1, 243 Pausanias 1.14.5, 6; 1.21.2, 237; 10.4.1, 236; 2.27.5, 22 Philostratus Life of Apoll. 6.11, 234 Philostratus the Younger Imag. 13, 234 Plato Apol. 26de, 14 Laches 183ab, 9 Laws 7.811a, 17 Prot. 325e-326a, 18 Rep. 568a, 235 Plautus Rudens 86, 63 Pliny the Elder NH 35.93, 100, 237 Pliny the Younger Letters 7.4.2, 61 Plutarch Ant. 58, 68 Alex. 8.3, 15; 4.6, 29.1, 49 Crass. 33, 61, 65 Demetr. 28, 61

Dem. 7, 19; 29.5, 64 Lyc. 31.5, 10 Lys. 15.2-3, 29; 15.3, 10 Nic. 29.2, 10 Pel. 29.4-6, 30 [Plutarch] Mor. 837e, 30, 235; 841, 26; 844f-845b, 19 Polyaenus Stratagems 7.41, 65 Quintilian 1.8.20, 48; 10.1.66, 234; 10.1.67, 62; 10.1.67-9, 236; 11.3.73, 63 Scholia Ar. Ach. 10, Frogs 868, 234 Ar. Clouds 144, 235 Eur. And. 445, 9, 46 Eur. Hipp. 171 Eur. Med. 148, etc., 239 Eur. Or. 488, 714, etc., 239; 1038, 1287, 47; 1366-8, 43 Eur. Phoen. 88, 44; 96, 43 Eur. Tro. 36, 44; 47, 239 Soph. Ajax 42, 43; 864, 25 Soph. OT 287, 378, etc., 43 Soph. Chryses fr. 728 Pearson, 48 Soph. Trach. 1046-1102, 61 Soph. Troilus fr. 624 Pearson, 48 Theoc. Idyll 10.18e, 48 SIG3 648B, 49; 659, 49 Sophocles Ajax 550f., 60 OT 924-1072, 34 Women of Trachis 1045-1111, 61 Statius Silv. 2.1.114, 214 Stobaeus Flor. p. 522 (97.48), 25 Strabo Geog. 14.675, 240 Suda s.v. Achaeus, 237 s.v. Callimachus, 45 s.v. Ignatius, 83 Suetonius Divine Julius 56.7, 61 Tertullian On Spectacles 17, 74 St Thecla Miracles 13.7-8, 33.62-3, 243

280

Abbreviations and Index Locorum Theophrastus Char. 15.10, 27.2, 20 TGF I, pp. 3-52, nos 60, 70, 72, 236; no. 60T 8b, 9, 21; no. 60 T2a, 24; no. 128, 240; nos 199-200, 21, 77 II, F 649, 237 III, pp. 29-108, 234

IV, pp. 29-95, 234 Tzetzes Prolegomena to Comedy I, 11a p. 22 Koster, 45 Vergil Aen. 2.31-4, 56, etc., 241; 2.991-1001, etc., 60

281

General index See also Appendix IV for discussion of individual tragedies Abdera, 30 Accius, Lucius, tragedian, 58f. Achaeus of Eretria, tragedian, 13, 29, 82 actors, Greek, 23-5 Aeschines, 19, 24 Aeschylus, 5-7, 14, 18, 29, 60, 83, 86, 87, 109f., 113, 123f., 157, 159, Fig. 3 Agamemnon, see Oresteia Agathon, tragedian, 21, 53 Ajax of Sophocles, Fig. 34 Alcestis of Euripides, 159, Figs 35, 54 Aldine Press, 105-10, Figs 20 and 21 Aldus Manutius, 106-11, Fig. 19 Alexander of Aetolia, 45 Alexander of Pherae, 29 Alexander the Great, 15, 30 Alexandria, 37, ch. 2 passim, 80, 88 alphabetic plays of Euripides, see non-selected plays of Euripides Andromache of Euripides, 70 Andromeda of Euripides, 5, 14, 30 Andronicus, Livius, tragedian, 58 Anouilh, Jean, 171 anthologies, 17, 53f., 74f. Antigone of Sophocles, 4, 8, 23, 119, 147, 151-6, 171, Figs 31, 42, 50 Apollonius Rhodius, 60 apparatus criticus, 110, 121, Fig. 24 Aquila Theatre Company, 161 Archelaus of Macedon, 9, 29 Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, 208 Arethas of Patras, 82 Aristarchus of Samothrace, 48 Aristophanes of Byzantium, 46f., 86 Aristophanes, 6, 9, 14 Aristotle, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15, 19, 36f., 41, 95

Artavasdes II of Armenia, 61, 65 Ascham, Roger, 115 Astydamas, tragedian, 5, 22, 24, 82 Atilius, 61 Atumanus, Simon, 91, Fig. 16 audience, Athenian, 3-5 aulêtês, 3 Auratus, 124 Aurispa, Giovanni, 95, 199 Bacchae of Euripides, 1, 9, 72, 84, 93f., 171 Badius Ascensius, 110 Balliol College, 158 Bentley, Richard, 71, 124 Bessarion, Cardinal, 101f., 199f. Biblioteca Marciana, 102 biographical tradition, 54f. Birtwistle, Sir Harrison, xv, 182 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 97, 103 book trade, Athenian, 15 Bradfield School, 159 Brecht, Bertolt, 171 Browning, Robert, 139 Brunck, Richard, 125 Bruni, Leonardo, 98 Buchanan, George, 112 Byzantine triads, 77, 79, 88, 97, 105, 197 Byzantium, 69f., 78 Cacoyannis, Michael, 174-6, Figs 43-4 Caesar, Julius, 61, 67f. Callas, Maria, Fig. 55 Callimachus of Cyrene, 45f., 55 Cambridge Greek Play, 159f., Fig. 34 Cambridge Ritualists, 134 Capodarso Painter, 33f.

282

General Index Carcinus, tragedian, 22 censorship, 163, 165, 171-4 China, 180 chorêgos, 5, 14 chorus, 3, 188, Figs 7, 34, 35 Christians, 70-4 Christus Patiens, 72, 84, Chrysoloras, Manuel, 95, 98 Cicero, M. Tullius, 61 Cicero, Q. Tullius, 61 City Dionysia, 2-5, 23, 30, 41, 49 Clement of Alexandria, 70f. Clouds of Aristophanes, 18 Cocteau, Jean, 213f., Fig. 50 codex, invention of, 75f. collation, 121f. Constantinople, 78, 80, 85, 98 Constantinople, University of, 81, 83 Convent of San Marco, library of in Florence, 102f., Fig. 18 Corbinelli, Antonio, 105, 198 Cosimo de’ Medici, 100, 102 Crassus, M. Licinius, 64 Cresphontes of Euripides, 67 critical approaches, 134-8 Crusades, 98, 102 curriculum, Athenian, 18f. curriculum, Byzantine, 78, 82f.

Electra of Sophocles, Fig. 51 Eleusinian Mysteries, 6 Eliot, George, xv, 8, 119 Eliot, T.S., 140, 163 Elizabeth I, Queen, 115 Elmsley, Peter, 129 Ennius, Quintus, 58 Epidaurus, theatre at, 159, 183 Eponymous Archon, 14, 23 Erasmus, 110-15 Euripides, 9-11, 18f., 29-31, 36, 49, 53, 60, 62, 65, 80, 83, 86-8, 96, 113, 119, 125, 161-3, Fig. 5 ‘Euripidomania’, 10, 29-31 Eustathius, 84 Ezekiel, author of Exagôgê, 50

Dante, 10 Dark Ages, 79f. Dassin, Jules, 178 Dawe, R.D., 131 Demosthenes, 19, 24, 64 Didascaliae, 23 Didymus, scholiast, 48 Dio Chrysostom, 61 Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, 22, 30 Dionysus, 3, 20f., 29 Dionysus, Theatre of, 2, 22, 24, 27 Dodds, E.R., 131 Donner, J.J. Chr., 152 Droysen, J.G., xv, 7 Dryden, John, 149

Gascoigne, G., 116f. Gellius, Aulus, 62 George of Pisidia, 80 Gildon, Charles, 149 Girard, René, 134 Giustiniani, Orsatto, 118 Glover, Richard, 150 Gluck, Christoph, 11 Goethe, J.W. von, 11, 151 Goffe, Thomas, 157 Goldhill, Simon, xvi, 137 Granville-Barker, Harley, 162 Greek War of Independence, 151 Greek, knowledge of in the West, 79f., 113f. Grocyn, William, 113 Guarino, Battista, 199

Easterling, Patricia, 21 Ecclesia, 2, 27 editiones principes, 95, 105-10, 123 Egypt, 50ff., 62 Electra of Euripides, 29, 123, 175-6, Fig. 43

Federigo da Montefeltro, 105, 200 feminist criticism, 137 festivals of tragedy, modern, 169f. Filelfo, Francesco, 97, 100, 200 film versions of tragedy, 174-9 Flaxman, John, Fig. 26 Fourth Crusade, 85 fourth-century tragedy, 20-2 Fraenkel, Eduard, 122, 131 Freud, Sigmund, 136 Frogs of Aristophanes, 6, 9, 14, 20f., 29

Hall, Sir Peter, 141, 182-4, Fig. 48 Harrison, Jane, 159f. Harrison, Tony, 141, 182 Harvard University, 159f.

283

General Index Hecuba of Euripides, 84, 96f., 103, 110, 115, Fig. 17 Hellenistic tragedy, 50 Heracles of Euripides, 129 Hermann, Gottfried, 129 Hesychius, 74 Hieron I of Syracuse, 6 Hippolytus of Euripides, 121 Homer, Hellenistic tragedian, 50 Housman, A.E., 120, 142 Hughes, Ted, 142 hypomnêmata, 43, 45, 47 hypotheseis, 44, 47 Hypsipyle of Euripides, 52 Ignatius, metropolitan of Nicaea, 82 interpolations, actors’, 25, 43 Ion of Chios, tragedian, 13, 29, 53, 82 Iphigeneia among the Taurians of Euripides, 11, 23 Iphigeneia at Aulis of Euripides, 1, 11, 23, 25, 110, 177-8, Fig. 44 Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico, 170 Japan, 159, 180, 182 Jebb, Sir Richard, 123, 130, 160 Jenkin, H.C. Fleeming, 157f. Johnson, Thomas, 124 Juba II of Mauretania, 64 Justinian, Emperor, 79 Kallierges, Zacharias, 110 Kitto, H.D.F., 2, 21 Knox, Bernard, 30, 184 Lascaris, Janus, 105 Laurentianus Conventi Soppressi no. 172, 92 Lenaea, 2, 23 Leveaux, David, 215 libraries: monastic, 89; private, 14f., 41, 52, 68; public, 40f., 67f.; Renaissance, 101-5 literacy, 15 Low’s Scholars, 157 Lucretius, Titus, 60 Lumley, Lady Jane, 115 Lycurgan version, 25-9, 40, 42 Lycurgus of Boutadae, politician, 19

Magister, Thomas, 86 manuscripts, 87-95, Appendix II; hunt for, 99-101 maxims, 17, 20 Medea of Euripides, 5, 17, 170, Figs 55-7 Mediceus Laurentianus 32.2, 91f. Mediceus Laurentianus 32.9, 87, 89-91, 100 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 201 Melanchthon, Philipp, 114f. Mendelssohn, Felix, 152 Michelangelo, 102 military junta, Greek, 171f. Milton, John, 10 minuscule script, 80-2 Mitchell, Katie, 184 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 181, Fig. 47 monasteries, 80-2, 87 Moschopulus, Manuel, 86 Moses of Bergamo, 99 Mounet-Sully, Jean, 157, 165, Fig. 32 Mount Athos, 101 Murray, Gilbert, 130, 134, 140, 147f., 161-3, 165, 180 music, 3, 152, 172, 181f. Mussolini, Benito, 170 Musurus, Marcus, 99 Naeogeorgius, 112 Naevius, Gnaeus, traedian, 59 Nazis, 132, 171 Neakademia, 106 neo-classicism, French, xv, 10 Neophron of Sicyon, tragedian, 29 Neoptolemus, actor, 19 Neville, George, 113 Newnham College, 158 Niccoli, Niccolò, 91, 100-3, 199 Nicholas V, Pope, 104, 198 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 119, 131-3, 157, 169 non-selected plays of Euripides, 2, 69, 81, 83f., 86, 88, 93, 197 Notre Dame University, 159 Oedipus Complex, 136, 179 Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles, 4, 7, 21, Fig. 52 Oedipus the King of Sophocles, 1, 5, 8,

284

General Index 29, 33f., 36, 52, 151, 156f., 163-9, 178f., 180f., Figs 9, 37-9, 41, 53 ‘old tragedy’, 23, 25, 30 Olivier, Lord, 218, Fig. 53 operas based on tragedy, 207, 226f. Oresteia of Aeschylus, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 99, 170f., 179, 182-4, Figs 10, 33, 47-8 Orestes of Euripides, 3, 23 Otranto, 87 Ovid, 60, 96 Oxford University Dramatic Society, 158f., Figs 33, 35 Pacuvius, 61 Page, Sir Denys, 50, 120, 131 paidagôgos, 35 Palaeologan Renaissance, 85-7 Palimpsest codex no. 36, 94 Palmer, Eva, 169f. pantomime, 65 papyri, 15, 17, 50-4, 62, 69, 78f., Figs 1, 12 Parr, Rev. Samuel, 157 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 178f., 181, Figs 46, 55 performance criticism, 137 performances of tragedy in the Hellenistic world, 48-50 Pergamum, library at, 68 Persians of Aeschylus, 172f., Fig. 49 Pertrucci, Antonello, 105, 201 Petrarch, 91, 95, 96, 101 Philodemus of Gadara, 68 Philocles, tragedian, 29 Philoctetes of Sophocles, 7, 115 Phoenician Women of Euripides, 25, 53, 116, Figs 25b and 58 Photius, 82 Phrynichus, tragedian, 82 Pilatus, Leontius, 96f., 103 Planché, J.R., 155f. Planudes, Maximus, 86 Pleiad, tragic, 50 Plutarch, 60f., 64 Poggio Bracciolini, G.F., 102f. politicisation of tragedy, 170-4, 231f. Polus, actor, 25 Porson, Richard, 122, 125, 129, Figs 25a and b Potter, Robert, 139 Pound, Ezra, 141

Praxiphanes, 45 Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus (?), 2, 4, 7, 169, Fig. 40 Psellus, Michael, 83f. Ptolemy I Soter, 41 Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 40 Pound, Ezra, 141 Quintilian, 62 Racine, Jean, 10 Reading School, 157 refugees, 85, 98f., 102, 105 Reinhardt, Karl, 130f. Reinhardt, Max, 163-9 revivals of tragedy in antiquity, 23-5 Rhesus, 2 Robortellus, 109 Rohde, Erwin, 132f. Roman adaptations of tragedy, 10, 58-60 Rome, 68 Rural Dionysia, 3 San Marco, Convent of, 91, 201 St Augustine, 73 St Basil of Caesarea, 72f. St John Chrysostom, 72, 109 St John of Damascus, 80 Satyrus, 54 satyr plays, 1, 4f., 23 scholia, 86, 88 Schlegel, A.W. and K.W.F., 7 scribes, 81f., 87 scriptorium, 81f. ‘Second Hellenism’, 81 Segal, Charles, 136f. Segesta Declaration, 170 selected plays, 2, 69f., 78, 80, 83, 86, 88, 94, 197, Appendix I Seneca, Lucius, 59, 96, 113 sententiae, 61f., 75, 78 Shakespeare, 20, 113 Shelley, P.B., 8, 139, 163 Shirwood, John, 113 Sikelianos, Angelos, 169 Sixtus IV, Pope, 104, 200 Smith, Edmund, 150 Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, 158

285

General Index Trojan Women of Euripides, 4, 29, 163, 170f., 176-7, Fig. 43 Turnebus, 123f. Turyn, A., 131 Tzetzes, Johannes, 84

Sophocles, 7-9, 60, 82, 87, 112f., 119, Fig. 4 Sosiphanes, Hellenistic tragedian, 50 Stanley, Sir Thomas, 124f. Steiner, George, 187 Stiblinus, Caspar, 112 Stobaeus, 74 Suda, the, 82 suffragettes, 163 Swinburne, Algernon, 11 Talfourd, Thomas, playwright, 151 Taplin, Oliver, 31, 120, 137 Tertullian, 74 textual criticism, 120-3 theatres, Greek, 22 Theodectes, tragedian, 5, 22, 58 Thorndike, Dame Sybil, 162f., Fig. 36 Tieck, Ludwig, 147, 151-5, Figs 30-1 Timon, Hellenistic tragedian, 50 Timotheus, tragedian, 52 Timotheus of Zacynthus, actor, 25 Trackers of Sophocles, 52 tragôidoi, 49f. translations into English, 138-45, 203f. translations into Latin, 110-13 translations into other languages, 113, 202-6 Triclinius, Demetrius, 86, 124 tragici cantores, 63f., 65 tragôidoi, 49f.

Valla, Giorgio, 105, 201 Valpy, Dr Richard, 157 vase-painting, evidence from, 31-6 Vatican library, 104f. Vaticanus Palatinus graecus no. 287, 92f. Velestinlis, Rigas, 180 Venice, 98, 101f., 105f. Vergil, 60 Verrall, A.W., 130 Victorius, 112, 123 Vicenza, 117f., 149 Vietnam War, 171 Wagner, Richard, xv, 152 wall paintings, 65, Figs 14, 15 West, M.L., 131 Whitehead, William, 150 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, T. von, 136 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 69, 129f., 131-3, 171 Yeats, W.B, 140, 169 Zeitlin, Froma, 137f. Zotion of Ephesus, actor, 49

286