Theatre World: Critical Perspectives on Greek Tragedy and Comedy 3110514915, 9783110514919

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Theatre World

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 45

Theatre World

Critical Perspectives on Greek Tragedy and Comedy Studies in Honour of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos Edited by Andreas Fountoulakis, Andreas Markantonatos and Georgios Vasilaros

ISBN 978-3-11-051491-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-051978-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-051896-2 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Preface

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I Tragedy and Comedy Francisco Rodríguez Adrados Cult, Lyric and Komos: The Origins of Tragedy and Comedy, Once Again Alan H. Sommerstein Philanthropic Gods in Comedy and Tragedy Suzanne Saïd The People in Aeschylus’ Tragedies Chris Carey Staging Allegory

15

33

49

Bernhard Zimmermann Trygodia – Remarks on the Poetics of Aristophanic Comedy

65

Andreas Fountoulakis When Dionysus Goes to the East: On the Dissemination of Greek Drama 75 beyond Athens

II Individual Plays Franco Montanari Klytaimnestra in the Odyssey and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon Justina Gregory Sophocles’ Ajax and his Homeric Prototypes

137

Francis Dunn The Prosopon Fallacy or, Apollo in Sophocles’ Electra

157

121

3

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Andreas Markantonatos Failing with Intent: A Narratological Note on the ‘False Merchant Scene’ in 171 Sophocles’ Philoctetes Ioannis N. Perysinakis Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Euripides’ Electra (367 – 390) and the Poetics of the Play 181 Milagros Quijada Sagredo Narrative and Rhetorical Experimentation in Euripides’ Late Iphigenia at 213 Aulis

III Reception Paul Demont A Note on Demosthenes (19.246 – 250) and the Reception of Sophocles’ 235 Antigone Michael Edwards Tragedy in Antiphon 1, Against the Stepmother

243

Eleni Volonaki Euripides’ Erechtheus in Lykourgos’ Against Leokrates André Hurst Upon the king!

251

269

Georgios Vasilaros The Lemnian Deeds: A Tragic Episode in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius 277 John Davidson Tristan and Isolde and Classical Myth

295

IV Theatre and Music Evangelos Moutsopoulos The Role of Music in Plato’s Symposium

313

Table of Contents

Egert Poehlmann Aristotle on Music and Theatre (Politics VIII 6. 1340 b 20 – 1342 b 34; 317 Poetics) Notes on Contributors

347

Academic Publications of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos Index Locorum

357

General Index

365

Index of Greek Words

375

351

VII

Preface This volume, Theatre World: Critical Perspectives on Greek Tragedy and Comedy, aims to celebrate the life and work of Professor Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos in view of her retirement in 2014 after more than four decades of service at the Universities of Athens and the Peloponnese. Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos, as well as contributing greatly to our better understanding of Attic rhetoric in particular and Athenian culture in general, principally through her annotated edition of Demosthenes’ Against Meidias published by the Academy of Athens (in Modern Greek, 21989), is an internationally distinguished classicist who has made her mark in the study of postclassical Attic drama. Taking into account her invaluable scholarly contribution to the field of drama, this collection of twenty essays addresses a wide range of issues concerning Greek tragedy and comedy. The book was edited by a team of former students and colleagues of Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos, who consider this a labour of love. It comes after the publication in 2016, in a honorary volume of Platon (60 [2015]), of the proceedings of a conference on Social and Cultural Values in Greek Literature from the Archaic to the Byzantine Period, which was held at the University of the Peloponnese in May 2014 in honour of Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos. The editors feel that this honorary volume would be incomplete without a brief first attempt at sketching the impressive academic contribution of the recipient of this Festgabe to classical scholarship. It is remarkable that Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos managed to have a considerable impact on the study of ancient Greek drama very early on in her scholarly career with her brilliant and pioneering book Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy, which was published in 1980 as an elegant volume in the prestigious series of monographs of the Academy of Athens. Indeed, this well-written and tightly documented doctoral thesis, submitted to the University of London and lavishly praised by the examiners, shed abundant light on the tragic production of the fourth century BC, which until that time was largely unknown or underestimated, and established beyond reasonable doubt the great importance of tragic fragmentary plays in the analysis of Attic drama in particular and the study of fourth-century Greek culture in general. It is not too bold to argue that with this original research work the honouree succeeded in breaking new ground in the ever-evolving and highly competitive field of classical studies, primarily because until then the rich theatrical production, which appeared after the end of the fifth century BC, was considered the product of an already decadent art which, while having reached the pinnacle of glory during the golden age of Athenian hegemony, fell into decline after the devastating defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

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Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos, fully aware of the great significance of her discoveries, continued expanding upon the important findings of her doctoral thesis with an important monograph entitled Parallel Developments in Postclassical (4th century BC) Tragedy and Comedy (in Modern Greek, 21991). This study focuses on the features adopted by tragedy and comedy during the fourth century BC, and opens the way for an appreciation of a process of mutual influence and perhaps convergence between the two theatrical genres, which may be traced in Euripides and becomes even more apparent in Menander. The research interests of Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos are also reflected in her numerous articles regarding the study of postclassical tragedy and comedy. It is worth noting that these essays, impressive examples of scholarly acuity and intellectual clarity, have been published in a wide range of well-established journals, conference proceedings, and edited volumes, something which proves the exceptional diligence, wide erudition, and creative genius of the dedicatee of this liber amicorum. It is fair to say that most scholarly works referring to postclassical drama, annotated editions of tragic and comic fragments, and anthologies, published about these often impossibly difficult to decipher textual remnants of lost works, draw inspiration and knowledge from Xanthakis-Karamanos’ insightful contributions to this challenging subject. Happily enough, these important papers on postclassical drama have been brought together in one volume entitled Dramatica: Studies in Classical and Postclassical Dramatic Poetry (22004), where a significant number of tragic and comic fragments cease to be dislocated pieces of long-lost literary works and are shown to have meaning and context. This synopsis of Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos’ scholarly achievements in the research area of Greek drama is but a mere portion of her vast research output, as well as of her considerable contribution to academic administration as Director of the Research Centre for Greek and Latin Literature of the Academy of Athens and Head of the Department of Philology at the University of the Peloponnese. One should not fail to mention the significant role that she has played in the development of the field of classical studies from the posts of the President of the Society of Greek Philologists and of the Vice-President of the International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies (FIEC). The editors have concurred with each other in the view that her life-long devotion to reconstructing and interpreting Greek fragmentary plays is reason enough to collect together cutting-edge scholarship exclusively on Attic drama in this special homage volume. The largest aggregate of essays in this Festschrift deals mainly with either broader topics regarding Greek tragedy and comedy or specific interpretative issues concerning individual plays; there are also far-reaching discussions of the reception history of particular works, themes, and dramatic charac-

Preface

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ters, as well as a fascinating concluding section on the interpenetration of scenic action and music. In order to improve the readability of this collection of erudite articles every effort has been made to ensure that the book stays consistent, while at the same time retaining each author’s stylistic intent and special preferences. Last but not least, the editors wish to express their gratitude to Professors Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, chief-editors of the Trends in Classics series of academic monographs, for their unfailing patience and helpful suggestions; in particular, we are deeply indebted to the latter, as he gently nudged us towards further streamlining of a demanding text and has sagely watched over the growth of this volume from its beginning. Andreas Fountoulakis Andreas Markantonatos Georgios Vasilaros

Rethymno, Kalamata, and Athens May 2016

Francisco Rodríguez Adrados

Cult, Lyric and Komos: The Origins of Tragedy and Comedy, Once Again 1 Also Once Again, a Critique of the Aristotle-Wilamowitz Proposal and of Pan-Dionysism It is a pleasure for me to write again on the origins of ancient Greek theatre, a theme that I began to unravel in 1967,¹ before writing my fundamental work on the subject in 1972.² And I have continued with this theme right up until now (I shall refer to my bibliography throughout this article). And it is for me a pleasure to dedicate this work to a person who is also constant in the study of Greek theatre, Professor Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos. But I must say that this pleasure is not free of disappointment because the thesis I have maintained from the beginning, namely that in Greek theatre the Dionysiac factor is joined to elements that are not Dionysiac, is often unrecognised.³ Furthermore, apart from me others have defended this conclusion, for example Patzer and Del Grande, and recent authors whose bibliography I will provide. Nevertheless, today what still dominates is Aristotle’s thesis (or its modification by Wilamowitz), which proposes a radical pan-Dionysism of Greek theatre:

 Adrados 1967.  Adrados 1972a. This book, published by a well-known publisher (1975), Brill of Leiden, is not cited by my colleagues in classical philology, as far as I can discern, nor are its ideas discussed, with at least one exception, that of Ghiron-Bistagne 1985.  I repeat what I say in Adrados 2013a, 223 on the practice of not citing the ideas that differ from those that have become almost dogma. There I say: ‘I must admit that this book (mine, the one I have just cited), although well known and well considered in Spain, especially among people of the theatre, is scarcely mentioned abroad, neither in the Spanish version nor in the English one’. No one has written a critique of it; it seems no one has read it. This is worrying, not only for me but also for classical philology worldwide, which seems to lack interest in anything that breaks the old routines and is not written in English or German. I see no reason to keep silent on this. But it seems that not even English, to which my book was translated, helps: apparently one must accept obligatory dogmas like the ideas of Aristotle and Wilamowitz on the origins of Greek theatre. This is not good for the future of our discipline. Apart from this, I shall discuss the ideas presented in this book later. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-001

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according to the former, a proponent of Dionysism as is known (cf. Poetics 1449a), tragedy would come from the exarchons or soloists of the dithyramb; or, in another hypothesis, incongruent, incidentally, with the first one, from a satyricon thereafter made ‘serious’: ἐκ μικρῶν μύθων καὶ λέξεως γελοίας διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικοῦ μεταβαλεῖν ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνύνθη. And comedy would come from the φαλλικά, or phallic hymns (a single element among many others). Wilamowitz attempted to fix this by introducing (inventing, actually) a fanciful ‘dithyramb of satyrs’. Today this is, more or less and with exceptions, the doctrine that is encountered by the novice scholar who wants to form an idea of the origins of the theatre. It is what is found in the OCD (s.v. Tragedy, Greek), or in recent works for those who are beginning to study the subject.⁴ I have said elsewhere that Aristotle was right in seeing the origin of both genres in the dialogue between the Chorus leader, who sings, and a number of Chorus members, who recite; but it is an error to credit the two genres with such narrow foundations, exclusively Dionysiac, and dispense with the underlying choral, cultural, and religious aspects, and with lyric mimicry, all these existing in both genres. Another error is the pan-Dionysism, when the presence of the Dionysiac themes in tragedy and comedy is minimal: this is without doubt an extrapolation from the fact that performances of both theatrical genres took place in Athens in the Dionysiac culture area of Dionysus, as part of his festivities, only after c. 500 BC of course, first in a structure of wood and later, in the fourth century, of stone. Only by way of this extrapolation from the celebration of the theatre in Athens (in the theatre of Dionysus and in the Dionysiac festivals) can it be understood how themes with no relation to Dionysus and his myths may be considered Dionysiac and take centre stage in tragedy and comedy in the opinion of Aristotle and many others, even though this contradicts the reality of the facts. Worst of all is when a scholar like Jürgen Leonhardt⁵ proposes that in the Poetics 1449 a 15 ff., contrary to what we all interpret, it is comedy that comes from the soloists of the dithyramb, and tragedy from the phallic hymns. But the passage cited, though syntactically convoluted, leaves no doubt about what Aristotle proposes: exactly the opposite. Leonhardt should be asked to offer evidence of some phallic element in tragedy. There are none. I provide some bibliography of mine, published later than my book cited above, which studies in depth this theme of the Aristotelian view about the ori-

 Thus Latacz 1993, 56 ff.  Leonhardt 1991.

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gins of theatre (tragedy coming from the soloists of the dithyramb, comedy from those of the phallic hymns) and of the counterarguments that one can offer.⁶

2 Did Aristotle Know More Than We Do? Religion, Cult, and Ritual in the Greek Theatre On the other hand, we can discard the idea that Aristotle ‘knew more than we do’, supported by the author hidden in obscure initials in the above-mentioned article of the OCD and, it seems, by many others. Neither Aristotle nor Plato are literary historians: in matters of theatre, they are critics of a moralistic type if not, like Aristotle precisely, proponents of the entelechy, a mysterious evolution that would lead tragedy to achieve its own nature: a nature that Aristotle defines in his particular way, based on the ἁμαρτία or tragic error and the ἔλεος καὶ φόβος of the spectator. There is absolutely no trace of the tragic or of ὕβρις that have been so disquieting for modern researchers in our times. Aristotle belongs to an anti-tragic age. The philosophers, from Socrates onwards, formed part of a moralistic group that disputed the position of the theatre as the guide of Athenian culture: they were, actually, distanced from it and from traditional Greek religion. With the philosophers, a different society is born; they were distant, I repeat, from the traditional religion of Athens, although some did keep up appearances. And they tried to find various definitions for the theatre other than religion, to which they were alien; this is why they sought to find other starting points for the theatre.⁷ It was as difficult for them to understand that kind of theatre as it was for a long series of European scholars two or three centuries before ours, almost always Anglosaxons or Germans, whose Pietist protestant cultural foundations were far removed from the archaic Greek ones from which that theatre arose.⁸

6

Adrados 2005 and 2008. And several articles in Adrados 1999a, especially Adrados 1999b. Also, among others, see Adrados 1962, 1969, 1972b, and 1974. 7 See, apart from some of the things that I have already indicated, my recent article on Socrates, Adrados 2013b, where I point out the difference between the ideas of the philosophers, right from Socrates himself, and the traditional Greek religion, whatever Socrates might have said in his own defense. The tragedians, however, especially Aeschylus and Sophocles, base their work on traditional religion as does what precedes them in cult and traditional komoi. 8 It is well-known, for example, that Wilamowitz’s enormous erudition often went hand in hand with a great ignorance of the habitual feelings of the Greeks of the archaic and classical period and their society. Famous are, for example, Wilamowitz’s criticisms of Medea’s feminist speech in Medea, because of simple ignorance of what Greek society was like, or his interpretation of

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It was much closer to the mentality of the writers and the public acquainted with so many mysteries, sacred representations, processions, autos sacramentales, and similar works in medieval France and England, and in Spain, Italy, and Greece itself until today. Nevertheless, the presence of the archaic religion in Greek theatre began to be diluted in Euripides and New Comedy. This is a movement that commenced, after several archaic attempts, during the fifth-century Sophistic movement and in the different philosophical systems, as I have just said. I would also like to add to the foregoing observations a direction in the modern bibliography on Greek theatre, a direction related to the study of theatrical works, and also to studies on cults and Greek rites that have a connection with precedents of the theatre. A number of scholars have begun to distance themselves from the religious asepsis of some of their predecessors, to speak of the importance of the ancient Greek religion in theatre. What I present is not an exhaustive study, only certain facts. In the first place, I should not want to neglect a work by Inge Nielsen,⁹ which studies the ‘theatre-like’ areas in Greece, the Near East, Egypt, etc. devoted either to theatre or, earlier, to ritual drama in various pre-Greek cultures, a drama which included Choruses, hymns, dances, and masked thiasoi, sometimes representing animals. This situates Greek theatre in the ambit of the ancient cults of Isis, Cybele, Atargatis, Astarte, and others, and also of Games and various Sanctuaries, although evidently Greek theatre represents a literary evolution of these pre-forms. I stop here for a moment – this is an important book: chapter I, for example, on Egypt, ‘Evidence for Ritual Drama’. Some examples: the Egyptian text from the Old Empire on the drama of the gods Geb and Set, with dialogue and instructions for performance; the Dramatic Ramesseum papyrus, containing a ceremonial play for the coronation of Sesostris I, dialogue and instructions for the erection of the pillar, symbol of Osiris; or a stele from the time of Sesostris III, on the feast of Oxiris in Abidus, perhaps mere mimesis; and many fragments of ritual dramas. And Archaeology reveals the existence of ‘Cult Theatres’. Chapters II and III on the Near East present, among other things, the best known ritual, that of Adonis and Astarte in Byblos (there is a Greek echo in Sappho 140, another in Theocritus): data on ‘cultic theatres’ of Astarte or Aphrodite in Paphos and Kition, of Bel in Palmira, and Baal.

the poetic group of Sappho in Lesbos as a ‘German residence for young ladies’. The mentality that corresponded to Greek tragedy and society was foreign to him. 9 2002.

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But there are also those theatres (chapter IV) in Minoan Crete, the ‘theatrelike areas’ of Knossos and Phaistos. And in archaic Greece: in the sanctuaries of Artemis Orthia in Sparta and of Artemis in Brauron. More directly related to Greek theatre is the book by Christiane SourvinouInwood, a broad study of the cult elements in tragedy. It deals first of all with the beginning of the Great Dionysia in Athens, in the third quarter of the sixth century BC: they were celebrated first as a cult of xenismós, the reception held in the prytaneum of the cult of Dionysus after first being rejected. It was a cult consisting in its beginnings of the sacrifice of the tragos, the male goat, accompanied by a ‘tragic’ hymn. The ceremony moved to the Academy, according to Pausanias, then to the altar of the twelve gods in the agora, and finally, toward 500 BC, to the theatre of Dionysus, which was first of wood, later of stone. This book is important, in the first place because of the ample documentation of Religion in Tragedy, then because of its study of the cult of Dionysus, a very hypothetical reconstruction, to be sure. The author points out the question pending: how were there joined together in a hymn to the god, which the author calls a dithyramb, myths and celebrations that came from elsewhere? She herself recognises the precarious character of her various reconstructions: how this reception and celebration of the new god evolved toward a proto-tragedy in which a hypokrités spoke, then continued to evolve until attaining the form of a tragedy with a masked Chorus. But it is satisfactory, at least, to see the incorporation of new myths or cults into the original sacrifice clearly indicated. For me, the matter is clear: the magnification, indeed the reworking of the ritual is a personal initiative of someone with the power to do this: no doubt of Pisistratus the tyrant, founder of the Panathenaic Games, as well. It was in Athens where that initiative had been taken, that is, to introduce alternatively into the celebration various myths, something which is a great innovation: a rite and a myth, which could be converted into a celebration, like any rite or any myth. It is quite clear that this alternation, this changing spectacle, already existed when it was taken to the Great Dionysia – first in tragedy, then in satyr drama, finally in comedy. Only someone with power, who sought to endow Athens with a spectacle that was religious and popular at the same time, Pisistratus the tyrant, could have done it. And someone had to make the suggestion, show him a model: Thespis, a very apt name that comes from the θέσπις ἀοιδός, the ‘inspired singer’ of whom Homer speaks and of whom Horace, among others, tells us (Ars Poetica 275 – 277). He is the symbol of others like himself when, as they tell us, he drove his theatrical wagon through Greece, much as did, more than two millennia later, the famous puppeteer Maese Pedro in chapter XXV of the Spanish novel Don Quixote: the myths and fables have now become a spectacle. So Pisistratus

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brought to Athens a new and grandiose spectacle to impress the citizens, as any mayor would do in our own days. In any case, now that the ice is broken for the beginning of theatre, it is necessary to look beyond Athens for that radical modification of the ancient rites, with the help of performances equally religious but now converted into spectacle. In Athens it was first tragedy, as we know; 536 BC is the date given by the Parian Marble, and almost certainly satyr drama as well, a comic version of tragedy; then, as is known, comedy entered the performances of the Great Dionysia in 488 or 487 BC.

3 The Komos and the Other Sources of the Theatre Not far removed are theories speaking simply of popular Choruses or of komoi1⁰ and affirming that to an initial cultic hymn were added various myths and rites. More than that, the content of the komoi, the popular processions, half religious, half festive, about which we have been talking, is enormously variable, ranging from the Choruses of mourning or celebration of the god to processions of men revelling in the festivities in various popular guises, even imitating animals. Tragedy, Satyr Drama, Comedy, all of their various types, come from all kinds of komoi. I wrote about komoi myself in my book, as did Paulette Ghiron-Bistagne.1¹ Actually this name was applied to all processions, both religious and festive, that ended up in the theatre, in the various genres of the theatre, as I have just said. They existed all through Greece, though the theatrical genres deriving from them were distinguished by perfectly clear characteristics. The komoi that were the source of Comedy (not all of them were) have lately been the topic of important studies.1² There are then common roots joining the diverse komoi that circulated throughout Greece in the various festivities, from those of mourning to those

10

See, for example, Vernant 1972; Duchemin 1969; Markantonatos 1971. 1985. 12 See Rothwell 2006. But on the animal komos there is much more material in an unpublished book: a thesis for the Licenciatura in Madrid that I directed in 1978 (Danzas de Imitación de animales en la Grecia Antigua by Helena Torres Huertas); I keep the original like a treasure. It was the time when I had just published my book, in Spanish (1972a) and English (1975), Fiesta, Comedia y Tragedia, and I was interested in these themes, as I am now. 11

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of revelry to those that explore the mythical origins of the people (heroic or not, free of mockery) or likenesses of people and animals. They are agrarian celebrations that in Greece became Dionysiac festivities. This is an inexhaustible mother lode: in Asia it is the source of the kathakali and other theatres, among them those that deal with the legends of Buddha, those of Sita and Rama (with the incredibly funny presence of the monkeys), in our own Middle Ages and much later in the carnival celebrations, the burning of effigies, the celebrations of Moors and Christians, erotic festivities like Adam de la Halle’s Jeu de Robin et Marion in France, the Hertha and Valkyrie processions in Germany or the Ludus de rege et regina or the Spanish Mayas or the Italian theatre with Harlequin, an age-old infernal character. Or animal games like those of the bear and bull in different places. But I do not intend to be exhaustive; I simply refer to my book on the origins of theatre.1³ As I said before, this book had little success, but I think it gives what is essential on the subject. And it is mentioned in a study by Paulette Ghiron-Bistagne ‘Sur les origines de la tragédie grecque’, in which the author cites, along with material of mine, additional data and concurs with me in the general thesis that the komos was the nucleus of very diverse theatrical genres in Greece and in other countries. It is unfortunate that this Hellenist died very young. I met her in Montpellier, in the meetings that she organised on theatrical and anthropological themes, at one of which I read my above-mentioned paper ‘Rite, Mythe et théâtre en Grèce ancienne’.1⁴ Now having reached this point, I would like to stop for a moment to explain something that I have continued to study since my first book and that has found little acceptance. In all genres of Greek theatre, there can be found a series of elements which originate from a different komos, all of them religious ‒ elements ranging from the costumes to the types of lyric, to the types of action, to the prosody, and so on and so forth. The variants are infinite ‒ various genres preferring some and others preferring different ones. They all come from religious (of various types) and festive komoi. I repeat, as far as the Greek theatre is concerned. The Chorus is nuclear: there is one, rarely two; they sing; at their side are the coryphaeus, who recites, and the actors, who, with exceptions, recite as well. One of them, whom I call leader of the Chorus, is also called the protagonist; the other is the antagonist. The Chorus enters (πάροδος), without exception after a prologue recited by an actor, who describes the situation to the audience, one of uncertainty or anguish in general. Various stationary songs are performed

13 14

1972a, 369 ff. 1987.

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(στάσιμα); often two semi-Choruses sing the strophe and antistrophe. Between the stasima two distinct moments of action take place: they are acts in which the actors take part and sometimes the coryphaeus as well. There are growing tension, opposing actions, and, frequently, the λύσις or resolution of the conflict. There are a number of variants, often a recitation by the coryphaeus. For the audience, all this was a fiesta: learning by way of myth. In it there were kings, priests, archaism in the costumes and of the language in tragedy, popular and even parodical costumes and language in comedy. The chorals are song and dance, either anti-strophic, or alternating with the recitation of one or two actors. There are various types of choral songs, all of them traditional: those of entrance and exit (πάροδος, ἔξοδος), an invocation of a god (for example of Dionysus in Bacchae), a hymn of victory (in Antigone), an evocation of death (of Agamemnon in Choephori), an appeal (for example, to the gods in Suppliants1⁵), agon or confrontation (between characters and Choruses, between men and women, etc.), lament or mourning (in Oedipus Rex, for example), persecution (as in Eumenides), expulsion (of Oedipus, Cleon, etc.) Everything comes from ancient rituals of marriage, death, search, persecution, etc.: we find them at times in the popular or literary lyric, at times in tragedy, at times in comedy. And with many formal variants: some types are missing in comedy (for example, the lament), others in tragedy (for example, the hymenaea or wedding songs). Certain burlesque rituals are only found in comedy and satyr drama, not in tragedy: this is the case of the game of those who tug at a rope in opposite directions, witnessed in a fresco from Mycenae; it has an echo in Dictyulci, a satyr play by Aeschylus, and in Peace by Aristophanes.1⁶ Tragedy, satyr drama, and comedy drew material from among the various komoi. All this is present also in rituals from outside Greece: conflicts between the followers of Osiris and Set in Egypt, between Kama and Krishna in India, between Moors and Christians in Spain. The agon or confrontation, furthermore, is important in Greece both in the ritual and popular festivities (the conflict between men and women in mythical contexts in various celebrations, for example), and in all theatre 1⁷. Naturally, there are basic groups, as in Eumenides (Orestes/Erinyes) or complex groups, as in the great epirrhematic sections of comedy.

15 16 17

On the tragedies of supplication, see Adrados 1986. See Adrados 1971. See, for example, Duchemin 1945 and Adrados 1974.

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It is the old world revived, changed in place and time via the komos, organised into various groups. There are approximately common lines, others that are lacking or are created here or there. Another important element in both tragedy and comedy is the Messenger (also in rituals like those of Demeter in Eleusis, in those of Athis in Phrygia, and then in Rome). But above all, I want to insist on a theme that is almost always forgotten: that of the formal and metrical elements of the komos that already appear in the popular and literary lyric, as we have seen, and are formalised in the theatrical genres. Of all these popular lyric elements that theatre has accepted, there exist parallelisms in various peoples, most specifically in India, as Bharat Gupta establishes, making parallels with the Greek facts and citing my book.1⁸ And there are analogies in the European Middle Ages,1⁹ and other derived ones in sporting encounters.2⁰ In all these cases, without exception, there is in their origins some festivity with mimetic dances of mourning or liberation, with heroic or burlesque choral songs, in which are present, revived again before the audience, ancient myths that end in the desired liberation from oppressive situations with the arrival of the god or of the burlesque hero, or the mourning for the death of the hero. And there is always a religious context, controversial, anguished or related to some search. And returning for a moment to the Aristotle or Aristotle-Wilamowitz thesis, I must repeat that it is absolutely insufficient, and more so as it proposes that the Chorus / actors dialogue comes, in the case of tragedy, from the dialogue of the exarchon, or soloist of the dithyramb, and the Chorus; in the case of the comedy, from a parallel dialogue in the phallic hymns! There is much more than the phallus in comedy. Essential aspects of the theatre, especially of tragedy, religious and ritual aspects, and also formal elements in common with the lyric and earlier than the Athenian theatre, as we have seen, are forgotten. Forgotten, too, is the fact that ancient tradition presents tragedy to us as a product imported to Athens in the epoch of Pisistratus and of Thespis, in the sixth century BC. Its elements are pan-Grecian, carried to Athens one way or another, later recognised within the three theatrical genres that we know.

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Gupta 20063. See Adrados 2012. See Adrados 2013a, 467 ff. (‘La fiesta mimética y sus desarrollos teatrales’). I shall return to this theme later. 20 See Adrados 1996.

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Francisco Rodríguez Adrados

There is no Attic myth in Greek Tragedy,2¹ properly speaking, only Greek myth from various regions; nor are there particularly Attic themes in Comedy; a thousand comic elements, animalistic or not, are common in Greece. But there is indeed a religious and mythological mentality in the theatre. That much is clear. Now I have repeatedly criticised not only theories like those of Aristotle and Wilamowitz but also the philosophers’ views about theatre: their ideas are foreign to essential elements of theatre. This paper is written to emphasise that point: that present in Greek theatre are elements that are mythic, ritual and religious or else general or often foreign to Athens and that somehow arrived there. Some were already present in Athens; just as in other places, myths that lived there had become common to all Greece. Nor were burlesque Choruses of animals and men unusual. But it is not my intention to emphasise this but rather to review the recent bibliography in order to find more or less complete recognition in it of facts that have been forgotten in the past: the sometimes non-Athenian character, at times simply pan-Grecian, of so many elements of the Athenian theatre (and one would have to add of the Sicilian theatre, as well); and their fundamentally religious character, including rites and myths. And one important matter: at times it is accepted that those elements were joined in a certain moment to the cult of the god Dionysus himself, who arrived in Athens from elsewhere. So, then, this theme is still pending: that of how these foreign elements came to be inserted into the cult of Dionysus, which was introduced into Athens at some time in the second half of the sixth century BC. This in itself signifies a converging of positions: a rejection of pan-Dionysism, and an acceptance of the fact that this theatre contains an enormous non-Dionysiac area that was added to the rites of acceptance in Athens of Dionysus, the new god. It is even said that Dionysus himself is often secondary to the earlier figures and rituals! When the theatrical performances, even at best still not theatre, were moved to the grounds of the god at the foot of the Acropolis, they already contained those non-Dionysiac elements from which it would no longer be possible to free themselves. They had already become the nucleus of the theatre, of that festivity that attracted everyone more than any other and that became something like the symbol of the city and people of Athens.

21 The only important myth that we can call Attic is that of Theseus; see Calame 1990. We have news of cults (especially of the festivals of the Oscophoria and the Pyanopsia) and myths, but there are hardly any allusions in the theatre, there being one in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.

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Unknown to us, however, are the exact details of when and how all these other elements that came from various komoi, most of them Panhellenic or at least foreign to Athens, were inserted into the festivity that celebrated the arrival of the god Dionysus, his acceptance and original cult in Athens. In any case, it is clear that komoi, myths and rites of various levels were included in a single varied whole. And that not without the profound influence of the literary epic and lyric, and of the very essence of Athens and its goddess, of its growing humanism, of its democracy, of its internationalism, of its openness to the whole Greek world and to the whole future of man.

Bibliography Adrados, F. R. (1962), El héroe trágico y el filósofo platónico, Madrid. — (1967), ‘ΚΩΜΟΣ, ΚΩΜΩΙΔΙΑ, ΤΡΑΓΩΙΔΙΑ: Sobre los orígenes griegos del teatro’, in: Emerita 35, 249 – 264. — (1969), ‘El Βanquete platónico y la teoría del teatro’, in: Emerita 37, 1 – 28. — (1971), ‘Los coros de la Paz y los Dictiulcos y sus precedentes rituales’, in: Dioniso 45, 289 – 301. — (1972a) [19832], Fiesta, Comedia y Tragedia. Sobre los orígenes griegos del teatro, Barcelona [also in English: (1975), Festival, Comedy and Tragedy: The Greek Origins of Theatre, Leiden]. — (1972b), ‘Das Komische und das Tragische im athenischen Theater’, in: Das Altertum 18, 137 – 151. — (1974), ‘The Agon and the Origin of Tragic Chorus’, in: J. L. Heller / J. K. Newman (eds.), Serta Turyniana: Studies in Greek Literature and Palaeography in Honour of Alexander Turyn, Urbana / Chicago / London, 108 – 121. — (1986), ‘Las tragedias de súplica: Origen, tipología y relaciones internas’, in: Estudios Clásicos 28, 27 – 45. — (1987), ‘Rite, Mythe et théâtre en Grèce ancienne’, in: Cahiers du Gita 3, Anthropologie et Théatre antique. Actes du colloque international de Montpellier (6 – 8 mars 1986), 37 – 52. — (1996), ‘Mito, rito y deporte en Grecia’, in: Estudios Clásicos 110, 7 – 31. — (1999a), Del teatro griego al teatro de hoy, Madrid. — (1999b), ‘Rito, mito y teatro en la Grecia antigua’, in F. R. Adrados (ed.), Del teatro griego al teatro de hoy, Madrid, 39 – 54 [also in French in: Cahiers du Gita 3, 1987, 37 – 52]. — (2005), ‘Le origini della tragedia: Aristotele o riconstruzzione interna e paragone’, in: R. Grisolia / G. M. Rispoli (eds.), Il personaggio e la maschera. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Naples, 95 – 102. — (2008), ‘¿Aristóteles o reconstrucción interna y comparación? Sobre el origen de la tragedia’, in: F. Doménech (ed.) Teatro español. Autores clásicos y modernos: Homenaje a Ricardo Doménech, Madrid, 341 – 350.

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— (2012), ‘Teatro griego antiguo y teatro indio: Su origen en danzas corales que miman antiguos mitos’, in: Emerita 80, 1 – 12. — (2013a), El Río de la Literatura. De Sumeria y Homero a Shakespeare y Cervantes, Barcelona. — (2013b), ‘Sócrates: viejas y nuevas interpretaciones’, in: Emerita 81, 241 – 261. Calame, C. (1990), Thésée et l’imaginaire Athénien, Lausanne. Duchemin, J. (1945), L’ἀγών dans la tragédie grecque, Paris. — (1969), ‘Les origines populaires et paysannes de l’agon tragique’, in: Dioniso 43, 247 – 265. Ghiron-Bistagne, P. (1985), ‘Sur les origines de la tragédie grecque’, in: Cahiers du Gita 1, Melpomene 84. Mélanges interdisciplinaires sur la tragédie grecque. Gupta B. (20063), Dramatic Concepts, Greek and Indian, New Delhi. Latacz, J. (1993), Einführung in die griechische Tragödie, Göttingen. Leonhardt, J. (1991), Phalloslied und Dithyrambos: Aristoteles über den Ursprung des griechischen Dramas, Heidelberg. Markantonatos, G. A. (1971), ‘Περὶ τὴν γένεσιν τῆς ᾿Aττικῆς Τραγῳδíας’, in: Platon 23, 20 – 38. Nielsen, I. (2002), Cultic Theatre and Ritual Drama: A Study in Regional Development and Religious Interchange between East and West in Antiquity, Aarhus. Rothwell, K. S. (2006), Nature, Culture and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses, Cambridge. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (2003), Tragedy and the Athenian Religion, Lanham. Vernant, J.-P. (1972), ‘Le moment historique de la tragédie en Gréce. Quelques conditions sociales et psycologiques’, in: J. Burian / L. Vidman (eds.), Antiquitas Graeco-Romana ac tempora nostra: acta congressus internationalis habiti Brunae diebus 12 – 16 mensis Aprilis 1966, Prague, 246 – 250.

Alan H. Sommerstein

Philanthropic Gods in Comedy and Tragedy In archaic and classical Greece, we can discern two contrasting views about the attitude of gods to mortals, both of which are present in those foundational texts, the Homeric and Hesiodic poems – and both of which were probably often held by the same persons at different times according to their experiences. I shall call them the Iliadic view and the Odyssean view. In the Iliad, the welfare of humans in general is of little or no concern to the gods. Individual deities may have their favourites – Athena giving aid to Diomedes or Odysseus, Aphrodite to Paris – and they are usually loud, though often not successful, in defence of their own children; but Hera thinks nothing of inviting Zeus to destroy, if he wishes, the three Greek cities that are dearest to her heart, if only he will allow her to make away with Troy (Iliad 4.30 – 72); and when Zeus ponders the possibility of saving his son Sarpedon contrary to his destiny (aisa), a few rumbles of discontent from his wife on behalf of ‘us other gods’ (presumably the pro-Greek ones) are enough to silence him (16.439 – 443). The world of the Iliad is one in which, as Achilles tells Priam, Zeus from his jars of good and evil dispenses to mortals either a mixture of the two, in more or less equal proportions, or else evil alone (24.525 – 533). Nor do the gods of the Iliad seem to treat virtuous humans significantly better than vicious ones. They do punish the breaking of oaths – though the most important example of such punishment, the perjury of Pandarus, on which the entire issue of the Trojan war is made to depend, involves a breach of oath suggested and encouraged by a divine agent provocateur, Athena, with the consent of Zeus (4.64– 126); but divine punishment of perjury is a logical necessity if oaths themselves are to have any meaning. In the whole of the Iliad there are only two passages in which the poet, or the gods themselves, indicate that the gods may punish other moral delinquencies¹ (as distinct from a failure to give them due honour and tribute). One is the debate among the gods on the treatment of Hector’s body (24.22– 76), when Zeus, despite the opposition of Athena,

 Menelaus, standing over the corpse of Peisander, does tell the Trojans that they ‘did not fear the heavy wrath of Zeus Xenios, who will some day destroy [their] lofty city’ because they stole away Helen and many of Menelaus’ possessions (13.623 – 627); yet when he was facing the actual offender, Paris, in single combat, and prayed to Zeus to ‘subdue him under my hands, that men of future generations may shrink from doing evil to their hosts’ (3.351– 354), his prayer was not granted. Likewise, Hector’s suggestion that Achilles may incur divine wrath if he denies Hector burial (22.358) is not borne out by subsequent events (de Jong 2012, 150 – 151). DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-002

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Hera, and Poseidon, decides to order Achilles, under threat of punishment, to return the corpse for burial; but Zeus has always had a soft spot for Hector (who had been assiduous in sacrificing to him), and had been reluctant to allow him to be killed (22.168 – 176). The other passage is the simile in 16.384– 393, where the noise made by Hector’s horses, as they rush their master out of battle, is compared to that of streams swollen in flood when Zeus has sent a rainstorm, ‘vexed and angry with men who in the place of assembly give crooked judgements and drive out justice, heedless of the resentment of the gods’. Here, however, the lines describing the offence (387– 388) fit in rather awkwardly. If these lines were not there, the following line (τῶν δέ τε πάντες μὲν ποταμοὶ πλήθουσι ῥέοντες) would mean ‘and with these waters [described in 384– 386] all the flowing rivers are filled’;² whereas with 387– 388 included, the pronoun τῶν will have to refer to the men spoken of in 386 – 388, as if the rivers were their property. This, combined with the uniqueness of the passage (and of the noun ὄπις) in the Iliad, raises a strong suspicion that 387– 388 are an interpolation (cf. Hes. Op. 250 – 251).³ In the Odyssey, on the other hand, the gods, and Zeus in particular, have an intense concern with justice on earth. The tone is set right from the proem, where the poet goes out of his way to emphasise that Odysseus could not, for all his efforts, bring his companions safe home, ‘because they were destroyed by their own recklessness’ (1.7) – a phrase that recurs shortly afterwards (1.34) in the important passage where Zeus criticizes mortals who bring suffering on themselves ‘by their own recklessness’ and blame the gods for it, thereby giving Athena an opportunity to complain about what she sees as the unmerited suffering of Odysseus and so to set in motion the plot of the Odyssey, wherein Athena with the backing of Zeus (cf. 16.260) helps to bring about the return of Odysseus, and Penelope’s suitors ultimately perish ‘through their recklessness’ (22.317, 416). Why, then, it may be asked, did Odysseus suffer so much in the first place? For the blinding of the Cyclops, says Zeus (1.68 – 75); that, of course, had been necessary to secure the escape of Odysseus and his men from the Cyclops’ deadly cave, but they would never have been imprisoned there if they had not broken the laws of hospitality by taking the Cyclops’ food in his absence – the same offence that the suitors would later commit on a far grander scale – and then, on Odysseus’ insistence, staying in the cave to meet him in the hope of receiving  Cf. Ameis / Hentze 1924, ad loc.  The two lines were rejected by Leaf 1888, ad loc., largely on the ground that they are more Hesiodic than Homeric. That in itself would not worry Martin West (2011, 320), for whom the whole Iliad as we have it is post-Hesiodic and full of echoes of the Hesiodic poems, but he still finds this passage ‘quite untypical of Il.’.

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guest-gifts (9.216 – 234). Odysseus was already then far from his way home, having been caught in the fringes of the storm that Athena and Zeus brought upon the homebound Greek fleet ‘because not all of them had wisdom or justice’ (3.133 – 134) – evidently alluding (cf. 1.326 – 327, 4.502) to the seizure of Cassandra from Athena’s temple by the lesser Ajax (and perhaps to the army’s failure to punish him for it).⁴ The phrase ‘not all’ implies a collective punishment, the whole army suffering for wrongs done by one or a few of them; all early understandings of divine justice contain this feature. The Odyssey contains only one passage in which a god inflicts suffering that cannot be seen as either individual or collective punishment for any moral offence: Poseidon’s petrifaction of the Phaeacians’ ship (together with its crew) when it returns from Ithaca after taking Odysseus home (13.124– 164), an action which has the explicit approval of Zeus even though the act by which the Phaeacians have offended Poseidon was both praiseworthy in itself (providing a guest with assistance for his onward journey) and part of Athena’s plan for Odysseus’ return which Zeus had likewise approved.⁵ Its only justification is poetic rather than ethical: at the moment when Odysseus wakes (13.187– 188) to behold his homeland for the first time (though he fails to recognise it), it severs all connection between the fantasy world of his wanderings and the world to which he has returned. The action of the first four books of the poem took us, with Telemachus, from Ithaca across much of southern Greece; that of the next eight and a half took us, with Odysseus, into unknown, unchartable regions and even into the underworld; but from now on, save for a short section early in book 15, we shall not leave Ithaca again except in flashbacks and digressions. With the one exception I have noted, the attitude and behaviour of Zeus in the Odyssey are consistently human-friendly, or, to use a Greek-derived term, philanthropic. In the rest of this paper, a philanthropic god will mean a god who behaves according to the Odyssean model, acting benevolently towards those humans who on moral grounds deserve benevolent treatment. Gods who show unconditional favour to particular individuals regardless of their behaviour will certainly be regarded by their protégés as friendly, but they are not philanthropic. Hesiod offers us both approaches, even in the same poem. In the Works and Days (213 – 285) he eloquently warns both his brother and the ‘bribe-devouring’ nobles that they face divine retribution for the wrongs they have committed; but  So the scholia to 3.135 (and to 1.327).  Bowie 2013, 124– 6, points out that the Phaeacians had been warned that they were acting riskily (8.564– 571, 13.172– 178); but it would have been even riskier to deny assistance to guests when well able to provide it.

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both in that poem and in the Theogony he attributes the great hardships of the human condition to the wanton ill-will of Zeus. In the Theogony (535 – 564) Zeus conceals fire from men, not because of anything they have done, but in retaliation for a trick by Prometheus which he detects at once, but which he pretends to be deceived by in order to have something for which to retaliate; then, when Prometheus steals fire and gives it to men, Zeus creates fresh misery for men by bringing women into existence (567– 613). The Works and Days (42– 105) tells essentially the same story, though the first part of it is abbreviated and the latter part elaborated by the introduction of Epimetheus and the tale of the jar of evils. Neither version contains the slightest suggestion that humans (or rather human males) have done anything at all to deserve such a fate. When the dramatic genres arise, the Odyssean pattern is prima facie best suited to comedy, and the Iliadic to tragedy. It is not for nothing that ‘Longinus’ called the Odyssey a κωμωιδία […] ἠθολογουμένη (Subl. 9.15): several of its main themes are also common themes of New Comedy – the restoration of a disrupted marriage, the return of a man mistakenly believed to be dead, the discomfiture of those who seek improper gains (though in comedy they do not actually lose their lives). All three of these elements, indeed, can be found in a single partly-surviving play, the Aspis of Menander (the disrupted marriage is that between Chaireas and the sister of Kleostratos, which has not yet taken place but for which all arrangements have been made until they are stopped by the false news of Kleostratos’ death and the claim by Smikrines that as the sister’s senior uncle he has the legal right to marry her). The happy endings of New Comedies are frequently assisted by benevolent gods, who seem, however, nearly always to be minor divinities like Pan or Tyche, or invented ones like Misapprehension (Agnoia) or Disproof (Elenchos)⁶, rather than the great Olympians. Not that the latter are presented as malevolent: they simply do not figure at all. In Old Comedy, on the other hand – certainly in the surviving plays of Aristophanes – the major deities often, indeed usually, do have an important role, whether behind the scenes or in front of them, and almost any of them, with the significant exception of Zeus, may assist the comic hero to achieve his or her aims. Dicaeopolis in Acharnians receives his private peace-treaty from the ‘immortal’ Amphitheus, who claims to have been commissioned by ‘the gods’ to end the war (Ach. 45 – 55, 129 – 133, 175 – 203) – and the rapid success of Amphitheus’ mission (he returns from Sparta before Dicaeopolis has reached home after the assembly meeting) confirms, in case we had any doubts, that

 These four appear, respectively, in Menander’s Dyskolos, Aspis, Perikeiromene, and an unidentified play (Men. fr. 507).

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he is indeed a divine agent.⁷ In Knights, the defeat of Paphlagon-Cleon by the Sausage-Seller is predicted by oracles (Eq. 125 – 143, 193 – 210, 220, 1229 – 1252). Lysistrata invokes (Lys. 551– 554, 833 – 834), and receives (1290 – 1291), the blessing of Aphrodite on her scheme for making peace; the whole action of the play, moreover, takes place on and around Athena’s home on the Acropolis, a connection is made between the heroine and the current priestess of Athena Polias,⁸ and it is even possible that in her final scene Lysistrata wears the aegis of the goddess herself (as the priestess sometimes did).⁹ In Frogs Dionysus himself brings Aeschylus back from Hades ‘so that the city may be saved and hold her choral festivals’ (Ran. 1419), with the ready consent of Pluto (and probably Persephone)¹⁰ who send the poet on his way with an injunction to ‘save our city’ (1501). Even in Clouds, where Strepsiades’ main project has no divine endorsement (for the Clouds, as they later admit, are deceptively luring him to his ruin: Nub. 1456 – 1461), his final revenge on Socrates and his associates is taken on the advice of Hermes (1478 – 1485). Zeus, as I have mentioned, is another matter. Quite in the Hesiodic tradition, when Zeus is involved in the comic plot as an individual deity (rather than being subsumed, as in Acharnians, in the collectivity of ‘the gods’), it is always as an antagonist of the hero and usually of a wider group to which both he and the audience belong. But in contrast with Hesiod, in whose world the will of Zeus can never with impunity be thwarted, the Aristophanic hero is always able to defeat him, and sometimes even to depose him, with the aid of one or more other gods. In Peace, Trygaeus declares his intention of flying to heaven to confront Zeus about the way he is treating the Greeks, and if necessary to prosecute him for ‘betraying Greece to the Medes’ (Pax 102– 108) – an idea that reappears later when he alleges that the Sun and Moon, who are worshipped by the ‘barbarians’, are conspiring to bring about a barbarian conquest of Greece (403 – 413). He arrives to find that the gods have moved out of their home into a retreat in the remotest part of heaven, leaving behind only War as tenant and Hermes as caretaker, and that War has imprisoned Peace in a deep cavern (195 – 226); and Hermes tells him that Zeus has decreed the death penalty for anyone attempting to rescue Peace (371– 372). In other words, Zeus is determined that the Greeks

 The peace-treaty he brings applies only to Dicaeopolis and his family, but that is because the prytaneis have refused to let him speak to the Assembly about making peace between the Athenian and Spartan states, which would have been the preferred option for Dicaeopolis (Ach. 26 – 27, 39, 57– 58), for Amphitheus, and evidently for the gods.  See Lewis 1955.  See Sibley 1995, 61– 62; Sommerstein 2000, 15 (= 2009, 245), 2001, 302– 303.  See Sommerstein 1996, 295.

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will continue fighting and destroying each other, making them an easy prey for their external enemies. By lavish bribery (including a promise that all the festivals of other gods will be transferred to Hermes) Trygaeus secures Hermes’ support (416 – 425), and with the assistance of the (human) Chorus Peace is released, the Greek people saved – and Zeus’ menaces turn out to be as empty as Trygaeus’ promises to Hermes. In Birds, Peisetaerus persuades the birds to declare war on the gods for the recovery of what he alleges was their ancient right to rule the universe (Av. 466 – 563); but it is striking that even while doing so, he is already arguing (586 – 626) that bird rule will be beneficial to humans (since birds can bring them great blessings of various kinds, but will be content with very cheap sacrifices). By creating the fortified aerial city of Nephelokokkygia the birds are able to blockade the gods in heaven, and the gods’ messenger, Iris, on her way to earth to demand an immediate supply of sacrifices, is arrested, treated with contempt and insult, and sent back whence she came (1199 – 1261). As the blockade bites, Zeus’ old enemy, Prometheus, comes secretly to Nephelokokkygia, tells Peisetaerus that an embassy is on its way from the gods to negotiate peace, and advises him what terms he should insist on: the surrender by Zeus of the sceptre that symbolizes his rulership, and marriage to the maiden Basileia who embodies it (she is also the custodian of the thunderbolt, 1538). When the embassy arrives, Peisetaerus is easily able to win Heracles over – again mainly by lavish promises which he has no intention of fulfilling – and Heracles in turn ensures that the decisive vote of the Triballian god is cast in favour of accepting Peisetaerus’ terms. When Peisetaerus returns from heaven with his bride, he is welcomed as their tyrannos (1708) and as the new Zeus¹¹ – and we may be sure that, unlike the old Zeus, he will rule the universe in the interests of humans (especially himself). In Wealth the hostility of Zeus is fundamental to the plot from the beginning. As soon as the blind beggar, in whose footsteps Chremylus and Carion have followed from Delphi to Athens, is revealed to be the god of Wealth, he tells the two men that Zeus, ‘out of ill-will to humans’, took away his eyesight in order to frustrate his wish to associate only with the virtuous (Plut. 87– 92); that is why he is so often found in the homes of the wicked. Chremylus promises to heal him, and does, by taking him to a sanctuary of Asclepius; thus three gods assist Chremylus in bringing about the defeat of Zeus – Apollo (who gave the oracle that brought

 Throughout the concluding lyrics (1731– 1765) Peisetaerus is treated as the successor to Zeus’ power, and his marriage to Basileia is compared to that of Zeus and Hera; in these lines Zeus is mentioned, by name or description, seven times, and in the very last words of the play Peisetaerus is addressed as ‘most exalted of gods’.

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Chremylus into contact with Wealth), his son Asclepius,¹² and Wealth himself. When Wealth’s sight has been restored, and virtue has gained its proper rewards, men cease to sacrifice to the traditional gods, who have shown so little care for human welfare in the past (1112 – 1117); and soon there begin to be desertions from their camp to Wealth’s – first that favourite comic god, Hermes, and then the priest of Zeus Soter. The latter, who seems to be apprehensive of the possible consequences of his action (his words do not on their face betray such apprehension, but perhaps his tone and body-language do), is assured by Chremylus (1188 – 1190) that there is nothing to fear, because ‘Zeus Soter is right here, having come of his own accord’. It is disputed whether this means that Zeus himself has abdicated from power and accepted a subordinate status at the court of Wealth, or that Wealth has become the new Zeus Soter, the true ‘saviour’ of humanity;¹³ but in an important sense this makes no difference – either way, the anti-human rule of Zeus is at an end. Thus in three of Aristophanes’ surviving plays, spread over thirty-three years, Zeus is defied and defeated, and in each of them his vanquisher gains crucial assistance from one or more other gods. Some of the assisting gods are won over by (empty) promises of reward, but others, typically of the second rank – Prometheus, Asclepius, Wealth – seem to be genuinely human-friendly. It is arguable that benevolent gods play a role in Thesmophoriazusae also. To be sure, the central comic project – to save Euripides from being punished by the women for his slanders against them – is a failure: Euripides’ in-law, who infiltrates the Thesmophoria disguised as a woman, is discovered and sentenced to death, and though Euripides eventually rescues him, it is only at the cost of promising not to say anything bad about women in future (Thesm. 1166 – 1167). The women, however, though presented in typical comic fashion as addicts of drink and sex, are also presented, increasingly as the play goes on,¹⁴ as dutifully celebrating a festival, important to the welfare of Athens, which the men are threatening to disrupt, and Athenians would certainly expect that the Thesmophorian goddesses (Demeter and Persephone) would be angry with the disruptors. However, though the women certainly pray for the goddesses’ favour, they give no explicit acknowledgement of actually having received it. Only in two of Aristophanes’ eleven surviving plays are philanthropic gods definitely not to be found – Wasps and Ecclesiazusae. These plays have little if  Asclepius shows his ethical discrimination by healing Wealth while making the disliked politician, Neocleides, more blind than he had been before (Plut. 716 – 726, 745 – 747).  The former alternative is defended by Sommerstein 2001, 214– 215; for the other view, which is that of the scholia, see Torchio 2001, 239 – 240 (with extensive bibliography).  Especially in the choral songs (947– 1000, 1136 – 1159).

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anything else in common that others lack, and it is not clear that the absence of assisting gods carries any implications regarding the merits of their comic projects. Rather, the assisting god is an obligatory feature if the comic hero is to oppose the might of Zeus, and otherwise it is optional, emphasizing the extent to which the comic project is in harmony with the forces governing the universe. The greatest impact is made in Lysistrata and in Frogs; in Lysistrata, indeed, all the gods prove in the end to be friendly, as the final songs (1279 – 1321) invoke not only Athena and Aphrodite but the Graces, Artemis, Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus, Hera, the Dioskoroi, Helen (a goddess at Sparta), and ‘the gods’ in general, while in Frogs even the usually grim Pluto instructs Aeschylus to ascend to earth and save Athens. Tragedy, on the other hand, is (stereo)typically concerned with disaster. Sometimes the concluding prophecies of a deus ex machina (or equivalent) may offer a measure of consolation, but this often does little to ease the burden of misery on the survivors who hear it. Gods in tragedy can be friendly to individual heroes, particularly if there is a traditional association between them; but such associations may make them fiercely hostile to the enemies of their protégés, as Athena is to Ajax. Tragedy, in this respect, is as a rule strongly Iliadic. But in the early stages of the genre, at any rate, the Odyssean model was not unknown. During most of Aeschylus’ Oresteia the gods seem concerned only to ensure that human transgressions are punished – by other human transgressions, in an unending cycle. The cycle begins to break when we learn, nearly at the end of Choephoroi (1029 – 1033), that Apollo has promised Orestes his protection if Orestes obeys his injunction to avenge his father’s death by killing his mother. That, however, is still only favouritism to an individual, and (as the Erinyes later point out, Eum. 490 – 516) it may have extremely bad consequences for other innocent individuals. Yet even Apollo recognises a more general obligation. When he expels the Erinyes from his sanctuary, and they depart declaring that they will pursue Orestes relentlessly, Apollo for his part declares that he will protect his suppliant, ‘for fearful both among mortals and among gods is the wrath of the suppliant, if I willingly betray him’ (Eum. 232– 234). Not only, then, is it incumbent upon gods, as upon mortals, to respect the laws of supplication, but there are sanctions against gods who fail to do so. These are the last words of the Delphian portion of Eumenides, and the next thing that happens is another supplication by Orestes, at the temple of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis. After some delay this is answered by Athena. She too has a commitment to help her favourites (who in her case are the Athenian people); but she also has a commitment to do justice, and when they threaten to clash, this is the stronger of the two. This situation first arises when Orestes

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and the Erinyes both agree to refer their dispute to her judgement (Eum. 433 – 435, 468 – 469). Athena is reluctant to take on the task, because if she decides one way she will be violating the rights of a suppliant, and if she decides the other way the Erinyes will take terrible revenge on the Athenians: ‘both letting you stay,’ she says, ‘and sending you away, are hard for me to do without incurring wrath’ (480 – 481). So she establishes a human tribunal, the court of the Areopagus, to judge this and future cases of homicide. But in the trial of Orestes, the result turns out to depend on Athena’s own vote – and though she knows the risks that an acquittal will pose to her beloved (911) Athenians, she casts that vote in Orestes’ favour, and then uses all her eloquence, successfully, to conciliate the Erinyes. The reason she gives for voting thus (735 – 740) may at first sight seem like pure prejudice: she has no mother, she favours the male in all respects (except that she wouldn’t marry one), and she is κάρτα τοῦ πατρός. But that last phrase might not only mean ‘completely on the father’s side’ (and therefore against the mother) but also ‘completely in agreement with my Father’ – implying that her attitude to the dispute is also that of Zeus. And she proceeds to explain that attitude in terms much more balanced than her previous lines would suggest: Thus I shall not set greater store by the death of a woman, when she had killed a man [or her husband], the guardian of the house (739 – 740).

She does not actually say that she regards the murder of Agamemnon as more important than that of Clytaemestra, only that she does not regard it as less important. She is about to rule that equally divided votes will mean acquittal (741); and similarly, equally balanced arguments should mean a vote for acquittal¹⁵ – because whereas a conviction is a decision to punish the accused (by death, exile, fine or whatever), an acquittal is not a decision to reward the accused or to punish the accuser, but a decision to do nothing, to maintain the status quo. Since justice therefore demands Orestes’ acquittal, Athena will bring it about, despite the danger it poses to her people, and will then do all she can to quash that danger. She succeeds, and thus ends by harnessing both Orestes and the Erinyes to the service of Athens. Orestes, in his posthumous capacity as a hero, will ensure that Argos remains faithful to the eternal alliance he has made with Athens (762– 774); the Erinyes, now Semnai Theai, will give Athens every kind of blessing (except success in war, which Athena will provide herself: 913 – 915) – so long as Athens shows herself a πόλις ὀρθοδίκαιος, a ‘city of upright justice’ (993 – 994), a condition whose fulfilment will be assisted by the  Cf. Antiphon 5.51.

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Erinyes’ own deterrent power. Athena has behaved in a friendly manner to Orestes, the Erinyes, and the Athenian people alike, and has benefited all of them, without doing harm to anyone except the wicked (and Athens’ enemies). The Danaid trilogy seems also to have been ended by a goddess, Aphrodite. We know something of what she said (Aesch. fr. 44), concerning the universality of the sexual principle which she personifies, and we can infer something of the dénouement which she imposed or endorsed.¹⁶ She must have commended and blessed the one Danaid-Aegyptiad marriage that survived its first night, that of Hypermestra and Lynceus, and she must therefore have condemned the father whom Hypermestra disobeyed (and who may or may not be already dead by the time Aphrodite speaks). At the same time the emphasis she places on the mutual desire of the primeval couple, Sky and Earth, suggests strongly that she did not attempt to excuse the attitudes and behaviour of the murdered Aegyptiads, who had regarded marriage as equivalent to ownership, a wife as equivalent to a slave – as is made clear by the language of their representatives in Suppliants (918, 924, 932– 933). Hypermestra’s sisters are of course killers, but their guilt is mitigated by the fact that they were acting at the behest of their father and arguably in self-defence (in this connection it may be significant that Aphrodite herself can speak of sexual penetration as ‘wounding’). If the view now widely accepted¹⁷ is correct that they were finally given to new husbands (presumably Argive, and presumably after having undergone purification rites), both the demands of justice and the principles proclaimed by Aphrodite will have been satisfied in the end, though (as in the Oresteia) only after much earlier suffering, including the death of many Argives (among them almost certainly the king who had accepted the Danaids’ supplication)¹⁸ in a war that Danaus and his daughters had forced upon Argos. There are no friendly, let alone philanthropic, gods in Seven against Thebes (where, on the contrary, Apollo is unremittingly hostile to Laius and his descendants) or in Persians;¹⁹ and in lost Aeschylean tragedies, while we can reasonably

 I have discussed the conclusion of the Danaid trilogy more extensively in Sommerstein 1995, 123 – 132 (= 2010a, 104– 116) and 2010b, 104– 107.  See e. g. Garvie 2005, 226; Friis Johansen / Whittle 1980, i. 51– 52; Papadopoulou 2011, 21– 22.  See e. g. Garvie 2005, 198 – 199; Friis Johansen / Whittle 1980, i. 43, 50; Papadopoulou 2011, 19.  The Messenger says, indeed, that ‘the gods preserve the city of the goddess Pallas’ (347), but in his actual account of the battle of Salamis, the gods are presented as acting out of jealousy (362, φθόνος) against the Persians, not out of friendliness towards Athenians or Greeks.

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postulate individual favouritism in various cases (Thetis for Achilles,²⁰ Athena for Odysseus²¹ or Perseus²²), we have little evidence to indicate a general concern on the part of gods with the welfare of humanity (or of deserving humanity), with one notable exception. The exception is the so-called Dike Play, preserved in a group of papyrus fragments (Aesch. frr. 281a, 281b and perhaps 451n), which is certainly by Aeschylus but cannot be securely identified with any play of his otherwise known. In the surviving fragments a divine figure appears, identifies herself as Dike, and says that she records the deeds of mortals on ‘the tablet of Zeus’ so that in due course they are rewarded or punished accordingly (fr. 281a.14– 23); and she also tells (ibid. 31 ff) of having been foster-mother to a savage child of Zeus and Hera (this must be Ares) who delighted in indiscriminate slaughter, and whom, presumably, she eventually taught to direct his violence only against the wicked.²³ This is almost too comforting a message for any normal tragedy, and when we find Dike saying (fr. 281a.12) that Zeus has sent her ‘to this land’, it becomes very tempting to associate the fragments, as many have done,²⁴ with Aeschylus’ Aitnaiai which was first staged ‘as an omen of good fortune’ for Hieron I’s newly founded city of Aetna²⁵ – though a problem for this view is that the Chorus are apparently male (fr. 281a.14). At any rate it provides us with another example of the Aeschylean philanthropic god. I have not so far mentioned Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound, which I have elsewhere described (Sommerstein 2010b, 232) as ‘Aeschylean in concept but not in execution’ and (following West 1990, 68 – 72) as probably the work of Aeschylus’ son Euphorion in the 430s. Prometheus is the humanfriendly god par excellence; indeed he is told at the outset of Prometheus Bound (11, 28) that he is being punished by Zeus for his φιλάνθρωπος τρόπος, his ‘human-loving ways’, and the Chorus later sing (407– 424) that all humanity is lamenting his fate. He claims (231– 236) to have saved humans from destruc-

 In the trilogy based on the Iliad, and also in Memnon and Psychostasia (if the latter was Aeschylus’ work; see West 2000).  In the trilogy based on the Odyssey, and also in the plays about the dispute between Odysseus and Ajax, Hoplōn Krisis and Threissai.  In Phorkides (on Perseus’ slaying of Medusa) and Polydectes. Athena is not mentioned explicitly in our surviving information about these plays, but Phorkides was set near Lake Tritonis where she was supposed to have been born (Eratosth. Cat. 22; cf. Aesch. Eum. 293), and Athena’s support for Perseus is well attested in archaic art (LIMC Perseus #100, 119 – 121, 151– 152, 154– 156, 158) and in Aeschylus’ contemporary Pherecydes (fr. 11 Fowler).  See Sommerstein 2010c, 208 – 209.  Starting with Fraenkel 1954.  Life of Aeschylus 9.

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tion (probably an allusion to his role in the Flood story)²⁶ and given them not only fire but all the arts of civilization (442– 506), together with the boon of not knowing in advance when they will die²⁷ (248 – 250); and at some points (notably 101– 3) he implies that he did this knowing the unimaginable torments he would suffer in consequence, though elsewhere (268 – 270) he says almost exactly the opposite.²⁸ At any rate, not even the threat of even worse torments can induce him to change his attitude or to reveal the secret he holds which, if he can keep it, will bring about the overthrow of Zeus. And like the heroes of comedy, but like no one else in tragedy, he defies Zeus successfully – though unlike the heroes of comedy, he does not actually depose Zeus, but forces him to come to terms that secure the future of humanity. The surviving fragments of Prometheus Unbound do not reveal precisely what concessions Zeus made in exchange for the disclosure of Prometheus’ secret; the suggestion, which I have tentatively endorsed elsewhere,²⁹ that this play is the source for the story put in Protagoras’ mouth, in Plato’s dialogue of that name (321d-322c), that Zeus gave humans the arts of social and civic life (which are notably absent from Prometheus’ listing of his own benefactions in the preceding play) is, as Griffith says, ‘highly speculative’,³⁰ but some concessions he must have made. There are no philanthropic gods in the seven surviving plays of Sophocles, and there are cruelly hostile gods in most of them: the Athena whose vindictive hatred of Ajax is too much for Ajax’s greatest human enemy to tolerate (Ajax 118 – 126); the Zeus who imposes horrendous physical agonies on his son Heracles and orders him to have himself burnt alive; the Apollo who creates a situation in which Oedipus unknowingly commits parricide and incest, apparently because Oedipus is guilty of the crime of having been born;³¹ the minor goddess

 Cf. Epicharmus’ Promatheus or Pyrrha; also [Apollod.] Bibl. 1.7.2. The story, including the role of the helper-god, may have been imported from the Near East in the sixth century via the epic Titanomachy (S. R. West 1994, 144– 149; West 1997, 493).  Which, as many writers have pointed out, is a crucial difference between the ordinary human condition and that of a prisoner under sentence of death.  The contradiction, which many editors fail to notice, is well discussed by Lefèvre 2003, 101.  Sommerstein 2010b, 227.  Griffith 1982, 303 – 304. Note that in Protagoras the gift to humans of αἰδὼς καὶ δίκη (323c) is made by Zeus of his own accord, not as part of any bargain with Prometheus, for fear that without it the human race would be destroyed; in the Aeschylean drama, on the contrary, Zeus had wanted to destroy humanity.  Iocaste tells Oedipus that Laius had received an oracle saying he would be killed πρὸς παιδὸς … ὅστις γένοιτ’ ἐμοῦ τε κἀκείνου πάρα (OT 713 – 14); Kovacs 2009, 366, points out that the relative clause is an indefinite one – in other words, that the couple were being warned not to have children, as in Aeschylus (Sept. 748 – 749) and Euripides (Phoen. 17– 20, Eur.

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Chryse who inflicts on Philoctetes nine years of agony (which also prove to be nine years of total isolation) for a small and unintentional act of sacrilege (Phil. 192– 200, 1326 – 1328). But at least in his early career, Sophocles too could tread in the footsteps of Aeschylus.³² The production that won Sophocles his first victory, in 468 BC, probably included Triptolemus, of which some thirty fragments survive; and Triptolemus was largely concerned with two great boons conferred by Demeter on humanity – the cultivation of cereals, and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Thomas Talboy and I have argued elsewhere³³ that Demeter probably made these gifts partly in return for the hospitality shown to her by the rulers and people of Eleusis, and partly as compensation for having caused the death of Triptolemus’ baby brother, Demophon, when her attempt to make him immortal was misunderstood by the child’s mother. But the benefits she grants extend far beyond Eleusis – in the case of the Mysteries, at least to all who speak Greek; in the case of cereals, apparently to the whole world, for Triptolemus is given detailed instructions for a tour (or perhaps rather two successive tours) which includes, among other places, Liguria (fr. 598), Carthage (fr. 602), India (where bread is made of rice, cf. fr. 609) and the northern Balkans (frr. 601, 604). The death of the infant – and possibly the consequential suicide of his father, Celeus – will have given the first half of the play a tragically dark tone, but its second half seems to have focused entirely on Demeter’s blessings.³⁴ In Euripides, it is only in Alcestis, a ‘fourth-place’ play produced in lieu of a satyr-drama, that a friendly god (Apollo) takes part in the action, and then only as a favour to a mortal (Admetus) who had done him special service in the past.³⁵ Otherwise, in the surviving plays and for the most part in the fragmentary ones

fr. 539a), because any child they did have would become the murderer of Laius. Thus ‘it is merely as the son of Laius and not on his own account that Oedipus incurs the hatred of Apollo’ (Kovacs 2009, 367; he might have cited OT 1393 and 1397 where Oedipus describes himself as ‘impure and of the race of Laius […] evil and of evil ancestry’).  As he himself said he did with regard to style (Plut. Mor. 79b).  Talboy / Sommerstein 2012, to which readers are referred for a full discussion of Triptolemus.  The only other ‘friendly’ deity that we can confidently find in Sophocles is Thetis, who intervenes in The Diners (Syndeipnoi) to end a serious quarrel between Achilles on one side, and Odysseus and perhaps Agamemnon on the other; but I have argued elsewhere (Sommerstein 2006), on quite separate grounds, that (i) her main motive is probably to protect her son from a plot against his life (she is never elsewhere represented as showing any concern for the Greek expedition against Troy in general) and (ii) in any case The Diners is a ‘fourth-place’ play like Alcestis.  And Apollo does not actually lift a finger to save Alcestis; she is rescued instead by the mortal (at that time) Heracles.

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too,³⁶ it is only at the end of a play, as dei ex machina (to use the conventional phrase), that gods confer blessings, sometimes ending long suffering which another god, or even the same god, had a considerable hand in creating in the first place (as when Apollo winds up Orestes, defusing the crisis that has arisen as a result of Orestes’ matricide which was carried out on his orders). Dionysus in Bacchae 860 – 861 calls himself ‘most terrible and most gentle to humans’, and Teiresias (278 – 283), the First Messenger (769 – 774) and the Chorus (378 – 385, 417– 429) all descant on his power to give pleasure; but he gives none in Bacchae itself. He is utterly merciless to Cadmus, who is his grandfather and who has given him honour (10 – 12, 180 – 200, 337– 342), and ends by ordaining Cadmus’ exile and predicting his transformation into a snake (1330 – 1338). He may, indeed, in the lost portion of his final major speech (between 1329 and 1330), establish his mystery-cult at Thebes,³⁷ but if he does, he does it in the presence of the dismembered body of Pentheus, of Pentheus’ mother whom he has made Pentheus’ murderer, and of her father whom he is robbing of all his kin and of his humanity too. Things are essentially the same even in the plays that end well for the central characters, such as Ion, Iphigeneia in Tauris, and Helen. All comes right in the end without any obvious divine intervention before the deus ex machina stage; in Helen we do hear of a dispute between Aphrodite and Hera over the fate of Helen and Menelaus (878 – 891), but in a sort of re-run of the Judgement of Paris, the decisive voice in this dispute rests with the mortal Theonoe (1005 – 1007), and when her vote goes to Hera, the defeated Aphrodite does nothing about it. In Ion Apollo works to secure a good outcome for his son Ion, while making sure that both Ion and his stepfather Xuthus are deceived about his paternity (Ion 67– 73); but his plan goes wildly wrong, as first Ion’s mother Creusa tries to murder her son and then Ion is on the point of putting her to death, forcing Apollo to authorize his prophetess (1353) to present Ion with the cradle that will serve as a recognition-token, and presently Creusa confesses to her son that

 In Alcmene, Zeus may have saved Alcmene from death at her husband’s hands (cf. LIMC Alkmene 3 – 7 and LIMC Supp. i [2009] Alkmene add. 1), but he has the obvious motive of preserving the life of his future son Heracles. Erechtheus (on which see Sonnino 2010) is set amid a war between the Athenians, supported by Athena, and Eumolpus son of her old rival Poseidon; but Athena intervenes only at the end (Eur. fr. 370.55 – 117), after Praxithea has lost both her husband and her daughters.  Cf. Seaford 1996, 252; the supporting evidence is not as strong as he claims, but Agaue’s final words (1387) probably do imply that there is to be a Theban cult (in which she wishes to have no part); and given that Dionysus mentions that he has established his rites all over Asia (13 – 22), it would be surprising if, on coming to his birthplace, he did not do so there as well.

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Apollo is his father and that she had exposed him (1482– 1499). Ion is not sure whether to believe this (1521– 1548), and Apollo is too embarrassed to confirm it, sending Athena to speak for him (1557– 1559). Apollo apparently thinks it sufficient compensation for his brutal rape of Creusa (cf. 859 – 922) that she was able to keep her pregnancy secret, had an easy birth, and has now (after nearly twenty years) been reunited with her son (1595 – 1600); and Athena apparently endorses this (1614– 1615). Creusa, and by implication Ion, are told to keep Xuthus in ignorance (1601– 1603), letting him go on believing that Ion is his son by a long-past liaison at Delphi (545 – 556). And the Chorus’ final comment on all this is: Farewell, Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto! Anyone whose house is beset by troubles should honour the gods and have no fear; for in the end the virtuous get what they deserve, and the base, in accordance with their nature, can never do well (1620 – 1623).

Only one named character³⁸ in the whole play has been ‘base’, and that is Apollo – though if his secret has been kept from the Athenians of Ion’s time, it has been irrevocably revealed to the Athenians of Euripides’ time. And as far as ‘the virtuous’ are concerned, Xuthus, who has been a good fighter for Athens (61– 63) and a good and loyal husband to Creusa, has been condemned to the fate of the cuckold – to have as his heir, tending his tomb, a ‘son’ who is not his, merely to save Apollo’s blushes. Tragedies which ended happily for sympathetic characters became popular in the fourth century and, according to Aristotle (Poet. 1453a 30 – 35), received a significant degree of critical approval, but we do not know whether the philanthropic god was a common feature of these plays. In the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus Athena is made to give a big helping hand to Odysseus and Diomedes (595 – 674), but both are traditional favourites of hers, and she is in any case strongly committed, for personal reasons, to the Greek cause in the war. At the other end of the time scale, we equally do not know whether the human-friendly god was introduced into tragedy by Aeschylus, or whether he found this already a feature of the genre. What we can say is that Aeschylus was prepared to present gods of this kind, especially perhaps in the climactic stages of tragic trilogies; that he was probably doing so at least as early as 470 BC; that in 468 BC Sophocles followed his example in Triptolemus; but that after Aeschylus’ death the pattern almost entirely disappears except in

 I say ‘named character’ to exclude the Old Man who encourages Creusa to plot the murder of Ion (978 – 979) – after she has rejected his proposals to burn down the temple of Apollo or to kill Xuthus.

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plays produced in lieu of a satyr-drama, the only known exception being the Prometheus plays which appear to have been presented as previously unknown works of Aeschylus. Human-friendly gods in tragedy are very much an Aeschylean phenomenon.³⁹

Bibliography Ameis, K. F. / Hentze, C. (1924), Homers Ilias, 2. Band, 2. Heft (4th ed.), Leipzig. Bowie, A. M. (2013), Homer: Odyssey, Books XIII and XIV, Cambridge. De Jong, I. J. F. (2012), Homer: Iliad, Book XXII, Cambridge. Fraenkel, E. (1954), ‘Vermutungen zum Aetna-Festspiel des Aischylos’, in: Eranos 52, 61 – 75. Friis Johansen, H. / Whittle, E. W. (1980), Aeschylus: The Suppliants, Copenhagen. Garvie, A. F. (2005), Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy (2nd ed.), Exeter. Griffith, M. (1982), Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Cambridge. Kovacs, D. (2009), ‘The Role of Apollo in Oedipus Tyrannus’, in: J. R. C. Cousland / J. R. Hume (eds.), The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp, Leiden, 357 – 368. Leaf, W. (1888), The Iliad, vol. ii, London. Lefèvre, E. (2003), Studien zu den Quellen und zum Verständnis des Prometheus Desmotes, Göttingen. Papadopoulou, T. (2011), Aeschylus: Suppliants, London. Seaford, R. A. S. (1996), Euripides: Bacchae, Warminster. Sibley, E. J. S. (1995), The Role of Athena in Fifth Century Athenian Drama, PhD diss., University of Nottingham. Sommerstein, A. H. (1995), ‘The Beginning and the End of Aeschylus’ Danaid Trilogy’, in: B. Zimmermann (ed.), Griechisch-römische Komödie und Tragödie, Stuttgart, 111 – 134 [reprinted with updates in Sommerstein 2010a, 89 – 117]. — (1996), Aristophanes: Frogs, Warminster. — (2000), ‘Nudity, Obscenity and Power: Modes of Female Assertiveness in Aristophanes’, in: S. Carlson / J. F. McGlew (eds.), Performing the Politics of European Comic Drama, Cedar Falls IA, 9 – 24 [reprinted with updates in Sommerstein 2009, 237 – 253]. — (2001), Aristophanes: Wealth, Warminster. — (2006), ‘Syndeipnoi (The Diners) or Achaiôn Syllogos (The Gathering of the Achaeans)’, in: A. H. Sommerstein / D. G. Fitzpatrick / Thomas H. Talboy, Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays, Volume 1, Oxford, 84 – 140. — (2009), Talking about Laughter and Other Studies in Greek Comedy, Oxford. — (2010a), The Tangled Ways of Zeus and Other Studies in and around Greek Tragedy, Oxford. — (2010b), Aeschylean Tragedy (2nd ed.), London.

 Versions of this paper were presented to the North Staffordshire Branch of the Classical Association at Newcastle-under-Lyme in March 2014, and to the Association’s annual conference at Nottingham in April 2014. All translations are my own.

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— (2010c), ‘Notes on Aeschylean Fragments’, in: Prometheus 36, 193 – 212. Sonnino, M. (2010), Euripidis Erechthei quae exstant, Florence. Talboy, T. H. / Sommerstein, A. H. (2012), ‘Triptolemus’, in: A. H. Sommerstein / T. H. Talboy, Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays, Volume 2, Oxford, 216 – 260. Torchio, M. C. (2001), Aristofane: Pluto, Alessandria. West, M. L. (1997), The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford. — (2000), ‘Iliad and Aethiopis on the Stage: Aeschylus and Son’, in: Classical Quarterly 50, 338 – 352. — (2011), The Making of the Iliad, Oxford. West, S. R. (1994), ‘Prometheus Orientalized’, in: Museum Helveticum 51, 129 – 149.

Suzanne Saïd

The People in Aeschylus’ Tragedies Athenian tragedies were funded by the polis and performed as part of a civic festival in front of a popular audience. Excepting the Persians, they all are concerned with myths centred on royal dynasties. However, it is worth examining the part they give to the collectivity and the people, a topic appropriate to a volume honouring Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos, mostly renowned for her work on fourth-century tragedies. In an important dissertation defended in 1990 and still unpublished, M. Fartzoff has focused on oikos and polis in the Oresteia and complemented his work with comparisons with the Persians, the Seven and the Suppliants. I shall limit here my attention to the people and its relation to the ruler either barbarian (Xerxes in the Persians) or Greek (Eteocles in the Seven, Pelasgus in the Suppliants, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Aegisthus in the Agamemnon and the Choephoroi) or its part as autonomous agent in the Eumenides. First, I shall deal with the Persians and the Suppliants that oppose two political regimes, autocracy and democracy, before looking at the place and representation of the people in Greek states, such as Argos, Thebes, and Athens.

Persians In this play the vocabulary used for the people is both political ‒ πόλις, πόλισμα, πολιήτης¹ and δῆμος² ‒ and military – στρατιά,³ στρατός,⁴ στράτευμα,⁵ λαός, λεώς,⁶ since war is omnipresent. It also includes some vague words such as ὄχλος⁷ and ὅμιλος,⁸ as well as ethnic terms. Onstage the people is personifed by a Chorus made of the ‘faithful’ (πιστά) chosen by Xerxes because of their age and their prestige (κατὰ πρεσβείαν).⁹ They are supposed to play the part  πόλις: Persians: Pers. 118, 213, 219, 511, 682, 715, 781, 946; Athens 23, 347, 348, 895 ματρόλις, Θεσσαλῶν πόλεις: 489 , 864: the πόλεις conquered by Darius, 893: Κυπρίας τε πόλεις, πόλισμα: 120 τὸ Κισσίων πόλισμ’, 249 γῆς ἁπάσης ’Ασιάδος πολίσματα, πολιήτης: Pers. 55.  δῆμος: Pers. 732 Βακτρίων… δῆμος.  στρατιά: Pers. 9, 25, 534, 858, 918.  στρατός Persians: 26 occurrences; Athenians: Pers., 235, 236, 355, Greeks: 384, 452.  στράτευμα Persians: 7 occurrences Pers., 117, 335, 423, 469, 720, 791, 798.  λαός Persians 92, 729, 770 Λυδῶν δὲ λαὸν καὶ Φρυγῶν, 1025 ’Ιάνων λαός.  Pers. 41– 42 Λυδῶν ὄχλος.  Pers. 1029.  Pers. 1– 7. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-003

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of well disposed and benevolent counsellors of the royal family. Indeed, in the first episode, they advise the queen to pray to the gods and Darius.¹⁰ But when the queen again asks them to bring together faithful counsels with faithful counsels to Xerxes, comfort and escort him to the palace,¹¹ her request has no effect. The emphasis is systematically put on the submission of the subjects to a king who is ‘not responsible to the city for his actions’.¹² In the first episode, they prostrate themselves before the queen.¹³ In the Ghost-scene, they are paralysed by their respect,¹⁴ awe,¹⁵ and fear¹⁶ for Darius. In the final kommos they only respond to Xerxes and follow his peremptory orders.¹⁷

Suppliants In the Suppliants, a play whose date is still questioned (within the mid-470s to the late 460s BC) the people of Argos¹⁸ appear onstage as mute characters, the men-at-arms who accompany Pelasgus and are announced by Danaus in lines 183 – 184: ‘I see a mass of men with shields and spears, their horses too, and their curved chariots’.¹⁹ They are again mentioned by Danaus in lines 492– 493: ‘Send some of your Argives with me as escorts and guides of the local conditions’.²⁰ A request accepted by Pelasgus who says at 500 – 501: ‘Go with him men; conduct him to the city’s shrines and sanctuaries of the gods’.²¹ The part they play in the action is controversial. The vocabulary of κράτος is used for both the king²² and the people.²³ Thirty years ago in an important paper

 Pers. 216 – 223.  Pers. 527– 530.  Pers. 213 οὐχ ὑπεύθυνος πόλει.  Pers. 152 προσπίτνω.  Pers. 694– 695 σέβομαι…σέβομαι.  Pers. 699 τὴν ἐμὴν αἰδῶ.  Pers. 696 σέθεν ἀρχαίῳ περὶ τάρβει, 701– 702 δίομαι μὲν χαρίσασθαι, / δίομαι δ’ ἀντία ϕάσθαι, 703 ἀλλ’ ἐπεὶ δέος παλαιὸν σοὶ ϕρενῶν ἀνθίσταται.  Pers. 1039 – 1078.  16 occurrences πόλις, πολῖται: Supp. 484, δήμιον: 370, δῆμος: 398, 498, 601, 604, 624.  Supp. ὄχλον δ’ ὑπασπιστῆρα καὶ δορυσσόον / λεύσσω, ξὺν ἵπποις καμπύλοις τ’ ὀχήμασιν·.  Supp. 492– 493 ὀπάονας δὲ ϕράστοράς τ’ ἐγχωρίων / ξύμπεμψον.  Supp. 500 – 501 στείχοιτ’ ἄν, ἄνδρες· εὖ γὰρ ὁ ξένος λέγει. / ἡγεῖσθε βωμοὺς ἀστικούς, θεῶν ἕδρας.  Supp. 255, 259, 372, 399, 425.  Supp. 604, 699.

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Burian²⁴ argued for the shared responsibility of Pelasgus and the Argive demos in accepting the Danaids’ supplication, and found in the course of the king’s encounter with his suppliants a clear progression from initial assertions of almost unlimited power to a recognition of the limitations on its exercise explained by ‘the unrelenting, indeed unscrupulous pressure the Danaids bring to bear on Pelasgus’, whereas Garvie²⁵ asserted that ‘the king cannot by himself accept or reject the Danaids’ plea for asylum. Only the sovereign people can decide’. A close reading of the text led me to side with Garvie. When Pelasgus enters the stage, he introduces himself as ‘the ruler of this land’²⁶ and is greeted by the Corypheus and Danaus as ‘the king of the Pelasgians’.²⁷ He also emphasises the power he has over the Argive territory.²⁸ But he is not an autocrat. Right from the beginning he is preoccupied with the consequences of his decision for the city.²⁹ He clearly distinguishes between public and private properties: the public altars and his own hearth³⁰ and the royal place and the public houses.³¹ Since the suppliants are sitting at a public altar, as he says, ‘it is the city that is in its communality liable to pollution. Therefore the people collectively have to work out a cure. I will not myself pledge an undertaking beforehand, but after I consult all the citizens about this matter’³² and at 398 – 401, ‘I have said already, I will not take action without the people, even though I am ruler, for fear that that they should say to me if anything bad happen, “You destroyed the city because of your regard for foreigners”’³³ and refers the whole problem to the Argive assembly for decision. The Danaids are the only ones who twice assimilate Pelasgus to a Persian despot, first at 370 – 374, ‘You are the State, you are the people. Ruler unquestioned and unaccountable, you command the altar which is your country’s hearth, by your mere nod which is the only vote and by your only sceptre and

 Burian (1974) 2007, 202, and 204.  Garvie 1969, 150.  Supp. 251 τῆσδε γῆς ἀρχηγέτης.  Supp. 328, 349, 616: ἄναξ Πελασγῶν.  Supp. 255, 259.  Supp. 356– 358 and 410 – 411.  Supp. 365 οὔτοι κάθησθε δωμάτων ἐϕέστιοι / ἐμῶν.  Supp. 957– 958 καὶ δώματ’ ἐστὶ πολλὰ μὲν τὰ δήμια, / δεδωμάτωμαι δ’ οὐδ’ ἐγὼ σμικρᾷ χερί.  Supp. 366 – 369 τὸ κοινὸν δ’ εἰ μιαίνεται πόλις, / ξυνῇ μελέσθω λαὸς ἐκπονεῖν ἄκη. / ἐγὼ δ’ ἂν οὐ κραίνοιμ’ ὑπόσχεσιν πάρος, / ἀστοῖς δὲ πᾶσι τῶνδε κοινώσας πέρι.  Supp. 398 – 401 εἶπον δὲ καὶ πρίν, οὐκ ἄνευ δήμου τάδε / πράξαιμ’ ἄν, οὐδέ περ κρατῶν, καὶ μήποτε / εἴπῃ λεώς, εἴ πού τι μὴ τοῖον τύχοι, ἐπήλυδας τιμῶν ἀπώλεσας πόλιν.

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throne, you decide all issues’³⁴ and again at 425, when they insist on the completeness of his power, ‘you have full power over the land’ (πᾶν κράτος ἔχων χθονός). However, they will later on change their mind, mentioning ‘the sovereign hand of the people’ (604, δήμου κρατοῦσα χείρ). Pelasgus will only play the part of the wise adviser. He tells the suppliants how to behave in order to prevent the people, who are prone to criticize their leader, from casting forth a talk against him, to arouse their hatred of the Egyptians’ violence and their goodwill for the suppliants.³⁵ Then he summons the people after teaching Danaus what he has to say.³⁶ The manoeuvre succeeds, as demonstrated by the speech of Danaus after his return from the assembly, ‘Be reassured, my daughters, everything is all right concerning the citizens. A decree carrying full authority has been decided by the people’ (600 – 601, θαρσεῖτε παῖδες· εὖ τὰ τῶν ἐγχωρίων· / δήμῳ δέδοκται παντελῆ ψηϕίσματα). When they ask for details: ‘in what direction the sovereign hands of the people were multiplied what does the decision say?’, the narrative which follows stresses the unanimity of the vote (605, ἔδοξεν ’Αργείοισιν οὐ διχορρόπως) which granted the Danaids the right to live in Argos as free, inviolable guests (609 – 610, ἡμᾶς μετοικεῖν τῆσδε γῆς ἐλευθέρους / κἀρρυσιάστους ξύν τ’ ἀσυλίᾳ βροτῶν·). It also shows the effficiency of Pelasgus’ rhetoric: ‘his speech in favour of the suppliants was persuasive and when he warned the city against augmenting [literally ‘fattening’] in future time the wrath of Zeus protector of the suppliants, the people of Argos after hearing it raised their hands and made their decision and voted his resolution without waiting for the caller. The people of the Pelasgians obeyed the orator’s turning’.³⁷ Accordingly the benedictions of the Danaids,³⁸ deprecating pestilence, external and internal war and promoting fertility of crops and beasts, along with ancestral worship of the gods, concern only the land and the city of Argos. A strophe in particular draws attention to the importance of democratic regime. At

 Supp. 370 – 374 σύ τοι πόλις, σὺ δὲ τὸ δήμιον· / πρύτανις ἄκριτος ὤν, / κρατύνεις βωμόν, ἑστίαν χθονός, / μονοψήϕοισι νεύμασιν σέθεν, / μονοσκήπτροισι δ’ ἐν θρόνοις χρέος / πᾶν ἐπικραίνεις.  Supp. 484– 489.  Supp. 517– 519.  Supp. 615 – 624 τοιαῦτ᾿ ἔπειθε ῥῆσιν ἀμϕ’ ἡμῶν λέγων / ἄναξ Πελασγῶν, Ζηνὸς Ἱκεσίου κότον / πόλει προϕωνῶν μήποτ’ εἰσόπιν χρόνου / μέγαν παχῦναι, […] τοιαῦτ’ ἀκούων χερσὶν ’Αργεῖος λεὼς / ἔκραν’ ἄνευ κλητῆρος ὡς εἶναι τάδε. / δημηγόρου δ᾿ / ἤκουσεν εὐπειθὴς στροϕῆς / δῆμος Πελασγῶν.  Supp. 630 – 709.

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698 – 900, the Chorus wishes that the people who are wise and counseling in common to good effect may keep their prerogatives.³⁹

Seven against Thebes ⁴⁰ The play is clearly divided into two parts by a sharp break at 653, which coincides with the decision of Eteocles to station himself at the seventh gate against his brother, as well pointed out by Solmsen.⁴¹ The first part focuses on Thebes as a city, as demonstrated by the many occurrences of πόλις and its derivatives (most of them in the first part of the play),⁴² whereas the military vocabulary ‒ στρατός⁴³ λαός/λεώς⁴⁴ ‒ is , with few exceptions, used only for Argos. In the second part the focus of attention shifts from the city to the family.⁴⁵ The play concludes at 791– 802 with the salvation of the city: ‘This city has escaped the yoke of slavery’ (793, πόλις πέϕευγεν ἥδε δούλιον ζυγόν), and the end of the royal family with the death of the two sons of Oedipus. This conclusion is made possible by the sharp distinction between the city of Cadmus⁴⁶ and the Cadmeans on the one hand and the family of Laius and Oedipus on the other. For Eteocles, who is called ‘son of Oedipus’⁴⁷ and belongs to the lineage (γένος) of Oedipus and Laios⁴⁸ is never explicitly included into the Cadmus’ descent in the play. In the first part of the play, the ‘houses’ ‒ that is, the Thebans’ homes⁴⁹ and the temples of their gods⁵⁰ ‒ are part of the city and share its fate, and there is no mention of the royal palace before lines 647– 648, and the words ascribed to Jus Supp. 698 – 700 ϕυλάσσοι τ’ ἀτρεμαῖα [a correction generally adopted for the mss ἀτιμίας] τιμὰς / τὸ δήμιον, τὸ πτόλιν κρατύνει, / προμαθὶς εὐκοινόμητις ἀρχά.  Without including ll. 861– 874 and 1005 – 1078 which should be rejected as an interpolation; cf. Thalmann 1978, 137– 141.  1937.  73 occurrences of πόλις and πτόλις, 5 of πόλισμα, 10 of πολίτης, 3 of πολισσοῦχος, 3 of πολιοῦχος and πολιάοχος, 1 of ῥυσίπτολις, 1 of φιλόπολις, 1 of ἀκρόπτολις, 1 of ἀγχίπτολις. See also δῆμος at l. 99.  στρατός: 10 occurrences for the Argive army and only 2 for the Theban army.  λαός/λεώς (Sept. 80, 91, 291) are only used for the Argives.  Thalmann 1978, 31– 32, Fartzoff 1990, 164– 167.  Κάδμου πόλις or πόλισμα: Sept. 74, 120, 136; πόλιν καὶ στρατὸν / Καδμογενῆ: 301– 2, Κάδμου πύργους: 823; Κάδμου πολῖται: 1; Καδμείων: 9 occurrences, Καδμείους: 678.  Sept. 203, 372, 677.  Sept. 654, 801, 809: Oedipus and 691: Cadmos.  δόμος: Sept. 73, 232, 454, 482; δῶμα 335, οἶκος 190.  Sept. 278 ἁγνοῖς δόμοις.

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tice on Polynices’ shield, ‘I’ll bring back this man and he’ll have his ancestral city and the right to move into his palace’.⁵¹ The Cadmeans are physically brought into the play in the prologue as a gathering of mute citizens, the Κάδμου πολῖται exhorted by Eteocles to rescue the city and the altars of the gods.⁵² With the entrance of the Chorus, they are also identified with the ‘group of suppliant Theban maiden’⁵³ who enter the stage at 78. In the shield-scene, the Thebans are represented by ‘a selection of the city’s strongest fighting men’⁵⁴ posted at the six gates and all characterized in the famous shield-scene by their valour, their lack of hubris and their piety.⁵⁵ As a city Thebes is characterized by its Greek language⁵⁶ and its freedom,⁵⁷ in contrast with enemies who speak a foreign language⁵⁸ and are indirectly, though they are Achaeans,⁵⁹ assimilated to barbarians.⁶⁰ Until line 653, it is tempting to draw a parallel between Eteocles, ‘the king of the Cadmeans’⁶¹ and Pelasgus. Like him he is aware that he will be accountable to the city in case of defeat, ‘If ‒ which Heaven forbid ‒ misfortune happens / illluck should meet us ‒ Eteocles would be the one name harped upon in the town by the citizens with loud cries and wailings’.⁶² He may appear as an ideal Greek ruler who cares for the city. In the first epirrhematic scene between Eteocles and the Chorus (181– 286), he attempts to calm the panicked women and is able, in the shield-scene, to take the necessary measures to save the city by allocating the appropriate defender at each of the six gates. After Eteocles has decided to post himself at the seventh gate and fight against his brother ‒ a decision explained both by the curse of his father and his shame to evade the battle⁶³ ‒ the curse and the Erinys, that were kept in

 Sept. 647– 648 Κατάξω δ’ ἄνδρα τόνδε καὶ πόλιν / ἕξει πατρῴαν δωμάτων τ’ ἐπιστροϕάς.  Sept. 1– 35.  Sept. 110 – 111 παρθένων / ἱκέσιον λόχον.  Sept. 57 ἀρίστους ἄνδρας ἐκκρίτους πόλεως.  Sept. 407– 411: the son of Astacos, 448 – 450: Polyphontes, 474– 476: Megareus, 504– 508: Hyperbius, 554– 555: Actor and 620 – 624: Lasthenes.  Sept. 71– 73 πόλιν […] ‘Ελλάδος ϕθόγγον χέουσαν.  Sept. 74 ἐλευθέραν δὲ γῆν.  Sept. 170 ἑτεροϕώνῳ στρατῷ.  Sept. 28, 324.  Sept. 463 ‘the nosebands [of Eteocles’ mares] whistle in a barbarian style’ (ϕιμοὶ δὲ συρίζουσι βάρβαρον τρόπον); cf. Fartzoff 1990, 176 – 178.  Sept. 39.  Sept. 5 – 8 εἰ δ’ αὖθ’, ὃ μὴ γένοιτο, συμϕορὰ τύχοι, / ’Ετεοκλέης ἂν εἷς πολὺς κατὰ πτόλιν / ὑμνοῖθ’ ὑπ’ ἀστῶν ϕροιμίοις πολυρρόθοις / οἰμώγμασίν θ’.  Sept. 653 – 655, 683 – 685, and 693; cf. von Fritz 2007 [1962], 153.

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the background in the first part of the play (they were only mentioned once by Eteocles at line 70),⁶⁴ become very much present⁶⁵ and the focus is put on the royal dynasty and its house.⁶⁶ The Chorus and the king also undergo a complete change of character, as demonstrated by the second epirrhematic scene (679 – 719), where the Chorus of panicked women become self possessed and wise and urge prudence to a ruler driven by his passion orgè, possessed by madness and an atè that fills his heart with lust for battle, and goaded by a wild desire.⁶⁷ The conclusion, which begins with a Chorus first torn between joy for the city that has escaped unhurt and lament over the two sons of Oedipus,⁶⁸ is entirely devoted to the mourning for the brothers who are not any more distinguished and for the house of Laios and Oidipus.⁶⁹

Oresteia Agamemnon The first part of the trilogy, with the return of Agamemnon after the sack of Troy and his murder by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, is a tale of two cities: Troy and Argos. Represented onstage only by Cassandra, the Trojan captive, Troy is very much present in the text of Agamemnon. ⁷⁰ It is also called, like in Homer, the city of Priam⁷¹ and defined as an autocratic regime. The fate of the people depends on the royal family, and the city pays jointly with Paris the appropriate price for what he has done⁷² and curses his fatal marriage.⁷³ The vocabulary used for Argos as a place or a community is ethnic (᾿Aργεῖοι),⁷⁴ political (πόλις, πολίτης, ἀστός, δήμιος and the compounds of

 Sept. ᾿Aρά τ’ ’Ερινὺς πατρὸς ἡ μεγασθενής.  Sept. 700, 709, 723, 725, 791, 833, 867, 886, 977, 988.  Sept. 700, 720, 740, 853, 877, 880, 881, 895, 915, 995.  Sept. 677– 8 μή, ϕίλτατ’ ἀνδρῶν, Οἰδίπου τέκος, γένῃ / ὀργὴν ὁμοῖος τῷ κάκιστ’ αὐδωμένῳ, 686 – 687 τί μέμονας, τέκνον; μή τί σε θυμοπλη- / θὴς δορίμαργος ἄτα ϕερέτω· 692– 693 ὠμοδακής σ’ ἄγαν ἵμερος ἐξοτρύ- / νει.  Sept. 825 – 831.  Sept. 832– 1004.  Ag. 20 ocurrences of πόλις, 2 πολίτης, 5 Τροία , 15 Ἴλιον.  Αg. 126, 267, 710, 813, 1336.  Αg. 532– 533 Πάρις γὰρ οὔτε συντελὴς πόλις / ἐξεύχεται τὸ δρᾶμα τοῦ πάθους πλέον.  Ag. 709 – 713.  Ag. 11 occurrences.

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δῆμος),⁷⁵ and military (λεώς and στρατός),⁷⁶ with a focus on the sufferings of the army at Aulis and at Troy and on the destruction of many ships by the storm that stroke the fleet at its return.⁷⁷ Argos is personified onstage by a group of old men who point out their weakness at 72– 75. But I am not sure that one has to conclude from these lines that they are very different from the Chorus of wise advisers portrayed in the Persians. It depends on the meaning given to the expression πρέσβος ’Αργείων τόδε, which is twice⁷⁸ applied to the Chorus by Clytemnestra (an allusion only to their age or both to their age and dignity?). They show reverence for Clytemnestra as for the absent king’s wife⁷⁹ and again reverently greet the victorious king.⁸⁰ But one has to note that, as opposed to the Persians where Xerxes is not answerable to the state if he should fail,⁸¹ the Chorus stress the bitter indignation provoked by the deaths among their families in Greece and allude to the grudge and grief that spread stealthily (σίγα) against Atreus’ sons, the principals in lawsuit.⁸² They twice point out the weight of the citizens’ angry talk, and the danger it represents for a leader who has to pay for the curse decreed by the demos. ⁸³ Clytemnestra is also afraid by the danger at home ‘if the anarchy of popular clamour of the people should overthrow the Council’.⁸⁴ Moreover, the Chorus do not hesitate to criticize openly the king at 799 – 802: ‘When you marshalled this army for Helen’s sake, I will not hide it, you were portrayed very negatively as someone who did not rightly steer the course of his mind’.⁸⁵ Agamemnon himself acknowledges the power of the public opinion at 938.⁸⁶ At 844– 846 he is even ready, like Pelasgus in the Suppliants, to involve the people in the process of decision and plans to convene a plenary of all the citizens to deliberate over the city

 Ag. 13 occurrences of πόλις, 3 of πολίτης, 5 occurrences of ἀστός, δήμιος (640), δημόκραντος (457), δημόθρους (883, 938, 1409, 1413), δημορριφής (1616). As well pointed out by Dodds 1960 [2007] 246, ‘references to the demos are more frequent than in a Mycenean monarchy’.  Ag. 2 occurrences of λεώς, 11 of στρατός.  Ag. 188 – 191, 555 – 565, 634– 660.  Ag. 855, 1393.  Ag. 257– 260 ἥκω σεβίζων σόν, Κλυταιμήστρα, κράτος· / δίκη γάρ ἐστι / ϕωτὸς ἀρχηγοῦ τίειν / γυναῖκ’ ἐρημωθέντος ἄρσενος θρόνου.  Ag. 785 – 786 πῶς σε σεβίξω / μήθ’ ὑπεράρας μήθ’ ὑποκάμψας / καιρὸν χάριτος.  Pers. 213 – 214.  Ag. 427– 455.  Ag. 456 – 457 βαρεῖα δ’ ἀστῶν ϕάτις ξὺν κότῳ· / δημοκράντου δ’ ἀρᾶς τίνει χρέος.  Ag. 884– 885 εἴ τε δημόθρους ἀναρχία / βουλὴν καταρρίψειεν.  Ag. 799 – 802 σὺ δέ μοι τότε μὲν στέλλων στρατιὰν / ‘Ελένης ἕνεκ’, οὐ γάρ ἐπικεύσω / κάρτ’ ἀπομούσως ἦσθα γεγραμμένος, / οὐδ’ εὖ πραπίδων οἴακα νέμων.  Ag. 938 ϕήμη γε μέντοι δημόθρους μέγα σθένει.

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and the gods.⁸⁷ Indeed, ‘Argos is not yet a democracy, as it will be in 458. But the opinions of the demos are already important’.⁸⁸ But in contrast with the people of the Suppliants, the old men of Agamemnon’s Chorus have no impact on the action. While Agamemnon is murdered, their attempt to reach a common decision⁸⁹ is ineffective. After his death they curse his murderers⁹⁰ and threaten Clytemnestra with banishment⁹¹ and Aegisthus with stoning.⁹² But they are no match for Aegisthus’ bodyguards and are sent back to their houses in silence by Clytemnestra who has the last word.⁹³

Choephoroi In Choephoroi the Argive collectivity is relegated to the background. Significantly, the Chorus of old citizens is now replaced with a Chorus of Trojan captives.⁹⁴ Moreover, there are few occurrences of πόλις,⁹⁵ ἄστυ,⁹⁶ δῆμος,⁹⁷ and their derivatives, and Argives,⁹⁸ whereas the vocabulary of the house ‒ δόμος, δῶμα, οἶκος and ἑστία ‒ both as building and family ‒ is omnipresent.⁹⁹ From the beginning, the focus is decidedly on the house. Orestes, the Chorus, and the nurse lament on the calamities, the wreckage, and unhappiness of a house¹⁰⁰ surrounded by darkness after the death of Agamemnon,¹⁰¹ ‘the union [of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra] unwelcome to and abominated by the

 Ag. 844– 846 τὰ δ’ ἄλλα πρὸς πόλιν τε καὶ θεοὺς / κοινοὺς ἀγῶνας θέντες ἐν πανηγύρει / βουλευσόμεσθα.  Cf. Dodds 1960 [2007] 247.  Ag. 1347– 1371.  Ag. 1409 : Clytemnestra and 1616: Aegisthus.  Ag. 1410 – 1411 ἀπέδικες ἀπέταμες, ἀπόπολις δ’ ἔσῃ, / μῖσος ὄβριμον ἀστοῖς.  Ag. 1615 – 1616 οὔ ϕημ’ ἀλύξειν ἐν δίκῃ τὸ σὸν κάρα / δημορριϕεῖς, σάϕ’ ἴσθι, λευσίμους ἀράς.  Ag. 1672– 3.  Ch. 74– 78, 84. 719.  Excepting l. 289, where it refers to the city as a place, the only secure occurrence of πόλις is to be found at the very end of the play at l. 1046; there are also 2 occurrences of πολίτης (304, 431) and 1 of πολισσονόμος (864).  There is no occurrence of ἄστυ and only 1 of ἀστός (188).  1 certain occurrence of δάμιος (55).  ᾿Aργεῖοι Ch. 1040, 1046.  39 occurrences of δόμος, 20 of δῶμα, 6 of οἶκος and 4 of ἑστία refer to the house of Agamemnon (861, 937) or Atreus (765).  Ch. 13 (Orestes), 49 – 53 (Chorus), 566 (Orestes), 625 (Chorus) 937, 625, 740 and 744– 746 (nourrice).  Ch. 51– 53.

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house’¹⁰² and the exile ‒ either physical ‒ Orestes ‒ or metaphorical ‒ Electra ‒ of its legitimate heirs.¹⁰³ Orestes, who is called ‘the darling’ and ‘the eye’ of his father’s house’,¹⁰⁴ entreats his father to grant him the power over the house.¹⁰⁵ His return is identified by Electra and the Chorus as the return of the light,¹⁰⁶ the salvation¹⁰⁷ or the liberation¹⁰⁸ of the house and the removal of the curb restraining it,¹⁰⁹ whereas his failure would mean the end of hope for the house.¹¹⁰ The allusions to the citizens and the city are rather rare. The only occurrence of a word belonging to the family of δῆμος, the adjective δάμιος appears at 57, when the Chorus emphasises the gap between the hereditary kingship¹¹¹ of Agamemnon and the tyranny¹¹² of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus: ‘the respect, which was formerly unconquered irresistible in battle and in war now stands aside, the respect which penetrated the ears and the mind of the people has now disappeared. There is only fear’.¹¹³ Agamemnon’s readiness to consult the people¹¹⁴ also contrasts with the behaviour of Clytemnestra who does not let them have a say and only consult Aegisthus, as demonstrated by her words at 672– 673: ‘If there is a need of other action requiring more deliberation to leave the decision to the men to whom we shall communicate’¹¹⁵ and again at 716 – 718: ‘We shall communicate the matter to the masters of the house and, since we has no lack of friends, and decide together with them about this unhappy issue’.¹¹⁶

 Ch. 623 – 625.  Ch. 253 – 254.  Ch. 235 ὦ ϕίλτατον μέλημα δώμασιν πατρός, 934 ὀϕθαλμὸν οἴκων.  Ch. 479 – 480 πάτερ, […] αἰτουμένῳ μοι δὸς κράτος τῶν σῶν δόμων.  Ch. 131 (Electra) ϕίλον τ’ ’Ορέστην ϕῶς ἄναψον ἐν δόμοις, 808 – 809, 863 (Chorus) πῦρ καὶ ϕῶς ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ /δαίων, 961 (Chorus) πάρα τε ϕῶς ἰδεῖν.  Ch. 264 (Chorus) ὦ παῖδες, ὦ σωτῆρες ἑστίας πατρός.  Ch., 161 ἀναλυτὴρ δόμων, 820 δωμάτων λυτήριον and 961 πάρα τὸ ϕῶς ἰδεῖν.  Ch. 961– 962 μέγα τ’ ἀϕῃρέθη / ψάλιον οἴκων.  Ch. 698 – 699 (Clytemnestra) and 861– 862 (Chorus).  βασιλεύς and βασίλειος (excepting Ag. 114, 355) are always applied to Agamemnon, his family and his palace in Agamemnon and Choephoroi.  Ch. 973 τὴν διπλῆν τυραννίδα; see also Ag. 1355, 1365, 1633.  Ch. 55 – 58 σέβας δ’ ἄμαχον ἀδάματον ἀπόλεμον τὸ πρὶν / δι’ ὤτων ϕρενός τε δαμίας περαῖνον / νῦν ἀϕίσταται. ϕοβεῖ- / ται δέ τις.  See supra n. 87.  Ch. 672– 673 εἰ δ’ ἄλλο πρᾶξαι δεῖ τι βουλιώτερον, / ἀνδρῶν τόδ’ ἐστὶν ἔργον, οἷς κοινώσομεν.  Ch. 716 – 718 ἡμεῖς δὲ ταῦτα τοῖς κρατοῦσι δωμάτων / κοινώσομέν τε κοὐ σπανίζοντες ϕίλων / βουλευσόμεσθα τῆσδε συμϕορᾶς πέρι.

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At 429 – 433 Electra mentions the citizens only in order to point out their absence at the funerals of Agamemnon: ‘O cruel, all-daring mother in a funeral of hatred to bury the king with all his citizens gone, with all sorrow for him forgotten, you dared’.¹¹⁷ Until the very end of the play¹¹⁸ the liberation of the city is a secondary theme in comparison with the liberation of the house. At 299 – 303,¹¹⁹ when Orestes explicits the many motives which impel him to act, ‘the orders of the gods, his great grief for his father and besides the lack of property that presses upon him’. The end of the subjection of the glorious destroyers of Troy with confident purpose to two females’ is only a consequence and not a cause of the revenge. At 863 – 865, when the Chorus wonder about the issue of the fight to come, either the utter destruction for all time of Agamemnon’s house or ‘kindling fire and light for freedom, he will get the great wealth of his ancestors and the authority to govern the city’,¹²⁰ the rule over the city is an apposition to the wealth of the house. The two occurences of the Argives both appear at the very end of the play. The first one at 1040: ‘to all men of Argos in time to come I say…’¹²¹ in a speech of Orestes that cannot be safely interpreted because of the corruption of the following line. The second at 1046 is the only passage where the Chorus closely associates the liberation of the whole city of the Argives with the murder of the tyrants at 1046 – 1047: ‘You liberated all the Argive city by lopping the head of these two snakes’.¹²²

 Ch. 428 – 33 ἰὼ ἰὼ δαΐα / πάντολμε μᾶτερ, δαΐαις ἐν ἐκϕοραῖς / ἄνευ πολιτᾶν ἄνακτ’, / ἄνευ δὲ πενθημάτων / ἔτλης ἀνοίμωκτον ἄνδρα θάψαι.  According to Garvie 1986, 269 at l. 824, ‘the text given by M πόλει τάδ᾿ εὖ at l. 824 presents problems and there is much to be said here for Kirchhoff’s πλεῖ τάδ᾿ εὖ … The metaphor would continue that at l. 814 and 821’.  Ch. 299 – 303 πολλοὶ γὰρ εἰς ἓν συμπίτνουσιν ἵμεροι, / θεοῦ τ’ ἐϕετμαὶ καὶ πατρὸς πένθος μέγα, / καὶ πρὸς πιέζει χρημάτων ἀχηνία, / τὸ μὴ πολίτας εὐκλεεστάτους βροτῶν, / Τροίας ἀναστατῆρας εὐδόξῳ ϕρενί, / δυοῖν γυναικοῖν ὧδ’ ὑπηκόους πέλειν. As well pointed out by Garvie 1986, 120, ‘τὸ μὴ … πέλειν does not introduce a further motive, the construction is consecutive’.  Ch. 863 – 865 ἢ πῦρ καὶ ϕῶς ἐπ’ ἐλευθερίᾳ / δαίων ἀρχάς τε πολισσονόμους / ἕξει πατέρων μέγαν ὄλβον.  Ch. 1040 τάδ’ ἐν χρόνῳ μοι πάντας ’Αργείους λέγω […].  Ch. 1046 – 1047 ἠλευθέρωσας πᾶσαν ’Αργείων πόλιν, / δυοῖν δρακόντοιν εὐπετῶς τεμὼν κάρα.

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Eumenides From line 235, when Orestes re-enters the stage followed by the Chorus of the Erynies at line 240, the play moves from Delphi to Athens, and the people that matters is not any more Troy or Argos, but Athens presented both as a πόλις¹²³ with its citizens¹²⁴ and an army.¹²⁵ The σκηνή which represented the royal palace in Agamemnon and Choephoroi is not any more part of the setting¹²⁶ and together with it, kingship has been replaced by democracy. ‘The curious circumstance that in the Eumenides alone among Greek tragedies, Athens lacks a king has hardly received the attention it deserves […] The only sovereign is Athena, ‘queen of the land’ (288). She it is who, exercising the same royal function as Pelasgus in the Supplices, weighs the grounds for accepting or rejecting the suppliant’s claim; she it is who in the trial scene takes the place of the archon basileus’. ¹²⁷ When she has succeeded in convincing both the Furies at lines 433 – 435 and Orestes at lines 468 – 469 to accept her verdict, she decides to convene a court of Athenian citizens, ‘Since this business has fallen upon us here, after I have chosen judges of homicide under oath blameless, I shall institute for all time to come this ordinance. You now call witnesses, marshal evidence, safeguards under oath of the justice of the case. After I have selected the best of my citizens, I shall return and they will make a true determination of the matter, not violating their oath with unjust mind’.¹²⁸ At 489 she leaves the stage which was set first in front of the temple of Athena in the Acropolis¹²⁹ and re-enters at 566 with an herald and the jurors¹³⁰ on the Areopagus where the law court is set, as demonstrated by the deictic at 570, ‘while this council-chamber is filled’.¹³¹ This trial will not only decide the case of Orestes. It also institutes for ever law and order at Athens: ‘Reverence and inborn fear will deter the citizens from crime both by day and night alike, so long as they make no innovations

 Eum.: πόλις 18 occurrences and πόλισμα (668).  Eum.: 8 occcurrences of πολίτης and 8 of ἀστός.  Eum.: λεώς: 638, 681, 775, 997 and στρατός: 566, 569, 668, 683, 762, 889.  Di Benedetto 1987 [2007].  Dodds 1960 [2007], 247.  I follow here the text and the correction of Piatoni in Eschilo, Orestea (1995): Eum. 482– 488 ἐπεὶ δὲ πρᾶγμα δεῦρ’ ἐπέσκηψεν τόδε, / ϕόνων δικαστὰς ὁρκίους αἱρουμένη / θεσμόν, τὸν εἰς ἅπαντ’ ἐγὼ θήσω χρόνον. / ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτύριά τε καὶ τεκμήρια/ καλεῖσθ’, ἀρωγὰ τῆς δίκης ὀρθώματα. / κρίνασα δ’ ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ βέλτατα / ἥξω διαιρεῖν τοῦτο πρᾶγμ’ ἐτητύμως, / ὅρκων περῶντας μηδέν᾿ ἐκδίκοις ϕρεσίν.  Cf. Taplin 1977, 377– 379.  Cf. Taplin 1977, 390 – 395.  Eum. 570 πληρουμένου γὰρ τοῦδε βουλευτηρίου.

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in the laws’.¹³² The establishment of the Areopagus as ‘a bastion to bring safety to the land and the city’¹³³ and ‘a council inaccessible to corruption, worthy of respect, quick to wrath, on behalf of those who sleep ever-wakeful guard-post of the land’¹³⁴ will make Athens forever secure. Such a definition of the Areopagus is echoed in the orators, Aristotle and Plutarch.¹³⁵ But Aeschylus is the only one to portray it as a democratic institution.¹³⁶ The text systematically identifies it with the people of Athens.¹³⁷ As well pointed out by Macleod in his comment on line 487 ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ βέλτατα, ‘if the Areopagus is “the best of the citizens”, that is to emphasise not that they are superior, but that they represent perfectly the city, being the flower of its manhood’.¹³⁸ From now on the reverence (σέβας), which was associated to hereditary kingship in the Choephoroi,¹³⁹ is now settled on the Areopagus: ‘there will sit Reverence, with its kinsman, Fear, that belongs to my people: and it will prevent wrong-doing, night and day, if only the citizens themselves make innovations in the laws.’¹⁴⁰ ‘So these lines recall an important Athenian principle, the stability of homicide laws, which we guaranteed in their formulation (Dem. 23.62) and which Antiphon (5.14 = 6.2; 1.3) dwels on with pride’.¹⁴¹ After Athena’s vote and Orestes’ acquittal, the focus is on its consequences for the Athenian people. After thanking Athena who saved his house,¹⁴² Orestes concludes an alliance with Athens, ‘To this land and your people for all the ful-

 Eum. 690 – 694 ἐν δὲ τῷ σέβας / ἀστῶν ϕόβος τε ξυγγενὴς τὸ μὴ ἀδικεῖν / σχήσει τό τ’ ἦμαρ καὶ κατ’ εὐϕρόνην ὁμῶς, / αὐτῶν πολιτῶν μὴ ’πικαινούντων νόμους.  Eum. 701 ἔρυμα τε χώρας καὶ πόλεως σωτήριον.  Eum. 704– 706 κερδῶν ἄθικτον τοῦτο βουλευτήριον, / αἰδοῖον, ὀξύθυμον, εὑδόντων ὕπερ / ἐγρηγορὸς ϕρούρημα γῆς καθίσταμαι.  E.g. Arist. Ath. 4.4 φύλαξ τῶν νόμων and 8.4 ἐπίσκοπος τῆς πολιτείας; Plu. Sol., 19 ἐπίσκοπον πάντων καὶ ϕύλακα τῶν νόμων and Dem. 24.150 and Arist. Ath. 55.5 (the Archonts swear to abstain from gifts). Cf. Dodds 1973 [2007], 240 and Saïd 1991, 161.  In opposition to Isocrates (Areop. 37 and Panath. 154) and Aristotle (Ath. 4.2 and 26.4) who stress its aristocratic character, cf. Saïd 1991, 176.  Eum. 566 κήρυσσε, κῆρυξ, καὶ στρατὸν κατειργαθοῦ, 638 – 639 λεώς, / ὅσπερ τέτακται τήνδε κυρῶσαι δίκην. 681 ’Αττικὸς λεώς, 775 πολισσοῦχος λεώς, 807 ἀστῶν τῶνδε, 854 πολίταις τοῖσδε, 912 τὸ τῶν δικαίων τῶνδ’ […] γένος, 927 τοῖσδε πολίταις, 997 ἀστικὸς λεώς, 1010 – 1011 πολισσοῦχοι / παῖδες Κραναοῦ.  Macleod 1982 [2007], 271.  See supra n. 113.  Eum. 690 – 692 ἐν δὲ τῷ σέβας / ἀστῶν ϕόβος τε ξυγγενὴς τὸ μὴ ἀδικεῖν / σχήσει τό τ’ ἦμαρ καὶ κατ’ εὐϕρόνην ὁμῶς. αὐτῶν πολιτῶν μὴ ’πικαινούντων νόμους (translated by Macleod, modified).  Macleod 1982 [2007], 272– 273.  Eum. 754 ὦ Παλλάς, ὦ σώσασα τοὺς ἐμοὺς δόμους.

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ness of time to come I swear an oath now, before returning home, that no leader of my country shall bring against them a well equipped army’¹⁴³ and wishes her military victories, ‘May you hold your enemies in a wrestling-grip with no escape, one that brings salvation and in battle victory’.¹⁴⁴ As opposed to the Agamemnon’s portrayal of the Trojan war as a cause of sufferings and death, the wars waged by imperialist Athens have become synonymous with salvation and victory. After Orestes’ departure, Athens is threatened with sterility and plague by the Furies’ wrath.¹⁴⁵ But they are persuaded by Athena at lines 894– 900 to change their mind and deliver blessings over the city, as did the Danaids in the Suppliants. But they put more emphasis than the Danaids did on the prevention of civil strife¹⁴⁶ and the importance of civic concord¹⁴⁷ as expected in a tragedy that was performed few years after the reform of Ephialtes (462 BC), who reduced the Areopagus to the single function of being the court for homicide.¹⁴⁸ The tragedy is concluded by a second Chorus who sing the Eumenides off at the end. If one accepts Taplin’s attractive suggestion, this Chorus is in fact made of the jurors of the Areopagus.¹⁴⁹ So the people are not only powerful by its vote, like in the Suppliants, they are also granted a voice at the end and given the last word in the trilogy. To conclude, from the Persians to the Oresteia, the people, always portrayed as a unity, play an important part in Aeschylus’ tragedies. Among the barbarians (Persians and Trojans), the people are totally subordinated to the ruler and have to pay for the folly of their king ‒ in the Persians ‒ or for the crimes of the members of the royal family ‒ in the Agamemnon. In the Suppliants, where the Egyptian Danaids give voice to an autocratic conception of kingship, the text emphasises the power of the assembly responsible for the granting of the status of metics to Danaos and his daughters, while stressing at the same time the part of the persuasive rhetoric of the king. The Seven against Thebes, a play clearly divided into two parts, the fate of the city which is saved is disentangled from

 Eum. 762– 766 ἐγὼ δὲ χώρᾳ τῇδε καὶ τῷ σῷ στρατῷ / τὸ λοιπὸν εἰς ἅπαντα πλειστήρη χρόνον / ὁρκωμοτήσας νῦν ἄπειμι πρὸς δόμους, / μήτοι τιν’ ἄνδρα δεῦρο πρυμνήτην χθονὸς / ἐλθόντ’ ἐποίσειν εὖ κεκασμένον δόρυ. On the allusion to the Argive alliance of 462 BC, see Macleod 1982 [2007], 268 – 271.  Eum. 777– 778 πάλαισμ’ ἄϕυκτον τοῖς ἐναντίοις ἔχοις, / σωτήριόν τε καὶ δορὸς νικηϕόρον.  Eum. 780 – 790, 810 – 817.  Eum. 976 – 983.  Eum. 984– 987.  Cf. Dodds 1960 [2007], 248.  Cf. Taplin 1977, 410 – 411.

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the destiny of the royal family ruined by the crime of Laius and the curse of Oedipus. The Agamemnon acknowledges the importance of popular opinion, but also demontrates at the end their powerlessness. In the Choephoroi, where the people have no say under the tyranny of Aesgisthus and Clytemnestra, the focus is decidedly on the family. In the Eumenides Athens is consistently portrayed as a democracy.

Bibliography Burian, P. (1974), ‘Pelasgus and Politics in the Aeschylus’ Danaid Trilogy’, in: Wiener Studien 8, 5 – 14 [reprinted with a new introduction in Lloyd 2007, 199 – 210]. Di Benedetto, V. (1995), Eschilo Orestea, introduzione di V. Di Benedetto, traduzione e note di E. Medda, L. Battezzato, M. P. Piatoni, Milan. — (2007), ‘Le Eumenidi: Una tragedia di interni senza σκηνή’, in: [reprinted in Il Richiamo del Testo. Contributi di filologia e etteratura, Pisa 2007, 4 vols., III.1081 – 1098]. Dodds, E. R. (1960), ‘Morals and Politics in the Oresteia’, in: PCPS 186, 19 – 31 [reprinted in Lloyd 2007, 245 – 264]. Dover, K. J. (1957), ‘The Political Aspect of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, in: JHS 77, 230 – 237. Fartzoff, M. (1990), Oikos et Polis dans l’Orestie d’Eschyle: Valeurs familiales et valeurs civiques, PhD diss., University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. Friis Johansen, H. / E. W. Whittle, Aeschylus: The Suppliants, 3 vols., Copenhagen. Garvie, A. F. (1969), Aeschylus, Supplices: Play and Trilogy, Cambridge. — (1986), Aeschylus: Choephori, Oxford. Hutchinson, G. O. (1985), Aeschylus: Septem contra Thebas, Oxford. Lloyd, M. (2007), Oxford Readings in Classsical Studies: Aeschylus, Oxford. Macleod, C. W. (1982), ‘Politics and the Oresteia’, in: JHS 102, 124 – 144 [reprinted in Lloyd 2007, 265 – 301]. Patzer, H. (1958), ‘Die dramatische Handlung der Sieben gegen Theben’, in: HSCP 63, 97 – 119. Podlecki, A. J. (1989), Aeschylus: Eumenides, Warminster. Saïd, S. (1991), ‘Le mythe de l’Aréopage avant la constitution d’Athènes’, in: M. Pérart (ed.), Aristote et Athènes. Actes de la table ronde du centenaire de la Constitution d’Athènes 23 – 25 Mai 1991, Fribourg, Université, Paris, 155 – 184. Solmsen, F. (1937), ‘The Erinys in Aischylos’ Septem’, in: TAPA 68, 197 – 211. Sommerstein, A. H. (1989), Aeschylus: Eumenides, Cambridge. Taplin, O. (1977), The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, Oxford. Thalmann, W. G. (1978), Dramatic Art in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes, Yale. Von Fritz, K. (1962), ‘Die Gestalt des Eteokles in Aeschylus’ Sieben gegen Theben’, in: K. von Fritz (1962), Antike und moderne Tragödie, Berlin, 193 – 226 [reprinted and translated as ‘The Character of Eteocles in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes’ in Lloyd 2007, 141 – 173].

Chris Carey

Staging Allegory My title is a little misleading. But it is a useful way of encapsulating the effect which interests me here. Allegoria is not allegory as we would understand it; it is questionable whether we encounter allegory in any meaningful way before Plato. Most of the time what we meet in ancient texts is metaphor, sometimes extended metaphor, rather than sustained and coherent interaction between sign systems in the manner of allegory as experienced in medieval and modern texts. So what I’m talking about is metaphor. And more specifically about personification as a vehicle for theatrical metaphor, and its role in the creation of dramatic meaning in fifth century comedy. The personification of abstracts plays a central role in Greek literature and thought from the earliest period. So Old Comedy is not alone in making extensive use of it. But simple fact of visual enactment in the theatre combines with the comic love of the tactile gives a unique dimension (in both the literal and the metaphorical sense) to its use of such figures. Old Comedy has a passion for the physical. By this I don’t mean simply the tendency toward sexual and scatological explicitness.¹ Or even the love of slapstick and physical violence.² Though both are true. I mean a passion for reification either of metaphor or of concept.³ Comedy abounds in abstracts. But it likes always to turn the abstract into the concrete. This tendency is exemplified at every level in the comic world. It involves characters, sets, props, individual scenes and even whole plot lines. This synaesthesia is partly about the comic love of language. Visual metaphor and personification are ways of engaging with the quiddity of language. Words are seen, felt and tasted, not merely heard. It is also partly about the comic love of incongruity. Bizarre effects can be created by the sudden realization of a turn of phrase or a title as an act or person. This can be seen for instance in the entrance of the King’s Eye in Acharnians. From the description it seems likely that the mask⁴ consists of a single large eye, possibly with a mouth below it (Ach. 94 – 97):

 Henderson 21991 remains the standard work on this.  On self-assertion generally see Sutton 1980, on slapstick and violence, MacDowell 1988, Kaimio 1990, Robson 2009, 63 – 64.  For the principle, see Newiger 1957.  See Olson 2002 ad loc. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-004

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ΚΗ. ῾Ο βασιλέως ᾿Οφθαλμός. ΔΙ. ῏Ωναξ ῾Ηράκλεις. Πρὸς τῶν θεῶν, ἄνθρωπε, ναύφρακτον βλέπεις, ἢ περὶ ἄκραν κάμπτων νεώσοικον σκοπεῖς; ῎Ασκωμ’ ἔχεις που περὶ τὸν ὀφθαλμὸν κάτω; Herald: The King’s Eye! Dikaiopolis: Lord Herakles! Mister, you look like a galley, or are you rounding a cape looking for a harbour. Down below your eye you have an oar hole.

It also seems possible that the character’s movement (stately and circuitous) reinforces the physical image (περὶ ἄκραν κάμπτων) by mimicking the movement of a trireme, an object which would often have an eye painted on the front. Effects like this, and they can be multiplied, often function only at the level of the individual joke, a sort of visual gag, and are merely part of the stream of humour and stream of consciousness⁵ which makes up the comic world. As often with Aristophanic jokes, the absurdity is the point and they are uttered and forgotten as the play moves restlessly forward. But sometimes these effects are more profound, in that they help to reify aspects of the plot or themes which lie at the heart of the comedy. Physical images such as this can help to create the comic world and as such may form part of the process whereby the impossible becomes possible. At the level of plot and prop one might cite the placing of lines of poetry in the balance in Frogs, which converts semantic and moral weight to visible physical weight, or the wineskins in Acharnians, essentially the enactment of a lexical (and ritual) term (the fact that the plural of the word for libation, spondai, is also the word for ‘truce’), which supervene to replace peace negotiations. To obtain the wineskins is to conclude peace. The skins thus allow the play to bypass the tedium of real-world politics. At the same time they telescope time and space, allowing the hero to break not just the laws of Athens but the restrictions of lived experience. The choice of wine as the image for peace also contributes to a consistent reification of the benefits of peace in terms of the joys of wine, food and sex, especially wine.⁶ The effects I am looking at are not all as fundamental as this but they do operate at the interface between visual presentation and theme. I am interested in the way visual presentation, especially costume, operates in the presentation of personification in the Aristophanic theatre.⁷ The abstracts themselves help to for Silk 2000 passim, esp. 136 – 137.  The effect is underscored by another personification, this time not enacted, that of War at Ach. 978 – 986, who is characterized as a disorderly symposiast.  For costume in Aristophanes more generally, see now Compton-Engle 2015.

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ward the realization of the plot. And in making the abstract concrete they allow the theatre to stretch its representational capacity either by giving visual form to intangibles or by condensing complex events and processes within a smaller compass, or both. By their presence in theatrical space they achieve this. But their appearance is part of this effect. It is this visual effect which I want to discuss. Despite their thematic importance most of these creations are highly localized within the plot. The most significant exception in Aristophanes is Demos in Knights. The play starts with a careful description by one of the household slaves. His master is a man named Demos. From the description it emerges that the play is built on an extensive metaphor (almost but probably not quite allegory), with Demos as the personification of the Athenian people and the household slaves as the politicians. The creation of Demos is one of Aristophanes’ most brilliant effects. It allows Aristophanes to bring the whole citizen population onstage and crystallize in a vivid way the nature of the Athenian political process and the relationship between the Athenian citizen population and its political leaders. The reverse is done in Wasps, where Philokleon is treated both as an individual Athenian and as a typical member of the citizen body, so that in part the people is reified through a single member of the demos. But the use of Demos is far more effective, at least thematically, since collective behaviour can be presented visibly and emphatically through a single entity. Demos is characterized by one of the household-slaves-cum-politicians as a rough (agroikos), irascible (akracholos) old man (Knights 40 – 43): Λέγοιμ’ ἂν ἤδη. Νῷν γάρ ἐστι δεσπότης ἄγροικος ὀργήν, κυαμοτρώξ, ἀκράχολος, Δῆμος Πυκνίτης, δύσκολον γερόντιον ὑπόκωφον. I will tell it then. Our master is a rough bad-tempered man, a bean-nibbler, Demos of Pnyx, a disagreeable old man and half deaf.

Both qualities, age and temperament, are probably part of the mask, so visible to some of the audience at least: colour (probably red to reflect outdoor work and irascibility); facial expression (scowling); hair probably short. And the clothing (over the standard comic padded body-costume) probably a chiton, perhaps even the worker’s exomis with one shoulder uncovered, since this is a demotic demos

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and this the best way of representing the man who works his land or his trade.⁸ Once he is rejuvenated by the Sausage-seller, his appearance changes.⁹ His entrance has something of the air of an epiphany, though he is described not in divine but in human terms as a monarch. The text works hard to maximize this effect. His re-emergence from the stage building is carefully prepared and his appearance described in some detail (Knights 1324– 1334): ΧΟ. Πῶς ἂν ἴδοιμεν; Ποίαν ἔχει σκευήν; Ποῖος γεγένηται; ΑΛ. Οἷός περ ᾿Αριστείδῃ πρότερον καὶ Μιλτιάδῃ ξυνεσίτει. ῎Οψεσθε δέ· καὶ γὰρ ἀνοιγνυμένων ψόφος ἤδη τῶν προπυλαίων· ᾿Αλλ’ ὀλολύξατε φαινομέναισιν ταῖς ἀρχαίαισιν ᾿Αθήναις καὶ θαυμασταῖς καὶ πολυύμνοις, ἵν’ ὁ κλεινὸς Δῆμος ἐνοικεῖ. ΧΟ. ῏Ω ταὶ λιπαραὶ καὶ ἰοστέφανοι καὶ ἀριζήλωτοι ᾿Αθῆναι, δείξατε τὸν τῆς ῾Ελλάδος ἡμῖν καὶ τῆς γῆς τῆσδε μόναρχον. ΑΛ. ῞Οδ’ ἐκεῖνος ὁρᾶν τεττιγοφόρος, τἀρχαίῳ σχήματι λαμπρός· οὐ χοιρινῶν ὄζων, ἀλλὰ σπονδῶν, σμύρνῃ κατάλειπτος. ΧΟ. Χαῖρ’, ὦ βασιλεῦ τῶν ῾Ελλήνων· καί σοι ξυγχαίρομεν ἡμεῖς· τῆς γὰρ πόλεως ἄξια πράττεις καὶ τοῦ ’ν Μαραθῶνι τροπαίου. Cho: How can I see him! What is his dress like, what his condition? Sausage seller: As in the days when he dined with Aristeides and Miltiades. But you will see it, for here is the sound of the Propylaia doors opening. Shout for joy at the vision of Athens of old, marvellous, much sung by the poets and the home of the glorious Demos. Cho: Oh! bright Athens, violet-wreathed, admired, show us the monarch of all Greece and of this land. Sausage seller: Here he is with his hair tied with a golden cicada, brilliant in his dress of old, smelling not of the courts, but of peace, perfumed with myrrh. Cho: Hail! King of the Hellenes, we rejoice in your happiness; your state is worthy of the city and of the trophy won at Marathon.

Presumably this is in part to ensure that those seated at a distance do not miss the transformation. But the description is not just an aid to those at the back. It also acts to reinforce what those with a good view can see, and to guide them in the process of reading the costume. The mask has changed. It may even have changed beyond recognition. Usually character re-entry in both tragedy and comedy requires continuity in appearance for the purpose of character identification; this is necessary to avoid confusion, since any uncertainty about the identity of the character disrupts the fiction. Comedy unlike tragedy is tolerant of slippage in character but not confusion about identity. In this case however

 For the exomis, see Lee 2015, 110 – 112.  For the significance of change of costume in comedy, see Compton-Engle 2015, 13 – 14.

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visual continuity is not needed. The extensive preparation for Demos’ reappearance in the dialogue between the Sausage seller and the Chorus means that we can recognise Demos regardless of the degree of transformation. And we also have the voice of the actor to help maintain continuity. Certainly he is transformed. The hair is now worn in the archaic style, as tettigophoros indicates. In the comic world this returns him to a better past,¹⁰ a point underscored by the text (᾿Αριστείδῃ […] καὶ Μιλτιάδῃ, ἀρχαίῳ σχήματι, τοῦ ’ν Μαραθῶνι τροπαίου). In the real world this would also transpose Demos to the ranks of the social elite, since Thucydides associates this hairstyle with the wealthy in the archaic period.¹¹ This may be part of the point here, that now that he is no longer being robbed by unscrupulous politicians he is free to enjoy the fruits of empire.¹² This would accord with his description as ‘king of the Hellenes’, βασιλεῦ τῶν ῾Ελλήνων, 1333. The colour of the mask may well have changed. This is not a man who needs to work outdoors, or indeed to work at all. His expression may have changed. He no longer has need for anger, since politics has changed.¹³ The clothing too must be different to reflect his new status. Here it is difficult to be precise. His clothes may match the hair, i. e. he may be wearing the long Ionian chiton which is associated at least in Thucydides with Athens’ past (again the elite past); or he may be wearing a himation. But certainly his clothing has changed. The adjective lampros may point to a white garment of some sort. This is not certain, since lampros is ambiguous – it can mean ‘white’ but can also simply mean ‘radiant’. The alternative which suggests itself is that he is dressed in tragic costume; this would agree with his portentous entrance and both visibly elevate him in status and juxtapose tragic and comic costume in a way attested elsewhere for the comic stage.¹⁴ We would then have a visual game with the markers of genre. Possibly, as has been suggested, he emerges on the ekkyklema. ¹⁵ I am generally suspicious of attempts to multiply examples of the ekkyklema in comedy. But its use seems inescapable for the removal of the defeated Paphlagon at 1249:¹⁶

 Clouds 984– 985.  Thuc. 1.6.3.  Cf. lines 1218 – 1220 and Wasps 1665 – 1667.  Cf. Peace 349 – 350.  Most notably in the Choregoi vase from South Italy, illustrated (among others) in Green 2002, 96; Biles / Thorn 2014, 296; Compton-Engle 2015, 38.  See most recently Csapo 2010, 128.  Cf. Sommerstein 1980, 53 – 54; Edmunds 1987, 74; Slater 2002, 18; Papathanasopoulou 2013, 159.

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Κυλίνδετ’ εἴσω τόνδε τὸν δυσδαίμονα. Wheel inside this ill-fated man.

So the play has an established paratragic dimension, unsurprisingly as this is a battle for the future of Athens. And rejuvenation through boiling (1321– 1323) is a heroic-mythic motif. So the ekkyklema cannot be ruled out for the entrance of the transformed Demos. However though, tragic costume and props would be at home, the presence cannot be proved; and there is nothing distinctively tragic about the entrance of Demos, unlike the downfall of Paphlagon. Not only has Demos changed. The imagined chronotope of the stage set has changed; his world (which is our world seen in a distorting mirror) has been transformed around him. His rejuvenation is the reification of a new age, not merely the change in a character and in the collective body which he represents onstage. He now lives in the Athens of old (1323). Comedy like Greek myth tends to look backward to a better past. The Athens of the past, especially the Athens of Marathon, is mythologized in comedy as a utopia.¹⁷ But part of the job of comedy is to create utopias.¹⁸ The imaginary world of the play is now the Athens of the early fifth century. The change of costume here underlines the restoration of this past in terms of the behaviour of the demos and the nature of Athenian politics. The visual changes have no practical impact in themselves; they do not effect the transformation of Demos or of Athens. That is done through the actions of the Sausageseller onstage and off. It does however give physical form to the change and embody (literally) the new potential for a better future to match the better past. This use of the visual dimension of personification to reify the transformation of a world in Knights recurs in Ploutos, though with some variation. In the case of Knights there is a complete continuity between appearance and reality. I can deal briefly with the visual representation of the personifications in this play, since Ploutos and Penia have been thoroughly discussed by ComptonEngle.¹⁹ Here Aristophanes creates a more subtle relationship between appearance and reality. In this play the god of wealth is cured of his blindness, so that money can now go to those who deserve it instead of the undeserving. The blindess is stressed at the very beginning of the play (Ploutos 8 – 15):

 See in general Carey 2013.  Ruffell 2000.  There is a very thorough discussion of costume and transformation in this play in ComptonEngle 2015, 82– 87.

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Καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ ταῦτα· τῷ δὲ Λοξίᾳ, ὃς θεσπιῳδεῖ τρίποδος ἐκ χρυσηλάτου, μέμψιν δικαίαν μέμφομαι ταύτην, ὅτι ἰατρὸς ὢν καὶ μάντις, ὥς φασιν, σοφὸς μελαγχολῶντ’ ἀπέπεμψέ μου τὸν δεσπότην, ὅστις ἀκολουθεῖ κατόπιν ἀνθρώπου τυφλοῦ, τοὐναντίον δρῶν ἢ προσῆκ’ αὐτῷ ποεῖν. So much for that. But the god, Loxias, who sings oracles from the golden tripod, fully deserves my blame, because though a physician and a wise diviner he sent my master away mad. He is following behind a blind man, the opposite of what he should be doing.

This is probably somehow revealed in the mask. We learn later (265 – 267) that Ploutos is bald and toothless. This too will be in the mask. We learn also that everything about his appearance is wretched, which probably means that despite his name he is dressed like a beggar in rags. So Ploutos is a visual paradox. If his blindness reifies the conceptual injustice of a world which divorces wealth from dessert, his appearance goes further in embodying the result of that inequality. For the original audience the wretchedness is reinforced by the intertextual background. The old blind man who enters and is vulnerable and ill-tempered but capable of bringing great benefits suggests the Oidipous at Kolonos of Sophokles.²⁰ When Ploutos returns, he is transformed. Again as in Knights there is a very careful textual preparation for his appearance (Ploutos 749 – 759): ΓΥΝ. ᾿Ατὰρ φράσον μοι, ποῦ ’σθ’ ὁ Πλοῦτος; ΚΑ. ῎Ερχεται. ᾿Αλλ’ ἦν περὶ αὐτὸν ὄχλος ὑπερφυὴς ὅσος. Οἱ γὰρ δίκαιοι πρότερον ὄντες καὶ βίον ἔχοντες ὀλίγον αὐτὸν ἠσπάζοντο καὶ ἐδεξιοῦνθ’ ἅπαντες ὑπὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς· ὅσοι δ’ ἐπλούτουν οὐσίαν τ’ εἶχον συχνὴν οὐκ ἐκ δικαίου τὸν βίον κεκτημένοι, ὀφρῦς ξυνῆγον ἐσκυθρώπαζόν θ’ ἅμα. Οἱ δ’ ἠκολούθουν κατόπιν ἐστεφανωμένοι γελῶντες, εὐφημοῦντες· ἐκτυπεῖτο δὲ ἐμβὰς γερόντων εὐρύθμοις προβήμασιν.

 Noted by Compton-Engle 2015, 84.

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Wife: But tell me, where is Ploutos? Karion: He is coming, but he was surrounded by an enormous crowd. Those who were honest before and had little to live on welcomed him with greetings of one accord with pleasure. The rich, who had great wealth And had amassed their wealth unjustly, were knitting their brows and glaring at him while the just were following him, wreathed with garlands, laughing and celebrating him; the din of old man walking in time surrounded his progress.

His mask must have changed to indicate his restored sight. How much else has changed is difficult to say. But the motif of rejuvenation does not appear here. So perhaps he remains bald and old. But he is surrounded by a crowd of garlanded people and probably he too wears a garland. Since this is a celebration (ritually underscored by the practice of greeting a new member of the oikos with katachysmata, 768, 788 – 795), it is likely that he is dressed for the occasion; his costume has been changed from the rags he wore before. The other personification, Penia, cuts a monstrous figure. Again old, she wears a pallid mask, which is compared with an Erinys in tragedy (418 – 425); and her threats to destroy them (before she is dismissed with contempt) agree with the suggestion of a monstrous figure. Her clothing too probably reflects this, perhaps black like the Erinyes in Aischylos.²¹ Probably also shabby to reflect her name. Here too as with Ploutos nothing is quite as it seems. Poverty is horrible in appearance but she offers very good arguments against the plan to cure the god of his blindness and so eliminate her, though she is rejected in the end, as she must be, because this is comedy and the utopian fantasy of a world where good people do not have to work is too appealing to dismiss. As in the other plays, costume and costume change are used to reinforce theme and peripeteia in the plot. But at the same time they are used in a way which reinforces themes which link it to tragedy and to particular plays. In the other plays, appearance and reality coincide at the level of costume (even when people are disguised, the disguise is always visible to the audience). In this play as in tragedy, and as later in Menander, the world is not always as it seems.

 The link to Aischylos was first noted by Cantarella 1965. Compton-Engle 2015, 165 is sceptical. But the Erinyes in theatre space were rare and the Oresteia had achieved classic status by the late fifth century. So Eumenides was the obvious intertext, especially since Penia like Aischylos’ Erinyes offers sound moral arguments despite her monstrous appearance.

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Penia is unusual among Aristophanes’ female personifications in playing an active role in the plot, even if she is dismissed. Though their dramatic purpose is to give physical form to radical change, in contrast to the male personifications the female abstractions we meet are (unsurprisingly) not active agents but conduits or instruments. Accordingly (and equally unsurprisingly) they are highly sexualized, though in different ways and to different degrees. And unlike Demos, Penia and Ploutos they are silent. The focus is therefore the body itself for the most part. All these females are eroticized. They are objects to be used. But they are not all objectified in the same way or to the same degree. When Trygaios returns from heaven in Peace, after rescuing the goddess Peace and putting an end to war in Greece, he brings with him two female figures. They are not described in detail; so we cannot be sure what the audience saw. But the exchange between Trygaios and his servant offers some information. When Trygaios instructs him to take Opora (Harvest) into his house to prepare her for marriage, the servant concludes that the gods are pimps (847– 849): OI. Πόθεν δ’ ἔλαβες ταύτας σύ; ΤΡ. Πόθεν; ἐκ τοὐρανοῦ. ΟΙ. Οὐκ ἂν ἔτι δοίην τῶν θεῶν τριώβολον, εἰ πορνοβοσκοῦσ’ ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς οἱ βροτοί. Servant: But where did you get these girls? Trygaios: Where? In heaven. Servant: I wouldn’t now give three obols for the gods, If they keep brothels like us mortals.

Since Trygaios has just brought back a bride (844) from heaven, the obvious analogy at this point would be the marriage ritual, where the bride is brought to her new home. The absence of this analogy at this point is suggestive for the appearance of this figure. However we envisage this female, she cannot be dressed like a matron or a maiden. Her appearance suggests sexual availability. She may be naked. But there is no specific allusion to her body. So her body is probably exposed rather than nude. That is, she may be wearing a thin garment which reveals the contours of the padded female body. ²² This is not however her only moment or her only role in the play. She returns for the exodos, where she is to be married to Trygaios. The wedding is celebrated with a mixture of lyric genres in which the epithalamion is prominent. It is difficult to believe that a ritual like this was not reflected in costume. Bride and groom must wear garlands. Be-

 For the female ‘body’ costume, see Revermann 2006, 151; Compton-Engle 2015, 28 – 38.

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yond that it is more difficult to be precise. The bride could be naked to indicate the pleasures to follow. But this is about more than sex. This is a wonderful moment of comic mythopoiia. This is a mythic end to a play rich in mythic resonance. In a plot based on heroic (and tragic) myth (the story of Bellerophon), but with the comic twist that the overreacher succeeds, Trygaios has put an end to war. Another mythic pattern in play is the idea of the winning of the bride, rarely attested in the historical period but well attested in myth. The hero whose name means wine lees now marries a figure whose name means Harvest. The marriage (a seminal hieros gamos, as Stella Papastamati has recently emphasised)²³ is part personal reward for his heroic achievement, part inauguration of a new era of peace and plenty. Probably therefore the bride will wear a white peplos. In a normal wedding the bride would dress demurely. If Revermann is right to argue that the comic ugliness which we find in the appearance of male characters also extends to the various mute female figures,²⁴ then possibly in this case we have either a shorter garment to create an element of grotesquerie and suggest readiness for sex or a near diaphanous robe which hugs the figure and emphasises sexuality and the fertility which will result from the wedding and the peace which the hero has achieved. But equally a long, figure-hugging peplos is possible. The objectification goes much further in the case of the other female whom Trygaios brings with him, Theoria, Holiday. Again the servant’s language immediately sexualizes her (872– 874, 877): ΟΙ. Τίς αὑτηί; Τί φῄς; Αὑτὴ Θεωρία ’στίν, ἣν ἡμεῖς ποτε ἐπαίομεν Βραυρωνάδ’ ὑποπεπωκότες; […] ὅσην ἔχει τὴν πρωκτοπεντετηρίδα. Servant: Who is she? What are you saying? Is she Theoria, whom we would bang all the way to Brauron when drunk? … What an Olympic arse she has.

He also attempts some kind of sexual contact, either rubbing or surreptitious penetration (878 – 879). And we are invited to admire her body in explicit detail (887– 895). Nudity is also suggested (though not proven) by the athletic metaphors outlining what the Council can do with her (894– 904). Most significantly, Trygaios and the servant admire her oven (optanion 891), which is described as smoke-blackened (892), which must refer to the (visible – 891, τουτί, ὁρᾶτε) tri For the hieros gamos in Aristophanes, see Papastamati 2012, 118 – 137.  Above n. 22.

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angle of pubic hair. She is given to the Council but without any of the language of marriage, unlike Opora (844). Since she signifies collective pleasure and enjoyment, she needs nothing beyond her theatrical skin. Like Ploutos, Peace makes use of contrasting personifications. The two female figures who articulate the fertility and relaxation provided by peace at the close counterbalance two male figures who personify the destruction of war, Polemos and Kydoimos. The latter is presumably dressed as a comic slave. Of Polemos we know only that Trygaios recoils from his face (239), presumably a grotesque mask. One might guess that like Lamachos in Acharnians he wears armour. But closer than that one cannot get. Basileia in Birds has much in common with Opora in Peace. Again we have a mute figure who features as a bride in a sacred marriage with the hero and the wedding celebration is presented in the theatre as the climax of the play. As in Peace, the marriage both rewards the hero for his achievement and inaugurates a new world. The change is even more radical here, since the hero Peisetairos has forced Zeus to hand over his power as ruler of the universe. The marriage with Basileia symbolizes this new order. But the differences from Peace are as striking as the similarities. This is most obvious in terms of the achievement and the reward in each case. Where Trygaios brings in an era of peace and plenty, Peisetairos achieves the ultimate comic fantasy in not merely subverting but replacing divine authority. This is reflected in both the tone and the presentation of the bride in each case. A wedding invariably has erotic connotations. The sexual humour and anticipation of the physical pleasures to come which we find in Peace are not absent from Birds. But it is only implicit. It never becomes explicit in the text. And Peisetairos allows his new wife a degree of dignity, even affection at Birds 1759 – 1762:²⁵ ῎Ορεξον, ὦ μάκαιρα, σὴν χεῖρα καὶ πτερῶν ἐμῶν λαβοῦσα συγχόρευσον· αἴρων δὲ κουφιῶ σ’ ἐγώ. Stretch out your hand, blessed wife! Take hold of me by my wings and dance with me; I shall lift and carry you.

This is at some remove from the exchange between the two half-Choruses at Peace 1337– 1340:

 Cf. Compton-Engle 2015, 44.

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ΧΟ. ΧΟ. ΧΟ. ΧΟ.

Τί δράσομεν αὐτήν; Τί δράσομεν αὐτήν; Τρυγήσομεν αὐτήν. Τρυγήσομεν αὐτήν.

What shall we do to her? What shall we do to her? We will reap her. We will reap her.

Presumably both Peisetairos and Basileia are garlanded. Given her name, the bride may wear a tiara, not to signal her power but to indicate her role as conveyor of power. There is none of the emphasis on the body which would suggest nudity. Instead we have a stress on her beauty (1722). This is probably registered in the mask, which may be marked by a reduction or an absence of comic distortion. The bride may wear white, though an obvious alternative would be for her to wear purple, again to indicate her role as conduit for divine and regal power. And in view of the silence on body parts her costume may be both long and decorous. All of this is speculative. But since it seems that the groom (presumably again elaborately dressed) carries the thunderbolt, it would be perfectly in keeping with the scene as a whole to have the bride presented with a degree of decorum. This offers little room for humour. But it makes an exquisite tableau and that may be the effect intended. It may also be significant that Peace precedes Birds by only a few years and many in the audience will have seen and will remember the earlier play. Aristophanes thus needs a degree of variety to avoid seeming simply to recycle. My final example is the character of Diallage, Reconciliation, in Lysistrata. This is probably Aristophanes’ most effective mute figure. In part she is probably the result of a desire to create variety (like the changes between Basileia and Opora in Peace and Birds). Like the wineskins in Acharnians which are used to represent and bring about the truce between the hero and the enemy, she helps to simplify the comic world and allow peace to be achieved rapidly, plausibly (within the fiction) and with humour, removing the tedium of real life negotiations. Like the wineskins she is integrated elegantly into the thematic concerns of the play. The truces in Acharnians focus on one key aspect of peace, drink. Reconciliation focuses on another, sex. Actually, she has an antecedent in a gesture of personification which forms a bridge between Acharnians and Lysistrata in terms of the mechanics of peacemaking. When Demos in Knights has been rejuvenated, he is rewarded by the Sausage seller with a truce, the point being (as in Acharnians) that, the politicians. Two (or more) females enter, named Spondai, Truce (Knights 1387– 1395). They are pluralized because the

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word sponde only means peace in the plural. The sexual pun in Demos’ expression of appreciation suggests again that they are naked (i. e. in their comic skins). From some perspectives two or more naked women are better than one. But in thematic terms a single eroticized female allows for a sharper focus. Reconciliation is also more carefully aligned with the plot, in that the whole play has turned on the need for, and refusal of, sex and the desirability and inaccessibility of the female body. Peace and sex as often go together. But the sexualized figures are tangential in the plot of Knights. Reconciliation fits nicely into a play which has a man named Shagger (Kinesias) and a woman named Bush (Myrrhine). But unlike these merely typical figures she is a personification who combines in herself the key concerns of the play, peace and sex. In the case of Opora in Peace, sexuality is prominent but unfocused. There is little attention to detail. The treatment of Theoria is a little more specific in that attention is drawn to her body. But Diallage is feminized in a detailed and specific way. Each part of her anatomy corresponds either to a geophysical or to a military feature and her body becomes a metaphor for territorial trading in the context of peace negotiations (Lysistrata 1161– 1170): ΛΥ. Τί δ’ οὐ διηλλάγητε; Φέρε, τί τοὐμποδών, ΛΑ. ῾Αμές γα λῶμες, αἴ τις ἁμὶν τὤγκυκλον λῇ τοῦτ’ ἀποδόμεν. ΛΥ. Ποῖον, ὦ τᾶν; ΛΑ. Τὰν Πύλον, τᾶσπερ πάλαι δεόμεθα καὶ βλιμάδδομες. ΑΘ. Μὰ τὸν Ποσειδῶ τοῦτο μέν γ’ οὐ δράσετε. ΛΥ. ῎Αφετ’, ὦγάθ’, αὐτοῖς. ΑΘ. Κᾆτα τίνα κινήσομεν; ΛΥ. ῞Ετερόν γ’ ἀπαιτεῖτ’ ἀντὶ τούτου χωρίον. ΑΘ. Τὸ δεῖνα τοίνυν, παράδοθ’ ἡμῖν τουτονὶ πρώτιστα τὸν ᾿Εχινοῦντα καὶ τὸν Μηλιᾶ κόλπον τὸν ὄπισθεν καὶ τὰ Μεγαρικὰ σκέλη. ΛΑ. Οὐ τὼ σιώ, οὐκὶ πάντα γ’, ὦ λισσάνιε. ΛΥ. ᾿Εᾶτε, μηδὲν διαφέρου περὶ σκελοῖν. Lys: Why not be reconciled? Come, what’s to prevent you? Spartan: We’re ready for talks if they’ll let us have this round bit here. Lys: Which bit? Spartan: Pylos. We’ve been wanting this for ages, feeling for it. Athenian: By Poseidon, this you’ll not get! Lys: Good sir, let them have it! Athenian: Well, what do we get to grind? Lys: Ask for another place instead. Athenian: Hmmmm! Well then, give us this

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First of all, Echinous, around here, then the Malian Gulf round the back and the Megarian legs. Spartan: By the twins, not everything, sir! Lys: Let it go. Don’t quarrel over the legs.

This is probably not just a verbal but also a physical process. As Lysistrata reminds the Spartans and Athenians of their shared history, they are commenting on and probably also gesticulating toward or touching Reconciliation (1128– 1158). We are never told anything about the appearance of this figure. But the comments of the negotiators at 1157– 1158 make sense only if the body parts are visible, that is, if she’s naked. The same applies to the specifics of the negotiation. The use and presentation of Reconciliation in Lysistrata is probably the best integrated of all the minor personifications in Aristophanes. In this play both the male and the female body play a central visible role in the action of the play.²⁶ In the case of the male body the use of costume is highly innovative. The phallos had been around in comedy presumably from the very beginning of the statesponsored performances in the festivals and probably much earlier. Aristotle’s connection of comedy with the phallophoric processions in Poetics ²⁷ though no more than inference is almost inescapable inference, even if the precise relationship is more nebulous than he supposed. It was an important part of the identity of comedy, since it was part of the basic costume of the actor playing male parts. That makes it sound a little perfunctory, which would be misleading. The phallos may have been a constant but its visible impact varied. We know from iconography that it could be worn either hanging or rolled up. And costume length allowed the actor-director to conceal it. Or to half-conceal it, as with Aristophanes’ own comment on the comic phallos in Clouds ²⁸ indicates that one could play games with length, thickness and colour. There is also a lot of room for comic business with the phallos, as we know from Thesmophoriazousai, with the attempts of Euripides’ kinsman to hide his phallos after his rhetoric exposes him as a man. Interestingly however the phallos usually dangles, even where as in Thesmophoriazousai it is not just part of the standard equipment but a badge of masculinity. Unlike the phallos pole its power, whether consciously conceived or not, resides in sexual potential. Thus Philokleon even at his most youthful and sexually aggressive is able to offer his phallos as a rope to haul up the hetaira after his transformation in Wasps. ²⁹ Unrolling the phallos may make it visibly ready for action. But no more is needed. If comic business is needed,

   

For recent discussion, see Compton-Engle 2015, 48 – 58. Poetics 1449a. Clouds 537– 539. Wasps 1341– 1344.

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the phallos is made erect by simply holding it up by hand. This is probably the case in the same scene in Wasps, where Philokleon invites the hetaira to masturbate or fellate him,³⁰ again at Birds 1253 – 1256, where Peisetairos threatens to rape Iris and claims that despite his age he can still get it up. It is certainly the case in Peace 879 – 880 (περιγράφεις 879), where Trygaios’ slave is trying to penetrate or just rubbing his phallos against Theoria, probably from behind. Lysistrata in contrast makes considerable play with erections and accompanying body positioning as people try to hide them. The paradox (which the Athenians and Spartans in this play share with the Odomantians of Acharnians ‒ line 861 ‒ and the Scythian of Thesmophoriazousai ‒ 1187– 1188) is that the erect penis, unlike the phallos pole, comes to signify not power but desperation.³¹ Both sets of negotiators have large erections (1076 – 1084). So too it seems does Kinesias (831– 832, 846, 869). How visible his erection is remains unclear. But the negotiators on both sides are concealing their erections and their clothing bulges in front them. Where the exposed phallos can be indicative of power, the concealed phallos is indicative of weakness and need. So interestingly, though the presence of Diallage objectifies the female body, since like the territory it becomes the object of male gaze and male control, her unclothed and subject body in contrast to the clothed bodies of the males reverses the power ratio between male and female. Somewhere between Diallage and the males comes Myrrhine. For the scene between Myrrhine and Kinesias to work, her costume has to cling, as set out earlier by Lysistrata (149 – 151); her costume and her actions (in endlessly postponing sex) thus cohere. The role of the female body as object of desire is also operational at the larger level of theatrical space. The rear of the staging area is occupied by a building with a central opening. The building is sealed and is controlled by the females. The men try to break in. Here we have a still larger metaphor for the central theme of the play, in which the men desire to penetrate the women and the women refuse access. There is in all this a quite remarkable synergy between theme, costume and theatre space which is unmatched in the Aristophanic corpus. In none of these cases does the personification or its visual presentation create meaning. Neither of these can do that alone. But they interact with language, structure, theatre space and proxemics as part of the larger construction of meaning. The figures I have discussed do not establish or develop themes. Personification is used to articulate thematic elements present in plot, script and

 Wasps 1348.  Here I part company with Compton-Engle 2015, 55, for whom the erect penis ‘represents the reclaiming of the comic stage by protuberantly male bodies’.

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character. And the visual representation is used to reinforce those thematic considerations.

Bibliography Biles, Z. / Thorn, J. (2014), ‘Rethinking Choregic Iconography in Apulia’, in: E. Csapo / H. R. Goette / J. R. Green / P. Wilson (eds.), Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century B.C., Berlin / Boston, 295 – 317. Carey, C. (2013), ‘Marathon and the Construction of the Comic Past’, in: C. Carey / M. J. Edwards (eds.), Marathon 2,500: Proceedings of the Marathon Conference 2010, London, 123 – 142. Compton-Engle, G. (2015), Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes, Cambridge. Csapo E. (2010), ‘The Production and Performance of Comedy in Antiquity’, in: G. Dobrov (ed.), Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy, Leiden, 103 – 142. Edmunds, L. (1987), Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics, Lanham /New York / London. Green J. R (2002), ‘Towards a Reconstruction of Performance Style’, in: P. Easterling / E. Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors, Cambridge, 93 – 126. Henderson, J. (21991), The Maculate Muse, Oxford. Kaimio, M. (1990), ‘Comic Violence in Aristophanes’, in: Arctos 24, 47 – 72. Lee, M. M. (2015), Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece, Cambridge. MacDowell, D. M. (1988), ‘Clowning and Slapstick in Aristophanes’, in J. Redmond (ed.), Farce, Cambridge, 1 – 13. Newiger, H. J. (1957), Metaphor und Alegorie: Studien zu Aristophanes, Munich. Olson, S. D. (2002), Aristophanes: Acharnians, Oxford. Papastamati, S. (2012), Gamos in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry, PhD diss., University of London. Papathanasopoulou, N. (2013), Space in Aristophanes: Portraying the Civic and Domestic Worlds in Acharnians, Knights, and Wasps, PhD diss., Columbia University. Robson, J. (2009), Aristophanes: An Introduction, London. Ruffell, I. (2000), ‘The World Turned Upside Down: Utopia and Utopianism in the Fragments of Old Comedy’, in: D. Harvey / J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes, London, 473 – 506. Silk, M. (2000), Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy, Oxford. Slater, N. (2002), Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes, Philadelphia. Sommerstein, A. H. (1980), ‘Notes on Aristophanes’ Knights’, in: CQ 30, 46 – 56. Sutton, D. F. (1980), Self and Society in Aristophanes, Washington DC.

Bernhard Zimmermann

Trygodia – Remarks on the Poetics of Aristophanic Comedy I Tragedy is a lucky genre (ποίημα) in every respect, because, first of all, the audience is familiar with the story even before a single word has been spoken. That is why the playwright need only give a small hint. If I say ‘Oedipus’, the audience automatically knows the rest: that his father is Laios, that his mother is Iocaste, who his daughters and sons are, what he will suffer, what he has done. /…/ Whenever tragedians have nothing more to say and have grown quite tired of their plays, they need only raise a finger and use the machine, and the audience will be content. That is not the case with us, for we must make everything up: new names, (Kaibel), what happened before the play, what happens in the play, the plot twist, the beginning. And if someone like Chremes or Pheidon leaves any of that out, he is booed off the stage, while people like Peleus or Teucrus can do all this.

This monologue is part of a comedy by Antiphanes with the programmatic title Poiesis (fr. 189 PCG; 4th century BC), in which either personified comedy or poetry herself complains about the difference between the two Dionysian sibling genres of tragedy and comedy. The speech may have featured in the prologue of the play and has the form of a makarismos, a cultic ritual of blessing. This form is used to set off the comic playwright’s plight of being under constant pressure to innovate, while the tragedian’s lot is portrayed as comparatively easy: in comedy, everything has to be new and must therefore be invented, whereas the tragedian can simply draw on traditional mythology for the content and structure of a play, and in case he has maneuvered his play into a dead end, he can always use the deus ex machina as a last resort. Antiphanes’ monologue is part of a long comic tradition which can be traced back to the 5th century, and holds the claim that a comic playwright must ‘say something new’ (καινὰ λέγειν)¹ – however, this claim is mentioned so frequently as to deserve closer scrutiny. If one peruses the comic fragments using Aristophanes’ eleven comedies as point of reference, certain recurring varieties of comedy, certain plot structures, dramatis personae and comic techniques immediately emerge, all of which were available to comic playwrights as part of a so-called ‘comic pool’ of ideas.² For  Cf. Zimmermann 2004.  Cf. Heath 1990; Zimmermann 2011, 694– 699. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-005

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recurring varieties of comedy, one need only think of the kind that is set in the underworld. This variety is not only represented by Aristophanes’ Frogs, but also by his plays Gerytades and Tagenistai, Pherecrates’ Krapataloi and Miners [Μεταλλῆς], Eupolis’ Demoi and Taxiarchoi, by Phrynichus’ Muses and Cratinus’ Laws, Chirones, Archilochoi and Plutoi. In this variety, the comic hero descends into the underworld in order to restore the ‘good old days’ by bringing back dead politicians or poets (Eupolis’ Demoi, Aristophanes’ Frogs), or in order to ask the dead for advice (Aristophanes’ Gerytades). Another variety is the comedy of retirement: in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Dikaiopolis leaves a polis that is too stubborn to make peace and retires to the rural demos, where he finds the personal freedom he desired. A similar structure must have served Phrynichus’ Monotropos or Crates’ Animals (Θηρία), and Pherecrates’ The Wild Ones (Ἄγριοι), and it is attested for sure in Aristophanes’ Birds. Other varieties are ‘local comedies’ like Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Eupolis’ Prospaltians, or a variety that deals with demagogues and intellectuals. A particularly interesting variety of comedy is one I would like to call ‘transparent comedy’. As far as we know, it was developed by Cratinus around 430 in his plays Dionysalexandros and Nemesis. ³ In these plays, the mythological action around the Trojan War and the birth of Helena is superimposed over a current event, the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. Mythology is used in a similar way here as it is in tragedy, namely to interpret the present, and in this case, uncover the causes of the war. Aristophanes returns to this variety in the Knights, which was performed in 425. In this play, he replaces the foreground of mythological action with a middle class household, the Oikos of a certain Demos, who, as master of the household, is looking for a new first slave, which brings great distress to his two longtime house slaves. Despite this change of setting, Aristophanes is using the same dramatic technique that Cratinus employed. Underneath the surface action taking place in the private household of Demos, the actual reference to the household of the Athenian state cannot be overlooked, as the two frames of reference continually merge and blur into each other, constantly turning comic action into a relentless appraisal of Athens’ domestic politics.⁴ Eupolis, Aristophanes’ contemporary and almost his coeval, adopts the same variety of comedy and the same comic technique in the Marikas. ⁵ In the Knights, the primitive new domestic slave can easily be identified as the demagogue Cleon, the two old slaves as Nicias and Demosthenes, while the Marikas

 Cf. Bakola 2010, 82– 117; Zimmermann 2011, 720 – 724.  Cf. Newiger 1957, 33 – 49.  Cf. Cassio 1985.

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features the demagogue Hyperbolos behind the mask of a Persian slave named Marikas. He is similar to Cleon (Eq. 986 ὑομουσία) in that he has no musical paideia (fr. 208) and acquires his knowledge in a hair salon (fr. 194). Eupolis introduced a new element into this variety of comedy by adding Hyperbolos’ mother (who allegedly sells bread) into the mix, and in her role gave comedy a new favorite recipe for the vulgar and obscene that culminated in a cordax performed by the drunk old woman.⁶ He had borrowed this idea from his colleague Phrynichus (Nub. 556).⁷ Eupolis made another addition to this variety by accenting the Persian origins of the slave. This allowed all the negative traits the Athenians associated with Persia to enter the play, such as luxury, indulgence and hostility towards the Athenians. Most markedly, however, the play differs from Knights with respect to Eupolis’ third addition to the variety: he divided the Chorus in two, with one half consisting of the demagogue’s rich enemies, and the other half of his poor supporters. The phenomenon of demagogy is therefore analyzed in social terms, as the conflict is carried out simultaneously on two levels of the play, that of the Chorus and that of the actors, as is also the case in Aristophanes’ Lysistrate. The question of whether or not the Chorus of the Marikas was united, and if so, at what point in the play, cannot be answered based on the fragments we have today, but it is safe to assume that this would have had a symbolic force similar to that the union of the male and female Chorus has in Lysistrate. From this ‘transparent form’ of comedy, it was only a small step for many playwrights towards treating the problem of demagogy with full frankness. They turned the politicians in question into a character in the play and used their names as titles, as Plato did in the Hyperbolos, Cleophon and Peisander, Archippus in the Rhinon, and Theopompus in the Teisamenos. This more straightforward approach meant that derision ad personam (ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν), which had been present almost invariably in 5th century comedy as a minor element, now became the dominant theme of such plays. The two layers of the ‘transparent form’ of political criticism were thus reduced to a single layer, presumably enhancing its aggressiveness. The changes to the ‘transparent form’ of comedy outlined above constitute no more than a readjustment or a reevaluation of minor and major elements within the comic pool, effected by enriching the repertoire or assigning new priorities to certain elements within it. These kinds of processes are behind what comic playwrights proudly call καινὰ λέγειν, their ability to ‘innovate’, a feat they never tire of advertizing as their own particular achievement. If a rival play-

 Cf. Henderson 2000, 141.  Cf. Oeri 1948, 13 – 19.

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wright happens to adopt a certain innovation, he is accused of plagiarism, or his success is attributed wholly to the fact that the original ‘innovator’ served as an involuntary ghost writer for his rival’s play.⁸ Aristophanes, for example, claims that his comedy Knights served his rival Eupolis as material for no less than three comedies (fr. 58, Nub. 533 f.). Lysippus (fr. 4) tries to prove his independence as an artist by asserting that he recycled nobody else’s ideas in his plays, just as Eupolis insists on his claim to originality (fr. 89) by saying that he first helped Aristophanes write the Knights and then left the play to him as a present (cf. Cratinus, fr. 213). Accusing another playwright of plagiarism and claiming to have contributed to his play as a ghost writer is therefore typical of the agonistic dialogue that took place between comic playwrights.

II The agonistic situation forced playwrights to engage in an on-stage dialogue with their rivals in order to set off their own comedic skills and give their play a distinctly original coloring. These poetological power struggles – they are hardly harmless enough to be called poetological reflections – were mainly carried out through the parabases, but manifestations of this struggle can be found in numerous other parts of the plays, as well. We can assume that all comic playwrights practiced this form of self-advertising, since they were, after all, keen to prevail at the comic agon, where practicing polite restraint would have placed them at an obvious competitive disadvantage. Based on the state of textual transmission, we can observe the structure and development of this poetological discourse mainly for Aristophanes, and with some reservations and doubts for Cratinus and Eupolis, and probably for Pherecrates, as well; this is probably an area where a lot of new insights are still to be gained. In short, the Aristophanic comedies provide us with the following poetics and the following communication model between comic text and audience: although every comic playwright is under pressure to present his audience with something new (Nub. 547; Vesp. 1044), Aristophanes wants to do so within the bounds of good taste (Pax 739 – 751; Ran. 1– 34) and moderation (σωφροσύνη; Nub. 537; Vesp. 1023 – 1028). In characterizing his skills as an artist, he confidently lays claim to the epitheton ‘urbane’ (ἀστεῖος: Ran. 901, 906; οὐκ ἀγοραῖος: Pax 750). He also takes pride in emphasizing that a good comedy should rely

 For the discussion of authorial collaboration cf. Halliwell 1989; Mastromarco 1994, 40 – 43; Kyriakidi 2007, 154– 171.

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on its literary qualities alone (Pax 749 f.). However, a play which answers to such sophisticated demands can only be successful if its audience shares the same criteria and is as educated and clever, σοφός and δεξιός, as the playwright and his creation are (Nub. 518 – 532; Vesp. 1051– 1059). If this is not the case, even the best poet and the best comedy are bound to fail, as Aristophanes did when he entered the agon with Clouds. In addition to the literary qualities which the playwright ascribes to himself, his comedies also fulfill a didactic and informative political function, as indicated by the Chorus of the Acharnians in the parabasis (633 – 635): Our poet says he was the author of many good things to you, since he prevented you from being completely beguiled by foreign and foreign sounding speeches, from being so enthusiastic about being deceived, and from proving yourselves to be real airheads.

As if he were a second Hercules, Aristophanes is ready to face monsters like Cleon for the sake of the city (Nub. 549 – 559; Vesp. 1029 – 1037, Pax 752– 760; cf. also Eq. 510 f.) and is not content with ridiculing obscure private persons and women (Vesp. 751) nor with attacking second-rate politicians like Eupolis did with Hyperbolos. Aristophanes credits his comedy with fulfilling the same noble function as tragedy: it knows what is right (Ach. 497– 500). Please do not take offense, dear spectators, if I, although I am only a beggar, undertake to speak about the polis to the people of Athens – although I am only writing a comedy. For the trygodia, too, knows what is right!

The neologism of τρυγῳδία (Ach. 499 f.) and the emphasis added by the word ‘too’ (καί) serve to establish a clear connection to the sibling genre of tragedy and claim common ground for the two dramatic genres, a notion which Aristophanes elaborates repeatedly by using different variations of the same neologism. Aristophanes derives the right to practice comic freedom of speech and to ‘say what is right’ from comedy’s Dionysian roots.⁹ The right to make fun of somebody by name was a long-established custom of the Dionysian mysteries (Ran. 368). The Chorus of initiates in the Frogs is therefore the appropriate group to provide a definition of a ritually sanctioned license to ridicule as the characteristic element of the genre in terms of content. This definition of

 Cf. Lada-Richards 1999.

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comic license is placed within the context of a nostalgic review of the declining Old Comedy of the 5th century, and demonstrates full awareness of the fact that it had been performed at a historical turning point (Ran. 391– 395, 405 – 410). The passage below states that the sacred Chorus at the festival of Dionysus has the right to joke and ridicule while dancing (Ran. 375 f., 390, 394, 409); however, these are not ends in themselves, they also convey a serious message (Ran. 391 f.). Demeter, mistress of holy mysteries, Come and protect your Chorus And without danger all day Let me joke and dance And say much that is funny But much that is serious, too, and Let me, as is fit for your festival, Joke and jest and wear the crown of victory. (Ran. 386 – 395)

The initiates meet this obligation in the epirrhema of the parabasis with their call for harmony and unity within the polis (686 – 705, 718 – 737). Aristophanes’ artistic motto as expressed much earlier in the parabasis of Peace (764) had already conveyed similar notions of ‘offending little, giving much enjoyment, and supplying everything that fits the occasion’. Aristophanes’ concept of genre transcends the cultic context by making comedy a genre of the polis with the clearly defined political function of informing and educating the audience. By opening its eyes to certain problems, comedy proves itself useful to the public. ‘It is right for the holy Chorus to give useful advice and teach the polis’, sings the Chorus of initiates in the parabasis of Frogs (686 f.) as it introduces the agon between Euripides and Aeschylus. This agon provides the backdrop for the important discussion of the didactic function the genres of the polis fulfill. The neologism τρυγῳδία expresses a notion of comedy not only relying on, but even rivaling with tragedy, which led Cratinus to coin the paradoxical bon mot of εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων (fr. 342).¹⁰ In this fragment, Cratinus has an astute spectator ask how it is possible to reconcile Aristophanic criticism of Euripidean tragedy, especially in terms of its sophistic tenor, with the simultaneous integration of these very elements within his own work: how does a penchant for ‘fancy talk’ (λεπτολογία) and polished phrases that Cratinus discerns in his younger rival’s work fit in with the harsh criticism Aristophanes levels at the tragedian?

 Cf. Zimmermann 2006.

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This is a paradox that applies to all writers of comedies, because, as a polyphonic genre, comedy derives a substantial part of its comic potential from the parody of ‘nobler’ genres, such as tragedy (‘paratragedy’)¹¹ or the dithyramb, both of which were performed in the same institutional context as comedy. On the one hand, Aristophanes, showing a perceptiveness which would do honour to any literary critic, was acutely aware of the balancing act that the tragedies of playwrights like Euripides or Agathon were engaging in by incorporating ‘new music’ and its flamboyant effects and mannerisms into their plays. This tightrope walk was made especially precarious by the fact that these tragedies were constantly on the verge of plummeting from the highest pathos into the superficial and trite, and therefore prone to create unintended humorous effects; on the other hand, Aristophanes does recognise the potential inherent in the musical innovations of his time, but takes into account the criterion of appropriateness (πρέπον) and thus sees ‘new music’ as rightfully belonging to comedy rather than to the other Dionysian genres related to it. The parabasis of Aristophanes’ Knights provides a crucial, perhaps even the crucial insight into his implicitly explicit poetics. At this part of the play, Aristophanes has the Chorus explain why he himself did not manage the staging of his plays from the beginning. The passage in question (507– 550) allows us to distinguish three stages in his career as a young playwright, which is illustrated using several metaphors borrowed from seafaring: Aristophanes entered the trade as a kind of apprentice,¹² helping out more experienced playwrights as a ghostwriter, writing individual scenes or supplying fresh ideas. After his ‘apprenticeship’, he went on to write his own plays, but committed them to others for the staging, and only then, says the Chorus, did he deem himself worthy of being the pilot of his own ship, so to speak, by staging his plays himself. He explains his piecemeal progress by saying that creating κωμῳδοδισκαλία is notoriously difficult, and compares it to a beautiful, capricious woman, whose favor is hard to win; also, the Athenians are as unpredictable as the weather (this accusation also appears in the parabasis of the Acharnians): one year, they rave about a playwright, the following year, they suddenly retract their favor and abruptly abandon him. As evidence of this, Aristophanes cites from the first fifty years of the history of Greek comedy following its establishment in 486. He begins his outline in the 70s and 60s with Magnes as the first comic playwright of note, applauding the variety in his music and the innovative costumes he devised, and ends with Crates, a playwright of the 50s and 40s, whom he praises for a humor so subtle it requires

 Cf. Rau 1967.  Cf. Mastromarco 1994, 40 – 44.

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no further elaborate effects. Aristophanes maliciously places Cratinus, the former champion of the genre, between the two deceased writers just mentioned, thus marking his rival, who was still living at the time, as one already dead. The Chorus goes on to say that Aristophanes is aware of what Magnes’ fate as a playwright had been after his hair had grown white: although he had triumphed most often over his rivals’ Choruses, had offered the Athenians all kinds of voices, played the lyre, used fluttering wings, let Lydian melodies resound and dressed up the Chorus as gall wasps and as frogs, he was still not able to win their favour, and was cast out in the end; not as a young man, however, but when he had grown old and his talent for ridicule had abandoned him. The Chorus then uses Homeric language to describe Cratinus’ art, but only to lash out against him immediately afterwards (526 – 536): Then he remembered Cratinus, who used to glide along on a great wave of praise, And rush across the even plain, sweeping away from where they stood and carrying off with him The oaks and the plane trees and his enemies by their roots. Nothing could be sung at a symposium except for ‘Doro with his fig-sandals’ And ‘carpenters of skilfully-wrought hymns’. That is how popular he was back then. Now, when you see him blubbering nonsense, you feel no pity; The pegs are falling from his lyre that has gone out of tune, He is losing his intonation. Old man that he is, he goes about Like Connas, ‘a dry wreath on his head, dying of thirst’. But based on his former success, he should be drinking at the Prytaneum And not blabber to himself, no, all should see him anointed, sitting next to Dionysus.

This characterization of Cratinus begins by praising his early days: he is described as a poet who used to be bursting with elemental Dionysian force, much as Aeschylus is portrayed in the Frogs; the image of a rapid stream sweeping away everything in its way was later to become a metaphor for the artistic power that only the truly original genius possesses (one need only think of Horace’s Ode on Pindar IV 2). Cratinus’ compositions are said to have been great hits which were sung at every symposium, but those days have passed for Cratinus, and the only thing that remains Dionysian about him is his love of wine, his drunkenness. Finally, the Chorus speaks about the comic playwright Crates (537– 540), who belongs to the generation after Cratinus: What anger and what abuse did Crates have to endure from you, who sent you home after feeding you with a small meal, kneading for you with a cotton-dry mouth the most urbane of ideas, but he alone did (not) always hold out, sometimes he lost, sometimes he didn’t.

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Compiling Aristophanes’ characterizations of the three playwrights Magnes, Cratinus and Crates in his short history of Attic Comedy (Eq. 520 – 540)¹³ makes it possible to put together the concept of the ideal comedy Aristophanes was striving to realize in his work. His ideal comedy is rich and full of variety in its music and makes use of daring mimetic effects both in its music and its songs, while the Chorus and its costumes should be very creatively designed. These characteristics were all exemplified by Magnes’ work (520 – 525) and should be combined with the kind of ‘elemental Dionysian force’ in the lyric portions of the play that Cratinus used to possess in his youth. The most important ingredient, however, are urbane ideas (539) such as Crates had, which make do without elaborate effects and are staged in a sober and reasonable fashion (537– 540). Since none of these three playwrights was able to achieve long-term success despite their individual achievements, a playwright ideally needs to possess the virtues of all three paradigms. Among them, Crates’ characteristics obviously rank highest with Aristophanes: he repeatedly comments on the urbanity of Crates’ ideas, which set the latter apart from his rivals’ inane jokes (Nub. 547 ff., Pax 734 ff., Ran. 1 ff.). This makes them the kind of ideas most appropriate for a city like Athens. Aristophanes also repeatedly demonstrates which genre he is competing against: comedy’s sibling genre of tragedy. This is where Aristophanes appears to differ most from his older archenemy Cratinus. While Cratinus mainly draws on older poetry, especially Archilochus, Aristophanes is more daring: just as he is not content with ridiculing mediocre politicians, he does not hesitate to take on the genre that dominated the Athenian theater. It is through his competitive engagement with the powerful sibling genre of tragedy that Aristophanes develops his trademark comedy. (Translated by Katharina Xenia Epstein)

Bibliography Bakola, E. (2010), Cratinus and the Art of Comedy, Oxford. Cassio, A. C. (1985), ‘Old Persian marika-, Eupolis’ Marikas and Aristophanes’ Knights’, in: CQ 35, 38 – 42. Halliwell, S. (1989), ‘Authorial Collaboration in Athenian Comic Theatre’, in: GRBS 30, 515 – 528. Heath, M. (1990), ‘Aristophanes and His Rivals’, in: G & R 37, 143 – 158.

 Cf. Imperio 2004, 187– 220.

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Henderson, J. (2000), ‘Pherekrates and the Women of Old Comedy’, in: D. Harvey / J. Wilkins (eds.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, London, 135 – 150. Imperio, O. (2004), Parabasi di Aristofane. Acarnesi, Cavalieri, Vespe, Ucelli, Bari. Kyriakidi, N. (2007), Aristophanes und Eupolis. Zur Geschichte einer dichterischen Rivalität, Berlin / New York. Lada-Richards, I. (1999), Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs, Oxford. Mastromarco, G. (1994), Introduzione a Aristofane, Roma / Bari. Newiger, H.-J. (1957), Metapher und Allegorie. Studien zu Aristophanes, Munich. Oeri, H.G. (1948), Der Typ der komischen Alten in der griechischen Komödie, seine Nachwirkungen und seine Herkunft, Basel. Rau, P. (1967), Paratragodia. Untersuchungen zu einer komischen Form des Aristophanes, Munich. Zimmermann, B. (2004), ‘Poetologische Reflexionen in den Komödien des Aristophanes’, in: A. Bierl / A. Schmitt / A. Willi (eds.), Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung, Munich / Leipzig, 213 – 225. — (2006), ‘Euripidaristophanizon. Riflessioni su un paradosso aristofaneo’, in: P. Mureddu / G. F. Nieddu (eds.), Comicità e riso tra Aristofane e Menandro, Amsterdam, 33 – 41. — (2011), Handbuch der griechischen Literatur der Antike, 1. Band, Munich.

Andreas Fountoulakis

When Dionysus Goes to the East: On the Dissemination of Greek Drama beyond Athens* 1 Introduction When Aristotle notes in his Poetics (1450b 7– 8) that the older playwrights created tragic characters speaking πολιτικῶς, while those of the fourth century characters speaking ῥητορικῶς, he appears to observe in the tragic poetry of his own times a preference for the language of persuasion over that of the civic discourse of the older generation. Similarly, he notes a preference among his contemporary tragedians for eventful plots involving plot-reversal (περιπέτεια) and recognition (ἀναγνώρισις), (1450a 29 – 35 and 1452b 28 – 1453a 39),¹ over the construction of dramatic character (1450a 25 – 26). While his observations on the art of poetry often have a prescriptive rather than descriptive character,² in this case they appear to echo a tendency of his contemporary playwrights towards complex plots full of emotional upheavals, rhetorical motifs and unexpected action rather than plots dominated by pathos and unhappy endings. This tendency is attested in late fifth-century tragedies such as Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, Ion, and Helen, and developed further by the tragic and comic playwrights of the fourth century. Along with the occurrence of pan-Hellenic ideals in tragedies such as Euripides’

* This paper was, despite some additions and modifications, essentially written during the autumn of 2013 and the spring of 2014, while I was a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London respectively. I am grateful to both institutions for providing me with their excellent research facilities. Special thanks are due to Professor Patricia Easterling for her encouragement and support, as well as for discussing with me various important points concerning the reception of Greek drama outside Athens. A shorter version of this paper was presented in April 2014 at the Annual Conference of the Classical Association, which was held at the University of Nottingham. Thanks are due to the audience in Nottingham for useful observations and suggestions. Needless to say, I am alone responsible for the views expressed in this paper and the imperfections which may remain.  Cf. Belfiore 1992, 141– 153.  For the importance attached to dramatic character by Aristotle, see especially Poet. 1454a 22– 33 and 1456a 1– 2 (on the kind of tragedy [ἠθική] which is centred on the depiction of human character). DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-006

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Iphigenia at Aulis,³ comedy, in particular, tended to eliminate radically the references to persons and subjects pertinent to the Athenian civic life, as these are known from Aristophanes, and assumed a more universal thematic orientation even though its action was often supposed to be placed in Athens.⁴ These were tendencies which were associated with the demands of an audience and a cultural context emerging from the adventures of the democratic polis and the decline of Athenian hegemony after the end of the Peloponnesian war. The same tendencies, along with factors such as the emergence of new festivals, the ability of the actors to travel, the cosmopolitan outlook of plays and audiences, or the increased theoretical interest in the theatre,⁵ facilitated the dissemination of Attic drama outside Athens and its reception by audiences in many cities of mainland Greece and the Greek islands, in South Italy and Sicily, and beyond. After all, despite its alleged Athenocentricity, Greek drama was even in the fifth century a genre not always restricted within the boundaries of Athens.⁶ While in recent years the expansion of Greek drama in the West has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention,⁷ little research has been conducted on the presence of Greek drama in the Eastern Mediterranean especially during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Considering the expansion of Greek drama in areas such as Asia Minor, Cyprus, Palestine or Egypt during and after Alexander’s conquests, this paper aspires to explore some of the reasons which led to that expansion.⁸ Although

 See E. IA 1383 – 1384; Xanthakis-Karamanos 1980, 3 – 4; Hall 1989, 160 – 165.  See Xanthakis-Karamanos 1980, 47– 58; Green 1994, 49 – 51.  Cf. Easterling 1993; Hall 2007; Hanink 2014a, 192– 203.  Plays such as Aeschylus’ Persae and Aetnaeae or Euripides’ Archelaus, Troades and Bacchae were probably first performed or re-performed in places such as Sicily and Macedon, while in the fourth century fifth-century Athenian tragedy as well as comedy were probably regularly performed not only in cities outside Athens throughout mainland Greece, but also in South Italy and Sicily. See TrGF III T A 1, 33 – 34; T Gd 56ab; T A 1, 68; T A 1, 35 – 39; T A 2; Csapo / Slater 1995, 3, 14– 17; Easterling 1994, 73 – 80; Taplin 1993, 89 – 99; Taplin 2007, 5 – 15; Csapo 2010, 96 – 98; Vahtikari 2014, 79 – 90; Csapo / Wilson 2015, 328 – 364. For the likelihood of a performance of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Vinctus in Sicily, see Vahtikari 2014, 84– 86.  See Gigante 1971; Taplin 1993; Dearden 1999, 226 – 246; Taplin 1999; Fountoulakis 2000; Allan 2001; Todisco 2002; Jordan 2007; Wilson 2007; Csapo 2010, 38 – 82; Bosher 2012. See, however, Braund / Hall 2014 (for Greek drama in the region of the Black Sea in the fourth century); Csapo / Wilson 2015 (for a comprehensive survey of the presence of Greek drama in the Eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and fourth centuries).  The perspectives of cultural history and the methodological tools of cultural studies may turn out to be particularly useful for this exploration. For these approaches see, among others, Miller 2001: Arcangeli 2012. See, however, Braund / Hall 2014 (for Greek drama in the region of the Black Sea in the fourth century); Csapo / Wilson 2015 (for a comprehensive survey of the presence of Greek drama in the Eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and fourth centuries)

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such an exploration may pose more questions than those it will attempt to answer, its primal aim is to shed light not only on aspects of the reception of Greek drama outside Athens, but also on aspects of its potential social, political, and cultural function in various contexts where issues of cultural formation and identity had often a prominent role to play.

2 Greek Drama in the East During his campaign in the East Alexander the Great was accompanied by actors, musicians and mimes, who occasionally reached the number of even 3,000 and gave performances on various occasions.⁹ Plutarch and Athenaeus refer to some of those artists and, more specifically, to the tragic actors Athenodorus, Thessalus and Aristocritus, the comic actors Lycon, Phormion and Ariston, many musicians such as Cratinus, Aristonymus, Aristocrates, Dionysius, Diophantus and Phrynichus, and the mimes Heraclitus, Scymnus and Philistides.¹⁰ While one might suppose that the aim of their performances was to entertain the king and his men, the organization of some of these performances suggests that they functioned as something other than mere entertainment. According to Plutarch, Alex. 29 and Mor. 334e, when in the spring of 331 BC¹¹ Alexander returned to Phoenicia from Egypt, he organized in Tyre sacrifices and processions for the gods, athletic and musical contests, and performances of dithyramb and tragedy. Plutarch’s reference to the presence of the comic actor Lycus suggests also the staging of comedy. Earlier on, Philip had dissociated the performance of drama from its civic context and had organized games so as to celebrate the destruction of Olynthus in 348 BC, and Alexander himself had followed his example in order to celebrate his sack of Thebes in 335 BC; two instances which betray the emergence of drama outside its traditional Athenian festival context along with the possibility of its presentation even in the form of excerpts or on private occasions, and its manipulation by a ruler in

 See Arrian, An. 7.14.1 and 10; Plu. Alex. 72.1; Le Guen 2014a, 360 – 361.  Plu. Alex. 29, Mor. 334c-f; Ath. 1.20a, 12.538e – 539a (citing Chares FGrHist 125 F 4); Stephanis 1988, nos. 74, 345, 352, 377, 398, 723, 783, 1092, 1200, 1494, 1567, 2285, 2508, 2579, 2585; Csapo 2010, 172– 174; Le Guen 2014b, 264– 266.  Pickard-Cambridge 21988, 280 and Vahtikari 2014, 102– 103 assume that it was in 332 BC when the dramatic contests in Tyre took place, apparently soon after the city’s conquest, but this is highly unlikely.

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order to gain for himself cultural and political prestige and authority.¹² Alexander’s stay in Tyre coincided with his attempt to reorganize the administration of the conquered Phoenicia, establish good relations with Athens, suppress Sparta’s rebellion and prepare his army in order to proceed even further in the East and conquer the entire Persian Empire.¹³ The tragic performances took place as part of dramatic contests, while the competing performances were sponsored by the Cypriot kings of Salamis and Soloi. This was not due to Alexander’s reluctance to sponsor the contests since on other occasions he was willing to provide dramatic artists with large sums of money for various reasons.¹⁴ Plutarch stresses the conscious adoption of a modified version of the Athenian institution of chorêgia as well as of the Athenian resonances of the dramatic contest: the kings Nicocreon of Salamis and Pasicrates of Soloi were selected in the way the chorêgoi in Athens were selected from the tribes,¹⁵ were provided with tragic choruses as well as with the famous actors Thessalus and Athenodorus respectively, who were already victorious in the dramatic competitions of Athens. The performances were assessed by judges who voted Athenodorus as the victor in a competition organized as an echo of Athens’ Great Dionysia.¹⁶ As Dearden points out, the two crucial elements of the performance of drama in Athens were that of competition and the existence of the chorêgos. ¹⁷ Both elements were present in Alexander’s productions. Although the existence of chorêgoi is also attested in many places outside Athens such as Samos, Rhodes or Delos, in the fifth century chorêgia associated with dramatic contests existed only in Athens.¹⁸ It is important to note that Plutarch’s rendering of this story is not focused on the tragedies performed or on the conditions and the quality of the performances, but on the transference of an institution adopted by democratic Athens in order to oblige the most wealthy citizens to contribute financially to its activities and enable the poorer citizens to

 D. 19.192– 195; D. S. 17.16.3 – 4; Arrian, An. 1.11.1; Ceccarelli 2010, 101; Vahtikari 2014, 101– 102; Moloney 2014, 240 – 245.  Lane Fox 1973, 222– 227.  As regards Athenodorus, Alexander paid the fine imposed on him by the Athenians, because his presence in Tyre prevented him from turning up at the city’s Great Dionysia as he ought to have done. According to Duncan 2015, 312, this was an implicit reminder that Alexander and his kingdom were now more powerful than Athens. For Alexander’s generosity with artists, see Pickard-Cambridge 21988, 280; Hammond 1993, 61; Vahtikari 2014, 110.  Note, however, that the chorêgoi in Athens were not selected by lot, as Plutarch asserts. See Wilson 2000, 288.  See Le Guen 2014b, 257; Vahtikari 2014, 103 – 105.  Dearden 1999, 222.  Wilson 2000, 279 – 302 and esp. 282.

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attend an activity which was thought to be important for their education and the construction of their civic identity.¹⁹ The adoption of the institution framing a dramatic performance in classical Athens provided the performances of Tyre with a mechanism which was originally used in order to integrate the tragic performance into the performance culture of the polis and provide the Athenian spectators with the education of the citizen of the democratic polis. Yet the transference of the institution of chorêgia and the element of competition in Tyre was deprived of its practical aspect, while it retained its Athenian colouring. The existence of chorêgia in later times throughout the Hellenistic period at places other than Athens even after its abolition in Athens was related to the intention of adopting a classical Athenian institution rather than the actual need to impose such a kind of taxation.²⁰ In fact, Alexander dissociated the performance of Greek drama from Greek religious festivals traditionally associated with dramatic performances such as the Athenian Dionysia,²¹ while he replaced the eminent Athenian citizens, who contributed to the welfare and the education of the democratic polis, with two kings whose royal patronage had now become part of his own political agenda.²² The citizen who was expected to care about the polis was thus replaced by the brave, magnanimous and generous king who was supposed to care about his people.²³ As Brigitte Le Guen has persuasively argued, Alexander the Great apparently envisaged himself as the incarnation of Greek culture and attempted to compete with Athens by adopting the means through which Athens had secured a prom-

 Cf. also Arrian, An. 3.6.1; Quintus Curtius 4.8.16; Le Guen 2014a, 360. For the political function of the chorêgia in the Athenian democracy, see Wilson 2000, 144– 197. It is worth pointing out that Alexander chose to adopt an institution considered as important in fifth-century and not in his contemporary Athens. The chorêgoi were replaced by the agônothetês between 318 and 307 BC and this suggests that at the time of the performaces in Tyre the chorêgia was a fading institution. It is therefore likely that Alexander was not merely attempting to reproduce a Greek festive occasion, but also to create a setting linked with a glorious Greek past. Cf. Sifakis 1967, 137– 139; Pickard-Cambridge 21988, 91– 93; Easterling 1996, 212; Wilson 2000, 271– 273, 307– 308.  The use of chorêgia in the dramatic performances of Delos continued long after its abolition in Athens. Ironically enough, the Delian chorêgia was abolished in 166 BC after the island got under Athenian control. See Sifakis 1967, 31– 38.  He nevertheless preserved part of its ritual context since the performances were normally succeeding sacrifices or funeral games. He also reinforced the political agenda put forward by his implicit identification with Dionysus, which was later put forward by his Successors, through the promotion of an intrinsically Dionysiac artistic means. See Le Guen 2014a, 361; Le Guen 2014b, 271– 274.  Cf. Lane Fox 1973, 224– 225; Wilson 2000, 287– 288; Csapo / Wilson 2015, 364.  See Le Guen 2014b, 271– 272; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 245 – 246.

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inent place in Greek cultural life.²⁴ The importance attached to the preservation of the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides by Lycurgus’ legislation in fourth-century Athens suggests the city’s attempt to secure its cultural assets which were already considered as a means of securing a leading role in the Greek world.²⁵ Alexander also transformed theatre into a means of celebration of his military achievements and a kind of kingship ideology, which was invested with an intrinsically Greek framing.²⁶ In addition to the apparently Athenian plays performed in Tyre and the use of Athenian actors, the type of organization of the performances rendered the entire occasion a cultural event with a specially highlighted Greek cultural identity since it had at its core a dramatic performance with Athenian resonances, one of the most eminent specimen not only of the Athenian cultural identity, but also of classical Greek culture. Considering that the organization of these contests took place while Alexander was working in order to establish the Macedonian authority in the conquered regions, promote good relations with Athens and organize the rest of his campaign in the East, they may be seen as a confirmation of a Greek cultural identity as was epitomized in the performance of Athenian tragedy.²⁷ Such a confirmation would contribute to the development of a sense of purpose, cultural continuity and ethnic identity among his men, while it functioned as a cultural asset pertinent to the identity of the kind of multi-ethnic kingdom he was about to create. Towards the end of 332 and the beginning of 331 BC, after the battle of Issus, Alexander the Great organized in Memphis athletic and musical contests.²⁸ Significantly enough, Alexander sacrificed on the same occasion to the Egyptian god Apis²⁹ and summoned the most famous artists from Greece. Greek culture was thus becoming a major component of his strategy of religious and political syncretism.³⁰ Later in 331 BC, after the battle of Gaugamela, Alexander was proclaimed ‘king of Asia’ and this was in accordance with his consideration as the heir to the throne of the Pharaohs earlier in Egypt. At the same time, exhibiting a Greek consciousness, he declared that he was going to rebuild the city of Plataea and sent money for that purpose as well as part of the spoil to Croton in South Italy. He also returned to Athens the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton,

 See Le Guen 2014b, 269 – 270.  See Hanink 2014b, 60 – 125, 221– 247.  Cf. Csapo 2010, 173.  For the consideration of Athenian culture as an essential part of a Greek consciousness cultivated by Alexander and his Successors, see Momigliano 1975, 7– 12; Green 1990, 319 – 320, 337.  See Arrian, An. 3.1.4.  Apis might have been identified with the Greek Epaphus, Dionysus or Adonis.  See Wilcken 1967, 117; Bloedow 1998.

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which had been transferred to Persia in 480 BC. Seen from the perspective of his intentions to appear as the Greek leader, who was also an Oriental king aiming at an unprecedented political combination of the organization of the Greek poleis and that of the Persian Empire³¹ – a combination that functioned as the foundation of his new kingdom – the organization of the performances at Tyre may be considered as part of an attempt to create a Greek cultural consciousness which functioned as the capping stone and the connecting tissue of his multi-ethnic kingdom. According to Arrian, early in 324 BC, after the conquest of the Persian Empire and the successful campaign in India, Alexander the Great celebrated his victories and organized at Susa his own wedding with Stateira, Dareius’ daughter, as well as the weddings of 10,000 Macedonian men with Asian women.³² The wedding celebrations lasted five days and included among other things musical and dramatic performances. Athenaeus, citing Chares of Mytilene, provides us with many names of artists who took part in those performances.³³ It is worth underlining the spirit of reconciliation between Greece and Asia, which was epitomized by those weddings, as well as in the wider context of an Asian view of leadership adopted by Alexander, as was reflected in his adoption of the proskynêsis of the king or his use of Persian costumes and royal insignia.³⁴ In such a context those performances invested the reconciliation of Greece and Asia with an intrinsically Greek cultural identity which, as a dominant one, came into a dialogue with Oriental cultural identities. On various occasions one may note dramatic performances with a similar function either in major productions or in the form of dramatic excerpts presented at symposia such as those at Ecbatana in the autumn of 324 BC, during which Hephaistion fell ill and eventually died,³⁵ or in Babylon the following year a few nights before Alexander’s death. On that last occasion, after the actors’ performance Alexander himself recited a whole scene from Euripides’ Andromeda.³⁶ Alexander’s personal interest in drama is attested by Plu-

 Cf. Vlassopoulos 2013, 76 – 77.  Arrian, An. 7.4.4– 7.5.6.  Ath. 1.20a, 12.538e – 539a (citing Chares FGrHist 125 F 4). Among the many artists who came from Greece for the occasion were three tragic and three comic actors. Cf. Vahtikari 2014, 108 – 109.  See Lane Fox 1973, 414– 420; Bosworth 1980; Stewart 1993, 86 – 95; Fredricksmeyer 2000, 150 – 165; Bosworth 2006, 16 – 21.  D. S. 17.110; Arrian, An. 7.14.1; Plu. Alex. 72.2; Bloedow 1998, 129 – 130; Vahtikari 2014, 109 – 110; Duncan 2015, 212– 213.  Ath. 12.537d. Alexander is said to have recited excerpts from Euripides quite often, as happened with various Hellenistic rulers. See Plu. Alex. 10.7, 51.8, 53; Arrian, An. 7.16.6; Plu. Demetr. 14.34, 45.3; Vahtikari 2014, 71, 111.

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tarch, who notes that the king carried with him in his campaign the texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, as well as by Athenaeus, who claims that the satyr play Agên, which is attributed to Python of Catana or of Byzantium, may have been authored by Alexander.³⁷ Considering that, according to Athenaeus,³⁸ the Agên – a political play focused on the contemporary story of the Harpalus affair in which a character representing Alexander might have appeared³⁹ – was performed during the Dionysia organized by Alexander in 326 BC on the banks of the river Hydaspes,⁴⁰ it may be concluded that the performance of drama was not only a means of entertainment or cultural awareness, but also a way of making political statements or even of promoting royal propaganda.⁴¹ Soon after Alexander’s death the production of Greek drama became a common activity in most cities of the newly founded kingdoms of his Successors. Dio Chrysostom, Or. 32.94 refers to a great number of adaptations of Greek plays, mainly of comedies, which were particularly popular in Alexandria. This was facilitated by the well-known increased professionalism of the Dionysiac technitai, who were particularly well-paid, sometimes befriended powerful rulers, often acted as ambassadors, and were able to travel from place to place enjoying privileges such as asphaleia and asylia, which protected them from arrests and legal seizures.⁴² Their ability to travel carrying with them and disseminating some of the most important assets of Greek culture turned them into a kind of cultural ambassadors, who worked towards the achievement of a cultural homogeneity with an intrinsically Greek colouring within the immense and heterogeneous world of the Hellenistic kingdoms.⁴³ Theatrical buildings appeared in places such as Babylon, Seleucia on the Tigris, Antioch, Byblos, Alexandria Oxiane, Ec-

 See Plu. Alex. 8.3; Ath. 2.40 f, 13.586d, 13.595e; TrGF I 91 F 1; Hammond 1993, 164– 165; Günther 1999, 594– 601; Vahtikari 2014, 110 – 111.  Ath. 13.595d.  See Vahtikari 2014, 106 – 107; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 115 – 123.  It is nevertheless possible that the play was performed one or two years later, after the Harpalus affair, at another place and that Alexander was only the sponsor. For the possibilities concerning a different dating, see Le Guen 2014b, 261– 263, 272– 273; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 115 – 117.  Moschion’s Pheraioi and Lycophron’s Cassandreis and Symmachoi might well have alluded to contemporary events having a political function. Cf. Fantuzzi 1993, 31– 35; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 25 – 27, 74– 77, 83, 85, 131– 132; Duncan 2015, 313.  Cf. Plato, Laws 817a-b; Aristotle, Rhet. 1405a 23. See further Sifakis 1967, 99 – 103, 136 – 146; Fraser 1972, I, 618 – 619; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, ch. 5, 180 – 184, 203 – 206; Pickard-Cambridge 2 1988, 279 – 305; Csapo / Slater 1994, 231– 238; Easterling 1996, 224; Le Guen 2001, II, passim and esp. 69 – 71; Aneziri 2003; Sens 2010, 297; Csapo 2010, 103 – 107; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 275 – 280.  Cf. Walbank 1981, 69 – 70.

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batana, Arykanda, Balbura, Cadianda, Ephesus, Halicarnassus, Priene, Oenoanda, and Crimea. In Egypt, in particular, theatres were constructed in places such as Alexandria, Ptolemais, Memphis, Panopolis, Antinoe, Arsinoe and Oxyrhynchus.⁴⁴ They appeared as far as Cyrene.⁴⁵ Many surviving theatres such as those of Paphos in Cyprus, Apamea in northwestern Syria, or Ephesus, Aphrodisias, Xanthus and Pergamum in Asia Minor, which are dated to the Roman period, were most likely built on earlier theatres of the Hellenistic era.⁴⁶ In addition to an increasing interest in readings and recitations of dramatic excerpts or singing of dramatic songs at private gatherings, many festivals, no longer always associated with Dionysus, such as the Heraia in Samos and in Argos, the Amphiaraia/Romaia in Oropos, the Soteria in Delphi, the Sarapieia/Serapieia in Tanagra, the Mouseia in Thespiae, the Asklepieia in Epidaurus or the Agrionia in Thebes,⁴⁷ provided opportunities for performances of fifth-century plays as well as of new ones.⁴⁸ The existence of Hellenistic tragic poets considered as members of the ‘Pleiad’, a group either organized or simply favoured by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, as well as epigraphic evidence from Ptolemais-Hermiou, which gives us the names of four members of the local guild of the Artists of Dionysus, the tragic poets Phaenippus and Diognetus, and the comic poets Stratagus and Musaeus, suggest that in Hellenistic Egypt the writing of drama was still a creative process involving many productions at various festivals.⁴⁹ Two decrees from Ptolemais in Egypt dated to the age of Ptolemy II Philadelphus suggest the existence of an active guild of Dionysiac technitai associated with the temple of Dionysus and the organization of the local Dionysia.⁵⁰ Titles of tragedies such as, for instance, Lycophron’s Oedipus, Andromeda, Cassandreis and Marathonioi, Alexander Aetolus’ Astragalistai, Sositheus’ Daphnis or Ptolemy IV Philopator’s Adonis as well as

 See Turner 1963, 120 – 121 with n. 3.  See Ceccarelli / Milanezi 2007, 196 – 197 with n. 24.  See Webster 1956, 161– 162: Le Guen 2003, 331– 341. For a detailed survey of evidence concerning theatrical buildings from Asia Minor to Babylon and Cyrene, and the possibility of the occurrence of performances even before Alexander in some of these places, see Csapo / Wilson 2015, 364– 372, 379-380.  See Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 268 – 273.  It is, however, likely that performances were given beyond the boundaries of established festivals. See Sifakis 1967, 97– 98.  OGIS 51.31– 36; AP 7.707. Cf. Bieber 21961, 34– 35, 108 – 128; Sifakis 1967, 1– 2; Fraser 1972, I.619 – 621; Rice 1983, 52; Parca 1991, 96 – 97, 108 – 112; Sens 2010, 297; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 49 – 113, 246 – 249. New plays were written even in the Roman period. See Jones 1993.  See Le Guen 2001, I, 293 – 300, TE 60 and TE 61.

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the surviving fragments of Hellenistic dramatic writing witness such a process.⁵¹ It is important to note that this last case of Ptolemy IV Philopator – provided, of course, that the attribution of the Adonis to Philopator by Σ Ar. Thesm. 1059 is correct – testifies an involvement of the Hellenistic kings in the production of drama which was much deeper than patronage. Such an involvement betrays their profound belief in its cultural and political value as a means which could testify their high and intrinsically Greek cultural background, and at times contribute to their specific political aims and royal propaganda.⁵² Papyri containing fragments of Greek plays – most probably intended as script-texts for performers – suggest that the performance of either whole plays or excerpts was a popular activity.⁵³ The production of new plays along with revivals continued in Egypt until Roman times.⁵⁴ In the surviving victors’ lists from the Romaia at Magnesia on the Meander, which are dated to some point after 150 BC, reference is made to ποιηταὶ καινῶν δραμάτων suggesting that the poets of tragedy, comedy and satyr play, whose names figure on those lists, were producing new plays, although the performance of older plays in the same festival cannot be excluded.⁵⁵ It is worth stressing that, even though the ritual context of the dramatic performance was in most cases retained, some of the relevant festivals were associated with the Hellenistic monarchs and the dynastic cult. Festival names such as the Ptolemaia in Alexandria and in Delos, the Demetrieia in Athens, the Antigoneia and the Demetrieia in Samos, the Seleuceia in Rhodes, the Antiocheia and the Laodiceia in Teos or the Antiocheia and the Attaleia in Cyme in Aeolis were added to the traditional name of the Dionysia and reflect the intention of many Hellenistic rulers to lay claims upon a quasi-divine status and manipulate the festivals in order to impose a kind of control over the social gatherings of the festivities, celebrate their victories, display their power, project themselves as sources of culture and prosperity, and promote their political aims.⁵⁶ The dramatic performances were occasions of mass entertainment which could be used as

 See TrGF 1, 100 T 3 (Oedipus, Andromeda, Cassandreis, Marathonioi), 101 F 1 (Astragalistai), 99 F 2 (Daphnis), 119 (Adonis). Cf. Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002a, 295 – 298, 304– 305. See also Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b; Fantuzzi / Hunter 2004, 432– 437; Sens 2010, 298 – 299; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 83 – 85, 92– 93, 95 – 105, 146 – 147.  See Hurst (this volume).  See e. g. P. Sorb. inv. 2252; P. Strassb. W.G. 304– 307; P. Köln VI 245; P. Oslo 1413; P. Leiden 510; Gentili 1979, 19 – 22, 28 – 31; Parca 1991, 95 – 99, 111; Nervegna 2007, 25 – 29, despite her reservations as regards the actual purpose of such documents.  See D. Chr. Or. 19.5, 32.94; P. Oxy. 4546; Nervegna 2007, 22– 23.  Mette 1977, II B2 a, b; Csapo / Slater 1995, 200, no. 164; Le Guen 1995, 66; Nervegna 2007, 21.  For the Antigoneia, the Demetrieia and the Ptolemaia organized by the κοινὸν τῶν νησιωτῶν, see Sifakis 1967, 15 – 18.

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mass gatherings offering a fertile ground for the promotion of various policies and the development of political propaganda, as often happened with the theatrical buildings themselves, which were often used for political gatherings.⁵⁷ For similar reasons many Hellenistic rulers attempted to gain control over the powerful Dionysiac guilds as well as over the cult of Dionysus for the consolidation of which they showed a particular interest. As Rush Rehm observes, the Dionysiac technitai ‘received massive support from Hellenistic kings and rulers, who grafted their own names onto existing festivals or invented new ones, hiring technitai to celebrate their power’.⁵⁸ Thus the Egyptian guild of technitai was under the patronage not only of Dionysus, but also of the Ptolemies whose cult was introduced in 269 BC. They were mentioned in the guild’s name as Theoi Adelphoi (‘Fraternal Gods’) or Theoi Euergetai (‘Gods Benefactors‘) or Theoi Epiphaneis (‘Gods Made Manifest’).⁵⁹ According to Theocritus, Id. 17.112 – 116 gifts or money were generously offered to the Dionysiac artists for their work by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, most probably when he married Arsinoe. The Hellespontine guild based at Teos included among its members artists of a guild, based at Teos as well as at Pergamum, of the technitai of Dionysus Kathegemon, who was the patron-god of the Attalid kings.⁶⁰ In a decree from Teos dated to c. 204/203 BC the city of Teos, honouring the king Antiochus III and the queen Laodice, acknowledges the close relations between the rulers and the local Dionysiac guild which enjoyed royal favour.⁶¹ In return, the Dionysiac guilds often issued decrees honouring kings and local rulers.⁶² The annual musical and dramatic contests introduced around 130 BC in honour of Ariarathes V and his wife Nysa, the king and queen of Cappadocia,⁶³ testify the use of such contests as a field in which dynastic power could exercise its control as well as be displayed and celebrated. The cult of Dionysus and its various, even not strictly religious, manifestations such as the dramatic contests came thus

 See Mette 1977, 46 – 72; Csapo / Slater 1995, 186 – 206; Le Guen 1995, 64– 65; Chaniotis 1997, 224– 226; Lightfoot 2002, 221; Chaniotis 2009b, 41– 62; Le Guen 2014a, 362; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 3 – 4, 7– 8, 273 – 274.  Rhem 2007, 191– 192.  The guilds of technitai appear to have as patrons Dionysus as well as the deified rulers in many inscriptions from Egypt and Cyprus. See Le Guen 2001, I, 293 – 315, TE 60, TE 61, TE 62, TE 68, TE 69, TE 70; Le Guen 2001, II, 89 – 90.  See Rice 1983, 53 – 54; Le Guen 2001, I, 265 – 282, TE 53, TE 54; Le Guen 2001, II, 29 – 32; Lightfoot 2002, 220; Aneziri 2003, 71– 109; Le Guen 2014a, 363.  See Le Guen 2001, I, 220 – 225, TE 42.  See Le Guen 2001, I, 293 – 315, TE 62, TE 63, TE 64, TE 65, TE 66.  See IG II2 1330, 43 – 46; Pickard-Cambridge 21988, 311– 312; Le Guen 2001, I 67– 74, TE 5; Le Guen 2001, II, 89 – 90; Aneziri 2003, 44– 45, 198; Nervegna 2007, 20.

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under the auspices of many Hellenistic rulers, who turned Dionysus into their patron-god, often identified themselves with him who acted as their model, and sometimes claimed to be his descendants, as was often thought to have happened up to a certain extent earlier with Alexander the Great.⁶⁴ As Brigitte Le Guen rightly argues, the myths concerning Dionysus’ adventures in India were popular, and presumably appeared, after its conquest by Alexander, while the king’s identification with the god and his use of the theatre increased after that conquest and was closely related to the promotion of royal ideology and propaganda.⁶⁵ Antiochus VI, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Mithridates VI, Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy XII, for instance, assumed the title of ‘New Dionysus’ and were thus identified with the god.⁶⁶ In Teos the king was identified as Σωτήρ and shared Dionysus’ temple making himself equal with the god. The Attalids, the Lagids and the Seleucids established close contacts with associations related to the theatre as well as to the cult of Dionysus, which was soon associated with the royal cult. The Dionysiac technitai most probably participated in the festival celebrating the politically significant prospective entry into the city of Pergamum of Attalus III.⁶⁷ Associations, such as that of the Attalists in the Pergamine kingdom, testify this manipulation of the theatre as well as of Dionysiac cult in celebrations of the monarch like that of ‘the day of the king’ and the establishment of a dynastic cult of Oriental inspiration.⁶⁸ In addition to being the god of drama, Dionysus became thus the god of the ruler inasmuch as the dramatic display became the display of royal power.⁶⁹ In Roman times the interest of many emperors in Greek drama may be linked with its educational aspects, but was also related to their intentions of acquiring a prestigious cultural identity which was linked with political power.⁷⁰ This was nevertheless not entirely new to Greek theatre practice. According to ancient biographical testimonies, Aeschylus was thought to have died in the court of Hieron, the tyrant of Syracuse, while Euripides in the court of Archelaus,

 For Alexander and Dionysus, see O’Brien 1992, 1– 8, 14– 16, 152– 153, 188 – 189; Bosworth 1996, 140 – 166; Revermann 1999 – 2000, 458 – 462.  See Le Guen 2014b, 271– 274. Cf. Lane Fox 1973, 443; Fountoulakis 2014, 118 – 119.  See Chaniotis 2007, 241– 242, Chaniotis 2009b, 134– 136.  See OGIS 332; Le Guen 2001, I, 278.  For the relation between such associations and dynastic cult with respect to Craton, the aulos-player, and the cult of the Attalids, see Le Guen 2001, I, 260 – 265, TE 52; I, 227– 239 TE 44 and TE 45; Le Guen 2001, II, 29 – 31, 35 – 36, 88 – 89; Le Guen 2007, 272– 278. For the Egyptian notion of kingship which was apparently adopted by the Ptolemies, see Stephens 2003, 49 – 64.  See Le Guen 2001, II 8 – 11, 65, 88 – 93; Lightfoot 2002, 220 – 221.  Cf. Suet. Aug. 89.1– 2; Marc. Aur. Med. 11.6; Jones 1993, 44. For tragic performances in Roman times, see Kelly 1979, 21– 44.

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the king of Macedon. The tragic poet Agathon had also left Athens for the royal court of Macedon. When Hieron founded Aetna, Aeschylus produced his Aetnaeae, a play probably meant to promote the personal politics of his Syracusan patron investing him with an Athenian cultural prestige.⁷¹ Similarly, Euripides is supposed to have written his Archelaus, a play about the first mythical king of Macedon in order to flatter his supposed descendent and contribute to the consolidation of the latter’s power.⁷² Yet even if these stories are fictitious, they reflect – and especially that concerning Euripides and his Macedonian patron⁷³ – the tendency of Alexandrian scholars to link the Ptolemies, their own patrons who had Macedonian origins, with the cultural prestige of Athenian drama.⁷⁴

3 Constructing Cultural Memory Considering, however, the Athenian resonances of some of the most popular dramatic forms of the Hellenistic period, it is difficult to understand why the performance of Greek plays was chosen as an occasion of mass entertainment which nevertheless reflected social and political concerns, anxieties and goals of many Hellenistic societies outside Athens. The performance of Menandrean comedy throughout the Hellenistic world provides a good case for this type of investigation. Sebastiana Nervegna, studying the reception of Menander in antiquity, discusses a number of mosaics and frescoes dated between the Hellenistic period, as happens with the Theophoroumene mosaic signed by Dioscurides of Samos and dated to the last quarter of the second century BC, and the first few centuries AD from places as diverse as Mytilene, Crete, Zeugma, Daphne, Stabiae, Ulpia Oescus, Pompeii and Ephesus, which depict scenes from Menander’s comedies. Nervegna notes the formation and development of a relevant iconographic tradition as well as their dependence on actual performance of Menand-

 Cf. Rehm 1989, 31– 34; Duncan 2015, 298 – 300; Csapo / Wilson 2015, 332– 333.  Through Euripides’ play the Macedonian king sought to manipulate the myth in order to gain prestige by presenting the mythical Archelaus as a descendent of Heracles and Zeus, and link him with the foundation of the city of Aegae after Apollo’s command, as well as to integrate himself and his kingdom in the core of Greek culture as this emerged from tragedy. See Harder 1985, 129 – 137; Revermann 1999 – 2000, 452– 467; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2012, 108 – 126; Moloney 2014, 234– 240; Duncan 2015, 300 – 301; Csapo / Wilson 2015, 361– 362.  For reservations concerning Euripides’ visit to Macedon, see Scullion 2003, 389 – 400, where it is regarded as later fiction.  See Vita Aesch. 8 – 11 = TrGF III T 1; Vita Eur. 10 = TrGF V.I T 1; Suda ε 3695.4 Adler = TrGF V.I T 3. See also Paus. 1.2.3; Taplin 1999, 41– 42; Hanink 2010, 49 – 53, 58 – 59; Vahtikari 2014, 79 – 82, 87– 89.

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er’s plays.⁷⁵ Thus the mosaics of the House of Menander in Mytilene, which are dated to the late third or the fourth century AD, but may well point towards Hellenistic originals, depict scenes from Menander’s Kybernetai, Leukadia, Misoumenos, Phasma, Plokion, Samia, Synaristosai, Epitrepontes, Theophoroumene, Encheiridion and Messenia. ⁷⁶ In most of these depictions one may distinguish three characters, with speaking roles in the plays they come from, fully dressed in theatrical costumes and wearing recognizably comic masks such as those of the old man or the hetaera. Rather than highlighting visually elements of the plays pertinent to their literary merits or the ideas they convey, these depictions focus on eventful and spectacular scenes which must have made a great visual impression on the audience and were for this reason chosen by the iconographers who produced recognizable mementos of performances and not of plays that were read or recited. In the Mytilene mosaic pertaining to Menander’s Samia, for instance,⁷⁷ one sees the depiction of the spectacularly violent scene of Chrysis’ expulsion from the house of Demeas (Sam. 359 – 398) and not of the scene of the reconciliation between Demeas and Moschion from the play’s fifth act (Sam. 690 – 725), which is less spectacular even though it is more important in terms of plot construction, character drawing and ideological load. The iconographic tradition created by various artists and the visual interest in spectacular depictions on the part of later educated spectators who might have been fond of relevant theatrical performances or private renderings of single scenes, but were also acquainted with that tradition, contributed significantly to the choice of the depicted scenes.⁷⁸ A similar interest in the performance of both tragedy and comedy is attested in wall-paintings from Ephesus as well as from the House of the Comedians on the island of Delos. In the latter case scenes from tragedy as well as from comedy are being depicted.⁷⁹ What stands out is a scene from a comedy, perhaps Menander’s Perinthia, depicting a slave seated on an altar. It is worth noting that altar-scenes were particularly popular in comedy as well as in tragedy and involved spectacular violent action and intriguing verbal exchanges. It is for this reason that so many ancient depictions of slaves seated on altars survive.⁸⁰ In the wall-paintings from Ephesus there is an interesting pairing of significant scenes from Menander’s Sikyonian(s) and Euripides’ Orestes. Such a pair-

     

Nervegna 2013, 137– 169. See Charitonidis / Kahil / Ginouvès 1970. Charitonidis / Kahil / Ginouvès 1970, 38 – 41 and fig. 4. Csapo 1997, 171– 180; Fountoulakis 2004, 131; Csapo 2010, 140 – 167; Nervegna 2013, 162– 163. Bruneau et al. 1970, 168 ff., figs. 21– 25; Green 1994, 131. See Green / Handley 1995, 65 – 66, 79 – 83, 90 with figs. 41, 53, 54, 55 and 56.

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ing alludes to the intertextual affinities between the two plays and, more specifically, to the function of the democratic assembly as portrayed in the Messenger’s report of the condemnation to death of Orestes and Electra by the Argive assembly of Euripides, Orestes 866 – 956 as well as in Eleusinius’ speech of Menander, Sikyonian(s) 176 – 271 reporting the function of the informal assembly at Eleusis.⁸¹ At the same time, it reflects the audience’s interest in dramatic mannerism and spectacular performance rather than the ideas put forward or the social function of the plays in their original Athenian context.⁸² As may be inferred from later scholia, the popularity of Orestes in post-classical times depended on the opportunities it offered to actors for spectacular performances. Σ E. Or. 1366, for instance, implies that the actor enters at that moment the stage leaping from the roof of the stage building and this is related by the ancient commentator to an interpolated text pointing to later performances dominated by the interventions of the actors. Similarly, the return of Helen in a spectacular procession of slaves and booty is also thought by Σ E. Or. 57 to be due to a later choice made by actors, which is incompatible with the Euripidean text, while according to Σ E. Or. 268 the actor playing Orestes in post-classical performances pretends that he takes a bow and shoots.⁸³ And it is important to note that, as Patricia Easterling has pointed out, the ancient scholia often offer information concerning the reception of plays in antiquity providing us with the lens through which various ancient audiences envisaged, appreciated and interpreted drama.⁸⁴ Yet even if we assume that later audiences focused their attention on impressive scenes and spectacular staging, the popularity of Menander outside Athens from the Hellenistic period onwards cannot be easily explained if one bears in mind that most of his plays are set in Athenian demes, evoke Athenian customs and laws and, most importantly, reproduce a pervasive plot-pattern: the marriage of a young man and his beloved girl after it comes out that they both possess Athenian citizen status. Menander’s popularity is even harder to explain, if it is borne in mind that the performance context of his plays was formulated by a vast expansion of drama beyond Athens enabled by the professionalism of the actors and their guilds, the existence of a large number of new festivals,

 Cf. Goldberg 2007, 126 – 127.  See Easterling 1997, 215 – 224. Even if we suppose that the existence of some of these later depictions means that their owners enjoyed having them on their walls without being interested in their theatrical performance, the Hellenistic originals, on which most of them are based, betray a direct relation to theatrical performances and the familiarity of audiences with them.  See Strocka 1977, 45 – 55 with figs. 62 and 64; Green 1994, 51; Falkner 2002, 350 – 351, 355 – 359; Nünlist 2009, 347– 348, 361– 362.  See Easterling 2013, 186 – 187. Cf. Nünlist 2009, 338 – 365.

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the concern about genre, the mixing of genres, and the increased interest of theoreticians such as Aristotle and his followers on the form, function and aesthetics of drama.⁸⁵ Comedies such as Menander’s Perikeiromene, Sikyonian(s) and Heros provide extant examples of the marriage pattern. In the Perikeiromene the revelation that Glykera is actually fathered by Pataikos and is the sister of Moschion enables her reconciliation and eventual marriage with Polemon, who mistakenly thought that she has had an affair with Moschion. The play’s action is probably set in Corinth and both Pataikos and Polemon are Corinthian citizens, but this does not prevent the dramatist from creating a plot projecting issues pertinent to the construction of Athenian citizenship and identity. In the Sikyonian(s) it is only after the adventurous revelation that Philoumene and Stratophanes are Athenians by birth that their marriage is made possible in the fifth act of the play. Similarly, in the Heros the discovery that Plangon is the free daughter of the Athenian citizens Laches and Myrrhine makes possible her marriage with Pheidias, another Athenian citizen. Menander’s plays re-enact thus on the comic stage the relevant Athenian law which was introduced by Pericles during the archonship of Antidotus in 451/450 BC and demanded that a man and a woman should be of citizen status in order to be able to get married and bear legitimate children. This law safeguarded the identity of the Athenian citizens who were thus united in order to form the oikoi that functioned as kernels of the democratic polis. Seen from such a perspective, Menandrean comedy has often been taken to echo an ongoing discourse concerning citizenship, civic ideology and democracy in late fourth-century Athens.⁸⁶ This perception of Menander’s plays may reflect the way some of the Athenian spectators of their first performances interpreted them. Yet it ignores that most of those elements of his plays had acquired a conventional character with little significance with respect to a potential topicality of Menandrean comedy. It is for this reason, for instance, that the Periclean citizenship law crops up in the plot of plays such as Plautus’ Cistellaria or Terence’s Andria, which are hardly concerned with the discourse of Athenian citizenship and democracy. Audiences outside Athens could still appreciate and enjoy Menandrean plot-construction, character-drawing, humour or morality.⁸⁷ Yet

 See Fountoulakis 2011, 117– 138, 180 – 193; Petrides 2014, 98 – 113.  Cf. Konstan 1995, 165; Salmenkivi 1997, 193 – 194; Patterson 1998, 191– 205; Omitowoju 2002, 141– 154; Lape 2004, 13 – 19.  Lape 2010, wondering about the potential reception of the Athenocentric features of Menadrean comedy by audiences outside Athens, associates the interest of those audiences in Menander with his portrayal of human character often beyond the constraints of citizenship.

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those elements were very important as regards the Athenian cultural identity of the plays and their portrayal of human character in the context not of specific social and political events of late fourth-century Athens, but of the wider cultural framework adopted by the Hellenistic, and, later, by the Roman, world. Thus the address of the Athenian land and the praise of Athens may initially have been used by Menander as a form of captatio benevolentiae before his Athenian audience, but had eventually acquired a conventional character which was also adopted by his Roman followers who were addressing a primarily non-Greek audience⁸⁸ drawing attention to a Greek cultural framework and a Greek paideia, which were crucial to the formation of cultural identities prevalent in the Roman empire.⁸⁹ As regards the dramatic rendering of the Periclean citizenship law, it is by no means certain that in social contexts it existed continuously from 451/450 BC until the age of Menander. Vérilhac and Vial have observed that at some point between 415/414 and 403/402 BC the law no longer demanded that both spouses should be Athenian citizens in order to be able to get married and have legitimate children who could acquire citizen status. The law that required a double parentage was reintroduced in 403/402 BC in an attempt to keep alive the memory of fifth-century Athens and revive its democracy. Although the law still existed in Menander’s age, it must have been abolished in the later Hellenistic or even the Roman period.⁹⁰ On these grounds, in their original Athenian performances these aspects of Menander’s plays would reflect Athens’ social ambience and legal system. At the same time, they would evoke a cultural past, which might have been of some relevance to contemporary concerns relating to democracy and citizenship, but was also associated with a nostalgic view of Athens before the Peloponnesian war. It should also be borne in mind that, as Vérilhac and Vial have shown, in the early Hellenistic period similar laws, requiring both spouses to be of citizen status, existed in places such as Byzantium, Cos, Miletus, Tenus and Rhodes.⁹¹ A similar requirement determined the marriages of the Greek ruling elite of Alexandria. Drawing on papyrological evidence of the Augustan period, such as BGU IV.1050, IV.1099, IV.1100 and IV.1101, Vérilhac and Vial have noted that in

 See Menander, Samia 101– 104; Aspis 491; Adelphoi I, fr. 1 K.-A.; Naukleros, fr. 247 K.-A.; Plautus, Stichus 649; Bacchides 170 – 171; Persa 549 – 551; Gomme / Sandbach 1973, 555; Goldberg 2007, 130 – 131; Fountoulakis 2009, passim and esp. 115.  Cf. Goldhill 2001, 8, 13 – 20; Whitmarsh 2001, 26 – 38.  See D. 57.30 and 32; Is. 8.43; Ar. Birds 1652– 1670; Plu. Per. 37.2– 5; Ath. 13.577b; Vérilhac / Vial 1998, 56 – 60, 78 – 79.  Vérilhac / Vial 1998, 60 – 68.

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those marriage documents both spouses are specifically described as citizens, while it is reasonable to assume that such a requirement must have come into existence, when similar requirements also existed in other places of the Greek world, that is in the early Hellenistic period.⁹² This requirement must have been introduced into the legal system of Ptolemaic Egypt, which was formulated according to Peripatetic moral standards and Athenian laws in an attempt to invest the Ptolemaic rule with an intrinsically Greek form of authority and administration.⁹³ There were, of course, many exceptions to this rule as in the Hellenistic kingdoms the concept of citizenship was not as strong or important as it used to be in the autonomous city-states of earlier eras, and Greek men, and especially the poorer ones, were often encouraged to marry local women in an attempt of the Hellenistic monarchs to create a more homogeneous population as well as in the fashion of Alexander and his men, whose marriages with Oriental women were part of a reconciliation process between Greece and the East.⁹⁴ Another reason why that requirement was not always satisfied was the fact that citizenship no longer had the functional value of a means of securing political rights in the democratic polis. Considering the Menandrean rendering of the Periclean law through the eyes of spectators who lived outside Athens in post-classical political contexts that had endorsed a similar legislation, it may be argued that Menander’s plots would be interpreted by those spectators not as parts of a discourse of Athenian democracy relating to issues of status and citizenship, but as reflections of a collective cultural consciousness marked by a Greek cultural identity which was pertinent to their own social and political reality. Yet the legal system introduced by Ptolemy II Philadelphus was drawing a distinction between Greeks, native Egyptians and Jews, as it operated separately for these groups, and this pointed towards a sense of cultural differentiation stemming from the administration of law.⁹⁵ The performance of Greek drama outside Athens from Hellenistic times onwards pointed thus to a glorious Greek cultural past, which was par excellence Athenian, and contributed to the formation of a cultural present which, despite its cosmopolitan and multicultural aspects, was invested with a Greek cultural identity.

 Vérilhac / Vial 1998, 69 – 71.  It is probable that the laws of Alexandria were formed according to those of Athens and this was mainly due to Peripatetics, such as Demetrius of Phalerum. See P. Hibeh 196; P. Oxy. 2177; Aelian, Var. Hist. 8.17; Fraser 1972, II, 179; Habicht 1997, 59 – 60.  See Mélège Modrzejewski 1980, 53 – 73; Walbank 1981, 114– 118; Yiftach-Firanko 2003; Stephens 2003, 12– 15.  See Stephens 2003, 243 – 244.

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Although it is hard to define what Greek culture might be and how a Greek cultural identity might have been perceived in the Hellenistic period, one may consider as starting points Herodotus’ discourse on Greeks and barbarians throughout his Histories as well as Thucydides’ rendering of Pericles’ consideration of Athens as a school providing paideusis to Hellas, the belief of Plato’s Protagoras that Athens was the prytaneion of wisdom, and Isocrates’ well-known assertion from his Panegyricus that Hellenes are called those who have a share in the Athenian paideusis. ⁹⁶ In a sepulchral epigram, which is attributed to Thucydides or Timotheus and is supposed to have been inscribed upon Euripides’ Athenian cenotaph, the funeral monument of Euripides is thought to be the entire Hellas, while his homeland is specified as Athens, which is being described as the Hellas of Hellas (πατρὶς δ’ Ἑλλάδος Ἑλλάς, ᾿Aθῆναι).⁹⁷ While the Athenian origins of tragedy are thus being acknowledged, that Athenianness is thought to be quintessentially Greek in a poem which reflects Alexandrian perceptions concerning the supposedly strong links between tragedy, Athenianness and Greekness. Greek language and education formed the primary vehicles of a Greek paideia, which was further enriched with elements coming from the interrelated fields of myths, rituals, religious beliefs, works of art, customs, laws, lifestyles, preconceptions and mentalities often used in order to define the Greeks. And it is worth noting that in post-classical times Athens figured prominently as a place where Greek paideia, and subsequently Greek culture took a recognizable shape, whereas Athenian tragedy, in particular, often formed a field in which the Greek cultural identity as opposed to that of the barbarians was defined, projected and reinforced.⁹⁸ The link between a cultural past and a cultural present was created through a complex process of construction of cultural memory, while the performance of Greek drama was part of such a process. According to Jan Assmann, social groups and communities often focus on historical narratives, works of art, public monuments, myths, rituals or festivals which keep alive in memory a common past which is significant for their present and future. These groups and communities develop thus a cultural memory which creates a sense of belonging as well as a shared identity which is important with respect to their survival. Norms, institutions, ideas and narratives from a common past constitute thus a meaning-

 Th. 2.41.1; Pl. Prot. 337d; Isoc. 4.50. Cf. Isoc. 15.296; Too 1995, 129; Most 2006; Moloney 2014, 232– 233.  See AP 7.45 = Vita Eur. 14 = TrGF V.I T 1; Hanink 2010, 53 – 54.  See Momigliano 1975, 7– 12; Hall 1989, 160 – 200 and passim; Green 1990, 319 – 320, 337; Hall 2002, 172– 228 and esp. 220 – 226; Schmitz 2011, 236 – 237; Whitmarsh 2013a, 5 – 8; Vlassopoulos 2013, 291– 292; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 1– 3.

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ful frame that shapes the identities of individuals within the system of symbols, hierarchies and identities employed by a particular culture in order to construct and define its territory.⁹⁹ Tragedy, articulating mostly a world of myth and ritual that was often associated with the concerns of fifth- and fourth-century Athenian democracy, could bring to memory myths and rituals which were for a long time used in order to construct a Hellenic cultural identity, while it recalled a social and political realm which was regarded by the Hellenistic rulers as a cultural and political past, parts of which were used in order to construct a cultural and political present. Comedy, on the other hand, and more specifically Menandrean comedy, focusing on themes concerning private lives, had assumed a thematic form which could hardly be considered as alien to the spectators’ lives and concerns in many contexts outside Athens. Its references to Athenian laws, values and moral standards could easily be considered as references to Hellenic laws, values and moral standards often adopted by the Greek communities of the Hellenistic kingdoms, which, as has been noted, looked for models in the Athenian polis mostly under the influence of the Peripatetics. The Athenian cultural resonances of Greek drama were soon thought to be Greek cultural resonances and this is observed by Plautus, Menaechmi 7– 9, where it is noted that the action of many Roman comedies is set in Athens so that they may be invested not with a specifically Athenian, but with a Greek cultural atmosphere: atque hoc poetae faciunt in comoediis: / omnis res gestas esse Athenis autumant, / quo illud vobis graecum videatur magis [now writers of comedy have this habit: they always allege that the scene of action is Athens, their object being to give the play a more Grecian air], (transl. P. Nixon).¹⁰⁰ The productions of performances of Greek drama, which were framing the plays themselves, were parts of festivities promoting the construction of cultural memory. It is for this reason that Alexander the Great had organized the performances of 331 BC in Tyre in the form of dramatic contests recalling the Athenian Dionysiac contests. For similar reasons the Dionysiac context of a performance provided many Hellenistic monarchs with a rich material which could be used during, and even beyond, the occasion of the performance in order to encourage the development of a kind of cultural memory which was pertinent to the construction of a new cultural and political identity. The consideration of the dramatic contest as an occasion during which a polis could bestow honours on in Assmann 1997. Cf. Harth 2008, passim and esp. 86; Chaniotis 2009a, 255 – 256 (for a distinction between collective and cultural memory as a distinction between the recent experiences of a community and memories from a distant or even mythical past); Klooster 2011, 20 – 21; Erll 2011, 13 – 92.  See Manuwald 2011, 298; Nervegna 2013, 37. The translation comes from Nixon 1917.

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dividuals or promote its own politics may have continued in the poleis of the Hellenistic period,¹⁰¹ but this was not incompatible with the manipulation of the festivals by many rulers who managed in this way to take advantage of the political dynamics of those gatherings. Thus, according to Athenaeus (5.196a ff.) citing Callixeinus, Ptolemy II Philadelphus introduced, most probably during the Ptolemaia of 275/274 BC, his Great Procession during which one might have noticed in a Dionysiac cultic atmosphere representations of Dionysus, Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II along with impersonations of Greek cities and representations of Zeus and other Greek gods.¹⁰² One might have also noticed the active participation of the Alexandrian guild of the artists of Dionysus. They were headed by the poet Philicus, most probably the member of the ‘Pleiad’ Philiscus or Philicus of Corcyra, who was also a priest of Dionysus as happened with many Dionysiac artists (198c).¹⁰³ Another member of the guild wearing a tragic costume and a mask appeared as Eniautus (198a). All the members of the guild also appeared most probably wearing theatrical costumes. The statue of Dionysus was accompanied by masks from comedy, tragedy and satyr-play (198d-e). Delphic tripods were carried as prizes for the chorêgoi of the flautists (198c). They were accompanied by elements relating more directly to Dionysiac myth and cult, as well as to dramatic performances, such as thyrsoi, tympana, a phallus, wine, ivy or vine wreaths or men dressed as Satyrs and Silenoi (197d-200d). Even a Priapus appeared (201d). All this suggests that the Egyptian guild must have been well organized by the age of Philadelphus as well as that it had gained royal favour and was eager to participate in royal festivities. Their appearance with their theatrical paraphernalia also suggests that the Great Procession was part of a festival in which dramatic and dithyrambic performances had a central role.¹⁰⁴ The choregic prizes and the context of the festival imply a transplantation of relevant Athenian institutions, which would invoke an intrinsically Greek past and invest the occasion with an intrinsically Greek atmosphere. Yet this time the Dionysiac celebration was not placed in the heart of the democratic polis, but was turned into part of a wider celebration associated with the cult of a Hellenistic monarch.

 See e. g. SEG 19.317.19 – 21 and 25 – 26, 30.358, 49.1108.10 – 12; Le Guen 1995, 73 – 74, 80; Chaniotis 2009b, 41– 62; Ceccarelli 2010, 101– 106, 131.  For Ptolemy’s procession in relation to older, but still current in Hellenistic times, Dionysiac processions in places such as Ephesus or Delos, see Webster 1956, 157– 159.  For Philiscus or Philicus of Corcyra see Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 66 – 74.  See Rice 1983, 55 – 58; Le Guen 2001, I, 345 – 347, TL 17; Falkner 2002, 346 – 347.

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When in a four-wheeled cart one might have seen the depiction of the ‘Return of Dionysus from India’ for which real elephants were used (200d), one might note a parallelism between Dionysus and Alexander the Great with a similar appearance on elephants of the statue of Alexander (202a). This was designed so as to evoke a memory of Alexander who, as has already been noted, was thus identified with Dionysus and had conquered the East like the god, bringing a kind of reconciliation between the East and the West within a Greek cultural framework. Although it is possible that the identification of Alexander with Dionysus was, in fact, not made by Alexander himself, but by some of his Successors, such as the Lagids, after his death so as to support their own image as the sovereigns who safeguarded the reconciliation between the East and the West, the Procession’s emphasis on ‘Dionysus’ Return’ explored relevant mythological traditions emerging particularly from classical tragedy.¹⁰⁵ In the opening scene of Euripides’ Bacchae emphasis is placed on Dionysus’ adventures in places such as Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Bactra, Media, Arabia and the entire Asia (sc. the Western part of Asia Minor), where the god had conquered their inhabitants and established his cult before his arrival in Greece.¹⁰⁶ The expansion in the East of an intrinsically Dionysiac art form, such as drama, during and after Alexander’s campaign might well have exploited this aspect of Dionysus’ myth pointing towards not a cultic, but a military, political and, above all, cultural conquest of the East by the Greeks. Through the Dionysiac overtones of the Procession, achieved by the presence of the Dionysiac artists who pointed towards the realm of theatrical production and the references to Dionysiac myth and cult, three levels of cultural reminiscences may be discerned. The first level was related to the distant world of Dionysiac myth. The second one had to do with the evocation of the dramatic performance as a cultural achievement of classical Athens. The third one brought to the foreground the military, political and cultural achievements of Alexander the Great. The Oriental elements appropriated by the mythical and cultic figure of Dionysus were used as vehicles that facilitated the expansion of Greek culture in the East. Cultivating a cultural memory of this kind was crucial to Ptolemy who envisaged himself as the successor of Alexander and Dionysus, and had set for his kingdom a political agenda similar to that endorsed by Alexander in order to establish his authority in the East.¹⁰⁷ Plutarch’s description of the forthcoming end of Antony, another

 Cf. Lane Fox 1973, 442– 443.  E. Ba. 13 – 22.  Cf. Rice 1983, 67, 85 – 86; Green 1994, 94– 95; Le Guen 2001, II, 89; Falkner 2002, 346 – 347; Fountoulakis 2014, 117– 120.

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ruler who identified himself with Dionysus, in terms pertinent to his abandonment by Dionysus and his thiasos betray the associations between Dionysus, Dionysiac cult, the theatre and political power, which permeated the thought of later eras and was apparently due to those Hellenistic constructs.¹⁰⁸ It is worth noting that in Egypt drama must have been considered as an art form suitable for the promotion of issues pertinent to the contact of East and West. While it retained a distinctively Greek character, it was not entirely alien to the theatricality of the rituals relating to local cults like that of Osiris, which were well-known by the native Egyptians and were not much different from the rituals associated with the early days of Greek theatre.¹⁰⁹ Tempting though it may appear to consider the evolution of drama in Hellenistic Egypt in terms of a cultural syncretism, which becomes apparent in plays such as Ezekiel’s Exagôgê, one should bear in mind the distinctively Greek character of drama in post-classical times. This character is epitomized mostly in the use of Greek language and the conventions of the Greek theatrical tradition, and tends to impose itself upon elements coming from non-Greek cultural environments. The importance attached to Greek drama as a means through which Greek cultural memories were being produced and Greek cultural identities were being constructed is reflected in a relevant interest in drama exhibited in the great libraries of the Hellenistic world. As Johanna Hanink has persuasively shown, when in fourth-century Athens Lycurgus’ legislation imposed the production of official copies of the texts of the three great tragedians of the previous century as well as the obligation of actors not to deviate from those texts, Athens attempted to create, project and promote an image of itself as the cultural capital of the Greek world whose authority recalled and reinvented under new circumstances and mainly within a cultural framework the city’s hegemonic role before the Peloponnesian war.¹¹⁰ According to Galen, much later Ptolemy III Euergetes borrowed from Athens the official Lycurgan text of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides in order to have copies made for Alexandria’s library. After the copies were produced, he kept the original texts in Alexandria sending back to Athens the copies even if this cost him the deposit of fifteen silver talents which was subsequently left to Athens.¹¹¹ The story suggests the significance at-

   

See Plu. Ant. 75.4– 5. See Panosa Domingo 2009, 77– 105. See Hanink 2014b, 60 – 125. Galen, Comm. II in Hipp. Epidem. 3.239 – 240.

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tached to Greek drama by the institution of the library which, by attempting to accumulate the whole of Greek literary culture, served the attempts of the Hellenistic monarchs to establish their cultural and political hegemony.¹¹² Athenian tragedy appears to have been considered as a powerful weapon in this struggle for cultural and political power. For similar reasons, according to Hermippus’ Vita Euripidis, Dionysius I of Syracuse had bought Euripides’ lyre, writing-tablet and pen soon after the tragedian’s death.¹¹³ Having had his own as well as Euripides’ names inscribed on them, he dedicated them to the Muses at their temple. Being a failed tragedian himself, Dionysius thought that he might thus be invested with the cultural prestige of the great Athenian poet.¹¹⁴ Political power must have been closely related to such a prestige. As regards the Alexandrian fate of the Lycurgan text, Yun Lee Too perceptively observes that ‘Athenocentrism is an authorizing move for the Alexandrian empire and originality is a mark of power’.¹¹⁵ In the same manner, drama attracted a great deal of scholarly attention in the Alexandrian Museum and Library and this often went hand in hand with the writing and performance of new plays as many of the great philologists working on drama in those institutions were also some of the distinguished Hellenistic tragedians whose names figure prominently in the tragic ‘Pleiad’, which nevertheless does not always consist of the same people in ancient sources. Homer of Byzantium, Lycophron of Chalcis, Alexander Aetolus and Dionysiades are among those eminent tragedians who worked along with scholars such as Eratosthenes, Callimachus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Euphronius on the study of drama.¹¹⁶ Thus those working for the preservation of cultural memory

 This explains the generous rewards offered to people who gave books to the libraries of Pergamum and Alexandria as well as Ptolemy’s eagerness to have copies made of every single book which reached Alexandria by sea. See Too 2010, 88; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 15.  Vita Eur. 27 = TrGF V.I T 1.  See Lucian, Adv. Ind. 15; Karavas 2005, 217; Hanink 2010, 46 – 48, 56; Csapo / Wilson 2015, 333.  Too 2010, 36.  Homer of Byzantium is considered by the Suda (s.v.) as γραμματικός and τραγῳδιῶν ποιητής, while Lycophron of Chalcis and Alexander Aetolus, in addition to being described by the Suda (s.v.) in a similar manner, are said by Tzetzes (Prol. Περὶ Κωμῳδίας 22– 38) to have undertaken the study, and probably the correction, of dramatic texts. Lycophron was responsible for comedy and Alexander for tragedy and satyr play, while Lycophron was also said to have written a treatise Περὶ Κωμῳδίας. Comedy was probably also treated by Dionysiades, another tragedian of the ‘Pleiad’. See Pfeiffer 1968, 106 – 107, 119 – 120, 129, 132, 160 – 161, 192; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002a, 297– 298; Fantuzzi / Hunter 2004, 434; Sens 2010, 297; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 14– 15, 49 – 54, 63 – 66, 74– 93, 110 – 111.

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were also working for the production of a new cultural identity and it is important to note that, despite the Alexandrian tendency towards experimentation, innovation and generic play, the one was correlated to the other. As the Alexandrian grammarians worked towards the preservation of Greek language and the formulation of the koinê, the new universal language of the Hellenistic kingdoms which was based on the Attic dialect, so the scholars working towards the preservation of Greek culture worked also towards the formulation of a new cultural language which was based mainly on Athenian culture, but served the new cultural and political needs of the entire Hellenistic world.¹¹⁷

4 Constructing a Cultural Language What I mean by ‘cultural language’ is not only a vocabulary that is morphologically and semantically formulated and used in association with a specific culture in which it is being developed, but also a series of perceptions, assumptions, ideas, preconceptions, imagery and various expressive means which dominate the collective consciousness of a community. They are culturally constructed and yet they determine the ways in which the members of that community create, understand and perpetuate their own culture, while they are being capable of understanding as well as of communicating effectively with each other. The ways in which various local communities with their own cultural peculiarities share a common cultural code of this kind form what Kostas Vlassopoulos regards as a ‘glocalisation’ process: a means through which various communities and cultures exchange, adapt and adopt elements from different cultures in their attempt to construct a global cultural koinê. ¹¹⁸ Seen from this perspective, Menander’s insistence on matters of citizenship and legitimacy may be related to matters of ethnic identity raised in the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East, while the Menandrean representation of ethical issues and codes or of problems pertinent to the oikos’ survival may be related to assumptions and anxieties associated with the position of the individual not in the democratic and autonomous polis, but in the wider ambience of the Hellenistic kingdoms. This type of implicit, and perhaps non-conscious, articulation of social and cultural concerns on the part of Menander may partly explain his immense popularity outside Athens as well as the occurrence of many of the concerns expressed in his plays in social  Walbank 1981, 62 sees in the use of a language such as the koinê an attempt to create ‘a single cultural continuum’ within the boundaries of ‘a great movement of colonization’, as he puts it.  See Vlassopoulos 2013, 20 – 22, 235 – 240, 291– 292.

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contexts.¹¹⁹ In Hellenistic times even tragedy seems, despite the fragmentary nature of its remains, to have moved away from its fifth-century Athenocentric perspective and its fourth-century pan-Hellenic outlook, towards a more cosmopolitan character which was greatly enhanced by the multicultural character of new cultural centres such as Alexandria or Pergamum.¹²⁰ The Exagôgê of Ezekiel, whose surviving parts form the most extensive extant tragic text of the Hellenistic period, is an intriguing case concerning the use of such a cultural language. The play was most probably written in Alexandria during the second century BC¹²¹ and is based on the story of Moses and the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. Considering the fact that most Jews of Alexandria were mainly Greek-speaking, as happened also in other parts of the Mediterranean beyond Palestine, and often were of a high social and professional standing enjoying a significant degree of autonomy, it comes as no surprise that it was written in Greek. For similar reasons the Old Testament was translated in Greek by the Septuagint most probably in the age of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, while in the Greek translation of the Wisdom of Ben Sirach it is noted that the Greek text was intended for those who lived outside Palestine, and were therefore Greekspeaking, so as to learn to live according to the Jewish law.¹²² In such an ambience many works of Jewish literature such as the books of Judith, Tobit, Esther and Daniel or Theodotus’ epic on Jacob’s daughter and the destruction of the city of Shechem appeared in Greek and addressed mainly a public of Hellenized Jews. Adopting many of the themes, motifs and conventions of classical Greek tragedy and reflecting probable Hellenistic developments of the genre, as happens, for instance, with its five-act structure,¹²³ the play forms a dramatic rendering of the Exodus as it occurs in the Septuagint’s Old Testament.¹²⁴ This raises questions relating to the potential addressees of the Exagôgê and the form of its presentation. While these questions are still open to scholarly debate, it is likely that the play was primarily addressed to the religiously less conservative

 Cf. Fountoulakis 2009; Fountoulakis 2011, 180 – 193.  Cf. Vinagre 2001, 81– 95; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 8.  See Jacobson 1983, 5 – 11; Lanfranchi 2006, 10 (for a dating between the middle of the third century BC and the middle of the first century BC) and 11– 13 (for Alexandria as a probable place where Ezekiel might have written and have had his plays performed); Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 220 – 222.  Feldman 1993, 51– 56, 87– 88; Gruen 2002, 120 – 125; Stephens 2003, 243 – 244; Rajak 2009, 30 – 63, 112– 113; Whitmarsh 2013a, 13; Vlassopoulos 2013, 312– 317.  For this, probably Hellenistic, development, see Hor. A.P. 189 – 190; Fantuzzi / Hunter 2004, 435.  Jacobson 1983, 23 – 28; Fountoulakis 1995 – 1996; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b; Fantuzzi / Hunter 2004, 435 – 436; Lanfranchi 2006, 15 – 18, 32– 35.

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Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria and perhaps to Greeks or native Egyptians who would be interested in Jewish culture as well as in the theatre.¹²⁵ Rather than being a Lesedrama, it was most probably presented on-stage not, of course, in the context of Dionysiac cult, but in a Jewish religious context.¹²⁶ About a century later, Nicolaus of Damascus, a figure who according to the Suda was the author of both tragedies and comedies,¹²⁷ might have also been the author of a tragedy on the Jewish story of Susanna articulating thus a Jewish cultural construct through a Greek cultural vehicle.¹²⁸ Bearing in mind that its potential addressees, either Jews or non-Jews, would have access to the text of the Septuagint in the play’s Alexandrian milieu, further questions may be raised with respect to the reasons why Ezekiel chose the tragic genre in order to retell the biblical story. While this transformation of a narrative text into a dramatic one is often found in Greek drama and may in part have influenced Ezekiel’s working method, as happens in the various treatments of the Homeric text by the Greek tragedians or with the Hellenistic rendering of Herodotus’ story about Gyges (1.8 – 13) in dramatic form (P. Oxy. 2382),¹²⁹ one might still wonder about the reasons that led a Jew of the Diaspora to re-inscribe a Jewish sacred text within the expressive means of a distinctively Greek form of artistic expression with strong pagan overtones. Drawing attention to the discrepancies between the Exagôgê and classical tragedy, Rachel Bryant Davies argues that Ezekiel chose a form of representation having strong affinities with sacrificial ritual in order to replace and re-enact the Passover sacrifice which could only be performed at the Temple of Jerusalem, but was essential for the preservation of faith and commemoration of the first Passover among the Jews of the Diaspora.¹³⁰ Tim Whitmarsh, on the other hand, believes that Ezekiel might have chosen the Greek tragic genre as an artistic medium which could help him articulate themes relating to religious revelation, foundation stories, otherness and suffering. Moreover, he thinks that Ezekiel’s Egypt may have functioned as a covered representation of contemporary Alexandria and the negative overtones he invests it with as a form of Jewish criticism and resistance before the Ptolemaic rule.¹³¹ These observations may draw attention to some aspects of the Exagôgê as

 See Fountoulakis 1995 – 1996, 88 – 89; Lanfranchi 2006, 39 – 63; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 8, 200 – 202, 220 – 221, 232– 233.  See Fountoulakis 1995 – 1996; Lanfranchi 2006, 35 – 36, 64– 68.  Suda, s.v. Νικόλαος ὁ Δαμασκηνός.  Cf. Eustath. Comm. Dion. Perieg. 976.52– 53; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 159 – 160, 241– 242.  See Lanfranchi 2006, 32– 35. For the Gyges drama, see Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 180 – 185.  Bryant Davies 2008.  Whitmarsh 2013b, 217– 220.

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seen especially from a Jewish perspective. It would nevertheless be interesting to reconsider the play’s tragic character in the light of its cosmopolitan context. The play has often been thought to be a non-typical Greek tragedy – in the sense that it does not seem to adhere to the Aristotelian principle of the unity of time and space, it has a happy ending or it does not have the Aristotelian features of error (ἁμαρτία), plot-reversal (περιπέτεια) and recognition (ἀναγνώρισις) – and therefore keep a distance from the Greek dramatic tradition. Yet it should be borne in mind that not all classical tragedies comply with the principles of tragic composition found in Aristotle, while some of them had a happy ending. The fact, on the other hand, that we do not possess substantial specimen of Hellenistic tragedy does not allow us to assess the degree to which Ezekiel deviates from the principles of Greek tragic writing or if he simply adheres to the principles of Hellenistic tragedy, which as a whole would have been in many respects different from its dramatic antecedents.¹³² When in the play’s second act (ll. 68 – 89) Moses narrates to Raguel a predictive dream he had and the latter proceeds to its interpretation, it becomes clear that Ezekiel adopts a tragic motif which is nevertheless differentiated from the classical tradition, while it draws material from both Greek and Jewish sources. The dream-visions of Atossa in Aeschylus, Persae 176 – 230, Clytemnestra in Aeschylus, Choephori 524– 533 and Sophocles, Electra 417– 423, Hecuba in Euripides, Hecuba 59 – 97 and Iphigenia in Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 42 – 49 form some of the tragic antecedents of Moses’ dream. However, as has been noted in modern scholarship, in all these cases it is women and not men who have predictive dreams. Almost always their dreams are bad omens, while they are interpreted by themselves.¹³³ Yet in Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris 42– 49 the dream points to a positive outcome, as happens with Moses’ dream, which might have followed the Euripidean example of a positive predictive dream. In Rhesus 780 – 786, also, it is a man, the Charioteer of Rhesus, who has a predictive dream, which is nevertheless a bad omen. In the case of the Rhesus there is no time for interpretations because as soon as he awakes he finds around him the doom predicted by the dream.¹³⁴ Considering that the Rhesus is most probably a fourthcentury play, the replacement of a woman who has dreams by a man may

 Cf. Lanfranchi 2006, 15 – 21.  Only in Choephori 541– 550 is Clytemnestra’s dream interpreted by Orestes. For the structure, the content, the dreamers and the interpreters of these dreams, see Goward 1999, 25 – 26, 64– 66, 107– 108; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b, 414– 416; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 230.  It is possible that the element of a man having a prophetic dream, instead of a woman, shortly before the incident it points at, may be part of the epic tradition exploited by the Rhesus. See Liapis 2012, 280 – 281.

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well be a later innovation which could function as a model for Hellenistic tragedians. The connection between dream and real life, which is put forward by the narrative voices of the males who dominate the action of the Rhesus, is reflected in specimen of vase paintings associated with the Rhesus myth – and not exclusively with its dramatic rendering – and betrays an interest in such motifs from the fourth century onwards, which may have been further explored in Hellenistic tragedy.¹³⁵ Although Moses’ dream is absent from the text of the Exodus, which is the play’s primary source, dreams do occur in the Jewish tradition, as happens with the dreams of Joseph or Daniel, even though their interpretation is thought to be divinely inspired.¹³⁶ Yet the dream of the Exagôgê appears to modify a Greek tragic tradition with which the play’s Alexandrian audience might well have been familiar. This happens in a way that may be recognizable as part of such a tradition, whereas it embodies Jewish elements which may have not been appreciated by the Greek or the Hellenized non-Greek members of the audience who would have not been fully acquainted with Jewish narratives. The patterns of thought relating to prediction and interpretation, which occur in a tragic dream, are, by contrast, elements recognizable by a wide audience to such an extent that they would form parts of a common cultural language capable of rendering more approachable the narrative of the Exodus. The elements also, which are seen in Moses’ dream, are commonly found in Jewish sources. The divine throne, the scepter, the crown, the miraculous vision of the earth and the stars, and the kingly appearance of Moses are all found in texts such as Psalms 45.7 and 110.1 or Genesis 15.¹³⁷ The tragic dream enables them to be incorporated in the Exodus narrative and acquire a predictive signifying function similar to the signifying function of things dreamt in a tragic dream. The tragic code enables those who are familiar with it to understand and appreciate that function with respect to the economy of the play’s plot. Moreover, the tragic code, with its intrinsically Greek resonances, might easily transfer Moses’ kingly appearance in the Greek context of the Hellenistic kingdoms and project his image as a counter-image of a Hellenistic ruler, which nevertheless retains the Jewish countenance of the biblical prophet. As Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos observes, such a conception of Moses as a king who receives his crown from God would certainly be related to the Oriental conception of the deified sovereign, which was endorsed by many Hellenistic kings and es For the associations of these motifs with relevant epic and iconographic traditions, see Giuliani 1996, 71– 86.  See Jacobson 1983, 92– 93; Lanfranchi 2006, 180 – 181.  See Jacobson 1983, 90 – 95; Lanfranchi 2006, 184– 191.

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pecially by the Ptolemies who envisaged and presented themselves as the heirs of the Pharaohs.¹³⁸ The counter-image of a Hellenistic ruler would thus take advantage of a Greek cultural imagery, which could promote the idea of a Jewish identity standing as a counter-identity of a Greek one. It might serve as an implicit kind of resistance before the, sometimes oppressive, power of the Greek monarchs as well as of Egypt’s Greek ruling elite. It could have also underlined in an ironical manner the anteriority, and hence the implied superiority, of Jewish culture before the current domination of Greek culture.¹³⁹ The Exagôgê may thus appear as a text which articulates a Greek cultural language in order to express before those acquainted with it, either Greeks or non Greeks, Jewish concerns pertaining to Jewish spiritual superiority and ethnic, social and political identity and independence as well as anxieties developed in the Jewish culture of the Diaspora before a feeling of oppression and the danger of assimilation.¹⁴⁰ In a similar manner, the legendary Egyptian Sesostris is said by Diodorus 1.55.2– 3 to have conquered Asia far beyond the points Alexander had reached. This piece of information may echo Hellenistic narratives concerning the superiority of the Egyptians, which were developed in Egypt so as to flatter the native population or for related propaganda purposes.¹⁴¹ The Oracle of the Potter, which survives in Greek in papyri dated to the first centuries A.D., was originally written in Demotic Egyptian in the third century BC, and predicts the destruction of the Greeks. It was apparently meant to offer consolation to the oppressed native Egyptians and express a kind of resistance before the Ptolemaic rule.¹⁴² The story of Nectanebo of the Alexander Romance (1.8 – 10) reflects relevant Egyptian narratives that sought to incorporate the image of Alexander in the Egyptian historical tradition within the boundaries of Ptolemaic propaganda and present him as the child of Nectanebo and hence as the legitimate heir to the throne of the Pharaohs.¹⁴³ In the account of the crossing of the Red Sea and the defeat of the Egyptians, which is provided by the Egyptian Messenger in the surviving parts of the Exa-

 See Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b, 416. Cf. Lanfranchi 2003 and Lanfranchi 2006, 197– 199, where emphasis is nevertheless placed on the religious allegory of the dream.  Cf. Rajak 2007; Whitmarsh 2013b, 220.  This function of the Exagôgê may be seen as part of a ‘glocalisation’ process, through which the Hellenistic Jewish communities of the Diaspora presented their own identity and tried to achieve their social and political goals. For this process in the Hellenistic period, see Vlassopoulos 2013, 309 – 317.  Cf. Ryholt 2013, 60 – 62.  See Koenen 1968, 178 – 209.  See Stephens 2003, 64– 73; Stephens 2013, 94– 95.

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gôgê’s fourth act (ll. 193 – 242), one may find a typically tragic messenger scene which takes into account the relevant narrative of the Exodus, but appears to diverge from the biblical narrative and follow the narrative patterns of earlier dramatic messenger speeches pertaining to battle-narratives such as those of Aeschylus, Septem contra Thebas 375 – 652, Euripides, Phoenissae 1090 – 1263 and, most prominently, Aeschylus, Persae 249 – 514. The positive outcome of the encounter for the Jews is foreshadowed by the dream of Moses, which appears as the equivalent of Atossa’s dream in the Persae, although the latter predicts disaster for the Persians. This conscious play with the tragic convention of the dream as a bad omen would surprise audiences acquainted with the conventions of classical Greek theatre and draw attention to the significance of the deviation from earlier models. This would inevitably highlight the importance of the positive outcome of the Exodus story with respect to the play’s plot and the wider Jewish religious and historical consciousness it reflects. The dependence of Ezekiel’s text on that of Aeschylus has rightly been emphasized by modern scholarship even though other narratives such as that of Herodotus may have also exercised considerable influence upon Ezekiel.¹⁴⁴ In both the Persae and the Exagôgê the described incidents are being reported by a Messenger who belongs to the defeated. The disasters described take place at sea. In both cases the two opponents are being described in detail (Pers. 377– 383; Exag. 194– 201) and the defeated army is presented as bigger and better organized (Pers. 337– 344; Exag. 202– 203). Both the defeated armies are described as so self-confident that they exhibit a kind of arrogance (Pers. 352; Exag. 219). The wealth, power, prosperity, ignorance, arrogance and recklessness of Xerxes and his men leads to the creation of a pattern of thought and action, in which olbos leads to hybris and hybris to atê, and eventually to nemesis and tisis. This pattern already occurs in Herodotus 8.56 – 99, but is more fully developed as a central pattern in Greek tragedy, and of course in the Persae. ¹⁴⁵ The descriptions of the Exagôgê aim at the reconstruction of this pattern of thought and the emergence of the motif of crime and punishment not in biblical terms, but through the recognizable cultural language created by the Greek tragedians.¹⁴⁶ Both the Greeks and the Jews ask for divine help (Pers. 393 – 394; Exag. 210 – 213), which is being provided and

 For the probable influence of Herodotus, see Jacobson 1983, 138 – 140; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b, 420. For the adoption of Euripidean dramatic technique with respect to the formation of Ezekiel’s messenger speech, see Lanfranchi 2006, 265.  Cf. Fisher 1992, 256 – 263; Xanthakis-Karamanos 2002b, 420.  Yet it should be noted that the speech exhibits a certain adherence to the element of miraculous divine intervention on behalf of God’s chosen people, which is very important in the Jews’ sacred history. Cf. Lanfranchi 2006, 269 – 271.

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leads to their victory (Pers. 345 – 347, 454, 514; Exag. 220, 225, 234– 242) and the consolidation of a divine dikê. ¹⁴⁷ The rendering of a significant narrative for the history and the identity of Jewish people through the medium of Greek tragedy is not accidental or deprived of a more profound purpose. In doing so Ezekiel takes a medium, which in his cultural context was used for the construction of cultural memory and ethnic identity, and borrows from it formal elements and patterns of thought with recognized semantic load and function. In the fifth century, Aeschylus’ Persae, along with other texts such as Herodotus’ relevant narratives,¹⁴⁸ contributed to the creation and promotion of an image of Athens as the saviour of the Greeks as well as to the consolidation of its hegemonic role in the Greek world after the Persian wars. In later times, the same texts promoted a discourse of ethnicity as well as of military, political and cultural competition between Greeks and non-Greeks. Adopting this type of cultural language, Ezekiel explores the Exodus narrative and constructs through the commemoration of the first Passover a cultural memory for the Jewish people of the Diaspora as well as a kind of independent religious and ethnic identity which could easily be adopted by them and be recognized as such by non-Jews. Greek language and drama function in the Exagôgê as non-Jewish vehicles of a Jewish consciousness bringing Jewish history, religion and concerns closer to a wide audience of Greek-speaking Jews and non-Jews, and not as elements of the play which would deprive it of its Jewish character and impose on it a Greek cultural identity.¹⁴⁹ This does not mean, of course, that these different identities were not influenced by each-other, while such influences are discerned in Greek culture from the archaic period onwards and are further enhanced in the Hellenistic kingdoms. The apparent parallelism between Jews and Greeks in the Messenger’s speech lays claim to the construction-process of a cultural and ethnic identity which for the Greeks could have been enabled through the texts of Aeschylus and Herodotus. In an Alexandrian milieu such a parallelism would also bring the Jews closer to the Greek population: the former would thus be presented as an ethnic group with a history similar to that of the latter and this would produce a conception of the Jews as a group which could co-exist with the Greeks having equal rights and deserving equal respect. At the same time, the construction of a distinctively Jewish identity through the Exagôgê would point to the differences between Jews and non-Jews, while a potential identification of the  For a detailed examination of all these similarities, see Jacobson 1983, 136 – 138; XanthakisKaramanos 2002b, 419 – 423. For divine justice in Aeschylus, see Lloyd-Jones 21983, 79 – 101.  Hdt. 8.56 – 110.  Cf. Whitmarsh 2013a, 13 – 14.

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Ptolemies with the Pharaohs, as the former were presenting themselves as heirs to the throne of the latter, would constitute an implicit acknowledgment of the discomfort felt by many Jews under the Greek rule of Egypt. The use of the pattern of olbos, hybris, atê, nemesis and tisis might accordingly be taken to be an implicit, and yet recognizable, warning directed against the ruling Greeks as well as a kind of reassurance needed by the Jews with respect to their present and future. As happened in plays such as Aeschylus’ Supplices or Euripides’ Helen, Greek tragedy offered – together with texts such as that of Herodotus – a medium of exploration of the relations between the Egyptians and other people such as the Greeks,¹⁵⁰ and this appears to have been taken into account by Ezekiel in his rendering of the Exodus story. Even though the Jewish discomfort towards the Greeks, and subsequently towards Greek language and culture, was more obvious after the siege of Jerusalem by Vespasian and the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, texts such as 2 Maccabees 4.12– 14 attest a certain sense of incompatibility of the Greek gymnasia and palaestrae with traditional and rather conservative Jewish environments such as that of Jerusalem.¹⁵¹ After all, even though the Jewish population of Alexandria, and especially the population working in public administration, was mostly enjoying rights similar to those of the Greeks, as happened with many native Egyptians, there must have been instances of hostility on the part of the Greeks and the Greek rulers,¹⁵² and this is something which is implicitly taken into account by a text which is concerned with issues of history, cultural memory, ethnicity and identity. Greek drama provided the Hellenistic East with a cultural language which often conveyed, or was presented as conveying, ideas, emotions, images or patterns of thought alien to the theatre often in non-dramatic or even in non-Greek contexts.¹⁵³ Greek drama offered thus an easily understood code of expression and communication, while it invested with the refinement of Greek culture or with the legitimizing power of the employment of Greek concepts such as atê

 Cf. Vasunia 2001, 33 – 74; Stephens 2003, 20 – 64.  Cf. Whitmarsh 2013a, 13.  See 3 Maccabees; Jos. Ap. 2.53 – 55. In 3 Maccabees, in particular, it is noted that Ptolemy IV Philopator would have let the Jews of Alexandria retain their civil rights only if they were initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus and gave orders so that other Jews might be tattooed with Dionysus’ ivy leaf. Such actions might have contributed to the acquaintance of those people with important aspects of Greek culture associated with the Greek cultic life as well as with the theatre, but would also have provoked among those Jews a great deal of indignation and hostility towards the Greek ruling elite. Cf. Fountoulakis 1995 – 1996, 89; Collins 22000, 64– 73; Gruen 2002, 54– 83; Alexander / Alexander 2007; Whitmarsh 2013b, 216 – 217, 220.  For the extensive use of theatrical imagery, ideas or forms of behaviour and action in Hellenistic politics, see Chaniotis 1997, 226 – 254; Chaniotis 2009b, 64– 139.

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or dikê the presentation of persons and incidents that might have otherwise been differently evaluated. Tragedy cast its dark emotional shadow on historical events such as the assassination of Philip II of Macedon and, much later, the assassination of Caligula. According to Suetonius, the day before the latter’s murder the famous pantomime Mnester danced the same tragedy that the actor Neoptolemus had presented at the dramatic games during which Philip was murdered. It appears that even in the form of the pantomime, which often reshaped tragedy using the expressive means of dancing and was therefore often described as tragoedia saltata, tragedy provided a historical event with a meaningful context that put forward its tragic dimensions in terms of a tragic character’s rise and fall.¹⁵⁴ Similarly, Polybius conceives and presents the hatred and subsequent conflict between the two sons of Philip V as a drama created and staged by Tyche.¹⁵⁵ Although the potential impact of fortune on human affairs may reflect common Greek views which are attested in earlier authors and were popular among Hellenistic philosophers, it was Greek drama which endorsed them to such an extent that they often appeared as parts of major tragic patterns pertaining to the mutability of fortune and were later adopted also by comedy. Thus the deified Tyche appeared in Menander’s Aspis and perhaps in a lost part of his Epitrepontes as a powerful divine agent capable of directing people’s lives.¹⁵⁶ This use of theatrical concepts as a means of understanding and presenting life continued until Roman times, when the Greek paideia adopted the same cultural language as a mode of viewing and talking about the world, and as a means of creating cultural identities.¹⁵⁷ The brutality that stems from the slaughter of Crassus in 53 BC is thus being invested with the legitimizing veil of Greek culture in Plutarch, Crassus 33, where the head of the dead Roman general and politician is said to have appeared before Orodes (or Hyrodes), the king of Parthia under the veil of Dionysiac ritual as this emerges from Euripides’ Bacchae. During the celebrations for the engagement of the son of Orodes and the sister of Artavazes (or Artavasdes), the king of Armenia, the two kings were enjoying the performance of Jason of Tralles, a tragic actor who acted or sung the scene of

 See Suetonius, Calig. 57.3 – 4. Cf. Diod. 16.92.5 and 16.94.1; Easterling 1997, 218 – 221; LadaRichards 2007, 32– 37; Chaniotis 2009b, 41; Duncan 2015, 310 – 311.  Polybius 23.10.12– 16. Cf. also Polybius 11.5.8 and 19.19.2. See Walbank 1957, 16 – 26; Sacks 1981, 136 – 140; Chaniotis 2009b, 172– 173, 266.  See Thuc. 7.68.1; Pl. Laws 709b; D. 2.22, 18.306; A. Ag. 664; S. OT 977– 978; E. Her. 480 – 482; E. Tr. 1204– 1206; Ar. Peace 359, 939 – 945; Men. Asp. 97– 148; Dover 1974, 139 – 141; XanthakisKaramanos 1980, 132– 135; Vogt-Spira 1992, passim and esp. 51– 59; Fountoulakis 2004, 117– 118.  Cf. Preston 2001, 86 – 119.

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Agave from the Bacchae. Despite their barbarian origins, the two kings are presented as very well acquainted with Greek culture: Orodes is thought to know Greek language and literature, and Artavazes is presented as the author of tragedies, speeches and history.¹⁵⁸ Instead of picking the dummy head of Pentheus, Jason grasps Crassus’ head and sings the famous relevant lines of Agave from the Bacchae (1169 – 1171 and 1179). When Jason/Agave says that he/she had killed Crassus/Pentheus, Exathres, the man who had actually killed Crassus, interrupts the action and says that he was actually the man who had killed the eminent Roman. The harsh reality is intertwined with the illusionary atmosphere provided by Greek drama to such an extent that Plutarch observes that Crassus’ life ended like a tragedy, as often happens with Plutarch’s rendering of the fall of people such as Galba, Pompey or Demetrius.¹⁵⁹ Even if the story is fictitious, it may also be seen as a reflection of the tendency of historians and biographers of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods to consider people and incidents of the past through the filter of theatre’s cultural lens, either in the so-called ‘tragic history’ or in less sentimental representations of characters and events such as those of Plutarch’s Lives, and this betrays the pervasiveness of a theatrical cultural language in the thought of those authors as well as in the thought of their readers.¹⁶⁰ The story transmitted by Velleius Paterculus 2.82.3 that Artavazes was later on decapitated in Alexandria and his head was sent to the king of Media Atropatene suggests the conception of Artavazes’ life as a life dominated by a tragic pattern of olbos, hybris, atê, nemesis and tisis, while the details concerning his head appear as an echo of Plutarch’s use of tragic imagery in his references to the head of the dead Crassus.

5 Conclusion While the elimination, or even the lack, of topicality in post-classical Greek drama, especially so far as comedy was concerned, facilitated its dissemination as well as its reception in various eras, in contexts very different from that of

 For the king of Armenia Artavazes (or Artavasdes) II as a dramatist, see Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 156 – 158.  See Plu. Galba 1, 14; Pomp. 9; Demetr. 1, 18, 24, 28, 35, 45 – 46, 52– 53; de Lacy 1952, 165, 168 – 171. For a discussion of the incident concerning Crassus in terms of the ways in which people in later antiquity saw the possible connections between drama and life, see Easterling 1997, 221– 222.  Cf. de Lacy 1952; Walbank 1955; Kokolakis 1960; Walbank 1960; Pollitt 1986, 4; Mossman 1995, 212– 213; Chaniotis 1997, 248– 254; Chaniotis 2009b, 103 – 139, 171– 186.

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classical Athens, and by audiences as diverse as the populations of the Hellenistic kingdoms, it may be concluded that Greek drama, either in the form of productions of fifth-century plays along with new ones or in the form of dramatic excerpts presented on various, mainly private, occasions, retained much of its earlier social significance. This explains its popularity in post-classical times. Rather than being turned into an artifact of an antiquarian nature, it still had a functional character in many societies of the Hellenistic period and beyond. This was primarily due to its contribution to the creation of cultural memory and the construction of a Greek cultural identity, which was vital for those societies’ survival and welfare. Having understood that, many Hellenistic rulers manipulated various aspects of drama as well as the dramatic performances and the people involved in them in order to achieve their political goals. The ubiquity of Greek drama along with the koinê and its contribution to the formation of cultural constructs pertinent to issues of cultural formation, identity, ideology and power led to the creation of a cultural language, largely based on drama, which dominated to a significant extent the collective consciousness of many post-classical audiences. Greek drama provided thus a tool which enabled the creation of further socially and culturally determined constructs with a significant role in the social and political lives of later eras and various ethnic or social groups as well as in the formation of post-classical ideologies and mentalities.

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Salmenkivi, E. (1997), ‘Family Life in the Comedies of Menander’, in: J. Frösén (ed.), Early Hellenistic Athens: Symptoms of a Change, Helsinki, 183 – 194. Schmitz, T. A. (2011), ‘The Image of Athens in Diodorus Siculus’, in: T. A. Schmitz / N. Wiater (eds.), The Struggle for Identity: Greeks and their Past in the First Century BC, Stuttgart, 235 – 251. Scullion, S. (2003), ‘Euripides and Macedon, or the Silence of the Frogs’, in: CQ 53.2, 389 – 400. Sens, A. (2010), ‘Hellenistic Tragedy and Lycophron’s Alexandra’, in: J. J. Clauss / M. Cuypers (eds.), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature, Malden, MA / Oxford, 297 – 313. Sifakis, G. M. (1967), Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama, London. Stephanis, Ι. Ε. (1988), Διονυσιακοί Τεχνίται: Συμβολές στην Προσωπογραφία του Θεάτρου και της Μουσικής των Αρχαίων Ελλήνων, Herakleio. Stephens, S. (2003), Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. — (2013), ‘Fictions of Cultural Authority’, in: T. Whitmarsh / S. Thomson (eds.), The Romance between Greece and the East, Cambridge, 91 – 101. Stewart, A. (1993), Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics, Berkeley / Los Angeles / Oxford. Strocka, V. M. (1977), Die Wandmalerei der Hanghäuser in Ephesos, Vienna: Forschungen in Ephesos VIII.1. Taplin, O. (1993), Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase-Painting, Oxford. — (1999), ‘Spreading the Word Through Performance’, in: S. Goldhill / R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, Cambridge, 33 – 57. — (2007), Pots and Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century BC, Los Angeles. Todisco, L. (2002), Teatro e Spettacolo in Magna Grecia e in Sicilia: Testi, Immagini, Architettura, Milan. Too, Y. L. (1995), The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates: Text, Power, Pedagogy, Cambridge. — (2010), The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World, Oxford. Turner, E. G. (1963), ‘Dramatic Representations in Graeco-Roman Egypt: How Long Do They Continue?’, in: AC 32, 120 – 128. Vahtikari, V. (2014), Tragedy Performances outside Athens in the Late Fifth and the Fourth Centuries BC, Helsinki: Papers and Monographs of the Finnish Institute at Athens vol. XX. Vasunia, P. (2001), The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Vérilhac, A.-M. / Vial, C. (1998), Le mariage grec du VIe siècle av. J.-C. à l’époque d’Auguste, Athens. Vinagre, M. A. (2001), ‘Tragedia griega del siglo IV A.C. y tragedia hellenistica’, in: Habis 32, 81 – 95. Vlassopoulos, K. (2013), Greeks and Barbarians, Cambridge. Vogt-Spira, G. (1992), Dramaturgie des Zufalls. Tyche und Handeln in der Komödie Menanders, Munich. Walbank, F. W. (1955), ‘Tragic History: A Reconsideration’, in: BICS 2, 4 – 14. — (1957), A Historical Commentary on Polybius I: Commentary on Books I – VI, Oxford.

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— (1960), ‘History and Tragedy’, in: Historia 9, 216 – 234. — (1981), The Hellenistic World, London. Webster, T. B. L. (1956), Greek Theatre Production, London. Whitmarsh, T. (2001), Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation, Oxford. — (2013a), ‘The Romance between Greece and the East’, in: T. Whitmarsh / S. Thomson (eds.), The Romance between Greece and the East, Cambridge, 1 – 19. — (2013b), ‘Politics and Identity in Ezekiel’s Exagoge’, in: T. Whitmarsh, Beyond the Second Sophistic: Adventures in Greek Postclassicism, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 211 – 227. Wilcken, U. (1967), Alexander the Great, transl. by G. C. Richards of Alexander der Grosse, with Preface, an Introduction to Alexander Studies, Notes and Bibliography by E. N. Borza, New York / London. Wilson, P. (2000), The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: The Chorus, the City and the Stage, Cambridge. — (2007), ‘Sicilian Choruses’, in: P. Wilson (ed.), The Greek Theatre and Festivals: Documentary Studies, Oxford, 351 – 377. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (1980), Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy, Athens. — (2002a), ‘Hellenistic Drama: Developments in Form and Performance’, in: G. Xanthakis-Karamanos, Dramatica: Studies in Classical and Post-Classical Dramatic Poetry, Athens, 293 – 311 (= Platon 45 (1993), 117 – 133), — (2002b), ‘The Exagoge of Ezekiel and Fifth-Century Tragedy. Similarities of Theme and Concept’, in: G. Xanthakis-Karamanos, Dramatica: Studies in Classical and Post-Classical Dramatic Poetry, Athens, 403 – 423 (= B. Zimmermann (ed.) (2001), Rezeption des antiken Dramas auf der Bühne und in der Literatur, Stuttgart / Weimar, 223 – 239). — (2012), ‘The Archelaus of Euripides: Reconstruction and Motifs’, in: D. Rosenbloom / J. Davidson (eds.), Greek Drama IV: Texts, Contexts, Performance, Oxford, 108 – 126. Yiftach-Firanko, U. (2003), Marriage and Marital Arrangements: A History of the Greek Marriage Document in Egypt. 4th Century BC – 4th Century CE, Munich.

Franco Montanari

Klytaimnestra in the Odyssey and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon* The figure of Klytaimnestra and her revenge crime dominate the development of the plot in the trilogy Oresteia by Aeschylus. In Agamemnon, Klytaimnestra is the strong character, who sets up the deadly treachery enacted against her husband, controls the evolution of the events and murders both Agamemnon and Kassandra directly with her own hands. Subsequently, in Choephoroi and Eumenides, the main thread of the story remains linked to Klytaimnestra: the revenge crime perpetrated by Orestes against his mother in Choephoroi, and the problem of his punishment for killing his mother in Eumenides, are a development and consequence of the actions of Klytaimnestra, who is both the wife of Agamemnon and the mother of Iphigeneia. Klytaimnestra is unquestionably one of the great tragic figures created by Aeschylus. The interpretation of her role generally places emphasis on a crucial distinction: while in the ancient precedent of the Odyssey Agamemnon is slain by Aigisthos during a clash between factions that are seeking to gain the upper hand in a power struggle, in the Oresteia it is Klytaimnestra who kills Agamemnon with her own hands. The course of events as portrayed by Aeschylus thus differs from the story told in the Odyssey, and the change in the way the man who has returned victorious from Troy is murdered can be highlighted as the element in the structuring of the narrative that exerts a strong influence on the creation of the tragic character. To illuminate the significance of the transition from the Homeric version to that of Aeschylus, it is necessary first and foremost to re-examine and analyse the considerable number of passages from the Odyssey that mention Agamemnon’s return after the fall of Troy, and his murder. For instance, in addition to the references in book 1,¹ an excursus on this issue can be found in book 3, where Nestor tells Telemachus about the death of Agamemnon, in ll. 255 – 312, in particular ll. 262– 272 and 303 – 310.

* English translation by Rachel Barritt Costa.  1.29 – 30, 35 – 37, 43, 298 – 300: Aigisthos married Klytaimnestra and killed Agamemnon; Orestes killed his father’s murderer. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-007

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Odyssey 3.262 – 272, 303 – 310. ἡμεῖς μὲν γὰρ κεῖθι πολέας τελέοντες ἀέθλους ἥμεθ᾿· ὁ δ᾿ εὔκηλος μυχῷ Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο πόλλ᾿ ᾿Aγαμεμνονέην ἄλοχον θέλγεσκεν ἔπεσσιν. ἡ δ᾿ ἦ τοι τὸ πρὶν μὲν ἀναίνετο ἔργον ἀεικές, δῖα Κλυταιμνήστρη· φρεσὶ γὰρ κέχρητ᾿ ἀγαθῇσι· πὰρ δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἔην καὶ ἀοιδὸς ἀνήρ, ᾧ πόλλ᾿ ἐπέτελλεν ᾿Aτρεΐδης Τροίηνδε κιὼν εἴρυσθαι ἄκοιτιν. ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δή μιν μοῖρα θεῶν ἐπέδησε δαμῆναι, δὴ τότε τὸν μὲν ἀοιδὸν ἄγων ἐς νῆσον ἐρήμην κάλλιπεν οἰωνοῖσιν ἕλωρ καὶ κύρμα γενέσθαι, τὴν δ᾿ ἐθέλων ἐθέλουσαν ἀνήγαγεν ὅνδε δόμονδε … τόφρα δὲ ταῦτ᾿ Αἴγισθος ἐμήσατο οἴκοθι λυγρά· ἑπτάετες δ᾿ ἤνασσε πολυχρύσοιο Μυκήνης κτείνας ᾿Aτρεΐδην, δέδμητο δὲ λαὸς ὑπ᾿ αὐτῷ. τῷ δέ οἱ ὀγδοάτῳ κακὸν ἤλυθε δῖος Ὀρέστης ἂψ ἀπ᾿ ᾿Aθηνάων, κατὰ δ᾿ ἔκτανε πατροφονῆα, Αἴγισθον δολόμητιν, ὅ οἱ πατέρα κλυτὸν ἔκτα. ἦ τοι ὁ τὸν κτείνας δαίνυ τάφον ᾿Aργείοισι μητρός τε στυγερῆς καὶ ἀνάλκιδος Αἰγίσθοιο·





   



While we were in Troy sweating out our many trials,  he sat at his ease in a corner of Argos that nourishes horses, beguiling the wife of Agamemnon with his words. At first she put off the evil deed, the beautiful Klytaimnestra,  for she had a good heart. Furthermore there was a singer at her side that the son of Atreus had set to look closely after his wife when he left for Troy. But when the fate of the gods determined that she should be overcome, then Aigisthos took the singer to a desert island and left him there to be the prey and booty of birds.  Then Aigisthos took her to his house where she gladly gave in. … During this time Aigisthos, back at home,  worked out his dire plan. He ruled for seven years at Mycenae, rich in gold, after he had killed the son of Atreus, and the people were  oppressed by him. On the eighth year the good Orestes came, bent on vengeance, back from Athens, and Orestes killed his father’s murderer, the treacherous Aigisthos, because Aigisthos had killed his glorious father, Agamemnon. After Orestes killed the man, he made a funeral feast for the Argives over his hated mother and the cowardly Aigisthos.  (translation by Barry B. Powell, )

In these lines (preceded by a brief mention of Agamemnon’s murder by Aigisthos and Orestes’ revenge in ll. 193 – 198), attention focuses mainly on Klytaimnestra’s seduction by Aigisthos, who overcomes the queen’s initial reluctance and then

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achieves his aim, once he has eliminated the bard whom Agamemnon had entrusted with looking after his wife. After the murder of the old king, Aigisthos seizes the reins of power and rules for seven years, until he himself is killed by Orestes upon the latter’s return to his homeland. The most extended version of the story is found in book 11 of the Odyssey. The deceased figures whom Odysseus meets include the soul of Agamemnon, and it is the commander of the Achaean army himself who relates (ll. 385 – 466) the events of his ill-fated homecoming, when he arrived as the triumphant victor returning in a blaze of glory from the Trojan war, only to come to an untimely end as a result of the plot contrived against him by his unfaithful wife Klytaimnestra and her lover Aigisthos. Agamemnon’s soul is surrounded by the souls of his companions who met their end in the clash with Aigisthos and his followers (ll. 388 – 389). Agamemnon’s account of the happenings begins in l. 405 and, straightaway, in response to Odysseus, he asserts that his death was not caused either by Poseidon at sea or by a confrontation with enemies during a cattle raid or an act of war, but rather by his own family members, namely Aigisthos (son of Thyestes) and Klytaimnestra. Odyssey 11.387– 434 ἦλθε δ᾿ ἐπὶ ψυχὴ ᾿Aγαμέμνονος ᾿Aτρεΐδαο ἀχνυμένη· περὶ δ᾿ ἄλλαι ἀγηγέραθ᾿, ὅσσοι ἅμ᾿ αὐτῷ οἴκῳ ἐν Αἰγίσθοιο θάνον καὶ πότμον ἐπέσπον. … τὸν μὲν ἐγὼ δάκρυσα ἰδὼν ἐλέησά τε θυμῷ καί μιν φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδων· ‘‘᾿Aτρεΐδη κύδιστε, ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν ᾿Aγάμεμνον, τίς νύ σε κὴρ ἐδάμασσε τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο; ἠέ σέ γ᾿ ἐν νήεσσι Ποσειδάων ἐδάμασσεν ὄρσας ἀργαλέων ἀνέμων ἀμέγαρτον ἀϋτμήν; ἦέ σ᾿ ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες ἐδηλήσαντ᾿ ἐπὶ χέρσου βοῦς περιταμνόμενον ἠδ᾿ οἰῶν πώεα καλὰ ἠὲ περὶ πτόλιος μαχεούμενον ἠδὲ γυναικῶν;’’ ὣς ἐφάμην, ὁ δέ μ᾿ αὐτίκ᾿ ἀμειβόμενος προσέειπε· ‘‘διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν᾿ Ὀδυσσεῦ, οὔτ᾿ ἐμέ γ᾿ ἐν νήεσσι Ποσειδάων ἐδάμασσεν ὄρσας ἀργαλέων ἀνέμων ἀμέγαρτον ἀϋτμήν, οὔτε μ᾿ ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες ἐδηλήσαντ᾿ ἐπὶ χέρσου, ἀλλά μοι Αἴγισθος τεύξας θάνατόν τε μόρον τε

  

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ἔκτα σὺν οὐλομένῃ ἀλόχῳ οἶκόνδε καλέσσας, δειπνίσσας, ὥς τίς τε κατέκτανε βοῦν ἐπὶ φάτνῃ. ὣς θάνον οἰκτίστῳ θανάτῳ· περὶ δ᾿ ἄλλοι ἑταῖροι νωλεμέως κτείνοντο σύες ὣς ἀργιόδοντες, οἵ ῥά τ᾿ ἐν ἀφνειοῦ ἀνδρὸς μέγα δυναμένοιο ἢ γάμῳ ἢ ἐράνῳ ἢ εἰλαπίνῃ τεθαλυίῃ. ἤδη μὲν πολέων φόνῳ ἀνδρῶν ἀντεβόλησας, μουνὰξ κτεινομένων καὶ ἐνὶ κρατερῇ ὑσμίνῃ· ἀλλά κε κεῖνα μάλιστα ἰδὼν ὀλοφύραο θυμῷ, ὡς ἀμφὶ κρητῆρα τραπέζας τε πληθούσας κείμεθ᾿ ἐνὶ μεγάρῳ, δάπεδον δ᾿ ἅπαν αἵματι θῦεν οἰκτροτάτην δ᾿ ἤκουσα ὄπα Πριάμοιο θυγατρὸς Κασσάνδρης, τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιμνήστρη δολόμητις ἀμφ᾿ ἐμοί· αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ ποτὶ γαίῃ χεῖρας ἀείρων βάλλον ἀποθνῄσκων περὶ φασγάνῳ· ἡ δὲ κυνῶπις νοσφίσατ᾽ οὐδέ μοι ἔτλη, ἰόντι περ εἰς ᾿Aίδαο, χερσὶ κατ᾿ ὀφθαλμοὺς ἑλέειν σύν τε στόμ᾿ ἐρεῖσαι. ὣς οὐκ αἰνότερον καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο γυναικός, ἥ τις δὴ τοιαῦτα μετὰ φρεσὶν ἔργα βάληται· οἷον δὴ καὶ κείνη ἐμήσατο ἔργον ἀεικές, κουριδίῳ τεύξασα πόσει φόνον. ἦ τοι ἔφην γε ἀσπάσιος παίδεσσιν ἰδὲ δμώεσσιν ἐμοῖσιν οἴκαδ᾿ ἐλεύσεσθαι· ἡ δ᾿ ἔξοχα λυγρὰ ἰδυῖα οἷ τε κατ᾿ αἶσχος ἔχευε καὶ ἐσσομένῃσιν ὀπίσσω θηλυτέρῃσι γυναιξί, καὶ ἥ κ᾿ εὐεργὸς ἔῃσιν.



When the holy Persephone had scattered the breath-souls of the women here and there, up came that of Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, groaning. The breath-souls of all those who died and met their fate in the house of Aigisthos were gathered around him. … I wept when I saw him and took pity in my heart, and spoke to him words that went like arrows: “Most glorious son of Atreus, king of men, Agamemnon, what fate of grievous death overcame you? Did Poseidon overcome you, raising up the dreadful blast of savage winds among your ships? Or did enemy men do you harm on the dry land as you cut out their cattle or their beautiful flocks of sheep, or fought for a city, or for women?” So I spoke, and he answered me at once: “O son of Laertes, of the line of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus– it was not Poseidon who overcame me, raising up the dreadful blast of savage winds among my ships, nor enemy men who harmed me on the dry land, but Aigisthos contrived my death and fate and killed me with the help













 





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of my accursed wife. He invited me to this house and gave  me a meal, as you kill an ox at the manger. So I died a wretched death, and my companions died in numbers around me, like pigs with white teeth who are slaughtered in the house of a rich and powerful man at a wedding feast, or a potluck, or a thriving symposium. You’ve witnessed the death  of many men, either in single combat or in the strong press of battle, but in your heart you would have pitied the sight of those things– how we lay in the hall across the mixing-bowl and the tables filled with food, and the whole floor drenched in blood.  But the most pitiful cry I heard came from Kassandra, the daughter of Priam, whom the treacherous Klytaimnestra killed next to me. I raised my hands, then beat them on the ground, dying with a sword through my chest. But the bitch turned away, and although I was headed to the house of Hades, she would  not stoop to close my eyes nor to close my mouth! There is nothing more shameless, more bitchlike, than a woman who takes into her heart acts such as that woman devised– a monstrous deed, she who murdered her wedded husband.  I thought I’d return welcomed by my children and slaves, but she, knowing extraordinary wickedness, poured shame on herself and on all women who shall come later, even on those who do good deeds! (translation by Barry B. Powell, )

The unfolding sequence of events involving Agamemnon’s return seems to be based, fundamentally, on a clash that pits Aigisthos with his followers against Agamemnon and his companions, whose souls cluster around him even in Hades, thus underlining ‘the group’ character. This aspect of the circumstances is prefigured in book 4, ll. 512– 537, where Menelaos relates the story of the Old Man of the Sea, Proteus, which includes information about his brother Agamemnon’s return. Odyssey 4.512– 537 σὸς δέ που ἔκφυγε κῆρας ἀδελφεὸς ἠδ᾿ ὑπάλυξεν ἐν νηυσὶ γλαφυρῇσι· σάωσε δὲ πότνια Ἥρη. ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ τάχ᾿ ἔμελλε Μαλειάων ὄρος αἰπὺ ἵξεσθαι, τότε δή μιν ἀναρπάξασα θύελλα πόντον ἐπ᾿ ἰχθυόεντα φέρεν βαρέα στενάχοντα, ἀγροῦ ἐπ᾿ ἐσχατιήν, ὅθι δώματα ναῖε Θυέστης τὸ πρίν, ἀτὰρ τότ᾿ ἔναιε Θυεστιάδης Αἴγισθος. ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε δὴ καὶ κεῖθεν ἐφαίνετο νόστος ἀπήμων,





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ἂψ δὲ θεοὶ οὖρον στρέψαν, καὶ οἴκαδ᾿ ἵκοντο, ἦ τοι ὁ μὲν χαίρων ἐπεβήσετο πατρίδος αἴης, καὶ κύνει ἁπτόμενος ἣν πατρίδα· πολλὰ δ᾿ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ δάκρυα θερμὰ χέοντ᾿, ἐπεὶ ἀσπασίως ἴδε γαῖαν. τὸν δ᾿ ἄρ᾿ ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἶδε σκοπός, ὅν ῥα καθεῖσεν Αἴγισθος δολόμητις ἄγων, ὑπὸ δ᾿ ἔσχετο μισθὸν χρυσοῦ δοιὰ τάλαντα· φύλασσε δ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ εἰς ἐνιαυτόν, μή ἑ λάθοι παριών, μνήσαιτο δὲ θούριδος ἀλκῆς. βῆ δ᾿ ἴμεν ἀγγελέων πρὸς δώματα ποιμένι λαῶν. αὐτίκα δ᾿ Αἴγισθος δολίην ἐφράσσατο τέχνην· κρινάμενος κατὰ δῆμον ἐείκοσι φῶτας ἀρίστους εἷσε λόχον, ἑτέρωθι δ᾿ ἀνώγει δαῖτα πένεσθαι· αὐτὰρ ὁ βῆ καλέων ᾿Aγαμέμνονα, ποιμένα λαῶν, ἵπποισιν καὶ ὄχεσφιν, ἀεικέα μερμηρίζων. τὸν δ᾿ οὐκ εἰδότ᾿ ὄλεθρον ἀνήγαγε καὶ κατέπεφνε δειπνίσσας, ὥς τίς τε κατέκτανε βοῦν ἐπὶ φάτνῃ. οὐδέ τις ᾿Aτρεΐδεω ἑτάρων λίπεθ᾿, οἵ οἱ ἕποντο, οὐδέ τις Αἰγίσθου, ἀλλ᾿ ἔκταθεν ἐν μεγάροισιν.







 

As for your brother Agamemnon, he fled the fates  and escaped in his hollow ships. The revered Hera saved him. But when he was about to reach the steep height of Cape Malea, a storm wind caught him and drove him, moaning deeply,  over the fishy deep to the border of the land where Thyestes used to live in earlier times, but when now Aigisthos, Thyestes’ son, lived. When a safe return from there was showed Agamemnon, and the gods changed the course of the winds,  and he reached home, then he stepped out on the land of his fathers with joy. Laying hands on the land, he kissed it, and many hot tears poured from him, so welcome the land appared. But a lookout whom crafty Aigisthos had placed there,  promising him a reward of two talents of gold – that lookout saw Agamemnon. So that he would not pass by unseen and invoke his furious valor, the watchman went straight to the house, to the shepherd of the people, to tell what he had seen. Right away Aigisthos worked out a treacherous plan. Choosing twenty of the best men throughout the land,  he set up an ambush. On the other side of the hall he ordered that a feast be prepared. Then he went with chariot and horses to summon Agamemnon, the shepherd of the people, intending a foul deed. Thus he brought him up unaware of his doom. He killed him after he had dined, as one kills an ox  in its stall. Not one of the comrades who followed the son of Atreus survived, and not one of Aigisthos’ men, but they were all killed in his halls.  (translation by Barry B. Powell, )

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The story thus reports that Aigisthos, alerted by a hireling who has been told to give the alarm upon Agamemnon’s return from Troy,² assembled a squad of men faithful to him, invited Agamemnon to a banquet in his home and then launched a surprise attack on him and his companions: this resulted in a violent confrontation, as well as the death of Agamemnon and a carnage among both factions. As we have seen, in book 11 the murder is described in a similar manner, but more extensively and in greater detail. Aigisthos, aiming to set in motion the plan he and Klytaimnestra have hatched, invites Agamemnon to a banquet and then kills him in the context of a massacre that involves the friends both of Aigisthos and of Agamemnon. The murder of Kassandra by Klytaimnestra is depicted as the final act of butchery in this gory affair: a woman against another woman, which appears, in a sense, as a sort of addition to the fight between the men and their groups. The way in which the story-line is developed constitutes a highly important aspect that must be carefully kept in mind, in particular as regards the episode characterizing the clash between the two factions, which is repeated in book 4 and book 11. Another no less significant aspect in the passage from book 11 can likewise hardly fail to attract attention, namely, the fact that Agamemnon’s account of the events clearly emphasises the figure of Klytaimnestra and her key role in the murder perpetrated by Aigisthos (cf. below also 24.200). See l. 410 ‘Aigisthos … / killed me with the help of my accursed wife’ (Αἴγισθος … / ἔκτα σὺν οὐλομένῃ ἀλόχῳ) and ll. 429 – 430 ‘a woman / who takes into her heart acts such as that woman devised- / a monstrous deed, she who murdered her wedded husband’ (κείνη ἐμήσατο ἔργον ἀεικές, / κουριδίῳ τεύξασα πόσει φόνον).³ Furthermore, Klytaimnestra kills Kassandra with her own hands (ll. 422– 423: τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιμνήστρη δολόμητις / ἀμφ’ ἐμοί, ‘deceitful Klytaimnestra killed her / next to me’) and her savagery towards the dying Agamemnon is particularly underlined (see ll. 423 – 426). Odysseus brings up the concept again in l. 439: ‘and Klytaimnestra fashioned a plot against you, when you were away’ (σοὶ δὲ Κλυταιμνήστρη δόλον ἤρτυε τηλόθ’ ἐόντι). Immediately afterwards, Agamemnon declares that death will not come to Odysseus from his bride (ll. 444– 446), thus setting up an explicit parallel between wise Penelope and evil Klytaimnestra, and thus evidently between the return of Odysseus and that of Agamemnon. The comparison and parallel between the two homecomings remains in the background on different levels and offers a sort of guiding thread in the interpre Precedent of the guard who brings the piece of news to Klytaimnestra at the beginning of Agamennon.  Instead of with the verb ‘to murder’, a better rendering for l. 430 τεύξασα would be ‘planning the murder’ or ‘plotting death’.

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tation of the sequence of events involving the two heroes. For Odysseus, his homeward-bound journey is, first of all, fraught with difficulties and unbelievably long-drawn-out: upon his arrival he initially faces an arduous series of obstacles but eventually he is blessed with luck and there is a happy ending. Agamemnon’s homecoming, on the other hand, is uncomplicated and quick: upon his arrival he is at first jubilantly welcomed back in a blaze of glory, but eventually his return proves to be painful and ill-fated. Both of the battles take place indoors, in the banqueting hall, but in the first case the legitimate sovereign, who wages the battle almost single-handed, recovers his kingdom, and with it the faithful queen, while in the second case it is the usurper who, thanks to the complicity of the faithless wife, wins out over the legitimate sovereign and a group of friends of his.⁴ In ll. 452– 453 Agamemnon underlines that Klytaimnestra even denied him the chance to see his son again, because πάρος δέ με πέφνε καὶ αὐτόν, ‘she killed me before that’. It is hard to tell whether the verb πέφνε (killed) should be seen as a deliberate and forced underlining of Klytaimnestra’s involvement as a mastermind of the murderous act or whether it should be interpreted in a causative sense, ‘she had me killed’. In any case, however, it is indisputable that the line once again underscores the paramount role of Klytaimnestra. Attention is drawn to the question again in book 24 of the Odyssey, where the descent of the shades of the Suitors to Hades offers the opportunity for a reappearance of Agamemnon (ll. 15 – 204). This time, he at first engages in conversation with Achilles and a parallel is drawn between the glorious death granted to Achilles and which could have been granted to Agamemnon at Troy, and the painful and piteous death that the commander of the Achaean army had been fated to suffer in his own homeland: ‘For Zeus had in mind a wretched death for me / on my return at the hands of Aegisthos and my ruinous wife’ (ll. 96 – 97). Then the shades of the Suitors arrive on the scene and one of them, Amphidemon, tells of the ruse of Penelope’s web, the homecoming of Odysseus, the contest of the bow and the massacre of the Suitors (ll. 98 – 190). In his rejoinder (ll. 191– 202), Agamemnon once again puts forward the parallel between himself and Odysseus, based on the difference between wise Penelope, whose aretê will have everlasting fame, and evil Klytaimnestra, so that at the end:

 See for example the words of Athena in Od. 3.230 – 238: ‘As for my part, I would rather endure / much pain before I reached home and I saw the day of my homecoming, / than be killed at my hearth as Agamemnon was killed by the treachery / of his wife and Aigisthos’.

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Odyssey 24.199 – 202 οὐχ ὡc Τυνδαρέου κούρη κακὰ μήcατο ἔργα, κουρίδιον κτείναcα πόcιν, cτυγερὴ δέ τ᾿ ἀοιδὴ ἔccετ᾿ ἐπ᾿ ἀνθρώπουc, χαλεπὴν δέ τε φῆμιν ὀπάccει θηλυτέρῃcι γυναιξί, καὶ ἥ κ᾿ εὐεργὸc ἔῃcιν.

 

Not like that did the daughter of Tyndareus fashion her own evil deeds killing her wedded husband! The song about her will be hateful  among men! Why, she brings a bad reputation to all womankind, even on her who does the right thing. (translation by Barry B. Powell, )

The verb κτείναcα of l. 200 raises the same problem as πέφνε in 11.453: here too the question arises of whether the expression should be seen as a deliberate and forced underlining of the woman’s ‘active’ role or whether it should instead be taken in the causative meaning, ‘having him killed’; but what is certain is that once again the central role of Klytaimnestra is highlighted, at least from Agamemnon’s point of view. In short, the episode of Agamemnon’s return from Troy is presented in the Odyssey on the basis of two elements. The murder is perpetrated by Aigisthos during a fight, a veritable battle that pits the companions of the aged king, who comes back after a long absence to reclaim his throne, against the usurper who in the meantime has seized and intends to maintain power and has become the queen’s new lover-partner. The actions and motives of Aigisthos are mingled with the role of the queen Klytaimnestra, who is an active accomplice in preparing the deceitful treachery against her husband, in plotting his death and even in killing the concubine Kassandra with her own hands. The overall picture is thereby expanded with the additional aspect of fierce revenge in a sort of female rivalry with respect to Agamemnon, in a certain sense retrospectively vis-à-vis the new situation that sees her as the lover of Aigisthos. Thus while Agamemnon is materially and concretely killed by Aigisthos, Klytaimnestra’s active connivance is so strongly underlined in Odyssey 11 and 24 as to constitute a valid precedent for the transformation of the woman into the direct murderer of Agamemnon, as we see her in Aeschylus. But is the change in the murderous hand an invention by Aeschylus or did it already exist and the tragic poet appropriated and developed it? For the moment, what remains unsolved (and I would say unsolvable, unless additional information somehow becomes available) is the problem of the priority between the Oresteia and Pindar’s Pythian 11, which involves this aspect of the myth. In Pindar’s ode, composed for a victory of the young Thrasydaios of Thebes in a race at the Pythian games, the narrative excursus is devoted to the myth of the Atreides and

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is introduced by what can well be defined as a purely geographic pretext: Thrasydaios achieved his victory at Delphi, the place where Pylades once offered hospitality to Orestes, who had been exiled from his homeland precisely by his mother Klytaimnestra. Pindar, Pythian 11.15 – 37 ἐν ἀφνεαῖς ἀρούραισι Πυλάδα νικῶν ξένου Λάκωνος Ὀρέστα. τὸν δῆ φονευομένου πατρὸς ᾿Aρσινόα Κλυταιμήστρας χερῶν ὕπο κρατερᾶν ἐκ δόλου τροφὸς ἄνελε δυσπενθέος, ὁπότε Δαρδανίδα κόραν Πριάμου Κασσάνδραν πολιῷ χαλκῷ σὺν ᾿Aγαμεμνονίᾳ ψυχᾷ πόρευσ᾽ ᾿Aχέροντος ἀκτὰν παρ᾽ εὔσκιον νηλὴς γυνά. πότερόν νιν ἄρ᾽ Ἰφιγένει᾽ Εὐρίπῳ σφαχθεῖσα τῆλε πάτρας ἔκνισεν βαρυπάλαμον ὄρσαι χόλον; ἢ ἑτέρῳ λέχεϊ δαμαζομέναν ἔννυχοι πάραγον κοῖται; … θάνεν μὲν αὐτὸς ἥρως ᾿Aτρεΐδας ἵκων χρόνῳ κλυταῖς ἐν ᾿Aμύκλαις, μάντιν τ᾽ ὄλεσσε κόραν, ἐπεὶ ἀμφ᾽ Ἑλένᾳ πυρωθέντων Τρώων ἔλυσε δόμους ἁβρότατος. ὁ δ᾽ ἄρα γέροντα ξένον Στρόφιον ἐξίκετο, νέα κεφαλά, Παρνασσοῦ πόδα ναίοντ᾽· ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ σὺν Ἄρει ἔπεφνε ματέρα θῆκε τ᾽ Αἴγισθον ἐν φοναῖς.



As a victor [Thrasydaios]⁵ in the rich fields of Pylades, the host of Laconian Orestes,⁶ who, indeed, at the slaughter of his father, was rescued by his nurse Arsinoa out from under the powerful hands of Klytaimestra and away from her grievous treachery, when with the gray bronze she dispatched Kassandra,





 

 

 Thrasydaios is the victor for whom the celebrations are being held.  According to the Homeric poems, Agamemnon’s kingdom is located in Mycenae or in Argos, and the same is true of the tragic playwrights: Aeschylus and Euripides (Orestes and Electra) place him in Argos, Sophocles (Electra) in Myceneae. Pindar does not follow this tradition and situates Agamemnon’s kingdom at Amyclae, to the south of Sparta (l. 32); Sparta is where he is placed both by Stesichorus and Simonides.

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Dardanian Priam’s daughter, along with Agamemnon’s  soul, to the shadowy shore of Acheron– that pitiless woman. Was it then the sacrifical slaying of Iphigeneia at Euripos far from her homeland that provoked her to rouse up her heavy-handed anger? Or did nighttime lovemaking lead her astray by enthralling her to another’s bed?  … Atreus’ heroic son himself died when at last he came to famous Amyklai, and he brought death on the prophetic maiden, after he despoiled of their luxury the homes of the Trojans, who were visited by fire for the sake of Helen. The young boy, though, went to his aged friend Strophios, who lived  at the foot of Parnassos. but, with Ares’ eventual help, he slew his mother and laid Aigisthos in gore.  (translation by William H. Race, )

Thus according to Pindar in this passage, Agamemnon was murdered Κλυταιμήστρας χερῶν ὕπο κρατερᾶν (l. 17), and the νηλὴς γυνά (l. 22) also killed Kassandra, who had been sent to the Acheron together with the soul of Agamemnon (ll. 19 – 22). Pindar additionally mentions two reasons that were likely to have prompted Klytaimnestra to take action against her husband and his concubine: the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and her new relationship with Aigisthos (ll. 22– 27). In contrast with the Odyssey, the murderous hand is that of Klytaimnestra for Agamemnon as well. As mentioned earlier, there is considerable debate as to the priority of Aeschylus or Pindar as regards this innovation in the myth compared to the Odysssey. For Pythian 11 two datations have been hypothesized: 474, thus before the Oresteia of 458, or 454, thus after Aeschylus. Furthermore, we should bear in mind that Stesichorus, who was born more than a century before Aeschylus and Pindar, composed an Oresteia, of which we have some slight information and a few fragments. As far as we can tell, even the ancients had addressed questions concerning the changes introduced after Homer in this part of the myth of the Atreids. In a second century BC papyrus commentary (P. Oxy. 2506 = Stesichorus fr. 217 Page and Davies) we find not only comparisons between Stesichorus and Euripides (Orestes and Iphigeneia in Aulis), but also the information, among other things, that in Stesichorus the recognition of Orestes was achieved thanks to the curly lock of hair, as in the Choephoroi. A scholion to Aeschylus (sch. Choeph. 733 = Stesichorus fr. 218 Page and Davies) mentions the different names of the wet nurse of Orestes in Aeschylus, Pindar and Stesichorus. Furthermore, in Plutarch (Ser. Num. Vind. 10.555 A = Stesichorus fr. 219 Page and Davies) we read a detail about Klytaimnestra who has a dream in which she sees a snake from which there emerges

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‘the king of the family of Pleisthenes’. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to analyse the evidence on the Oresteia of Stesichorus: suffice it so say that it allows the possibility that the account given in Stesichorus diverges from that of Homer by introducing episodes and details⁷ of the myth of the Oresteia that we find in later authors,⁸ but we have no information pertaining to the material perpetrator of the murder of Agamemnon. Therefore we have no other alternative than to focus on the only texts we know namely the Odyssey, Pindar and Aeschylus. Given this state of affairs, it certainly cannot be said that the issue of the priority between Aeschylus and Pindar on the question of who was the material author of the murder of Agamemnon is of minor relevance; equally certainly, on the other hand, it by no means exhausts all the aspects of the problem. We pointed out earlier that Pindar mentions two reasons that could well have been the underlying motives of Klytaimnestra’s hatred and could thus have driven her to act against Agamemnon: the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia and her new love affair with Aigisthos. The sacrifice of Iphigeneia does not appear at all in Homer, whereas the adulterous relationship between Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra is clearly underscored and provides the basis for Agamemnon’s emphasis on the comparison between wise Penelope and the sinister Klytaimnestra, and thus between himself and Odysseus. From this perspective, a difference can be perceived between books 4 and 11, on the one hand, and books 3 and 24 of the Odyssey, on the other. In books 3 and 24 the more personal and ‘private’ aspect is foregrounded and in 24 it occupies a prominent position: indeed, it is effectively the only one that is present here and it provides the basis for the contrasting appraisal of Agamemnon’s unfaithful Klytaimnestra versus the faithful Penelope of Odysseus. In books 4 and 11 the political-institutional clash between Aigisthos and Agamemnon, each supported by their own group of followers as they scramble to grab hold of royal power, is the focus of attention and dictates the manner in which the deposed king meets his gruesome end in the context of a battle and the ensuing carnage among his companions. Naturally, however, the way in which this scene unfolds by no means contradicts or attenuates the elements we have already highlighted, namely the significant emphasis placed on the role played by Klytaimnestra (old and new queen, with the old and the new

 On the location of Agamemnon’s kingdom, see above, n. 6.  Nothing can be said concerning the evidence deriving from Megaclides (second half of the fourth century BC) in Athenaeus XII 513a, according to which Stesichorus took over many things from an earlier lyric poet Xanthos, above all with regard to the myth of Heracles and the theme of the Oresteia: Xanthos could represent an intermediate step between Homer and Pindar/Aeschylus, but he remains shrouded in mystery.

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king) in the plot hatched against Agamemnon. In short, to give a simplified summary, let us say that in the Odyssey two elements concerning the death of Agamemnon are treated side by side, namely a public, political-institutional aspect coexists with a private and personal aspect laden with passion: Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra jointly plan the murder, prompted by both motives, which are present simultaneously and interactively, but the actual murder of Agamemnon is carried out directly by Aigisthos whereas that of Kassandra is performed by Klytaimnestra. Looking at the story narrated in the Odyssey from an a posteriori perspective, i. e. with Aeschylus and Pindar in mind, the absence of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia is certainly an eye-catching feature. Without claiming to go back over the frequently addressed problem of knowledge of the character and episode of Iphigeneia in the Homeric poems, we will merely point out that the story of the murder of Agamemnon in the Odyssey contains no trace of Iphigeneia. It is clear that the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, with all its consequences, shifts the focus of attention towards the ‘private’ sphere and highlights the profoundly personal aspect of Klytaimnestra’s motives. This is what we find in Pindar, where nothing is said about a political-military struggle for power: in Pindar, the murder of Agamemnon (and obviously of Kassandra) is perpetrated by Klytaimnestra with her own hands on account of an intense hatred she harbours, that arises from the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, carried out at Agamemnon’s behest, and from her new relationship with Aigisthos, who is the rival of the previous king. But Aigisthos, as it were, slides almost to the margins of the issue: the struggle for power remains shadowy and fades into the background, giving way to feelings of resentment and revenge. The choice of the murderous hand mirrors this shift, changing in line with it and bringing with it the context of the event. Pindar says nothing with regard to the manner in which the murder is committed, but Aeschylus trains the spotlight on Klytaimnestra who kills her husband with her own hands in a private context, in the recesses of the old palace and in solitude. Thus the scene differs starkly from the clash between the politically and militarily opposing groups in the Odyssey. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon Aigisthos plays no role until the murder of Agamemnon (and of Kassandra) is completed: on the contrary, he appears on the scene only in the final part (namely in l. 1577). He goes back over the events that marked the hatred between Atreus and Thyestes, and rejoices at the death of Agamemnon, for which he claims the merit; he clashes with the Chorus that hints at a possible vengeful return of Orestes, but in the end it is Klytaimnestra who intervenes, partly to prevent the clash from degenerating into further violence, but above all to bring the matter to a definitive close and make it clear that the power now lies in Aigisthos and their hands.

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The fever-pitch dialogue between Aigisthos and the Chorus in the final scenes of the tragedy contains several elements of interest for the theme we have been developing. Aigisthos, after speaking of a ‘day that brings justice’ (l. 1577), claims the merit for the killing of Agamemnon, describing it as right and just, and declares that he himself is the one who was effectively responsible for this act: κἀγὼ δίκαιος τοῦδε τοῦ φόνου ῥαφεύς … καὶ τoῦδε τἀνδρὸς ἡψάμην θυραῖος ὤν, πᾶσαν ξυνάψας μηχανὴν δυσβουλίας.

 

and it was I, in my right, who wrought this murder  … till from afar I laid my hands upon this man,  since it was I who pieced together the deadly plot. (translation by Richard Lattimore, revised by Mark Griffith, )

Aigisthos thus presents himself as the éminence grise of the affair, the one who, for the sake of justice, plotted the murder of Agamemnon, which is materially carried out by Klytaimnestra, and as such the Chorus understands it: σὺ δ᾽ ἄνδρα τόνδε φῂς ἑκὼν κατακτανεῖν, μόνος δ᾽ ἔποικτον τόνδε βουλεῦσαι φόνον



You claim that you deliberately killed the king,  you, and you only, planned the pity of this death. (translation by Richard Lattimore, revised by Mark Griffith, )

The claim asserted by Aigisthos would appear, on first sight, to be a reversal as compared to the Odyssey, where the roles attributed to himself and Klytaimnestra were inverted, but in actual fact his claim sounds even slightly fanciful, if one considers his total absence up to this point and the way the events have unfolded in the tragedy. The Chorus mercilessly exposes the falseness of his version. Firstly, in ll. 1625 – 1627 the Chorus declaims against Aigisthos, branding him as a ‘female’ who stays in the home and who, moreover, defiled the marital bed and plotted the death of the warrior commander (a precedent in Odyssey 3.262 ff.). Shortly afterwards, in ll. 1633 – 1635 the Chorus questions and challenges the idea that he, who plotted the king’s death but did not dare, did not have the courage to perform the action with his own hands, could ever become the lord of Argos. Aigisthos argues, in his defence, that the deceitful chain of actions was clearly the work of a female, since he himself was an enemy who had long been the focus of suspicion. Furthermore, he forcefully reaffirms his intention to

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take over power (ll. 1636 – 1641). But the Chorus is unyielding: why did Aigisthos, a coward, not kill Agamemnon with his own hand but, instead, enlisted a woman to help him in the killing, producing a miasma that contaminates the earth and its gods (ll. 1643 – 1646)? The Chorus hints at the return of Orestes (ll. 1646 – 1648) and the clash with Aigisthos and his followers is about to degenerate (l. 1651: ‘let each one draw his sword’) when Klytaimnestra intervenes to prevent ἄλλα κακά (l. 1654), asserting that they are now the overlords (ll. 1672 – 1673), after pronouncing a highly significant line (l. 1661): ὧδ᾽ ἔχει λόγος γυναικός, εἴ τις ἀξιοῖ μαθεῖν.



Thus a woman speaks among you. Shall men deign to understand?  (translation by Richard Lattimore, revised by Mark Griffith, )

The belated appearance of Aigisthos and his somewhat insubstantial role in this finale may perhaps even have a vein of irony: but what is certain is that the dominating personality is Klytaimnestra. Indeed, she is likewise involved in the very motif of the clash between the factions and the seizure of power, which is certainly present, albeit now at the end and in the background as compared to the Odyssey. On this point Klytaimnestra had already clashed with the Chorus immediately after the discovery of the murder (ll. 1372 ff.) and, defining herself as the maker of justice, she had curtly concluded: τάδ’ ὧδ’ ἔχει, ‘that’s how things stand’. As in Pindar, in Aeschylus the two personal motives underlying Klytaimnestra’s actions have gained the upper hand and are awarded priority over the public and political issue of the thirst for power, which has by no means disappeared but does not play a primary role in the sequence of events and in the development of the play. In Ag. 1414– 1420 and 1521– 1529 the raging mother screams her fury over the sacrifice of Iphigeneia as the reason for her hatred of Agamemnon. In the finale of Agamemnon, Klytaimnestra calls Aigisthos φίλτατ᾽ ἀνδρῶν and in the conclusion she asserts their joint power; in Ch. 906 – 907 it is Orestes who, after killing Aigisthos, bitterly upbraids his mother for her relationship with the latter, whom she unlawfully preferred over her legitimate husband: ‘when he was alive you preferred him to my father, / therefore go to bed with him as a dead woman’. Predominance is decidedly awarded to the family story: passions, hatred, seething resentment, love relationships; Klytaimnestra looks back over this state of affairs and defines herself as ‘the ancient harsh avenging demon’ of the family. Klytaimnestra’s hatred also extends to Kassandra (cf. Ag. 1440 – 1447), who is killed directly by Klytaimnestra already in the Odyssey, a point that remains unchanged in Pindar and Aeschylus. As mentioned earlier, the killing of the Trojan

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concubine adds to the overall picture the personal aspect of fierce revenge in a sort of female rivalry. The fact that, as we said, this may appear to be retrospective in comparison to the new situation in which Klytaimnestra is the lover of Aigisthos is in no way involved in the mere development of the story: indeed, it is never even recalled. Klytaimnestra hates Agamemnon for this reason too: it is an element that accentuates the tones of the storyline and of the character, an important component that remains unchanged, even though it has no decisive influence over the development of the events. Aeschylus has Klytaimnestra come out with words defining the murder of Kassandra as παροψώνημα, i. e. an ‘additional titbit, an extra side dish’ accompanying the main course (l. 1447). As a source for the innovation we find in Aeschylus and Pindar, the Odyssey supplied a good precedent in its emphasis on Klytaimnestra’s role as a ferocious active accomplice, which we have highlighted. This precedent is developed by presenting Klytaimnestra as the direct and material murderer of Agamemnon as well. We pointed out that the choice of the murderous hand follows and accompanies the shift in the crux of the unfolding events, together with the greater focus on family passions and personal motives that we observe after Homer. This change of the murderous hand moves in parallel with the altered focus and also repositions the context and setting of the episode, which is transposed from the banquet and the public clash to the private sphere within the house. We do not know who first introduced this novelty, but Aeschylus certainly espoused it and staged it with great dramatic effectiveness and in particular consonance with the issues of justice and genos that stand at the centre of the Oresteia.

Justina Gregory

Sophocles’ Ajax and his Homeric Prototypes Tragedy’s indebtedness to Homer, appreciated since antiquity, has been overshadowed in recent decades as scholars turned their attention to the genre’s democratic ambience and conditions of performance (that is, to its contemporary context) and to its reception (that is, to its afterlife). Nevertheless, that indebtedness is both impossible to deny and imprudent to ignore. In 1983 Gould undertook to detail how tragedy differs from Homer, taking as his point of departure Vernant’s identification of the fifth-century ‘tragic moment’, with its ‘radical break with many fundamental strands in traditional thinking about human experience’ as decisive for the development of the genre.¹ After singling out plot material, language, and above all historical context as elements distinguishing tragedy from epic, Gould nevertheless concluded his essay by affirming that tragedy was ‘held in the grip of Homer’s imagination’ and that ‘for the playwrights of the fifth century, there was everything to learn from the poetry of Homer’.² Gould’s judgment seems all the more apposite today. The concept of the ‘tragic moment’ has fallen into abeyance with the recognition that tragedy did not die at the end of the fifth century but continued to flourish in the fourth.³ Situating tragedy in its full temporal context entails not only tracing its fourth-century development but also reconsidering its relationship to the archaic past.⁴ Of the three fifth-century tragedians Sophocles is by general consent regarded as the most beholden to Homer, and within Sophocles’ surviving oeuvre Ajax is rightly deemed the most Homeric.⁵ The protagonist plays a major role in the Iliad, the text rings variations on epic vocabulary,⁶ and as if to proclaim the play’s Homeric affiliations, Sophocles has included a scene whose links to the

 Gould 1983, 35.  Gould 1983, 42 and 45.  See the foundational work of the honourand, Xanthakis-Karamanos 1979 and 1980, and most recently Csapo / Goette / Green / Wilson 2014.  For this approach see Cairns 2013, a collection of essays that study tragedy’s relationship not only to Homer but to archaic thought more generally. For other exemplary studies see Zanker 1992 and Davidson 2006 and 2012.  See Easterling 1984, 1 and Davidson 2012, 245 – 246.  For example, Sophocles applies to Ajax epithets that are evocative of, but not identical to, Homer’s, such as ξιφοκτόνος (Aj. 10) and σακεσφόρος (Aj. 19). For the connotations of the latter see Davidson 2006, 25 – 31. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-008

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Iliad were first documented in the scholia to the play.⁷ The first episode of Ajax concludes with a debate⁸ between Ajax and his spear-bride Tecmessa in front of Ajax’s tent. Ajax maintains that suicide is the only honourable course in light of his disgrace (Aj. 430 – 480), while Tecmessa argues that it would be ignoble for him to abandon his family (Aj. 485 – 524). As the encounter draws to a close, Ajax adjures their small son Eurysaces to be like his father, but more fortunate (Aj. 550 – 551). The scene reworks Hector’s meeting with his wife Andromache at Troy’s Scaean gates. Andromache begs Hector to withdraw inside the gates and defend the city from the ramparts (Il. 6.407– 439), while Hector argues that it would be shameful to adopt such a course (Il. 6.441– 465). As the encounter draws to a close, Hector prays to Zeus that their small son Astyanax will grow up to be like his father in salient respects, but ‘much better’ as a warrior (Il. 6.479). Kirkwood and Easterling among others have analyzed the intertextual connection between the two passages in illuminating detail.⁹ In view of these treatments I shall not discuss the episode except to note that its ‘conspicuous and extensive’¹⁰ relationship with the Iliad signals the audience to keep the Homeric backdrop in mind for the remainder of the play. My own approach to Homeric elements in Ajax centers on the protagonist. In what follows I argue for the composite Homeric origins of the Sophoclean Ajax, a character who owes much to the Ajax of the Iliad and Odyssey but even more to the Iliadic Achilles. After reviewing these different facets of Ajax’s characterization, I consider their implications for the play as a whole.

Ajax’s History The play assumes a seamless continuity between the epic and tragic instantiations of the hero. When Athena characterizes Ajax before his onset of madness with the rhetorical question, ‘What man was found to have more foresight than this one, or to be better at opportune action?’,¹¹ she cues the spectators

 See Easterling 1984, 8 n. 6.  For the encounter as ‘a pair of matching speeches’ see Easterling 1984, 2.  Kirkwood 1965, 56 – 60; Easterling 1984, 1– 5.  Kirkwood 1965, 56.  τούτου τίς ἄν σοι τἀνδρὸς ἢ προνούστερος / ἢ δρᾶν ἀμείνων ηὑρέθη τὰ καίρια, Aj. 119 – 120. My text is Lloyd-Jones / Wilson 1990. Finglass 2011 ad loc. suggests that the Homeric Ajax is not known for his foresight, but his predictions at Il. 13.815 – 820 show his ability to anticipate de-

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to answer her query by recalling the character and accomplishments of Ajax in the Iliad. To put it another way, Athena suggests that the experiences of Homer’s Ajax constitute the Sophoclean Ajax’s past. Athena is at least partly correct, for Sophocles’ Ajax shares an extensive history with Homer’s. The overlap becomes obvious during the agôn between Agamemnon and Teucer in the fourth episode. Teucer highlights the hero’s accomplishments during the Trojan War to support his charge that the Atreidae are guilty of ingratitude toward the dead hero. His examples are drawn from Homer, with compressions and alterations that adapt them to the speaker’s rhetorical purpose and to their tragic context. Teucer begins by reproaching the Atreids for their convenient amnesia in forgetting how often Ajax risked his life for them. He recounts how at a critical moment of the war Ajax saved the Greeks’ ships from Hector’s onslaught and from catastrophic fire (Aj. 1273 – 1280): οὐ μνημονεύεις οὐκέτ’ οὐδέν, ἡνίκα ἑρκέων ποθ’ ὑμᾶς ἐντὸς ἐγκεκλῃμένους, ἤδη τὸ μηδὲν ὄντας ἐν τροπῇ δορός, ἐρρύσατ’ ἐλθὼν μοῦνος, ἀμφὶ μὲν νεῶν ἄκροισιν ἤδη ναυτικοῖς ἑδωλίοις πυρὸς φλέγοντος, ἐς δὲ ναυτικὰ σκάφη πηδῶντος ἄρδην Ἕκτορος τάφρων ὕπερ; τίς ταῦτ’ ἀπεῖρξεν; Have you no longer any recollection of the time when you were penned inside your defenses, now reduced to helplessness by the turn of battle, and this man rescued you by himself when fire was already licking at the high point and decks of the ships, and Hector was leaping high over the ditch onto their hulls? Who kept this from happening?

Teucer’s narrative evokes the events of Iliad 15 and 16 but as the play’s commentators point out, the correspondence is not exact. Whereas Teucer suggests that Ajax was the only one fighting to save the ships, Homer’s account presents a different picture. To be sure, Ajax takes the lead, rallies his fellow soldiers, and stabs in turn each of twelve Trojans who advances to set fire to the ships (Il. 15.742– 746), but there are others besides himself involved in the ships’ defence, as his exhortation to his fellow warriors makes clear (Il. 15.733 – 734):

velopments. Although Finglass prefers to translate τὰ καίρια (Aj. 120) as ‘doing what is right’, Ajax’s comportment in Il. 9 gives proof of his sense of occasion, as discussed below.

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ὦ φίλοι ἥρωες Δαναοί, θεράποντες Ἄρηος, ἀνέρες ἔστε, φίλοι, μνήσασθε δὲ θούριδος ἀλκῆς. Greek friends and warriors, attendants of Ares, act like men now, my friends, remember your spontaneous courage.

In Homer’s account Hector is not routed by Ajax. To the contrary, he renders Ajax’s spear useless by breaking it off at the point. Seeing the gods’ will at work in this misfortune Ajax withdraws, allowing the Trojans to set fire to Protesilaus’ ship (Il. 16.118 – 123). By this juncture, however, Homer has already shifted his narrative focus from Ajax to Patroclus and Achilles. Patroclus has previously been urging Achilles to help the Greeks, and Achilles has given his somewhat reluctant assent. Now Achilles takes the initiative as he tells Patroclus to arm himself in haste (in Achilles’ armour rather than his own, just as Patroclus had proposed) and come as quickly as possible to the Greeks’ defence (Il. 16.126 – 129). Achilles also summons his Myrmidons to enter the fray, and prays to Zeus to ensure Patroclus’ success and safe return. The efforts of Ajax are thus represented as secondary to Patroclus’ entry into battle; that is what turns the tide, saving the Greek ships and sending the Trojans (who initially mistake Patroclus for Achilles, Il. 16.278 – 282) into precipitous flight. As we have seen, Teucer says nothing about Patroclus’ role, but claims that Ajax was solely responsible for keeping fire from the ships. Indeed, the adjective μόνος is applied to Ajax throughout the play, becoming a leitmotif of his characterization.¹² Sophocles’ variations on the Homeric narrative have the effect of amplifying Ajax’s role, corroborating not only Teucer’s denunciation of the Atreids but also Ajax’s characterization of himself (Aj. 421– 427) as a uniquely valuable member of the expedition. The validity of this assessment will become clear only at the end of the play. As a second example of his brother’s heroism, Teucer adduces Ajax’s single combat with Hector (Aj. 1283 – 1287): χὤτ’ αὖθις αὐτὸς Ἕκτορος μόνος μόνου, λαχών τε κἀκέλευστος, ἦλθεν ἀντίος, οὐ δραπέτην τὸν κλῆρον ἐς μέσον καθείς, ὑγρᾶς ἀρούρας βῶλον, ἀλλ’ ὃς εὐλόφου κυνῆς ἔμελλε πρῶτος ἅλμα κουφιεῖν;

 See Aj. 47, 294, 467, 796, 1283, and de Jong 2006, 77. Ajax’s sole ally in his exploits, Teucer implies, was Teucer himself (Aj. 1288).

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And on another occasion when he went against Hector, man to man, by lot and unordered, after tossing in a token that was no avoider, no lump of damp mud,¹³ but one that was going to jump out first from the well-plumed helmet?

Homer narrates the encounter to which Teucer refers at Il. 7.38 – 312. In the leisurely manner of epic, the lead-up to the duel is set forth at elaborate length: the gods are the first to conceive of a single combat, next the seer Helenus suggests it to Hector, and finally Hector proposes it to the Greeks. The Greek warriors are simultaneously afraid to face Hector and ashamed of their fear (Il. 7.92– 93): in the event, nobody steps forward. Eventually Menelaus offers to fight Hector, but Agamemnon dissuades him from his suicidal project. Nestor then goads nine warriors, including Ajax, into volunteering for combat. The champion on the Greek side is eventually chosen by lot, and to the general relief he turns out to be Ajax. Ajax himself welcomes the outcome: he expresses pleasure at being chosen and confidence that he will prevail, but also urges his fellow soldiers to pray to Zeus for his success (Il. 7.191– 199). In the event, darkness brings the duel to a halt. It ends in a draw and with an exchange of gifts: Hector bestows a sword on Ajax, while Ajax reciprocates with a belt. Except for the sword, which Ajax identifies as the fitting instrument for his suicide since it was an enemy’s gift (Aj. 657– 665, 815 – 818), these circumstantial details find no place in Sophocles’ play.¹⁴ They are presumably suppressed for two reasons. In the first place, tragic narrative cannot afford the discursiveness of epic; secondly, the compressed version offered by Teucer again presents Ajax in the most flattering possible light. Teucer emphasises his brother’s eagerness for the duel: he stresses that Ajax volunteered for the encounter, and deploys a pathetic fallacy to demonstrate that even Ajax’s token showed alacrity for the task. As earlier, Teucer is at pains to emphasise his brother’s singular heroism (at Aj. 1283 μόνος is augmented by αὐτός and further strengthened by the collocation in polyptoton with μόνου). Despite these variations in narrative emphasis and detail, the Iliad is the indisputable source for both Teucer’s tales.

 As Finglass 2011 explains ad loc., a token consisting of mud would tend to remain inside the helmet.  At Aj. 1028 – 1039 Teucer mentions the belt in addition to the sword and suggests that the gods were at work in the two heroes’ symmetrical fates. Deleted by Morstadt, the passage is defended by Jebb 1896, Stanford 1963, and Garvie 1998 but rejected by Lloyd-Jones / Wilson 1990 and, with persuasive justifications, by Finglass 2011.

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Ajax’s Temperament While the Sophoclean Ajax’s history closely tracks that of the Iliadic Ajax, his temperament has a different provenance: it is Homeric but not Iliadic. The salient quality of Sophocles’ Ajax is his stubbornness. He does not accept instruction or advice; on the one occasion when he claims to have changed his mind, it emerges that he was not telling the truth.¹⁵ The Iliadic Ajax, in contrast, is not notably obstinate. As we have seen, when he is fighting to defend the ships he recognises that the gods intend to give victory to the Greeks and beats a strategic retreat (Il. 16.114– 122). To be sure, one striking simile (Il. 11.558 – 562) compares Ajax to a donkey that gets into a wheat field, then holds his ground under a rain of blows until he has eaten his fill. The simile has puzzled scholars because at first glance it appears so unflattering: donkeys, the lowliest of the equines, are proverbially stupid as well as obstinate,¹⁶ and this is the only simile in Homer that takes a donkey as its vehicle. Context, however, goes far to explain the application to Ajax. The donkey in the simile does eventually retreat, just as Ajax retreats in Iliad 15; neither is unremittingly intransigent. Furthermore, the donkey simile is one of a pair;¹⁷ it follows hard upon another (Il. 11.548 – 555) comparing Ajax to a lion that attacks a farmstead by night, only to be driven away by the watchmen’s dogs, weapons, and torches. Taken together, this brace of similes attributes to Ajax not the negative trait of obstinacy but the positive qualities of persistence and tenacity.¹⁸ It is in the Odyssey, not the Iliad that stubbornness emerges as Ajax’s signature characteristic. Narrating his adventures in the underworld to the Phaeacians, Odysseus describes how he glimpsed Ajax’s ghost among those of the other Trojan War heroes. Ajax kept his distance because he was angry that after Achilles’ death the hero’s arms had been awarded to Odysseus instead of himself (Od. 11.541– 551). Odysseus reports that he addressed Ajax in regretful and conciliatory tones, only to see the ghost stalk away in resentful silence (Od. 11.552– 565). This memorable scene¹⁹ may well have provided Sophocles with the inspiration for his own unyielding Ajax. If so, it is noteworthy that in

 For a précis of the ‘three main interpretations’ of the deception speech see Lardinois 2006, 213, and for a perceptive analysis of its contents see Rutherford 2012, 392– 394.  Gregory 2007, 194.  For the relationship between the two similes see Gregory 2007, 201– 202.  Trapp 1961, 272 and Hainsworth 1993 ad loc.  For Vergil’s adaptation of this scene for the encounter of Dido and Aeneas in the underworld see Panoussi 2002, 101– 2 with additional references.

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the same passage Odysseus assures the hero that the Greeks mourned him just as fervently as they mourned Achilles (Od. 11.556 – 558) – a statement that acknowledges him as Achilles’ near equal and legitimate successor. Sophocles’ Odysseus arrives at a similar conclusion, as we shall see.

Ajax and the Gods The Sophoclean Ajax also diverges from his Iliadic namesake in his relationship with the gods. The Homeric Ajax is respectful of divinity: as previously noted, before his duel with Hector he asks the other Greeks to pray for his success.²⁰ Curiously, however, as a warrior he does not enjoy the divine protection that is extended to other heroes of his rank; whatever he accomplishes he accomplishes on his own.²¹ All the Greek champions, of course, yearn for glory on the battlefield, but Ajax stands out for the intensity of his aspiration. On one occasion when the Greeks are hard pressed, Ajax neither proposes retreat to his fellow warriors nor asks the gods for help. Instead he requests that Zeus dispel the mist that is obscuring the battlefield and to destroy the Greek warriors, since such is his will, in the light of day.²² The request ‘amounts to a plea for the opportunity to display his excellence and to win renown’.²³ Sophocles’ appropriates the hero’s autonomous style and concern with his reputation for his own Ajax. Sophocles’ protagonist takes autonomy further, however, than his Iliadic predecessor. The prophet Calchas condemns him for not thinking ‘as befits a human being; (κατ’ ἄνθρωπον, Aj. 761 and 777), and describes two incidents to back up this claim. According to Calchas’ account (as transmitted to Teucer by the messenger), Telamon adjured Ajax, as he saw him off to war, to prevail with his spear (that is, with his own fighting strength), but always to prevail along with the gods (Aj. 764 – 765). Ajax responded ‘arrogantly and foolishly’ (ὑψικόμπως κἀφρόνως, Aj. 766) that even a nobody could prevail with the aid of gods, but that he was confident of snatching glory even without them. On another occasion, according to Calchas, Ajax was offensively dismissive to Athena (Aj. 770 – 775):

 Kamerbeek 1953 on 767– 768 forwards Pohlenz’s suggestion that Sophocles has transferred Locrian Ajax’s impiety (as recounted at Od. 4.504) to his greater namesake, but Locrian Ajax defies the gods as Sophocles’ Ajax, even as filtered through Calchas’ hostile account, does not.  Kirkwood 1965, 61 comments on his ‘quality of isolation’.  ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον, ἐπεί νύ τοι εὔαδεν οὕτως, Il. 17.647.  Cairns 2002, 85 n. 30.

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εἶτα δεύτερον δίας ᾿Aθάνας, ἡνίκ’ ὀτρύνουσά νιν ηὐδᾶτ’ ἐπ’ ἐχθροῖς χεῖρα φοινίαν τρέπειν, τότ’ ἀντιφωνεῖ δεινὸν ἄρρητόν τ’ ἔπος· “ἄνασσα, τοῖς ἄλλοισιν ᾿Aργείων πέλας ἵστω, καθ’ ἡμᾶς δ’ οὔποτ’ ἐνρήξει²⁴ μάχη.” Then again, when the divine Athena, in an attempt to stir him up, kept telling him to turn on the enemy with murderous force, he gave a dreadful and unspeakable reply: “Queen, stand by the other Greeks; where I am the line of battle will never break”.

In both passages the Sophoclean Ajax leaves no doubt that he looks to himself rather than to divinity for success in battle. That he responds to his father ‘arrogantly and foolishly’ and that his reply to Athena is ‘dreadful and unspeakable’ is less clear. The incidents are reported at such a narrative remove —speaking to Teucer, the messenger reports the words of Calchas, who narrates events he could only have learned at second hand—that it arouses suspicion at the outset.²⁵ Furthermore, Calchas employs pejorative adverbs and adjectives that betray the vehemence of the professional seer—another reason to suspect his interpretation. His account of what motivates Athena to drive Ajax mad is not the only one available to the audience. When in the prologue Athena explains to Odysseus that she induced Ajax to mistake sheep and cattle for men (Aj. 44– 54), it sounds as if she made his vision play tricks on him not as a punishment for impiety, but as the quickest and most efficacious way to keep the Greek commanders, including her favorite Odysseus, from being murdered by Ajax.²⁶ Calchas’ déformation professionelle leads him to offer a religious explanation for Ajax’s disaster, but the audience is not obliged either to accept his evaluation or to equate it with Sophocles’.²⁷ In assessing Ajax’s relationship with divinity the audience will need to take into account not only Calchas’ hearsay report and Ajax’s

 The conjecture of Lloyd-Jones / Wilson 1990. The mss. have ἐκρήξει; Finglass 2011 obelizes the verb.  For the layers of the messenger’s speech, see Bers 1997, 52– 54.  Aj. 450 – 453 highlights the last-minute quality of Athena’s intervention. Aj. 952–953 emphasises Athena’s protectiveness of Odysseus; the observation reflects Tecmessa’s perspective, but the audience has glimpsed this protectiveness for themselves in the prologue. Athena’s caution to Odysseus about the importance of respecting the gods (Aj. 127– 133) cannot be taken as the lesson of the play, for it consists of boilerplate gnomic sentiments with no specific application to Ajax.  See Garvie 1998 on 719 – 865 for the scholarly controversy on Calchas’ authority and narrative reliability.

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verbatim statements, but also the intertextual relationship that several of these passages forge with the Iliad.

The Language of Ajax The Sophoclean Ajax’s history, temperament, and relationship with divinity repay comparison with Homer’s; so too does his command of language. Buxton observes that the Sophoclean Ajax expresses himself like no one else in the play; he draws attention to the hero’s exalted lyric register and in particular to the ‘music’²⁸ of the deception speech. The Iliadic Ajax, however, taps his own vein of eloquence. In a tribute to Ajax’s diplomatic and verbal skills, Nestor nominates him for the delegation that visits the estranged Achilles in Iliad 9. Ajax displays sensitivity to his audience, an important attribute for any speaker. It is he who determines the appropriate moment for the three ambassadors to embark on their pleas (Il. 9.222– 223). Speaking last, he keeps his own speech short because he recognises that Achilles is impatient for the embassy to come to an end.²⁹ He concludes on a warmer note than the other speakers by emphasizing the affection that all three have for Achilles.³⁰ Ajax’s appeal proves more effective than the elaborate, protracted disquisitions of Odysseus and Phoenix: it is after Ajax has concluded his speech that Achilles retracts his threat to depart for home and engages to return to the fighting, albeit at a time of his own choosing. The verbal dexterity³¹ of Homer’s Ajax is not limited to that single occasion. When the Trojans threaten the Greek ships, Ajax appeals to the troops (Il. 15.504– 508): ἦ ἔλπεσθ’ ἢν νῆας ἕλῃ κορυθαίολος Ἕκτωρ, ἐμβαδὸν ἵξεσθαι ἣν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἕκαστος; ἦ οὐκ ὀτρύνοντος ἀκούετε λαὸν ἅπαντα Ἕκτορος, ὃς δὴ νῆας ἐνιπρῆσαι μενεαίνει; οὐ μὰν ἔς γε χορὸν κέλετ’ ἐλθέμεν, ἀλλὰ μάχεσθαι.

 Buxton 2006, 18 and 20.  Cf. Il. 9.620 – 622.  Il. 9.640 – 642. His words pick up on Achilles’ equally warm greeting at Il. 9.197– 198.  Admittedly Hector characterizes Ajax as ἁμαρτοεπής (‘misspeaking’) at Il. 13.824. But the epithet clearly constitutes apotropaic abuse, since the speech Ajax has just made is both eloquent and forceful.

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Do you anticipate, if Hector with his glancing helmet captures our ships, that each of you will return overland to your home country? Do you not hear Hector rousing his men to action, in a fury to set our ships on fire? He is not summoning you to a dance, but to battle.

Ajax is particularly adept at rhetorical questions, as a subsequent passage confirms (Il. 15.735 – 736). His ‘do you anticipate… that… you will return overland’ and ‘he is not summoning you to a dance’ combine vividness with dry humour. The Homeric Ajax is a hero of few words, but he makes every word count, and Sophocles reworks that distinctive eloquence for his own protagonist. To this point I have explored the affiliations between the Sophoclean Ajax and his Homeric predecessor. The parallels with Homer’s Achilles are just as extensive, however, and arguably more thematically significant. In what follows I explore these affiliations.

Ajax’s Response to Insult Kyriakou observes that the Sophoclean Ajax’s ‘sense of entitlement, violent reaction [to]… perceived insult, and wish that the whole army come to harm…are reminiscent of the behaviour of the Iliadic Achilles’.³² When in Iliad 1 Agamemnon disrespects Achilles by threatening to seize Briseis, Achilles ponders whether to kill Agamemnon or check his rage (Il. 1.188 – 192). As he considers these alternatives the first impulse seems to prevail, for Achilles is in the act of drawing his sword when Athena hastily descends from Olympus and dissuades him from murdering his commander by promising him gifts three times more valuable than the captive woman whom Agamemnon is threatening to appropriate. Although Achilles obeys Athena to the extent of sheathing his sword, he does not abandon his project of retaliation, but rather broadens it. Dispatching his mother Thetis to Olympus, he charges her with persuading Zeus to favour the Trojan side in battle and bring about the deaths of Achilles’ fellow Greeks (Il. 1.407– 410). Achilles does not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of his fellow soldiers in the interest of his private revenge, but his reputation suffers no damage as a consequence. Sophocles’ Ajax also counters insult with homicidal violence, but the outcome is significantly different: as he recognises, his vengeful impulse transforms  Kyriakou 2011, 187 n. 2. For similarities (and differences) between the two heroes see also Lawall 1959, 292; Winnington-Ingram 1980, 17; Sorum 1986, 375, and Barker 2009, 286 – 290.

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him into a general object of hatred (Aj. 457– 459). After Ajax determines to kill the Greek commanders Athena intervenes to prevent carnage, just as she did with the Homeric Achilles; but instead of using persuasion to appease him she causes a ‘miscarriage of judgment’ (δυσφόρους … γνώμας, Aj. 51– 52), so that Ajax attacks livestock instead of men. When the hero comes to his senses he must confront not only his defeat in the contest of arms, but also the humiliation of having inflicted vengeance on domestic animals (Aj. 364– 367, 372– 376) and the imminent threat of death by stoning or spears (Aj. 253/4– 256 and 407– 408/9). In Sophocles as in Homer, insulting treatment triggers a hero’s decision to murder those responsible, but from this similar beginning the episodes diverge in accordance with the different destinies the mythological tradition allots the two warriors. Although the parallel with Achilles is only partial, it redounds to Ajax’s credit, for it shows his homicidal project in a less aberrant light. It thus paves the way for the hero’s reinstatement at the end of the play.

Ajax’s Intransigence We have seen that the Iliadic Ajax defends the Greek ships from Trojan fire as long as he can, but recognises when the gods have turned against him and prudently withdraws. While the Odyssean Ajax is undoubtedly intransigent, as a ghost he is not exactly comparable to Sophocles’ living, breathing hero. The Iliadic warrior who, like Sophocles’ Ajax, disregards the pleas of his friends and is accused by them of culpable hard-heartedness, is in fact Achilles.³³ Ajax is the first Homeric character to call Achilles savage and pitiless for refusing to accept Agamemnon’s offered recompense (Il. 9.628 – 632). After Diomedes, Odysseus, and Agamemnon have all sustained wounds in battle, Nestor complains to Patroclus that Achilles, for all his valor, neither cares for the Greeks nor feels pity for them.³⁴ Patroclus voices a similar reproach when the Trojans are threatening the Greek ships; he describes Achilles to his face as pitiless, the offspring not of Peleus and Thetis but of the grey sea and craggy rocks (Il. 16.33 – 35). As Achilles summons his Myrmidons to battle, he acknowledges that they too thought him pitiless (Il. 16.203 – 204). Although Achilles’ savagery only increases with his return to battle, the end of the poem brings a dramatic shift. When Achilles kills Hector and repeatedly drags his enemy’s body around the walls of Troy, even Apollo comments on the hero’s

 On Achilles and pity see Crotty 1994, 79 – 80 and passim and Kim 2000, 9 – 34 and passim.  αὐτὰρ ᾿Aχιλλεὺς / ἐσθλὸς ἐὼν Δαναῶν οὐ κήδεται οὐδ’ ἐλεαίρει, Il. 11.664– 665.

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loss of pity (ἔλεον … ἀπώλεσεν, Il. 24.44). The gods then devise a scheme to enable the rescue of Hector’s body. Four separate divine interventions are required to secure this outcome, but the principal credit belongs to the human actors: to Priam, who frames his appeal in a form that touches his adversary, and even more to Achilles, who is overcome by pity and admiration for the bereaved father and acts on his change of heart to return Hector’s corpse for burial. Sophocles’ Ajax also evinces an initial resistance to pleas for pity which is succeeded by a compassionate response, but the contrast between the two heroes stands out all the more clearly for the similarity of pattern. Ajax’s response is belated, as is Achilles’, but unlike Achilles’ it is never translated into practice. When Tecmessa begs Ajax to refrain from suicide out of consideration for his parents, pity for their child, and χάρις (gratitude) toward herself, Ajax ignores her appeal (Aj. 527– 528). Later, however, in the so-called deception speech, he acknowledges that her words have moved him, and that he ‘feels pity at leaving her a widow and the boy an orphan among my enemies’ (Aj. 652– 653). The ambiguity of his language leaves the audience unsure of his intentions,³⁵ but there can be no doubt about the outcome. Ajax remains fixed in his determination to end his life; he shows compassion for Tecmessa only in the sense that his equivocal language offers her a brief period of deluded relief. In contrast to the Homeric Achilles, Sophocles’ Ajax does not attain the ethical and emotional maturity that allows him both to empathize with another human being and to translate his empathy into action. The character who rivals and even surpasses³⁶ the Iliadic Achilles in his enlightened compassion for an enemy is Odysseus, not Ajax.³⁷ As we shall see, this consideration complicates the assessment of who qualifies as Achilles’ heir.

Ajax the Megalomaniac? Many scholars have endorsed Calchas’ accusation that the Sophoclean Ajax is arrogant, hubristic, or (in Winnington-Ingram’s forceful description) a megalo-

 For the ambiguity of οἰκτίρω δέ νιν / χήραν παρ’ ἐχθροῖς παῖδά τ’ ὀρφανὸν λιπεῖν, see Easterling 1984, 5.  In contrast to Achilles, Odysseus expresses empathy for Ajax not as a belated recognition but from the outset of the play (Aj. 121– 126).  Zanker 1992, 25; Garvie 1998, 16.

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maniac.³⁸ The textual evidence depends on five passages. Three have links to the Homeric Achilles that elucidate their tone and implications. The first passage that figures in the indictment of Ajax comes from the prologue. When Athena asks Ajax to stop torturing the animal victim whom he believes to be Odysseus, Ajax replies, ‘in other respects, Athena, I bid you fare well; but that man will pay this penalty, and no other’.³⁹ Critics are divided on the tone of this rejoinder. Finglass (ad loc.) describes it as ‘politely expressed’, and I concur. Addressing the goddess by her name alone, without appending an honourific epithet, cannot be seen as signifying a lack of respect since Odysseus does the same (Aj. 74). As for Ajax’s refusal to comply with a divine request, there is an Iliadic parallel in Achilles’ exchange with the Scamander river. Finding his waters clogged with corpses, the river god asks Achilles to take his slaughter elsewhere. The hero replies, ‘These matters will be as you order, god-cherished Scamander. But I shall not cease killing the arrogant Trojans/ until I have shut them in their city…’ (Il. 21.223 – 225). In both instances a divinity makes a request and the hero indicates general compliance while insisting on having his way in the matter at hand. The parallel suggests that when judged in epic terms, the Sophoclean Ajax’s reply to Athena does not amount to punishable defiance. The question (to which I shall return) is whether Ajax should indeed be judged in epic terms or by different, fifth-century standards. The next passage comes from the hero’s lyric lament after he has recovered from madness. He addresses the waters of the Scamander river: ‘Never more shall you look at me, who (I will make a large claim) was like nobody else whom Troy saw in the army coming from the land of Greece; but now I lie as you see me, bereft of honour’.⁴⁰ As all commentators note, the Iliadic Achilles strikes a similar note when he states, ‘I sit here beside my ships, a useless weight on the good land, / I, who am such as no other of the bronze-armoured Achaeans / in battle, though there are also others better in council’.⁴¹ The parallel suggests that Ajax’s boastful tone is not out of line for an epic warrior.⁴²  For a summary of the controversy over Ajax’s ‘hubris’ and ‘thinking big’, see Hesk 2003, 141– 148. For Ajax’s ‘megalomania’, see Winnington-Ingram 1980, 15 and 19 – 20. For the same accusation phrased in different terms see Lawall 1959, 293 and Kyriakou 2011, 189.  χαίρειν, ᾿Aθάνα, τἄλλ’ ἐγὼ σ’ ἐφίεμαι, / κεῖνος δὲ τείσει τήνδε κοὐκ ἄλλην δίκην, Aj. 112– 113.  οὐκετ’ ἄνδρα μὴ / τόνδ’ ἴδητ’ – ἔπος / ἐξερῶ μέγα –/ οἷον οὔτινα / Τρωία στρατοῦ / δέρχθη χθονὸς μολόντ’ ἀπὸ / ῾Ελλανίδος· τανῦν δ’ ἄτι- / μος ὧδε πρόκειμαι. Aj. 421– 427.  ἀλλ’ ἧμαι παρὰ νηυσὶν ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης, / τοῖος ἐὼν οἷος οὔ τις ᾿Aχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων / ἐν πολέμῳ· ἀγορῇ δέ τ’ ἀμείνονές εἰσι καὶ ἄλλοι, Il. 18.104– 106. Finglass 2011 on 421– 426 observes that the parallel was first observed by Eustathius.  Cf. Zanker 1992, 22: Ajax uses ‘a vaunting tone typical of epic’. Garvie 1998 on Aj. 423 – 426 comments that ‘such boasting is normal for an epic hero’.

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The content of the boast is a different matter. On the usual reading, Ajax here intimates that he was the best fighter among the Greeks from the outset of the expedition—a claim that flouts the unanimous testimony of the literary tradition that he was second best after Achilles as long as Achilles was alive.⁴³ If that is what Ajax is saying, it is reasonable to accuse him of megalomania. A closer look at Ajax’s phraseology, however, suggests a different interpretation. He uses the relative οἷος, which standardly ‘conveys that one thing is comparable to another, with respect to some relevant quality, but the quality need not be arranged on a scale, the way size or superiority is… On the other hand, that doesn’t exclude the possibility that the quality being envisaged is arranged on a scale…’.⁴⁴ An example of οἷος with reference to qualities that are ‘arranged on a scale’ is found in the Iliadic intertext: Achilles compares himself to the other Greeks in two specific respects, asserting his superiority in war but not in conclave. In contrast, Ajax uses οἷος in a ‘non-scalar’⁴⁵ sense. He neither specifies the quality in which he excels nor compares himself to a named rival. There is nothing in the text to suggest that he is referring to Achilles, who will not emerge as a focus of his thoughts until he has shifted from lyric lament to trimeter reflection.⁴⁶ Rather, Ajax compares his former unique⁴⁷ reputation to his current status as a dishonoured outcast.⁴⁸ He uses his past to set in relief the misery of his present. That contrast has been operative from the beginning of the play,⁴⁹ and it produces a more relevant and compelling juxtaposition than the comparison between Achilles and Ajax that critics have read into Ajax’s words. I have already mentioned the two items in Ajax’s indictment that are contained in Calchas’ hearsay reports. The first dates to before the war. Calchas reports that as Ajax prepared to depart for Troy, Telamon cautioned him to ‘desire to prevail, but always to prevail together with the god’ (Aj. 764– 765), and Ajax retorted that even a nobody could prevail with the gods’ help, but that he was confident of wresting glory even without them.

 See Jebb 1896 on Aj. 1341.  P. Probert (per litteras).  See Probert 2015, 152.  He refers specifically to Achilles at Aj. 441– 444.  As Rose 1995, 83 n. 27 observes, for Ajax ‘to claim that he was uniquely great … is subtly but importantly different from claiming explicitly to be better …’. I owe this reference to Hesk 2003, 170 n. 25.  Since Sophocles makes his Ajax’s history coextensive with the Homeric Ajax’s, the audience can assume that his former reputation was that of a superb defensive warrior.  Davidson 1975, 165.

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The context for Telamon’s admonition evokes Peleus’ parting words before his own son’s departure for Troy, as recalled to the hero by Odysseus: ‘My son, Athena and Hera will give you strength, if they so wish, but it is up to you to restrain your powerful temper within your breast, for amiability is better’.⁵⁰ As the two fathers see their sons off to war, both seek to demarcate for their benefit the divine sphere of operations from the realm of personal responsibility. Ajax answers his father with a retort whereas Achilles does not, but as the Iliadic Odysseus points out, Achilles subsequently ‘forgets’ his father’s advice (Il. 9.259) with equally damaging results. Although neither Achilles nor Ajax grasps his parent’s distinction, that failure does not warrant the conclusion that either hero is failing to think ‘as befits a human being’. Nor does Ajax’s directive to Athena to ‘stand by the other Greeks’ since he can hold the battle line on his own (Aj. 774– 775), for it is more expressive of confidence in himself than of contempt for the goddess. One additional statement by Ajax remains to be considered. His retort to Tecmessa that he is ‘no longer beholden to the gods for any service’ (θεοῖς /…οὐδὲν ἀρκεῖν … ὀφειλέτης ἔτι, Aj. 589 – 590) is harsh and over-emphatic (as Tecmessa’s alarmed response, ‘Speak words of good omen’ confirms), but reflects an understandable sense of betrayal in the face of Athena’s disastrous intervention. The statement also reflects Ajax’s painful consciousness of time’s power to alter fortune— a recurrent preoccupation that he will develop more fully in the deception speech. Ajax is not unique in speaking angrily about (or even to) divinity. The Homeric Achilles tells Apollo to his face, ‘I would punish you, if I only had the ability’ (Il. 22.20). In tragedy as well as epic, betrayed and disabused characters revile the gods.⁵¹ Neither Ajax’s quoted words nor his directly expressed sentiments are so extreme as to confirm Calchas’ diagnosis. His attitude toward the gods does not rule him out of consideration as Achilles’ legitimate successor.

Life, Death, and Reputation It is not the protagonist but Teucer, his faithful stand-in, who adumbrates the final parallel between the Iliadic Achilles and the Sophoclean Ajax. It turns on the erasure by death of distinctions that mattered in life. As Achilles angrily

 Il. 9.254– 256. For the topos of parting words spoken by fathers to sons see Il. 5.197– 200, 6.207– 210, and 11.782– 789.  Cf. Soph. Phil. 446 – 452, Eur. Hipp. 1415. Stevens 1986, 331 observes, ‘[B]itter railings against the gods are common enough in those grievously afflicted, and do not make [Ajax] a θεομάχος.’

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rejects Agamemnon’s proffered gifts, he makes successive gnomic statements in bald, emphatic asyndeton (Il. 9.318 – 320): ἴση μοῖρα μένοντι, καὶ εἰ μάλα τις πολεμίζοι· ἐν δὲ ἰῇ τιμῇ ἠμὲν κακὸς ἠδὲ καὶ ἐσθλός· κάτθαν’ ὁμῶς ὅ τ’ ἀεργὸς ἀνὴρ ὅ τε πολλὰ ἐοργώς, The portion is the same for the man who stays back and the one who fights hard. We receive a single honour, both the coward and the brave man. Death comes equally to the lazy and the proficient.

Achilles states the same point three times over. Each line features the same pair of representative warriors, described in different terms for variation’s sake: the laggard and the champion, the coward and the hero, the indolent and the energetic fighter. The first statement links Achilles’ specific plight to the human condition by means of wordplay: it references the portion (μοῖρα) that awaits every mortal, not just the portion (μοῖρα) Agamemnon has seen fit to give Achilles.⁵² The second statement might provisionally be read as another allusion to Agamemnon’s unfair distribution of goods, but that interpretation must be revisited in the light of the unambiguous following line, which clarifies that the ultimate leveller of differences is not Agamemnon but death. The distinction between the two types of warrior, so clear and consequential in life, is nullified when both meet the same end. Teucer makes a related point when he laments, ‘Alas, how quickly does gratitude to a dead man flow away from mortals and is found to abandon him’,⁵³ and adds that Ajax’s heroic actions have now been ‘all cast away and lost’ (Aj. 1271). For Teucer as for Achilles, death threatens to obliterate the reputation a warrior accrues in life. He sees a ceremonial burial as the way to safeguard Ajax’s memory and validate his heroic record, which in his view should not be threatened by a brief access of madness. What happens to a warrior’s reputation after death is a central preoccupation of the Iliad; it matters both to Achilles and to the epic poet whose song is designed to arrest the slippage brought about by time. That Teucer addresses the same issue suggests that it mattered to Sophocles as well.

 See Verdenius 1960, 348, referenced by Hainsworth 1993 ad loc.  φεῦ, τοῦ θανόντος ὡς ταχεῖά τις βροτοῖς / χάρις διαρρεῖ καὶ προδοῦσ’ ἁλίσκεται, Aj. 1266 – 1267. Lloyd-Jones 1994 and other translators render προδοῦσ’ as ‘betray’, but ‘abandon’ seems more germane to the context.

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Conclusions I have argued that Ajax bears a strong resemblance to the Homeric Ajax but an even stronger one to the Homeric Achilles. Tragedy moves easily between the epic world of the protagonists and the fifth-century world of the audience, bringing now one and now the other to the fore.⁵⁴ It is often suggested that Ajax is a figure ‘unfit for the new age’,⁵⁵ and that his resemblance to the heroes of the past serves only to stamp him as obsolete in the fifth-century world. As I read the play, however, Ajax’s ties to Achilles, when combined with his likeness to his Homeric namesake, have the opposite effect: they strengthen the epic ambience rather than undercutting it, and simultaneously they enhance the hero’s standing. There is in fact surprisingly little in the play that evokes the fifth-century polis. It is generally agreed that in the first part ‘the political and social background [is] almost exclusively Homeric’,⁵⁶ but the second part presents less of a contrast than some critics have assumed. Odysseus is hardly representative of fifth-century democratic values.⁵⁷ His insight that ‘all of us who are alive are nothing more than images… or insubstantial shadow’ (Aj. 125 – 126) comes straight from Pindar,⁵⁸ and as we have seen, his empathy for Ajax evokes the Achilles of Iliad 24. Nor, despite their up-to-date references to the laws and to the polis (Aj. 1073 – 1074, 1246 – 1249), are Menelaus or Agamemnon more modern in their outlook. Menelaus’ praise of fear as a deterrent to civic disobedience (Aj. 1073 – 1076) calls to mind not only Aeschylus’ authoritarian Aegisthus⁵⁹ but also the Iliadic Agamemnon, who framed his punishment of Achilles as a warning to the collective (Il. 1.184– 187). As for Sophocles’ Agamemnon, he speaks like ‘a blustering stage tyrant, seeking to deny his opponent the right of reply’.⁶⁰ Sophocles’ characterization of Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Odysseus offers an additional incentive to the audience to judge the protagonist in archaic terms. The contest of arms was never only about weaponry, but concerned Achilles’ broader legacy. Ajax begins after the Greeks have already awarded Achilles’ arms

 Sourvinou-Inwood 1989, 136 (also in subsequent publications) has influentially described this movement in terms of ‘zooming’ and ‘distancing’.  Knox 1961, 24.  Winnington-Ingram 1980, 63.  As claimed by (for example) Knox 1961, 21– 22 and 25, Sorum 1992, 374, Meier 1993, 182– 83, and Raaflaub 2012, 478 – 79. In contrast, Finglass 2011, 58 suggests that the play shows a ‘general lack of interest in politics’.  See P. 8.95 – 96 and, for additional examples of this imagery, Finglass 2011 ad loc.  A. Ag. 1617– 24, 1628 – 32. See Winnington-Ingram 1980, 64 and Raaflaub 2012, 477.  Barker 2009, 307.

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to Odysseus.⁶¹ It then stages a second contest as Ajax and Odysseus compete once again for the title of Achilles’ successor. Each hero has valid claims on his side. Ajax bests Odysseus when it comes to heroic prowess, but Odysseus’ display of Achillean compassion (not just once, but both on the occasion of his madness and following his death) makes it clear that whoever⁶² adjudicated the original contest of arms, the decision was not an easy one. In the end it is Odysseus who solves the dilemma; paradoxically, his Achillean qualities prompt him to hand a belated victory to Ajax. When Odysseus describes Ajax as ‘the best of the Greeks…except for Achilles’ (ἄριστον A ᾿ ργείων…πλὴν A ᾿ χιλλέως, Aj. 1340 – 1341), and declares himself ready to help with the burial, omitting nothing that is owed ‘to the best men’ (τοῖς ἀρίστοις ἀνδράσιν, Aj. 1380), he echoes the assessment made by Homer’s Odysseus in the underworld (Od. 11.556– 558) that placed the two heroes virtually on a par. Even as he ensures his adversary’s burial, Odysseus vindicates Ajax’s claim that he was unjustly deprived of Achilles’ arms.⁶³ The audience will have no trouble seconding Odysseus’ judgment. Through his composite characterization of the protagonist, Sophocles has woven proof of Odysseus’ veracity into the fabric of the play.

Bibliography Barker, E. (2009), Entering the Agon. Oxford. Bers, V. (1997), Speech in Speech. Lanham, MD. Buxton, R. G. A. (2006), ‘Weapons and Day’s White Horses’, in: I. J. F. de Jong / A. Rijksbaron (eds.), Sophocles and the Greek Language, Leiden / Boston, 13 – 23. Cairns, D. L. (2002), ‘The meaning of the veil in ancient Greek culture’, in: L. Llewellyn-Jones (ed.), Women’s Dress in the Ancient Greek World, London, 73 – 93. — (2006), ‘Values’ in: J. Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy, Oxford, 305 – 320. — (ed.) (2013), Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought, Swansea / London. Crotty, K. (1994), The Poetics of Supplication in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Ithaca. Csapo, E. / Goette, H. R. / Green, J. R. / Wilson, P. (eds.) (2014), Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century BC , Berlin / Boston. Davidson, J. F. (1975), ‘The Parodos of Sophocles’ Ajax’, in: BICS 22, 163 – 177. — (2006), ‘Sophocles and Homer: Some Issues of Vocabulary’, in: I. J. F. de Jong / A. Rijksbaron (eds.), Sophocles and the Greek Language, Leiden / Boston, 25 – 49. — (2012), ‘The Homer of Tragedy: Epic Sources and Models in Sophocles’, in: A. Markantonatos (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles, Leiden, 245 – 261. Easterling, P. E. (1984), ‘The Tragic Homer’, in: BICS 31, 1 – 8. Finglass, P. J. (2011), Sophocles: Ajax, Cambridge.

 For the critical role played by this past event, see Cairns 2006, 317.  For the play’s vagueness on this issue, see Finglass 2011, 37.  Knox 1961, 23.

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Garvie, A F. (1998), Sophocles: Ajax, Warminster. Gould, J. (1983), ‘Homeric Epic and the Tragic Moment’, in: T. Winnifrith / P. Murray / K. W. Gransden (eds.), Aspects of the Epic, London, 32 – 45. Gregory, J. (2007), ‘Donkeys and the Equine Hierarchy in Archaic Greek Literature’, in: CJ 102, 193 – 212. Hainsworth, B. (1993), The Iliad: A Commentary, Vol. 3, Books 9 – 12, Cambridge. Hesk, J. (2003), Sophocles: Ajax, London. Jebb, R. C. (1896), Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments. Part VII: The Ajax, Cambridge. Jong, I. J. F. de (2006), ‘Where Narratology Meets Stylistics: The Seven Versions of Ajax’s Madness’, in: I. J. F. de Jong / A. Rijksbaron (eds.), Sophocles and the Greek Language, Leiden / Boston, 73 – 93. Kamerbeek, J. C., (1953), The Plays of Sophocles: Commentary. Part I: The Ajax, Leiden. Kim, J. (2000), The Pity of Achilles, Lanham, MD. Kirkwood, G. M. (1965), ‘Homer and Sophocles’ Ajax’, in: M. J. Anderson (ed.), Classical Drama and its Influence, New York, 51 – 70. Knox, B. M. (1961), ‘The Ajax of Sophocles’, in: HSCP 65, 1 – 37. Kyriakou, P. (2011), The Past in Aeschylus and Sophocles, Berlin / Boston. Lardinois, A. (2006), ‘The Polysemy of Gnomic Expressions and Ajax’ Deception Speech’, in: I. J. F. de Jong / A. Rijksbaron (eds.), Sophocles and the Greek Language, Leiden / Boston, 213 – 223. Lawall, S. N. (1959), ‘Sophocles’ Ajax: Aristos…After Achilles’, in: CJ 54, 290 – 294. Lloyd-Jones, H. (1994), Sophocles: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus, vol. I, The LOEB Classical Library, Cambridge, MA. Lloyd-Jones, H. / Wilson, N. G. (eds.) (1990), Sophoclis Fabulae, Oxford. Meier, C. (1993), The Political Art of Greek Tragedy, Baltimore. Panoussi, V. (2002), ‘Vergil’s Ajax: Allusion, Tragedy, and Heroic Identity in the Aeneid’, in: CA 21, 95 – 134. Probert, P. (2015), Early Greek Relative Clauses, Oxford. Raaflaub, K. B. (2012), ‘Sophocles and Political Thought’, in: A. Markantonatos (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles, Leiden, 471 – 488. Rose, P. W. (1995), ‘Historicizing Sophocles’ Ajax’, in: B. Goff (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory, Austin, 59 – 90. Rutherford, R. B. (2012), Greek Tragic Style, Cambridge. Sorum, C. E. (1986), ‘Sophocles’ Ajax in Context’, in: CW 79, 361 – 377. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1989), ‘Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone’, in: JHS 109, 134 – 148. Stanford, W. B. (1963), Sophocles: Ajax. New York. Stevens, P. T. (1986), ‘Ajax in the Trugrede’, in: CQ 36, 327 – 336. Trapp, R. L. (1961), ‘Ajax in the Iliad’, in: CJ 56, 271 – 275. Verdenius, W. J. (1960), ‘L’association des idées comme principe de composition dans Homère, Hésiode, Théognis’, in : REG 73: 345 – 361. Winnington-Ingram, R. P. (1980), Sophocles: An Interpretation, Cambridge. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (1979), ‘The Influence of Rhetoric on Fourth-Century Tragedy’, in: CQ 29, 65 – 76. — (1980), Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy. Athens. Zanker, G. (1992), ‘Sophocles’ Ajax and the Heroic Values of the Iliad’, in: CQ 42, 20 – 25.

Francis Dunn

The Prosopon Fallacy or, Apollo in Sophocles’ Electra My subject in this paper is a relatively limited one, insofar as Apollo is mentioned infrequently and only in passing in Sophocles’ Electra, yet it has important implications for our understanding of the play, since the question of whether the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are justified often comes back to that of the god’s endorsement. My topic and its implications must both be deferred, however, for the sake of a preamble on gods in Greek tragedy, since all too often a simple phrase such as ‘Apollo in Electra’ carries with it unexamined assumptions. I therefore begin with the role of the gods before turning to individual references to Apollo in Sophocles’ Electra, and these will lead in turn to consideration of their implications for the central plot of revenge.

The Gods Jon Mikalson begins Honour Thy Gods, his book on popular religion in Greek tragedy, by differentiating the gods of Homer and drama from those of religious belief and ritual practice: ‘the Aphrodite of Euripides’ Hippolytus appears quite unlike the Aphrodite worshiped in Athens. And conversely, there are among the major divine actors of tragedy no deities similar to Zeus Ktesios, Zeus Herkeios, Demeter, Athena Hygieia, Asclepios, and most other deities central to Athenian worship.’¹

Those divine actors of tragedy – Panhellenic and anthropomorphic Olympians – are, as Mikalson notes, drawn from the epic cycles and are thus ‘products of literary fantasy and genius, not of the Greek religious spirit.’² To put this crucial point less tendentiously, the gods who play an active part in tragedy are intelligible to the audience because a long tradition of narrative poetry from Homer to Aeschylus has shaped expectations about how they will act toward humans and one another. What can we say about the inverse? If a god is mentioned in drama, but does not play an active role, how (if at all) will this god be intelligible to the audience?

 Mikalson 1991, 4.  Mikalson 1991, 5. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-009

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I propose that in such cases, if we lack cues indicating how a god is to be understood, we should withhold judgement rather than assume we are dealing with an anthropomorphic deity from the narrative tradition. To do otherwise entails what I shall call the πρόσωπον fallacy, by which I mean ascribing to a god the qualities of a dramatic character in a context where these do not apply. For example, at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women when the Chorus enters asking Zeus Aphiktor to watch over it (Ζεὺς μὲν ἀφίκτωρ ἐπίδοι προφρόνως στόλον ἡμέτερον, 1), there is nothing to suggest we should look beyond the prayer for a Zeus who will somehow take part in the action. In a similar vein, when the priestess of Apollo in the prologue of Eumenides adds to her claim of authority reaching back to Gaia and Themis that ‘Bromios occupies this place, I well know’ (Βρόμιος ἔχει τὸν χῶρον, οὐδ’ ἀμνημονῶ, 24), we have no reason to suspect that Dionysus may yet walk onstage. Shortly afterward, by contrast, the Pythia’s report of hideous creatures inside the temple (40 – 59) prepares us for an unprecedented spectacle: Furies – those incarnations of punishment and revenge – will make a shocking entrance as the Chorus of the play.³ In Sophocles’ Electra, references to Apollo involve no such cues and instead occur, as we shall see, in contexts like those naming Zeus Aphiktor and Bromios. Yet presumably because Apollo is an important divine actor in Sophocles’ model, the Oresteia, critics tend to succumb to the πρόσωπον fallacy, assuming that Apollo is somehow an offstage character in his Electra. Let us begin with a closer look at references to Apollo in Sophocles’ drama.

Apollo The market. The earliest reference to Apollo comes in the opening lines of the play as the Tutor sets the scene for Orestes, describing a series of landmarks in the exile’s home town of Mycenae: τὸ γὰρ παλαιὸν Ἄργος οὑπόθεις τόδε, τῆς οἰστροπλῆγος ἄλσος Ἰνάχου κόρης· αὕτη δ’, Ὀρέστα, τοῦ λυκοκτόνου θεοῦ ἀγορὰ Λύκειος· οὑξ ἀριστερᾶς δ’ ὅδε Ἥρας ὁ κλεινὸς ναός· οἷ δ’ ἱκάνομεν, φάσκειν Μυκήνας τὰς πολυχρύσους ὁρᾶν, πολύφθορόν τε δῶμα Πελοπιδῶν τόδε. (4– 10)

 The Life of Aeschylus reports (Page 1972, 332) that children fainted and fetuses were aborted. On the Erinyes more generally, see Sommerstein 1989, 6 – 12 and Lloyd-Jones 1990.

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This is ancient Argos you have been longing for, sacred grove of gadfly-driven Io; and this, Orestes, is the Lykeian market of the wolf-killing god; here on the right is Hera’s famous temple; and where we stand you are looking at Mycene rich in gold and this, the house of the Pelopidae, full of death.

He begins by pointing out ancient Argos (4) and the grove of Io (5), and concludes with the temple of Hera (7– 8) and the building represented by the skene, ‘this house of the Pelopidae crammed with death’ (10).⁴ In between is a curious expression, ‘and that, Orestes, is the Lykeian market of the wolf-killing god’ (6 – 7), which conflates two landmarks, the famous temple of Apollo Lykios or Lykeios in the city of Argos, and the city’s central marketplace or agora by which the temple stood. Pausanias reports that this temple was the most famous building in the city,⁵ and Thucydides confirms that the adjoining agora was the venue for displaying treaties with other states.⁶ In referring to the temple and market, the Tutor does not name Apollo but instead uses a periphrasis, ‘the wolf-killing god’, which suggests an etymology for the cult epithet Lykeios. The play’s first allusion to Apollo is thus indirect, and serves not to invoke a divine actor but to identify a prominent feature in the topography of Argos. An oracle. Our next passage comes soon afterward as Orestes, in his reply to the Tutor, recalls his visit to Delphi and the oracle’s response to his question: ἐγὼ γὰρ ἡνίχ’ ἱκόμην τὸ Πυθικὸν μαντεῖον, ὡς μάθοιμ’ ὅτῳ τρόπῳ πατρὶ δίκας ἀροίμην τῶν φονευσάντων πάρα, χρῇ μοι τοιαῦθ’ ὁ Φοῖβος ὧν πεύσῃ τάχα· ἄσκευον αὐτὸν ἀσπίδων τε καὶ στρατοῦ δόλοισι κλέψαι χειρὸς ἐνδίκους σφαγάς. (32– 37) When I arrived at the Pythian oracle, to learn in what manner to win revenge from my father’s murderers, Phoebus gave me this response, as you’ll learn: that I, not armed with shields or army, should steal just slaughter by sleight of hand.

 For discussion of this passage, see Dunn 2006.  ᾿Aργείοις δὲ τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει τὸ ἐπιφανέστατόν ἐστιν ᾿Aπόλλωνος ἱερὸν Λυκίου, Paus. 2.19.3.  ἀναγράψαι … ᾿Aργείους δὲ ἐν ἀγορᾷ ἐν τοῦ ᾿Aπόλλωνος τῷ ἱερῷ, Th. 5.47.11, from the treaty establishing the ‘Quadruple Alliance’ of 420 BC.

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These lines have been the subject of much controversy (concerning both Orestes’ question and the oracle’s answer), on which I comment in the final section of this paper. Here, I want to observe what it says and does not say about Apollo. Orestes speaks of going to consult the oracle, presenting his question, and receiving a response. Throughout, he uses language appropriate to the cultural practice of seeking guidance from the oracle in Delphi: he goes to the site or building of the oracle (μαντεῖον), he formulates a specific question he would like answered (ὡς μάθοιμ’ ὅτῳ τρόπῳ, κ.τ.λ.), and he personifies the answer by saying that ‘Phoebus gave me this oracular response’ (χρῇ μοι τοιαῦθ’ ὁ Φοῖβος).⁷ Otherwise he makes no mention of Apollo, and he makes no attempt to imply that a divinity has spoken to him or issued a command. This is in striking contrast to Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, where Orestes casts the oracular response or χρησμός (270) of Loxias as the means by which the god commands and threatens him, commanding him to take this risk (κελεύων τόνδε κίνδυνον περᾶν 270), proclaiming disaster if he fails (ἄτας … ἐξαυδώμενος / εἰ μὴ κ.τ.λ., 272– 273), instructing him to kill in revenge those who killed (ἀνταποκτεῖναι λέγων, 274), and describing in detail the punishments he will suffer if he fails to do so (276 – 283). In Sophocles, however, Orestes nowhere attributes such anthropomorphic faculties and motives to the oracle and, far from claiming to have learned the god’s purpose, reports a typically riddling oracular response. To indicate that Orestes should not make a frontal assault on the usurpers, the oracle says indirectly that he should go ‘not equipped with shields and army’, ἄσκευον … ἀσπίδων τε καὶ στρατοῦ, and then elaborates with a double metaphor, ‘to steal slaughters’, κλέψαι … σφαγάς, which mystifies as much as it clarifies. Orestes gathers that the oracle supports his mission, but nevertheless the oracle’s language, apart from the epithet ἐνδίκους, is ambivalent in tone: the killing is described as ‘slaughter’, and is to be accomplished by means of theft, κλέψαι, and deceit, δόλοισι. These lines, in other words, portray not the will of an Olympian god but the Delphic oracle’s notoriously obscure pronouncements. The oracular response is twice recalled elsewhere in the play. Just a few lines later, Orestes announces that they will now make offerings at his father’s tomb ὡς ἐφίετο, ‘as he/it instructed’ (51), thus bringing in (without explanation) a more concrete piece of the oracle’s reply, to which the Tutor likewise alludes when reminding Orestes to attend first to ‘the affairs of Loxias’, τὰ Λοξίου, by

 Likewise Dio of Prusa says of the famous oracle given to Socrates, καίτοι τοῦ ᾿Aπόλλωνος χρήσαντος ὡς εἴη σοφώτατος Ἑλλήνων καὶ βαρβάρων, naming Apollo even though he and his readers know the response was spoken by the Pythia; cf. Fontenrose 1978, 93 – 94.

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pouring libations to his father (82– 84). Near the end of the play, and after the murder of Clytemnestra, Orestes tells Electra that all is well inside the house, ᾿Aπόλλων εἰ καλῶς ἐθέσπισεν, ‘if Apollo proclaimed well’ (1425). Orestes thus distances himself from the question of justice, and he does so by deflecting responsibility not to a divine actor but to the oracular pronouncement and its less than transparent meaning. Two prayers. Twice in the play Apollo is addressed directly. These passages are prayers that frame the central episodes of the drama, the first delivered by Clytemnestra and the second by Electra. In the first case, Clytemnestra arrives onstage troubled by a dream, and after a bitter exchange with her daughter tries to assuage her own fears by praying to Apollo (644– 659). She begins by invoking him as ‘guardian’, Φοῖβος προστατήριος (637), which is not a cult epithet but simply indicates her desire for the god’s protection.⁸ When the queen comes to her specific request, she uses the epithet Λύκειος: ἃ γὰρ προσεῖδον νυκτὶ τῇδε φάσματα δισσῶν ὀνείρων, ταῦτά μοι, Λύκει’ ἄναξ, εἰ μὲν πέφηνεν ἐσθλά, δὸς τελεσφόρα, εἰ δ’ ἐχθρά, τοῖς ἐχθροῖσιν ἔμπαλιν μέθες· (644– 647) The visions I saw last night in ambiguous dreams – grant me, Lykeian lord, if their appearance was good, they be fulfilled, and if bad, turn them back against my enemies.

and she uses the same epithet when concluding her request: ταῦτ’, ὦ Λύκει’ Ἄπολλον, ἵλεως κλυὼν δὸς πᾶσιν ἡμῖν ὥσπερ ἐξαιτούμεθα. (655 – 656) Listen to me kindly, Lykeian Apollo, and give us all what we have asked for.

Clytemnestra, standing before the royal house of Mycenae, can hardly be addressing the cult god of Argos, some six miles away, nor is a cult of Apollo Lykeios attested

 The sense ‘protector’ is supported by the occurrence of ᾿Aπόλλωνι σωτῆρι in the list of gods in an oracle (D. 43.66) at the same place as ᾿Aπόλλωνι Προστατηρίῳ in D. 21.52 (cf. MacDowell 1990, ad loc.); note also the brief inscription θεοῖς προστατηρίοις, θεοῖς ἀλεξικάκοις (IK Kyme 33). The epithet is once found as a cult title (of Apollo in the Megarid, Paus. 1.44.2), and beginning in the third century BC frequently occurs in prytany decrees recording sacrifices τῷ τε ᾿Aπόλλωνι τῷ Προστατηρίῳ καὶ τεῖ ᾿Aρτέμιδι τεῖ Βουλαίαι καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις θεοῖς οἷς πάτριον ἦν (IG II2 790, 848, Agora XV 89, 111, 115, in some cases without Artemis, IG II2 674, Agora XV 78).

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for Mycenae.⁹ Rather, in seeking to avert the omen of her dream, she appeals to a particular aspect of the god – ‘Wolfish Apollo’ – to whom humans regularly turn, at least in tragedy, at moments of great danger.¹⁰ For example, in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, as Thebes is surrounded by an army of enemies, the Chorus calls upon various gods for help, including Apollo: ‘and you, Lykeian lord, be wolfish to the hostile army’ (καὶ σὺ Λύκει’ ἄναξ, Λύκειος γενοῦ στρατῷ δαΐῳ, 146). In Agamemnon, when Cassandra in her prophetic narrative is about to speak of her own murder, she first cries out to Apollo: ὀτοτοῖ, Λύκει’ Ἄπολλον· οἲ ἐγὼ ἐγώ. (1257). In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King the Chorus, having learned that the plague will not end until Laius’ murderer has been punished, cries out first to Zeus (202) and then to Apollo: ‘Lykeian lord, may your unconquered weapons be scattered in front to help us’ (Λύκει’ ἄναξ, τά τε σὰ … βέλεα θέλοιμ’ ἂν ἀδάματ’ ἐνδατεῖσθαι / ἀρωγὰ προσταθέντα, 203– 206); and later in the play, as Jocasta begins to fear the worst, she enters from the house praying that Apollo will provide a solution: ‘I come to you as suppliant, Lykeian Apollo’, πρὸς σ’, ὦ Λύκει’ Ἄπολλον … ἱκέτις ἀφῖγμαι (919 – 920). In Sophocles’ Electra Clytemnestra likewise prays that evil may be averted without requiring us to imagine a divine being offstage.¹¹ Later in our play, as Orestes goes inside to murder his mother, Electra prays to Apollo that he may succeed. She begins with a general invocation, ‘lord Apollo, listen favorably to them’, ἄναξ Ἄπολλον, ἵλεως αὐτοῖν κλύε (1376); when she comes to her specific request, she uses the same epithet as her mother: νῦν δ’, ὦ Λύκει’ Ἄπολλον, ἐξ οἵων ἔχω αἰτῶ, προπίτνω, λίσσομαι, γένου πρόφρων ἡμῖν ἀρωγὸς τῶνδε τῶν βουλευμάτων. (1379 – 1381) And now, Lykeian Apollo, by all I have I ask, beg, beseech: be friend and ally to our plans.

For Electra, this is the moment of greatest danger, so she prays to avert danger as did her mother earlier in our play, and as Jocasta did in Oedipus the King. As Claire-Françoise de Roguin observes, in Greek tragedy Apollo Lykeios is generally regarded ‘comme un dieu protecteur contre les ennemis et les malheurs de toutes sortes’.¹² It follows that these two passages, the prayers of Clytemnestra and Electra, do not presume that an offstage divinity is being aroused to action,

 Graf 1985, 220 – 226.  Full discussion in de Roguin 1999.  On the subsequent entrance of the false messenger, see next section below.  de Roguin 1999, 111.

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simply that an onstage character, in a moment of crisis, tries to ward off danger by calling upon ‘Wolfish Apollo’.¹³ A contest. Between these two prayers and at the center of the play is the Tutor’s speech reporting the death of Orestes (680 – 763). The Tutor sets his fictional account at the Pythian Games, a venue that is geographically convenient since it places the athletic contest in Phocis, where Orestes had spent his exile and befriended Pylades, and is also religiously convenient since the games were organized by the same institution, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, that instructed Orestes to ‘steal just slaughters’. Yet the Tutor’s vivid and detailed speech makes no mention of Apollo or his temple; instead, he begins by stressing the fame and splendour of the games: κεῖνος γὰρ ἐλθὼν ἐς τὸ κλεινὸν Ἑλλάδος πρόσχημ’ ἀγῶνος Δελφικῶν ἄθλων χάριν … (681– 682) He came to Greece’s famous, spectacular contest, to join the Delphic games …

The Tutor goes on to report that Orestes won every event he entered (690 – 693) – a rhetorical inflation directed at Clytemnestra (who can welcome the news more openly, since her son has died at a moment of triumph) while also heightening Electra’s grief. Incidental details present the venue and the victor in a context of aristocratic display: Orestes enters the lists a brilliant object of awe (εἰσῆλθε λαμπρός, πᾶσι τοῖς ἐκεῖ σέβας, 685) and emerges from them with ‘the all-glorious prize of victory’ (νίκης ἔχων ἐξῆλθε πάντιμον γέρας, 687); his exploits are unrivaled (οὐκ οἶδα τοιοῦδ’ ἀνδρὸς ἔργα καὶ κράτη, 689); and his success is registered in a ringing proclamation of his name, city, and noble lineage: ὠλβίζετ’, ᾿Aργεῖος μὲν ἀνακαλούμενος, ὄνομα δ’ Ὀρέστης, τοῦ τὸ κλεινὸν Ἑλλάδος ᾿Aγαμέμνονος στράτευμ’ ἀγείραντός ποτε (693 – 695). So he prospered, proclaimed an Argive, Orestes by name, son of Agamemnon who once mustered the famous Greek expedition.

The messenger speech thus not only avoids mention of Apollo but also casts the games as a secular competition among ambitious young nobles. The same venue is mentioned one other time, when Orestes in the prologue advises the Tutor to use a chariot race ἄθλοισι Πυθικοῖσι, ‘at the Pythian Games’

 As de Roguin 1999, 111– 112 notes, these attempts are usually unsuccessful.

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(49), as pretext for the false news of his death. Here too there is no mention of Apollo. A doorway. Finally, just before the matricide, Orestes asks Pylades to recognise certain gods as they both go inside the house: ἀλλ’ ὅσον τάχος χωρεῖν ἔσω, πατρῷα προσκύσανθ’ ἕδη θεῶν, ὅσοιπερ πρόπυλα ναίουσιν τάδε. (1373 – 1375) As quickly as possible go inside after venerating the seat of the household gods, all who dwell here in the porch.

The god or gods are not named, but the term προσκυνέω (1374) implies a visible gesture of respect, the phrase ‘seat of the gods’ (ἕδη / θεῶν 1374– 1375) suggests a tangible object of reverence, and the expansion ‘all who inhabit this porch’ (ὅσοιπερ πρόπυλα ναίουσιν τάδε 1375) places this object near the door. Commentators rightly conclude that we are here dealing with Apollo Aguieus or ‘Apollo of the Street’, who stood outside many homes in the form of an ‘aniconic’ or nonrepresentational column or marker.¹⁴ Characters in drama may appeal to Apollo Aguieus at crucial moments when about to enter or depart from the house. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Cassandra uses a variant of the epithet, twice crying out to Apollo Aguiates (1080 – 1081, 1085 – 1086) as she confronts the door that will lead to her death; in Euripides’ Phoenician Women, Polyneices bids farewell to the city he shall reluctantly attack by addressing Phoebus Aguieus (Φοῖβ’ ἄναξ ᾿Aγυιεῦ, 631); and in Euripides’ Electra, when Electra fears that the two newly-arrived strangers might kill her, she runs for the door with a prayer to Phoebus Apollo (ὦ Φοῖβ’ Ἄπολλον· προσπίτνω σε μὴ θανεῖν, 221).¹⁵ In the same way, Orestes and Pylades, hoping for good fortune as they enter the house on their deadly mission, salute a familiar feature of domestic architecture. To recapitulate, direct and indirect allusions to Apollo in Sophocles’ Electra involve the following: a well-known building by the agora in Argos (some distance from Mycenae); a riddling response from the oracle at Delphi; two prayers to the wolf-god intended to avert impending danger; an athletic competition among the nobility at the Pythian Games; and a feature of domestic architecture

 So Jebb 1894; Kamerbeek 1974; March 2001; on the appearance and function of the Aguieus, see Fehrentz 1993.  In a more comic vein, characters in Aristophanes and Menander express hope that the blocking figure will remain trapped inside the house by praying to ‘Lord Aguieus’ (Wasps 875) or ‘Apollo here’ (Dyskolos 659).

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called the Aguieus. Apollo is nowhere presented in this play as an offstage character; instead we have an assortment of social contexts with which the name of Apollo is in one way or another connected.

The Murders In dramatizing this story without including Apollo among its πρόσωπα, Sophocles departs from the example of Aeschylus who, as we have seen, portrays the oracle in Libation Bearers as the voice of an individual uttering promises and threats, and who furthermore brings the god onstage in Eumenides to vouch for his oracle and defend the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Apollo’s participation in the drama as absent, then present, πρόσωπον is thus closely connected, in the Oresteia, with the justice of Orestes’ actions. Euripides’ Electra varies this model, portraying the murders as unjust and Apollo as an active participant who fails to appear onstage to vouch for his instructions. Thus Orestes says, as he sets eyes on his mother, that Apollo – wrongly – told him to kill her (ὅστις μ’ ἔχρησας μητέρ’, ἣν οὐ χρῆν, κτανεῖν, 973), and at the end of the play, as the siblings lament what they have done, Castor appears on the machine instead of Apollo to vouch for the injustice of his oracle: σοφὸς δ’ ὢν οὐκ ἔχρησέ σοι σοφά (1246). Scholars who advocate either the ‘positive’ interpretation of Sophocles’ Electra (arguing that the play endorses the murders) or the ‘negative’ one (claiming that it criticizes them) equally tend to read into Sophocles a divine actor more at home in Aeschylus or Euripides. Jenny March, for example, in arguing that the matricide ‘is accomplished with the full support and approval of the gods’, claims that Apollo ‘almost seems himself to take part in the play’.¹⁶ Her evidence chiefly consists of the tenuous claim that the entrance of the Tutor immediately after Clytemnestra’s prayer to Apollo Lykeios shows the god rejecting her request; there is nothing in the text, however, to indicate that Apollo has orchestrated the entrance of the Tutor in response to Clytemnestra’s prayer. Rather, the Tutor’s entrance is a typical example of ironic timing by which a character’s wishes seem – mistakenly and temporarily – to be realized, thus heightening suspense. For example, in Women of Trachis, immediately after Deianeira voices her fear that today Heracles will die (169 – 177), a Messenger arrives with the apparent good news that her husband has returned; and in Oedipus the King, immediately after Jocasta prays that her husband’s fears are misplaced (914– 924),

 March 2001, 16.

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a Messenger arrives from Corinth with the apparent good news that Oedipus’ father has died. To infer that after Clytemnestra’s prayer in Electra, in S. M. Adams’ words, ‘at this moment … [Apollo] all but steps upon the stage himself’¹⁷ is to imagine a πρόσωπον where none exists.¹⁸ March’s other arguments are that the success of the matricide shows Apollo’s favourable response to Electra’s prayer, which simply confuses post hoc with propter hoc, and the claim that Apollo’s statue ‘is onstage throughout, giving the visual impression that he is overseeing the action’,¹⁹ which wrongly assumes that the aguieus was a likeness of Apollo.²⁰ Her argument that the god approves the action in these ways thus rests on a false assumption that Apollo is a divine actor in the drama. Some negative readings rely on similar assumptions about the god’s involvement in the action. Richard Minadeo describes an escalating tension between Apollo’s dispassionate plan for revenge and Electra’s ‘raw’ emotions²¹ which culminates in a bleak separation of human actions from divine purpose, but his argument compounds πρόσωπον fallacy with logical error. Observing contrasting themes of logos and ergon, reason and emotion, he assumes that if Apollo is associated with the former and Electra with the latter, then the god is as much a ‘dominant force’ in the play as is the heroine.²² In a similar vein, Mary Blundell describes Apollo’s divine and rational plan as increasingly remote from the ‘grim and problematic form of justice’ he has set in motion.²³ By contrast with these ironic, Euripidean readings of Apollo’s part in the drama, G. H. R. Horsley proposes a negative interpretation in which Apollo actively destroys Electra. Accepting Kells’ view that the play leads to Electra’s psychological ‘death’,²⁴ Horsley argues that because the murders have been sanctioned by Apollo, the god ‘may thus be seen to be the force behind the ruin of Elektra as a person’²⁵ – thus reading into the oracle’s response the purpose and agency of a divine actor. If, however, our play includes neither an Apollo who (as in Aeschylus) authorizes revenge, nor an Apollo whose absence (as in Euripides) undermines it, then we need to rethink both Apollo and the murders in Sophocles’ version.  Adams 1957, 71.  Similar but less emphatic is Horsley 1980, 22: ‘In that Klytaimestra is completely taken in by the [Tutor’s] tale Apollo is clearly prospering his agents’ strategy’.  March 2001, 16.  March 2001, 181.  Minadeo 1967, 132.  Minadeo 1967, 124. Cf. Minadeo 1967, 129 on ‘the play’s organic opposition of Electra and Apollo’.  Blundell 1989, 183.  Kells 1973, 25.  Horsley 1980, 25.

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To begin with the former, Apollo’s various guises have more in common with the discrete social practices of Mikalson’s popular religion than with the coherent individuals of the literary tradition. More specifically, Apollo is named in connection with social practice and the things people do: they use temples as landmarks to help find their way; they consult the oracle and often get puzzling replies; they compete for status in the athletic games; they make formal prayers in dangerous situations, and less formal gestures when about to take risks. Furthermore, in each case Apollo is presented subjectively, in terms of people’s feelings, or hopes, or fears: an exile finds comfort and reassurance in a familiar landmark; a young man facing a momentous task must rely on riddling instructions; friends and relations will welcome news of a prince’s dazzling success; those in danger will invoke disaster on their enemies instead; and those taking mortal risks will piously hope for success. These passages should be read, not for what they tell us about a supposed divine actor, but for how they characterize the individuals who speak them, and thus they guide our understanding of the murders at the level of human action, not divine will. As for the murders in Sophocles, the first two references to Apollo are made by the Tutor and Orestes as they enter plotting murder. This is a dangerous enterprise and they need to plan carefully, so the Tutor checks off, one by one, the landmarks that have guided their steps past the grove of Io and the market of Apollo to their final destination, the bloody house of the Pelopidae. Orestes answers by likewise checking off the precautions they have taken: consulting the oracle, passing themselves off as Phocians, bringing and hiding a funeral urn, and contriving a story around the chariot race at the Pythian Games. They are methodical because they need to be, to avoid being killed themselves, and despite the oracle’s riddling expression they understand it clearly enough to proceed by guile. When Orestes adds that he will leave offerings at his father’s tomb as it or he advised (ὡς ἐφίετο 51), he does not mention Apollo or the oracle because his concern is simply with what needs to be done. These pragmatic human concerns are especially striking by contrast with the divine injunctions in Aeschylus. The last three examples are spoken by Orestes and Electra as the plotters enter the house and by Orestes as he emerges shortly afterwards. The moment of gravest danger is now at hand, so Orestes prudently advises touching the aguieus, and Electra prays they will succeed; the two brief gestures pragmatically address the imminent crisis. Within fifty lines Orestes and Pylades enter the house, kill Clytemnestra, and Orestes reemerges; then, to Electra’s query how things went, Orestes famously answers, ‘it is well inside, if Apollo instructed well’ (ἐν δόμοισι μὲν / καλῶς, ᾿Aπόλλων εἰ καλῶς ἐθέσπισεν, 1424– 1425). Sophocles thus reminds us of the oracle at the very climax of the action, yet it does not

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follow that he does so in order to affirm or deny its justice. To Electra’s urgent yet indirect question, ‘Orestes, how goes it there?’ (Ὀρέστα, πῶς κυρεῖ τάδ’; 1424), her brother answers, in effect, ‘Inside the house, things are going well – those things Apollo advised’. The context does not support taking the connective εἰ either as ‘in the unlikely event that’ or as ‘since we know that’.²⁶ What Electra would like to hear, and what Orestes tells her, is something more specific than ἐν δόμοισι καλῶς, which nevertheless respects the indirection of her question. In thus reassuring his sister, Orestes also reassures himself; his perilous mission began at the Delphic oracle, and he can now proclaim that – thus far – the strategy devised there is succeeding. In the intervening scenes, Clytemnestra prays to Apollo Lykeios and the Tutor reports Orestes’ death at the Pythian Games. Clytemnestra’s appeal to Wolfish Apollo reflects the disquiet aroused by her troubling dream, a disquiet exacerbated by her unpleasant confrontation with Electra. Her prayer thus signals to the audience that, although the conspirators left the stage almost as soon as they arrived, her situation is precarious and the threat of murder is real. The Tutor’s false story, by contrast, makes no mention of Apollo; nevertheless by situating Orestes’ death at the Pythian Games, and bringing this news himself from Delphi, he reminds the viewer that his traveling companion Orestes has yet to enter from the same venue. In this play the protagonist will have to be content with several guises of Apollo but no divine agent of that name. Aeschylus’ Orestes can reasonably expect Apollo to speak on his behalf after imposing on him the double murder. Euripides’ Electra can justly feel distraught at Apollo’s failure to shoulder responsibility for the consequences of revenge. But Sophocles’ Electra finds herself in a secular world, with no access to a larger divine purpose. Her grief and anger, her despair and joy, are so compelling in this version because they are neither redeemed by divine power nor compounded by divine neglect. As she stands alone in front of the house at the end of the play, the women of the Chorus congratulate her with no mention of divinity and no proverbial allusion to the gap between humans and gods. She has suffered and persevered and there is nothing more to say: ὦ σπέρμ’ ᾿Aτρέως, ὡς πολλὰ παθὸν δι’ ἐλευθερίας μόλις ἐξῆλθες τῇ νῦν ὁρμῇ τελεωθέν. (1508 – 1510)

 MacLeod 2001, 172– 173 prefers the latter, with doxography for both views in nn. 34– 35.

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O seed of Atreus, how much you suffered before narrowly emerging in freedom, made complete with the present effort.

Bibliography Adams, S. M. (1957), Sophocles the Playwright, Toronto. Blundell, M. W. (1989), Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics, Cambridge. De Roguin, C.-F. (1999), ‘Apollon Lykeios dans la tragédie: dieu protecteur, dieu tueur, ‘dieu de l’initiation’ ’, in: Kernos 12, 99 – 123. Dunn, F. M. (2006), ‘Trope and Setting in Sophocles’ Electra’, in: I. J. F. de Jong / A. Rijksbaron (eds.), Sophocles and the Greek Language: Aspects of Diction, Syntax and Pragmatics, Leiden / Boston, 183 – 200. Fehrentz, V. (1993), ‘Der antike Agyieus’, in: JDAI 108, 123 – 196. Fontenrose, J. (1978), The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of Responses, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London. Graf, F. (1985), Nordionische Kulte. Religionsgeschichtliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den Kulten von Chios, Erythrai, Klazomenai und Phokaia, Rome. Horsley, G. H. R. (1980), ‘Apollo in Sophokles’ Elektra’, in: Antichthon 14, 18 – 29. Jebb, R. C. (ed.) (1894), Sophocles: The Electra, Cambridge. Kamerbeek, J. C. (ed.) (1974), The Plays of Sophocles, Part V: The Electra. Leiden. Kells, J. H. (ed.) (1973), Sophocles: Electra, Cambridge. Lloyd-Jones, H. (1990), ‘Erinyes, Semnai Theai, Eumenides’, in: E. M. Craik (ed.), ‘Owls to Athens’: Essays on Classical Subjects Presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, Oxford, 203 – 211. MacDowell, D. M. (ed.) (1990), Demosthenes: Against Meidias, Oxford. MacLeod, L. (2001), Dolos and Dike in Sophokles’ Elektra, Leiden. March, J. (ed.) (2001), Sophocles: Electra, Warminster. Mikalson, J. D. (1991), Honour Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy, Chapel Hill. Minadeo, R. W. (1967), ‘Plot, Theme and Meaning in Sophocles’ Electra’, in: C & M 28, 114 – 142. Page, D. (ed.) (1972), Aeschyli Septem quae Supersunt Tragoedias, Oxford. Sommerstein, A. H. (1989), Aeschylus: Eumenides, Cambridge.

Andreas Markantonatos

Failing with Intent: A Narratological Note on the ‘False Merchant Scene’ in Sophocles’ Philoctetes* In this article I shall attempt to re-approach Sophocles’ Philoctetes with the analytical means that narratology provides us with, at the same time making every effort to avoid cluttering my discussion with too much narratological jargon, while taking into account the current wide-ranging debate about certain problematical aspects of the play;¹ in fact, my aim is to shed revealing light on a particular, challenging according to many, scene of the play from an entirely new angle.² The so-called ‘False Merchant Scene’ (lines 542– 627) constitutes one of the main problems of structure and content that we confront in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. When they do not discount it, most scholars either take as a rule an unenthusiastic and sceptical stand towards that scene or let an evident perplexity show – asserting that the False Merchant scene is entirely unnecessary or at least that it constitutes, as it were, an intercalary episode, which promotes the delineation of the characters, without nonetheless contributing significantly to the furtherance of the plot.³ In any case the fact is that beyond certain exceptionally interesting contributions to a deeper understanding of the scene, contemporary criticism does not place the emphasis that is owed on the crucial narrative role that the fictitious character of the Merchant performs, a character that through

* All Sophoclean passages refer to the OCT edition of the play by H. Lloyd-Jones / N. G. Wilson. Translations of ancient texts follow the LOEB edition of Sophocles by H. Lloyd-Jones.  On various interpretative discussions of the play, see Easterling 1978; Heath 1999; Roisman 2005 and 2014 with further references; Kyriakou 2012. See moreover the recent annotated edition of the play by Schein 2013 with relevant bibliography.  For the application of narrative theory to Greek tragedy, see mainly Goward 1999; Lowe 2000, 157– 187; Markantonatos 2002, 2012, and 2013 with abundant bibliography; Lamari 2010.  The scene with the False Merchant became an object of intensive research at the end of the 19th century in Germany; cf. (e. g.) Holub 1888; Cwiklinski 1893. Later on, some critics, most notably Waldock 1951, 204, treated the scene as ‘a thoroughly unsound piece of action’; cf. also Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1917, 281– 283; Podlecki 1966, 239; Machin 1981, 485. Further, in relation to cautious judgements for the expediency of the scene, without however placing enough emphasis on the interpretative intricacies of the episode, see especially Laurenti 1961; Masaracchia 1964; Ronnet 1969, 242– 243; Garvie 1972; Østerud 1973; Ussher 1990, 3 – 4. See also Greengard 1987, 24– 27; Ringer 1998, 101– 125; Falkner 1998; Lada-Richards 2009; Schein 2014, who highlight very well the metatheatricality of the episode. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-010

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its myth-making ability aims at leading the course of the stage action, as well as offering clear signs of a purposeful narrative pattern to a fiendishly complex web of storylines and events.⁴ The truth is that prima facie the Sophoclean work creates the impression that the episode with the False Merchant is indeed not necessary, not to say superfluous and pointless – an intermezzo that is, without any essential theatrical function and expediency beyond the creation of an admittedly powerful dramatic tension. For it constitutes an indisputable fact that Philoctetes – entirely unsuspicious – has fallen victim to a trap of deception that Odysseus has set for him, while his willing accomplice Neoptolemus, who is in essence up until that moment a tame instrument in his hands, has succeeded in convincing him with his lies and indeed in winning his confidence to such a great degree, so that that miserable hermit of Lemnos tries to reciprocate his friendship to the son of Achilles and urges him and his sailors to go aboard the ship and to leave as fast as possible from that desert island (lines 530 – 534). So since, some critics suggest, Philoctetes had already been convinced to abandon – and with evident willingness indeed – his cave and to go aboard the ship of Neoptolemus, there was no reason for Sophocles to invent that episode with the disguised Merchant, interrupting awkwardly the smooth course of the plot of the play. If, however, one studies carefully the structure of Sophocles’ Philoctetes in direct connection with the development of the plot – noticing particularly the prolepsis that the poet inserts deliberately at the beginning of the play (lines 127– 131),⁵ as the new elements of the myth that the fictitious narration of the Merchant projects – he will come to the conclusion that criticism finding fault with the episode under discussion leaves much to be desired. Indeed, he will admit, I venture to hope, that the scene with the anonymous Merchant, who pretends that he is on his way to the island of Scopelos returning from Troy, should be considered necessary for the thickening of the plot and the portrayal of the characters, inseparable that is organic element of the narrative structure of the play. I shall discuss below in brief the most important elements that advocate the role and the dramatic expediency of that scene, without losing sight of the ancient text. Despite the justifiable scepticism of some critics, who consider that an exceptionally tumultuous element is unreasonably inserted into the smooth narrative flow of the play, I shall argue that the scene of the False Merchant takes so many various dimensions, that it functions as a powerful commentary,  The following contributions are noteworthy exceptions, as they refer briefly to a more general narrative function of the False Merchant scene: O’Higgins 1991, 34; Roberts 1989, 171.  In contemporary literary theory with the term prolepsis what is indicated is the foreshadowing of a future event of the plot of the play. Cf. Markantonatos 2002, 10 – 11 with further references.

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revealing mirror, and indeed enlightening doubling of the entire tragedy. To the unsympathetic criticisms that that scene is redundant and meaningless, but also it simultaneously disorientates the main aim of Sophocles, and as a theatrical act is technically inferior to the ensuing tension-filled scenes of the play, I shall offer specific arguments in support of the view that in that case the author puts on stage with incomparable dramatic skill a situation of intentional narrative import. In other words, I shall suggest that through elaborate contractions, recyclings, and refoldings of the myth, the narrative plot reaches a dangerous verge for all the characters in the False Merchant scene, and thereby the deceptive masks start to fall. At the background of the painting Sophocles draws with big strokes of the narrative brush the deeply vertical and horizontal parameters of the different dramatis personae, who under the asphyxiating pressure of the events are forced to reconsider their initial thoughts about the course of the action on the uninhabited island of Lemnos. Consequently, I shall attempt to demonstrate very briefly that the Philoctetesplay gallops towards its denouement with a clear course, without distorted and unequal narrative lines; even the seemingly superfluous narrative threads, which Sophocles inventively lets to float in the air during the False Merchant scene, are declaratory of particular characters and situations, as well as introductory to future reversals and plot twists. As curious as it may seem, often through ineffectual narrative insertions and miscalculated narrational paddings and amplifications the thematic arch is extended to unknown areas and the characters acquire the greatest possible depth. This narrative pleonasm complicates the essence and the technique of the play – the deliberately unsuccessful result of a narrative thread not only dramatises wider thematic units, but also proves microscopic of the play as a whole. As such, it is not overbold to argue that the entire scene with the Merchant augurs the forthcoming overturn; it showcases how in this play deceit succumbs gradually to the unconquerable power of truth. At the hour exactly of the apparent triumph, when Philoctetes surrenders without fighting to the fraudulent behaviour of Neoptolemus, the deceptive plannings are shattered under the weight of their own impudent nature. Odysseus’ superciliously-planned intervention with the purpose of accelerating his deceitful plot becomes an unsuccessful digression, which delays with fateful results the final success of his cunning scheme.⁶ Even at the level of dramaturgy, the episode with the False Merchant that Odysseus prepared with such caution and dexterity already from the opening scene of the play finds eventually its way under the category of the unnecessary, the intercalary, and finally the insipid and useless.

 See also Roisman 2005, 50.

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More specifically, it is not at all accidental that Sophocles already in the prologue of the drama presents Odysseus as the absolute sovereign of the narrative game.⁷ With his cautious recommendations Odysseus sets the web of the trap, a web which encompasses the entire tragedy; especially, for the case that I am examining, as I have already noted, the scene with the False Merchant is planned on basic lines at the beginning of the play. The stage curtain rises with the very experienced Odysseus giving advice to the young untried Neoptolemus as to how he will deceive Philoctetes and will acquire the much desired bows of Heracles (lines 1– 25, 54– 85). Despite the objections of Neoptolemus, who would prefer to battle in a duel with Philoctetes and not to achieve his aim with fraudulent means and knavish tricks (lines 85 – 86), Odysseus manages for a moment to quell the reservations of his inexperienced, yet obliging accomplice (lines 96 – 122); however, the justifiable hesitations of Neoptolemus that emanate from his innate politeness and his irreconcilable character convey the feeling that the attempted deceit of Philoctetes is destitute of ethical support.⁸ Besides, in order to reinforce the morale of Neoptolemus, Odysseus promises to send one of his sailors disguised as a captain of a merchant ship with the ulterior purpose of helping with his false words in the successful outcome of the mission: σὺ μὲν μένων νῦν κεῖνον ἐνθάδ’ ἐκδέχου, ἐγὼ δ’ ἄπειμι, μὴ κατοπτευθῶ παρών, καὶ τὸν σκοπὸν πρὸς ναῦν ἀποστελῶ πάλιν. καὶ δεῦρ’, ἐάν μοι τοῦ χρόνου δοκῆτέ τι κατασχολάζειν, αὖθις ἐκπέμψω πάλιν τοῦτον τὸν αὐτὸν ἄνδρα, ναυκλήρου τρόποις μορφὴν δολώσας, ὡς ἂν ἀγνοία προσῇ· οὗ δῆτα, τέκνον, ποικίλως αὐδωμένου δέχου τὰ συμφέροντα τῶν ἀεὶ λόγων. ἐγὼ δὲ πρὸς ναῦν εἶμι, σοὶ παρεὶς τάδε· Ἑρμῆς δ’ ὁ πέμπων δόλιος ἡγήσαιτο νῷν Νίκη τ’ ᾿Aθάνα Πολιάς, ἣ σῴζει μ’ ἀεί. (123 – 134) Do you stay here now and wait for him; I will be off, so as not to be seen by him, and shall send the scout back to the ship. And if you seem to me to be taking too long, I will send back that same man, disguising him as a sea captain, so that he will not be known. As he tells a cunning tale, my son, do you get what advantage you can from whatever words are spoken. I will go to the ship, leaving this to you; and may Hermes the escorter lead us with his guile, and Athena of the City, who is Victory, always my protectress.

 Cf. Kittmer 1995, 16 – 17; Roisman 2001.  Cf. Blundell 1987; Carlevale 2000, 27.

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For the most part of the play, Odysseus remains inactive and offstage; however, at a first level, the scene with the False Merchant shows that Odysseus appears to serve as the architect of the plot, a true master-plotter. Neoptolemus is presented as a worthy executive instrument in the hands of Odysseus; consequently, at a first reading, the unexpected arrival of the Merchant appears to function as a reminder of the sovereign role of Odysseus in the narrative game.⁹ Despite all that, the scene ends in being the first of a series of incomplete exits.¹⁰ Philoctetes is ready to depart with Neoptolemus, when the so-called dealer from the island of Scopelos enters the scene and prevents unwillingly their exit. The information of the Merchant clearly has an Odyssean character – narratives containing truth and lies in equal doses and appearing as completely true – and so add force to the distinctly Homeric character of the scene.¹¹ As opposed to the indisputable effectiveness of similar Odyssean narrations, the fictitious stories of the pseudo-trader, who is presented deliberately as the alter ego of Odysseus to such an extent that several scholars have vigorously argued that the Merchant is no one else than Odysseus disguised as a boatswain,¹² retard the successful issue of the mission. The initial aim of Odysseus was to facilitate the exit of Philoctetes, but the many fictitious narrations of the Merchant achieve exactly the opposite. A new crisis of his illness compels Philoctetes to interrupt his expected departure. Besides, it is not accidental that a few moments before the faint of Philoctetes, Odysseus is ruthlessly reviled for concocting such a vicious secret plan (lines 622– 625, 628 – 634, 791– 792). The Merchant declares falsely that after having fortuitously anchored at the island of Lemnos arriving from Troy he was informed by the sailors about the presence there of Neoptolemus and decided to warn him of the deceitful plans of the Argives, who sent Phoenix and the sons of Theseus, Demophon and Acamas, in order to hunt down the undisciplined son of Achilles (lines 542– 552, 561– 562). In accordance with the fictitious information of the trading-ship captain, Neoptolemus is not the only one who is being pursued by the Argives; Philoctetes himself constitutes a prominent trophy for Diomedes and Odysseus, who already have set sails with the aim of searching and arresting their old comrade in arms (lines 570 – 571, 591– 597). At this point it must be underlined that the false news, which with noteworthy skilfulness is carried by the boatswain,

 See mainly Roisman 2001.  Cf. Goward 2001, 133.  On the play’s Homeric echoes, see Beye 1970; Perysinakis 1994; Whitby 1996; Rabel 1997.  Cf. especially Ahl 1991, 211; Roisman 2001, 44– 49. Noteworthy is the fact that, according to the distribution of roles, the actor acting as Odysseus would also act as the Merchant (cf. Roisman 2005, 21). In relation to the intense metatheatricality of the play, see also Kittmer 1995, 25.

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place Neoptolemus and Philoctetes in the same destiny; in other words, both of them constitute a coveted target for the implacable Achaeans. Although the particular information is unfounded, their seemingly common fate renders more prominent the close tie that starts gradually to develop between the two heroes. It is not beyond accident that the Merchant refers to one more secret mission aiming at the capture of the son of Priam, Helenus; yet again in this deceitful abduction the intriguer Odysseus takes centre stage:¹³ ἐγώ σε τοῦτ’, ἴσως γὰρ οὐκ ἀκήκοας, πᾶν ἐκδιδάξω. μάντις ἦν τις εὐγενής, Πριάμου μὲν υἱός, ὄνομα δ’ ὠνομάζετο Ἕλενος, ὃν οὗτος νυκτὸς ἐξελθὼν μόνος ὁ πάντ’ ἀκούων αἰσχρὰ καὶ λωβήτ’ ἔπη δόλοις Ὀδυσσεὺς εἷλε· δέσμιόν τ’ ἄγων ἔδειξ’ ᾿Aχαιοῖς ἐς μέσον, θήραν καλήν· ὃς δὴ τά τ’ ἄλλ’ αὐτοῖσι πάντ’ ἐθέσπισεν καὶ τἀπὶ Τροίᾳ πέργαμ’ ὡς οὐ μή ποτε πέρσοιεν, εἰ μὴ τόνδε πείσαντες λόγῳ ἄγοιντο νήσου τῆσδ’ ἐφ’ ἧς ναίει τὰ νῦν. καὶ ταῦθ’ ὅπως ἤκουσ’ ὁ Λαέρτου τόκος τὸν μάντιν εἰπόντ’, εὐθέως ὑπέσχετο τὸν ἄνδρ’ ᾿Aχαιοῖς τόνδε δηλώσειν ἄγων· οἴοιτο μὲν μάλισθ’ ἑκούσιον λαβών, εἰ μὴ θέλοι δ’, ἄκοντα· καὶ τούτων κάρα τέμνειν ἐφεῖτο τῷ θέλοντι μὴ τυχών. (603 – 619) I shall explain all this to you, since perhaps you have not heard it! There was a noble prophet, a son of Priam, called Helenus; that man went out alone at night ‒ he of whom shameful and outrageous things are said, Odysseus ‒ and ambushed him, and brought him as a prisoner into the middle of the Achaeans, a splendid prize. He prophesied all other events to them, and told them that they would never take the towers of Troy, unless they persuaded Philoctetes and brought him from the island where he is now living. And when the son of Laertes heard that the prophet had said this, at once he promised the Achaeans that he would bring him and display him to them. He thought he would take him of his own free will, but if he refused, he would capture him against it, and if he failed, he would allow anyone who wished to cut off his head.

Despite the utterly ourageous character of the fictitious narration of the deceiving trader, it projects in the most emphatic way possible certain important parameters of the famous oracle of Helenus, who sparked off the relentless pursuit of Philoctetes.¹⁴ Though the false impressions of the boatswain undermine any

 See also Hinds 1967.  Cf. Budelmann 1999, 109 – 113.

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attempt at discovering credible information in his narrations, the image of the schemer Odysseus, who puts even his own life to the mercy of the Argives in case of failure of the mission, strengthens the tragic irony of the scene; for the cunning son of Laertes will fail miserably in his effort to bring Philoctetes to Troy and thus will risk capital punishment for the collapse of the Greek military endeavour at Troy.¹⁵ As is rendered obvious soon after, only the divine intervention of Heracles, who as possessor of truth has the right to speak with convincing eloquence, ensures the happy resolution of the drama.¹⁶ The scene of the unexpected, but catalytic appearance of the deus ex machina shows that the narrative stratagems and the fraudulent methods of Odysseus as master plotter and conspirator extraordinaire led the dramatic action to an indescribable chaos. While Neoptolemus in an outburst of confidence considers that the play springs forth towards its fated end in the fraught with guilt but confident silence of the gods, during the play he is convinced to ignore the deeper celestial plan that he himself recognised earlier on (lines 191– 200, 1326 – 1341). Indeed the appearance of Heracles paves the way for the re-telling and re-formulation of the plan with new provisions and an entirely new choice of words that become immediately acceptable by Philoctetes without in any case allowing the prestige and dignity of the much-suffering hero to be considerably blemished.¹⁷ To pull the threads together. In this paper, as briefly as I could treat a difficult interpretative issue, I tried to compromise the two opposite currents of criticism swelling about the scene with the Merchant in Philoctetes. Both the justifiable sceptical judgements for the non-usefulness of the intervention of the deceiving boatswain and the persistent attempts at the discovery of deeper meaning in that highly controversial episode show that the scene with the False Merchant is successful and multi-dimensional from the view of metatheatricality and intertextual richness. The same scene, however, which intentionally fails at the level of plot, foretokens with the strongest emphasis the final fall of Odysseus and the complete failure of his cunning plans. Additionally, and more broadly, from the brief examination that preceded it was also rendered, I hope, evident that the scene with the trader from Scopelos proves that in this play each narrative point should be appreciated in accordance with the wider dramatic context; for seldom does it adjust to carefully-calculated secret plans and overconfident machinations. Consequently, the False Merchant scene constitutes a narrational firework (hence the complete identification of the tradingship captain with Odysseus) prefiguring with its fizzling out in the black sky of the  See also Falkner 1998, 35 – 37.  Cf. Segal 1981, 337– 340.  Cf. (e. g.) Kirkwood 1994; Belfiore 1994, 128 – 129; Kittmer 1995, 29 – 35; Roisman 1997, 162– 166; Hawkins 1999, 356 – 357; Carlevale 2000, 53 – 55.

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play the final defeat of the conspiracy, an evocative narrative doubling of the drama indelibly sealed with the same failed resolution for Odysseus and his deceitful plannings.

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Laurenti, R. (1961), ‘Interpretazione del Filottete di Sofocle’, in: Dioniso 35.2, 36 – 57. Lowe, N. J. (2000), The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative, Cambridge. Machin, A. (1981), Cohérence et continuité dans le théâtre de Sophocle. Haute Ville PQ. Markantonatos, A. (2002), Tragic Narrative: A Narratological Study of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Berlin / New York. — (2012), ‘Narratology of Drama: Sophocles the Storyteller’, in: A. Markantonatos (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles, Leiden / Boston, 349 – 366. — (2013), Euripides’ Alcestis: Narrative, Myth, and Religion, Berlin / Boston. Masaracchia, A. (1964), ‘La scena dell’ ἔμπορος nel Filottete di Sofocle’, in: Maia 16, 79 – 98. O’Higgins, D. (1991), ‘Narrators and Narrative in the Philoctetes of Sophocles’, in: Ramus 20.1, 87 – 106. Østerud, S. (1973), ‘The Intermezzo with the False Merchant in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in: C & M 9, 10 – 26. Perysinakis, I. (1994), ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the Homeric Epics: An Anthropological Approach’, in: Metis 9 – 10, 377 – 389. Podlecki, A. J. (1966), ‘The Power of the Word in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in: GRBS 7, 233 – 250. Rabel, R. J. (1997), ‘Sophocles’ Philoctetes and the Interpretation of Iliad 9’, in: Arethusa 30, 297 – 307. Ringer, M. (1998), Electra and the Empty Urn: Metatheater and Role Playing in Sophocles, Chapel Hill. Roberts, D. (1989), ‘Different Stories: Sophoclean Narrative(s) in the Philoctetes’, in: TAPA 119, 161 – 176. Roisman, H. M. (1997), ‘The Appropriation of a Son: Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in: GRBS 38.2, 127 – 172. — (2001), ‘The Ever-Present Odysseus: Eavesdropping and Disguise in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in: Eranos 99.1, 38 – 53. — (2005), Sophocles: Philoctetes, London. — (2014), ‘Sophocles: Philoctetes’, in: H. M. Roisman (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy, Chichester, U.K., vol. III, 1309 – 1316. Ronnet, G. (1969), Sophocle poète tragique, Paris. Schein, S. L. (2013), Sophocles: Philoctetes, Cambridge. — (2014), ‘The Scene with the False Merchant in Sophokles’ Philoctetes’, in: Dioniso 4, 65 – 81. Segal, C. (1981), Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, Cambridge, MA / London. Ussher, R. G. (ed.) (1990), Sophocles: Philoctetes, Warminster. Waldock, A. J. A. (1951), Sophocles the Dramatist, Cambridge. Whitby, M. (1996), ‘Telemachus Transformed? The Origins of Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes’, in: G & R 43.1, 31 – 47. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, T. von (1917), Die Dramatische Technik des Sophokles, Berlin.

Ioannis N. Perysinakis

Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Euripides’ Electra (367 – 390) and the Poetics of the Play* Introductory

Two introductory remarks are necessary: (i) Greek society developed more rapidly than did its values, or the presuppositions on which the values were based. By the end of the fifth century the Greeks faced serious problems, not because they had abandoned traditional values to which they needed to be recalled, but because they retained them in a situation far different from that in which the values had developed and were appropriate. (ii) ‘From Homer onwards the chief problem of Greek values was the need to discover a means of relating dikaios to agathos, arete and associated words in such a way as to make dikaiosyne either the whole or the part of arete, and hence render it an essential element of the most attractive group of values; or alternatively, as a second best, to demonstrate or assert that to be dikaios is a necessary … means to becoming or remaining agathos, to the desired state of existence in this world, or to happiness in the next’.¹ The values of the Homeric world in fact persist throughout the fifth century. But they do not persist unchallenged. What is needed is a use of agathos to commend, or a use of kakos to decry, a man who falls short in respect of the quiet virtues.² Two quotations, one employing arete, the second agathos, will serve both to display the usage and to suggest that it cannot be unintentional. The first passage is ascribed to Euripides’ Heracleidae (incert. fr. 853 N2=Kan.). In the second passage under discussion, from the Electra Euripides rejected many other qualities in virtue of which men had hitherto been termed agathoi, and claimed that the Autourgos was the truly agathos. ³ Orestes begins to reflect upon the nature of euandria, a word which, com* This paper consists in fact of part iv; parts i-iii, which constitute another paper with a similar title, are briefly mentioned only for the sake of clarity. I am grateful to Prof. M. Edwards who read this paper, made valuabe remarks and improved its English; for whatever blemishes remaining the responsibility is mine.  Adkins 1960, 153.  Adkins 1960, 172. Adkins entitles ch. 9 of Adkins 1960 ‘Infiltration of morality’, where he discusses such passages.  Adkins 1960, 176 – 178 and 195; Adkins 1972, 115 – 117. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-011

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mending the man most valued, in traditional thought denotes and commends courage.

I Orestes’ Speech in 367 – 390: Re-Evaluation of Aretai ⁴ In 380 – 385 ‘Aristos clearly commends self-control, a complete departure from traditional usage. The quieter virtues are to have their place, and men are to be judged by what they do, not by what they seem to be. The violence of this sudden turn to the audience is to be explained by the fact that it is his own habits of thought, as well as those of his audience, that Euripides is trying to eradicate’.⁵ The passage gives a radical impression of Euripides’ social values. ‘This is a powerful appeal, whose vehemence is perhaps explained by the fact that it seems to be not only of the assumptions and linguistic behaviour of the audience that Euripides is trying to change, but his own… But nowhere else in the extant complete plays of Euripides is any male character commended as agathos for self-control or for any co-operative excellence’.⁶ In lines 386 – 390 ‘The self-controlled man is agathos because self-controlled men are best at the organization of their cities and their own houses in the interests of prosperity: these new aretai, justice and self-control, have been enrolled on precisely the same terms as the old ones… Dikaiosyne might become part (or even the whole) of arete, could it be realized that the quieter virtues are essential to the stability and prosperity of society; and society seems at last to have realized this’.⁷ In this situation the success resulting from administration is the valued goal, to which all else is a means. If self-control is acknowledged to be a  Diggle’s recent OCT follows Wilamowitz in deleting 373 – 379 and 386 – 390. Cf. Reeve 1973, 151– 153. Goldhill 1986 persuasively defends the section 367– 400. But, as Goldhill argues (1986, 158), what is at stake is not merely the bracketing of several lines, but the criteria and methods to be adopted in approaching the criticism of a Euripidean text. I follow the traditional text and Goldhill. Cf. Kovacs 1985 on the influence of literary upon textual criticism.  Adkins 1960, 177. Cf. also Hipp. 409 ff., Androm. 766 ff.; both of which show tension, but adhere to traditional usages (Adkins 1960, 191, n. 12).  Adkins 1972, 116; Donlan 1980, 150 – 151.  Adkins 1960, 70, 195 and 215 (n. 3). These lines (386 – 390) were excised by Wilamowitz as being irrelevant. Cropp 2013, ad 367– 400. Denniston 1939, repr. 1960, ad loc. agrees that these lines are irrelevant, but adds: ‘But it does not follow with certainty that Euripides could not have put it in’. Adkins 1960, 215, n. 2 adds: ‘I have no doubt at all that the lines should stand where they do: they are the explanation of the foregoing lines, which at this period certainly stand in need of explanation’. Cf. note 4.

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necessary means, it will be valued. In the homonymous dialogue, Meno was saying that the arete of a man is to eu dioikein, administer well, his city (73a6 ff.). And it is evident from the passage as a whole that Meno’s goal is competitive, and eu dioikein means administrating efficiently, not administrating justly. What in fact emerges from Orestes’ speech is that agathos has become the good citizen, the agathos polites. ⁸

II Re-Evaluation of Aretai in Euripides’ Fragmentary Plays This seems to be the only passage in the extant complete plays in which agathos, in reference to a man, is identified with or analytically related to the quiet co-operative virtues. Adkins also cites three usages very close to that from Electra in Euripides’ fragments. The first is fr. 495.40 – 43 N2=Kan. (Melanippe); the second fr. 336 N2=Kan. (Diktys); and the third fr. 282.23 – 28 N2=Kan. (Autolycus). To these I have added frr. 61b-c N2 (Alexander), and frr. 199, 200 and 194 N2 (Antiope)⁹, and Xanthakis-Karamanos has added Astydamas fr. 8 N2.

III Criteria for Virtue on Re-Evaluation of Aretai in Orestes’ Speech (i) Arete, Wealth and Eugeneia In ancient Greek society agathos commends the most admired type of man; and he is the man who is eugenes, brave in war and in peace, successful, of high social and political standing and who possesses wealth. But the equation of wealth with nobility breaks down when the aristocratic landowner becomes impoverished and the merchant class arises thanks to colonization and coinage during the Lyric Age of Greece. Euripides’ plays are full of speculations as to the relation between wealth, nobility and virtue. Traditionally nobility is ancestral wealth. In other cases, nobility is represented as something different from wealth, but less valuable. The Autourgos incorporates some of these behaviours. In his

 Adkins 1972, 117, 133; Adkins 1960, 198.  Gibert 2009; Nightingale 1995, 73, 79, 87: Plato consciously adapted a tragic model (Euripides’ Antiope) when he wrote the Gorgias. 73, 79, 87.

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work on nobility Aristotle accepts that it is disputed who those are who ought to be called eugeneis. Eugeneis are οἱ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν πάλαι, not ‘those with ancestral wealth’ (τοὺς ἐκ πάλαι πλουσίων) as Simonides said (fr. 2 Ross, 47 g Campbell). Nobility is arete of family, stock (genos), and arete of spoudaioi; a genos is spoudaion in which many spoudaioi are born by nature. Aristotle speaks of interior moral virtue.

(ii) Phronesis, Ethos, Euboulia Orestes invites the Athenians to come to their senses and judge the nobility of mortals by their way of life and their character (383 – 385). It is well-known that ‘virtue of character (i. e. of ethos) results from habit (ethos)’. Therefore, ‘we acquire virtues, just as we acquire crafts, by having previously activated them’ (Arist. E.N. 1103a 14– 20, 24– 26, 32– 1103b2, Irwin). Orestes praises Autourgos for his self-control over the organization of his city and his house in the interests of prosperity. His virtues are phronesis (intelligence), euboulia, dikaiosyne and sophrosyne. Euripides fr. 486 Kan. (δικαιοσύνας τὸ χρύσεον πρόσωπον / οὔθ᾽ ἕσπερος οὔθ᾽ ἑῷος οὕτω θαυμαστός, Melanippe Wise), which is used in a metaphor by Aristotle in his description of dikaiosyne (1129b 19 – 31), is adduced to show Euripides’ emphasis on justice (cf. fr. 506 Kan.).

IV Re-Evaluation of Aretai and the Poetics of Euripides’ Electra (a) Structure of Orestes’ Speech and Euripides’ Dramatic Technique Orestes’ speech is generally condemned as dramatically irrelevant philosophizing. Orestes speaks his lines without the farmer being thought to hear them; although Orestes and Pylades are invited into the cottage at 338, it is not until 393 that Orestes accepts the invitation.¹⁰ The train of argument, however, is as follows. It is difficult to judge euandria accurately (367), for the natures of mortal men are in confusion: the offspring e. g. of a gennaios, nobleman, is nothing, while good children come from worthless fathers; also, I have seen a rich man famined in spirit, and great judgment in a poor body. How, then, will one  Goldhill 1986, 160 – 162; Cropp 1988, 22013, ad 367– 400.

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judge (373)? By wealth? A wicked standard. By poverty? But poverty brings its own sickness. Arms? A strong man need not be good. Therefore, it is best to let such criteria lie (379). Look, this man, Autourgos, a man of the people, has proved to be aristos. Therefore, come to your senses, and determine who is eugenes by his character and behaviour (380 – 385). For such men administer well both their cities and their own households (386 – 390).¹¹ The sentiment in 379 (it is best to let this subject go as it will) is said to have shocked Socrates so much that he left the theatre (Diog. Laert. 2.33). Socrates said γελοῖον εἶναι ἀνδράποδον μὲν μὴ εὑρισκόμενον ἀξιοῦν ζητεῖν, ἀρετὴν δ᾽ οὕτως ἐᾶν ἀπολωλέναι. And this seems in accord with Socrates’ teaching (and reminds us of Theognis 183 ff.). This point for Euripides was the most advanced point on stage with regard to the plot; for Socrates it was the beginning of his elenchus. The Athenians, however, were ready to listen to generalizations on this subject. Cf. E. Suppl. 913 – 917: ‘courage is teachable … So educate your children’ (ἡ δ’ εὐανδρία διδακτόν … οὕτω παῖδας εὖ παιδεύετε), and Pl. La. 189d. In the structure of thought there are two general ascertainments in 367 and 373, the criteria on which each of them is based, and a conclusion in 379. Then, after the refusal of the traditional values, a positive exhortation follows using Autourgos as a paradigm, and the criteria for the new evaluation. The whole structure constitutes a priamel. The two general ascertainments and the criteria on which they are based constitute the foil, while Autourgos and what he stands for (380 – 385 and 386 – 390) constitute the climax (or cap).¹² Euripides’ re-evaluation of aretai in Electra is not the only one in Greek literature. Before him Tyrtaeus, Xenophanes and Theognis had re-evaluated virtues usually in priamels, and after him Plato in the Republic and the Laws. After rejecting one by one various excellences in a long priamel Tyrtaeus ends with bravery in war, which he recognises as the only virtue, ‘this is excellence’ (12W.13). Similarly after rejecting various forms of athletic virtue and other privileges Xenophanes ends with his own sophie, political wisdom (2W.12), which fattens the city’s treasury. Theognis protests that for the majority of people wealth is best and that for all people wealth has the greatest power (699 – 719). For Simonides, only a god could have the privilege of being good, agathos; a man cannot avoid being bad, kakos, when he is in the grip of irresistible misfortune: when he fares well he is good, when he fares ill he is bad (542.14– 18 PMG). Aristotle makes eugeneia the subject of philosophical analysis.

 Goldhill 1986, 159; O’Brien 1964, 32.  For priamel cf. Bundy 1986, 4– 10; Georgantzoglou 2005, 221– 223; Race 2006, 104– 107.

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Euripides re-evaluates arete and its components under the pressure of the fifth-century enlightment and the claims of people participating in democracy, and the confusion during the Peloponnesian War. Plato is under the influence of Euripides, or responds in the same way under the pressure of society or his philosophical programme, when he re-evaluates and classifies the virtues in a different order from the usual one. In the Laws, one should resort to a form of education ‘as a result of which a man would be not only agathos in war, but also capable of administering his city; the type of man who, as we said at the beginning, is really more skilled in war than the warriors of Tyrtaeus; the man who honours courage as the fourth grade of arete, not the first, whether it is manifested in individuals or in the city as a whole’ (Lg. 666e). And in a second re-evaluation, on a somewhat different calculation, the brave deeds of the soldier are to be ranked second: ‘let there be laid down this law coupled with laudation, a law which counsels the people to honour to a lesser extent those agathoi who preserve the city whether by acts of courage or by stratagems of war; for the greatest honour is to be given to those who are able to observe to an outstanding degree the written pronouncements of their good legislators’ (922a).¹³ Guthrie examines Orestes’ reflections in Elecrta 367 ff. under the unity ‘social equality’, and includes Antiphon B 44 DK, Aristotle On Nobility of Birth (who also cites Lycophron, fr. 1 Ross), E. Dictys fr. 336 N2, Alexander frr. 61b and 61c N2. Lycophron says that ‘with regard to good birth, I for my part am quite at a loss to say whom one should call well-born’. There is a division of opinion and obscurity of statement, particularly about the significance of good birth, ‘and in truth there is no difference between the low-born and the well-born’.¹⁴ In a well-documented article on Electra 367– 400 Goldhill addresses the specific philological question of the syntax and staging, and at greater length considers the structure and relevance of Orestes’ remarks. He concludes with three general points in support of the overall relevance of Orestes’ speech in its context. ‘First, it is a typically Euripidean technique for a character to utilize a series of standard rhetorical tropes which, in the ironic deformation of their precise context, illuminate the character himself, his situation, and his inadequate understading of the situation… Second, novel rhetoric in the mouth of a traditional character is an essential part of Euripides’ rewriting, or re-evaluation, of inherital myths, ethos, and social values. So here, Orestes’ disquisition on the failure of the traditional criteria to evaluate character adequately is an essential and ironic part of Euripides’ questioning of the adequacy of the traditional depictions and

 Adkins 1960, 293, 294.  Guthrie 1979, III.1, 152– 155.

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evaluations of Orestes as hero. Third, this speech is clearly interwoven into the thematic texture of the play and demonstates, moreover, many of the interests of the other dramas of Euripides’.¹⁵ Commenting on Euripides’ dramatic technique in general Arrowsmith argues that ‘Euripides’ favorite technique for demonstrating the new dissonance in Athenian culture, the disparity between putative values and real values, is simple realism of the pattern λόγῳ μέν… ἔργῳ δέ. But it is balanced at times by the converse technique – allowing the myth to criticize the everyday reality: λόγῳ μέν… ἔργῳ δέ. And these exceptions are important, since they show us that Euripides’ realism is not a matter of simple anti-traditionalism, but consistent dramatic technique’. (cf. Pl. Ap. 32d1). This is in particular true for Orestes’ speech. That Euripides was an innovator is not an altogether new idea. But ‘Euripides’ theater is no less revolutionary than his ideas, and his ideas are implicitly expressed in the assumptions of his theater and his dramatic hypotheses. In short, his theater is his ideas’.¹⁶ Dissonance of appearance and reality, of legend and truth are combined in Orestes’ speech and character, and the characters of Autourgos and Electra. Arnott has persuasively shown that ‘the revolutionism of the play lies less in the fact of deglamorization itself, and more in the use made by Euripides of two sophisticated techniques which are designated to pinpoint the dichotomy between the heroic, royal past of myth and the unglamorized, democratic present of reality’. Both techniques depend on the ‘double view’ of certain characters and actions; both use the ironic mode in a new and special way; both techniques imply the criticism of the old heroic code, or the myth tradition; and both techniques focus particularly on the character, words, and actions of Electra herself. One of the techniques functions through imagery, the other through characterization. Euripides asks his audience to see each of the characters of Clytemestra, Orestes, Electra herself and Aegisthus in two ways, as contemporary, unheroic people, but also through the distorting lens of Electra. And he concludes that no less important than Euripides’ message is ‘his novel application of techniques such as the double view to reinforce his message, both in the imagery and in the

 Goldhill 1986, 171, 164– 167; Goldhill 1990 repr., 253. Cf. O’Brien 1964, 32– 33; Lucas 1969 repr., 238 – 239. Cf. Grube 1973, 304. The relevance of this speech is no way invalidated by the usual anachronism. Concerned mainly with dramatic psychology, Grube 1973, 314 judges Electra to be Euripides’ masterpiece at least in character-portrayal. Orestes’ statements are characterizing enough of him at this point in the play, they do contribute their mite of wisdom to the overall consideration of value the play is conducting, and they point towards a fuller appreciation of Euripides’ dramatic poetry: Mulryne 1977, 47, 49 – 50.  Arrowsmith 1963, 39, 52.

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presentation of character’.¹⁷ Orestes’ philosophical speech in 367 ff. functions through this ‘double view’ in both ways, in itself and through Orestes’ and Electra’s vision in comparison. In the structure of Euripides’ Electra, Kubo uncovers an interesting aspect of his dramaturgical attitude. ‘When Euripides seeks truth or meaning as a dramatist in a given myth, for example the myth of Electra, his search leads him to uncover another myth hidden underneath’.¹⁸ Orestes’ speech from its highly schematic nature, Adkins suggests, seems to be a borrowing from some sophist.¹⁹ And he may be right, though in fact, I think, Euripides is composing in a sophistic spirit. Goldhill has shown how the sophists do not merely constitute an intellectual background or influence on the literary world of tragedy, ‘rather, tragedy and sophistic writing both attest to a radical series of tensions in the language and ideology of the city of fifth-century Athens’. The connection between the sophists and tragedy has been seen as an important indication of the radical tensions that draw together sophistic and tragic questions about man’s place in the order of things.²⁰ He also has shown that for Euripides ‘innovativeness is developed not merely in the new material of his plots, the experimental use of lyric, or his deglamorization of myth, but also in his tragedies’ self-reflexive sense of theatre as theatre’. But these elements of self-reflexive and transgressive manipulation of the conventions of genre are deeply interwoven in the play’s thematic texture. The interest in the relations between inward and outward signs and attitudes of behaviour, the role of the past in the determination of the present, all these innovative elements are implicated in Euripides’ self-reflexive drama.²¹ Euripides’ engagement with the sophists has often been regretted as a dramatic failing. But in contrast it has been shown that Euripides ‘effectively transforms both the background of war and the new skeptical thinking, so that far from pointing to the decline of tragedy, these features in fact make the plays all the more interrogatory and powerful’. Euripides was a powerful and penetrat-

 Arnott 1981, 181, 190 and passim; Hammond 1985, 375. Electra’s point of view in Euripides’ Electra is contrasted by other points of view, Harder 1995, 24.  Kubo 1967, 29 – 30.  Adkins 1960, 178. Cf. Johansen 1959, 97, in Goldhill 1986, 159.  Goldhill 1990 repr., 243, 244.  Goldhill 1990 repr., 244, 253 and 264; Arrowsmith 1963, 42. On Euripides and the sophists cf. Conacher 1998; Allan 1999 – 2000 and Allan 2005. For a summary of the theory of Euripides’ ‘killing’ of traditional tragedy see Kovacs 1978, vol. 3, 143 – 144; Burian 1997, 205 – 208; Goff 1999 – 2000.

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ing thinker who explored contemporary ideas in an individual way.²² Willink suggested that Euripides exploited his contemporary world in order to enhance the aesthetic appeal of his essentially mythical dramas, and that he refashioned myth to say things about his contemporary world. And Kovacs argued that in Euripides’ Andromache instead of tragedy being modernised, modernity is tragedified.²³ In Aristotle’s definition, ‘tragedy is a representation / imitation of a serious (spoudaia), complete action, which has magnitude’ (Poet. 1449b 23, Janko). Spoudaia is the action of spoudaioi men: spoudaioi are the traditional agathoi. ²⁴ The nature of epic poetry compared to that of tragedy is that ‘epic poetry follows tragedy insofar as it is a representation of serious people which uses speech in verse’ (1449b 8 – 9). Therefore, tragedy is a representation of actions of spoudaioi men; epic poetry is about the klea of agathoi men and gods, which the singers celebrate, or the klea of men who were heroes of previous generations (Od. 1.337– 338, Il. 9.189, 524); the klea of men and representation of spoudaia action is equalized in terms of literature. The Autourgos is Euripides’ invention and he is not a ‘serious’ man. That Euripides feels that he can add something to the features of the myth means that part of reality seen by means of a telescope (according to the very nature of the myth) may become a myth of ordinary political and social life. Myths are traditional tales relevant to society. This is the very realism of Euripides’ tragedy. We must bear in mind that all Greek literature is from the side of the agathos. The Autourgos is the only character in Greek tragedy, though secondary, who is not an agathos. Themistocles ascribes the defeat of the Persians, according to Herodotus, to the gods: ‘it is not we who have achieved this, but gods and heroes’ (8.109.3). In such feelings ‘lie the roots of Aeschylus’ realisation that human events are interwoven with the divine. This knowledge is basic to his tragedies as nothing else is. Here, too, is that significant interplay between community and individual … All this we shall find clearly expressed in his work, especially in the Oresteia’.²⁵ In the Persai of Aeschylus history is tragedified. Tragedy derives its reliability and authenticity in the first place from the validity of the mythological tradition itself, which even the modernist Euripides himself does not question. A second source of drama’s association with the  Allan 1999 – 2000, 156.  Willink 1986, xxv-xxvi; Kovacs 1980, 82.  Analyzing ch. 13 of Aristotle’s Poetics, Adkins 1966 argues on the best kind of tragedy. Cf. Wohl 2013; Cairns 2005, 305.  Lesky 1965, 1978 repr., 57.

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truth is its relation with the political, social and intellectual reality of the poet’s age, a relationship, of course, indirect and allusive, which may be traced by means of some anachronisms or certain ideas concerning contemporary sociopolitical intellectual issues. In this way the historical reality, as well as contemporary intellectual inquiries, e. g. the debate about the nature of the truth and the law in the frame of the sophistic movement, filtered into drama indirectly, but clearly. Aeschylus and Sophocles modernise the myth, but they do not criticise it intensively.²⁶ Easterling chooses the Electra plays as an example of how one play might be designed to recall another through what was shown on stage. In Aeschylus’ Cho. Electra pours offerings and prays for vengeance at Agamemnon’s tomb, in the Sophoclean play the urn contains the (supposed) ashes of her dead brother, and in Euripides’ the urn becomes the water-pot, which is the emblem of Electra’s humble life-style. Each of the later dramatists seems to exploit the power of the stage picture to recall another play. And Burian adds that ‘in the Euripidean version, self-conscious deviation from past presentations becomes the means of forcing the audience to rethink every facet of character, motivation, and the very meaning of the action’.²⁷ The water-pot scene is not only the emblem of Electra’s humble life-style, but the every day realism of the people. Nevertheless, the treatment of the myth by the three tragedians is not the aim of this paper; nor the investigation of the characters and the plot of the relevant plays.²⁸ We are interested (i) in moral values and re-evaluation of aretai in Orestes’ speech and (ii) their relation with other fragmentary plays of Euripides and other texts, (iii) the criteria for virtue on re-evaluation of aretai in Orestes’ speech, and (iv) whether they affect the poetics of the play, i. e. decisions, characters and plot (μῦθος) of Euripides’ Electra; especially the fourth, since the first, second and third were the subjects of another study.

 Iakov 1998, 41– 66, esp. 50, 56, 58, 61. Cf. Konstan 2008, 79, who suggests that the abstract noun eleutheria in S. El. 1508 – 1510 would appear to be employed in the political sense of freedom from tyranny, the restoration of the democratic constitution in Athens and the defeat of the oligarchic unsurpers.  Easterling 1997, 168 – 169; Burian 1997, 179 – 180. Cf. Hammond 1985, 380, 386 – 387.  Cf. Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., xxvi-xxxiii; Cropp 1988, xliii-l; Cropp 2013, 20 – 31; Roisman / Luschnig 2011, 6 – 11.

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(b) The Autourgos The Autourgos is Euripides’ invention. Orestes has discovered that the Autourgos has not attempted to consummate his marriage with Electra, whom Aegisthus had given to him in marriage on the grounds that such a husband would not be encouraged by the match to attempt to seize the throne which he had usurped from Agamemnon (22– 23). We need to bear in mind that Electra, according to the myth, should be married to Pylades as a virgin. It is a child of Electra that the king and queen fear; and it is an irony that the queen will be killed in the circumstances she dreaded: vengeance at the hands of a male child of Electra, the dreaded παῖς ποινάτωρ (22– 23, 268).²⁹ The Autourgos is poor and of humble birth, but we have been informed that he is of a noble family which has come down in the world (34– 42). Euripides used the well-known motif from Homer that secondary characters in the epics come from noble origin, as Eumaeus, Eurycleia, Thersites. The Autourgos remarks that noble birth is soon overlooked when one has no wealth to support it. He is self-restrained by dike, not wanting to commit an outrage (hybrizein) against Electra’s parents (257), and not wishing ‘to dishonour Orestes’ (365).³⁰ He invites the guests inside his home, and declares ‘even if I was born poor, I will not show myself ignoble in manner’ (362– 363). The observations of Orestes on nobility were occasioned by the farmer’s character. The well-born Homeric agathos, faced with hospitality from a poor farmer, attempts to comment on the situation and the political situation of his time.³¹ Electra defines the guests as εὐγενεῖς for they are μείζονες, of higher standing than the Autourgos, in terms of birth, wealth and appearance. The Autourgos himself replies that ‘if they are as noble as they appear to be, will they not be content equally in modest and in grand circumstances?’ (405 – 407, transl. Kovacs). This is a conscious moralisation of traditional values. With Electra’s farmer-husband in the Euripidean version, the essential fact is that the dramatist has deployed human relationship within the story in such a way as to break through the crust of type-distinction founded on status.³² We do not experience the shock from the Autourgos presence on stage, ‘but Euripides will surely have secured from his first audience the response he wanted. They will have been with Orestes as he pondered the mysterious separation of

 O’Brien 1964, 19, 26; Zeitlin 2003, 279.  Euripides has transferred the prayer for piety and modest mind Electra prays in A. Cho. 140 – 141, alluded in the Electra, to the characteristics of the Autourgos, as she describes him; Sheppard 1918, 137.  Cf. O’Brien 1964, 32– 33; Goldhill 1986, 171. Cf. above III.i (eugeneia).  Jones 1980 repr., 243.

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personal merit and exalted status’.³³ As Conacher put it in a programmatic remark, Euripides ‘was constantly inventing, under the pressure of his complex view of reality, new forms in which to cast his varied perceptions of the sources of human tragedy’.³⁴ Euripides accentuates ‘the multiple moral dimension of his characters. Every one of them is in some sense an exhibit of the sophistic perception that human character is altered by suffering’; their function are ‘specifications of the shaping ideas of the play’.³⁵ The Autourgos is the best paradigm. On each point on which the Autourgos is profoundly right Electra takes the conventional view, and she is tragically wrong. She thinks that her marriage to the peasant is θανάσιμος (247); she does not know that real nobility is a matter of character, not birth. If we observe this point, we will no longer think of lines 367– 390 as undramatic.³⁶ The issues of interpretation and evaluation of the interactants’ performances are not qualitatively different from those of real life. The values in question are not abstract, but embedded in the characterisation and motivation of the dramatic characters.³⁷ A new image of human values emerges. The poet seems to have been trying to give his hearers release rather than to provoke thought, though he can never write without revealing by some challenging generalisation his own interests. ‘Farmer’ or ‘peasant’ may appear to be the right words for naming the character, but neither of them is the proper word, because neither contains his obligation to work in order to win his livelihood; his life depends on his being obliged to work (LSJ 9: ‘one who works his land himself’, generally ‘one who works for himself’). The Hesiodic farmer, as soon as the time for ploughing is proclaimed to men, has to make haste ὁμῶς δμῶές τε καὶ αὐτός (Op. 459); Electra’s husband possesses oxen and land, and works alone. We also meet the simple peasant (αὐτουργός) whose heart is in the right place once more in the Orestes, where a similar man, who detests cowardice and meanness, comes to the aid of Orestes when he is hard pressed: αὐτουργός – a simple farmer, one of those who alone keep a country sound and healthy (920). Other usages of the word appear in Thucydides (1.141.5: autourgos, ‘one who tills his own land on his own without the help of slaves’), Xenophon (Oec. 5.4: autourgoi, ‘those who work the land with their own hands’), Plato (Rep. 565a: autourgos, ‘who owns little, and lives quietly (apragmon)’), Aristotle (Rhet. 1381a24: autourgoi are ‘craftsmen’), and Euripides’ Orestes (920). Its use in Euripides’ Elec    

Jones 1980 repr., 244; Lucas 1969 repr., 189. Cf. Lada-Richards 2008, 483 – 484. Conacher 1967, 3. Arrowsmith 1963, 42– 43. Sheppard 1918, 138. Cairns 2005, 306.

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tra must be the first in this sense. Euripides’ autourgos ‘is a man who lives in the country, far from town; he is poor and compelled to work long hours to make a modest living; he comes seldom to town and the assembly; he is expressly contrasted with the shameless mob-orator; he is respectful of those wealthier than himself; he is loaded with terms of moral approbation – he is prudent, truly noble, modest; he can run his home and the city too; finally, he is the saviour of the State’.³⁸ The Autourgos simultaneously upsets the traditional generic identifications of the play and the traditional Greek concepts of worth, and in this he makes the Electra’s struggles with the contradictions of birth, wealth and status different from those of archaic poetry. His very presence in his own person, acting on the stage, embodies both that generic shift for which scholars criticise Euripides and those unmanageable contradictions. ‘That the Autourgos appears in tragedy at all, and not only in comedy or prose, is perhaps a symptom of the pressure that this problem could exert on the city’s imagination’.³⁹ It is obvious that an audience based in a performance culture, armed with an awareness of stagecraft techniques, had the means to use production information to inform their interpratation of a play.⁴⁰ Adkins seems to underestimate the first occurrence of words such as agathos and arete in Euripides, that the significant element in Euripides’ text is the air of novelty they possess.⁴¹ When Euripides drastically changes the traditional myth, it is reasonable to suppose that he would like to give it a significant meaning. Orestes describes the change of values which had been taking place for many years, and this reminds us of the change of values and character (pathology) during the Peloponnesian War that Thucydides describes in 3.82– 84: ‘revolution brought on the cities of Greece many calamities, such as exist and always will exist till human nature changes, varying in intensity and character with changing circumstances’ (82.2, transl. Livingstone). I add in paraphrase some observations: the ancient simplicity into which honour (gennaion) so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared (83.1); those who desired to get rid of their accustomed poverty ardently coveted their neighbour’s possessions (84.1); in the confusion into which life was now thrown (xyntarachthentos tou biou) in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, gladly

 Carter 1986, 92; Carter entitles the fourth chapter of his book ‘Peasant Farmer’. Lesky 1965, 1978 repr., 172.  Goff 1999 – 2000, 103 – 104.  Marshall 1999 – 2000, 341.  Adkins 1960, 191, n. 9.

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showed itself uncontrolled in passion, above respect for justice and the enemy of all superiority (84.2). Old words gained new meanings. Euripides’ picture in his tragedies of a general decline in civic motivation suggests that to him the costs of the conflicts in Athens overrode the possible justice of the causes involved. To both Thucydides and Euripides, the crisis in culture meant that the old world order was irrecoverably gone. ‘What chiefly interested Euripides was less the indictment of tradition – though that was clearly essential – than the confrontation, the dramatic juxtaposition, of the split in his culture. This was his basic theatrical perception, his reality’.⁴² The confusion Socrates is speaking about at the end of Protagoras (361c) is not just the confusion in their conversation, but the confusion of values both of the dramatic and real time of the Protagoras, as is also described in the Apology, and the confusion in Electra (368) and Thucydides (xyntarachthentos). Participating in the philosophical conversations of his days, Isocrates re-evaluates virtues and behaviours in the Antidosis: ‘Athens has in many respects been plunged into such a state of topsy-turvy and confusion (ἀνέστραπται καὶ συγκέχυται) that some of our people no longer use words in their proper meaning but wrest them from the most honourable associations and apply them to the basest pursuits’ (283, transl. Norlin). As Norlin himself observes, this is reminiscent of Thuc. 3.82 ff. As a result of this confusion, after 428 it is more and more difficult to find any of the features in Euripides which at least broadly embrace the tragic idea, as in his Medea and Hippolytus. ‘There are no dominant human figures, only some decent kindly liberal gentlemen like our farmer in Electra, or Peleus in Andromache, or Iolaus in the Children of Heracles, or Amphitryon in Heracles, most of them are old men … In Euripides’ plays after 428 the only decisions that even remind one of the old tragic decisions are taken by the very young, by Polyxena in Hecuba, Macaria in the The Children of Heracles, Evadne in the Suppliants, Menoeceus in the Phoenician Women and Iphigeneia in Iphigeneia at Aulis’.⁴³ Boeckh was the first to see a reference to the Sicilian expedition in the verses 1347– 1356 of the Dioskouroi, and accordingly dated the play to 413. And this date was long accepted as certain until it was opposed by G. Zuntz, who won such a following that the play is now most often dated between the Suppliants (427) (in the group Heraclidae, Hecuba, Electra, Andromache and Supplices in the decade 427– 417) and the Troades (415), in particular, on the basis of metrical evidence,

 Arrowsmith 1963, 40, 38 (his emphasis). Cf. Konstan 1985, 178, 185; Cairns 2005, 311.  Gellie 1981, 9.

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in 420.⁴⁴ As for the Sicilian argument there is no doubt that πόντος Σικελὸς refers to Sicily and the Athenian fleet is there (autumn 415). I suggest (contra Lesky) that πόντος Σικελὸς is a reference to the Athenian navy, and the risk and dangers it faces in Sicily. Antiope fr. 194 N2 (‘I love neither a sailor nor a city leader who is too venturesome’, transl. Collard / Cropp) may be a reference to the risky mission to Sicily. Orestes’ outburst in vv. 367– 390 may have been caused by a strong recent event, such as the scandalous event of the Hermocopidae (May 415), always strange, both in antiquity and modern times; its protagonists must be sought among the hetaireiai of the aristocrats, who were opponents of Alcibiades, or the destruction of Melos. I cite Thucydides: ‘Alcibiades was implicated in this charge, and it was taken hold of by those who most disliked him, because he stood in the way of their obtaining the undisturbed direction of the people; they thought that if he were once removed the first place would be theirs’ (6.28.2, transl. Livingstone). Those who disliked Alcibiades thought that he stood in their way to being προστάται τοῦ δήμου; and if he were once removed, they would be πρῶτοι, in Thucydides’ words. This is always the behaviour of the agathoi and the leaders of the demos. ‘Those who are nothing but senseless lumps of muscle are mere ornaments of the market-place’ (387– 388) may well be a reference to the secondary sense of ἄγαλμα (‘statue’), because the ἀγορά was the centre of civic and social life, and there may be a tilt at those who were loungers in the agora, the idle exquisites whom Aristophanes detested (Nu. 991).⁴⁵ These young noblemen were like the athletes’ statues in the agora, useless in social and political life by Euripides’ standards. A similar expression is found in Autolycus fr. 282 N2 to which we referred earlier: ‘they (the athletes) are splendid in their prime and go proudly about as ornaments to a city [or glory and delight of the city (πόλεως ἀγάλματα)]’ (10 – 11). I note that we have another interesting repetition: κενῶν δοξασμάτων (El. 383, Melanippe fr. 495.43 N2). And probably we should bear in mind Alcibiades’ defence of his athletic interests and successes before the Athenian assembly in 415 BC, as reported by Thucydides (6.16.1– 2): ‘I have a better right to command than others’, Alcibiades insists, ‘and at the same I believe myself to be worthy of it … The Greeks, after expecting to see our city ruined by the war, concluded it to be even greater than it really is, because of the magnificence

 Lesky 1983, 291; Zuntz 1963, 64– 71; Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., xxxiii-xxxix. Roisman / Luschnig 2011, 28 – 32 (shortly after 415); Matthiessen 1964, 66 – 92, 168 – 171 (in relation to other E.’s plays and S.’ Electra); Cropp 1988, l-li; Cropp 2013, 31– 33; Cropp 1986, 190 – 192. Cf. Cropp / Fick 1985; Kovacs 1998, vol. 1, 16 – 17, vol. 3, 142; Conacher 1967, 203 n. 9; Gellie 1981, 9, n. 29; Solmsen 1967, 10, n. 1; Konstan 1985, 184 and n. 27. Etc.  Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., 97, ad loc.

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with with I represented it at the Olympic games’ (transl. Livingstone). Euripides himself, according to Plutarch (755 PMG, Alcibiades 11), composed an epinician hymn to celebrate Alcibiades’ victory in the chariot race at Olympia in 416 BC. Euripides by 415 must have broken with Alcibiades, and the break can have come only with the ugly events on Melos in the winter of 416 – 415, and the result in the following spring was the Trojan Women. Euripides’ words in Aristophanes’ Frogs 1427– 1428 written in a tragic meter may imitate some tragedy and refer probably to Alcibiades.⁴⁶ My suggestion may be stronger if we bear in mind that a fourth speech attributed to Andocides purports to be an attack on Alcibiades at a meeting of the assembly in 415 (even if it is spurious), in which Alcibiades refers to his leitourgiai and appears to have won in euandria, a competition in physical fitness, manliness (And. 4.42; cf. Ath. 13. 565 f).⁴⁷ I recall that Orestes begins his speech on the basis of euandria (368), with a different meaning, and this again dates Electra post 415. Antiope (dated later than 412; on metrical criteria before 418), Orestes (408), Electra (413 traditionally), all contain similar political ideas. I thought it more worth writing the words than the events (cf. Th. 1.22.2).

(c) Orestes’ Character Orestes’ character may be judged according to the standards by which he himself judges in his speech the Autourgos’ decision. The Autourgos’ prologue and Orestes’ speech are connected by their subject matter. The Autourgos’ decision is based on dike, not to transgress what is not his right, his observance of the established dike. These are the terms on which Electra evaluates him (253 – 262). He did not wish ‘to dishonour Orestes’ (365). Electra, too, evaluates Orestes on traditional standards; she applies to Orestes traditional virtue. It has been argued that in comparison with the characters of Aeschylus, the struggle of Orestes and Electra in Euripides is internal.⁴⁸ In Orestes’ speech and the Autourgos’ character Euripides is contrasting the inner and the outer of the character. It can be maintained with Arrowsmith that anagnorisis is not between one actor and another but takes place within the spectator, who recognises that the main charac-

 Bowra 1960, 79. Cf. also fr. 194 N2 (Antiope) and 347 N2 (Dictys, in 431).  Περὶ δὲ τῶν λῃτουργιῶν οὐκ ἀξιῶ μεμνῆσθαι, πλὴν κατὰ τοσοῦτον, ὅτι τὰ προσταττόμενα δαπανῶ οὐκ ἀπὸ τῶν κοινῶν ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ τῶν ἰδίων. Καίτοι τυγχάνω νενικηκὼς εὐανδρίᾳ καὶ λαμπάδι καὶ τραγῳδοῖς, οὐ τύπτων τοὺς ἀντιχορηγοῦντας, οὐδ᾽ αἰσχυνόμενος εἰ τῶν νόμων ἔλαττον δύναμαι (Andocides 4 [Κατὰ ᾿Aλκιβιάδου] 42).  Pohlenz 21954, 313 – 315 cited by Thury 1985, 6 n. 3.

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ters’ conception of human virtue have all proven inadequate in their narrowness, and in their connection of virtue with wealth, noble birth and courage rather than the internal qualities of piety and justice (1351).⁴⁹ By depicting both Electra, married to Autourgos and living in a cottage, and Orestes re-evaluating these virtues, it is as if Euripides were saying to the Athenians (there was probably a revival of the Oresteia in the 420s): ‘You believe, Athenians, that through the Oresteia you may bring the old values back to your life. I shall show you through my work that the real problems are not of a political nature, but they are inside the individual’.⁵⁰ Orestes more than any other character in Greek tragedy speaks on his own terms: he invents his own code of values, does not apply the standard values, but adapts contemporary social and political reality to the values he describes. Other characters, in both epic and tragic poetry, speak in accordance with the system of values in which they participate. We introduced this paper as reflecting the infiltration of morality under the presupposition of a use of agathos to commend, or a use of kakos to decry, a man who falls short in respect of the quiet virtues. We have now analysed Orestes’ speech and other relevant passages from Euripides’ fragmentary works. Between Homer and Aristotle, great advances were made in investigating the implications of concepts with moral responsibility. The importance of the quieter virtues to smooth, successful, and efficient civic organization was realised, and these excellences – sophrosyne, dikaiosyne, and similar qualities – were enrolled among the Greek aretai. To do this, however, to say ‘this is arete’, is to say ‘this is the type of man which the city needs’; and accordingly it is natural that both Plato and Aristotle, in attempting to solve the primary problem of rendering the quieter virtues respectable, should approach this problem from the point of view of the successful living of the city as a whole, and define the agathos in political terms.⁵¹ Orestes chose the autourgos for ‘the type of man which the city needs’, and re-evaluates ‘this is arete’. Bravery is still virtue, but he chose co-operative virtues developed later by Plato and advanced by Aristotle. Orestes in the Odyssey is a far-famed son and has won glory among mankind, when he killed for vengeance the murderer of his father (1.30, 40, 298); his behaviour constitutes the programmatic principle of justice in the introduction of the Odyssey. Electra welcomes Orestes after he had killed Aegisthus in terms of both the hero’s coming back victorious after the war and the athlete’s coming back victorious after the games (880 – 885). This is an interior self-refer-

 Arrowsmith 1963, 53.  As Hose 2008, 95 observes. Cf. similarly Conacher 1967, 203.  Adkins 1960, 348 – 351.

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ence to the ‘empty opinions’ and ‘ornaments of the market place’ (383, 388). The image of Orestes as an aristocratic athlete recurs also before Electra’s greeting of Orestes after Aegisthus’ murder. She is angry with the old man: ‘what you say, old sir, is unworthy of a wise man if you imagine that my brave brother would come to this land in secret because he feared Aegisthus’ (524– 526, transl. Kovacs; cf. 761– 762, 781– 782). The gap between being and seeming εὐγενὴς is emphasised repeatedly. Orestes does not feel at ease with Electra’s expectations. The Chorus reproaches Electra for having done a terrible thing to her brother who was unwilling (1203 – 1205). Judged by any criteria, Orestes cuts an extremely poor figure throughout the play. Electra, relying on the standard of physis (in the sense of inherited virtue), expects the best of him. She dreams of a brother who will one day return to storm the palace (274– 275, 524 ff.). In her sentimental imagination Orestes is a shining hero fashioned in the mould of his father, the conqueror of Troy. The garlanding of Orestes has a lasting visual impact because the flowers remain on the mask at least until 987. Electra idealises him in her imagination as a hero with virtues straight out of the Iliad, the bible of the aristocratic code. The more she humiliates herself, the more she idealises Orestes. Electra demands the traditional values but lives in poverty and humiliation. Orestes analyses the confusion of the traditional values. Electra expects that he will come clad in heroic strength. The recognition scene with its contrast between Electra’s expectation of Orestes and his actual behaviour, has the effect of placing his eugeneia in question, and she may be disappointed in Orestes. The old man’s remarks that one never can tell by high birth whether someone is truly noble (550 – 551) sound like an irony. The reality is totally different from Electra’s epic vision. Orestes is heroic in Electra’s eyes. When he first appears, he thinks of swiftness more in terms of running away than of achievement (94– 95). ‘More prudent politician than hero, he speculates whether the people will receive him well if he kills Aegisthus’ (632).⁵² ‘The old poets made people speak like citizens, but the recent ones make them speak like rhetoricians’ (Arist. Poet. 1450b4– 8, transl. Janko). Orestes in the Electra may have been made an example of this classification; he speaks like a politician.

 Mulryne 1977, 36 – 37; O’Brien 1964, 36, 38; Arnott 1981, 182– 183 and 187– 189; Kubo 1967, 23 – 24; Thury 1985, 13 (with n. 23), 15 (with n. 28); Zeitlin 2003, 272; Gellie 1981, 3; Michelini 1987, 211; Marshall 1999 – 2000, 333; Sheppard 1918, 139. Cf. Perysinakis 1990. The Greek tragedians made female characters at least like tragic women, because individuality is vital for tragedy, and for Greeks gender would have been a vital part of a character’s individuality, and they used a wide range of methods which included the adaptation of tragic language and rhetoric, cf. Mossman 2001.

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After Aegisthus’ death, Electra comes back to the criteria for nobility, in terms of good nature (agathe physis) in contrast to wealth obtained by unjust means (938 – 944). Aegisthus in a Homeric way was boasting that he was really someone on the strength of his money, which was Agamemnon’s wealth. But money is of no use except for enjoying its companionship for a short time. ‘It is character that is reliable, not money. Character stands beside us always and shoulders our troubles, while wealth lives unjustly with fools and then flies off from their houses, having blossomed for only a short time’ (941– 944, transl. Kovacs). Electra is waiting for her brother in terms of a Homeric hero, therefore she describes the situation in analogous terms; φύσις is ἀγαθὴ φύσις. This physis cannot be changed, it remains at one’s side. She understands physis as ‘inherited character’. Verses 938 – 944, 880 – 885, 524– 526, 976 ff., etc. constitute Electra’s ‘reply’ to Orestes’ soliloquy, and his criteria for virtue on re-evaluation of aretai. Electra’s view is not that wealth produces nobility, but that it ought to be a sign of nobility; she seems to deny the connection between nobility and wealth, but in fact her statements indicate her emphasis on wealth as a significant element of true nobility, i. e. the traditional aristocratic view.⁵³

(d) Electra’s Character The original audience of Electra must have been surprised to see on stage no palace, no altar, only a peasant’s cottage. Thus, the first impression is of poverty,

 On the unchanged physis, cf. S. fr. 195 N2: ἀρετῆς βέβαιαι δ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ κτήσεις μόνης; Democritus B 176D-K: τύχη μεγαλόδωρος, ἀλλ᾽ ἀβέβαιος, φύσις δὲ αὐτάρκης. Wealth is regarded as a living companion. On the other hand, that unjustly gained wealth lives for a short time is also a traditional idea fron Hesiod onwards (Op. 213 – 218, 312– 326, 333 – 334; Sol. 13W.7– 13, 71– 76; A. Ag. 381– 384, 750 – 781; Eu. 539 – 542, 996 – 1002). The thought is one which often recurs in Euripides. Wealth is in itself flighty and insecure (Ph. 511– 512); the possession of wealth is always unsafe, particularly so when it is ill-gotten (Erechtheus 354N2, and 362.11– 13N2, Ino 417.1– 2 2 N2). Vanishing wealth is often personified, especially as bird which flies away: ἐξέπτατ᾽ (944), Her. 510 – 512, Ino, fr. 420.4– 5 N2 (ὑπόπτερος πλοῦτος), Meleagrus, fr. 518.2 N2 (ὠκεῖα πτέρυξ). The metaphor of blossom is also used of hybris and satiety: ‘Insolence, once blossoming, bears its fruit’ (A. Pers. 821– 822, Benardete). Wealth which ‘lives unsjustly with fools and then flies off from their houses’ refers to the proper use of wealth, e. g. in helping one’s friends and resisting misfortunes, not to keep wealth hidden inside (cf. E. frr. 736, 776, 951 N2; cf. Pi. I. 1.68). All these supplement similar passages in the criteria for virtue (cf. Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., ad 253). Cropp 1988, 2013, ad 940 – 944; Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., ad 943 – 944; Roisman / Luschnig 2011, ad 940 – 944; Thury 1985, 10; North 1966, 75; O’Brien 1964, 36, 38. Cf. also above III.i and vv. 880 – 885, p. 17.

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and it will be something of a shock to be told (34) that this poor countryman is the husband of Electra. This first impression becomes even more shocking when Electra comes out of the cottage.⁵⁴ She is on her way to fetch water from a spring and is extremely conscious of the indignity of her task: ‘I do this not from need but to show the gods Aegisthus’ outrage (hybris) against me’ (57– 58). Electra calls the world to witness her humiliation. Electra of all the heroes of the play shows the duality of her character; she is another aspect of the ‘double view’ of the tragedy. She seems to say in the first stanza of the parodos: ‘I was born the daughter of Agamemnon (115) and look at my poverty’. In the third antistrophe in her discussion with the Chorus, Electra herself recapitulates her tragic position. Her father is dead, her brother is a wanderer and she is exiled from her father’s house on the slopes of the mountains (201– 210). That the gods have not answered her prayer and Orestes is far away is a nice irony (198 – 200), since Orestes will be the man she will speak to next, but also means that the punishment of usurpers is right. Electra refused to participate with the Chorus in the Heraia (180), as well as their offer to lend her fine clothes. The festival of Hera as a public celebration in Argos had objectified the alienation of Electra from home, city, and normal family life and gave a new thrust to her hostility.⁵⁵ Barlow has noticed that Electra’s concern with physical appearances is an indication of the state of her emotions and points out that Electra’s comparison of herself to a swan at 151– 153 indicates her desire to appear beautiful.⁵⁶ Her desire to appear beautiful and her appearance are another case of the ‘double view’. The contrast between the Chorus garbed in rich ceremonial dress and Electra would also be a visual one, like the later contrast between Clytaemestra and her daughter. Electra’s poverty is not intended by the poet to provide motivation sufficient for the matricide. Αs Thury puts it: ‘It seems that her lack of material possessions is the only aspect of her condition with which she can deal and into which she translates all aspects of her conditions’.⁵⁷ Electra is another royal figure brought on stage and dressed in rags. The contrast between poverty and wealth is an important theme of the play.

   

Grube 1973, 297; Cropp 2013, 139. Zeitlin 2003, 284; cf. 262– 267. Barlow 1974, 53 – 55, 82– 83. Thury 1985, 8. Cf. Grube 1973, 301; Kubo 1966, 23 – 24; O’Brien 1964, 28 – 29.

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(e) The First and Second Stasimon The first stasimon of the Chorus (432– 486) is the first explicit evidence we have of Euripides’ intention to parade the antithesis between the tragic-mythical and the realistic. ‘Thus far the play has been conducted at the furthest possible remove from the mythical. An impoverished farmer and a threadbare Electra have talked about their unattractive lives’, as Gellie observes. The first stasimon provides an index of Agamemnon’s stature, of the crime that destroyed him, and indirectly of the son who will avenge him. The ode cuts through Orestes’ doubt with a vision of legendary heroism, which takes for granted the importance of wealth and war. After the murder, Orestes proves himself truly equal to his inherited position as the great man’s son (880 – 881, cf. 206: κλεινοῦ πατρὸς ἐκφύς). Orestes does not, however, fit the image Electra has expectantly embellished over the years. Perseus and the Gorgon appear on the armour of Achilles. Orestes, like Perseus, has to face and kill Clytaemestra, but after the matricide he mourns over what host or pious man will look at him (1195 – 1196). At the end of the play Athene’s shield with the Gorgon’s emblem averts the terrible snakes. These shapes are not simply decorative, but serve poetic inspiration and Orestes’ character.⁵⁸ Morwood traces the pattern of Euripides’ Electra in the most remarkable feature of the first stasimon of the play, the way in which it ends with something altogether different from what was suggested at its outset. The armour of Achilles is a symbolic expression of conflict and dread. The stasimon is of central importance to the imagery of the play. In portraying Achilles in the first stasimon, Euripides removes brilliance from its place on the Homeric battlefield and isolates it in another much less realistic tradition, turning his audience emotionally away from the heroic ethos. He has removed the action from the heroic world and placed it in the environment of everyday life. The movement from the sweet to the bitter is a recurrent one in the tragedy. With our Aristotelian expectation of a reversal – ‘it is the fact of change which Aristotle finds essentially tragic, not the direction of change’ (Poet. 1451a 15 – 16; Jones 1980, 16) – we may anticipate that what is grim and degraded in the opening of the tragedy will give way to triumph, and that the self-conscious squalor, especially in the presentation of Electra, will prove the prelude to joyous restoration; ‘from rags to riches’.⁵⁹ Elec-

 Gellie 1981, 7; Walsh 1977, passim; Thury 1985, 16; Gartziou-Tatti 2004.  Morwood 1981, 362 (previous interpretations of the ode, and O’Brien 1964, 15 n. 4), 369; King 1980, 196, 212; O’Brien 1964, 15 – 18, 22; Michelakis 2002, 154– 162; Cropp 2013, 166 – 168; Willink 2009, 205 ff.

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tra’s humiliation in rags, poverty and decline, to do housework in the farmer’s cottage, are all part of the Aristotelian peripeteia. In the second stasimon (699 – 746), when a distant cry is heard offstage, the Chorus speaks for Euripides: ‘That is the story men tell, but the credit it receives from me is but slight, that the gold-visaged sun should turn, altering its torrid station to cause grief for the punishment of their wrongdoing. But fearful tales benefit mortals, making them worship the gods’ (737– 745, transl. Kovacs). Euripides refers to the dike of nature which Anaximander discusses in B1 D-K: ‘for they (= existing things) pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time’ (Kirk / Raven / Schofield); the place of the δίκαιον in this world (675), and the place of the δίκη (698) will come to our view in the second half of the play. We find a similar, though somewhat more radical explanation of divine myths in Critias’ Sisyphus B 25.12 – 15 D-K: ‘a certain wise man discovered fear of the gods for mortals so that wicked men might be fearful if they did or said or thought anything unjust’. Euripides lets the Chorus reflect a current Sophistic view of traditional myths about the gods, particularly with regard to divine punishment of human offences.⁶⁰ The Chorus introduces the myth of the ‘golden lamb’ as a κληδὼν ἐν πολιαῖσι … φήμαις (700 – 701: ‘tale in our age-old legends’), which may echo Aeschylus’ τριγέρων μῦθος on the same principle drasanta pathein (Cho. 313; cf. γέρων λόγος, Ag. 750). Rosivach has shown how the ‘golden lamb’ ode in the second stasimon is related both to the Electra as a whole and to its immediate context, the slaying of Aegisthus. He concludes that ‘the ode tells how Thyestes stole the golden lamb and caused sun and stars to reverse their path. This myth is remarkably parallel to the events of the play: the murder of Agamemnon, the illegitimate rule of Aegisthus, the return of Orestes, and Aegisthus’ death’. The golden lamb is the emblem of the wealth of the house, now enjoyed by Aegisthus and Clytaemestra. Zeus’ intervention secured dike in the myth as Aegisthus’ death does in the play. The ode is principally concerned with the punishment of Aegisthus, but the brief address to Clytaemestra at its end prepares the way for the extension of the themes of dike and divine will to the death of Clytaemestra in the latter part of the play. The metastasis of the sun and the stars serves to remind Clytaemestra of what she had apparently forgotten in her impious conduct (cf. Pl. Plt. 268e-269a). The reference of ὧν and θεῶν (744– 745) is best taken as comprehensive of the ‘moral’ to the preceding narrative. What the Chorus finds implausible (737– 738) is not the miracule aspect of the story, but its implications

 Conacher 1998, 20 – 21; Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., ad. 737– 746; Halporn 1983, 109 – 110; Michelini 1987, 212– 213.

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for the working-out of divine justice. The golden lamb represents the lamb that the old man brings; it is occasioned by the invitation of the Autourgos and the duty of xenia; he is the character who will accomplish the recognition of Orestes by his sister. Also, the imagery of the golden lamb presents as much of a challenge to the nobility of Orestes as Electra does later in the play. The Chorus likens the cry they hear as they finish their song to βροντὴ Διός (748), confirming in this way the applicability of the myth to present events.⁶¹

(f) Dike; the Oracle Dike, which is a recurring theme all through the Electra, is fulfilled through both Aegisthus’ and Clytaemestra’s death. Revenge, even to the point of shedding blood, is justifiable or even laudable. In the Sophoclean Electra Orestes came to Pytho’s place of prophecy to learn he was to win revenge for his father’s murder (32– 34): δίκας ἀροίμην in the middle dynamic verb is the equivalent to the Homeric phrase for the glory which the hero has to win (κῦδος or κλέος ἀρέσθαι), i. e. it constitues a competitive value. In the Euripidean Electra Orestes says that if injustice is triumphant over justice we must no longer believe in the gods (583 – 584). At the end of her long speech, Electra comments that Aegisthus paid the penalty (δίκην δέδωκας, 953): ‘therefore let not the criminal imagine, just because he has run his first steps well, that he is victorious over Justice (Dike) until he reaches the finish line and runs life’s final lap’ (953 – 956). That Clytaemestra deserved to die is nowhere doubted in the plays of the three dramatists. When Clytaemestra is crying within the house, the Chorus sums up the dramatic condition: ‘Truly the god dispenses retribution (dike), late or soon. Miserable was your suffering, but unholy your deeds, cruel woman, against your husband!’ (1169 – 1171). But at the end of the play, Castor as deus ex machina, addressing Orestes, judges the events with epigrammatic brevity: ‘The treatment she received was just (dikaia), but the act you did was not’ (1244; cf. Cho. 930). This is repeated in Orestes 538 – 539: Clytaemestra deserves death, but not at Orestes’ hands.⁶² It is very unlikely, having seen the remorse of Electra and Orestes and heard the pronouncements of Castor, that the audience will not

 Rosivach 1978 198 – 199, 195; Willink 2005, 11, 21; Stinton 1990, 260 – 261; Kubo 1967, 19 – 21. Thury 1985, 16 – 17; Zeitlin 2003, 269; Marshall 1999 – 2000, 335; Sheppard 1918, 140; Cropp 2013, 192– 193.  Cf. Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., xxiii-xxiv. A survey on Dike in the three tragedians requires more space.

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conclude that in Euripides’ Electra the pursuit of revenge to the extent of committing matricide is presented for their condemnation.⁶³ Electra’s desire for matricide does not proceed from an abstract desire for justice; she is driven by unreflecting hatred, and after the deed, by remorse. Orestes feels aidos and pity for his mother, and is convinced that oracle is wrong. Still he is unable to resist because of the combined pressure of his sister and of the god’s authority.⁶⁴ He hesitates when matricide is immediately before his eyes: ‘Phoebus Apollo, there was much folly (ἀμαθία) in your oracle’ (971). Amathia is a moral and political term (E. fr. 200 N2 (Antiope); Pl. Laws 688c, Ap. 29b1– 2, Alc. I 118a4– 5). Electra brushes his doubts aside: ‘But where Apollo is foolish, who is wise?’ (972). That may be heard as an irony. Euripides seems to say: ‘well, this is what the myth says, what shall I do?’. Orestes is not convinced in his heart, but he follows the current official belief. The sequel answers this question: in an aposiopesis about Phoebus, who is the lord of Dioskouroi, Castor continues: ‘Still, wise god though he is, his oracle to you was not wise’ (1246). In Euripidean plays which show us Orestes after the murder, Apollo, by common consent, is an ἄσοφος, ἀμαθὴς θεὸς who has deceived an unhappy mortal, and then left him in the lurch.⁶⁵ In 294– 296 (‘there is no pity in ignorance, but in wise men’), however, Euripides uses his moral reflection with an eye to dramatic effect. Clytaemestra does not conceive that Electra’s final words to her (1093 – 1096) constitute an announcement of her death. The last sentence in particular (‘if what you have done is just, this too is right’) is a reference to the Aeschylean principle of the δράσαντα παθεῖν (Cho. 313, fr. 456R, Ag. 1564). Electra had contended in her debate with her mother that she did not kill justly her father; therefore she and Orestes cannot kill rightly their mother. By killing their mother the persecutors have become victims of their own action (1190 – 1193). Orestes and Electra applied successfully the Greek moral principle ‘helping friends and harming enemies’, but their action eventually turned against them. Traditional ethics lead to no way out. It seems that Euripides brought to light a dimension of a crime which had never been described: trauma in the psyche of the doers. Electra thus anticipates Plato’s Gorgias, and the question whether committing wrong is worse than suffering it (469c, 474b, 475e; cf. Crito 49b, d).⁶⁶ Electra’s final words to her mother constitute the deepest irony of the play. And so, the  Cairns 2005, 308.  Lawrence 2013, 276, 282, 308.  Cf. also El. 1302, IT 570 – 571, 711, Or. 28 – 30, 169 – 165, 191, 417, 591– 601, 955 – 956; Denniston 1939, 1960 repr., xxii. Sheppard 1918, 141.  Hose 2008, 99 – 101.

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most heroic and aristocratic character of the play invalidates the most traditional aristocratic principle ‘helping friends and harming enemies’ and the Delphic oracle, and leads together with Orestes to the contrast of the inner and the outer of the human beings, and to co-operative values. Orestes experiences internally and intensively the prospect of matricide; at the end of the play he also faces the avenging spirits internally. The attack on the Delphic oracle is Euripides’ great innovation in the legend and is the logical final step in his deliberate ruffling of traditional standards in the Electra story. As O’Brien observes, ‘what Euripides offers in the Electra is not a practical solution of its problems of conduct, but a varied and powerful presentation of sufferers who have become moral replicas of their tormentors’. There is no sure standard which separates oppressor from oppressed.⁶⁷ The poet offers us the traditional story, but no human conscience can accept it. That a god could give such counsel is ἀοιδῶν δύστηνοι λόγοι (Her. 1346). Both Electra and Heracles are based on a traditional myth and in both the myth is expressed as senseless, alongside traditional mythical motifs such as the ancestral curse, which can no longer withstand the new criticism. In both stands a purely natural and human theme that, for Electra at least, leads from misery, despair, and passion to a deed that should never have been committed and that destroys its perpetrator. ‘Euripides depicts the destiny of two people who are driven to action by a horrible chain of events, but also by hatred and bitterness: however, the deed is more than they can bear, and it breaks them’.⁶⁸ The deus ex machina in the Electra is the price which the plot of the tragedy and Euripides’ realism pay to the traditional myths. Castor’s aposiopesis ‘I hold my peace’ (1246) is Euripides’ acceptance of the myth as it stands. Castor as deus ex machina addressing Orestes, judges the events: ‘The treatment she received was just (dikaia), but the act you did was not’ (1244). The ‘treatment she received was just’ is what the myth and traditional morality demand; ‘but the act you did was not’, is Euripides’ innovation. The same idea in Tyndareus’ mouth is expressed in two verses in Orestes (538 – 39). Castor’s criticism of Phoebus, ‘Still, wise god though he is, his oracle to you was not wise’ (1246), is a Euripidean a posteriori criticism of the traditional myths (cf. 1302). In this sense, the Dioscuri scene reconciles myth with reality, theatrical illusion with everyday life.⁶⁹

 O’Brien 1964, 38. Cf. Lloyd 1986, 18 – 19.  Lesky 1965, 1978 repr., 171 and Lesky 1983, 299; cf. Burian 1997, 179 – 180, 205 – 208.  Thury 1985, 20 has emphasised the deus ex machina scene: The Dioscuri must appear to console the sufferers, provide an explanation for their suffering and restore them to society, without reversing the divine purpose, which underlies their action. Without the deus ex machina scene

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The Odyssey’s influence has been fully recognized in Euripides’ Electra, since this is one of several tragedies which bear the most obvious hallmarks of Odyssean influence, the motifs of hidden identity, recognition and intrigue. All this is a guide towards understanding the emotional responses appropriate to Electra. The dialectic of text and tradition in the social upheavals of fifth-century Athens plays a major role in the city of the present. In Electra and in Heracles ‘the return of a hero to save his oikos, to deliver his oppresed dependents and reclaim his rightful position, turns into a pathos which itself effects the disintegration of the oikos and the remorseful exile of its surviving members’. It may be suggested that ‘the play, by its structure, emphasises the role of Orestes and Electra as victims – victims, that is, of some combination of their own human limitations along with an unwillingness on the part of the gods to protect individual humans from suffering’. Euripides portays the outcome of Orestes’ and Electra’s vengeance as being, for them, a pathos and a peripeteia, while the third part of a plot, recognition, is present in the tragedy (ch. 11 of the Poetics).⁷⁰ We know Sophocles’ remark from the Poetics that ‘he himself portrayed people as they should be, but Euripides portayed them as they are’ (1460b 33 – 34, transl. Janko). Knox writes about Euripides’ realism in the Electra: ‘the effect of the domestic atmosphere of the first half of the play is to strip every last shred of heroic stature from Electra and Orestes, so that we see their subsequent actions not as heroic fulfillment of a god’s command, but rather as crimes committed by ‘men as they are, … by people like ourselves’. We are being invited by the water jug ‘not to identify ourselves with the passions and destinies of heroic souls but to detach ourselves and observe the actions and reactions of ordinary human beings in a social situation with norms and customs we are only too well aquainted with’.⁷¹ And another critic adds: in both cases, of Orestes and Electra, ‘the effect of Euripides’ realism is to enhance the plausibility and pathos of the story and not implicitly to criticise the characters of Electra and Orestes. If the matricide is shown at the end of play to have been a mistake, it is no less tragic

Euripides would be presenting us with the hopeless drama of frustrated individuals caught in their own trap; cf. Thury 1985, 6, 21.  Cropp 1986, esp. 190 – 196; citations are from 190, 193; cf also Cropp 1988, 22013, on vv. 8, 9, 10, 160, 338, 774– 858 etc. On Electra’s relation with Homer cf. O’Brien 1964, 19 – 39; Malryne 1977; Walsh 1977; King 1980; Morwood 1981; Tarkow 1981; Halporn 1983, 107– 108; Davidson 1999 – 2000; Goldhill 1986, 1990 repr., ch. 6 ‘Text and Tradition’, 138 – 167; Garner 1990, 117– 127 passim; Tsagalis 2008, 105 – 106; Matthiessen 1964, 119 – 125; Dingel 1969, 100 – 109; Lange 2002.  Knox 1986 repr., 254, 252– 253. Cf. Segal 1983, 251.

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that such an act should be the responsibility of plausible and sympathetic characters’.⁷² Electra 367– 390 seems to be the only passage in the extant complete plays in which agathos is identified with the quiet co-operative virtues. There are, however, some usages very close to that from Electra in Euripides’ fragments. And the criteria by which arete is re-evaluated in Orestes’ speech are the criteria by which confusion of moral values is confirmed in fifth- (and fourth‐) century Athens. Aristos clearly commends self-control, a complete departure from traditional usage. The Autourgos behaved with great self-control, and was apparently termed agathos, despite his lack of the traditional qualities; self-controlled men are best at the organization of their cities and their own houses in the interest of prosperity. As Adkins has argued, ‘dikaiosyne might become part (or even the whole) of arete, could it be realized that the quieter virtues are essential to the stability and prosperity of society; and society seems at last to have realized this’. Orestes’ speech is related to Euripides’ technique. It is generally related to the thematic interests of the play and demonstates a remarkable irony of form; such manipulation of contemporary rhetoric for characterization and irony is common in Euripides, and essential of his rewriting, or re-evaluation, of inherited myths, ethos, and social values. Orestes’ speech serves the double view in its imagery and in the presentation of character, in the old heroic code and the mythic tradition; the reversal from rags to riches attests to tragedy’s relation with sophistic writing and to a radical series of tensions in the language and ideology of the city of fifth-century Athens. The λόγῳ μέν … ἔργῳ δὲ rhetorical technique in Orestes’ speech criticizes everyday reality; Euripides’ realism is not a matter of simple anti-traditionalism, but of consistent dramatic technique. Euripides’ re-evaluation of aretai comes after similar re-evaluations in Archaic Lyric Poetry and anticipates Plato’s re-evaluations in the Republic and the Laws. We can speak about the quarrel between the new moral values of the age of Euripides and the old ones from Homer onwards. Before they were remodelled first by Plato and then by Aristotle these new moral values had been born in Euripides’ tragedies. Orestes in his speech describes the change in values which had been taking place for many years in the Athenian society. Orestes’ outburst in lines 367– 390 may have been caused by a strong recent event, such as the scandalous event of the Hermocopidae. Alcibiades, also, appears to have won in euandria, competi-

 Lloyd 1986, 19.

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tion in physical fitness, manliness; Orestes begins his speech on the basis of euandria (367). The Autourgos fulfils the ‘double vision’ technique: he is both Electra’s punishment on the part of Aegisthus and the implementation of Orestes’ political remarks. He is the man of honour in peasant dress, one of those who alone keep a country sound and healthy (Or. 920). Euripides, under the pressure of his complex view of reality, was constantly inventing new forms in which to cast his varied perceptions of the sources of human tragedy. The Autourgos’ character is in some senses an exhibition of the sophistic perception that human character is altered by suffering; his function is a specification of a shaping idea of the play, and a recognition of the breakdown of class differences. The Autourgos and Orestes can be seen as a version of a sort of social interaction. The values in question are not abstract, but embedded in the characterization and motivation of the dramatic characters. The essential anagnorisis of Euripidean theatre is not between one actor and another but between the audience and its own experience, as that experience is being imitated in the play. Orestes more than any other character in Greek tragedy speaks on his own terms: he invents his own code of values, does not apply the standard values, but adapts contemporary social and political reality to the values he describes.

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2 Translation Kovacs, D. (1998), Euripides, vol. iii, Cambridge, MA / London.

3 Books and Articles Adkins, A. W. H. (1960), Merit and Responsibility, Oxford. — (1966), ‘Aristotle and the Best Kind of Tragedy’, in: CQ 16, 78 – 102.

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Stinton, T. C. W. (1990), ‘ ‘Si Credere Dignum Est’: Some Expressions of Disbelief in Euripides and Others’, in: T. C. W. Stinton, Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy, with a foreword by H. Lloyd-Jones, Oxford, 236 – 264. Synodinou, K. (1985), ‘Η Προσωπική Αίσθηση του Χρόνου της Ηλέκτρας και του Ορέστη στην Ἠλέκτρα του Ευριπίδη’, in: Dodone 14, 65 – 73. Tarkow, T. (1981), ‘The Scar of Orestes: Observations on a Euripidean Innovation’, in: RhM 124, 143 – 153. Thury, E. M. (1985), ‘Euripides’ Electra: An Analysis through Character Development’, in: RhM 128, 5 – 22. Tsagalis, Chr. (2008), ‘Ο Τρωικός Κύκλος στους Τρεις Μεγάλους Τραγικούς’, in: A. Markantonatos / Chr. Tsagalis (eds.), Αρχαία Ελληνική Τραγωδία, Athens, 33 – 115. Whitehorne, J. E. H. (1978), ‘The Ending of Euripides’ Electra’, in: Revue Belge de Philology et d’Histoire 56, 5 – 14. Walsh, G. B. (1977), ‘The First Stasimon of Euripides’ Electra’, in: YCS 25, 277 – 289. Willink, C.W. (ed.) (1986), Euripides: Orestes, with Introduction and Commentary, Oxford. — (2005), ‘The Second Stasimon of Euripides’ Electra’, in: ICS 30, 11 – 21. — (2009), ‘Euripides, Electra 432 – 486 and Iphigenia in Tauris 827 – 899’, in: J. R. C. Cousland / J. R. Hume (eds.), The Play of Texts and Fragments, Leiden / Boston, 205 – 217. Wohl, V. (2013), ‘Recognition and Realism in Euripides’ Electra’, I.C.S., Annual T. B. L. Webster Lecture, 5 p.m. Tuesday 5 November 2013 – Senate House, Room G22/26. Wolff, Chr. (1983), ‘Orestes’, in: E. Segal (ed.), Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy, Oxford, 340 – 356. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (1980), Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy, Athens. — (2002), Dramatica: Studies in Classical and Post-Classical Dramatic Poetry, Athens. — (2012), ‘The Archelaus of Euripides: Reconstuction and Motifs’, in: D. Rosenbloom / J. Davidson (eds.), Greek Drama IV: Texts, Contexts, Performance, Oxford, 108 – 126. — (2013), ‘Fragmentary Plays of Euripides with Similar Rhetorical Motifs and Story-Pattern: The Aeolus and Melanippe the Wise’, in: M. Q. Sagredo / M. C. Encinas Reguero (eds.), Retórica y Discurso en el Teatro Griego, Madrid, 61 – 90. Zeitlin, F. I. (1970), ‘The Argive Festival of Hera and Euripides’ Electra’, in: TAPA 101, 645 – 669 (= J. Mossman (ed.) (2003), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Euripides, Oxford, 261 – 284). Zuntz, G. (21963), The Political Plays of Euripides, Manchester.

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Narrative and Rhetorical Experimentation in Euripides’ Late Iphigenia at Aulis* The interest raised in the last decades by late 5th-century-BC tragedies and, in particular, by Euripides, of whom we know eight dramas staged after 415 BC,¹ has led to a deeper understanding not only of specific works which have been studied from new perspectives, but also of the poetics present in tragedy, its boundaries with regard to other genres and the particular way in which the social and political transformations taking place at the end of that century were reflected through it. That is the case of Iphigenia at Aulis, a tragedy which has received significant attention from critics in recent years. This play, which was staged after Euripides’ death in 406 BC, offers a reviewed vision of the myth that reveals the author’s meta-dramatical conscience in a late creative period, where Euripides’ worries about generational and family conflicts, apart from the usual conflicts between genders and civic and family values, which Euripides addressed in Iphigenia at Aulis with some new elements, reveal a period of crisis and transformations.² These days, the interaction of the play with its social and political context has been examined through a methodology whereby researchers have paid attention to the study of social practices, cultural institutions and ideological constructs from various perspectives, such as anthropological, sociological, structuralist and feminist criticism. The aim of this paper is to address some aspects of the complexity of this tragedy, where the elaborate narrative wrapping of the story runs parallel to a treatment of the characters which makes them particularly round. Agamemnon, who is among the main characters in the play, is one of the most remarkable. The traits that the tragedian uses to create this character give him a special density, which was undoubtedly attractive for the audience in Euripides’ time. In Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon is a round character in the sense that Edward M. Forster (1962) gives to this word: the test of a round character is whether that character

* This paper has been prepared in the development framework of the Research Project FFI2012 – 34030 of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO).  In research on late 5th-century-BC tragedy, the comparison of Euripides’ works is clearer than that of Sophocles’; some conclusions can be drawn from it. Cf. Quijada 2015.  Cf. the series of papers recently edited by Markantonatos / Zimmermann 2012, which address the study of late 5th-century-BC tragedies with regard to those changes. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-012

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is capable of surprising in a convincing way. Obviously, the readers, or the audience in 5th-century-BC Athens, decide the roundness level of a character with their vision of it, since the more sophisticated the receivers are, the more difficult it will be to surprise them. However, there is no doubt that, in Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon has opposite features, which create a dynamic character who can turn against his own decisions, that is, review in time his own behaviour. This is a trait that Agamemnon shares with Iphigenia, the other main character in the play,³ and that is shaped by the tragedian through a vast sequence of incidents. However, it also seems to be a feature of other characters created by Euripides in this tragedy,⁴ so as to say that, as it has been pointed out, Iphigenia at Aulis is ‘of all Greek tragedies the one with the largest number of changes of mind’.⁵ We think that this roundness and this dynamism in character creation and their close connection with the complex narrative creation of the story show Euripides’ experimentation in his artistic rendering of the myth presented in Iphigenia at Aulis. In this paper, our aim is to highlight that connection. This is not surprising, taking into account the close relationship between characters and action in drama.⁶ To begin with, let us elaborate on both elements. The traditionalism of the stories that the tragedians brought to the stage, their continued remaking and the extraordinarily advanced date, in that sense, of Iphigenia at Aulis make us think of the meaning that other poetic renderings of the myth undoubtedly provided, as well as the appearance of the character of Agamemnon in other works of epic poetry and drama, particularly in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. ⁷ This must have been an ineludible reference for any tragedian who wanted to write a play about the story of Agamemnon and his children, even if

 There are no significant differences among characters with regard to the number of verses which belong to each of them, but the fact that the focus of the play is Iphigenia’s sacrifice turns her and her potential executor into two of the main references of all actions in the tragedy, as we will discuss.  Also noteworthy is Menelaus’ change of mind after the agon with Agamemnon, where he is touched by his brother’s suffering.  Knox 1979, 243 – 246; Gibert 1995 presents a reviewed treatment of the concept of change of mind used by Knox.  It is well known that this connection was already considered by Aristotle, who clearly opted for the supremacy of action over the characters. Historically, that view was developed by theorists such as Brecht (Kleines Organon für das Theater), while the opposite idea was defended by Goethe (in his speech on Schäkespears Tag) or Lessing (Hamburgische Dramaturgie, no. 51), for example.  Agamemnon is one of the characters in Euripides’ Hecuba and Sophocles’ Ajax, but he has less relevance in those works.

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it did not address the same segment of the heroic legend as Iphigenia at Aulis.⁸ We do not know anything about Aeschylus’ or Sophocles’ Iphigenia, which have been lost,⁹ although with regard to the topic we do have the reference of the parodos of Agamemnon and the agon of Sophocles’ Electra. Apart from that, all three tragedians went back to the past in the tragedies that address Orestes’ matricide (Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra), whose consequences were addressed in turn in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, as well as in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians and Orestes ¹⁰. However, in Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides innovatively assumed the big challenge as a tragedian to recreate the great myths of tragedy addressed by his predecessors. That was undoubtedly the case of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which must have been staged frequently at the end of the century,¹¹ and where the action takes place just before the fleet left for Troy, extending considerably the dramatic perspective of the myth.¹² That extension of the treatment of the myth allows the tragedian to offer a version of the legend of Iphigenia’s sacrifice which must have defied the audience’s expectations, since it

 It seems that Agamemnon’s murder, which is the topic of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, was only dramatized by this tragedian. Neither Sophocles nor Euripides wrote any tragedy about that topic, although both authors addressed Agamemnon’s destiny in the tragedies entitled Electra. It is not very likely that there existed a Clytemnestra or an Aegisthus by Sophocles (cf. Pearson 1917, 219, as quoted in Radt 1999, 315).  Cf. Radt 1985, 115, 213 – 214 for Aeschylus and Radt 1999, 270 – 274 for Sophocles.  Cf. Aélion 1983 and more specifically Stockert 1992.  It is well known that, after Aeschylus’ death, the Athenians passed a law which allowed his tragedies to keep on being staged and therefore competing with those by authors who were still alive. Seven against Thebes and other tragedies related to the legend of Oedipus’ house and his descendants (portrayed extensively by Euripides in Phoenician Women) must have also been staged at the end of the century, as the comedy Frogs seems to indicate. Cf. in this regard Dover 1993, 23; Olson 2002, 69.  With regard to the mythical materials that Euripides shapes in this tragedy, neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey mention Iphigenia’s sacrifice, but the Cypria does, which we know thanks to a summary from late antiquity (cf. Davies 1989, 33 – 52). The poem must have been popular in Athens in the 5th century BC and offered a series of details about Iphigenia’s sacrifice which are picked up by Euripides. Basically, the divine mandate of Artemis – prophesized by Calchas; the place, Aulis, where the Greek fleet is anchored, waiting for favourable wind; Iphigenia’s arrival in that place on the excuse of her wedding; her final substitution for a doe and her immortalization. In the Catalogue of Women, attributed to Hesiod, we also find an Iphimede (a variant of the name Iphigenia, even if it is etymologically independent) who is turned into a simulation at the time of the sacrifice and immortalized by Artemis (fr. 23 Merkelbach / West). According to ancient sources, the lyric poem Oresteia, by Stesichorus, also followed the previous versions on Iphigenia’s salvation and immortalization. In Pindar, Pythian 11.22– 25, Iphigenia’s murder is considered as one of the reasons for Clytemnestra’s revenge (possible dates of composition: 474 and 454 BC, that is, before or after Aeschylus’ Oresteia).

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juxtaposes the narrative model and the incidents of the story, as well as the roles of the characters in it, and which is addressed by Euripides from new points of view, with the model sanctioned by tradition. With regard to the poetic rendering of a traditional story offered by Euripides, two narrative patterns shape this work.¹³ Iphigenia at Aulis is a tragedy about voluntary sacrifice, but the main theme does not develop immediately. The actor of the sacrifice is Iphigenia and her decision to die, which is taken by her quite late in the play, is the change of direction determining the act of the voluntary sacrifice. However, overlapping this narrative outline, we find another one, that is, an intrigue where Agamemnon is the intriguer and Iphigenia is the victim, and during which the main actor has to execute against his will. This overlapping of two different narrative patterns, as well as the ups and downs that the actors of the two main actions have to endure before becoming such, makes this tragedy particularly complex. With regard to character configurations, they present quite innovative combinations. In the first part of the play, which is a little family drama of sorts with intimate elements, we see Agamemnon confess his worries to a servant¹⁴ and oppose his own brother, Menelaus. That might remind us of Sophocles’ Ajax, but we must remember that in that tragedy Agamemnon and Menelaus are never together on the stage, and even if their points of view are different, in the end they do not represent opposite positions in their fight with Teucer. As for the second part of Iphigenia at Aulis, the appearance of Achilles as a dramatic character is unique in Greek tragedy as we know it today, and the mother, the daughter and the prospective husband create in turn an action segment where the family element – with the arrival of the mother to take care of the preparations for the wedding – is kept and where the oppositions are transformed through scenes where different characters fulfill similar roles (such as resistance-opposition with regard to Agamemnon’s plans, characteristic in voluntary-sacrifice dramas, and represented in Iphigenia at Aulis by Menelaus, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia and Achilles). The configurations of father – daughter, husband – wife, suitor – courted young woman, etc. establish opposition with certain elements that somehow herald New Comedy, where family and generational conflicts, as well as tradi-

 Cf. mainly the typology in Burnett 1971 and the previous work of Strohm 1957.  This is an old servant of Agamemnon, whom the latter makes enter the scene, and who tells how the general has spent a restless night, with tears in his eyes, writing and deleting a message on a wax tablet, a material element full of meaning in the play. In a long speech interrupting the dialogue between both men (and which might have originally been part of an alternative prologue), Agamemnon explains his situation and provides some background information: the urgency of the situation contrasts with the calm scene described in 9 – 15.

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tional conflicts between men and women, get a new quality around the marriage of a young woman. The extension of the different points of view allows the tragedian to further develop his characters. Agamemnon appears in the prologue of the play¹⁵ in order to inform about the divine mandate, the need to sacrifice his daughter, which marks the causal beginning of the typical events in a voluntary-sacrifice tragedy. At the same time, the prologue is also the introduction of a particular intrigue, where Agamemnon is the intriguer, as we have said, and the divine mandate is the cause.¹⁶ In effect, the menace that looms over Iphigenia, that is the deceitful plan to lead the victim to her death,¹⁷ shows an intriguer, Agamemnon, who has to execute this plan against his will. With Agamemnon trapped in a dilemma of two opposing actions, superbly summed up in the two letters that he has written for Clytemnestra,¹⁸ the first commanding her to make Iphigenia go to Aulis, the sec Both the beginning and the end of the play are damaged. As for the prologue, the text that we know starts with an anapestic dialogue between Agamemnon and his servant (1– 48). In response to the latter’s question, Agamemnon starts the typical narrative rhesis in iambic trimeters (49 – 114), describing things that the servant should already know; the rest continues and finishes the dialogue in anapests. Some scholars have accepted the iambs and refused the anapests; others have done the opposite. About this question, cf., among others, Willink 1971, 342– 364, or the comprehensive review in Stockert 1992, 66 – 79.  In spite of Artemis’ relevance in the myth and Iphigenia’s worship and in contrast with previous versions of the story, such as Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Artemis’ importance in this tragedy is considerably little. With regard to Agamemnon, he does neither question nor criticize the goddess’ demands; instead, he states that he wishes to cooperate with Calchas by doing what Artemis asks of him (746 – 748). Therefore, the divine mandate is turned into a means in Iphigenia at Aulis and is expressed through Calchas’ prophecies, the navy’s pressure, Agamemnon’s insecurity, Odysseus’ manipulation and the messenger’s prodigious narration where he tells Iphigenia’s vanishing at the sacrifice altar (which authenticity is questioned by Clytemnestra).  The plan has the features of a destruction mechanema; cf. for this concept the classic study by Solmsen 1932, 1– 17, who makes a distinction between an intrigue for (the opponent’s) destruction and another one for (one’s) salvation: ‘Die berechnende, listige Wahl und Anwendung geeigneter Mittel zu egoistisch erstrebten Zwecken. Das τέλος steht fest; τὰ πρὸς τὸ τέλος sind es, worauf das Augenmerk der μηχανώμενοι qua μηχανώμενοι gerichtet ist. Ethische Bedenken sind offenbar bei solchen μηχανήματα ausgeschaltet, das καλόν existiert für sie nicht. Die eigene σωτηρία und εὐτυχία oder das Verderben des Gegners ist das Ziel; dazu gilt es den Weg zu finden und – das kommt entscheidend hinzu – den, gegen den sich das μηχάνημα richtet, über Motiv und Ziele zu täuschen’ (p. 4). In this study, Solmsen does not refer to Iphigenia at Aulis, since, as we will point out below, this play has not typically been considered a tragedy of intrigue.  The tablet where Agamemnon expresses his changing will have a main role in Iphigenia at Aulis as an element which characterizes and focuses the first part of the action. This ‘unusually small and naturalistic prop’ (Taplin 1978, 95), which Agamemnon carries since the beginning of the play, but which is only identified in 35 – 36, forms the centre of attention in the first part of the tragedy, since it expresses Agamemnon’s dilemma in a material way and that of the other

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ond, which he bears in his hand at the beginning of the tragedy, revoking that command, the play starts in an extraordinarily innovative way, with the intriguer making a move in the opposite direction in order to keep the victim away from the place. However, the intrigue that is not willing to begin and the intriguer who is full of remorse help the tragedian to express in a new way the despair of the ‘close relative’ in a voluntary-sacrifice drama, which, as we have said above, Iphigenia at Aulis will become eventually. Agamemnon and Menelaus, the sons of Atreus, make a unity and shape one point of view in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: they act and suffer together with regard to Iphigenia’s sacrifice, which is reflected in the parodos of this work (202b – 204: ὥστε χθόνα βάκτροις ἐπικρούσαντας ᾿Aτρείδας δάκρυ μὴ κατασχεῖν, ‘The two Atreidae smote their sceptres on the plain and could not restrain their tears!’)¹⁹. However, in Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides introduces an innovation and makes them oppose each other in the agon of the first episode, where one represents the father who is going to lose a daughter and the other one, the husband who is going to get a wife. On the other hand, when the agon finishes, they are both willing to change their minds and adopt the opposite point of view. Agamemnon’s indecision in the Iliad, where he sometimes appears as arrogant and intimidating and some other times as passive and desperate,²⁰ lies beneath the volatile Agamemnon in this tragedy, but this ability to change reaches surprising peaks and features in Iphigenia at Aulis in comparison with tragedy standards. In the prologue, Agamemnon says that he has made his daughter come to Aulis, but the play starts when he is going to revoke that decision.²¹ Later, when the Mescharacters who appear in the scene. The discussion around the tablet between Menelaus and the servant (303 ff.) marks the beginning of a scene which adds a comical element to their entrance (Michelakis 2006, 101). The resource of the letter seems to be Euripides’ invention: in Sophocles, it is Odysseus who personally delivers the message to Clytemnestra in Argos, and previous versions of the myth do not seem to pay attention to the means used to bring Iphigenia to Aulis. On deceit and its association to the practice of writing, cf. Steiner 1994, among others.  In Aeschylus’ tragedy, Iphigenia’s sacrifice is narrated by the elders of the Chorus in a long passage (40 – 257) that prepares Agamemnon’s entrance, thus offering a wide perspective of the violence cycle portrayed in the trilogy; the Chorus’ narration focuses on the condition set by Artemis, on Agamemnon’s freedom to choose and on Iphigenia’s helplessness, which pave the way for Clytemnestra’s subsequent revenge.  Cf. Michelakis 2006, 34, who identifies the features that the Agamemnon in Iphigenia at Aulis shares with the one in the Iliad, basically his mood changes fluctuating between excessive self‐confidence and despair.  The first scene has no equal in Greek tragedy: Agamemnon, awake in the silence of the camp at Aulis, struggles to make up his mind about whether to do what he has decided (cf. Michelini 2000, 45). Il. 2.1– 4 or 9.1– 12 are precedents of the image of the general who is awake and worried, but the closest similarity in drama to this Agamemnon who is unable to sleep because of

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senger’s entrance puts an end to the agon between the brothers by announcing Iphigenia’s arrival and Menelaus also expresses his change of mind,²² Agamemnon changes his again and argues that it is impossible to save his daughter from sacrifice, since Calchas will tell the prophecy to the army and Odysseus will do everything he can to fulfill it. As has been pointed out,²³ such changes of heart cannot be explained, or at least not primarily, in terms of psychology. Agamemnon does not clarify how or why he made his fatal decision to bring Iphigenia to Aulis (whether it was a voluntary decision or if he was influenced by his brother’s arguments, cf. 97– 98a: οὖ δή μ᾽ ἀδελφὸς πάντα προσφέρων λόγον / ἔπεισε τλῆναι δεινά. ‘At this point my brother, making every sort of argument, persuaded me to bring myself to do a terrible thing’). He does not explain why compassion, which did not move him before, moves him now,²⁴ nor why, when he revoked his decision, he did not take into account the arguments that he uses after Iphigenia’s arrival. So how can we understand them? Aeschylus had already addressed Agamemnon’s attempt to justify his behaviour, and that attempt would have made the hero lose the audience’s sympathy. Above all, it also represented a wellknown dramatic peak, and Euripides seemed to wish to offer something new, a sequence of moments which express the emotional inconsistency and decision-making process typical in a human being.²⁵ In this regard, the agon between Agamemnon and Menelaus is paradigmatic in this play. The scene with the two brothers shapes a series of opposing speeches and an agonistic set with high rhetorical elaboration. In the first fight, Menelaus and Agamemnon use catalectic trochaic tetrameters in their speeches, as well

his worries is the beginning of the comedy Clouds by Aristophanes, where Strepsiades cannot sleep and calls a servant. Also surprising is the image of an Agamemnon who declares at the beginning of Iphigenia at Aulis: ‘I envy you, old man, envy any mortal who passes, unknown to fame, through a life without danger’ (16b-18) (translation by Kovacs 2002, 168; here and in the other fragments from Iphigenia at Aulis we follow the translation by Kovacs 2002).  Lloyd 1992, 15, notes that ‘it is unclear to what extent Agamemnon’s arguments have persuaded Menelaus and to what extent Menelaus’ change of heart is due to his brother’s tears and to the interrupting messenger speech’.  Griffin 1990, 144.  In his first fight with Menelaus, Agamemnon only defends his right to change a bad resolution for a good one (388 – 389a).  In her interpretation of the story model lying beneath Iphigenia at Aulis, Burnett 1971, 23, underlines that the tragedian uses the agon scene and the two following rheseis, where each brother expresses his change of heart, to provide a more comprehensive description of the suffering of those who have to fulfill a divine mandate against their will, and also to generally introduce the terms in which such a mandate can be acceptable from the point of view of a human being.

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as in the previous stichomythic dialogue (317– 333); after the Messenger brings news and when both brothers express their change of heart, they use iambic trimeters.²⁶ In the first fight, Menelaus attacks his brother’s changing nature and his treason to loyalty,²⁷ while Agamemnon defends his right to rectify in a speech which is framed by comments revealing an obvious rhetorical conscience.²⁸ In the second part of the scene, Agamemnon defends a different position, and it is precisely in this speech where the Athenians should easily recognise the influence from the extraordinary parodos in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, thanks to their theatrical memory.²⁹ In his speech, Agamemnon feels like the prey of a daimon which has turned out to be much more skilled (σοφώτερος, 445) than he is, and, once he has made a decision, he has doubts with regard to the Greek army, his wife and his daughter. On the other hand, throughout his speech, Menelaus insists in sincerity and in explaining his change of mind (477– 479, 489 – 490, 500 – 503), which is due to no other reason than his love of his brother (501b-502a: τὸν ὁμόθεν πεφυκότα / στέργων μετέπεσον. ‘I have changed and begun to love a brother from the same parents’). As if it were the precedent for other changes of heart that will determine the course of action, the vast agonistic set between Menelaus and Agamemnon seems to establish a behavioural pattern, a model of men’s inconsistency and instability when they make decisions in Iphigenia at Aulis.

 The stichomythic dialogue which follows the two first speeches is also written in iambic trimeters (402– 414a). The change of rhythm must also have adjusted a change of tone in the scene.  Φίλοι is significantly repeated in Menelaus’ speech, which highlights that behind the rhetoric in his speech lies his own interest. On the other hand, φιλότιμον, followed by the phrase ἐκ μέσου (342), seems to convey the idea of Agamemnon’s change of heart: while in the past he was keen to seek the glory that comes along with debate (we think that ἐκ μέσου may have that meaning here), he currently shows reluctance and concealment.  The beginning of Agamemnon’s speech reads: βούλομαί σ᾽ εἰπεῖν κακῶς αὖ, βραχέα, μὴ λίαν ἄνω / βλέφαρα πρὸς τἀναιδὲς ἀναγών, ἀλλὰ σωφρονεστέρως, / ὡς ἀδελφὸν ὄντ᾽· ‘I want in my turn to say a few words of criticism to you, not shamelessly raising my glance too high but in a more modest style, as one ought to address a brother’ (378 – 380a), and he finishes with the following words: ταῦτά σοι βραχέα λέλεκται καὶ σαφῆ καὶ ῥᾴδια· / εἰ δὲ μὴ βούλῃ φρονεῖν εὖ, τἄμ᾽ ἐγὼ θήσω καλῶς. ‘That is my message to you – brief, clear, and easy to understand. If you refuse to be sensible, I shall settle my own affairs well’ (400 – 401).  The influence from the parodos of Agamemnon is clear: the curse that his daughter will utter against him, wishing him an identical marriage (IA 463 – 464 ~ Ag. 235 – 237); the antithesis of alternatives – to weep or not to weep – (IA 451– 452 ~ Ag. 206 – 208); the necessity that yokes Agamemnon (IA 443 ~ Ag. 218).

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The arrival of the victim with her mother, who wishes to take part in the preparations for the wedding – undoubtedly an innovation by Euripides,³⁰ who emphasises in several passages how strange it is for Clytemnestra to appear among the tents and ships of the army that is anchored in Aulis (825 ff., 913 ff.) – transforms the nature of the intrigue in Iphigenia at Aulis, by creating an action with the features of a salvation mechanema, where the σωτηρία or εὐτυχία does not imply a plan to destroy the victim, but rather to avoid her intervention.³¹ In Iphigenia at Aulis, the aim is to keep Clytemnestra away from the sacrifice plans and the rather typical ploys of concealment.³² However, the intrigue fails. In two subsequent scenes, which last for a whole episode, Agamemnon faces Iphigenia first, then Clytemnestra. They are parallel scenes, both have a stichomythic form³³ and make a significant set, revealing the tragedian’s taste for and mastery of strongly ironic scenes. The one of Agamemnon and Iphigenia is a scene of meeting and parting, and shows a father who cannot endure his pain, to the extent of crying in 655: ‘Ah me, how hard to hold my tongue! I thank you, daughter’. The scene of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra (691– 750) structures the narrative about Achilles and a future narrative, the preparations for the wedding. However, Agamemnon’s attempt to keep Clytemnestra away fails and the parting with Iphigenia only increases the despair of Agamemnon, whom we heard say words with a double meaning once he had made his decision. That special feature of the intrigue’s failure in Iphigenia at Aulis is unique. Achilles’ entrance (801– 818) takes place in the next episode. He represents one more obstacle on the side of Agamemnon’s opponents, but Euripides does not make the heroes face each other, neither now nor later in the play. Achilles

 In the Cypria, Artemis demanded Iphigenia’s sacrifice, so the Achaeans asked her to go to Aulis with the excuse of her marriage to Achilles. Sophocles (fr. 305 Radt) develops this theme by turning Odysseus into the Messenger who has to go to Mycenae in order to convince Clytemnestra to bring her daughter to Aulis. See notes 8 and 12 above.  Clytemnestra and Iphigenia’s entrance on a cart, probably led by horses – a not very common entrance in Greek tragedy, cf. Taplin 1977, 70 – 79 – must have been one of the main moments in the play. In Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ Electra, the respective entrances on a cart of the king, with Cassandra, on his way back from Troy and of Clytemnestra provide a powerful contrast with the destiny that awaits both heroes. In Iphigenia at Aulis, the entrance of the mother and the daughter must undoubtedly recall the above-mentioned entrances, although the value of the contrasts that they provide has changed direction: Clytemnestra and Iphigenia arrive with the magnificence of those who are preparing for a wedding and the sacrifice which looms over the young woman ennobles her.  Cf. 538 – 540a: ‘Take care of this one thing, Menelaus: go through the army and make sure that Clytemnestra does not learn this’.  Only a brief rhesis by Agamemnon ends the dialogue in each scene.

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speaks to Clytemnestra first and their meeting is defined by surprise and the typical reaction of the first meeting of the anagnoriountes in a tragedy with anagnorisis. ³⁴ The scene ends with the unexpected entrance of an old servant of the house (in trochaic tetrameters), which solves the aporia to which the meeting has led, and reveals the final failure of Agamemnon’s plan to conceal the intrigue from his wife. After the second and more important moment of the failure of the intrigue, the action leads to the final representation of Iphigenia’s voluntarysacrifice drama, which peaks with her decision to die. However, Euripides inserts a series of delaying scenes in between, with the typical function of expressing the resistance movements that can be found in a voluntary‐sacrifice tragedy. Those scenes are significantly developed in Iphigenia at Aulis. First, there is the one which continues the dialogue between Achilles and Clytemnestra (now in iambic trimeters), where the resolution to convince Agamemnon follows the plea to do so (900 – 1035). Later, there is the set made by what can be considered an agon and where Agamemnon is present, to whom Clytemnestra and Iphigenia address their pleas (1146 – 1275). As in the beginning of the play, this second agon also gives a new expression to the background of purposes which lie behind the sacrifice demanded by Artemis, but, by taking part in it, the main female character becomes an innovative representation on the stage of the resistance to sacrifice, which is common in a voluntary‐sacrifice tragedy. After Agamemnon’s exit, the main female character’s monody (1279 – 1335) builds the lyric register that ultimately expresses such resistance. Clytemnestra’s speech when she faces Agamemnon (1146 – 1208) is clearly argumentative, even if it is also passionate, and, instead of conveying a request, it rather challenges her opponent.³⁵ On the other hand, Iphigenia makes a speech of plea, which is answered by Agamemnon. The story told by Clytemnestra in her speech seems to be unknown beyond Euripides; it transforms the traditional conflict be-

 Achilles’ first reaction when Clytemnestra enters the scene is characterized by surprise and distancing due to the shyness (αἰδώς, 821) that he feels in her presence. Since the revelation of Iphigenia’s fake wedding makes Clytemnestra feel embarrassed as well, the meeting is about to end in their parting (cf. 851, χαῖρ᾽), which is interrupted by the entrance of a Messenger who brings the news of Agamemnon’s plans. The similarities with tragedies such as Helen (the scene where Menelaus and Helen first meet, 557 ff.) or Ion (the relevant scene between the main character and Xuthus, 517 ff.) are significant: the surprise of the meeting causes astonishment and doubt about the total understanding of what is happening. Strohm 1957, 139, had already pointed out the similarities between this peculiar contact on the stage and the one between Achilles and Clytemnestra. On the practice of ἐγγύησις, see Foley 1982, 162.  Clytemnestra’s speech is the main ax in this second agon scene; that is highlighted by the fact that the number of verses in her speech matches the addition of Agamemnon’s and Iphigenia’s, a complex symmetry.

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tween husband and wife, giving it a deeper, moral nature and offering a rich, mythical and cultural background.³⁶ Maybe that is why it is told in some detail. Clytemnestra begins her speech by pointing out that Agamemnon married her against her will, that he got her through violence, after murdering her former husband, Tantalus, and smashing their little son on the floor. That means that the daughter which Agamemnon plans to kill, Iphigenia, is not the first child of Clytemnestra that he would murder. Therefore, the effect of this sort of ‘secret’, which surrounds the couple’s story and proves that Agamemnon was always able to kill innocents in his own interest, is devastating and gives the character of Agamemnon a dark nature in the play, which suits him better as a character in epic poetry and drama. Clytemnestra, a victim in the past who is menaced in the present by her husband’s cruelty, focuses the narration in her speech not only on what has already happened between husband and wife, but also on the things that can happen in the future, by pointing out how dangerous it could be for Agamemnon to go back home after killing Iphigenia (1187: νόστον πονηρόν, οἴκοθέν γ᾽ αἰσχρῶς ἰών; ‘An evil homecoming to match your shameful departure?’). Even if she ‘reconciled’ with him in the past and behaved as a flawless wife,³⁷ Clytemnestra could become a vindictive wife because of certain facts.³⁸ In her speech, Clytemnestra suggests that she will not accept Iphigenia’s substitution, which is what happened in the past with her first child. She underlines the unique nature of this daughter – one of the four children of Agamemnon that she has born – by watching the situation in the house without Iphigenia with her mind’s eye: ‘When I see the chair of your daughter empty, and her maiden chamber empty, and I sit alone in tears, always bewailing her’ (1174– 1176). The theme of the inability to replace a loved one³⁹ lies behind the treat-

 Cf. in this regard Luschnig 1988, and the contributions by Michelini 2000 and Gibert 2005.  Michelini 2000, 49, highlights in this regard: ‘impregnation with the child of the enemy does have a confusing effect on female royalties, since love of the child may mitigate rebellion against a hated master’. However, as Gibert 2005, 236, notes, ‘an ideology that allows such a shift of loyalty (after the birth of a son, no less) to be put forward as exceptionally praiseworthy points to its own inadequacy’. Gibert defends the possibility that this story served to raise questions about the institution of marriage and the lack of freedom of Athenian women with regard to choosing a husband. The fact that Agamemnon was not at war with anybody when he got Clytemnestra through violence adds up to the lack of consent from his wife.  Clytemnestra’s past behaviour is not explained in the play, but it definitely contrasts with the one that she announces for the future. That is why her speech in this agon with Agamemnon is used more to emphasise the violence that she suffered than to explain her decision in the present.  Clytemnestra’s arguments remind us of the famous passage in Sophocles’ Antigone, in which the heroine defends that a woman can get another husband or bear other children if she loses the ones she has, but it is impossible to substitute a brother; cf. in this regard Gibert 2005, 238.

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ment of this motif in Clytemnestra’s speech, and Iphigenia cannot be replaced from the point of view of a mother who has already lost another child, her first-born, at her current husband’s hands. That seems obvious in the speech made by Clytemnestra, beyond other facts that can turn Iphigenia, in her quality as Agamemnon’s chosen victim, into an irreplaceable being: birth order, beauty or her connection to Artemis.⁴⁰ Clytemnestra’s arguments about the inadequacy of choosing Iphigenia as a victim are clear. She never mentions the divine mandate. She thinks that, if the requirement for setting out for Troy is a sacrifice, the Greeks should make a draw to decide who will sacrifice his child (1199), instead of Agamemnon offering his own daughter as a chosen victim in favour of the Danaans. Otherwise, Menelaus, who is the one concerned, could kill Hermione in exchange for her mother’s return. Nothing can justify the exchange that Agamemnon plans to make (this is also an argument previously used by Menelaus, 481– 482), unless he has not reflected on it and only cares about bearing the scepter and leading the army (1194– 1195). The aim of Clytemnestra’s speech is to show a clear image of Agamemnon. She stresses that he has a choice and that it is fair that, when choosing, he honours the reciprocity that he owes her as a husband. However, if on the one hand the whole speech leads to that ἢ σκῆπτρά σοι / μόνον διαφέρειν καὶ στρατηλατεῖν μέλει; ‘or is your only thought to carry the scepter and be general?’ in lines 1194b-1195a, aimed at Agamemnon, on the other hand, by deepening in the queen’s past suffering, it decisively helps to give her character a nature that brings her closer to the audience, since it helps us to understand her suffering and opposes her most typical role in the myth as the avenger of her children, who were killed by her husband. As the other characters in the play, in Iphigenia at Aulis Clytemnestra is tied to her past (a past which is narrated to justify a certain behaviour, decision or action in the present), but, curiously, she is also aware of her future or of the character that she can become in that future that is sanctioned by the mythical and dramatical tra-

 Only Artemis can substitute Iphigenia, by replacing her for another victim, in the extraordinary ending of the play which is probably lost to us, where she appears as a dea ex machina. Cf. the discussion about the exodos in Stockert 1992, 79 – 87, who favours such an ending, taking into account the linguistic and metric difficulties present in the Messenger rhesis. Artemis’ appearance as a goddess ex machina can be deduced from some verses quoted by Aelianus, On the Nature of Animals 7.39 (ἔλαφον δ᾽ ᾿Aχαιῶν χερσὶν ἐνθήσω κτλ.), even if they do not necessarily belong to this tragedy. The idea of a reconciled Clytemnestra – Artemis’ rhesis would be addressed to her – is not unthinkable, even if it contradicts the mythical version sanctioned by tradition, if we take into account the similarities in other tragedies, such as Euripides’ Orestes. Other experts, such as Willink 1971, favour an unfinished ending, with two ancient attempts to provide the play with an iambic exodos, that is, a messenger rhesis and an Artemis rhesis as dea ex machina.

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dition. Orestes’ presence in the play, only a child at that time,⁴¹ can undoubtedly be interpreted similarly: it is a way to make the audience remember the future that awaits him in the myth. Agamemnon does not appear in the play after the scene of the plea,⁴² but, before Iphigenia expresses her resolution to die, there is a new delaying element: the long stichomythic dialogue between Clytemnestra and Achilles, which conveys the final failure of the opposition movement, since the hero could not convince the Greek army to oppose Agamemnon’s plans.⁴³ Iphigenia’s decision to die turns the sacrifice which looms over the play from the beginning into a voluntary-sacrifice tragedy.⁴⁴ We are not going to address how the young woman’s change of heart has been interpreted. This complex matter has divided the critics, starting with Aristotle, and has caused perplexity among them and even the characters in the play.⁴⁵ Iphigenia’s arguments remind us of those previously used by Agamemnon. This has led some scholars to talk about the lack of freedom in the young woman’s decision. We think that Iphige-

 Some scholars argue against Orestes’ presence in the play as a sweet infant, as a mute character, but, if it is accepted, 1117–1119 would indicate that Iphigenia carries him in her arms when she enters and it is not inconceivable that he is still in her arms while she sings her monody (1280 ff.).  His presence in the tragedy’s exodos is uncertain. As we have already pointed out, that part of the play is damaged.  It has already been noted (Michelakis 2006, 40 – 41) that Achilles’ portrait in Iphigenia at Aulis defies every set of values and beliefs strongly linked to his Homeric heroism. In fact, Achilles’ paradoxical position is built through certain personality traits and behaviour patterns that recall, and also contradict, his previous image in Greek literature, basically in the Iliad. On the figure of Achilles, cf. the previous Michelakis 2002.  On the topic of voluntary sacrifice in Euripides’ tragedies, cf. O’Connor-Visser 1987 and Wilkins 1990.  Aristotle uses the case of Iphigenia in this tragedy as an example to illustrate the absence of consistency (τὸ ὁμαλόν) of a character in drama (Poetics 1454a 32– 33). Aristotle’s treatment of the qualities that the ethe must have in chapter 15 of the Poetics is significantly brief, and in that passage it is definitely not clear whether that lack of consistency belongs to the most justifiable type, that is, a conscious inconsistency (κἂν γὰρ ἀνώμαλος τις ᾖ ὁ τὴν μίμησιν παρέχων καὶ τοιοῦτον ἦθος ὑποτεθῇ, ὅμως ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλον δεῖ εἶναι, Poetics 1454a 25 – 27, ‘For even where an inconsistent person is portrayed, and such a character is presupposed, there should be consistency in the inconsistency’ (translation by Halliwell 1987, 47), which on the other hand is difficult to reflect in the limited framework of a drama. As for the mixed feelings of the characters in the play with regard to Iphigenia’s decision, an index is offered by Achilles’ reaction when the young woman says that she wishes to die. As noted by Michelakis 2006, 39, Achilles expresses in twelve verses his admiration of Iphigenia’s courage and nobleness (1404– 1405), her patriotism (1406 – 1407), followed by a recognition of her pragmatism before something that cannot be helped (1408 – 1409), his wish to save her (1410 – 1413), his sorrow at the prospect of her death (1413 – 1415) and a final attempt to dissuade her (1415).

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nia’s reasons, that is, Artemis’ mandate, Hellas, fame, Achilles, as well as her mention of other alternatives – marriage and children (1398 – 1399) – make topoi that, in a voluntary-sacrifice tragedy, are used to highlight that the character is making a choice. However, it is also true that in Iphigenia at Aulis they have a different background and raise new questions. To begin with, the traditional value of sacrifice is not used to save a besieged city or end a war in this tragedy, but rather to start one. This negative vision of the consequences of war, in particular of an offensive war, such as Troy’s, is not new in Euripides’ work; it is already present in the epos, where it is probably an innovation introduced by the Iliad’s poet.⁴⁶ Also negative in Iphigenia at Aulis, as happens in the Suppliants, is the vision of the energy which drives the ὄχλος, the crowd, to start a war and, in several passages of the play, Agamemnon talks about the army’s haste to start their journey to Troy (528 – 535, 1264– 1268)⁴⁷. In Iphigenia at Aulis this theme is used to establish different perspectives. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s disillusioned view of the war which is about to start is not like that of young Iphigenia and Achilles, for whom the war represents a heroic future which they have not experienced yet. Agamemnon refers to this wild desire to go to war, traditionally described as a nosos, an illness, as madness sent by the divinity (411), while Achilles sees it as an eros, a passion not without divine intervention. Agamemnon combines both ideas in 1264, where, referring to the danger of the army if the sacrifice is not carried out, he states: μέμηνε δ᾽ A ᾿ φροδίτη τις Ἑλλήνων στρατῷ, ‘A great longing runs riot in the Greek army’. Agamemnon literally feels like a slave of this Greece which is to be freed (1271– 1272), as ‘we Greeks must not have our wives forcibly abducted’ (1275). In effect, in Iphigenia at Aulis there is a Panhellenic discourse, probably reflecting ideas which had been made familiar by epideictic oratory.⁴⁸ Oratory at the 4th

 In this regard, cf. Quijada 2006, 844– 846.  Cf. the beginning of Thucydides’ History, where he describes the inexperienced youth’s enthusiasm, who looked forward to the beginning of the war (2.8.1), and also his description of the same agitation (eros) before the expedition to Sicily (6.24.3). It is not unlikely that Iphigenia at Aulis was influenced by a contemporary disenchanted vision of the crowd as an ochlos and of the role of the soldier and the politician as their slave. In this regard, cf. Wassermann 1949, or Ober 1989, among others.  In this regard, see Michelini 2000, 55. Gorgias had written a famous speech about the unity of Greece in the Olympic Games and, in his Epitaphios, he warned Athenians that a victory over the barbarians deserved a monument, but that one over the Greeks deserved wailing. This epideictic oratory, established in the Olympic Games in the 5th century BC, continued also in the 4th century BC. Michelini highlights the role played by the kings of Northern Greece (probably also Archelaus of Macedon, in whose court Euripides sought refuge at the end of his life) in the promotion of Panhellenic ideas.

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century BC, Isocrates in particular, turned into a common topos the idea of the Trojan war as an example of a Panhellenic response in the shape of a military attack. However, in Iphigenia at Aulis, Euripides offers Agamemnon’s view, an experienced man who identifies this force as an ochlos and feels like its slave, as opposed to the view of Iphigenia, young and inexperienced, who thinks of how famous she will become through her sacrifice in an impulse where some scholars have also seen the strength of the eros toward Achilles.⁴⁹ Once Iphigenia decides to accept the sacrifice, Achilles makes a last attempt to dissuade her.⁵⁰ It is followed by a dialogue between mother and daughter, which shapes the usual parting scene (1433 – 1466) and where Clytemnestra does not appear as reconciled with the idea of the sacrifice. Her nonconformity contrasts with the usual expression of sorrow and praise of the heroic decision to die often present at the moment of parting in voluntary-sacrifice tragedies. Even if her daughter recommends her not to feel hatred of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra underlines the risks that he will face because of the sacrifice (1455) which was planned deceitfully (1457). This is another peculiarity in this tragedy as a voluntary-sacrifice drama, apart from the main female character’s initial reluctance and her delay in accepting the sacrifice. Iphigenia is the natural focus of tensions in Iphigenia at Aulis, which are enriched by Euripides in this drama by creating innovative character configurations, such as those related to Achilles, and which bring to the forefront a relationship between two young people which suggests something new.⁵¹ Agamemnon is the other innovation in the play with regard to the characters. The vast and intense way in which Euripides shows us his will’s ups and downs has no equal in Greek tragedy, and we have already pointed out at the beginning that they turn him into a dynamic

 Among other scholars who have defended this interpretation, see Sansone 1991.  The attempt to dissuade the person who accepts being sacrificed is quite compressed in this play because Iphigenia states her will quite late. Two brief rheseis by Achilles express this usual moment, but Iphigenia reaffirms her decision after the hero’s first intervention (1404– 1415), and the second one (1421– 1432) is used to express Achilles’ resolution not to abandon Iphigenia before her death, rather than to convince her. Achilles acts here as if he had married Iphigenia (1355 – 1356: τὴν ἐμὴν μέλλουσαν εὐνὴν … ἣν ἐφήμισεν πατήρ μοι, ‘I begged them not to kill my future wife… whom her father promised me’). In this regard, cf. Foley 1985, 73; Rabinowitz 1993, 52.  Achilles states his desire to get married when expressing his admiration of the young woman’s courage (1404 ff.) and is ready to save Iphigenia, if she has second thoughts in the last minute, when she sees the blade near her neck (1424 ff.). On the other hand, Iphigenia, thinking of Achilles, states that ‘better to save the life of a single man than ten thousand women!’ (1394). We are here before the idea of the union of a couple based on mutual admiration, a free union. Michelini 2000, 51, notes that the play continuously emphasises the contemporary rules of the separation of genders, which highlights the young couple’s less strict behaviour.

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character and turn his drama as an actor who must fulfill divinity’s will into a drama which is understandable from a human point of view. In Iphigenia at Aulis, Agamemnon belongs to the field of privacy, of intimacy. The theme of the ochlos, the crowd who make him fulfill his political and military role, which is highlighted in the play and described by the parodos with significant plasticity,⁵² serves to put his position into perspective, underscoring that Iphigenia’s sacrifice is partly a family drama in this play.

Conclusion Critics have thoroughly pointed out and studied the singularities of Iphigenia at Aulis as a voluntary-sacrifice drama. These singularities, to a great extent, stem from the importance of Iphigenia’s figure in the play, first as a reluctant victim, then willing to accept her sacrifice, and the innovative character configurations in which the tragedian places the main female character and which announce something new by turning the traditional conflict around sacrifice into a family drama. Those singularities are combined with Euripides’ noticeable play with tradition, established through elements which look into the past, but also into the future sanctioned by the myth. Less obvious and prominent are the innovations related to the development of the deceit motif in this tragedy and to the features that Iphigenia at Aulis has in common with the other intrigue tragedies so characteristic in Euripides’ late creation period.⁵³ The use of terms such as mechane and dolos in order to denote the series of strategies developed by the tragedian to attract and maintain the audience’s attention and to frustrate their expectations until the ending of the story that he wishes to tell has been emphasised by critics in modern narrative approaches to storytelling, even if the extent to which drama can be considered as a narration is under discussion.⁵⁴ However, this idea of deception refers to the relationship established between the narrator and the external receiver of the play, not to

 On the theme of this description’s plasticity with regard to memory, see Zeitlin 1995. Even if the entrance of the Chorus recalls Homer’s descriptions of troops, such as the ones in Iliad 2.484– 760 – the catalogue of ships – or 3.161– 244 – the teichoscopia –, the tone of the parodos in Iphigenia at Aulis is very different, and the Greek heroes’ athletic activities and the peaceful situation described by them contrast significantly with the war atmosphere in the Homeric prototype. On this parodos, cf. Sousa e Silva 2005, especially 345 – 350.  A clear exception is Strohm 1957.  In this regard, cf. the discussion on this topic in Lamari 2010, 5 – 16.

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the one existing among the different characters which shape the action of the intrigue in the inner theatrical communication system.⁵⁵ Intrigue has a role within inner theatrical communication: it is the means of escape from a precarious situation and, since it is linked to deceit, it highlights the complex connection between appearance and reality; both tragedy and comedy share this inner irony, although from different premises and tones, of course. However, within outer theatrical communication, tragedy has increased possibilities to offer the audience a greater distance – in their favour – with regard to the information that they and the characters have, thanks to its traditional theme and its exploitation of the gods’ intervention in the destiny of humans. In Iphigenia at Aulis, intrigue has unique features. First, as we have already noted, the play starts with the intriguer making the decision, which is revoked quickly, to end the intrigue. Then, as soon as a deceitful plan to trap the victim (characteristic of the destruction mechanema) starts, it is transformed by the victim’s arrival and the deception adopts a form rather characteristic of the salvation mechanema. The sacrifice plan must be kept secret, but Clytemnestra appears as an efficient opponent who starts ruining Agamemnon’s plans before discovering the whole strategy for killing her daughter (725 – 740). Undoubtedly, the discovery of the plan is the greatest innovation in the development of intrigue in this tragedy. The disguised intrigue in Iphigenia at Aulis is linked to the presence of characters which are made especially dynamic and round by Euripides. Willing to change their minds, these characters must have also surprised the ancient audience, because of the distance of their actions and decisions with regard to their past and future, sanctioned by tradition. Euripides must strengthen the narrative and dramatic resources within his reach to extend the treatment of the myth so as to project the innovative profiles of his characters in a wider time frame than the one in the drama. That is helped, in the case of Iphigenia, by her continued opposition to sacrifice and her delay to accept it as voluntary; in the case of Agamemnon, by the agon with Menelaus, which paradigmatically underscores both brothers’ change of mind before a difficult decision and shows them as trapped by the collective

 In this second sense, the intrigue motif (mechanema, dolos) has been studied in modern times (in its application to tragedy first, then to Menander’s comedy and to Latin comedy by Plautus and Terence) by taking the sequence of incidents which it causes in drama as a starting point for its definition. In this regard, cf. the early definition for tragedy in Solmsen 1932 (see note 17 above). Or the definition in Schwinge 1965, Col. 1874, s.v. Mechánema: ‛Ein auf einer List basierender Plan einiger Spieler im Drama, der ihnen zur Erreichung eines bestimmten Zieles dienen soll: der Rache an anderen = Rache-M., der eigenen Rettung = Rettungs-M.’.

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forces around them and the divine mandate; in the case of Clytemnestra, by her agon with Agamemnon, where the queen’s narration of her personal story, of her first and second marriages and of the violent death of her son with Tantalus at Agamemnon’s hands help her to define her position in the present, in clear contrast with the past; in the case of Achilles, by his role in the intrigue before it is discovered, as another victim of Agamemnon’s deceit and later as an opponent to the latter’s plans.

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O’Connor-Visser, E. A. M. E. (1987), Aspects of Human Sacrifice in the Tragedies of Euripides, Amsterdam. Olson, S. D. (ed.) (2002), Aristophanes: Acharnians, Oxford. Pearson, A. C. (1917), The Fragments of Sophocles, Cambridge. Quijada Sagredo, M. (2006), ‘“Por Ilión, ¡Oh Musa!, cántame entre lágrimas un canto de duelo, un himno Nuevo” (Eurípides, Troyanas 511 ss.)’, in: E. Calderón Dorda / A. Morales Ortiz / M. Valverde Sánchez (eds.), Koinòs Lógos. Homenaje al Profesor José García López, II, Murcia, 841 – 853. — (2015), ‘Tendencias narrativas en la tragedia griega de finales del s. V a. C.’, in: J. de la Villa Polo et al. (eds.), Ianua Classicorum: Temas y formas del Mundo Clásico, Vol. 2, Madrid, 27 – 56. Rabinowitz, N. S. (1993), Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women, Ithaca, NY. Radt, St. (ed.) (1985), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. 3: Aeschylus, Göttingen. — (ed.) (21999), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Vol. 4: Sophocles (F 730a-g herausgegeben von Richard Kannicht), korrigierte und ergänzte Auflage, Göttingen. Sansone, D. (1991), ‘Iphigeneia Changes Her Mind’, in: ICS 16.1 – 2, 161 – 172. Schwinge, E.-R. (1965), ‘Mechánema’, in: C. Andersen / K. Bartels / L. Huber (eds.), Lexikon der Alten Welt, Col. 1874, Zürich / Stuttgart. Solmsen, F. (1932), ‘Zur Gestaltung des Intrigenmotivs in den Tragödien des Sophokles und Euripides’, in: Philologus 87, 1 – 17. Sousa e Silva, F. (2005), ‘Elementos visuais e pictóricos na tragedia de Eurípides’, in: F. Sousa e Silva, Ensayos sobre Eurípides, Lisboa, 285 – 395 (= Humanitas 37 – 38 (1986), 9 – 86). Steiner, D. T. (1994), The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece, Princeton. Stockert, W. (1992), Euripides, Iphigenie in Aulis, Band 1, Einleitung und Text, Vienna. Strohm, H. (1957), Euripides. Interpretationen zur dramatischen Form, Munich. Taplin, O. (1977), The Stagecraft of Aeschylus, Oxford. — (1978), Greek Tragedy in Action, London. Wassermann, F. M. (1949), ‘Agamemnon in the Iphigenia at Aulis: A Man in an Age of Crisis’, in: TAPA 80, 174 – 186. Wilkins, J. (1990), ‘The State and the Individual: Euripides’ Plays of Voluntary Self-Sacrifice’, in: A. Powell (ed.), Euripides, Women and Sexuality, London, 177 – 194. Willink, C. W. (1971), ‘The Prologue of Iphigenia at Aulis’, in: CQ 21, 342 – 364. Zeitlin, F. I. (1995), ‘Art, Memory and Kleos in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis’, in: B. Goff (ed.), History, Tragedy, Theory, Austin, 174 – 201.

Paul Demont

A Note on Demosthenes (19.246 – 250) and the Reception of Sophocles’ Antigone It is well known that Creon’s first rhesis in Sophocles’ Antigone (175 – 190), concerning the importance of choosing true friends in order to save one’s country, was quoted with great approbation by Demosthenes in his 343 BC speech De falsa legatione (246 – 250). This is one of the earliest and most important testimonies establishing the canonical status that Sophocles’ dramas had already achieved by the fourth century.¹ According to Demosthenes, Aeschines had played the part of the king as a tritagonist in many performances but he has forgotten the meaning of what he (as Creon) said. He has actually done exactly the reverse of what those lines recommended by choosing Philippus as his friend over Athens, and continued to forget their meaning again in front of his judges. This section of his speech contains several problems which recent studies have addressed. I would like to re-examine two points: Demosthenes’ commentary on Antigone, and his assertion regarding tritagonists playing the parts of tyrants. Demosthenes quotes ‘iambic verses’ from the play which he claims were written in a way which is ‘beautiful and useful for you’ (πεποιημέν’ ἰαμβεῖα καλῶς καὶ συμϕερόντως ὑμῖν, 246), and are not meant to be spoken by a character whom the audience would find disagreeable. At the beginning of Antigone, King Creon expresses ideas of the dignified patriotism which Aeschines lost sight of during his mission. Demosthenes asks someone to read these verses to the jury, as if introducing another Creon in addition to ‘Creon-Aeschines’ (ὁ Κρέων Αἰσχίνης, 247)² – but this time the speaker is a noble one, a kind of ‘wise Sophocles’ (τῷ σοφῷ Σοφοκλεῖ, 248)³ instructing the people. The rhesis is no longer a tyrant’s rhesis, nor a piece of advice given by Aeschines to the Athenians, but a lesson given by Sophocles himself: a lesson which Aeschines misunderstood. Hanink has very recently, and I think

 See also Arist., Rh. 1.13.1373b8 – 13, 15.1347a32-b3; 3.16.1417a29, 17.1417b20, 1418b31.  Pontani 2009, 411 quotes Ar. Frogs 499 about this ‘trait d’union between Demosthenic style and comic diction’. This kind of ‘Mischungskomposita’ (Risch) or ‘dvandva’, linking the names of two humans or animals, is common both in comedy and in onomastic (Masson 1988).  Perhaps with a word play on sophos (I thank Katie Hartsock for this suggestion). A version of the Delphic oracle to Chaerephon about Socrates, quoted by Mathieu 1946, 100 n. 2 has a similar wording (Origenes, Cels. 7.6, schol. ad Aristoph. Clouds 144). The length of the quotation is guaranteed by the commentary that follows. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-013

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rightly, noted this appeal to ‘the moral authority of the tragedian and not of the fictional speaker of the lines’.⁴ I would add that, in my opinion, this style of selected quotation shows that Sophocles’ Antigone could also be read, and actually was read, in ‘morceaux choisis’, in order to give new life to the traditional function of the poet as didaskalos. It could be an instance of what Plato calls κεφάλαια applied to a tragic text – the central quotes, and their correct interpretations, which young people should learn from a tragedy.⁵ The drama itself is decontextualized. Unlike fifth-century comic decontextualizations of tragedy, here the speech has high and serious stakes. Completely absent are the questions of Antigone’s duties and noble concern for her brother, as well as the issue of Creon’s mistakes or failings. Thus, this text is also informative about the reception of Sophocles. Demosthenes’ commentary upon the rhesis presumes that the jury was familiar with the Sophoclean drama⁶—which has been ‘often’ played by those three actors (πολλάκις μὲν Θεόδωρος, πολλάκις δ’ ’Αριστόδημος ὑποκέκριται, 246)—but also suggests that such familiarity extended beyond the dramatic context of the stage. Moreover, the jury, and the readers of the published text of the speech, must have been able to understand the way Demosthenes contrasted every single verse of the Sophoclean rhesis to Aeschines’ treachery. His commentary, one of the first preserved upon a tragic text, displays technical rhetoric : note especially the use of gloss (τὴν ἄτην ὁρῶν / στείχουσαν becoming τὴν δ’ ἄτην ὁρῶν στείχουσαν ὁμοῦ, τὴν ἐπὶ Φωκέας στρατείαν), and of amplification with ‘Gorgianisms’ and parataxes (οὔτ’ ἂν σιωπήσαιμι becoming οὐ προεῖπεν οὐδὲ προεξήγγειλεν, ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον συνέκρυψε καὶ συνέπραξε καὶ τοὺς βουλομένους εἰπεῖν διεκώλυσεν, and then ταύτης ἔπι / πλέοντες ὀρθῆς becoming οὐδ’ ὅπως ὀρθὴ πλεύσεται προείδετο, ἀλλ’ ἀνέτρεψε καὶ κατέδυσε). This rhetorical use of one famous text from the tragic repertoire may be the result of some kind of technical education, as Plato’s Laws suggests. At least it is clear that Demosthenes’ audience and readers were very sensitive to this kind of commentary. A general statement about tritagonists, preceding this quotation and commentary, poses a more difficult question regarding the history of classical tragedy.

 Hanink 2014, 89 (I thank Anna Zouganeli for this reference): ‘For Demosthenes, those words did not truly belong to Creon, but rather to the “wise Sophocles” – the poet to whom Aeschines had chosen to bid a firm farewell’.  Plato, Laws 7.811a (cf. Gentili 1979, 19 – 20, Marshall 2004, 28 – 29, who distinguishes anthologies for readers and for performances).  Ferrario 2006 passim; Jouanna 2007, 524– 525.

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Ἴστε γὰρ δήπου τοῦθ’ ὅτι ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς δράμασι τοῖς τραγικοῖς ἐξαίρετόν ἐστιν ὥσπερ γέρας τοῖς τριταγωνισταῖς τὸ τοὺς τυράννους καὶ τοὺς τὰ σκῆπτρ’ ἔχοντας εἰσιέναι. (Demosthenes, 19.247)

It is usually translated as follows: ‘For of course you are aware that, in all tragic dramas, it is the enviable privilege of third-rate actors to come on as tyrants, carrying their royal sceptres’.⁷ Mathieu adds: ‘That the parts of tyrants were indeed played by tritagonists must be considered as absolutely certain. It is a matter of theatrical organization, which Demosthenes could not have possibly ventured to contradict’.⁸ But such a statement must be false: how could kings like Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus have been played by tritagonists? ‘This (even if not simply untrue) obviously cannot apply to plays in which (as in Oedipus Tyrannus) the principal part was that of a king’, Pickard-Cambridge writes.⁹ And he adds: ‘The likeliest explanation is that Demosthenes is lying: he has an axe to grind, in the point he can extract from Creon’s speech put into the mouth of Aeschines, and the bland assertion that tyrants were always played by the tritagonist is itself suspicious’.¹⁰ One could say more charitably that Demosthenes exaggerated, and did not take into account every performance. But because the Antigone is precisely one of these plays that does not fit with this statement, Sifakis is probably right when he writes that Pickard-Cambridge’s opinion ‘is unwise’.¹¹ As Jouanna recently wrote: ‘By modern criteria Creon [in Antigone] can only be played by the deuteragonist, or the protagonist, but certainly not by the tritagonist’.¹² But Demosthenes’ sentence begins with ‘you certainly know that …’ (ἴστε γὰρ δήπου τοῦθ’ ὅτι), and is explicitly general (‘in all tragic dramas’): it is difficult to imagine that he could have so carelessly spoken such a false statement in front of the court, and, as Easterling says, ‘whatever may have been true of the original distribution of parts, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the time of Demosthenes and Aeschines the part of Creon was played by the tritagonist’.¹³ There have been different ways of solving this problem. Pickard-Cambridge would hold that if Demosthenes’ assertion were true, it would only apply to the

 Transl. C. A. and J. H. Vince, LOEB Classical Library (1971). Cf. Mathieu 1946: ‘Car, vous le savez évidemment, dans toutes les tragédies, on réserve aux troisièmes rôles, comme un privilège, de tenir les emplois de tyrans et de porteurs de sceptres’.  Mathieu 1946 ad loc. (my translation).  Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 134, n.1.  Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 141, n. 2.  Sifakis 1995, 16.  Jouanna 2007, 231 (my translation).  Easterling 1999, 338, n. 41.

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roles of bad tyrants who should not garner any sympathy.¹⁴ This is also the kind of explanation Ghiron-Bistagne gives.¹⁵ But nothing in Demosthenes’ text suggests that he refers only to actors playing the roles of violent, awful tyrants; indeed, Creon’s verses are called noble and useful. Easterling’s argument suggests a change in the distribution of parts from the fifth to the fourth century. Jouanna claims that this is ‘the only way’ to explain the text: ‘to admit that the attribution of parts in the staging of the Antigone has been modified in the course of time’. Jouanna suggests that in the fourth century the roles of tyrants and kings may have become ‘less appreciated by the public’, and then given to tritagonists.¹⁶ He adds an important observation. Just before our passage, Demosthenes has mentioned two famous actors, Theodoros and Aristodemos, with whom Aeschines often acted when he played Creon’s part.¹⁷ Aristotle wrote of Theodoros that he never allowed any other actor to enter before him because he thought that the public was immediately gripped by the first character to appear on stage.¹⁸ Jouanna then supposes that, in this new era of ‘vedettariat’, Theodoros played Antigone’s part, gave Ismene’s to the deuteragonist, and Creon’s to Aeschines.¹⁹ Aristodemos may have made the same choice. Yet there is still another way of resolving the difficulty. It is well known that, because of the limited number of actors in tragedy and because of their use of masks, they played different parts in the same play. Less accepted is the hypothesis that the same part could be played by different actors, although it seems to be the case, for example, in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus – unless one thinks that there could have been a fourth actor. But this fourth actor may be ‘a myth’.²⁰ In this play, as in all other tragic plays, there are never more than three actors speaking at the same time: the protagonist, the deutera-

 Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 134, n. 1: ‘only to plays in which the king or tyrant was a tyrant in the modern sense, and all that was required was violence and declamation, rather than subtlety or skilful display of emotion. The scholium on this passage says that, according to Iuba, the reason for assigning such parts to the tritagonist was that ἧττόν ἐστι παθητικὰ καὶ ὑπέρογκα’.  Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 160.  Jouanna 2007, 231 (my translation).  Cf. Easterling 1999, 157 n. 14: ‘The reference in 19.247 to Theodorus and Aristodemus as putting on Antigone has often been taken (wrongly) to imply that these famous performers were in the same troupe instead of each leading their own. It is much more likely that they each had the play in their repertoire (the Greek text certainly suggests this: ᾿Aντιγόνην δὲ Σοφοκλέους πολλάκις μὲν Θεόδωρος, πολλάκις δ’ ᾿Aριστόδημος ὑποκέκριται), and that Aeschines acted for both’.  Arist., Pol. 7.17 1336b27– 31.  Jouanna 2007, 231– 232.  Jouanna 2007, 235 – 237 (‘La contrainte des trois acteurs dans Œdipe à Colone : le mythe du quatrième acteur’).

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gonist, and the tritagonist (the only actors to whom special names have been attributed in antiquity). When Oedipus, Theseus, Antigone, and Ismene are all on stage, Ismene must be silent, and played by a non-speaking actor. If there are no more than three speaking actors, Theseus’ part should also be divided between the tritagonist (549 – 667, and maybe at the end of the play) and the deuteragonist (887– 1043). Sifakis has also suggested this kind of solution for the Antigone. If Antigone’s part was given to the protagonist, ‘after line 943 the protagonist (the ‘performer of the play’) could return as Teiresias and Messenger, and indeed as Creon for the exodos’.²¹ This implies that the ‘iambic lines’ (Demosthenes’ precise words) spoken by Creon at the beginning could have been delivered by the tritagonist, and his songs at the end of the play performed by the protagonist. If this hypothesis is accepted, there is no need to imagine a shift in the attribution of parts between the fifth and the fourth century. One could also ask a more general question: could the parts of kings and tyrants have been played by tritagonists in our extant tragic dramas? I would like to quote the conclusion of a doctoral student, Diego Gariazzo Lechini, after his study of the testimonies: ‘Creon in Medea, Menelaus or Tyndareus in Orestes, Thoas in Iphigenia in Tauris, [Menelaus] in Trojan Women and Andromache, Eurystheus in Heraclides, Xouthos in Ion, Theoclymenus in Helen, Polymestor and/or Agamemnon and/or Odysseus in Hecuba, Agamemnon or Menelaus in Ajax, Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus, Aigisthos in Sophoclean Electra, Odysseus in Philoctetes, are all kings [whose parts] one could very easily imagine being given to the third actor. This list involves most of the ‘tyrants and sceptreholders’ in preserved tragedies’. Thus, Demosthenes’ statement could well be approximately right, for Antigone, and also for the genre of classical tragedy as a whole. But it does not hold true in every case, especially not for Seven against Thebes and for Oedipus Tyrannus. I would then ask a more direct question: does Demosthenes really make such a universal generalization? Let us have another look at the text: Ἴστε γὰρ δήπου τοῦθ’ ὅτι ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς δράμασι τοῖς τραγικοῖς ἐξαίρετόν ἐστιν ὥσπερ γέρας τοῖς τριταγωνισταῖς τὸ τοὺς τυράννους καὶ τοὺς τὰ σκῆπτρ’ ἔχοντας εἰσιέναι. You certainly know that in all tragic dramas it is a kind of special privilege for tritagonists to enter on stage as the tyrants and those who hold sceptres.

In my opinion it does not necessarily imply that in all tragic dramas kings were played by tritagonists. Indeed, if ἐξαίρετος is understood as ‘special’, but not as  Sifakis 1995, 19 – 20.

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‘exclusive’, it may mean the reverse: that in all tragic dramas it was a kind of special privilege for tritagonists to play the part of a king. As we just saw, it does not imply that tritagonists rarely played these parts, but only that it was a special opportunity for them and their careers, and more notable than say, playing the parts of servants, or nurses, or soldiers, or (sometimes) messengers. At any rate this statement about tritagonists should not be taken to necessarily mean that tritagonists always played the parts of tyrants. Furthermore, Demosthenes is being ironic: this earnest ‘privilege’ should not be understood at face value, but rather as a sarcastic joke aimed at Aeschines, as it is suggested by the use of ὥσπερ, the contrast between the emphatic ἐξαίρετον … γέρας and τοῖς τριταγωνισταῖς, and maybe also the initial δήπου.²² To appear as a tyrant before an audience: would this have been a real privilege, or only a privilege for such tritagonists as Aeschines—who has in fact introduced²³ Philippus to Athens, and who has been paid to do so (248), taking bribes like many other traitors?²⁴ The extraordinary privilege of playing a king for the poor and lowly actor Aeschines finally results in an extraordinarily ironic situation.²⁵

Bibliography Easterling, P. E. (1999), ‘Actors and Voices: Reading between the Lines in Aeschines and Demosthenes’, in: S. Goldhill / R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, Cambridge, 154 – 166. — (2002), ‘Actor as Icon’, in: P. Easterling / E. Hall (eds.), Greek and Roman Actors. Aspects of an Ancient Profession, Cambridge, 327 – 341. Ferrario, S. B. (2006), ‘Replaying Antigone: Changing Patterns of Public and Private Commemoration at Athens c. 450 – 340’, in: Helios 33, 79 – 117.

 With similar irony, Demosthenes uses the ‘boshafte Pointierung’ τριταγωνιστὴν ἄκρον in De Corona, 129 (Wankel 1976, 699).  The verb εἰσιέναι could be the infinitive of εἴσειμι or of εἰσίημι. Of course, it is here the infinitive of εἴσειμι, as in Plato, Laws 2.664c1. The LSJ also quotes Libanios 30.28 (ὥσπερ οὖν ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις ὁ τὸν τύραννον εἰσιὼν οὐκ ἔστι τύραννος, …) in which εἰσιὼν + accusative could or should be linked to εἰσίημι. This verb is used by Herodotus 3.158 regarding the introduction of traitors into cities.  It was necessary for Sophocles to decontextualize the quotation in the way suggested in the first part of this paper, in order to separate the good advice given by Sophocles from the fact that Creon is a king (cf. e. g. ‘Every king, every tyrant hates liberty, and is against laws’, Phil. II, 25).  This paper has been presented at the FIEC Congress (Bordeaux) and at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa). I thank their audiences for stimulating questions and criticisms. The English version of this note has benefitted from the help of Katie Hartsock (Northwestern).

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Gentili, B. (1979), Theatrical Performances in the Ancient World: Hellenistic and Early Roman Theatre, Amsterdam. Ghiron-Bistagne, P. (1976), Recherches sur les acteurs dans la Grèce antique, Paris. Hanink, J. (2014), Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy, Cambridge. Jouanna, J. (2007), Sophocle, Paris. Marshall, C. W. (2004), ‘Alcestis and the Ancient Rehearsal Process (P. Oxy. 4546)’, in: Arion, 11, 3, 27 – 45. Masson, O. (1988), ‘Noms grecs du type ‘ours-lion’’, in: Logopédies. Mélanges Jean Taillardat, Paris, 171 – 177. Pickard-Cambridge, A. (1988), The Dramatic Festivals of Athens [2nd ed., revised by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis], Oxford. Pontani, F. (2009), ‘Demosthenes, Parody and the Frogs’, in: Mnemosyne 62, 401 – 16. Sifakis, G. M. (1995), ‘The One-Actor Rule in Greek Tragedy’, in: BICS, 40 (Supplement 66, Stage directions. Essays in Honour of E. W. Handley), 13 – 24. Wankel, H. (1976), Demosthenes. Rede für Ktesiphon über den Kranz, Heidelberg.

Michael Edwards

Tragedy in Antiphon 1, Against the Stepmother It is a privilege to contribute to a volume in honour of Georgia Xanthankis-Karamanos, whose own contributions to the study of Greek drama, especially tragedy, have been so extensive and influential, as also has been her work on rhetoric and the relationship between tragedy and rhetoric.¹ That relationship has recently been explored again by David Sansone, in a controversial book, Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric,² which has received mixed reviews.³ My purpose here is not to consider the merits or otherwise of Sansone’s argument that ‘the development of rhetoric was directly inspired by the creation of the new, even revolutionary, genre of tragic drama’,⁴ as opposed to the more traditional view that rhetoric influenced tragedy,⁵ but rather to take another look at the undoubtedly tragic elements in what has claims to being the earliest surviving speech in the corpus of Attic oratory, Antiphon 1, Against the Stepmother. ⁶ Any attempt to link these directly to recent tragic performances is, to my mind, a vain one, simply because we do not know the dates of many of the plays or indeed of the speech itself.⁷ Rather, in my opinion these elements, combined with other stylistic usages, should be taken first and foremost as indicators of Antiphon’s fine oratorical technique. In Against the Stepmother Antiphon’s unnamed client prosecutes his stepmother for the killing of his father. The father was entertained to dinner in Pi-

 See her early article 1979, 66 – 76.  Sansone 2012.  ‘It is, indeed, one of those books that every reader is happy to have read even though she doubts that it will fully convince anyone’: Scodel 2013. See also Lloyd 2013, 457– 459; Stewart 2014, 26 – 28.  Sansone 2012, 4.  See, for example, Lloyd 1992.  For texts, translations, discussions of and commentaries on the speech see Blass / Thalheim 1914; Gernet 1923; Wijnberg 1938; Maidment 1941; Barigazzi 1955; Due 1980, 16 – 28; Gagarin 1997 and 2002; Gagarin / MacDowell 1998.  The dating of the speech is a matter of controversy. Older scholarship, such as Blass 1887, vol. 1, 193; Jebb 1893, vol. 1, 67; and Maidment 1941, 12, would see speech 1 as being a product of Antiphon’s earlier development. This view was challenged by Dover 1950, 44– 60, who suggests a date between 418/17 and 416/15; and his sequence for the surviving court speeches of 6, 1, 5 is followed by Gagarin 2002, 139. I would still myself prefer a much earlier date, perhaps as far back as the 430s. See Edwards 2000, 236. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-014

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raeus by his friend Philoneus, whose mistress (or παλλακή) served them wine poisoned with what she believed to be a love potion. Philoneus, receiving a larger draught, died instantly and his friend twenty days later. The mistress was a slave, and so was tortured and executed by relatives of Philoneus. Some years later, on reaching maturity, one of the friend’s sons, in accordance with his father’s deathbed injunction, prosecuted his stepmother, whose defence was conducted by one of her own sons, the half-brothers of the plaintiff. With no substantial evidence to rely on, Antiphon constructs for his client a vivid and largely imaginary narrative of these events. Its dramatic tenor was noted many years ago in the Budé edition of Louis Gernet. Commenting on the words which introduce the narrative, Gernet writes: Δίκη δὲ κυβερνήσειεν. Expression poétique, qui prélude assez naturellement à la narration dont la couleur n’est point celle de la prose judiciaire (notamment § 17, τὸν ἑαυτῶν φονέα, « leur meurtrier », en parlant de la coupe empoisonnée; cf. Soph., Ajax, 815 et 1026). Dans la seconde partie surtout – dans la scène du meurtre – ce récit fait penser à celui d’un messager de tragédie; l’auteur y met visiblement quelque complaisance.⁸

Similarly, Adelmo Barigazzi comments: L’espressione è senz’altro poetica, ma non è il caso di pensare alla chiusa d’un esametro desunta da qualche poeta. Essa appartiene al tono elevato e poetico che charatterizza la narrazione.⁹

On the narrative itself Bodil Due remarks: This narrative is the broadest and most vivid in the extant speeches of Antiphon … The litigant obviously strives to create an atmosphere filled with terror and vague presentiments, which is strongly reminiscent of tragedy, especially, as observed by Gernet, of the messenger-speeches.¹⁰

Finally, Michael Gagarin notes, also with reference to Gernet, that ‘A. here produces a vivid account which has been likened to a messenger speech in tragedy’.¹¹ There are a number of features of the narrative, and other parts of the speech, that support this consensus opinion. These include:

 Gernet 1923, 42 n. 1. For the personification Wijnberg 1938, 93, compares Hes. Theogony 902; Soph. OT 274.  Barigazzi 1955, 87.  Due 1980, 20.  Gagarin 1997, 114.

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(i) The striking metaphor in § 20: τὸν ἑαυτῶν φονέα μεταχειριζόμενοι (‘taking hold of their own killer’). Parallels for this, as Gernet noted, are Soph. Ajax 815 – 816, ὁ μὲν σφαγεὺς ἕστηκεν ᾗ τομώτατος γένοιτ’ ἄν (‘the slayer stands where its stroke will cut sharpest’) and 1026, ὑφ’ οὗ φονέως ἄρ’ ἐξέπνευσας (‘your killer that took your final breath’), and Due adds Eur. IT 586, οὐχὶ τὴν ἐμὴν φονέα νομίζων χεῖρα (‘not thinking my hand was a murderer’). Barigazzi comments ‘tutta la frase ha colorito poetico, è piena di solennità e gravità tragica’,¹² and he rightly defends the Greek text of the sentence τὸν ἑαυτῶν φονέα μεταχειριζόμενοι ἐκπίνουσιν ὑστάτην πόσιν (‘taking hold of their own killer, they drink it down, their last drink’) by reference to Aeschyl. Cho. 578, ἄκρατον αἷμα πίεται τρίτην πόσιν (‘[the fury] will drink unmixed blood as her third drink’). I note also a fragment of Euripides (912.7 N), which contains the verb in the context of holding Zeus’ sceptre (σκῆπτρον τὸ Διὸς μεταχειρίζεις). (ii) A second vivid metaphorical usage is found in § 17: ταῖς Κλυταιμήστρας τῆς τούτου μητρὸς ὑποθήκαις ἅμα διακονοῦσαν (‘following the advice of Clytemnestra, this man’s mother’).¹³ Barigazzi notes that Antiphon would have been about 20 years old when Aeschylus’ Oresteia was performed in 458,¹⁴ and Gagarin comments ‘the name adds to the tragic tone of the narrative, in which several passages seem intended to recall the Oresteia’.¹⁵ This is fine, but there were, of course, other versions of the myth, in tragedy and other poetry (starting with Homer, Odyssey 11.405 – 434), which could equally have influenced Antiphon. His use of the name of a character from mythology is exceptional in the orators: all the commentators note the only parallel at And. 1.129.¹⁶ This may be another sign of the lack of real evidence in the case, with Antiphon relying on the metaphor to kindle in the jurors the male fears of women that are a feature of so many tragedies (joined to the theme of the wicked stepmother). The metaphor helps to draw attention away from the fact that much of the narrative is the pure invention of its narrator (here the imaginary thoughts of the pallake). (iii) As we noted above, a third striking metaphor, with poetic flavour,¹⁷ is found in the words that introduce the narrative in § 13, Δίκη δὲ κυβερνήσειεν

 Barigazzi 1955, 91.  I adopt the text of Gagarin here.  Assuming a birth date around 480, with Ps.-Plutarch, Mor. 832F.  Gagarin 1997, 116.  τίς ἂν εἴη οὗτος; Οἰδίπους, ἢ Αἴγισθος; ἢ τί χρὴ αὐτὸν ὀνομάσαι; (‘Who would he be himself? Oedipus or Aegisthus, or what should we call him?’).  As Gagarin 1997, 27. His other examples of poetic metaphor come from speeches 5 (§§ 37, 77, 93) and 6 (§ 21). More examples of metaphorical expression are given by Cucuel 1886, 28 – 9: 1.13, 17, 20, 2.1.7, 2.2.13, 2.3.10, 4.10, 3.2.10, 3.3.4, 4.2.7 (wrongly given as Γγ7 by Cucuel), 5.37, 71, 86, 94.

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(‘may Justice be my guide’). This metaphor, however, recalls not tragedy, but Pindar, Pyth. 5.122– 23, Διός τοι νόος μέγας κυβερνᾷ δαίμον’ ἀνδρῶν φίλων (‘the mighty mind of Zeus governs the destiny of men he loves’; cf. Ol. 12.3 – 5, Pyth. 10.72). Nor is it only poetic: it is also paralleled later in Plato, Euthyd. 291c-d: Σωκράτης ταύτῃ τῇ τέχνῃ ἥ τε στρατηγικὴ καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι παραδιδόναι ἄρχειν τῶν ἔργων ὧν αὐταὶ δημιουργοί εἰσιν, ὡς μόνῃ ἐπισταμένῃ χρῆσθαι. σαφῶς οὖν ἐδόκει ἡμῖν αὕτη εἶναι ἣν ἐζητοῦμεν, καὶ ἡ αἰτία τοῦ ὀρθῶς πράττειν ἐν τῇ / πόλει, καὶ ἀτεχνῶς κατὰ τὸ Αἰσχύλου ἰαμβεῖον μόνη ἐν τῇ πρύμνῃ καθῆσθαι τῆς πόλεως, πάντα κυβερνῶσα καὶ πάντων ἄρχουσα πάντα χρήσιμα ποιεῖν. Socrates To this art, we thought, generalship and the other arts handed over the management of the productions of their own trades, as this one alone knew how to use them. So it seemed clear to us that this was the one we were seeking, and was the cause of right conduct in the state, and precisely as Aeschylus’ line expresses it, is seated alone at the helm of the city, steering the whole, commanding the whole, and making the whole useful.¹⁸

Socrates refers to the similar metaphor at Aesch. Septem 2, but there the verb used is in fact φυλάσσει: ὅστις φυλάσσει πρᾶγος ἐν πρύμνηι πόλεως (‘whoever guides affairs at the stern of the state’). (iv) Poetic vocabulary and phraseology make a further contribution to this picture. The first port of call here is the dissertation on Antiphon’s language and style by Cucuel, who discusses Expressions poétiques on pp. 22– 23.¹⁹ Cucuel is conservative in his approach,²⁰ but he identifies eighteen expressions in the Antiphontean corpus as poetic, two of which are used twice and the great majority of which are found in the Tetralogies.²¹ There are two in speech 1, both of which are both found not in the narrative, but in the proofs section: ἡ εἱμαρμένη (§ 21) and ἀθέμιτα (§ 22).²² It is interesting that the closest parallels for the expression

 Transl. Lamb 1952.  For Cucuel, see n. 17 above.  ‘Mais s’il s’agit de déterminer les expressions poétiques, la tâche devient moins facile’ (p. 22).  ἀθέμιστα (1.22; Cucuel misses an example in 4.3.6); ἄσημος (2.4.8); ἄωρος (3.1.2, 2.12); ἀωρὶ (2.2.5; Cucuel misses examples in 2.1.4, 4.5); γηραιός (3.2.11, 4.1.2); ἔμφρων (2.3.2); ἐπιορκότατος (6.33; Cucuel misses an example in 6.48); εὐδία (2.2.1); ἡ εἱμαρμένη (1.21); ἠλίθιος (2.2.3); καταπηγνύναι (frg. 11); κηλίς (3.3.8; Cucuel misses an example in 3.3.11); μήνιμα (4.2.8; Cucuel misses examples in 4.3.7, and possibly, depending on text, 4.10); νήπιος (3.2.11); ὀπτήρ (5.27); συλλήπτωρ (3.3.10); συμπράκτωρ (3.4.6); φροῦδος (5.29).  Listed by Cucuel as ἀθέμιστα, which according to LSJ is the poetical spelling; Gagarin, like Blass/Thalheim in the Teubner, prints ἀθέμιτα at 1.22, but ἀθέμιστα at 4.3.6, on which he notes

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ἡ εἱμαρμένη (‘his appointed time’, sc. μοῖρα),²³ are found in prose, in Plato (e. g. Gorgias 512e) and Demosthenes (e.g. 18.205). Harvey Yunis comments on Dem. 18.195, ‘this word is uncommon in Attic oratory (here and §205 out of eight instances); it is so markedly poetic (LSJ s.v. μείρομαι III) that it lends Athens’ fate the feel of tragic necessity’.²⁴ More questionably, E. R. Dodds comments on Gorgias 512e, ‘in the Homeric sense of the appointed death-day. Though the word is not found as a noun before Plato, it seems to be drawn from the language of poetry’.²⁵ But this use in Antiphon is similar to that in Plato. As well as in epic, the expression (though not, I note, precisely the same one) is found in Aeschyl. Ag. 913, θήσει δικαίως σὺν θεοῖς εἱμαρμένα (‘[the rest my vigilance] will order justly, with the gods’ aid, what is appointed’),²⁶ and Soph. Trach. 169, τοιαῦτ’ ἔφραζε πρὸς θεῶν εἱμαρμένα (‘such things, he declared, were appointed by the gods’). On the plot of the Trachiniae, Bruce Heiden writes ‘when Deianeira learns that Heracles has brought a young concubine under their roof, she tries to ensure his fidelity by secretly exposing him to a substance she believes has aphrodisiac properties’.²⁷ This in many respects makes Deianeira a closer parallel to the stepmother than Clytemnestra, but we cannot draw any inferences over the temporal relationship of the speech with this play as the date of the Trachiniae, as with most of Sophocles’ plays, is notoriously difficult to establish.²⁸ As for ἀθέμιτα/ἀθέμιστα, this form is not found in Aeschylus or Sophocles,²⁹ though both use forms of θεμιτός/θεμιστός negativised by οὐ: Aeschyl. Septem 694 (οὐ θεμιστοῦ), Cho. 645 (οὐ θεμιστῶς); Soph. OT 993 (οὐ θεμιστὸν), OC 1758 (οὐ θεμιτὸν). Euripides has the form twice, at Ion 1093 (ἀθέμιτος) and Phoen. 612 (ἀθέμιτόν σοι);³⁰ see also Aristophanes, Pax 1097 (ἀθέμιστος). But again I should point out that the parallel uses of the neuter plural are found in prose, both before and after Antiphon (Hdt. 7.33; Xen. Mem. 1.1.9, Cyr. 1.6.6).

(1997, 170) that this form ‘is fairly common in prose’, though ἀθέμιστα is only found in prose of the fifth and fourth centuries in (the non-Attic) Herodotus (7.33, 8.143) and a fragment of Dinarchus quoted in a later source (Bachm. Anecd. 41.1).  As Gagarin 1997, 118; Gagarin / MacDowell 1998, 14  Yunis 2001, 216.  Dodds 1959, 350.  Though the text here has been doubted.  Heiden 2012, 129.  See, e. g., Hoey 1979, 210 – 232, who suggests c. 450. For Easterling, ‘any date between 457 and, say, 430 would not be implausible’ (Easterling 1982, 23). But other scholars prefer a later date, e. g. Vickers 1995, 41– 69 (425/4).  The reference to Sophocles in Bachm. Anecd. 41.1 to Sophocles (fr. 742 P) is extremely dubious. See Conomis 1975, 146 (fr. 6 with apparatus).  Though ἀθέμιτόν is Bothe’s correction of the mss οὐ θεμιτόν.

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(v) Cucuel goes on to list ‘un certain nombre de mots techniques, si l’on peut dire, que l’on désigne souvent sous le nom d’archaïsmes ou de locutions poétiques, paraissent appartenir à un vocabulaire consacré’.³¹ Again, these are mostly found in the Tetralogies, but one occurs in the same passage of the proofs as the two listed above: τὸν ἀίδιον χρόνον (§ 21). Poetic parallels at Homeric Hymn 29.3 and [Hes.] Scut. 310 are noted by Wijnberg,³² but we should also note here Barigazzi’s comment, ‘la frase sembra avere carattere poetico, ma ἀίδιος entrò per tempo nella prosa ed ebbe lunga vita’, with reference to Thuc. 4.63.1.³³ (vi) To Cucuel’s lists may be added ἤδη meaning ‘forthwith’, another mainly poetic usage which is found in the narrative (§ 20); and οἱ, the old form of the reflexive pronoun, also found in the speech’s narrative (§ 16). The latter is mostly poetic, but it also occurs at 5.93; Thuc. 2.13.1; And. 1.38.³⁴ In addition to vocabulary there are dramatic features in the narrative, which I have discussed elsewhere but may be summarised here.³⁵ Most of the sentences are brief, with three or four short cola, which produces a staccato effect. There are, however, some longer cola, which coincide with key points in the narrative, which itself is tripartite: §§ 14– 16 (ὑπερῷόν τι … ὡς οἶμαι), §§ 16– 18 (μετὰ ταῦτα … τοῦ φαρμάκου), and §§ 18– 20 (ἐπειδὴ γὰρ … θέλωσιν). The colon comprising fourteen words in § 15 contributes to the longest sentence in the narrative, where the stepmother tells the pallake that she knows how to restore their respective men’s affections.³⁶ Another longer colon, of fifteen words this time in § 19, opens the dramatic sentence that vividly narrates how the pallake poured the drink while the two men were offering their prayers – prayers which were never to be answered.³⁷ The longest colon, of twenty-two words in § 16, is found towards the start of the second part of the narrative, in a transitional passage where Philoneus has the idea – an ‘excellent’ one but of course tragically fatal – of accompanying the

 Cucuel 1886, 23.  Wijnberg 1938, 122 n. 5.  Barigazzi 1955, 94.  Other old-fashioned or rare prose usages in the narrative are the rare use of the aorist infinitive καταστῆσαι after ἔμελλε (§ 14; see Barigazzi 1955, 88) and the old use of ὅς as a demonstrative pronoun in καὶ ἣ (§ 16; cf. Hdt. 8.87.2). Note also the τε … τε … correspondence in § 18, which is very frequent in the Tetralogies, but more common in poetry.  Edwards 2004, 51– 63.  ἔφη ἱκανὴ εἶναι ἐκείνῃ τε τὸν Φιλόνεων φίλον ποιῆσαι καὶ αὑτῇ τὸν ἐμὸν πατέρα (‘she said that she was capable of renewing Philoneus’ love for her and my father’s for herself’).  ἡ δὲ παλλακὴ τοῦ Φιλόνεω τὴν σπονδὴν ἅμα ἐγχέουσα ἐκείνοις εὐχομένοις ἃ οὐκ ἔμελλε τελεῖσθαι (‘Philoneus’ mistress, pouring the libation at the same time as they were uttering prayers which were not to be fulfilled’).

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father to Piraeus.³⁸ Finally, a colon of seventeen words in § 18 marks the start of the transition to the third part of the narrative, where the narrator becomes overt and prepares the listener/reader for the dramatic scene of the poisoning by skipping over the dinner to the pouring of the fatal libation.³⁹ Another feature of the long sentence in § 15 is the use of the vivid historic present tense in μεταπέμπεται and ἐθέλει. This use of the present, which recalls the effect of the tense in Euripidean messenger-speeches,⁴⁰ becomes particularly noticeable in the poisoning scene. In § 19 the pallake gives her man more (πλέον δίδωσι),⁴¹ which of course ironically kills him quicker; and in § 20 the two men, taking hold of their own killer, tragically drain their last drink (τὸν ἑαυτῶν φονέα μεταχειριζόμενοι ἐκπίνουσιν ὑστάτην πόσιν).⁴² Philoneus vividly dies (ἀποθνῄσκει) immediately, the father ‘falls into’ (ἐμπίπτει) sickness. In consequence, the pallake ‘has’ (ἔχει) the punishment she deserves, even though she is in no way to blame (οὐδὲν αἰτία οὖσα), and in contrast the stepmother who was to blame ‘will have’ it (ἕξει). To conclude, there is no doubt that Antiphon’s prosecution of the stepmother as the killer of her husband is reminiscent of a well-known tragic narrative, and the speaker’s case relies heavily on that fact. With no real evidence, as far as we can tell, he constructs an at least plausible case against the stepmother that deliberately recalls (but adapts) the situation of Orestes in the Oresteia, and particularly his trial in the Eumenides for avenging the murder of his father by his (in that story natural) mother.⁴³ Antiphon will have expected the jurors of the Areopagus to relate to that and indeed question why his client’s half-brother was defending this monster, even if she was his mother. The circumstances of the case perhaps made these dramatic

 κάλλιστον οὖν ἐδόκει εἶναι τῷ Φιλόνεῳ τῆς αὐτῆς ὁδοῦ ἅμα μὲν προπέμψαι εἰς τὸν Πειραιᾶ τὸν πατέρα τὸν ἐμὸν φίλον ὄντα ἑαυτῷ (‘it therefore seemed to Philoneus to be an excellent idea to escort my father, his friend, to Piraeus’). Note also the role of chance here (ἔτυχε).  καὶ τὰ μὲν ἄλλα μακρότερος ἂν εἴη λόγος περὶ τοῦ δείπνου ἐμοί τε διηγήσασθαι ὑμῖν τ’ ἀκοῦσαι (‘now it would take too long for me to narrate and for you to hear the story of the dinner’). The transition is also marked by the striking verbal periphrasis with an abstract noun in ὡς γεγένηται ἡ δόσις τοῦ φαρμάκου (see Gagarin 1997, 28 – 29, 116); and by the use of the particle γάρ, which very frequently in the orators indicates the start of the narrative (it is similarly delayed in Lys. 12.4 and 6).  As noted by Gagarin 1997, 117, following de Jong 1991, 38 – 45.  Note the further emphasis given here by the delta and pi alliteration in δεξιὸν ποιεῖν πλέον δίδωσι. Also, the triple use of ἐγχέω; as Gagarin points out (1997, 116) the ‘use of the same verb for pouring the libation and the poison emphasises the impiety of the crime’.  ‘Tragically’ not only in the expression but also in its rhythm: ἐκπίνουσιν ὑστάτην πόσιν fit an iambic trimeter.  The case is evidently weak, but not necessarily hopeless. See, e. g., Gagarin 1997, 106.

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allusions inevitable, but Antiphon makes full use of them, thereby indicating why he was worthy of a place in the canon of ten Attic orators.

Bibliography Barigazzi, A. (1955), Antifonte, prima orazione, Florence. Blass, F. (1887), Die attische Beredsamkeit, vol. 1, Leipzig. Blass, F. / Thalheim, Th. (1914), Antiphon. Orationes et fragmenta, Leipzig. Conomis, N.C. (1975), Dinarchi orationes cum fragmentis, Leipzig. Cucuel, C. (1886), Essai sur la langue et le style de l’orateur Antiphon, Paris. Dodds, Ε.R. (1959), Plato: Gorgias, Oxford. Dover, K.J. (1950), ‘The Chronology of Antiphon’s Speeches’, in: CQ 44, 44 – 60. Due, B. (1980), Antiphon: A Study in Argumentation, Copenhagen. Easterling, P.E. (1982), Sophocles: Trachiniae, Cambridge. Edwards, M.J. (2000), ‘Antiphon and the Beginnings of Athenian Literary Oratory’, in: Rhetorica 18, 227 – 42. — (2004), ‘Narrative levels in Antiphon 1, Against the Stepmother’, in: A. López Eire / A. Ramos Guerreira (eds.), Registros Linguísticos en las lenguas clásicas, Salamanca, 51 – 63. Gagarin, M. (1997), Antiphon: The Speeches, Cambridge. — (2002), Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law, and Justice in the Age of the Sophists, Austin. Gagarin, M. / MacDowell, D.M. (1998), Antiphon and Andocides, Austin. Gernet, L. (1923), Antiphon. Discours, Paris. Heiden, Β. (2012), ‘Trachiniae’, in: A. Markantonatos (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles, Leiden, 129 – 48. Hoey, T.F. (1979), ‘The Date of the Trachiniae’, in: Phoenix 33, 210 – 32. Jebb, R.C. (1893), The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus, vol. 1, London. Jong, I.J.F. de. (1991), Narrative in Drama: The Art of the Euripidean Messenger-Speech, Leiden. Lamb, W.R.M. (trans.) (1952), Plato vol. IV, Cambridge, Mass. / London. Lloyd, M. (1992), The Agon in Euripides, Oxford. — (2013), Review of Sansone (2012), in: CJ 108, 457 – 459. Maidment, K.J. (1941), Minor Attic Orators I: Antiphon, Andocides, Cambridge, MA. Sansone, D. (2012), Greek Drama and the Invention of Rhetoric, Chichester / West Sussex / Malden, MA. Scodel, R. (2013), Review of Sansone (2012), in: BMCR 2013.06.16. Stewart, E. (2014), Review of Sansone (2012), in: CR 64.1, 26 – 28. Vickers, M. (1955), ‘Heracles Lacedaemonius: the political dimension of Sophocles Trachiniae and Euripides Heracles’, in: Dialogues d’histoire ancienne 21, 41 – 69. Wijnberg, S. (1938), Antiphon’s Eerste Rede, Amsterdam. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (1979), ‘The Influence of Rhetoric on Fourth-Century Tragedy’, in: CQ 29, 66 – 76. Yunis, H. (2001), Demosthenes: On the Crown, Cambridge.

Eleni Volonaki

Euripides’ Erechtheus in Lykourgos’ Against Leokrates 1 Poetry in Oratory Poetry was the means of education for rhetores in matters of eloquence and syntax.¹ The significance of poetry in the training of the ancient rhetoric is clearly reflected in the rhetorical handbooks, where quotations of poetic maxims are illustrated together with stylistic devices.² Aristotle draws examples and citations from Homer and the tragic poets in his Rhetoric, assuming that logographers should have had a wide knowledge of poetry. Oratory relied on poetry and, therefore, the style of the first orators was highly poetical and influenced by the example of tragedy. Thus, Antiphon, the first logographer known to us from his written oratorical speeches, employs poetic style and Lysias went to the other extreme, whereas Isokrates established the independence of prose from poetry. Nevertheless, Isokrates emphasises the significance of examples and prototypes taken from poetry by an orator who speaks in front of a large audience (Isokr. 2.42– 44, 48 – 49).³ Athenian judges showed prejudice toward a particularly educated speaker, but they surely admired and appreciated the poets and their work. Aristotle speaks of the Athenians’ general knowledge of the mythological stories, which intensifies the enjoyment of the audience (Rhet. III. 1.9.1404a). In Aristophanes’ Wasps (579 – 80) Philokleon, the addicted judge, delivers a pseudo-legal speech in defence of jury attendance and he lists the types of entertaining performances he can expect to witness in court; these are recitations from tragedy, aulos-recitals, and competitions in rhetorical entreaty by rival suitors for the hand of a rich heiress. These three kinds of performance obviously refer to tragedy, comedy and the rhetorical debate (agon). Aristophanes’ parody, at this point, obviously reveals a comic tone and therefore is exaggerated,⁴ but must have related to reality since otherwise it would not seem amusing to his audience.⁵ Thus, it may be in-

 Perlman 1964, 160 – 61.  E. g. Rhet. Ad Alex. 18: 1433b11– 14, particularly where Euripides is quoted.  Poetry was the means of education of orators in matters of structure and eloquence, cf. Perlman, 1964, 160 – 61.  Carey 2000, 198 – 203.  Hall 2006, 353. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-015

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ferred that Athenian judges were expected to be pleased to hear quotations from tragedy. It is true that nowhere in the orators can we find any denial of the importance or the value of general education or culture. Orators may have been well aware of the appeal and influence of poetry on their audience but, on the other hand, there was an inherent antagonism towards experts together with a growing tendency to develop a prosaic-oratorical style independent of poetry. This probably restricted the use of poetry and decreased the number of direct quotations from poetry made by Attic orators in the fourth century BC. It is true that all the extant quotations from poetry are limited to a small number of forensic speeches delivered in public trials; the three speeches of Aischines, Against Timarchos (346 BC), On the False Embassy (343 BC), and Against Ktesiphon (330 BC), the speeches of Demosthenes, On the Crown (330 BC) and On the False Embassy (343 BC), and the speech of Lykourgos, Against Leokrates (330 BC). It is obvious that the poetic quotations in forensic oratory are all included in the speeches that involve the political rivalry between Aischines and Demosthenes, in particular the political trials that followed their Embassy to Philip II for the peace negotiations, and indirectly Lykourgos’ political agenda supporting Demosthenes at the time. All these trials were held within a period of six years, between 346 and 330 BC. Political and cultural programmes that enhanced the revitalization of fifth century drama, re-established the classical tragedians and recorded publicly for the first time their victories may have played a significant role to the inclusion of quotations from poetry at this specific period.⁶ Moreover, it may have been the crucial and intensive time in the Athenian political arena, before and after the Athenian defeat at the battle in Chaironeia (338 BC), which actually encouraged the use of the specific rhetorical strategy in order to influence the Athenian audience. On the other hand, it may have simply been a rhetorical technique introduced by Aischines, an actor himself, to build up the pleasure of the audience⁷ and attract their approval of his own case in the trial; Aischines may have firstly encouraged Demosthenes, and subsequently Lykourgos to respond and make use of the specific rhetorical frame of poetic quotations in their own speeches either for prosecution or defense.

 The first date, 347/6 BC is the time during Euboulos’ tenure as overseer of the theoric fund, when the records of victors at the Great Dionysia were first inscribed, whereas 330 BC is connected with Lykourgos’ first attempt to stabilize, protect and preserve the works of the three tragedians, Aischylos, Sophokles and Euripides; cf. Hanink 2014, 9 ff.  For Aristotle’s view that the general knowledge of the mythological stories intensifies the enjoyment of the audience, cf. Arist. Poet. 26, 1461b 27 ff.

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The greatest number of quotations from poetry is to be found in Aischines, Against Timarchos 1.119 – 154 and in Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 1.83– 110, 131– 133. Moreover, among the tragedians the quotations are mostly from Euripides.⁸ It may not be a coincidence that in both cases, that of Aischines against Timarchos and that of Lykourgos against Leokrates the legal proof is very weak or even non-existent. Both orators rely on moral rather than on strictly legal arguments, and the quotations from poetry may be seen as a substitute for proof from laws and for evidence by witnesses. In Lykourgos’ case, quotations from poetry are an integral part of an elaborate section of proofs and examples that aim to prove Leokrates’ guilt of treason.⁹ The present paper focuses on the tragic fragment from Euripides’ Erechtheus, which is the first quotation from poetry included in the section of proofs, exploring its appeal and influence upon the judges. Furthermore, it will examine whether the quotation from Euripides’ tragedy, among other quotations from poetry, constitutes proof or example or a specific rhetorical device employed for political purposes at the time. According to Aristotle (Rhet. Ι.15.13), poetry is used as proof, evidence or example.¹⁰ It is plausible that Lykourgos includes all quotations from poetry, as well as other forms of documentary evidence, within a legalistic frame of proofs and examples to support his case of treason. In order to understand the appeal of Euripides’ tragic abstract from Erechtheus, in particular, upon the audience, we need to examine briefly the case of prosecution against Leokrates. After the disaster of the

 Aischines includes in his first speech five quotations from Homer, three from Euripides and one from Hesiod. Lykourgos includes in his quotations Euripides, Homer and Tyrtaios, epigrams on the Spartans who had fallen at Thermopylae and on the Athenian victors at Marathon and finally two quotations from un-known poets. In the other two speeches of Aischines they are all from Hesiod and epigrams. Demosthenes quotes Hesiod, Euripides, Sophokles, and an epigram. Among the tragedians, Euripides is quoted mostly, Sophokles only once, whereas Aischylos, not at all. A comparison with Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric shows the same preference in the quotations from the tragedians; Euripides again holds the primacy and is quoted seventeen times, while Sophokles is quoted only five times and Aischylos is not quoted at all; cf. Perlman 1964, 163 – 165  These examples can be divided into three groups: a) examples of patriotism and piety (1.75 – 97), b) quotations from poetry demonstrating the spirit of Athenian and Spartan patriotism (1.98 – 110) and c) examples of punishment enacted by the Athenians and the Spartans for crimes similar to that of Leokrates (111– 122).  [13] περὶ δὲ μαρτύρων, μάρτυρές εἰσιν διττοί, οἱ μὲν παλαιοὶ οἱ δὲ πρόσφατοι, καὶ τούτων οἱ μὲν μετέχοντες τοῦ κινδύνου οἱ δ᾽ ἐκτός. λέγω δὲ παλαιοὺς μὲν τούς τε ποιητὰς καὶ ὅσων ἄλλων γνωρίμων εἰσὶν κρίσεις φανεραί, οἷον ᾿Aθηναῖοι Ὁμήρῳ μάρτυρι ἐχρήσαντο περὶ Σαλαμῖνος, καὶ Τενέδιοι ἔναγχος Περιάνδρῳ τῷ Κορινθίῳ πρὸς Σιγειεῖς, καὶ Κλεοφῶν κατὰ Κριτίου τοῖς Σόλωνος ἐλεγείοις ἐχρήσατο, λέγων ὅτι πάλαι ἀσελγὴς ἡ οἰκία: οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε ἐποίησε Σόλων εἰπεῖν μοι Κριτίᾳ πυρρότριχι πατρὸς ἀκούειν.

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city of Athens in the battle at Chaironeia, in 338 BC, the Athenians voted strict measures to protect their city from the threat by Philip II and the expansion of Macedonian power. Among these measures, they voted that citizens were forbidden to let their families (wives and children) flee away from the city, whereas they themselves were committed to serve as guardians. Leokrates, most probably (otherwise Lykourgos would have clearly stated so), left Athens before this particular decree was made and went first to Rhodes and then to Megara for trade, together with his family and all his belongings. Eight years later, he returns back to Athens, when Lykourgos denounced him with an eisangelia for treason (330 BC). The case is not legally founded but is mainly based upon Lykourgos’ attempt to present Leokrates as a traitor and an enemy of the city of Athens, its gods and its constitution, and should therefore be condemned to death, as other traitors had been convicted in the past.

2 Lykourgos and Euripides’ Erechtheus Euripides’ Erechtheus involves the mythical story of Erichthonios, who was born from the bowels of the earth after it received the seed spread by Hephaistos during his attempted seduction of Athena. The newborn was entrusted to the three daughters of Kekrops, the first autochthonous king of Attica, who was born half man and half snake from the soil of future Attica. As an adult, Erichthonios becomes the king of Athens with the name of Erechtheus, before being buried in the soil from which he was born, by a stroke of Poseidon’s trident; he had defeated and killed the god’s son, Eumolpos, the king of Thrace and ally to the Eleusinian rivals. However, this victory would have never materialized without the sacrifice of one of Erechtheus’ daughter.¹¹ Euripides presents on the Athenian stage the wisdom of the autochthonous king and founder of the city of Athens. The homonymous tragedy becomes even more interesting, since it was performed between 423 and 422 BC, toward the end of the first phase of the Peloponnesian War, and probably in connection with the beginning of reconstruction of the temple of Athena Polias, known as Erechtheion. The historic narrative of the war, which makes Erechtheus an enemy of Eumolpos, the son of Poseidon is dramatized during the dramatic festival of the Great Dionysia, a fact that attributes a political dimension to Euripidean tragedy. The battle between Erechtheus and Eumolpos takes place on the dramatic stage, at the foot of Akropolis, before the citizens who claim their autochthony

 On the myth, cf. Calame 2011, 2– 3.

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back to the history of the city of Athens, and, who at the moment, fight to defend and protect their city during the Peloponnesian war.¹² This episode from Euripides’ tragedy invites the audience to recall the early history of Athens and their legendary birth, as related to their mythical king, the renowned founder of their city. As Hanink (2014, 28) has stated, ‘Lycurgus frames the lengthy passage of Euripides’ Erechtheus in such a way that effectively rewrites literary history’. Lykourgos reflects, through the specific citation, Euripides’ own dramatization of Erechtheus’ myth and the values which his tragedy enhances, but also his own personality, his relation to the social and spiritual environment of his time, his political stance toward the city of Athens and its constitution. Lykourgos echoes Euripides’ dramatization of a glorious but damaging moment in the well-known history of Athens; during the period of the Archidamian War (431– 421 BC), Euripides appears to treat in a dramatic form the themes of the epitaphios logos.¹³ It is striking, as will be shown later, that Lykourgos himself employs all themes of the epitaphios logos, also the form and style of epideictic oratory in his forensic speech in order dramatize the supposed treasonable action of Leokrates; even his long citation of Euripides’ Erechtheus is included in a wide and extended section concerning the idea of patriotism. From section 80 in the speech Against Leokrates, Lykourgos begins to appeal to the past for historical examples of patriotism and reverence for the gods. Firstly, he praises all the Greeks who fought at Plataia and their oath (1.80 – 81), underlining their bravery and commitment for liberty. In subsequence, the city of Athens is glorified as a ‘shining example of noble deeds for the Greeks’ (1.82– 83). The example of the noble death of Kodros, the king of the Athenians, is contrasted with Leokrates’ treacherous action to abandon his country (1.84– 86). The condemnation to death of Kallistratos, an Athenian politician who played a leading role in the formation of the Second Athenian League in 378, is emphasised as an exemplary punishment of the Athenians for treacherous actions (1.93). Another rather fantastic story is narrated as suitable to younger men to hear; the filial piety of a man who stayed behind to save his father during the eruption of Mount Aitna (1.95 – 96). Lykourgos then calls for the audience’s attention to listen to the story of Eumolpos, the son of Poseidon and Chione, who had come together with the Thracians to attack Athens. Erechtheus, the king of Athens at the time, consulted the Delphic oracle about how he might secure a victory against them. The

 Ibid., 3 ff.  Sonnino 2010, 41; Loraux 1986, 65; Cropp 1995, 148; Hanink 2014, 31 with n.28.

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oracle’s response was that he must sacrifice his daughter, Erechtheus obeyed and so was able to expel the invaders (1.98 – 99).¹⁴ Lykourgos summarizes the plot of Euripides’ Erechtheus, which has reached us in fragmentary condition, either through citations or through the intermediary of a papyrus, itself incomplete.¹⁵ He then cites a long monologue by Praxithea, who accepts the sacrifice of her daughter in the name of the civic principles which are praised throughout the speech in order to prove that Leokrates’ behaviour was completely opposite to them. According to the orator, Praxithea’s virtues as presented in her monologue made her worthy of the city of Athens (Lykourgos Against Leokrates 1.100): ἄξιον δ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, καὶ τῶν ἰαμβείων ἀκοῦσαι, ἃ πεποίηκε λέγουσαν τὴν μητέρα τῆς παιδός. ὄψεσθε γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς μεγαλοψυχίαν καὶ γενναιότητα ἀξίαν καὶ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τοῦ γενέσθαι Κηφισοῦ θυγατέρα. ‘The iambic verses he wrote for the girl’s mother are worth hearing, gentlemen of the court, for in them you will see the magnanimity and nobility that made here worthy of our city and to be Cephisus’ daughter’.¹⁶

The Athenians’ victory over Eumolpos is a commonplace of Athenian epideictic oratory, particularly in epainos,¹⁷ used both by Euripides and Lykourgos in a different context in each case, dramatic and forensic. Beyond the encomiastic nature of the story, in the specific trial, the mythic quotation may also be related to the recent history of the Athenians, after the battle at Chaironeia, when Alexander the Great had razed the city of Thebes, supposedly killing 6,000 of its inhabitants and enslaving another 30,000 (Diod. Sic. 17.11.1– 14.1). The story of Eumolpos’ invasion is also quoted by Demosthenes in his epitaphios logos that he was elected to deliver for those who died at the battle of Chaironeia in 338. The same story enhances the encomiastic tone of epideictic arguments and historic examples that Lykourgos is using to emphasise Leokrates’ guilt for treason.¹⁸

 For the story that Erechtheus’ other daughters committed suicide and despite the sacrifice of his daughter, Erechtheus himself died in battle as he led the Athenians to victory over Thrace, cf. Hanink 2014, 32 with n. 32. There is also evidence of ancient texts that refer to classical tragedy, which suggests that Erechtheus was relatively well known in antiquity (ibid. 33).  Calame 2011, 3 – 4.  All citations from Lykourgos Against Leokrates in translation have been taken from Worthington / Cooper / Harris 2001.  On the commonplaces of epideictic oratory, cf. Thomas 1989, 218, Ziolkowski 1981, 74– 137, Loraux 1986, 241– 251, Volonaki 2014, 16 – 33, Hanink 2014, 34– 35.  For the interrelation between Lykourgos 1, Against Leokrates and Demosthenes 60, Epitaphios, cf. Loraux 1986, 393, n. 40.

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Lykourgos obviously recognised in the particular myth of Erechtheus a prototype which had inspired and educated the ancestors of the Athenian judges. The orator’s choice to cite the myth in the tragic presentation of Euripides’ Erechtheus may be given two explanations; firstly Euripides’ tragedy adds validity and authority since Athenian classical tragedy has widely acquired recognition and fame by the late fourth century, and particularly the Euripidean tragedy, and secondly Euripides’ version of the myth has an emphatic dramatic impact upon the audience because of the contrast created between a woman who sacrificed her own daughter for the sake of the city and supported the civic values from the classical period of the Athenian history and a man, Leokrates, who was a coward and traitor of the city at a critical moment of danger in the city of Athens a few years before the time of the trial.

3 Praxithea’s Speech The orator employs twice the adverb ‘justly’ to explain why his citation has to be heard by the audience. This may suggest that the audience would be expected to react with thorybos and therefore the orator needs to calm them by emphasizing the significance of Euripides, as a classical tragedian and his specific play.¹⁹ Firstly, Lykourgos appeals to justice in order to make the judges listen and accept the deeds of the ancestors (1.98: ἐφ᾽ οἷς γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι ποιοῦντες ἐφιλοτιμοῦντο, ταῦτα δικαίως ἂν ὑμεῖς ἀκούσαντες ἀποδέχοισθε ‘Justice demands that you listen to the deeds for which they won respect and take them to heart’). It is obvious that Euripides’ tragedy reflects the ancestral civic values, which Lykourgos wishes here to reinforce and make the audience adopt them, as if they were their own beliefs so that they will convict Leokrates. The distance between the Athenians’ ancestors from the classical period and the present time of the trial expands to a period of over a century and the link is apparently Euripides’ tragedy. Secondly, Lykourgos praises Euripides, just before the citation of Praxithea’s monologue, for having chosen the specific myth as a theme for his tragedy; moreover, the orator assigns Euripides with specific motivation for composing the tragedy Erechtheus, by stating that the dramatic poet set an example of the citizens’ love of their country (1.100):

 cf. Allen 2000, 31.

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διὸ καὶ δικαίως ἄν τις Εὐριπίδην ἐπαινέσειεν, ὅτι τά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ὢν ἀγαθὸς ποιητὴς καὶ τοῦτον τὸν μῦθον προείλετο ποιῆσαι, ἡγούμενος κάλλιστον ἂν γενέσθαι τοῖς πολίταις παράδειγμα τὰς ἐκείνων πράξεις, πρὸς ἃς ἀποβλέποντας καὶ θεωροῦντας συνεθίζεσθαι ταῖς ψυχαῖς τὸ τὴν πατρίδα φιλεῖν. ‘Euripides therefore deserves our praise because, in addition to his other poetic virtues, he chose to make a tragedy out of this story, believing that their deeds would serve as an example that citizens could look to and study and thus acquire in their hearts the habit of loving their country’.

It becomes clear that Lykourgos uses Euripides’ voice to add authority to his appeal to ancestral civic virtues, which are incorporated within his epideictic argumentation and style of the speech. According to Wilson (1996, 314), Lykourgos’ choice of quotation implies ‘a very nostalgic view of tragedy that virtually assimilates it to the profoundly idealizing genre of the epitaphios logos’.²⁰ Such a view strengthens the idea that Lykourgos attempts to advance the glorification of Athens of the first empire and connect it with the glory of classical tragedy. In the third quarter of the fourth century Athens still enjoyed a strong tradition of dramatic performance and each year a number of new tragedies and comedies came up at dramatic festivals. Lykourgos made a law to assure the status of the three tragedians by making a copy of their tragedies, depositing their scripts in the archive, and building statues of the poets to be placed in the centre of the city; thus Lykourgos’ law was meant to reinforce the Athenian identity of tragedy. According to Hanink (2014, 70 – 87), Lykourgos’ vision of Euripides is a vision of a great and wise citizen and Euripides’ poetry was the product of his own civic values; after explaining how Euripides is not only a good poet but also a good man, a devoted and brave citizen, she concludes that Lykourgos presents Euripides as the democratic poet and as a paradigm of Athenian patriotism and citizenship. Thus, in her opinion, Lykourgos effectively reclaims Greece’s most popular tragedian for Athens by choosing Euripides and assigns tragedy to a most important place in the city’s history. Moreover, given the theatrical and historical rivalry between Athens and Macedon and the fact that dramatic competitions became more popular in Macedon after the expansion of the empire, Lykourgos may aim to remind to the whole of Greece that Athens is the home of tragedy, and particularly of Euripides. On balance, Hanink emphasises the theatrical effect of Lykourgos’ recitation of (Erechtheus’ wife) Praxithea’s lines from Euripides’ Erechtheus and particularly notes that ‘the jurors will

 For the close relation between epitaphios logos for Diogneitos and Praxithea’s speech, cf. Tsagalis 2007, 13 and Hanink 2014, 38.

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have heard in Lycurgus’ single voice a plurality of voices (Praxithea’s, Euripides’ and Lycurgus’own)’.²¹ Lykourgos’ voice becomes more authoritative through Euripides’ voice –poetic and moral influence, and more rhetorically effective through Praxithea’s voice – female and argumentative impact.²² The orator praises Euripides ‘ἐπαινέσειεν, ὅτι τά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ὢν ἀγαθὸς ποιητής’ in a honourific language, which may suggest that the poet is worthy of an official status in Athens and deserves a decree to be honoured for his own service to Athens and for his choice to produce Erechtheus. ²³ On the other hand, the honourific language may be deliberatively and excessively used to stress the importance of Euripides’ Erechtheus as a fundamental play of Athenian past and heritage. Lykourgos cites fifty-five verses from Euripides’ Erechtheus, which present Praxithea to explain with arguments why she is going to offer her daughter to be sacrificed for the safety of the city. Her powerful words play a decisive role to the development of the tragic plot. On the one hand, Praxithea presents her decision to offer her daughter for sacrifice in future tense and on the other hand she explains the reasons for which this particular sacrifice has to be made. If we consider the fact that Euripides’ tragedy was presented before an audience who had started to dispute the Periklean ideology, during the Peloponnesian War, we will realize that Praxithea’s speech acquires a political and social tension. In order to understand Lykourgos’ aims of his choice to cite Praxithea’s prologue from Euripides’ Erechtheus, it’s worth exploring thoroughly the content of her speech. The monologue starts with a reference to the nobility shown when granting a favour, emphasizing that the delay of granting a favour leads to the opposite of nobility (δυσγενέστερον ‘less honourable’) (l. 1– 3). This statement highlights the contrast between those citizens who should be honoured for their noble deeds and those who should be dishonoured for their inactivity; the implication may be that Praxithea should be honoured for her noble deed to offer her daughter for sacrifice, whereas Leokrates should be punished for not protecting his city at a time of danger. In subsequence, Praxithea announces her decision to give her daughter to be killed (l.4: ἐγὼ δὲ δώσω τὴν ἐμὴν παῖδα κτανεῖν); the future tense underlines her determination and certainty. She then gives the reasons of her decision and Euripides uses the phrase, λογίζομαι δὲ πολλά (LSJ II2: ‘reckon, consider that…’), showing that the mother’s decision is the result of a serious and  Hanink 2014, 36  On Lykourgos’ authoritative voice, as was developed through Praxithea’s speech, consisting of political ideals, philosophical views and poetic virtues, cf. Allen 2000.  For the honourific language and the moral authority assigned to Euripides by Lykourgos, cf. Hanink 2014, 40 – 53.

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difficult process, where she had to consider many aspects of the sacrifice. The reasoning of her decision is based upon three fundamental common places of the epainos in funeral speeches, firstly the city of Athens is the best of all (l. 4– 6), and, secondly, the people of Athens are born from this earth (αὐτόχθονες) (l. 7– 8). In order to emphasise the importance of being an Athenian citizen, Praxithea refers with contempt to all the other cities as ‘founded by migrations with men imported from here and there’ (l. 8 – 10), as well as to the citizens who become aliens when leaving their own cities (l.11– 13). The third common place involves the worship of the ancestral gods and their altars, as well as the patriotism of the Athenians, both important reasons for which women bear their children (l. 14– 15). Following the idea of the patriotism, Praxithea poses a rhetorical question stressing the contrast between the one and the many: ‘Why must I destroy them when I can give one girl to die for all?’ (l. 16– 18); similarly, knowing the numbers, she argues that one family’s loss is much less of destruction than the loss of the entire city (l. 19 – 21). In another rhetorical question, she assures that if she had boys instead of girls, she would send to fight the enemy of the city and would not be afraid if he died; moreover, she wishes ‘she had children who fought and shine among men than mere figures of men born in our city for nothing!’ (l. 22– 27). The phrase ‘μὴ σχήματ᾽ ἄλλως ἐν πόλει πεφυκότα’ contrasts the brave Athenians to coward citizens who do not fight for their country, and this verse can be seen as an effective dramatic reference to Leokrates’ behaviour and action. In l. 28 – 29, Praxithea refers to those mothers who cry when their children go to the war and their lamentation is the cause for their children to lose courage at the battle. Taking into account the metaphor that Praxithea is giving her daughter to be sacrificed as if she had sent a son to the war, for the protection and safety of their country, she presents herself as a brave mother who will not cry but will be strong at the moment of giving her daughter to be killed. She is further contrasted with all those mothers who prefer to have their children alive, who give them bad advice rather than good (l. 30 – 31); the contrast is strengthened by the statement that she hates them, showing that she would have never withheld her children from supporting their country, even though she appears to be at a disadvantageous position, since her daughter will receive a single crown (l. 34– 35), whereas all the citizens who fight for their country win the honour of public burial and an equal renown (l. 32– 33). Here, again, Praxithea is depicted as superior to any other citizen in the city, who sacrifices her own child for the city even though she will not get in return great honours. Nevertheless, it is preferable to lose her child than everything (l. 36 – 40); here, the importance of the city of Athens for its people is emphasised to strengthen Praxithea’s patriotism. Lines 35 – 36 imply that the other two sisters died as well, and according to Apollodoros (3.15.4), they com-

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mitted suicide out of sympathy for her.²⁴ In l. 41– 42, Praxithea emphatically presents herself as the saviour of the city even when other governors will rule; the future tense stresses her certainty that her action will bring safety for the city (‘ἐμοὶ σωθήσεται …, τήνδ᾽ ἐγὼ σώσω πόλιν’). Her self-confidence reflects the arrogance of the heroic persona, even though it is the daughter’s sacrifice that will actually save the city. The same tone can be discerned when she assures the people that against her will no one will harm the ancestral traditional laws, the olive tree, the golden Gorgon, the trident standing upright over the city’s foundations, or the worship of that cannot be destroyed by Eumolpos and the Thracians (l. 43 – 49). Praxithea’s speech closes with two apostrophae, the first one instructing the citizens to take her daughter and save themselves, since for one single life there is no chance that she will not save them (l. 50 – 52); again, here the heroine stresses the fact that she will save the city and that the citizens’ safety will bring them victory (‘σῴζεσθε, νικᾶτ᾽ …τήνδ᾽ ἐγὼ σώσω πόλιν’), and the second one addressing the fatherland itself, calling upon her own love for it, and wishing that all citizens will do the same so that they live happily without suffering harm (l. 53 – 55). As has become clear, Praxithea’s speech is an encomiastic speech consisting of the commonplaces of an epitaphios logos. The main themes of her argumentation are autochthonia (‘born from the earth of the city’) and philopatria (‘patriotism’). Athens is the greatest of all the Greek cities and the autochthony indicates its greatness. Fame and glory are the rewards for those who die in battle and these are connected with the men of the city, if Praxithea had sons, but since she only has daughters, the glory is to be assigned to the daughter who will be sacrificed. Bravery as opposed to cowardice is praised as well as active participation in civic matters instead of inactivity. Finally, the things that count most in the city are the ancestral laws and the traditions, which are of preeminent importance. According to Lykourgos, Praxithea’s monologue, and subsequently Euripides’ tragedy, Erechtheus, contributed so that men placed more devotion to their country to such an extent that they would never think to abandon or disgrace it, as Leokrates did (Lykourgos, Against Leokrates 1.101): ταῦτα, ὦ ἄνδρες, τοὺς πατέρας ὑμῶν ἐπαίδευε. φύσει γὰρ οὐσῶν φιλοτέκνων πασῶν τῶν γυναικῶν, ταύτην ἐποίησε τὴν πατρίδα μᾶλλον τῶν παίδων φιλοῦσαν, ἐνδεικνύμενος ὅτι εἴπερ αἱ γυναῖκες τοῦτο τολμήσουσι ποιεῖν, τούς γ᾽ ἄνδρας ἀνυπέρβλητόν τινα δεῖ τὴν εὔνοιαν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἔχειν, καὶ μὴ φεύγειν αὐτὴν ἐγκαταλιπόντας μηδὲ καταισχύνειν πρὸς ἅπαντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ὥσπερ Λεωκράτης.

 It is also said that Erechtheus himself died in battle as he led the Athenians to victory over Thrace; cf. Hanink 2014, 32 with n. 32.

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‘These verses, gentlemen, formed part of our fathers’ education. Though all women by nature love their children, the poet portrayed this woman as loving her country more than her children. His point was that if women will have the courage to do this, men have all the more reason to place devotion to their country ahead of everything else. They should not abandon their country and flee or disgrace it in front of all the Greeks, as Leokrates did’.

Lykourgos uses the verbs ‘ἃ πεποίηκε’ (1.100), ‘ἐπαίδευε ~ ἐποίησε ~ ἐνδεικνύμενος’ (1.101) to praise the poet and describe the effect of his verses, which he assigned to Praxithea’s role. Lykourgos’ language emphasises Euripides’ poetic identity and action, ‘composed’, ‘educated’ and ‘showed’. The orator recalls Euripides’ poetic authority, fame and popularity and ascribes him the intention not only to offer examples of imitation to the Athenians but also to educate them with the virtues of autochthonia and patriotism. Through Euripides’ voice, Lykourgos acquires an authoritative voice himself to validate the same examples of heroism, as the one presented by Praxithea, and himself educate the Athenian audience to love their country, protect it and support its interests. Lykourgos, however, delivers his speech in the heliastic court, during an eisangelia – one of the most serious and important procedures available for prosecution against politicians and officials,²⁵ and his interpretation of Euripides’ tragedy and poetry as a whole is adjusted in such as way as to persuade the judges that Leokrates was a traitor of the city of Athens and should therefore be convicted. In this context, the orator underlines Euripides’ alleged point (‘ἐνδεικνύμενος’) that if women have such a courage as that of Praxithea to love their country more than their children, then men should have ‘all the more reason to place devotion to their country ahead of everything else’ (1.101). The contrast between female and male patriotism is deliberately stressed to imply that Leokrates has acted on the other extreme, neither as Athenian men ought to show their love for their country nor as women heroines, like Praxithea, have proven their patriotism, but he abandoned his country and disgraced it in front of all the Greeks.

4 Lykourgos’ Rhetorical Strategy: Persuasion of Tragic Citation After examining Lykourgos’ citation of Euripides’ Erechtheus, in particular Praxithea’s monologue as prologue to the tragedy, as well as the orator’s explanatory comments on the poet’s agency and motivation in his use of Erechtheus’ myth to compose a tragedy, and the specific verses assigned to Praxithea, it is important

 For a full list of all cases tried by an eisangelia, cf. Hansen 1975.

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to turn to the question, how effective this citation can be in the forensic context and why the orator resorts to it. According to Aristotle (Rhet. Ι.15.13), poetry can be used as independent proof among other atechnai pisteis, like laws, decrees, oaths, wills, treaties, witnesses etc., as a kind of evidence presented instead of witnesses or as an example. In this sense, poetic citations constitute legal evidence, upon which Leokrates’ conviction is founded. Poetry, as a whole (tragic, epic and lyric), comprises a separate and complete section of Lykourgos’ speech.²⁶ Lykourgos has stated in the beginning of his speech that he will not tell lies nor will he present material irrelevant to the main prosecution case (Against Leokrates 1.11): ποιήσομαι δὲ κἀγὼ τὴν κατηγορίαν δικαίαν, οὔτε ψευδόμενος οὐδέν, οὔτ᾽ ἔξω τοῦ πράγματος λέγων. οἱ μὲν γὰρ πλεῖστοι τῶν εἰς ὑμᾶς εἰσιόντων πάντων ἀτοπώτατον ποιοῦσιν: ἢ γὰρ συμβουλεύουσιν ἐνταῦθα περὶ τῶν κοινῶν πραγμάτων ἢ κατηγοροῦσι καὶ διαβάλλουσι πάντα μᾶλλον ἢ περὶ οὗ μέλλετε τὴν ψῆφον φέρειν. ἔστι δ᾽ οὐδέτερον τούτων χαλεπόν, οὔθ᾽ ὑπὲρ ὧν μὴ βουλεύεσθε γνώμην ἀποφήνασθαι, οὔθ᾽ ὑπὲρ ὧν μηδεὶς ἀπολογήσεται κατηγορίαν εὑρεῖν. The charge I am about to bring is just and contains no lies or irrelevant material. Most of the men who come before you act in the strangest way: they either give you advice about public business or make charges and accusations about everything except the issue about which you are going to cast your vote. Neither of these –giving an opinion about matters you are not discussing and finding an accusation to make about crimes no one is on trial for– is hard to do.

It is true that Lykourgos does not make any irrelevant accusations against Leokrates concerning either his private or public life. The only themes, that may seem extraneous, are the various poetic citations (epainos) included in the encomiastic section. As Lykourgos states at the end of his prosecution speech, he has kept his promise not to use irrelevant material (1.149): ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν καὶ τῇ πατρίδι βοηθῶν καὶ τοῖς ἱεροῖς καὶ τοῖς νόμοις ἀποδέδωκα τὸν ἀγῶνα ὀρθῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὔτε τὸν ἄλλον τούτου βίον διαβαλὼν οὔτ᾽ ἔξω τοῦ πράγματος οὐδὲν κατηγορήσας. ‘By defending our country, our temples, and our laws, I have conducted this case in a fashion both just and correct, without attacking the rest of this man’s life or making irrelevant charges.’

It can thus be inferred that poetry is not regarded as irrelevant material but, on the contrary, it constitutes evidence to prove that Leokrates is a traitor and that

 Dorjahn 1927, 89 – 90

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the judges should convict him, if they are interested in the safety and welfare of their city (1.149): ὑμῶν δ᾽ ἕκαστον χρὴ νομίζειν τὸν Λεωκράτους ἀποψηφιζόμενον θάνατον τῆς πατρίδος καὶ ἀνδραποδισμὸν καταψηφίζεσθαι, καὶ δυοῖν καδίσκοιν κειμένοιν τὸν μὲν προδοσίας, τὸν δὲ σωτηρίας εἶναι, καὶ τὰς ψήφους φέρεσθαι τὰς μὲν ὑπὲρ ἀναστάσεως τῆς πατρίδος, τὰς δ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἀσφαλείας καὶ τῆς ἐν τῇ πόλει εὐδαιμονίας. ‘Each of you must now realize that a vote to acquit Leocrates is a vote to condemn our country to death and destruction. There are two urns placed before you, one for treason, the other for survival, and you are casting your votes either to destroy our country or to keep it safe and prosperous.’

As it appears, the prosecution main argument involves the safety of the city (σωτηρίας), and Lykourgos appears to act as a public prosecutor who is mainly concerned with the protection of the laws, the ancestral traditions, the gods and the temples and above anything else the country itself. Thus, the orator’s fundamental point of persuasion is that Leokrates is a traitor because he had abandoned his country when it needed to be saved. In this framework, Lykourgos’ choice of Euripides’ Erechtheus is ideal in many aspects. First of all, Euripides’ tragedy had become very popular in the fourth century and had greatly influenced the dramatic activity of that period. The Euripidean tragedy had been inspired in its structure but also in the use of myth by the sophistic movement which had developed after the middle fifth century.²⁷ Praxithea’s monologue in Euripides’ Erechtheus reflects the rhetorical influence and is structured upon a series of arguments that explain the mother’s decision to give her daughter for sacrifice. Though all women by nature love their children, the poet portrays Praxithea as loving her country more than her children (Lycurg. Against Leokrates 1.110). Hence, Praxithea argues why the love of her country is the most important in her life and confidently emphasises in the beginning and the end of her speech that she will save her city. Lykourgos employs this prototype of argumentation for patriotism and self-sacrifice in the name of one’s country to prove that Leokrates is guilty because he had acted quite contrary. The contrast between a patriot woman –Praxithea– and a traitor man – Leokrates– adds to the dramatic effect of Praxithea’s argumentation and becomes even more effective for persuasion.

 On the influence of rhetoric upon the dramatic compositions of fourth-century Athens, cf. Xanthakis-Karamanos 1979, 66 – 76.

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Lykourgos’ choice to perform Praxithea’s monologue in court is significant,²⁸ because in Euripides’ and the heroine’s voice he succeeds to present pisteis (‘proofs’) in support of his own case against Leokrates. He strengthens rhetorically and dramatically his prosecution against Leokrates by an eisangelia, which is not legally substantiated, as can be inferred from that fact that Lykourgos asks the judges to act as legislators in the specific case (1.9) and accept the accusation of treason for Leokrates. Lykourgos places more emphasis on the importance of poetry and the lessons it had taught the citizens in the past and may, by implication, do the same in the present, rather than the laws, bringing thus a balance to the absence of a sound legal case.²⁹ Moreover, his choice of Praxithea’s monologue, from Euripides’ Erechtheus, is in accordance with the epideictic style, themes and argumentation, which are predominant in the speech Against Leokrates. Lykourgos reinstates the dramatic figure of Praxithea, as had been presented by Euripides a century earlier, during a period of reconstruction of the city of Athens after its defeat by Philip II of Macedon; his aim is to persuade the judges to accept self-sacrifice and patriotism as the values to be shared by all for the protection of their city at the moment. The presentation of Praxithea’s monologue by Lykourgos associates the heroic and tragic values of the individual sacrifice by Erechtheus’ daughter from the mythical past with the political values of a common sacrifice expected by all the citizens at the end of fourth century in Athens. In this context, Leokrates is called to be convicted, because he has betrayed those political values. Hence, Praxithea’s monologue is part of the section that consists of epideictic rhetorical elements and arguments used as proofs (‘pisteis’). The first theme of epideictic rhetoric is the autochthonia – a commonplace of praise in funeral oratory.³⁰ The second theme relating to the role of maternity praises the sacrifice of an individual for the safety of the whole citizen group, a heroic value that constitutes a commonplace of praising those who died on the battlefield in funeral speeches. The third theme is again connected with the heroic values of the archaic period that have been democratized during the fourth century and are identi-

 Even though there are usually indications in forensic speeches that the secretary of the court would read the poetic citations, there is no such indication in the speech Against Leokrates and it can be assumed that Lykourgos himself plays the role of an actor for Euripides’ tragedy – a role that demands dramatic skills, as well as the role of a rhapsodos and a lyric poet for the subsequent citations in the speech. On the question, who cites poetic abstracts in court, cf. Dorjahn 1927, 92– 93 and Bers 2009, 37– 39.  According to Hermogenes (On the Ideas B 389), Lykourgos’ speeches often include mythical, historic and poetic digressions. Thus, it may be suggested that this was a standard rhetorical strategy of Lykourgos aiming mainly to persuade the judges for his case on each occasion.  For the commonplace, cf. Todd 2007, 26 ff.

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fied with the political values of classical Athens. In particular, the noble death, glory and common welfare are values for which citizens used to fight to save their city. Praxithea’s final appeal to the country itself constitutes the outline of heroism and political ideal that Lykourgos attempts to present in order to substantiate his case against Leokrates.³¹ Lykourgos’ genuine interest in poetry is clearly reflected in his law to establish a public archive with the scripts of the tragedies, as well as the fact that he was responsible for the reconstruction of Dionysos’ theatre. Tragedy constitutes a reliable source of authority and as such it is employed to strengthen Lykourgos’ accusation in court. The theatrical effect of Lykourgos’ recitation of Praxithea’s lines from Euripides’ Erechtheus has been discussed above.³² Lykourgos’ primary role in the revival of dramatic performances and competitions of the classical tragedians gives him the authority to perform himself Praxithea’s monologue so that the judges will approve his recitation and accept it as a kind of evidence. There is, however, another important aspect to Lykourgos’ personality, and this relates to his programme of religion. Lukourgos’ membership of the genos Eteoboutadai is central to understanding his moral and political authority. Lykourgos, the son of Lykophron, was one of the most influential politicians in Athens in the period between the Athenian defeat at Chaironeia in 338 and the death of Alexander the Great in 323.³³ He belonged to the aristocratic genos of the Eteoboutadai, two branches of which controlled two major cults in Athens, those of Athena Polias (one of Athena’s priestesses was Praxithea), and those of Poseidon Erectheus. Lykourgos inherited the priesthood of Poseidon. His grandfather Lykourgos won the honour of burial in the Kerameikos and his prominence under the democracy may have been responsible for his execution by the Thirty. One of Lykourgos’ main interests was religion.³⁴ The politician Stratokles credited him with preparing adornment for the goddess Athena, solid gold Victory statues, and gold ornaments for a hundred basket carriers in the Panathe-

 For an analysis of heroic and political values presented in Praxithea’s monologue, cf. Calame 2011, 5 – 8.  cf. 2. Lykourgos and Euripides’ Erechtheus.  Lykourgos died probably in 325/4 BC. The main ancient source for the life of Lycurgus is the biography found in Pseudo-Plutarch, Lives of the Ten Orators (Moralia) 841a-844a with the decree at 851e-852e. The discovery of several inscriptions, many of which are collected in the valuable work of Schwenk, 1985, has contributed significantly to our knowledge of Athens in the time of Lykourgos. More recent studies on Lykourgos’ role to the formation of the constitution in relation to Kleisthenic democracy are included in the significant work edited by Azoulay / Ismard 2011, which based both on inscriptional and literary evidence clarify further the political and religious shifts in Lykourgan Athens.  Parker 1996, 242– 255.

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naic procession.³⁵ In 344 he passed a major law about religious cults,³⁶ provisions for the cults of numerous deities, including Zeus the Saviour, Athena, Amphiareus, Asclepius, Artemis of Brauron, Demeter, and Kore. As it becomes clear, Lykourgos appears to have taken the religion and the cults of the polis with great seriousness.³⁷ On balance, Lykourgos’ authoritative voice as a politician who made innovations on the sphere of drama and religion adds validity and persuasion to his performance of Praxithea’s monologue. By virtue of his status as Eteoboutad, ‘Lykourgos was in a position to embody Praxithea in a rather strong sense, and to share her solemn priestly authority’.³⁸ The choice of Euripides’ Erechtheus is associated with Lykourgos’ own religious background, his personal involvement in the religious, theatrical and dramatic restructure of his time. Lykourgos employs an authoritative voice through his status as as Eteoboutad, a reformer of culture and religion, and as an administrator of public finances in order to quieten down the dicastic thorybos that might break out due to the Athenians’ prejudice against an excessive use of poetry in court or even toward the presentation of an old play of Euripides, Erechtheus. Thus, Lykourgos would be able to perform himself, undisturbed, Praxithea’s monologue and establish his case. Only for one vote, Lykourgos lost the trial against Leokrates. It is, however, impressive that he succeeded in gaining such a large number of votes, even though Leokrates’ alleged offence could not be included in the impeachment law (‘eisageltikos nomos’) and was not directly connected with the decrees voted after the battle at Chaironeia in 338 BC. It is most probable that Lykourgos’ authoritative voice and rhetorical strategy in his use of Euripides’ tragedy (but also of poetry as a whole), significantly contributed to approaching so close to the victory.

Bibliography Allen, D. S. (2000), ‘Changing the Authoritative Voice: Lycurgus’ Against Leocrates’, in: CA 19, 5 – 33. Azoulay, V. / Ismard, P. (2011), Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes, Paris. Bers, V. (1994), ‘Tragedy and Rhetoric’ in: I. Worthington (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action, London / New York, 176 – 195. Bers, V. (2009), Genos Dikanikon: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens, Washington, DC.

   

Plut. Moralia 852b. Schwenk no. 21 Fisher 1976, 145. Lambert 2015.04.24.

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Calame, C. (2011), ‘Myth and Performance on the Athenian Stage: Praxithea, Erechtheus, Their Daughters, and the Etiology of Autochthony’, in: CPh 106, 1 – 19. Carey, C. (2000), ‘Observers of speech and hearers of action’, in: O. Taplin (ed.), Literature in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Oxford, 192 – 216. Collard, C. / Cropp, M. J. / Lee, K.H. (eds.) (1995), Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays, vol. 1, Warminster. Cropp, M. J. (1995), ‘Erechtheus’, in: Collard, C. / Cropp, M.J. / Lee, K.H. (eds.), Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays, vol. 1, Warminster, 148 – 94. Dorjahn, A. P. (1927), ‘Poetry in Athenian Courts’, in: CPh 22, 85 – 93. Fisher, N. (1976), Social Values in Classical Athens, London. Hall, E. (1995), ‘Lawcourt Dramas: The Power of Performance in Greek Forensic Oratory’, in: BICS 40: 39 – 58; revisited in ‘Lawcourt Dramas: Acting and Performance in Legal Oratory’, in: E. Hall (2006), The Theatrical Cast of Athens, Oxford, chapter 12. Hall, E. (2006), The Theatrical Cast of Athens, Oxford. Hanink, J. (2014), Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy, Cambridge. Hansen, M.H. (1975), Eisangelia: The Sovereignty of the People’s Court in Athens in the Fourth Century BC and the Impeachment of Generals and Politicians, Odense. Lambert, S. (2015), Review of Hanink (2014), in: BMCR 2015.04.24. Loraux, N. (1986), The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Trans. A. Sheridan, Cambridge. Parker, R.C.T. (1996), Athenian Religion: A History, Oxford / New York. Perlman, S. (1964), ‘Quotations from Poetry in Attic Orators of the Fourth Century’ in: AJP 85, 155 – 172. Petrie, A. (1922), Lycurgus: The speech against Leocrates, Cambridge. Schwenk, C. (1985), Athens in the Age of Alexander the Great: The Dated Laws and Decrees of the Lykourgan Era 338 – 322 BC, Chicago. Sonnino, M. (2010), Euripidis Erechthei quae extant, Florence. Todd, S. C. (2007), Lysias Commentary 1 – 11, Oxford. Thomas, R. (1989), Oral Tradition and Written Record in Athens, Cambridge. Tsagalis, C.C. (2007), ‘CEG 594 and Euripides’ Erechtheus’, in: ZPE 162, 9 – 13. Ullman, B.L. (1942), ‘History and Tragedy’, in: TAPA 72, 25 – 53. Volonaki, E. (2014), ‘Narratological Elements in Epideictic Oratory’, in: Platon 59, 16 – 33. Wilson, P.J. (1996), ‘Tragic Rhetoric: The Use of Tragedy and the Tragic in the Fourth Century’, in: M.S. Silk (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, Oxford, 310 – 331. Worthington, I. / Cooper, C.R. / Harris, E.M. (2001), Dinarchus, Hyperides, & Lycurgus, The Oratory of Classical Greece, vol. 5, Austin. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (1979), ‘The Influence of Rhetoric on Fourth-Century Tragedy’, in: CQ 29, 66 – 76. Ziolokowski, J.E. (1981), Thucydides and the Tradition of Funeral Speeches at Athens, New York.

André Hurst

Upon the king!¹ In spite of its being a democratic institution, the dramatic contest held during the Athenian festival of Dionysus seems to favour stories about kings when it comes to the subjects of tragedies. In Aristophanes’ Frogs, there is a confrontation between Euripides, who affirms his pride in giving the floor to simple people in his tragedies, making the whole thing democratic, and Aeschylus, who states on the contrary that tragedy is about figures greater than the ordinary man.² The result of the confrontation seems very likely to favour Aeschylus’ conception. Later, in a text that somehow echoes Aristophanes’ views on more than one point, Aristotle points to the fact that tragedy, if conforming to the recipes that proved successful, will usually be about events that happened to people belonging to a few illustrious families.³ This apparent paradox might be considered as enhanced during the history of post-classical tragedy. Actually, we had in classical times an Athenian ‘democratic’ community enjoying stories about royal families. Post-classical tragedy will increasingly become an interest of kings. Kings will go on inviting tragic poets, as did Sicilian and Macedonian monarchs in the time of classical tragedy. There is nothing new about that. But something unexpected happens in the history of post-classical tragedy: monarchs feel compelled at times to become tragic poets themselves. Some readers are surprised to find in Suetonius that Julius Caesar himself had composed a tragedy on the subject of Oedipus in Greek.⁴ But when he did so, he could look back over a series of monarchs who had preceded him on this way. And he had indeed entered himself in the series of models when his successor Titus wrote tragedies in Greek⁵ as well. It might be interesting to examine briefly this group of monarchic playwrights. To start with the greatest of them, Alexander the Great himself was famed to have written not exactly a tragedy, but a satyr drama, something which constituted a normal part in a tragic contest. Alexander was supposed to be the real author of

 William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 4, scene 1. I owe thanks to my wife Lilliam for checking my English.  Aristophanes, Frogs 907– 1076.  Aristotle, Poetics 1454a 9 – 15.  Suetonius, Julius Caesar 56.  TrGF n°183. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-016

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Python’s satyr drama Agen.⁶ Whether the real author was Python or Alexander the Great, what could matter is the content of the play. The plot is about Harpalos, Alexander’s companion who became his treacherous treasurer. Ancient sources tell us how he led a life of luxury in Babylon with his mistress Glykera while Alexander was in India, and decided to defect when Alexander was on his way back. The few lines that are preserved in Athenaeus belong in part to the prologue (F1 A) and in part to a dialogue between two figures (F1 B). The first lines allow to suppose that the satyrs formed a Chorus of magicians (F1 A, 5). Harpalos himself appeared under the name of ‘Pallides’. The end of the story is order reinstalled by ‘Agen’ (=Alexander himself) on his return to Babylon. One observation can be made about the use of satyr drama in this case: it certainly shows the king in a favourable light, which might explain why Alexander, if he really was the author, did not care, or even avoided, being recognised as such. Before Alexander the Great, there had been a monarch who aspired to be considered as a tragic poet: Dionysius the Elder,⁷ tyrant of Syracuse. He is known to have been a great warrior against the Carthaginians but a ‘bad poet’ (so Diodorus 15.73.5).⁸ If we judge his poetic abilities from the few fragments we have preserved, there is not much to say. He seems to write tragedies in a very classical style, using normal iambic trimeters for the dialogues. A fragment like fr. 10 could be quoted as an instance of normal formulary style: ‘alas, I lost an excellent wife’⁹ is an exclamation that any ordinary spectator of tragedies would expect from a figure like Admetus, for example. Another fragment: ‘Either say something better than silence, or remain silent’¹⁰ sounds like any ordinary advice, or threat, that one figure on stage could address to another. There is nonetheless a line that could be interesting in our perspective: ‘Tyranny, actually, is the mother of injustice’.¹¹ Whoever is the figure uttering these words on stage, they reflect an opinion about the problematics of power. Whether the words are spoken by somebody who will be victoriously contradicted or by somebody making a point considered as being in the right, the words are uttered.

 According to Athenaeus. Cf. GrS n°91, 593 – 601.  TrGF n°76, 240 – 246. He is also the man who invited Plato and later had him sold as a slave.  His death is even connected with his poetic activity: an oracle said he would die after defeating those that were better than him. He thought the oracle meant the Carthaginians. After his victory at the Athenian tragic competition at the Lenaia, he celebrated with excess and died: he had defeated poets better than him (Diodorus, loc.cit.).  TrGF n°76, fr. 10: οἴμοι, γυναῖκα χρησίμην ἀπώλεσα.  TrGF n°76, fr. 6: ἢ λέγε τι σιγῆς κρεῖσσον ἢ σιγὴν ἔχε.  TrGF n°76, fr. 4: ἡ γὰρ τυραννὶς μήτηρ ἀδικίας ἔφυ. One could compare with Sophocles’ ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον (Oedipus Tyrannus 873).

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And this, of course means that Dionysius intended them to be declaimed on stage. The line could be perceived either as a confession made by a monarch leading a life ‘accompanied by reflection’,¹² or by a figure on stage attacking the principle of monarchy.¹³ As a possible clue for the question of the relation between kings and tragedies, this might be worth taking into account. Another monarch as tragic poet is the fourth of the Ptolemies. From the very beginning of the dynasty, the Ptolemies had maintained the tradition of Macedonian kings as protectors of tragic poets.¹⁴ One remembers Euripides at the royal court of Macedonia, and later, in the same vein, Ptolemy I, ‘Sôter’, inviting Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, to Alexandria to preside over the organisation of the famous library ─ a library where the edition of tragedies would be assigned to Alexander of Aetolia, a library in which the famous rolls of the ‘official’ Athenian edition of the tragedies would finally find their place.¹⁵ Ptolemy IV, ‘Philopatôr’, son of a pupil of Apollonius Rhodius, is the one who finally passed the turning point and became the author of at least one tragedy, whose subject was Adonis.¹⁶ We know very little about the text: our information comes entirely from a scholion on Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousae (ad 1059) in which it is said that Ptolemy ‘Philopatôr’ emulated Euripides’ representation of Echo in his Andromeda as a figure sighing lamentably (κακοστένακτος). Ptolemy did so in a tragedy with the title of Adonis. His beloved Agathokles wrote about it, Agathokles who happened to be the brother of Agathokleia, mistress of the king. The occasion of the scholion is the scene of the Thesmophoriazousae in which Aristophanes makes fun of the way in which Euripides used Echo in order to stress the solitude of Andromeda (1015– 1097). By emulating a device which had been mocked by Aristophanes, Ptolemy shows at least his appreciation of ‘the most tragic of poets’,¹⁷ a poet who had been protected by a Macedonian king. The choice of subject, Adonis, reminds us of the importance of his cult in Alexandria.¹⁸

 Dionysius knew Plato personally, and the idea of a life accompanied by reflection is clearly stated in Plato’s Apology of Socrates (38a).  Mutatis mutandis, one thinks of the famous Viva la libertà in Da Ponte’s / Mozart’s Don Giovanni sung on stage in Prague in 1787, a few years before the French revolution.  Cf. the existence of the so-called Alexandrian ‘Pleiad’ of tragic poets, among them Lycophron, and the important role given to tragedy in the famous procession (πομπή) of Ptolemy II (Ath. 5.196 ff., quoting Callixeinus). See also Xanthakis-Karamanos 22004, 295 – 298.  The source is Galen, in his commentary on the Epidemics III of Hippocrates II.4, (17.1, p. 607 Kühn = CMG V.10.2, 79 – 80 E. Wenkebach 1936).  TrGF n°119, 283.  Aristotle, Poetics, 1453a 30.  Theocritus, 15.100 – 144, (the song of the ‘Argive woman’s daughter’). In that piece, one connection could be seen between kingship and the myth of Adonis: the superiority of Adonis over

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At the end of the Hellenistic period, we encounter another ruler as tragic poet : king Artavasdes II of Armenia, less known for his literary achievements than for the fact that after losing a war against Marcus Antonius he was executed on the orders of Cleopatra¹⁹. Plutarch is our source here: according to him, Artavasdes wrote tragedies and other kinds of texts as well, most probably in Greek.²⁰ The plays might have been presented in the Greek theatre built by his father Tigran. Julius Caesar and his Oedipus have been mentionned already. One question could be asked: had Caesar been attracted by the possibility of showing the dangers of power, like Sophocles had done in the past when he used the same legendary figure of a king?²¹ This, of course, is a pure matter of conjecture, but he could thus be situated along the same lines as Dionysius the Elder alluding to the problematics of power (supra). Julius Caesar was not the only Roman ruler who wrote tragedies: Titus did so after him, also in Greek.²² And he wrote not only tragedies, but other ‘poems’ as well, according to our latin sources. Suetonius (Titus 3.2) mentions his ability in writing and speaking in Greek and in Latin.²³ More specifically, Eutropius mentions tragedies (7.21.1: ‘he conducted his business in latin, composed poems and tragedies in Greek’).²⁴ The Suda byzantine lexicon simply reproduces on this matter Eutropius’ information (s.v. Τίτος). Up to a point, Julian the ‘Apostate’ brought this series of monarchs as tragic poets to an end (and later Christian emperors, evidently, could no longer afford to be seen in a relation of proximity with the pagan theatre). Julian did not choose to write a tragedy, but did not abandon the possibilities of a dramatic the greatest kings (because he could visit both the world of the dead and the world of the living (135 – 144). But it would be rather shaky to infer from Theocritus something about a tragedy written by somebody else, and about which we know so little.  Or ‘Artabazes’ (in Armenian ‘Artauazd’), TrGF n°165, Plutarch, Life of Crassus 33.2, 564e.  Plutarch, loc. cit, says Artavasdes wrote tragedies, λόγους and ἱστορίας (‘speeches’ [or ‘histories’] and ‘histories [or novels’]), of which some had been preserved. This last observation by Plutarch makes one think the works were in Greek. I owe to Valentina Calzolari the information that Artavasdes’ father, Tigran, had a ‘Greek theatre’ built in his capital and had invited the Greek historian Demetrius of Scepsis to write about Armenia (the text is lost). The Armenians of the time still had no alphabet and used Aramaean or Greek in their official administration. The inscriptions of Armawir show that Greek, and Greek poetry, was present in Armenia since the 3rd century BC (Lamberterie 1999). All this favours the idea of Artavasdes writing in Greek.  His expertise in Greek literature might be proved by his quoting Menander in Greek when he crossed the Rubicon (Plut. Life of Pompeius, 60.4, 651d).  TrGF n°183, 314 (testimonia by Suetonius, Eutropius and Suda).  The poetical talents of Titus are also recorded by Pliny the Elder (Historia Naturalis, Praefatio 5 & 11, Cf. Martinet 1981, ad Suet. loc. cit.).  Causas Latine egit, poemata e tragoedias Graece composuit.

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form: he turned to an illustrious opponent of tragedy, Plato, and wrote a dialogue on the Platonic model.²⁵ This ‘play’ is not about anything other than gods and emperors.²⁶ The dialogue of the Caesars is actually an imaginary play in which emperors compete in presence of gods. Is that choice emblematic, and was the possibility given in this case by an imitation of a Platonic dialogue also the possibility which was perceived in tragedy, namely to explore the mechanisms of personal power in relation with divine legitimacy? It could then be considered as one of the vectors of the monarch’s interest in tragedy. Three at least in our group of seven monarchs seem to have touched the problem: Alexander, if he is the author of the Agen (and, if not, he is at least connected with the question), Dionysius the Elder with the fragment about power, Caesar with the very choice of Oedipus as a subject, if we consider the main model he could not ignore, Sophocles’ Oedipus. Epic poetry, it is an accepted fact, used to function as the ‘oral encyclopaedia’ of a given society.²⁷ Everything was to be found in ‘Homer’, as the singer Ion repeats with many others (in his case in the Platonic dialogue bearing his name). This implies that an epic poet was supposed to be not only aware of everything, but interested in everything and particularly in every human activity at every level of society. Even in Ptolemaic Alexandria, an epic poet like Apollonius Rhodius still does so, using all kinds of human activities in his similes, even the humblest ones. It might well be that this aspect of epic poetry explains the fact that one could not observe in epic poetry the same series of monarch-poets as in tragic poetry. Tragedy seems to be the sort of poetry that would be fit for a king. Whether Python’s Agen is or not a work by Alexander himself, the very fact that it could be attributed to him offers an interesting clue to our problem. Obviously, as we have noted, this drama gives an opportunity to make a statement about the importance of a royal action conceived as legitimate and beneficial. One further clue could be given by a much later poet, when he lets the king have his say. In Shakespeare’s famous monologue of king Henry in his tragedy Henry the Fifth, we hear: Upon the king! Let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children and our sins lay on the king! We must bear all. O hard condition,… (William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 4, scene 1, 226 – 229).

 For the proximity with Plato’s Symposion, cf. Sardiello 2000, XIII-XIV.  Julian, The Caesars 361.  Cf. Havelock 1963.

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In this monologue, the king is alone, alone at the top. Consequently, he is the only one able to understand the hardship of his situation. There is nobody to whom he could turn for help in front of his responsibilities. We are sent back to a feeling that can be found in the ancient world: it is expressed in the formula defining the condition of the king as a ‘glorious slavery’, ἔνδοξος δουλεία.²⁸ This view can be considered as complementary to the view expressed in the anecdote of the famed ‘sword of Damocles’,²⁹ or in Julian’s description of his becoming the emperor, a description in which he also uses the word ‘slavery’ and evokes a situation strongly reminiscent of the sword of Damocles.³⁰ In short, being a king is difficult and dangerous, really a ‘hard condition’. One can then conjecture that tragedy is a privileged way to convey this idea. A possible model is to be found in Sophocles: when Creon has to defend himself in the face of Oedipus’ accusations, he offers a dark view of kingship and tries to persuade Oedipus (and the public) that being a king is not something to be wished for.³¹ So, the road had been opened by one at least of the great tragics of the past: showing the difficulty of being a king was given almost as a routinely used topos in tragedy. And the tragedy Caesar wrote was precisely an Oedipus. In addition to this welcome opportunity of showing oneself in a quasi-heroic position, a king might have been attracted to tragedy simply by the religious connections implied in the role of a tragic poet. Whereas an epic poet can invoke divinities to help him to sing his songs, tragedy is a constitutive part of a religious celebration, a festival in honour of Dionysus, and whatever means were used to choose the poets, they could benefit from the aura of having been chosen by a god. A form of prestige was thereby attached to the quality of being a tragic poet. One should observe here that tragedy occupies a very special place. If kings appear to like being seen as tragic poets, no monarch seems to have tried being praised as a comic poet. To come back to the satyr drama Agen, one can stress the very fact the Alexander the Great, if he was the author, could have prefered to leave the authorship to somebody else not only because the play praised Alexander himself, but also because the satyr drama of the time looked more and more like comedy. Actually, we even have one case in which comedies were

 Cf. Aelian, Var. Hist. 2.20 (Antigonos to his son : οὐκ οἶσθα, ὦ παῖ, τὴν βασιλείαν ἡμῶν ἔνδοξον εἶναι δουλείαν; ‘Don’t you know, my son, that our kingship is a glorious slavery?’. Cf. also Béranger 1973, 34 ff. It is not easy to understand exactly what is meant in this expression: is the king a slave of his subjects? Is he the slave of the laws that command everybody, including the king? For this last interpretation, cf. Volkmann 1956.  E. g. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 5.21.  Cf. Epistula ad Athenienses 7.7.  Oedipus Tyrannus 583 – 599.

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supposed to have been written by an important political figure but, contrary to the case of kings proclaiming their authorship of tragedies, the supposedly real author of these comedies was expected to hide the fact. This is the well-known case of Terence, whose comedies were by some considered as the work of Scipio Aemilianus.³² True or false, the point lies precisely in the fact that Scipio would have been expected to hide the fact, whereas a monarch like Dionysius quite openly took part with his tragedies in Dionysiac competitions. Our first paradox was the popularity of a ‘democratic’, or democratically practised, form of tragedy, with a select club of monarchs eager to be seen as tragic poets. There is now another paradox: according to many, tragedy was a device capable of helping a democratic society to ponder about itself, about its relation to power, human or divine, about its values and social codes. This is, after all, the reason why Aristophanes shows Dionysus travelling to the underworld in order to rescue a poet capable of saving Athens. The tragic poet functions as the teacher which society as a whole needs for its survival. Up to a point, tragedy corroborates the belief held by members of a democratic society that they are equal before the great challenges of life. With monarchs writing tragedies, one has the impression that, quite to the contrary, kings could feel the urge to write tragedies in order to show how different they were from their subjects. Of course, our sparse knowledge of their works does not permit us here to be too affirmative, but of the three whom we have considered as connected to the problematics of power, Dionysius the Elder, Alexander, Caesar, it can be said that tragedy offered a possibility of showing the life of a monarch as rendered by the gods simultaneously difficult and beneficial, and thereby very different from the lives of ordinary people.

Bibliography Béranger, J. (1973), Principatus. Études de notions et d’histoire politiques dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine, vol. 19 – 20, Genève. Havelock, E. A. (1963), Preface to Plato, Harvard. Lamberterie, C. de (1999), ‘Un poète hellénistique en Arménie’, in: A. Blanc / A. Christol (eds.), Langues en contact dans l’Antiquité (Actes du Colloque Rouenlac III, Mont-Saint-Aignan, 6 février 1997), Nancy, 151 – 167. Martinet, H. (1981), C. Suetonius Tranquillus, Divus Titus: Kommentar, Königstein.

 This will be the opinion of many, including for instance Montaigne himself, an excellent expert of Latin literature (Essais, I, 40). One thinks also of proposals made for the ‘real’ authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.

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Sardiello, R. (2000), Giuliano imperatore, Simposio I Cesari. Edizione critica, traduzione e commento, Galatina. Volkmann, H. (1956), ‘ΕΝΔΟΞΟΣ ΔΟΥΛΕΙΑ als ehrenvoller Knechtsdienst gegenüber dem Gesetz’, in: Philologus 100, 52 – 61. Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. (22004), Dramatica: Studies in Classical and Post-Classical Dramatic Poetry, Athens.

Georgios Vasilaros

The Lemnian Deeds: A Tragic Episode in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius After its departure from Iolkos and a spectacular sail through the Pagasetic Gulf, described by Apollonius Rhodius in Argonautica Book 1 (1.519 – 558) in almost cinematic fashion, Argo resumes its course to Bosporus and approaches the island of Lemnos. Apollonius uses this opportunity to deliver a beautifully structured episode about the Argonauts’ well-known encounter with the women of Lemnos (Arg. 1.609 – 909), already popularised through the epic, lyric and dramatic tradition.¹ Indeed, the account of the Argonauts’ time on Lemnos is a distinct episode, one that does not obstruct in any significant way the otherwise linear narration of their mission to Colchis, which –although slightly delayed– is neither substantially aided nor impeded by their stay on the island.² However, Apollonius’s skilled narrative craftsmanship transforms this episode into a tragic canvas, featuring many elements that foreshadow a number of interesting themes of the epic³ – for instance, Jason’s romantic encounter with the queen of Lemnos, Hypsipyle, anticipates the one with Medea in Book 3, as well as the mythological scenes embroidered upon Jason’s cloak, ominously suggestive of his future relationship with the Colchian princess. Earlier scholars of the Apollonian epic detected echoes of dramatic poetry within the Lemnian episode, despite the lack of extensive textual background.⁴ The main reason for this is that, from the multitude of tragedies based on the events that transpired on Lemnos, only a handful of excerpts from the handwritten tradition survives, not sufficient to substantiate clear intertextual links. It is established that the Argonautic legend inspired all three tragic dramatists, as the

 For a concise list of all the occurrences of the myth of the Lemnian women in Greek literature before Apollonius, see Vian 21976, 19 – 28.  For Apollonius’ narrative linearity in Argonautica, as opposed to the Homeric narrative technique, see esp. Rengakos 2004, 277– 304.  For the Lemnian episode’s manifold foreshadowings of the events in Colchis, see esp. Hunter 1993, 47– 52.  Cf. namely Stoessl 1941, 26 – 52, who attempted to detect intertextual links between the Lemnian episode’s first act and Aeschylus’ fragment, Hypsipyle, with a particular focus on the way the Lemnian women received the Argonauts. Broadly, for the debated issue of Apollonius’ reception of tragic poetry until the mid-20th century see Herter 1944/1955, 309 ff. and 344 ff. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-017

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following partially surviving works suggest:⁵ Argo, Lemnioi, Hypsipyle, and Kabeiroi by Aeschylus most likely belonged to a tetralogy based on the Argonautic legend.⁶ Sophocles dramatised events from the Argonautic cycle in several of his works, also partially lost.⁷ Undoubtedly, Lemniai is the single most relevant to our topic, conjectured by Vian to be a satyr play.⁸ Hypsipyle is a well-known fragment by Euripides about the queen of Lemnos,⁹ while in Medea he dealt with events that transpired after the Argonautic legend.¹⁰ A structural juxtaposition of these few fragments by the tragic poets, always in regards with the Lemnian episode from Apollonius’ Argonautica, reveals not only a strikingly similar core element, but also an essential difference in how the women of Lemnos reacted to the Argonauts’ arrival. According to Apollonius (Arg. 1.634– 635), and similar to Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle and Sophocles’ Lemniai, the women appear armed. However, the scholia to Argonautica ¹¹ highlight the difference: in Aeschylus, the armed women threaten the Argonauts until they are bound under oath to consummate with them. In the same context, in Sophocles, according to the scholiast again, the women even engaged the Argonauts in armed combat. In Apollonius’ variation, the situation is resolved without either conflict or combat with the, initially enraged from their fear, women; instead, the two groups negotiate through their heralds.¹² Therefore, this paper will not examine whether and to what extent Apollonius was indeed influenced by the conjectured structure of the above fragments, also inspired from the Argonautic legend. Rather, we are mostly interested in

 For a list of the tragic poets’ plays associated with the Argonautic cycle, see Aélion’s interesting study (1986, 119 – 149). Especially for the Lemnian episode see pp. 127– 135.  See for Argo fr. 20 – 21 Radt, for Lemnioi fr. 123a-123b Radt, for Hypsipyle fr. 247– 248 Radt, and for Kabeiroi fr. 95 – 97a Radt. Cf. Mette 1959, 15 – 18, and idem, 1963, 130 – 132.  See Athamas (A and B) fr. 1– 10 Radt, Phrixos fr. 721– 723a Radt, Lemniai fr. 384– 389 Radt, Amykos fr. 111– 112 Radt, Phineus (A and B) fr. 704– 717a Radt, Scythai fr. 546 – 552 Radt, Rhizotomoi fr. 534– 536 Radt and Colchides fr. 336 – 349 Radt.  See Vian 21976, 21 and esp. 28. Indeed, the Lemnian women’s assembly (see below p. 285), for instance, could be a motif that subverts traditional social structures and originates in comic plays. For this episode’s Aristophanic tone cf. also Stoessl 1941, 40.  See here the monograph edited by Bond 1963. Cf. also fr. 752– 770 Kannicht.  For the connections between Medea and Argonautica see the classic study by Fritz 1959, 66 – 71. Cf. also here Koukouzika 2008, 5 with n. 4.  See scholia to Argon. A 769 – 773 Wendel. Cf. also Vian 21976, 20 – 21, 26 – 28 and Jackson 1993, 60 – 62.  Cf. here Cusset 2001, 72 ff. and Schmakeit 2003, 202. See also Jackson’s 1993, 70 notable contribution on this issue: ‘for Apollonius, reconciliation, friendliness, physical attraction and sexual lust had to be the principal ingredients of the Lemnian episode; there was no place for disagreeable smells, battles or conflict of any kind’.

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whether the scholar-poet, as a true representative of his time, achieved to balance in a creative fashion not only the rich, enduring legacy of the archaic epic tradition, but also the influence of more composite forms of literature, such as tragic poetry, by drawing certain elements from it by practising oppositio in imitando, which was common in the Hellenistic poetry. Many dramatic elements can be identified in this ‘closed’ episode,¹³ whose overall structure resembles that of a short tragedy.¹⁴ As Vian points out,¹⁵ we can recognise five distinct dramatic acts: in the expository prologos (Arg. 1.609 – 632), Apollonius provides the mythic context, by recounting his own, most popular variation of the appalling deed of the Lemnian women, who slaughtered their husbands, along with every single man on the island. The first act (Arg. 1.633 – 652) briefly mentions the Argo approaching the island, moves to the women’s initially perplexed reaction to the sight of the ship, and describes how the Argonauts dispatched ashore their herald, Aethalides. In act two (Arg. 1.653 – 720), the Lemnian women, despite their original intentions, decide after an assembly in the agora, to follow the counsel of Polyxo, the elder nursemaid, who warned them against the risks of remaining childless, and invite the Argonauts in their town, by dispatching their own messenger, Iphinoe. In Arg. 1.721– 773 (intermezzo: ecphrasis of Jason’s cloak), Apollonius colourfully describes the brilliance of Jason’s red cloak, a gift from Athena, which he buckles around his shoulders, intending to impress the queen of Lemnos in their meeting. It is noteworthy that this deviation from the popular Argonautic legend is Apollonius’ original device, aimed to emphasise the deity’s special favour to Jason. In act three, there is Jason and Hypsipyle’s meeting and dialogue (Arg. 1.774– 860), which foreshadows his meeting with Medea. The epilogue of

 In this episode, both Hurst 1967, 58 – 62 and later Clauss 1993, 107– 110 observe a strict structural sequence of alternating motifs and events, in other words a structural bipolarity, marked by the protagonists’ genders.  For the influence of dramatic tradition in Argonautica see esp. Nishimura-Jensen’s dissertation (1996) as well as her related study (2009, 1– 23). For the presentation of the crew of the Argonauts by Apollonius as a Chorus, with eclectic influences from the choral-lyrical, tragic, and comic poetry of the 5th century, see the specialised study by Cusset 2001, 61– 76, which examines Apollonius’ reception of the genre of classical tragedy, as well as Hunter’s commentary (22008, 142– 143). Cf. also Fantuzzi 1983, 146 – 161.  Vian 21976, 25. Vian’s structure was followed by Schmakeit 2003, 200 – 225, in her interesting dissertation, but only for practical reasons, as she considered the former’s argument weak. In our following analysis, we will address Schmakeit’s criticism to Vian’s argument. In brief, she also identifies tragic influences on the Lemnian episode’s structure, but only in a few elements (ibidem, p. 224). However, this study follows Vian’s approach, which has also been supported by Cusset 2001, 71– 74.

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this tragic episode, in Arg. 1.861– 909 (exodos), is initiated by Heracles’ speech, who admonishes the Argonauts to cease the lovemaking with the Lemnians so they could leave the island immediately; however, the episode’s final scene is sealed by Jason and Hypsipyle’s tender farewell scene, dense with suggestive hints about the development of the epic. The Lemnian episode in Argonautica Book 1 reaches an impressive 300-line length in its entirety, and can be seen as a short tragedy, with a prologue, episodes-acts and an epilogue-exodos. The Argonauts’ encounter with the women of Lemnos, and especially Jason’s with Hypsipyle, is fully explored narratively; Apollonius, as poeta doctus, attempts not only to revisit and redefine elements of the epic cycle, and of the lyric and dramatic poetry, but also to foreshadow Jason’s betrayal of Medea, as popularised through Attic tragedy. Jason’s behaviour is indirectly but succinctly suggested by the two cloaks: the first cloak, red and dense with symbols of betrayal, he wears to impress Hypsipyle in their first meeting; and the second cloak,¹⁶ purple, with an ambrosial scent, which he receives as a farewell gift from her,¹⁷ although it is not revealed until much later, in Arg. 4.421 ff. It is the holy cloth upon which a tipsy Dionysus laid with Ariadne, after saving her from Naxos, where Theseus had abandoned her; Hypsipyle would later inherit this very cloth from her father, Thoas, son of Dionysus and Ariadne. What other gift could the queen of Lemnos offer to foreshadow more effectively Jason’s future betrayal to Medea? Next, for each act of the episode as established above, we will attempt to identify expressions and, especially, motifs that occur in Attic tragic poetry, telling of the scholar-poet’s knowledge and reception of it in the composition of this Hellenistic epic. Starting at Arg. 1.609 – 632, which Vian¹⁸ recognises as a Euripidean prologos in this tragic episode, we realise that Apollonius indeed provides the essential

 This holy cloth will be later used as a gift-bait for the ambush that Jason and Medea plan in order to deceive the latter’s brother, Apsyrtus. For the intertextual links between Apsyrtus’ murder by Jason (Arg. 4.421– 481) and his absolution later from Circe (Arg. 4.659 – 752), and Orestes’ horrendous crimes, for which he was also absolved later in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, see Griffith’s 1990, 25 – 39 specialised study.  Apart from the holy cloth, Hypsipyle’s farewell gifts to Jason included a robe, which he chooses to wear when he performs the ritual indicated to him by Medea. See Arg. 3.1204– 1206. It is noteworthy that in Pindar’s Pyth. 4.77 ff., which incorporates many elements of the Argonautic myth, we learn that in Lemnos took place an athletic event that awarded a piece of garment as prize. Apollonius probably has no knowledge of these games but is familiar with the theme of garments as gifts offered from Lemnian women, as it is implied by Hypsipyle’s parting gifts to Jason. See also Vian 21976, 20, n. 2.  Vian 21976, 25.

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introductory information about the myth of the horrendous crime committed by the Lemnian women. In other words, the narrator delivers an introductory exposition of the background, reminiscent of the informative prologues of Euripidean tragedies, where the poet uses long, introductory speeches to illuminate the audience about new events through narration.¹⁹ Similar to the Euripidean audience, which has more information about the play’s action than the protagonists do right after its prologue, in the lines that comprise this episode’s introduction, the Apollonian reader is provided with a truthful account of the androcide on Lemnos, which the Argonauts never receive. Hypsipyle, as we will examine later (1.793 – 833), never reveals to Jason the entire truth about the reasons due to which all male population are extinct on the island.²⁰ Despite broadly accepting that the Lemnian episode’s prologue resembles a Euripidean prologos in some respects, Schmakeit remains doubtful whether there are indeed similarities between the two structural elements.²¹ Schmakeit bases her doubts, firstly, on the fact that there are several other scenes in Argonautica with similarly well-defined introductions,²² which interrupt the linear narration of the Argonauts’ journey to inform the reader about various events through exposition. Secondly, she identifies –what she considers as – a fundamental narratological difference between the epic prologue and the dramatic prologos. She emphasises²³ that in Apollonius’ epic prologue, the omniscient narrator provides an account of the real events that transpired on Lemnos before the arrival of the Argonauts, who, unlike the reader, will never find out; in contrast, a dramatic prologos is a general overview in the form of a speech delivered by one of the play’s characters, providing a general overview, albeit always from their own limited and subjective viewpoint. Despite these narratological objections, which we deem reasonable and constructive, yet not essential to our analysis, we contend that the introductory lines to the Lemnian episode indeed constitute a mythic prologue in the style of Euripides, to the extent that they all reveal events and provide useful information about the premise or the background of the story through exposition. The myth presented in the episode’s prologue, of the man-slaying Lemnian women, is already popularised not only through the archaic epics and the lyric po-

 For this novel technique of long narrative prologues in Euripides’ work see namely Schmidt 1971, 45 passim, as well as Erbse’s 1984 particularly interesting monograph, which focuses on this issue.  Cf. here Fränkel 1968, 111– 112. See also below n. 67.  Schmakeit 2003, 206 – 210.  Schmakeit 2003, 207, n. 38  Schmakeit 2003, 210.

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etry,²⁴ but also through the three great tragedians. It is a misfortune that the fragmented nature of the surviving tragic tradition prevents us from forming a clear picture of how the tragic poets exactly presented their interesting variations of the legend that wants the women slaying the entire male population of Lemnos. Apollonius, in his epic, follows the most famous variation, in which the Lemnian men were slaughtered by their wronged wives, over the former’s infatuation with their female captives from Thrace (1.611– 615). According to Apollonius, the legitimate wives murdered all the menfolk in a fit of jealousy, along with their paramours on/in their beds (ἀμφ’ εὐνῇ, 1.618), which alludes to Medea’s motive, in the play by Euripides, as Hunter astutely observes.²⁵ Also, in the play Hypsipyle, the same tragic poet describes the state in which the men were at the time of the murder using the word εὐνέτας.²⁶ Quite interestingly, in lines 614– 15, Apollonius gives the real cause for the men’s annihilation, as opposed to the excuse that triggered it: it was the goddess Aphrodite’s terrible wrath that struck them, as they neglected for a long time to pay her the honours due. In the Apollonian text, l. 614, it is vague what the object of the verb ὄπαζε is; therefore, it is unclear whether the Cypride’s terrible wrath came upon the men or the women of Lemnos, for the neglect of romantic duties. However, we can deduct from the context that it refers to the men, as Vian has claimed.²⁷ The French classicist rightly asserts that there is a similarity between Apollonius’ version of the myth and the one Asclepiades of Tragilus recounts in an excerpt from Tragodoumena (FGrHist 12 F14 Jacoby), in which he holds the disrespectful men of Lemnos mainly responsible for this deed. Following Vian,²⁸ it would be tempting not to attribute Asclepiades’ and, thus, Apollonius’ version of the myth to Aeschylus, as he was the only tragic poet to name one fourth of his previously mentioned²⁹ Argonautic tetralogy Lemnioi (Lemnian Men), rather than Lemniai (Lemnian Women). Consequently, Apollonius makes no reference to the other popular variation of the myth, also known from the ancient literary tradition, in which Aphrodite

 For this specific myth’s variations and the Argonautic myth in literature, before Apollonius, see above n. 1, as well as the specialised monograph by Dräger 1993, and Koukouzika’s 2008, 4– 6 relevant table.  Hunter 1993, 48.  Eur. Hyps. fr. 64.77– 78 Bond: οἷά τε Γοργάδες ἐν λέκτροις ἔκανον εὐνέτας. See related Schmakeit 2003, 206, n. 34 and 211, n. 54.  Vian 21976, 26 – 28. Cf. also Vasilaros 2004, 237– 238.  Vian 21976, 27 ff. According to Vian, there are many indications that Aeschylus was Apollonius’ main source for the composition of the Lemnian episode. He substantiates his hypothesis on the conclusion that Aeschylus’ Argonautic tetralogy is concluded with the satyr play Kabeiroi, undoubtedly taking place in Samothrace, which, according to Apollonius, was indeed the Argonauts’ next landfall after Lemnos.  See above, pp. 277– 278.

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infused the Lemnian women with a terrible stench, as punishment for neglecting her worship. According to this variation, the Lemnian men abandoned their legitimate wives and preferred their captive maids from Thrace, due to this stench.³⁰ Consumed with jealousy, the Lemnian women slayed the entire male population of the island (with the exception of Thoas, Hypsipyle’s father, whom she saved by hiding in a chest or ark),³¹ along with their captive maids from Thrace. Their heinous deed inspired the proverbial sayings Λήμνιον κακόν or Λήμνια κακά, (‘Lemnian evil’) and Λημνίᾳ χειρί (‘Lemnian Deeds’).³² The tragic myth about Lemnos’ androcide, which Thoas survives by his daughter’s intervention, brings to mind the murder of all Aegyptus’ sons in one night by their betrothed ones, Danaides, popularised through the choral and tragic poetry murder of Aegyptus’ sons from their betrothed;³³ the exception in this mass androcide was made by Hypermestra, who saved her husband, Lynceus. According to the mythological tradition, Hypermestra either was in love with Lynceus or perhaps showed him her gratitude for having respected her virginity.³⁴ The lines that follow, constitute the first act (Arg. 1.633 – 652), and initiate the plot: first, they capture the initial reaction of the Lemnian women to the sight of

 See here the interesting scholia to Apollonius’ Argonautica, A 609 – 619a and e Wendel, with a reference to an alternate version of the myth, provided by Myrsilos of Methymna, in excerpts from his Lesbiaka, Book 1 (FGrHist 477 F1 Jacoby). According to Myrsilos, the stench of the women of Lemnos was due to potion Medea poured in the sea, when she sailed with the Argonauts nearby Lemnos in their return from Colchis. Cf. here also Pind. Pyth. 4.252– 257. See also Jackson 1990, 77– 83, idem, 1993, 59 – 60 and Vasilaros 2004, 238.  There are many mythic examples in the ancient tradition of unwanted illegitimate children or even adults, secretly sent away in chests or arks. Cf. namely Perseus, placed by his mother, Danae, and Rhoeo, by her father Staphylos, who was Dionysus and Ariadne’s son. See related Clauss 1993, 112– 113.  Cf. here Aesch. Cho. 631 ff. For the proverbial phrases see namely Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum (Leutsch-Schneidewin), vol. I: Zenobius 4.91, Diogenianus 6.2 and vol. II: Apostolius 10.65, Suda s.v. 451 (Adler), Hesychius s.v. 74 (Latte), and Photius Lex. s.v. 271 (Theodoridis). For the myth of the Lemnian women see esp. Dumézil 1924, Nilsson 1957, 470, idem, 31967, 97, n. 6 and 528, n. 2, Burkert 1970, 1– 16 and idem 1972, 212– 218, Levin 1971, 59 ff., Natzel 1992, 170 – 180 and Bachofen 1992, 173 – 177, who asserts that the myth alludes to a form of matriarchy. Lastly, cf. Dorati’s 2005, 23 – 54 interesting study, although he follows Herodotus’ historic reference to it (6.136 – 140) and attributes the proverbial phrase ‘Lemnian evil’ to the violent kidnapping of the Athenian women by the Pelasgians of Lemnos, which was much later avenged by Militiades.  For a parallel between Lemnian women and the Danaides, see Nilsson 1957, 470, Burkert 1970, 1– 16, and Natzel 1992, 170 – 180.  For this myth see Pind. Nem. 10.6, Aesch. Pr. 865 ff. Aeschylus, more probably, referred to it in his fragment, Danaides, which was part of a tetralogy based on the same theme, starting with Supplices, and followed by Aigyptioi, Danaides, and concluded with the satyr play, Amymone. See Mette 1959, 42– 46 and idem, 1963, 49 – 68.

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Argos approaching the island; next, the Argonauts dispatch their sweet-talking herald, Aethalides, son of Hermes, who Hypsipyle receives positively; as a result, she invites the Argonauts to step ashore and enter their town. In the description of the impetuous, aggressive descent of the armed Lemnian women to the beach,³⁵ Apollonius compares them to ravening Thyiades (1.636: Θυιάσιν ὠμοβόροις), which alludes to the Bacchae and Maenades of the Dionysian worship, and we assert that it confirms his tragic influences.³⁶ Although the chosen adjective, ὠμοβόρος, has not been used before Apollonius, it is derived from ὠμοβρώς, which occurs in earlier tragic poets, such as Timotheos, in Persae, fr. 791, col. 4.138 Page, in Sophocles, fr. 799.5 Radt, and in Euripides, in Heracl. 887, and Tr. 436. Schmakeit correctly observes that the word θυιάς (θυάς) also originates in the tragic vocabulary, which appears, for instance, in Aeschylus, in Th. 498 and 836, as well as in Suppl. 564.³⁷ In the description of the enraged women, Apollonius was probably more influenced by the parallel scene in the previously mentioned Hypsipyle by Aeschylus, in which the action is propelled only by the threat of combat, rather from the actual battle scene among the Argonauts and the Lemnian women in Sophocles’ Lemniai. ³⁸ Unfortunately, it is debatable to what degree the Hellenistic poet received these plays, as they both survive in fragments. Further, the role of the heralds, both Aethalides, who is dispatched by the Argonauts, and Iphinoe later, who is sent by the Lemnian women after their council, as intermediaries for the communication among the two groups, is strikingly reminiscent of the role of messengers in tragedies, through whose speeches the theatrical action is promoted.³⁹ In tragedy, the role of the messenger, Aethalides here, requires a person acting on stage, due to which his action is constrained by space and time conventions. The appearance of messenger extends these dimensions and contributes to the culmination of the drama.⁴⁰ According

 See here also Cusset 2001, 72 ff., who considers the Lemnian women’s arming and assumption of a traditionally male role as indications of this episode’s tragic tone. Cf. also NishimuraJensen’s 1996, 158 – 161 view, who compares the assembly of the women of Lemnos with a female Chorus, in the style of archaic performance poetry (Alcman, Sappho), or even Attic tragedy.  Even the horrendous man-slaying act of the Lemnian women could also be compared here with what the raw-flesh-eating Maenades did during Bacchic orgies. See Eur. Ba. 1125 – 1147. Cf. here the Lemnian women’s characterisation in Euripides’ Hypsipyle as Γοργάδες (fr. 64.77 Bond), previously mentioned in n. 26. See also Schmakeit 2003, 211, n. 54 with further bibliography.  See Schmakeit 2003, 211, n. 55.  See above p. 278.  For instance, Stoessl 1941, 30 and 50 ff., Ardizzoni 1967, 176, Vian 19762, 25 and Cusset 2001, 73 among others share the same view.  For the role of the messenger in dramatic poetry, see namely de Jong’s 1991 excellent study.

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to Schmakeit, the Argonauts’ herald, Aethalides, who, as a son of Hermes, inherited from his father not only the gift to alternate between the upper and lower worlds, but also the gift of memory, which extends to his experiences in the underworld,⁴¹ embodies two Homeric archetypes. First, the archetype of Teiresias, the seer, who retained his mind and talents intact in the underworld (see Homer, Od. 10.490 – 495, 11. 206 ff.), and, second, the archetype of the Dioscuri brothers, who enjoyed Zeus’ favour and would spend their time alternating between the upper and the lower worlds daily (see Homer, Od. 11.302– 304).⁴² It is quite interesting that, contrary to these Homeric archetypes, Aethalides’ perpetual reincarnations originate in Pythagoreanism.⁴³ The argument proposed by several scholars, that Aeschylus’ work has been influenced by Pythagorean traditions,⁴⁴ supports the hypothesis that Apollonius could have borrowed Aethalides’ description from the tragic poet’s fragment, Hypsipyle. Schmakeit observes⁴⁵ that there is no definitive proof of this speculation, since it is a fragment play and its content cannot be fully restored. However, Aethalides’ specific description in Argonautica can be regarded as Apollonius’ reception of Aeschylus, on the grounds of the established Pythagorean influences in the latter, which are also evident in the herald’s properties attributed to him by the former. In act two (Arg. 1.653– 720), there are two elements of particular interest, regarding Apollonius’ reception of tragic poetry: the motif of the Lemnian women’s assembly,⁴⁶ and the speech contest between Hypsipyle and her trusted, but withered from old age, nursemaid, Polyxo. After Hypsipyle’s stated intention to treat the men as voyagers, offering gifts but keeping them outside the city’s walls, Polyxo is the one who advises her fellow citizens towards accommodating the glorious strangers and taking them as new husbands, to prevent the island’s bleak future.⁴⁷

 For Aethalides’ role in Argonautica, cf. and Jackson 1993, 64– 66. Specifically for the abrupt interruption of Aethalides’ narration by Apollonius in ll. 1.648 – 649 cf. Hunter 1993, 106, Nishimura-Jensen 1998, 456 – 469 and Cuypers 2004, 49.  Schmakeit 2003, 204– 205, bases her remarks here on the compelling account of the scholiast (Scholia to Argon. Α 643 – 648e Wendel). Cf. here Clauss 1993, 114 ff. and Knight 1995, 164 ff.  See related Nishimura-Jensen 1998, 458 – 459.  See namely Thomson 1938, passim. A different view has been mainly expressed by Rösler 1970, 25 – 37.  Schmakeit 2003, 205.  The theme of the women’s assembly also occurs, of course, in Aristophanes’ comedy plays. Cf. namely Th. 372 ff. and Ec. 20 ff. See also above n. 8.  According to George 1972, 55, Hypsipyle and Polyxo’s principal difference is portrayed in the elderly nursemaid’s speech, whose arguments are founded on longer experience and a wellrounded perspective of reality.

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At first, the women’s assembly follows well-known Homeric archetypes of typical council scenes taking place, especially in the Odyssey, methodically recorded in Arend’s classic study.⁴⁸ It can be argued that the speeches delivered are not only Homeric, but also core dramatic elements. Hypsipyle’s and Polyxo’s speeches in the Lemnian women’s council are indirectly suggestive of ‘speech contests’ in Euripidean dramas, which undoubtedly inspired Apollonius in the composition of this episode too. An additional tragic theme that can be detected is Polyxo, the nursemaid.⁴⁹ The role of the nursemaid, who comments on events or even intervenes in the action, is a theme drawn directly from Euripidean drama⁵⁰ or rather specifically from Aeschylus’ Choephori. According to more recent commentaries,⁵¹ the role of Polyxo, as a nursemaid, makes also an appearance in the previously mentioned Sophoclean fragment, Lemniai (fr. 384 – 389 Radt). According to Apollonius’ narration, Polyxo leans on her cane, and addresses the assembly of the women surrounded by four virgins with all-white hair, (1.671/ 672: τῇ καὶ παρθενικαὶ πίσυρες σχεδὸν ἑδριόωντο / ἀδμῆτες, λευκῇσιν ἐπιχνοάουσαι ἐθείραις). The translation of the maidens’ description above posed a challenge to scholars: deeming the maidens’ virginity incompatible with a white hair colour, attempted to mitigate for it by changing the adjective that describes their hair to ξανθῇσιν (blond), despite the fact that λευκός, in relation to ‘hair’, indeed means ‘whitehaired’, as it occurs in many passages from tragic poetry.⁵² However, we believe that Apollonius, by using the term παρθενικαί, does not describe the young age of Polyxo’s custody; instead, he is probably echoing a similar Euripidean expression uttered by Hermione in his tragedy Helen, 283: θυγάτηρ ἄνανδρος πολιὰ παρθενεύεται, which usually refers to a single woman, who keeps her virginity.⁵³ Lastly, Apollonius’ detailed description of Polyxo’s old age (ll. 1.667– 674) and especially of the way it reflects to her body’s withered state, is a consistent theme

 Arend 1933, 116 – 121.  The Homeric archetype here is, of course, Eurycleia, Odysseus’ elderly nursemaid, whose old age and great life experience is first mentioned in the first rhapsody, Homer, Od. 1.428 – 442. Like Polyxo, she is also depicted as wise (see Homer, Od. 353 ff.), although she never speaks in councils, as the former does.  See e.g. Eur. Med. 1– 202 as well as Hipp. 170 – 361 etc.  See Vian 21976, 81, n. 2, but also 21, n. 3. Cf. also Cusset 2001, 73, n. 53. In fact, according to Valerius Flaccus (Arg. 2.316 – 325), Polyxo was also a priestess of Apollo, while Statius (Theb. 5.90 ff., 131 ff.) claims that she was the one who originally suggested that the Lemnian women should commit the horrible man-slaying act, which explains Hypsipyle’s accusation.  See Aesch. Ch. 282, Soph, Ant. 1092– 93, Aj. 625, and cf. OT 472.  For this interesting issue see Vasilaros 2004, 250 – 251 with further bibliography.

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of Hellenistic aesthetics, which command more realistic face descriptions.⁵⁴ Nevertheless, the belief that wisdom and eloquence mature with old age is not only a Homeric theme (cf. e.g. Nestor’s portrait in the Iliad), but it is also common in Euripidean drama, which had an influence on Apollonius, as we have established by now. Schmakeit, quite astutely, here refers to speech contests in many Euripidean tragedies,⁵⁵ where characters of old age prevail upon the younger ones, due to their eloquence, as for instance does Peleus upon Menelaus, in Andromache, Hecabe upon Polymestor in Hecuba, as well as Iolaus in Heraclidae. In the intermezzo (Arg. 1.721– 773), this short and distinct episode intervening within the acts of the tragic Lemnian episode, dividing it in two narrative parts of the same length, Apollonius describes, in the style of Homeric ecphrasis, Jason’s masterfully crafted cloak, gift of Pallas Athena. Regarding its structure, as Cusset notes,⁵⁶ we could argue that this intermezzo functions identically to a stasimon in tragedy, where the Chorus comments on a dramatic event and links it to other mythic events through song. Schmakeit highlights that many Euripidean tragedies contain examples of choral songs that include descriptions.⁵⁷ However, although the description of Jason’s cloak initially alludes to similar arming scenes from Homeric epics,⁵⁸ the Hellenistic context of Apollonius’ poetry shifts its intention: instead of praising the hero’s excellence in war, it emphasises his excellence in love.⁵⁹ Jason, wrapped in his cloak, will attempt to charm Hypsipyle in their first meeting, as we mentioned before. The seven scenes⁶⁰ embroidered upon Jason’s red cloak are drawn from the epic cycle and are direct Homeric echoes in Apollonius’ Hellenistic epic. There For Apollonius’ depiction of old age see mainly the specialised study by Schmakeit 2005, 124– 140.  Schmakeit 2003, 215.  Cusset 2001, 73. Cf. also Vian 21976, 25.  Schmakeit 2003, 217, n. 89, where she refers to Eur. El. 432– 477 and Hec. 466 – 474.  Cf. e.g. the ecphrasis of Achilles’ shield in Homer, Il. 16.478 – 608, and Agamemnon’s armour in 11.15 – 46, according to Vian 21976, 83, n. 2. It could also follow the literary model of the pseudo-Hesiodean description of Heracles’ shield. Both Achilles’ shield and Agamemnon’s armour are symbols, outward and visible expressions, of heroism. The description of a hero’s brilliant fighting gear is a common theme in heroic poetry. As Vian 21976, 25 remarks, Apollonius never forgets that he is composing an epic; hence he incorporates epic themes in the tragic frame of this ‘stasimon’. For the description of Achilles’ shield see the quite informative comments by Edwards 1991, 200 – 232 with further bibliography.  For Jason as a Love-hero see the interesting studies by Beye 1969, 31– 55 and Zanker 1979, 52– 75.  The scenes are: (a) the depiction of Cyclopes forging thunderbolts for Zeus; (b) Amfion and Zethus, sons of Antiope, building the citadel of ancient Thebes; (c) the reflection of Cytherea (Aphrodite) on Ares’ shield; (d) the battle among the Teleboae (Taphian pirates) and Electryon’s

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fore, apart from the use of the verb ὀχμάζω (1.743), which first appears in the tragic vocabulary (see Aesch. Pr. 5, Eur. El. 817), there are no significant links with the tragic tradition. However, I shall argue that even in this deviation from the Lemnian episode, there is a single element that associates this intermezzo with the tragic tradition and it lies in the description of the second scene on Jason’s cloak: the representation of the popular myth of the building of the citadel of Thebes, by Amphion and Zethus, the two sons of Zeus and Antiope, who was the daughter of river Asopos. We can conjecture that Apollonius’ description of Antiope and her sons, draws from a wide range of the literary tradition – again, not only from epic poetry, e.g. from Homer’s Odyssey, where in Nekyia (11.260 – 265) Antiope is depicted along many other female mythic characters, but also from the Euripidean fragment of the same name.⁶¹ Several other commentators support this connection with Euripides’ Antiope,⁶² from which Apollonius borrows the interesting contrast between Zethus’ physical prowess and Amphion’s musical talent, the sound of whose lyre enchanted the large stone blocks that moved and formed Thebes’ wall. The difference of the two brothers’ contributions in fortifying Thebes seems to create the tradition of the conflict between them, first mentioned in their debate in Euripides’ Antiope. ⁶³ In act three (Arg. 1.774– 860), the first meeting between Hypsipyle, the Lemnian queen, and Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, takes place. Apollonius’ charged with romantic implications simile⁶⁴ compares Jason to a bright star rising in the dark sky, causing the excitement of the stargazing brides-to-be maid-

sons over cattle; (e) the popular myth of Oenomaos’ pursuit of Pelops in a chariot race; (f) Apollo slaying the giant Tityos; and (g) Phrixus and the Golden Ram, which points directly at the Argonauts’ quest. Apart from the related commentaries by Fränkel 1968, 101 ff., Vian 21976, 83 – 86 and Glei 1996, 156, for a detailed interpretation of these scenes see Levin 1970, 17– 36, Shapiro 1980, 263 – 286, Rose 1985, 29 – 44, Thiel 1993, 36 – 88, Clauss 1993, 120 – 129, Manakidou 1993, 102– 142, and Bulloch 2006, 44– 68.  For the excerpts of Euripides’ Antiope, see the older critical edition by Kambitsis 1972, but also the more recent edition in TrGF, vol. 5.1, fr. 179 – 227 Kannicht.  See esp. Vian 21976, 258, according to whom this myth can be traced to the epic poet Eumelos (Europea, fr. 3 EGF Davies = 13 PEG Bernabé), as much as to [Hesiod.], Cat. fr. 182 MerkelbachWest. See also Pherec. FGrHist 3 F 170 Jacoby.  In the excerpts from Antiope mentioned above, Zethus and Amphion debate on the contrast between an active and a contemplative life. Cf. also Pl. Grg. 485e-486d, which also illustrates the two brothers’ differences.  The simile that compares Jason to Hesperos, the bright star rising in the dark sky is of utmost importance; in the lyrical tradition, Hesperos was associated with Aphrodite and symbolises the messenger of love. Cf. namely Sappho fr. 104 Lobel-Page. For more information and further bibliography see Vasilaros 2004, 272.

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ens in their chambers.⁶⁵ However, apart from the magnificent, red cloak, whose brightness alludes to the shining golden fleece, Jason, unaware of the absence of men on Lemnos, also carries a fighting spear, an exquisite gift from the maiden huntress, Atalanta. In his presence,⁶⁶ Hypsipyle blushes with modesty, lowers her eyes and addresses him a charming speech in a deceitful manner. The deceitful manner is detected in the false account she provides to explain the absence of men on the island: she conceals the murders and claims that the wronged legitimate wives forever banished all men from Lemnos, due to the latter’s indignity to choose to live with their Thracian captives.⁶⁷ The charm appears in the last part of her speech, where her tone changes and she addresses now Jason as a woman, inviting the Argonauts to inhabit and populate the island and even offering him the throne of Lemnos. Jason accepts her warm hospitality, albeit only for a short time, since, as he responds, he needs to resume his quest. Lastly, we have a description of the Lemnian women’s generous hospitality to the Argonauts, who were welcomed in the women’s homes, in order to repopulate the island, following Polyxo’s counsel. In this act too, there are several verbal allusions to Euripides that reveal Apollonius’ influence from the dramatic tradition. More specifically, although in the surviving version of Argonautica Hypsipyle attributes the Lemnian men’s indignity to Aphrodite, who imbued their souls with infatuation (1.802– 803), the scholia refer to a ‘pre-edition’ [‘προέκδοσις’], in which Hypsipyle’s speech is longer: in line 804* (οὐκ οἶδ’ ἢ θεόθεν ἢ αὐτῶν ἀφροσύνῃσι), the queen of Lemnos wonders, in the style of Euripides, whether the men’s infatuation was due to divine intervention or was their own indignity.⁶⁸ A few lines below (1.820), Hypsipyle seems again uncertain which god armed them with courage to banish the men from the city. There are two more Euripidean echoes in the next lines. In l. 1.812, some manuscripts read the adjective ἀτημελέες, which first occurs in Euripide’s Antiope (fr. 7.2 Kambitsis), although most editors preserve the rare adverb ἀτημελέως, whose first use is recorded here, in Apollonius. Lastly, in l. 1.826, the adjective used by Apollonius to describe the fields of

 According to Vian’s shrewd observation (21976, 86, n. 3), the bride-to-be virgin of the simile is no other than Hypsipyle, awaiting for her meeting with Jason.  Cf. here Medea’s similar reaction in Argonautica Book 3 (3.963 και 1008), when it is her turn to meet Jason. Apollonius’ intratextual allusion implies indirectly, yet succinctly, that Jason and Hypsipyle’s meeting anticipates his future meeting with Medea. Vian 21976, 24, n. 2, juxtaposed the descriptions of Jason’s two meetings, with Hypsipyle in Book 1 and Medea in Book 3, highlighting their intratextual connections.  For a rhetoric analysis of Hypsipyle’s speech see Berardi 2003, 189 – 217.  See Vian 21976, 88, n. 2

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Thrace, χιονώδεα, is another verbal allusion to Euripides: τὴν χιονώδη Θρῄκην κατέχει, from Hec. 81.⁶⁹ In the fifth and final act, which is the episode’s epilogue (exodos – Arg. 1.861– 909),⁷⁰ we learn that the Argonauts’ stay was getting unreasonably prolonged and their sailing delayed. As a result, Heracles, who never followed his companions to the city, makes an appearance and admonishes them for digressing from their quest. After Heracles’ intervention, the characteristically epic voice of this episode, the Argonauts prepare to leave hastily, without protest.⁷¹ Heracles’ moderate temper in this tragic episode, according to the scholiast, is consistent with his heroic nature: [πρὸς τὴν] κρατερὰν καὶ σώφρονα φύσιν τοῦ ἥρωος (A 855 Wendel); however, this attitude is not consistent with the mythical hero’s overall impression in Argonautica, as Apollonius attaches to him alternately serious and comic traits.⁷² As Heracles’ scolding provides a solution to the plot’s problem, by preventing the Argonauts from lingering on Lemnos and assuring that they will resume their voyage to Colchis, his intervention, within this episode’s tragic context, is considered by Cusset a deus ex machina device.⁷³ Indeed, the Argonauts, absorbed by the lovemaking with the Lemnian women, seem oblivious to their quest, its objective and all expected fame derived from its acquisition; they find themselves in a conundrum, which Hercules resolves, similar to a deus ex machina. In his address to the Argonauts, which propels the action forward, he starts mildly but progressively even becomes sarcastic when referring to Jason.⁷⁴ While the Lemnian women rush again to the beach and surround the Argonauts, this time compared to a swarm of bees, bidding their tearful goodbyes,⁷⁵  Cf. also Eur. Andr. 215 and Cyc. 329. See related Ardizzoni 1967, 208. It is quite interesting that this adjective is rarely used in the classical era. After the Hippocratic texts (Hippoc. Epid. 3.2), it is first used in the Euripidean line mentioned above.  The only words in the episode’s last act that also occur in tragic poetry contexts are: the rare female noun πολιῆτις (1.867), which, before Apollonius, appears in Eur. Hipp. 1127; the adjective πανήμερος (1.873), first used by Aeschylus in Pr. 1024, instead of the Homeric πανημέριος; and the verb ἀμέργω, which only occurs in Eur. Heracl. 397, after Sappho, fr. 122 Lobel-Page.  Indeed, here, Heracles voices the traditional epic values and condemns Jason’s deviation from duty. However, as Clauss 1993, 140, rightly observes, the epic hero will later have the opportunity to discover the erotic passion too, when he will abandon the Argonautic quest to search for Hylas.  For Heracles in Argonautica see Hunter 1993, 25 – 36. Cf. also Vasilaros 2004, 280.  Cusset 2001, 73. However, cf. Schmakeit’s 2003, 220 counter-arguments.  See here Fränkel’s 1968, 116, astute observations. Cf. also the related commentary by Clauss 1993, 136 – 139.  For the simile that compares the Lemnian women with bees see esp. Kofler 1992, 310 – 319. Cf. also Vasilaros 2004, 282 with further bibliography.

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we have Hypsipyle and Jason’s farewell scene (1.888– 909). Hypsipyle’s speech, balancing overwhelming passion and modesty, foreshadows, as we mentioned before, Jason’s future meeting with Medea, especially in the imperative form μνώεο … Ὑψιπύλης (1.896 – 97), which is later verbatim repeated at 3.1069 ff. μνώεο … οὔνομα Μηδείης (cf. and 3.1110). Jason sounds slightly uneasy farewell speech reinforces his portrayal as an anti-hero in Apollonius’ novel epic. Somehow reserved, Jason asks from Hypsipyle to think higher of him, because even if he fulfils his mission with the aid of the gods, he will have to return to his homeland and spend his life there peacefully. However, he requests from Hypsipyle, if their child is a boy, to send it to Iolkos, in case he does not survive his quest, so that he tends to his parents’ needs.⁷⁶ Apollonius’ suggestion that Hypsipyle is impregnated with Jason’s child, alludes to the Homeric line in Il. 7.468, where we learn that the child’s name was Euneos. Apart from its connection to the epic tradition, Apollonius’ suggestion especially alludes to Euripides’ Hypsipyle, from which we have established that Apollonius has drawn several elements for the composition of the Lemnian episode. In Hypsipyle, there is mention of two children resulting from Jason and Hypsipyle’s union, Euneos and Thoas. According to the myth, Hypsipyle fled to Nemea when the Lemnian women discovered that she had saved her father’s Thoas’ life, as it was considered an act of treason. In Nemea, while nursing king Lycurgus’ son, Opheltes, a monstrous snake strangulated the boy in her absence. Lycurgus and his wife, Euridice, attempted to murder Hypsipyle, but her two sons, Euneos and Thoas, were sent by Dionysus to rescue her. Conclusion: A close scrutiny of the Lemnian episode in Apollonius’ Argonautica Book 1, allows us to argue with strong likelihood that the Hellenistic poet was influenced, despite Schmakeit’s considerable doubts,⁷⁷ by the structure of Attic tragedy and especially by Euripides.⁷⁸ Perhaps, indeed, the state of the surviving fragments relating to the Argonautic legend, by any of the three tragic poets, prevents us from establishing a definite connection with a single tragedy, upon which Apollonius based this episode’s structure. However, we can detect an abundance of verbal allusions and borrowed elements that occur in many tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and especially Euripides, which allow us to conclude with reasonable certainty that Apollonius was strongly influenced by the Attic tragic poetry. This study detected these influences in Apollonius’ epic narrative within the

 Koukouzika 2008, 133 makes the shrewd observation that, for the learned reader, Jason’s statement here might allude to the tragic death of his male children from another union, i.e. with Medea.  Schmakeit 2003, 200 – 225 and esp. ibidem, 221– 222.  For the connections of Argonautica with Iphigenia in Tauris, yet another Euripidean tragedy, see Sansone 2000, 155 – 172.

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Lemnian episode in three levels: (a) in language, as there are several verbal allusions to tragic poetry; (b) in structure (cf. i.e. the episode’s mythic prologue, which creatively replicates the Euripidean prologos); and (c) in typical scenes and motifs for the Euripidean drama (cf. i.e. Aethalides and Iphinoes’ role as messengers, Polyxo’s role as a nursemaid, the Lemnian women’s council and the speech contest, or even Hercules’ appearance on stage as a deus ex machina). All these themes and forms are directly received from drama, as Vian observes.⁷⁹ Throughout the Apollonian epic, and especially in the composition of the Lemnian episode, Attic tragedy reverberates loud and clear.

Bibliography Aélion, R. (1986), Quelques grands mythes héroïques dans l′œuvre d′Euripide, Paris. Ardizzoni, A. (1967), Apollonio Rodio. Le Argonautiche, libro I. Testo, traduzione e commentario, Rome. Arend, W. (1933), Die typischen Scenen bei Homer, Berlin Bachofen, J. J. (1992), Myth, Religion, and Mother Right: Selected Writings of J. J. Bachofen (transl. by R. Mantheim), Princeton. Berardi, F. (2003), ‘Ipsipile oratrice. La ‘diatiposi’ in Apoll. Rh. 1.793 – 833’, in: SemRom 7, 189 – 217. Beye, C.R. (1969), ‘Jason as Love-Hero in Apollonios’ Argonautika’, in: GRBS 10, 31 – 55. Bond, G.W. (1963), Euripides, Hypsipyle, Oxford. Bulloch, A. (2006), ‘Jason’s Cloak’, in: Hermes 134, 44 – 68. Burkert, W. (1970), ‘Jason, Hypsipyle, and New Fire at Lemnos. A Study in Myth and Ritual’, in: CQ 20, 1 – 16. — (1972), Homo necans: Interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen, Berlin. Clauss, J.J. (1993), The Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition of the Epic Hero in Book I of Apollonius’s Argonautica, Berkeley. Cusset, C. (2001), ‘Apollonios de Rhodes. Lecteur de la tragédie classique’, in: A. Billaut / C. Maduit (eds.), Lecture antiques de la tragédie grecque. Actes de la table ronde du 25 novembre 1999, Lyon / Paris, 61 – 76. Cuypers, M. (2004), ‘Apollonius of Rhodes’, in: I.J.F. de Jong / R. Nünlist / A. Bowie (eds.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature, Leiden / Boston / Köln, 43 – 62. Dorati, M. (2005), ‘Lemnion kakon’, in: R. Raffaelli et alii (eds.), Vicende di Ipsipile da Erodoto a Metastasio. Colloquio di Urbino, 5 – 6 maggio 2003, Urbino, 23 – 54. Dräger, P. (1993), Argo Pasimelousa. Der Argonautenmythos in der griechischen und römischen Literatur, Teil I: Theos Aitios, Stuttgart. Dumézil, G. (1924), Le crime des Lemniennes. Rites et légendes du monde égéen, Paris. Edwards, M. W. (1991), The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. V: Books 17 – 20, Cambridge.

 Vian 21976, 26.

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Erbse, H. (1984), Studien zum Prolog der euripideischen Tragödie, Berlin – New York. Fantuzzi, M. (1983), ‘Varianti d’autore nelle Argonautiche d’Apollonio Rodio’, in : A&A 29, 146 – 161. Fränkel, H. (1968), Noten zu den Argonautika des Apollonios, München. Fritz, K. von (1959), ‘Die Entwicklung der Jason-Medea-Sage und die Medea des Euripides‘, in: A&A 8, 33 – 106. George, E. (1972), ‘Poet and Characters in Apollonius Rhodius’ Lemnian Episode’, in: Hermes 100, 47 – 63. Griffiths, F. T. (1990), ‘Murder, Purification, and Cultural Formation in Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius’, in: Helios 17, 25 – 39. Herter, H. (1944/55), ‘Bericht über die Literatur zur hellenistischen Dichtung seit dem Jahre 1921, II: Apollonios von Rhodos‘, in: Bursians Jahresbericht 285, 213 – 410, Göttingen. Hunter, R. (1993), The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies, Cambridge. — (22008), ‘The Poetics of Narrative in the Argonautica’, in: T.D. Papanghelis / A. Rengakos (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Apollonius Rhodius, Second Edition, Leiden / Boston, 115 – 146. Hurst, A. (1967), Apollonios de Rhodes. Manière et cohérence: contribution à l′étude de l′ esthétique alexandrine, Rome Jackson, S. (1990), ‘Myrsilus of Methymna and the Dreadful Smell of the Lemnian Women’, in: ICS 15, 77 – 83. — (1993), Creative Selectivity in Apollonius’ Argonautica, Amsterdam. Jong, I.J.F. de (1991) Narrative: Narrative in Drama. The Art of the Euripidean Messenger-Speech, Leiden. Kambitsis, J. (1972), L’Antiope d’Euripide, Athens. Knight, V. (1995), The Renewal of Epic. Responses to Homer in the Argonautica of Apollonius, Leiden / New York / Köln. Kofler, W. (1992), ‘Bienen, Männer und Lemnos: Beobachtungen zu einem epischen Gleichnis bei Apollonios Rhodios (Arg. 1,878 – 885)’, in: Hermes 120, 310 – 319. Koukouzika, D. (2008), Απολλωνίου Ροδίου Αργοναυτικά: Ερμηνευτικό υπόμνημα στο 1ο βιβλίο (στ. 605 – 1362), PhD diss., University of Thessaloniki. Levin, D.N. (1970), ‘Διπλαξ Πορφυρεη’, in: RFIC 98, 17 – 36. — (1971), Apollonius’ Argonautica Re-examined. I: The Neglected First and Second Books, Leiden. Manakidou, F. (1993), Beschreibung von Kunstwerken in der hellenistischen Dichtung. Ein Beitrag zur hellenistischen Poetik, Stuttgart. Mette, H.J. (1959), Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos, Berlin. — (1963), Der verlorene Aischylos, Berlin. Natzel, S. (1992), Κλέα γυναικῶν. Frauen in den “Argonautika” des Apollonios Rhodios, Trier. Nilsson, M. (1957), Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung, Darmstadt. — (31967), Geschichte der griechischen Religion, Bd. I, München. Nishimura-Jensen, J. (1996), Tragic Epic or Epic Tragedy: Narrative and Genre in Apollonius of Rhodes “Argonautica”, Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison. — (1998), ‘The Poetics of Aethalides: Silence and Poikilia in Apollonius’ Argonautica’, in: CQ 48, 456 – 469. — (2009), ‘The Chorus of Argonauts in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica’, in: Phoenix 63, 1 – 23.

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Rengakos, A. (2004), ‘Die Argonautika und das ‘kyklische Gedicht’. Bemerkungen zur Erzähltechnik des griechischen Epos’, in: A. Bierl / A. Schmitt / A. Willi (eds.), Literatur in neuer Deutung. Festschrift für J. Latacz anlässlich seines 70. Geburtstages, München / Leipzig, 277 – 304. Rose, A. (1985), “Clothing Imagery in Apollonius’ Argonautica”, in: QUCC 50, 29 – 44. Rösler, W. (1970), Reflexe vorsokratischen Denkens bei Aischylos, Meisenheim am Glan. Sansone, D. (2000), ‘Iphigeneia in Colchis’, in: M.A. Harder / R.F. Regtuit / G.C. Wakker (eds.), Apollonius Rhodius (Hellenistica Groningana 4), Leuven. Schmakeit, I.A. (2003), Apollonios Rhodios und die attische Tragödie: Gattungsüberschreitende Intertextualität in der alexandrinischen Epik, Diss. Groningen. — (2005), ‘Von alten Menschen, den Dingen, die vorübergehen. Die Darstellung des Alters n Apollonios′ Argonautika’, in: A. Harder / M. Cuypers (eds.), Beginning from Apollo. Studies in Apollonius Rhodius and the Argonautic Tradition, Leuven / Paris / Dudley, MA, 124 – 140. Schmidt, H.W. (1971), ‘Die Struktur des Eingangs’, in: W. Jens (ed.), Die Bauformen der griechischen Tragödie, München, 1 – 46. Shapiro, H.A. (1980), ‘Jason’s Cloak’, in: TAPhA 110, 263 – 286. Stoessl, F. (1941), Apollonios Rhodios. Interpretationen zur Erzählungskunst und Quellenverwertung, Bern / Leipzig. Thiel, K. (1993), Erzählung und Beschreibung in den Argonautika des Apollonios Rhodios. Ein Beitrag zur Poetik des hellenistischen Epos, Stuttgart. Thomson, G. (1938), The Oresteia of Aeschylus, edited with Introduction, Translation, and A Commentary, Cambridge. Vasilaros, G. (2004), ᾿Aπολλωνίου Ροδίου ᾿Aργοναυτικῶν Α΄. Εἰσαγωγή, ἀρχαῖο κείμενο, μετάφραση, σχόλια, Athens. Vian, F. (21976), Apollonios de Rhodes. Argonautiques, Tome I: Chants I-II. Texte établi et commenté par Francis Vian, traduit par Émile Delage, Paris. Zanker, G. (1979), ‘The Love Theme in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica’, in: WS 13, 52 – 75.

John Davidson

Tristan and Isolde and Classical Myth¹ Apart from that of Romeo and Juliet, the story of Tristan and Isolde is perhaps the most famous tragic love story in the Western tradition, many recorded versions of it in both poetry and prose existing from at least the twelfth century up to the present day, with film versions as well making an appearance from the twentieth century. But of all these versions the best known is perhaps the opera or, more correctly, the music drama of Richard Wagner, which was composed with remarkable speed between 1857 and 1859 after Wagner had suspended work on Der Ring des Nibelungen, and first performed at the Hoftheater in Munich on 10th June 1865. A number of factors drove the composition of Wagner’s music drama. One approach has been to say that its primary inspiration was the composer’s ‘affair’ with Mathilde Wesendonck, though this equation has also been reversed, so as to see Tristan und Isolde as having an effect on the course of his relationship with Mathilde.² In any case, the two are very closely linked. Important conceptual influences on Wagner include his reading of Spanish ‘Golden Age’ dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca (for the tensions arising from the conflict between love and honour) and, most importantly, his enthusiastic reception of the philosophical thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer, taken in conjunction with his main literary source, an unfinished work by the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg who was active during the first twenty years of the thirteenth century.³ The missing parts of Gottfried’s verse romance (which was written in Middle

 I am delighted to be able to offer this study as a tribute to Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos. I became acquainted with Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos’ work on ancient Greek literature at a relatively early stage of my career through reading Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy. However, it was not till 2007 that I met her in person. In that year she came to Wellington, under the auspices of the Greek Government, as a delegate at an international conference on Greek Drama, offering a paper which suggested a reconstruction of Euripides’ fragmentary tragedy Archelaus. An adapted version of that paper subsequently became one of those selected to appear in the volume Greek Drama IV (Oxford 2012) of which I was the co-editor. The academic relationship involving Greece itself, London (where I also completed my PhD), and New Zealand symbolizes the undying legacy of Greek antiquity throughout the world, a legacy to which Professor Xanthakis-Karamanos has made such a significant contribution.  For this latter view, see e. g. Zuckerman 1964, 35.  For a detailed discussion of Wagner’s debts to Schopenhauer and Gottfried, and his adaptation of Schopenhauer, especially in the light of Gottfried’s ‘Frau Minne’, see Chafe 2005. It is important, of course, not to overstate Wagner’s debt to Schopenhauer, at least in terms of the final DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-018

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High German) have been reconstructed at various times⁴ on the basis of his main source, the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman version of Thomas d’Angleterre (Thomas of England) whose own missing sections can again be reconstructed from other thirteenth-century adaptations, especially the old Norse version of Friar Robert composed for the King of Norway. There are also two other important early literary versions – probably late twelfth century – one in Anglo-Norman by Béroul, the other in Middle High German by Eilhart von Oberge. Wagner, of course, significantly adapted Gottfried, concentrating only on key moments in the story and producing a tragic intensification that goes far deeper than anything found in the medieval poet. His at best patronizing attitude towards Gottfried is perfectly illustrated in the well-known letter written to Mathilde Wesendonck on 30th May 1859 while he was engaged in the composition of the final act of Tristan und Isolde. ⁵ Mathilde had sent him a copy of another thirteenth-century verse romance, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, apparently suggesting that its story would be a good one for Wagner to base another opera on. Wagner writes at some length, claiming that the sheer agony involved in attempting to do justice to it makes such a project impossible for him (this in hindsight is extremely ironical, given his composition of Parsifal at the end of his life). He writes that an opera on the story should be entrusted to someone who could do it in the style of Wolfram, so as to turn out light, insubstantial, and merely ‘pretty’ at best. He speaks of himself as being ‘utterly repelled by the poet’s incompetence’, at which point adding in an aside: ‘The same thing happened to me with Gottfried v. Strassburg in the context of Tristan’.⁶ For all that, Gottfried remained an important starting point for Wagner. The focus of the present paper is on the extent to which the presence of themes and other echoes from classical myth may be identified in aspects of both Gottfried’s poem and also the text of Wagner’s music drama. With regard to Wagner, it must be admitted at the outset that we are obliged to put to one side the most important component of his work, namely the music. He adopted with enthusiasm Schopenhauer’s judgment that music was the highest form of art, and his practice in the work of his maturity in particular reflects this. The music is the soul and carries the drama. At the same time, Wagner the poet still had to write a verbal language to be integrated with the story-line ‘spoken’

Wagnerian philosophical position, which effectively inverted that of his so-called mentor. See also, for example, Millington 2012, 170 – 171.  By, for example, Ulrich von Türheim (about 1240) and Heinrich von Freiberg (about 1300).  Spencer and Millington 1987, 456 – 460.  Spencer and Millington 1987, 458.

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by the music, and this cannot be altogether overlooked.⁷ Nevertheless, in considering what is in any case just one aspect of the literary source material of Gottfried and Wagner, we can do full justice, so to speak, to the medieval poet, but we can only relate one-dimensionally with the nineteenth-century composer. Bearing all this in mind, then, we shall begin with Wagner, first summarizing the key aspects of his plot-line, in the light of Aristotle’s famous dictum in Poetics Chapter 9 that the well-known stories are well known only to a few. Before the time represented in the action of the work, Tristan has killed Princess Isolde’s fiancé Morold and sent back his head to the court in Ireland. Later, grievously wounded himself, Tristan has come incognito to Isolde for healing. Isolde sees that the sword splinter which had lodged in the head of her slain fiancé matches the nick out of the sword of the wounded stranger, and is about to kill him when he opens his eyes and gazes at her and she is overcome with passion and lets him live. When the opera opens, some time has passed and Tristan, acting as the agent of his uncle King Marke, is escorting a gloomy Isolde by ship to Cornwall for her arranged marriage to the king. In this depressing situation, Isolde compels Tristan to agree to a double suicide pact. Isolde’s mother has given her daughter soothing and healing potions along with a deadly poison and a love philtre. Under instructions to give the doomed couple the poison, Isolde’s maid Brangäne substitutes the love philtre, so that as the ship reaches Cornwall, Tristan and Isolde are dazed in a state of ecstatic love. The second two acts of the opera then chart the lovers’ betrayal of King Marke, their discovery and eventual undoing. The final act, in fact, features the mortally wounded Tristan back in his own country (here Brittany) tended by his loyal retainer Kurwenal. Isolde arrives only for Tristan to die immediately, and, following the fruitless arrival of King Marke and his followers, Isolde sings the so-called ‘Liebestod’⁸ before her own collapse over her lover’s corpse. A number of motifs in this plot are reminiscent of motifs found in classical sources, especially Greek tragedy. There is, for example, the female’s association with potions which features already in Odyssey Book 4 where that ultimate sexual icon and adulteress turned reformed housewife, Helen, slips a drug into the

 Indeed, Wagner took himself extremely seriously as a poet per se, rather than simply as an opera librettist, as have many of his supporters. He not only published his texts to accompany productions of the operas, but also had them appear independently as ‘books’. The poetic work Tristan und Isolde von Richard Wagner was published in Leipzig in 1859, a year before the musical score and six years before the première in Munich. See Groos 2011, 37.  Wagner himself gave this name to what is now generally known as ‘the Prelude’, calling Isolde’s final piece ‘die Verklärung’ (‘the Transfiguration’).

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wine that the company in Menelaus’ palace are about to drink, a drug to ease the pain of sorrow. Tristan’s ‘abduction’ of his host’s wife is reminiscent of Paris’ violation of Menelaus’ hospitality, and his ‘enjoyment’ of her while escorting her to marry someone else brings to mind Sisyphus deflowering Anticleia prior to her marriage with Laertes while he was at her father’s house.⁹ Brangäne’s ill-judged attempt to ‘help’ by interfering and substituting the aphrodisiac for the poison calls to mind what is in a way an inversion of this in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, namely Deianeira’s disastrous attempt to regain the love of her husband Heracles by smearing the robe with that potent mixture of the centaur’s blood and the hydra’s venom, no aphrodisiac as she imagines but in fact a flesh-eating poison. This in turn is linked to Medea’s deliberate use of poisoned garments in a situation where passionate love has then been transformed into a burning desire for revenge. Brangäne’s bungling intervention also echoes the disastrous attempt by the nurse in Euripides’ Hippolytus to solve a love-sickness problem. With regard to this particular Euripidean play and its reworking by Racine, indeed, Wolfgang Schadewaldt¹⁰ noted a range of parallels including pairs of characters and their actions – the love-sick yet proud Isolde and Phaedra, the ‘pure’ and loyal Tristan and Hippolytus, solicitous Brangäne and the nurse reacting to the mention of the draught of poison and the naming of Hippolytus respectively, King Marke and Theseus (specifically the Racinian version), and the adoptive and ‘natural’ sons of the respective kings.¹¹ For the abortive suicide pact too we might find a quasi-comical parallel in the situation of Helen and Menelaus in Euripides’ Helen, and in connection with the two potions, we might again think of Euripides, this time of the Ion with Creusa’s similar possession of two substances, one death-bringing and the other healing, drops of blood from the gorgon which she has inherited from a parent, in this case her father. And for Kurwenal’s loving care of the sick and delirious Tristan we might think of Electra’s tending of her brother in Euripides’ Orestes. With regard to Tristan’s killing of Isolde’s fiancé too one may be reminded of that otherwise unattested detail found in Euripides’ Iphige-

 In a fragment of Aeschylus’ Hoplôn Krisis, Ajax tells Odysseus that Sisyphus approached Anticleia (Fr. 175 Radt). The fragment breaks off at this point, but the context suggests that Ajax is calling Odysseus a bastard. The idea was picked up by both Sophocles and Euripides and vase paintings also depict the story. We do not know, however, if it pre-dates Aeschylus, in works such as the Little Iliad or Aethiopis of the Epic Cycle.  Schadewaldt 1970, 391– 393.  Lloyd-Jones 1982, 130 – 131 finds the likenesses of ‘little significance’ and the influence of the Euripidean tragedy on Wagner ‘if any’ to be ‘of little interest’.

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nia at Aulis in which Clytaemnestra reminds Agamennon how he has killed her first husband. Now, Wagner’s aim was, through his so-called ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, to recreate something of the form and spirit of Greek tragedy in a new Germanic way in what he saw as a culturally debased nineteenth-century Europe.¹² Although allowance must always be made for a degree of self-mythologizing on Wagner’s part, he appears from his own accounts to have been well-read in Greek myth in general from an early age. He even aspired to learn ancient Greek because, as he wrote: ‘ … the stories from Greek mythology seized my imagination so strongly that I wanted to imagine their heroic figures speaking to me in their original tongue, in order to satisfy my longing for complete familiarity with them’.¹³ It appears, however, that he never had the patience to master the grammar, and became familiar with the Greek tragedy which he especially admired through his reading of the contemporary German translation of Aeschylus by Johann Gustav Droysen (1808 – 1884). Aeschylus in fact became his idol and main model, not Euripides whom he rather despised for corrupting a ‘pure’ art form with sophistry and intellectualism. In the essay Art and Revolution (Die Kunst und die Revolution), written in 1849 during an unhappy sojourn in Paris, Wagner eulogized the god Apollo as encapsulating the spirit of the Greek people, and he continued: ‘Not as the soft companion of the Muses […] must we conceive the Apollo of the springtime of the Greeks; but it was with all the traits of energetic earnestness, beautiful but strong, that the great tragedian Aeschylus knew him’.¹⁴ The Festspielhaus which was built for Wagner at Bayreuth to stage the original performance of the Ring in 1876 was in essence modelled on the theatre of Dionysus in Athens where Aeschylus had mounted the Oresteia. The vision behind this can be seen already in Wagner’s idealized description of the context and realization of Aeschylean tragedy in a passage from Art and Revolution following closely on from the one quoted above: With such eyes also the Athenian saw the god, when all the impulses of his fair body, and of his restless soul, urged him to the new birth of his own being through the ideal expression of art; when the voices, ringing full, sounded forth the choral song, singing the deeds of the god, the while they gave to the dancers the mastering measure that meted out the rhythm of the dance, – which dance itself, in graceful movements, told the story of those deeds; and when above the harmony of well-ordered columns he wove the noble roof, heaped one upon the other the broad crescents of the amphitheatre, and planned

 Lloyd-Jones 1982, 140 – 141 rightly emphasizes that Wagner’s tragic vision as such is rather different from that of the Greeks.  Wagner 1983, 14.  Wagner 1892a, 32.

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the scenic trappings of the stage. Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus, the tragic poet saw this glorious god: when, to all the rich elements of spontaneous art, the harvest of the fairest and most human life, he joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus, brought forth the highest conceivable form of art – the DRAMA.¹⁵

In the wake of Schadewaldt (whose contribution originally took the form of lectures delivered at Bayreuth in the 1960s), even if sometimes diverging significantly from him, there have been a number of studies in the last fifty years¹⁶ of Wagner’s relationship with Greek literature (especially tragedy)¹⁷ and the Classics in general,¹⁸ or with Hellenism as such.¹⁹ Most recently, Daniel H. Foster has argued that each opera in the Ring ‘represents a particular phase in the cultural evolution of a mythical world modeled in part upon the ancient Greek world’,²⁰ the development reflecting the successive genres of epic, lyric, and drama. Where Greek tragedy in particular is concerned, the focus has naturally enough been on the Ring. Schadewaldt pointed to clear motif parallels between Prometheus Bound (and the lost plays of the supposed trilogy, as reconstructed by Droysen) and the Ring ²¹ and overall design parallels between the Oresteia and Wagner’s masterwork. Michael Ewans²² demonstrates affinities at every level between the Oresteia (which was certainly the main focus of Wagner’s admiration of Aeschylus) and the Ring, though he appears to overstate the case.²³ Ewans is also quite dismissive of the significance of the Prometheus Bound for the Ring. ²⁴ M. Owen Lee²⁵ likewise focuses on the Oresteia as the main inspira Wagner 1892a, 33.  For earlier scholarship, see e. g. the list in Müller 1992, 227 (with the Bibliographical Abbreviations 655 – 680), Ewans 1982, 262– 263, and Goldhill 2008, 456, n. 16 (with the References 477– 480).  Wagner also read and appreciated Greek comedy. For a discussion of this, especially with regard to the artistic contest involving the old and the new at the heart of Aristophanes’ Frogs and Die Meistersinger, see O’Sullivan 1990.  See e. g. Lloyd-Jones 1982, Borchmeyer 1991, 59 – 86, Roller 1992, Müller 1992, 227– 235, Magee 2000, 83 – 101.  Deathridge 2008 and Goldhill 2008 both emphasize the links between Wagner’s Hellenism and his anti-Semitism and German nationalism, and note Schadewaldt’s conspicuous omission of this connection, and the focus on a Hellenism stripped of the baggage of a darker past in Bayreuth in the early years following World War II.  Foster 2010, xi.  Schadewaldt 1970, 365 – 386. He had been anticipated in this by earlier scholars, as he notes (365) and his views have been endorsed subsequently by Lloyd-Jones 1982, 132– 134 and Lee 2003, 67– 70.  Ewans 1982.  Cf. Müller 1992, 233, 235.  Ewans 1982, 256 – 260.

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tion for Wagner and the Ring in general, though he gives far more credit to the Prometheus Bound than Ewans does.²⁶ Where, then, does Tristan und Isolde stand in all this? With regard to Greek tragedy in general, it has been said, in the context of Friedrich Nietzsche’s early admiration of Wagner, that ‘Of all the works of Wagner, Tristan best represented the wedding of Schopenhauer and Dionysus: the striving Schopenhauerian will of the lovers embodied in music of Dionysian frenzy’.²⁷ In connection with Aeschylus in particular (but also illustrating Wagner’s wide-ranging thinking), a sentence in Cosima’s diary entry for Friday 25th June 1880 reads as follows: R. works and is still somewhat immersed in serious thought around lunch time, but he then becomes more lively. Speaking of the first scene in [Aeschylus’] Choephoroi with its surgings and its constantly returning flow, he says, ‘I know something else like this: Trist. and Isolde in the 2nd act’. – At lunch conversation about animals, Darwin’s absent-minded ape, and the possibility of measuring the talents of a human being by his ability to concentrate his thoughts.²⁸

This is all very general, of course. Also general is the comment of Lee who observes: ‘Tristan is, from a structural point of view, in fact the most Aeschylean of all of Wagner’s works’.²⁹ That may or may not be the case. He goes on to say: To the casual operagoer, Wagner’s music dramas appear […] to be static. But to anyone who knows Greek drama, Wagner’s works, and Tristan in particular, are anything but static. Within Isolde in Act I and within Tristan in Act III, immense dramas are being played out. But they are inner dramas of passion, not external dramas of action. And that, by and large, is Greek.³⁰

Then too, the so-called ‘double motivation’ often seen as driving the tragic outcome in fifth-century Athenian drama has also been identified in Tristan und Isolde. In analyzing the demise of Siegfried in the Ring, Daniel Foster comments:

 Lee 2003.  Lee 2003, 66 – 71. Lee also adds a footnote (69) to Schadewaldt’s complementary identification of Homeric motifs and parallels in the Ring.  Zuckerman 1964, 66.  Cosima Wagner 1980, 496.  Lee 2003, 72.  Lee 2003, 73.

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[…] the ring may be ultimately responsible for Siegfried’s downfall, since it is the catalyst for Hagen’s plans. But like the love potion in Tristan und Isolde, magic in Wagner is never the sole cause of tragedy. It is always magic accompanied by personal desire, in a way that is deeply reminiscent of how tragedy often takes place in Greek drama, that is, through the Heraclitean dual motive of daemon and character.³¹

Such comments again are general and have an application not only well beyond Tristan und Isolde but also, indeed, beyond Wagner. Moreover, with regard to the motifs identified earlier, at least most of them, it is unlikely that Wagner’s primary source was Greek tragedy. However, the interference of Brangäne and the love potion substitution, for example, does not occur in Gottfried where the lovers drink the love potion by accident and become lovers on the ship.³² Greek tragedy may perhaps have played a more direct role here, and Wagner’s knowledge of the tragic texts may have acted as an added impetus, as it were, in other cases as well. At the very least, there appears to be some kind of Greek tragic substratum lying under Wagner’s story-line, mediated through Gottfried. We may be able to go a little further. In act 2 of Tristan und Isolde, the composer concentrates into one sequence of tryst and ultimate discovery a whole series of secret meetings by the lovers in the medieval tradition, and the attempts to catch them ‘in flagrante delicto’. Their love duet expresses their ecstasy in an intense spiritual union fostered by Night, which releases them temporarily from the ‘falseness’ of the realm of Day which signifies external, material reality. The lovers’ longing for an eternal bliss that can be found only in death almost guarantees their discovery, as night gives way to day. The strength of passion that leads to a yearning to be taken out of the material world is already found in Gottfried, and this was developed by Wagner. Night and Death for him represented the spiritual realm which he furnishes too with Schopenhauer’s notion of the renunciation of the will, ‘the final negation of the desire for life’, though of course Wagner modifies this on account of his own conviction that salvation can be achieved through love – death, though, is the only way in which Tristan and Isolde’s love can be properly fulfilled. This is heady stuff, and we appear to have left the Greeks far behind. But there are in fact tantalizing moments in Sophocles, for example, which are already tapping on this door. Think of the shamed Ajax when he recovers his sanity and exclaims ‘skotos emon phaos’ (‘darkness my light’) as his soul begins the

 Foster 2010, 219.  The substitution motif itself appears in another form because Brangäne is persuaded to take her mistress’ place secretly on King Marke’s wedding night to conceal from him his wife’s loss of virginity.

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journey to suicide. This is not a love context, of course, but it is in a love context of a kind that Antigone, initially at least, luxuriates in the thought of lying in death together with her brother Polyneices. Wagner also greatly admired Sophocles, and the Antigone in particular. In the course of his lengthy prose work Opera and Drama (Oper und Drama), completed in 1851, he discusses the Sophoclean treatment of Oedipus and his family and emphasizes love as the force driving Antigone,³³ just as love was to motivate Brünnhilde’s action in defying Wotan and attempting to save Siegmund when she saw the human hero’s love for his sister/bride Sieglinde. Wagner did, though, see in the post-Aeschylean Sophocles the beginning of the decline from the height of Greek tragedy that was to culminate in what was for him the over-intellectualism of Euripides.³⁴ Let us now turn our attention to Gottfried.³⁵ In Gottfried, it is the Irish queen Isolde (we shall call her Isolde number one) who cures Tristan, and who later prepares a love-potion to be drunk by her daughter princess Isolde (Isolde number two), and King Marke whom she is to marry. However, on the journey to Cornwall, as we have seen, Isolde number two and Tristan accidentally drink the potion, believing that it is only wine, and become lovers. As would be expected from a writer of this period, Gottfried lets his readers know that he is very conscious of his ties to the classical tradition.³⁶ Thus, in eulogizing other poets he announces that Heinrich von Veldeke derived all his wisdom from the Spring of Pegasus (Hippocrene), the source of all wisdom (ll. 4730 – 4732). Similarly, Orpheus’ tongue is said to have sung from the mouth of Reinmar von Hagenau (ll. 4790 – 4792) and Walther von der Vogelweide’s style is associated with Mount Cithaeron (ll. 4806 – 4810). Gottfried himself prays for inspiration to Helicon, the Muses, and Apollo (ll. 4860 – 4879, 4896 – 4897),³⁷ and describes how Vulcan manufactured Tristan’s armour and Cassandra (called ‘the wise Trojan woman’) designed and sewed his clothing (ll. 4932– 4964). Both Tristan and Isolde number a knowledge of Latin among their accomplishments (ll. 3628, 3692, 7986) and Tristan can play on the harp

 Wagner 1892b, 189 – 190.  Wagner 1892a, 52.  Wagner may well have read Gottfried in the contemporary German rendering of Hermann Kurtz, a second edition of which was published in 1847. However, he does seem to have made an attempt to read Gottfried’s original text. See von Westernhagen 1978, 233.  For Gottfried’s debt to classical writings on rhetoric, especially works by Cicero and Quintilian, see Chinca 1997, 42– 69.  For an analysis of Gottfried’s ‘pagan’ invocation here, see Kolb 1973.

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a song about Thisbe of Babylon (ll. 3616 – 3617).³⁸ The beautiful Isolde is also likened to a siren (ll. 8085 – 8089), and Tristan tells Marke that she is more beautiful than Helen and that the sun no longer rises in Mycenae (ll. 8263 – 8274). In addition to such references, there are classical echoes such as Tristan’s emotional response to the playing of a harpist (ll. 3520 – 3521) which recalls Odysseus’ reaction at the court of Alcinous, Gottfried’s comment that Tristan had in Rual, who had finally found him after a search of three and a half years, father, mother, relatives, retinue and friends rolled into one (ll. 3953 – 3995), which can be traced back ultimately to Andromache’s stated dependence on Hector in the Iliad, Rual’s transformation after a bath and new clothes (ll. 4062– 4071) which recalls similar transformations such as those of Odysseus in the Odyssey and Menelaus in Euripides’ Helen, and Gottfried’s ‘epic’ proclamation that if he had twelve senses and twelve tongues he would still have problems in describing the knighting ceremony (ll. 4604– 4625).³⁹ Scholars have also identified some interesting parallels with particular incidents from classical myth in both the extant and reconstructed parts of Gottfried, and in the medieval tradition as a whole. In the first place, there is Tristan’s first adversary, who is Isolde’s fiancé Morold in Wagner but in the medieval tradition Morholt or ‘the Morholt’, Isolde’s uncle, brother of her mother. This Morholt is often more or less a monster who demands a regular tribute from Cornwall, often in the form of young men and women, and Tristan alone is brave enough, on behalf of his substitute father King Marke, to take on the monster whom he kills in a ferocious contest on an island, being severely wounded himself. The connection with Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur, the beneficiary of tribute paid by Athens to Crete, is obvious.⁴⁰ Other parts of the Theseus story, in particular the Hippolytus incident, have also been seen at work in the tradition that led up to Gottfried, such as Tristan’s associations with the forest and hunting, his banishment by his substitute father King Marke, and the relationship between the king’s wife and the king’s substitute son.⁴¹ Even more telling is the story of Tristan’s death. After being forced to separate from Isolde number two, Tristan later marries Isolde Whitehand (Isolde number three). Subsequently, he gets severely wounded again and Isolde number two is sent for to bring her healing skills into play, supposedly without the

 For the significance of Tristan’s musical accomplishments and the ‘harmony’ between Isolde and him, see Jackson 1973.  For this conceit, Chinca 1997, 60 points specifically to the Sibyl’s words at Virgil, Aeneid 6.625 – 627.  See e. g. Eisner 1969, 121– 125.  See Eisner 1969, 108 – 109.

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knowledge of jealous wife Isolde number three. But this busybody has overheard the plan by which the returning ship will display a white sail if Isolde number two is on board and a black sail if she is not. A white sail is duly spotted, but Isolde number three tells Tristan that the sail is black, with the result that he promptly turns his face to the wall and dies. This recalls the death of Aegeus, father of Theseus.⁴² There is an interesting connection with Wagner here. The composer’s first written reference to his own plans for an opera on the story occurs at the end of a letter to Franz Liszt where he comments: ‘I have planned in my head a Tristan and [sic] Isolde, the simplest, but most full-blooded musical conception; with the “black flag” which flutters at the end, I shall then cover myself over, in order – to die.–’⁴³ This letter is dated about 16th December 1854, and in another letter to Liszt, dated 20th July 1856, he was still able to write: ‘You need first to digest my Tristan, especially its third act, with the black and white flags.’⁴⁴ In the earlier stages, then, he appears to have contemplated including the Isolde Whitehand theme in his own work, only to drop it as his planning and sketching developed. However, a vestige of it remains in the final product. The flag on the mast of the anticipated ship is first mentioned to Kurwenal by Tristan when he awakens in act 3. When the ship is finally sighted, Tristan asks: ‘Die Flagge? Die Flagge?’, to which Kurwenal replies, ‘Der Freude Flagge /am Wimpel lustig und hell’ (‘the flag of joy at the masthead, cheerful and bright’). To return to the medieval tradition. The monster-killing motif is actually repeated here when Tristan returns to Ireland to find a bride for King Marke. He kills a dragon, but is poisoned by it and rendered unconscious, later to be discovered by Isolde numbers one and two and restored to health. The prize for killing the dragon is marriage with Isolde number two. While Tristan is recovering, another man finds the dead dragon, cuts off its head, and claims the prize. He is then confounded when Tristan appears with the dragon’s tongue that he has cut out before lapsing into unconsciousness. There is a parallel here with the story of Perseus killing the sea monster to win Andromeda and then having to overcome a rival for her hand. In this case, however, scholars are right to see the Tristan episode not as directly modelled on the classical story, but rather as an example of the international folktale AT 300 (the dragon slayer). Interestingly, though, the detail of the tongue cutting as proof is found in a number of classical versions of the

 See Eisner 1969, 122, 150 – 157. The Greek story is told by Plutarch, Life of Theseus 17 and 22.  Spencer and Millington 1987, 324.  Spencer and Millington 1987, 356.

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tale, including those of Alcathous⁴⁵ and Peleus,⁴⁶ but at the same time, it is common enough elsewhere. One detail that also has a classical ring, of course, is the fact that in killing the dragon (who will ultimately demand the princess herself) Tristan wins a bride not for himself but for his uncle King Marke, just as Heracles kills the sea monster and wins Hesione not for himself but for Telamon.⁴⁷ Further classical motifs have also been spotted. When Tristan kills the Morholt he is severely wounded, as we have seen. Moreover, healing can only be provided by a relative of the Morholt, a motif related to that by which Telephus can only be cured by the spear wielded by Achilles to wound him.⁴⁸ The wound that he receives then turns septic and stinks to such an extent that his companions do not want to associate with him. He then puts himself in a boat, a floating island so to speak, and commits himself to waves that ultimately take him to Ireland. A parallel with Philoctetes, who was left lamenting on the island of Lemnos with a septic foot when the rest of the Greek expedition proceeded to Troy, is apparent here. And Philoctetes is in the background of another classical incident in which Paris, wounded by the once sore-footed archer, seeks healing from Oenone the nymph who alone can heal him, but whom he has abandoned for Helen. Aggrieved at her abandonment, Oenone sends a message saying that she will not come, while in fact soon setting out. Receiving the message and thinking she is not coming, Paris gives up and dies, after which Oenone arrives and kills herself through grief.⁴⁹ There is a parallel here with Tristan’s vain wait for Isolde to arrive to heal him, and Isolde’s collapse beside the corpse of her lover.⁵⁰ Yet further motifs can be adduced. In one manifestation of the medieval tradition, Tristan does not at first consummate his marriage with Isolde Whitehand (Isolde number three) but instead adores in secret a statue of Isolde number two (shades of Admetus’ stated intention for his life after Alcestis’ death, and

 It is actually a lion that Alcathous kills. The tongue-cutting detail is not found in the version of the story by Pausanias (1.41.3), but is included in the account of the fourth-century BC historian Dieuchidas of Megara.  The motif is associated with Peleus in the context of a general hunt on Mount Pelion (Pseudo-Apollodorus 3.13.3).  This story is not explicitly told by Homer, but references imply that he was familiar with it. There is a full account in a scholion on the Iliad (as a summary of Hellanicus), and both PseudoApollodorus and Diodorus tell it.  Schoepperle 1913, 377– 390 who, however, does point out that the motif is found widely beyond Greek literature.  This story is told e. g. by Parthenius, Erôtika Pathêmata 4, who credits Nicander as his source. In the Little Iliad, Paris dies on the battlefield.  On the connection between the voyage for healing and Philoctetes and the death of Paris, see Eisner 1969, 146 – 150.

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also Pygmalion). And again, Isolde’s initial intention to kill Tristan while he is in the bath (when she sees the nick out of Tristan’s sword after his dragon-slaying feat) brings us to Agamemnon’s death at the hands of Clytaemnestra, and recognition while the hero is in the bath takes us to Odysseus, as do scenes where Tristan cries on the seashore, where he appears in disguise as a beggar or leper, and where he delivers his various lying stories. The motif of the gift of a magic dog parallels that found in some versions of the classical story of Cephalus and Procris. The question now arises as to how such classically resonating motifs get into the story in the first place, which leads in turn to the question of the origins of the Tristan story itself before it was taken up by continental medieval authors. Scholarship in general still appears to favour the idea of a Celtic origin, as most plausibly argued in an influential study some time ago by Gertrude Schoepperle,⁵¹ whether this is more specifically Cornish, Welsh, Irish, North British, Pictish, or even Breton.⁵² Whereas development of the story by several authors in different countries at different periods of time has been the usual model posited, one theory has its literary form being composed in the context of monastic scholarship of the early post-Roman period of Britain, around the seventh or eighth century.⁵³ The scholars in these institutions, it is argued, were versed in the Classics and could easily have incorporated classical motifs into stories about heroes with local names, whether Drust / Drystan / Tristan or Cuchulain, Diarmid or whatever – there are clear Irish and Welsh analogues for many of the motifs. The story would then have passed at some stage to continental Europe, possibly through Brittany. Whether or not this construct is correct, the classical background of the continental medieval writers themselves means that it is quite possible too that some of the motifs became incorporated at this later stage. This leads to another important factor, namely Ovid.⁵⁴ Even if Ovid was not an important influence in the early monastic period, as he may well have been, he is certainly there in full view in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which

 Schoepperle 1913.  A sensibly cautious approach is adopted by McCann 1990, 28 who accepts the greater likelihood of a Brittonic origin rather than a Pictish one, though conceding that new evidence could always change the outlook.  Eisner 1969, 37 who is quite specific: ‘[…] the author of the first Tristan story used the names and some of the traditions of local heroes of his own recent past. To these figures he attached adventures which had been handed down from Roman and Greek mythology. He lived in the north of Britain, was associated with a monastery, and started the first rendition of the Tristan story on its travels to wherever it has been found.’  Wagner had little time for Ovid. See The Brown Book 200.

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have been dubbed the ‘aetas Ovidiana’.⁵⁵ Most relevant are the Metamorphoses, commonly called Ovidius Maior in the Middle Ages, and the love poems and poems about love which are particularly important for Gottfried. The notion of romantic love, as found in the Tristan story, for example, certainly developed independently of the Classics in the Middle Ages, but Ovid gave it the authority of antiquity. In Gottfried, when the lovers are expelled from court and reside in a ‘locus amoenus’, they sit under a lime-tree and tell each other stories about women destroyed by their desire, usually for forbidden objects of love.⁵⁶ These doomed heroines are found in the Heroides and Metamorphoses, though admittedly in this case Gottfried could have taken the stories from a mythological handbook (a very similar series of stories appears, after all, in Hyginus, for example). In this case too, of course, we also hear the whisper of Virgil’s Underworld and ultimately Odyssey Book 11. Perhaps more certainly Ovidian is the incident in Béroul in which the evil dwarf speaks into a hawthorne bush, but in such a way that King Marke’s barons can hear, revealing that the king has horse’s ears. The parallel here is with King Midas. The situation of Pyramus and Thisbe in the Ovidian account prefigures that of Gottfried’s lovers, and Tristan when separated from Isolde is obliged to follow precepts laid down in Ovid’s Remedia Amoris. ⁵⁷ In addition, the ending of several of the versions has trees or bushes planted on the lovers’ adjacent graves, which grow together in an everlasting embrace which recalls the posthumous bliss of Baucis and Philemon.⁵⁸ A man’s ignorance, in the dark, of the true identity of the woman sleeping with him, as in the Isolde/Brangäne switch, recalls Cinaras with Myrrha, but of course that is a common motif elsewhere, found in reverse, for example, in the Cupid and Psyche story. It is time for a conclusion. We might begin by positing Indo-Europeans with their mythical or perhaps more correctly folkloric motifs branching into Greek, Celtic and Iranian versions, the Greek versions, once written in literary form, being later adopted in literary form by the Romans, with the Latinized and Celtic versions meeting in the context of the Irish and British monastic system and finding new literary form there, with Greco-Roman elements grafted onto local stories with Celtic names and setting. The road from there would lead ultimately back to continental Europe, perhaps through Brittany, and into new literary ver-

 For some general accounts of Ovid in the Middle Ages, see e. g. Robathan 1973; Dimmick 2002; Hexter 2002.  Phyllis of Thrace, Canace, Byblis and Dido (ll. 17187– 17199).  See further in Wisbey 1990, 267– 273.  Mention might be made in this context of the trees specified as overhanging the lovers’ tryst in act 2 of Wagner’s opera.

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sions in Anglo-Norman and Middle High German, which are themselves directly infused with Ovid and other classical sources. Subsequently, in the nineteenth century, Wagner, himself an ardent admirer of classical antiquity, adapts a Middle High German version of what has become the Tristan story, complete with a wide range of motifs, excluding some motifs but retaining others, while at the same time absorbing other material directly from his classical Greek sources. This is, of course, all hypothetical, and in any case only offers part of what would be a much more complicated picture. It also, in many cases, perhaps privileges as ‘classical’ what may in fact rather be independently occurring international motifs. In the case of a motif like the love-charm too, a Celtic source seems much more likely than a classical one, even though it appears in classical literary texts as well.⁵⁹ However, there is still a distinct possibility that at least aspects of the construct are valid and that there may therefore perhaps be more of a hidden classical background to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde than is immediately obvious or normally recognised. Might we be getting here, then, a tantalizing glimpse into one of the streams that have preserved the Nachleben of classical myth in an originally un-classical story, in this case a story as given to the world in perhaps its most famous form by a brilliant if egocentric nineteenthcentury German composer?

Bibliography Borchmeyer, D. (1991), Richard Wagner: Theory and Theatre, transl. S. Spencer, Oxford. Chafe, E. (2005), The Tragic and the Ecstatic: The Musical Revolution of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Oxford. Chinca, M. (1997), Gottfried von Strassburg Tristan, Cambridge. Deathridge, J. (2008), ‘Wagner’s Greeks, and Wieland’s Too’, in: J. Deathridge, Wagner Beyond Good and Evil, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London, 102 – 109. Dimmick, J. (2002), ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages: Authority and Poetry’, in: P. Hardie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge, 264 – 287. Eisner, S. (1969), The Tristan Legend: A Study in Sources, Evanston, Ill. Ewans, M. (1982), Wagner and Aeschylus, London. Foster, D. (2010), Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks, Cambridge. Goldhill, S. (2008), ‘Wagner’s Greeks: The Politics of Hellenism’, in: M. Revermann / P. Wilson (eds.), Performance, Iconography, Reception: Studies in Honour of Oliver Taplin, Oxford, 453 – 480. Groos, A. (2011), ‘Between Memory and Desire: Wagner’s libretto and late Romantic Subjectivity’, in: A. Groos (ed.), Richard Wagner Tristan und Isolde, Cambridge, 36 – 52.

 See Schoepperle 1913, 401– 410.

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Hexter, R. (2002), ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages: Exile, Mythographer, and Lover’, in: B. Weiden Boyd (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Ovid, Leiden / Boston / Köln, 413 – 442. Jackson, W. (1973), ‘Der Künstler Tristan in Gottfried’s Dichtung’, transl. A. Wolf, in: A. Wolf (ed.), Gottfried von Strassburg (Wege der Forschung Band 320), Darmstadt, 280 – 304. Kolb, H. (1973), ‘Der ware Elicon’, in: A. Wolf, Gottfried von Strassburg (Wege der Forschung Band 320), Darmstadt, 453 – 488. Lee, M. Owen (2003), Athena Sings: Wagner and the Greeks, Toronto. Lloyd-Jones, H. (1982), ‘Wagner’, in: H. Lloyd-Jones, Blood for the Ghosts: Classical Influences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, London, 126 – 142. Magee, B. (2000), Wagner and Philosophy, London. McCann, W. (1990), ‘Tristan: the Celtic Material Re-examined’, in: A. Stevens / R. Wisbey (eds.), Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval Tristan Legend, Cambridge, 19 – 28. Millington, B. (2012), Richard Wagner the Sorcerer of Bayreuth, London. Müller, U. (1992), ‘Wagner and Antiquity’, transl. S. Spencer, in: U. Müller / P. Wapnewski (eds.), Wagner Handbook, transl. ed. J. Deathridge, Cambridge, Mass. / London, 227 – 235. O’Sullivan, N. (1990), ‘Aristophanes and Wagner’, in: Antike und Abendland 36, 67 – 81. Robathan, D. (1973), “Ovid in the Middle Ages”, in: J. W. Binns (ed.), Ovid, London / Boston, 191 – 209. Roller, D. (1992), ‘Richard Wagner and the Classics’, in: Euphrosyne NS 20, 231 – 252. Schadewaldt, W. (1970), ‘Richard Wagner und die Griechen’, in: W. Schadewaldt Hellas und Hesperien, 2nd ed., Zurich / Stuttgart, vol. II, 341 – 405. Schoepperle, G. (1913), Tristan and Isolt: A Study of the Sources of the Romance, 2 vols., Frankfurt a. M. (2nd ed. expanded by bibliography and critical essay on Tristan Scholarship since 1912 by R. Sherman Loomis, reprinted in New York 1970). Spencer, S. / Millington, B. (1987), Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, transl. and ed. S. Spencer / B. Millington, New York / London. Wagner, C. (1980), Cosima Wagner’s Diaries: Volume II 1878 – 1883, transl. G. Skelton, London. Wagner, R. (1892a), Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Volume 1, transl. W.A. Ellis, London. — (1892b), Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Volume 2, transl. W.A. Ellis, London. — (1980), The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865 – 1882: The Brown Book, presented and annotated by J. Bergfeld, transl. G. Bird, Cambridge. — (1983), My Life, transl. by A. Gray and ed. by M. Whittall, Cambridge. Westernhagen, C. von (1978), Wagner: A Biography. Volume 1: 1813 – 64, transl. M. Whittall, Cambridge. Wisbey, R. (1990), ‘Living in the Presence of the Past: Exemplary Perspectives in Gottfried’s Tristan’, in: A. Stevens / R. Wisbey (eds.), Gottfried von Strassburg and the Medieval Tristan Legend, Cambridge, 257 – 276. Zuckerman, E. (1964), The First Hundred Years of Wagner’s Tristan, New York / London.

Evangelos Moutsopoulos

The Role of Music in Plato’s Symposium The Symposium as a whole bears on the notion of love as a réalité vivante, personified by Eros. Each banqueter sets out to address the best eulogy. The one by Eryximachus, a doctor of the time, is divided into two parts. Between them there is an intermezzo on music which, as any other art form, and in the highest degree, expresses Eros, participates in it, or contributes to it. Eryximachus’ encomium on Eros illustrates the procedure from the desire of the other to mating. The doctor alludes to Alcmaeon of Croton, a physician, according to whom opposed elements and qualities unite to form the living corpses, which are the objects of medical science.¹ The same goes for music and, as it happens, the speaker cites a passage by Heraclitus, in which unity is the result of discordant opposites, such as the attunement of a bow or a lyre;² unless one interprets ‘bow’ as the bow of a lyre, which is quite unlikely according to the ancient Greek culture, Eryximachus remarks on the absurdity of the example given by the Ephesian, because, he proceeds, these two objects are in constant opposition.³ Indeed, Heraclitus himself succinctly suggests a solution to this enigmatic phrase when he says that no harmony would exist without the presence of both high-pitched and low-pitched notes.⁴ Much later, in the Philebus and particularly in connection with the idea of the mixed elements, Plato distinguishes between low and high pitch as two kinds of sound, and equal pitch as a third kind,⁵ which is something completely different, a limit; consequently, it does not sum up to two contradicting sounds. Even more so, one may consider the Heraclitean fragment in which har-

 Cf. Alcmeon, fr. 4 (D.-K.16, I, 215, 12– 13). Cf. Symposium, 186 d-e. Cf. Phaedo, 86 b-c: κρᾶσιν εἶναι καὶ ἁρμονίαν αὐτῶν τούτων (hot and cold; dry and wet etc.); ibid., 92 a: οὐ γὰρ … πρότερον ἦν ἁρμονία συγκειμένη πρὶν ἐκεῖνα εἶναι ἐξ ὧν ἔδει αὐτὴν συντεθῆναι; ibid., 92 b-c: πρότερον καὶ ἡ λύρα καὶ αἱ χορδαὶ καὶ οἱ φθόγγοι ἔτι ἀνάρμοστοι ὄντες γίνονται, τελευταῖον δὲ πάντων συνίσταται ἡ ἁρμονία καὶ πρῶτον ἀπόλλυται; ibid., 93 a: οὐκ ἄρα ἡγεῖσθαί γε προσήκει ἁρμονίαν τούτων ἐξ ὧν συντεθῇ, ἀλλ’ ἕπεσθαι. Socrates refutes Simmias’ view of the harmony of the soul. The same argumentation applies to Eryximachus.  Cf. Heraclitus, fr. B 57 (D.-K.16, I, 162, 4): παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης. Cf. Symposium 187 a.  Ibid., 187 a-b.  Cf. Heraclitus, fr. A 22 (D.-K.16, I, 149, 28): οὐ… ἂν εἶναι ἁρμονίαν μὴ ὄντος ὀξέος καὶ βαρέος. Cf. Symposium, 187 a-b.  Cf. Philebus, 17 c: καὶ τρίτον ὁμότονον; cf. Boussoulas 1952, 24 and 64 ; cf. Kucharski 1951, 39 ff.; Idem 1959, 41– 72. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-019

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mony is produced by the agreement between opposites, such as high and low, fast and slow.⁶ Therefore, in Aristotelian terms, but inversely, one might conceive their harmony as potential (dynamei) which, being always imperceptible, remains superior to that which is, actually (energeia), only apparent.⁷ In general, we are dealing with a harmony which transits (passes) from one state to another.⁸ In the Timaeus, harmony is established between the Same and the Different, but in that case harmony is neither musical or astronomical; it is simply mathematical.⁹ After this digression, we should return to music as being the science of harmonies and rhythms related to Eros, in the words of Eryximachus,¹⁰ but also, according to the Laches, as the most beautiful harmony, which is experienced by a man who is genuinely musical, rendering his own life harmonious.¹¹ In the same vein, in the Gorgias, music is considered as the creation of melodies.¹² It is in the same spirit that the doctor of the Symposium affirms, generally, that Eros is a good creator at every kind of musical production.¹³ Music, to say it properly, constitutes the peak of art which encompasses even philosophy.¹⁴ Stricto sensu, music necessarily presupposes the knowledge of rhythms and harmonies, in plural, which Plato discusses in the Republic in reference to Damon of Oa.¹⁵ Now, in that case, they are no longer consonances, but formal structures according to which the lyre is to be attuned, each one of which presents an ethos, a specific ‘character’ and a disposition to the listener himself who, in his turn, responds

 Cf. Heraclitus, fr. B 8 (D.-K.16, I, 153, 8– 10); Idem, fr. B 10 (D.-K.16, I, 153, 5–6); Idem, fr. B. 51 (D.K.16, I, 161, 17): (τὸ ἕν) διαφερόμενον ἑαυτῷ ὁμολογέει. Cf. Symposium 187 a-b: A ᾿ λλὰ ἴσως τόδε ἐβούλετο λέγειν ὅτι, ἐκ διαφερομένων πρότερον τοῦ ὀξέος καὶ βαρέος … ὕστερον ὁμολογησάντων, γέγονεν ὑπὸ τῆς μουσικῆς τέχνης. oὐ γὰρ δήπου ἐκ διαφερομένων γε ἔτι… ἁρμονία ἂν εἴη.  Cf. Idem, fr. B 8 (D.-K.16, I, 152, 9); fr. B 54 (D.-K.16, I, 162, 10): ἁρμονίη ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων. Cf. Tim., 80 a-b.  Cf. Heraclitus, fr. B 10 (D.-K.16, I, 153, 10 – 12): συνάψιες ὅλα καὶ οὐχ ὅλα, συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον συνᾶιδον διᾶιδον καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα. Cf. Aristotle, De mundo. 5, 396 b 7. Cf. Plato, Sophist 242 d.  Cf. Timaeus 34 c – 37 a. Cf. Moutsopoulos 21989, 352– 375.  Cf. Symposium 187 c: καὶ ἔστιν αὖ μουσικὴ περὶ ἁρμονίαν καὶ ῥυθμὸν ἐρωτικῶν ἐπιστήμη.  Cf. Laches 188 d: κομιδῇ μοι δοκεῖ μουσικὸς ὁ τοιοῦτος εἶναι, ἁρμονίαν καλλίστην ἡρμοσμένος.  Cf. Gorgias 449 d: ἡ μουσικὴ περὶ τὴν τῶν μελῶν ποίησιν.  Cf. Symposium 196 e: ποιητὴς ὁ Ἔρως ἀγαθός… πᾶσαν ποίησιν τὴν κατὰ μουσικήν. Cf. ibid., 187 b: ὑπὸ τῆς μουσικῆς τέχνης.  Cf. Phaedo 60 e: μουσικὴν ποίει καὶ ἐργάζου; ibid., 61 a: ὡς φιλοσοφίας μὲν οὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς.  Cf. Republic, ΙΙΙ, 398 d – 401 c; ibid., IV, 424 c; cf. Laws VII, 814 a ff.; cf. Aristotle, Polit., Δ 3, 1290 a 19 ff.; Θ 5, 1340 b 7 ff.

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accordingly after being impregnated by it. There are also harmonies which are to be preferred contrary to the ones which are to be avoided. Once these difficulties are discarded, it is now easier to proceed to the Platonic evaluation of music in the Symposium. One remarks, first of all, the assertion that harmony is a kind of consonance between elements which are no longer discordant.¹⁶ It is evident that the movement from disagreement to consonance marks a significant moment, a Kairos, a moment which is simultaneously the least and the most favourable before which anything is possible and after which there is nothing.¹⁷ This goes for sounds as well as for rhythms.¹⁸ It is Eryximachus that brings to attention the analogy between music and medicine.¹⁹ Already Hippocrates, in medicine, had qualified kairos as ‘high-pitched’, ‘sharp’,²⁰ in other words, of short duration. We have to realise it in advance, before it escapes our notice for good; it is also preferable that we provoke its appearance.²¹ This is how the musician puts his intentions to action.²² But he has to be careful not to go astray from the right path. But in what does this right path consist for a musician who, by definition, rejoices in Eros? Through Eryximachus, Plato insists on the very ideas suggested by Damon. Indeed, Damon was the one to put forward a certain strictness as far as music was concerned, teaching that the loose musical modes would encourage a similar behaviour. Middle fifth-century musicians were already free from the strict norms regarding their art, which had been dominant in the past. Damon, on the other hand, believed that a digression from such norms would have harmful consequences on the laws of the city of Athens,²³ which earned him the exile. The fragmentary passages of his apology, Areopagiticus, were collected²⁴ and then completed.²⁵ The echo of his doctrine is evident in the words of Eryximachus: music is beautiful and good when it celebrates celestial love, the one inspired by the Muse Urania. On the other hand, one should distrust music

 Cf. Symposium, 187 b: Ἡ γὰρ ἁρμονία συμφωνία ἐστίν, συμφωνία δὲ ὁμολογία τις. ὁμολογίαν δὲ ἐκ διαφερομένων, ἕως ἂν διαφέρωνται ἀδύνατον εἶναι, διαφερόμενον δὲ αὖ καὶ μὴ ὁμολογοῦν ἀδύνατον ἁρμόσαι.  Cf. Moutsopoulos 1991, 132– 145.  Cf. Symposium, 187 b-c: ὥσπερ γε καὶ ὁ ῥυθμὸς ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος καὶ βραδέος, ἐκ διενηνεγμένων πρότερον ὕστερον δὲ ὁμολογησάντων γέγονε.  Cf. ibid. 187 c.  Cf. Hippocrates, Aphorismi 1.1: ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξύς.  Cf. Moutsopoulos 2007, 157– 166; cf. Idem 2010, 19 – 24; 139 – 154.  Cf. Idem 2012, 28 – 38; 69 – 81; 173 – 178.  Cf. Ryffel 1949, 52 ff.  Cf. D.-K.16, II, 381– 384.  Cf. Lasserre 1954, 74– 79.

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inspired by the Muse Polymnia, who celebrates mundane love. It is sufficient to enjoy in moderation the pleasure she offers.²⁶ These ideas are inscribed outright within the frame of Damonian doctrines and indicate the adoption, by Plato, of a conservative attitude with regard to art in general, also detected in the evolution of the visual arts,²⁷ which are obvious at the same time as the development of the sophistic movement presenting the same dangers for the Athenian society as ‘liberal’ music. The defiance associated with this kind of music is evident throughout Plato’s thought, beginning with the Protagoras, where it is mentioned that, during his life, man needs good rhythms and good harmonies,²⁸ until the Laws, where these doctrines are reprised. Eryximachus’ speech in the Symposium is the sum-up of this doctrine.

Bibliography Boussoulas, N.-I. (1952), L’être et la composition des mixtes dans le Philèbe de Platon, Paris. Kucharski, P. (1951), ‘La musique et la conception du réel dans le Philèbe’, in: Revue Philosophique 76, 39 – 60. — (1959), ‘Le Philèbe et les “Eléments harmoniques” d’Aristoxène’, in: Revue Philosophique 84, 41 – 72. Lasserre, F. (1954), Plutarque, De la musique, Olten / Lausanne. Moutsopoulos, E. (1958), ‘La condition ontologique de l’art dans le Sophiste de Platon’, in: Athena, 62, 369 – 378. — (21989), La musique dans l’oeuvre de Platon, Paris. — (1991), Kairos. La mise et l’ enjeu, Paris. — (2007), Kairicité et liberté, Athens. — (2010), Reflets et résonances du kairos, Athens. — (2012), Valences de l’action, Athens. Ryffel, H. (1949), Μεταβολὴ πολιτειῶν. Der Wandlung der Staatsverfassungen, (Noctes Romanae 2), Bern. Schulz, P.-M. (1933), Platon et l’art de son temps, Paris.

 Cf. Symposium 187 d-e.  Cf. Schulz 1933; Moutsopoulos 1958, 369 – 378.  Cf. Protagoras, 326 b: πᾶς γὰρ ὁ βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου εὐρυθμίας τε καὶ εὐαρμοστίας δεῖται.

Egert Poehlmann

Aristotle on Music and Theatre (Politics VIII 6. 1340 b 20 – 1342 b 34; Poetics) 1 Preliminaries When studying Aristotle’s opinions on Music and Theatre, it is imperative to consider the relations of Plato’s theory of art in the Politeia and in the Laws with the Aristotelean Politics and Poetics. Aristotle was member of the Academy from 367 BC until Plato’s death (347 BC), whose successor was not Aristotle, but Plato’s nephew Speusippus (347– 339). In this period Aristotle could study Plato’s Republic and witness Plato’s work on the Timaeus and the Laws. From 347– 342 Aristotle was in Assos and Mytilene, from 342 to 336 BC he was teacher of Young Alexander in Pella, from where he returned to Athens in 335/34, where he founded his own school, the Peripatos. In his twenty years as member of the Platonic Academy, Aristotle had the opportunity to attend in the Dionysus Theatre restaged tragedies of the fifth century and the first nights of new pieces of Middle Comedy. Aristotle’s keen interest and thorough knowledge of the Athenian theatre is attested by many quotations of tragedies, comedies, performances and actors in the third book of his Rhetoric and in the Poetics. As he cannot have had the relevant experiences during his exile from 347 to 335, Walter Burkert¹ demonstrated that the third book of the Rhetoric and the Poetics, which are linked by cross-references, belong to the first period of Aristotle in Athens, the time of learning, arguing and dispute with Plato and Plato’s works, between the years 367 and 347. Thus, we could understand the Poetics of Aristotle against the background of Plato’s Republic and Laws. We shall see that Book 8 of Aristotle’s Politics is linked by many cross-references with Aristotle’s Poetics, especially the famous theory of musical and theatrical Katharsis of the affections of the hearer and spectator of music and theatre. Therefore, we have to try to integrate book 8 of Aristotle’s Politics into the first period of Aristotle in the Platonic Academy. In doing this we have to consider (1) the literary form of the Politics, and (2) the chronological segmentation of the Politics.

 Burkert 1975. DOI 10.1515/9783110519785-020

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(1) The Politics were not destined for publication as a piece of literature in artificial prose like the Laws of Plato. They are rather a collection of papers for the teaching in the Peripatos. It goes without saying that the respective parts of this material, being used several times, were changed when necessary with every repetition. We might confirm this result by our own experiences and techniques as academic teachers, when reusing papers for seminaries. After a final revision, which Aristotle did not accomplish, the whole would have been not a Dialogue in artificial prose like the Politeia, but a Pragmateia, a treatise on Politics. The material for this Pragmateia was assembled after Aristotle’s death by a librarian, who did not interfere in the papers he found. Thanks to the usual conservative method of ancient editorial technique, we have a series of self-contained parts, which follow some reasonable plan. But there are many gaps, unfulfilled cross-references and lacking connections. The text as transmitted in the manuscripts ends unfinished. Guilelmus Moerbeke, who translated the Politics as the first into Latin in 1260, adds at the end: Reliqua huius operis in Graeco nondum inveni. (2) Since the 16th century philologists tried to reconstruct the original succession of the eight books of the Politics. Of course, the sequence of books 1– 8 in the manuscripts is an achievment of late antiquity, when papyrus scrolls containing separate books were transscribed into a parchment codex. But the results of the efforts of the philology of the 19th century were dissappointing and confusing: The edition of Otto Immisch² enumerates, besides Immanuel Becker‘s edition by the Berlin Academy (1831), which gives the sequence of the manuscripts, four different editions with four different series of books. Philologists trying to solve the internal problems of the Politica by changing the transmitted sequence of books, treat the Politics with the wrong assumption that Aristotle had written them in order to publish a piece of high literature. Therefore, Ulrich von Wilamowitz, while rejecting the aforesaid method, explained the Politics as an agglomeration of three different layers: Books 1– 3 give introductory material. Books 4– 6 draw on existing Aristotle’s collections of Politeiai. Books 7/8 start to set up the ideal state in close connection with Platonic ideas. Thus, they are the earliest part of Politics. All in all, this approach was not shaked by following investigation of the Politics from Werner Jaeger to Rudolf Stark.³ The new approach about Aristotle’s Politics aims at segregation of chronological different layers of the Politics and attaching these to different phases of

 Immisch 1929.  Jaeger 1923; Stark 1972; Hager 1972; Steinmetz 1973.

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Aristotle’s life. Ernest Barker⁴ attaches books 7/8 to Aristotle’s Assos-Period (347– 344), books 1– 3 tentatively to his Pella-Period (342– 336), and books 4– 6 to his Peripatos-Period (335 – 322). It is interesting that he admits that Aristotle, who had the opportunity of study and research with Plato from 367– 347, might have conceived his books 7/8 already in his academic period. Ingemar Düring⁵ pointed to the fact that books 1, 2, 3, 4– 6 and 7/8 are preceeded by a general introduction and introduced by special headings: the theme of book 1 is ‘The Theory of the household’ (περὶ οἰκονομίαϛ, I 3. 1253 b2), book 2 is a review of earlier research about constitutions: ‘About the forerunners treating the question of the best state’ (Ι 13. 1260 b23: Περὶ τῶν πρότερον ἀποφηναμένων περὶ τῆϛ πολιτείαϛ ἀρίστηϛ). Book 3 contains mostly general reflexions about the constitution: ‘Whoever is considering the problems of the state, must first think about the nature of the state’ (Ι 1.1274 b1– 3: Τῷ περὶ πολιτείαϛ ἐπισκοποῦντι … σχεδὸν πρώτη σκέψιϛ περὶ πόλεωϛ ἰδεῖν, τί ποτέ ἐστι ἡ πόλιϛ). Books 4– 6 are introduced by a heading which is taken up later, at the beginning of book 7: ‘We have now to deal with the best state, which way it may come to being and which way it may be durable’ (ΙΙΙ 12. 1288 b3/4: Περὶ τῆϛ πολιτείαϛ ἤδη πειρατέον λέγειν τῆϛ ἀρίστηϛ, τίνα πέφυκε γίγνεσϑαι τρόπον καὶ καϑίστασϑαι πῶϛ). Books 7/8 are introduced by ‘Whosoever wants to investigate the best state must first establish which the best way of life is’ (VΙΙ 1.1323 a14/15: Περὶ πολιτείαϛ ἀρίστηϛ τὸν μέλλοντα ποιήσασϑαι τὴν προσήκουσαν ζήτησιν ἀνάγκη διορίσασϑαι πρῶτον τίϛ αἱρετώτατοϛ βίοϛ). It is evident that we have five independent treatises before a revision, which might have made of them a selfcontained Pragmateia. Like Wilamowitz, Düring pointed out that books 7– 8 about the ideal state are by far the earliest of these treatises, as they are using on the whole platonic terminology. Their starting point is the ‘second best state’ in book 5 of Plato’s Laws (739 e). Therefore Düring, while admitting (p. 474) that every treatise which became later part of the Politics was reworked after Aristotle’s return to Athens after 335 BC left open the possibility (p. 474 f.) that books 7/8 of the Politics belong to Aristotle’s time in the Academy some years before Plato’s death (367– 347 BC), the same period into which Burkert has convincingly dated the Poetics of Aristotle. We have seen that the Poetics give clear evidence for fundamental argument and dispute in the Academy. The same might be true for book 8 of the Politics, which is connected with the Poetics by the known cross-reference to the Poetics concerning the katharsis (1341 b38 – 40).

 Barker 1931.  Düring 1966.

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2 The Sources of Aristotle in Book 8 of Politics Plato’s last work, the unfinished Laws, were in the making in his last 6 years, from 353 to 347/6, a fact which might have raised the discussion in the Academy about musical education again, after the impact of the Politeia. This is more than a possibility, as there is evidence that book 8 of the Politics mirrors the discussion in the Academy about musical education. Plato, when writing his famous chapter on music, harmonies, rhythms and instruments in the Politeia (III 398– 400), is not inclined to explain technicalities. Therefore he makes his Socrates refer to the specialist, Damon of Oa: ‘Let us discuss these questions with Damon’ (III 400 b1/2: ᾽Αλλὰ ταῦτα μέν … καὶ μετὰ Δάμωνοϛ βουλευσόμεϑα). Likewise, Aristotle in the Politics, when he has to evaluate harmonies, rhythms, melodies and instruments, restricts himself to general regulations, referring the interested to the specialists of musical theory, on which he draws. Of course, he does not give names. But his vivid periphrases of his sources mirror the discussion in the Academy in Aristotle’s academic period (367– 347 BC): The first reference to musicological sources appears at the end of chapter 5 after a digression (1340 a28 – 38), which deals with the question, if paintings are able to express affections (ἦϑοϛ). Aristotle gives as examples the painter Pauson and Polygnot, whom he considers in the Poetics a good painter of character (1450 a27/28: ὁ μὲν γὰρ Πολύγνωτοϛ ἀγαθὸς ἠθογράφος). Though there was contemporary discussion about the question – see Xenophon Memorabilia III 10⁶ – Aristotle does not give a source. But the domain of ἦϑοϛ is music: ‘In the melodies there are imitations of character’ (1340 a38/39: ἐν δὲ τοῖϛ μέλεσιν αὐτοῖϛ ἔστι μιμήματα τῶν ἠϑῶν). This is the beginning of a long excursus about the expression of affections by melodies and rhythms (1340 a38 – 1340 b12), which can be studied in Barker.⁷ The sources of this excursus are diligently specified: ‘This point is aptly explained by philosophers of education. For they take the evidence for their theories from the facts themselves’ (1340 b5 – 7: ταῦτα γὰρ καλῶϛ λέγουσιν οἱ περὶ τὴν παιδείαν ταύτην πεφιλοσοφηκότεϛ. Λαμβάνουσι γὰρ τὰ μαρτύρια τῶν λόγων ἐξ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων). Perhaps Aristotle points to Damon, Plato’s source in the Politeia (see above). But an old member of the Academy, Heraclides Ponticus, had dealt with the expressive values of the harmonies also (Fragments 162/163 Wehrli). It is interesting that Aristotle qualifies the method of his source, which takes the evidence for theories from the facts themselves. This is Aristotle’s own method, the induction.  Preishofen 1974.  For Aristotle Pol. Book VIII see Barker 1984, 171 f., translations and notes used: 171– 182.

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The next references appear in chapters 6 and 7 and shall be conveniently treated in their context. Here a commented preview might be helpful: In 1340 b18 (πολλοί φασι τῶν σοφῶν) the Pythagorean respectively Platonic theory about soul and harmony is quoted.⁸ In 1340 b35 (πρὸϛ τοὺϛ φάσκονταϛ) and b40 (ἥν τινεϛ ἐπιτιμῶσι) Aristotle quotes musicologists, who reject teaching the young singing and playing an instrument altogether. In 1341 a26 Aristotle quotes elder musicologists, perhaps again Damon and Plato (οἱ πρότερον), who rejected aulos-playing in the education and by free citizens (ἐλεύϑεροι) altogether, and adds a long digression about the aulos and its use in the past. In 1341 b2/3 unspecified ἀρχαῖοι are quoted as source for the known stories of Athene and the aulos. In 1341 b21 (τοῖϛ πρὸϛ παιδείαν διαπονοῦσι) Aristotle refers to experts in education. In 1341 b27– 29 Aristotle quotes contemporary musicologists (τῶν δὲ νῦν) and philosophers, who are experts in musical education. In 1341 b33/34 he quotes philosophers (τινεϛ τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ), who propose the classification of melodies into ἠϑικά, πρακτικά and ἐνϑουσιαστικὰ μέλη. The next three quotations can be connected with Aristoxenos: In 1342 a31 Aristotle refers to members of his school (κοινωνοὶ τῆϛ ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ διατριβῆϛ), the Peripatos, and members with special expertise in musical education, who attack the Socrates of Plato in the Politeia (399 – 400) for eliminating all harmonies except the Dorian and the Phrygian. In 1342 b8 he quotes the same experts for the question of the close connection of the Phrygian Harmonia and the Aulos. Finally, in 1342 b23, he quotes the same musicologists who attack again the Socrates of Plato in Politeia 399 – 400 for eliminating the slack harmonies altogether.

3 Politics 8.6. 1340 b20 – 31: Music in Education Already in book 7 (1332 a33) Aristotle begins to treat the subject of education in the ideal state, which is carried on in book 8. At the end of book 7, three new questions are raised, namely: ‘The first is whether there ought to be some code of regulations governing the education of children. The second is whether the education of children should be a matter for the state, or should be conducted on a private basis, as it still is, even today, in the great majority of cases. The third question which we have to consider is the proper nature of a code of regulations’ (7, 1337 a3– 6, transl. E. Barker).⁹ These questions find their answers in book 8, which treats, in  See Plato, Phaedo 86, where the Pythagorean Simmias holds that human soul is a harmony, like Aristoxenos (frr. 118 – 121 Wehrli) and Dicaearchus. In Phaedo 93 Socrates takes the opinion that the human soul has harmony.  Barker 1931.

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the unfinished form we have, first generalities (1337 a11– 1338 b8), then gymnastics (1338 b9 – 1339 a10) and finally music (1339 a11– 1342 b34). The heading of chapter 6 of book 8 raises the question if children should be tought to sing and to play instruments: ‘Now we have to explain, if the children shall learn to sing and to play instruments, a question which has been raised earlier’ (1340 b20 f.: Πότερον δὲ δεῖ μανϑάνειν ᾄδοντάϛ τε καὶ χειρουργοῦντας ἢ μή, καϑάπερ ἠπορήϑη πρότερον, νῦν λεκτέον). With πρότερον Aristotle gives a cross-reference to 1339 a33 – b11, where the contrary view of some opponents is quoted (1339 b3 ὥϛ φασι). Now, Aristotle takes side recommending a moderate part of musical practice (ἔργα), as one of the aims of musical education is the ability to judge expertly about the moral quality of melodies (κριτὰϛ γενέσϑαι σπουδαίουϛ 1340 b25). This ability can only be acquired by some experience in singing and playing instruments. The notion of musical judgment (κρίνειν ὀρϑῶϛ) is already prepared in 1340 a17. We find the notion of expertise in musical judgment again in Pseudo-Plutarch’s De Musica (1144 C-E), where Aristoxenos as source might be indicated (1142 B). But the κριτικὴ πραγματεία in De Musica, which is aiming at the cultivation of a mature musicologist, is developed on higher level. Aristotle yet aims at the education of children, which he illustrates by the example of the baby rattle, the proverbial ᾽Αρχύτου πλαταγή,¹⁰ which is used in order to occupy babies. Likewise, some practical training in music may occupy aptly elder children.

4 Politics 1340 b31 – 1341 a17: Opinions of Opponents The next section (1340 b33 – 41 a5) quotes again opponents, which consider practical singing and playing instruments to be an occupation for lower classes: ‘against those who consider practical music making a low class occupation’ (1340 b34/35: πρὸϛ τοὺϛ φάσκονταϛ βάναυσον εἶναι τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν) or reproach music with degrade men to lower class: ‘About the reproach that music making degrades people to lower class standard’ (1340 b40/41: περὶ δὲ τῆϛ ἐπιτιμήσεωϛ ἥν τινεϛ ἐπιτιμῶσιν ὡϛ ποιούσηϛ τῆϛ μουσικῆϛ βαναύσουϛ). Aristotle’s retorts to his opponents are based on several restrictions of singing and playing instruments as part of musical education.

 Invention of Archytas: Plutarch, Convivium VII 10.1, Moralia 714 e, Aelian, Varia Historia XII 15, Suda s.v. Archytas, Pollux IX 127: from Aristoxenos, biography of Archytas (47– 56 Wehrli).

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Considering the age of pupils he limits the time for practical music to the first years, after which the children have acquired a safe judgement about morally good and bad melodies (1340 b35 – 39). As the children must be trained for the virtues of a citizen, it must be considered how far they shall participate in singing and playing instruments, which melodies and rhythms they may meet, and on which instruments they shall be trained: ‘We have to consider up to which point children, which are trained for the virtues of a citizen, may take part in practical music making, and with which melodies and rhythms they shall be acquainted, and on which instruments the training shall be executed’ (1340 b41– 41 a4: σκεψαμένουϛ μέχρι τε πόσου τῶν ἔργων κοινωνητέον τοῖϛ πρὸϛ ἀρετὴν παιδευομένοιϛ πολιτικήν, καὶ ποίων μελῶν καὶ ποίων ῥυθμῶν κοινωνητέον, ἔτι δὲ ἐν ποίοιϛ ὀργάνοιϛ τὴν μάϑησιν ποιητέον). The evaluation of melodies and rhythms is postponed to the end of the chapter (1341 b19 – 42 b34), thus, the question of μέχρι πόσου (1341 a4– 17) stands first. As it must be admitted that some styles of music may have a degrading effect on players and hearers (οὐδὲν γὰρ κωλύει τρόπουϛ τινὰϛ τῆϛ μουσικῆϛ ἀπεργάζεσϑαι τὸ λεχϑέν), the musical training must be limited as far as it does not hamper the military training and the training for the life in the polis. Therefore, the children must not be trained either in abilities for musical contests of professionals (1341 a10: πρὸϛ τοὺϛ ἀγῶναϛ τοὺϛ τεχνικοὺϛ), or for brilliant but superfluous effects of performance which today have entered the contests and from there the education (1342 a12: ἃ νῦν ἐλήλυϑεν εἰϛ τοὺϛ ἀγῶναϛ). Rather they must be trained in moderate music as far as they are able to enjoy morally good melodies and rhythms, and not only appreciate the universal charm of music, which pleases some animals and mostly all slaves and children. The universal charm of music is pleasure, which has been explained in a parenthesis earlier: ‘The nature of music is pleasure’ (1340 a4: ἔχει γὰρ ἡ μουσικὴ τὴν ἡδονὴν φυσικήν). Thus, the use of music is welcome to all age and character. But pleasure itself is not the aim of music, but only a means to improve the character and the soul.

5 The Dangers of Professionalism Interesting is the reference to contemporary dangers (νῦν) of extravagances in musical contests of professionals. This points to the so called ‘New Music’, a revolution of musical styles, which we know thanks to the opposition of ‘Old Comedy’, Pherecrates, Aristophanes and others, and Plato in the Politeia and the Laws. For example, we select two exponents of ‘New Music’, the Citharode Tim-

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otheos of Miletus, and the Auletes Pronomos of Thebes. Both of them have to do with a technical development of musical instruments. Timotheos (about 450 – 360) was a pupil of Phrynis, and like his teacher famous as composer of Citharodic Nomoi.¹¹ He was notorious because of his arrogance, which shows itself in two fragments.¹² Timotheos is said to have composed amongst other poems 19 Citharodic Nomoi, 18 Dithyrambs and 21 Hymns,¹³ of which titles and fragments are preserved.¹⁴ We have also the second half of the Nomos Persai on a papyrus of the 4th century BC, affording better understanding of the structure of the Nomos and the rhythmic peculiarities of Timotheos.¹⁵ In the sphragis of the Persai (l. 202– 236) Timotheos draws a line from the musical achievements of Orpheus via Terpander’s contribution to his own person, claiming for himself the invention of the cithara with eleven strings.¹⁶ As Stefan Hagel has demonstrated, the virtuoso cithara was equipped with eleven strings not in order to increase the compass of the instrument, but in order to introduce alternative strings, which allowed to play different harmoniai on the same instrument without retuning individual strings.¹⁷ Thus, he had the possibility to introduce manifold modulations (μεταβολαί), which were one of the stumbling-blocks of the conservative opposition. Pronomos of Thebes (about 400 BC)¹⁸ was a renowned virtuoso on the aulos. He is credited with the invention of the poly-modal aulos, on which it was possible to play different harmoniai. A famous vase-painting (Naples H 3240, about 400 BC) shows him in the center of a rehearsal for a satyr play of the poet Demetrios, who is depicted also with the text of his play, a papyrus scroll, in hands. Again, Stefan Hagel¹⁹ helps to understand this invention. The archaic and early classic auloi for the Dorian, Phrygian and Lydian harmonia, two pipes with four finger-holes and a thumb-hole each, were limited to one harmonia and two tetrachords. The late classic ‘Proslambanomenos Aulos’ expanded the compass until the proslambanomenos of the respective tonos, which made it possible to

 Wilamowitz 1903; PMG nr. 777– 804; Hordern 2002.  Fr. 796; 802 Hordern.  Suda s.v. Τιμόϑεοϛ; Hordern 2002, 9 f.  Hordern 2002, 10 – 14.  Hordern 2002, nr. 791.  Persai 221 f.: πρῶτοϛ ποικιλόμουσον ᾽Ορ/φεὺϛ υν ἐτέκνωσεν; 225 f.: Τέρπανδροϛ δ᾽ ἐπὶ τῷ δέκα / ζεῦξε Μοῦσαν ἐν ᾠδαῖϛ; 229 – 31: νῦν δὲ Τιμόϑεοϛ μέτροιϛ / ῥυϑμοῖϛ τ᾽ ἑνδεκακρουμάτοιϛ / κίϑαριν ἐξανατέλλει.  Hagel 2010, 76 – 87.  Pausanias 9.12.5, Athenaios 631e. See West 1992, 87, 366 f.  Hagel 2009, 393 – 413 (‘Early auloi’), 290 – 292; 319 – 323; 332– 343 (‘Proslambanomenos Aulos’), 343 – 351; 361– 364 (‘Hellenistic Tonoi-Aulos’), 351– 361 (‘Roman Imperial Auloi’).

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sound the Nete and higher notes by overblowing in the twelfth. The next step, the ‘Tonoi Aulos’, has sliders which close the three lowest holes, and alternative finger-holes at the other end. This technique gave Pronomos the possibility to play different harmoniai on the same instrument. The ‘Roman Imperial Aulos’ was armed with rotable collars instead of sliders.²⁰

6 Politics 1341 a17 – b18: Instruments It goes without saying that the classic seven-stringed lyra just as the classic nonmodulating aulos were technically within reach of amateurish music-making, whereas the expensive instruments for the virtuosi about 400 BC could no more have a place in education. Nevertheless, Aristotle excludes in the next section (1341 a175– b1) not only the auloi, but the cithara and all similar stringed instruments with the exception of the lyra from the use in education (1341 a18/19: οὔτε γὰρ αὐλοὺϛ εἰϛ παιδείαν ἀκτέον οὔτ᾽ ἄλλο τι τεχνικὸν ὄργανον, οἷον κιϑάραν κἂν εἴ τι ἕτερόν ἐστιν). The reason is the professional character (τεχνικόν) of the instruments, which had been apparent after the inventions of the polymodal aulos by Pronomos and the eleven strings by Timotheos. Later, Aristotle excludes other stringed instruments, either because they aimed only at the pleasure of the listeners (1341 a40: τὰ πρὸϛ ἡδονὴν συντείνοντα) or because they required technical skill (1341 b1: πάντα τὰ δεόμενα χειρουργικῆϛ ἐπιστήμηϛ), or both. Aristotle’s catalogue of unwelcome instruments recalls the Socrates of Plato on the Politeia, who excludes, besides the aulos, the spindle-harp (τρίγωνον), other types of harps (πηκτίϛ) and similar instruments from the ideal state because of their many strings, which allow to play more than one harmonia (III 399 CD: Τριγώνων ἄρα καὶ πηκτίδων καὶ πάντων ὀργάνων ὅσα πολύχορδα καὶ πολυαρμόνια, δημιουργοὺϛ οὐ θρέψωμεν). It is interesting that Plato does not yet banish the cithara (III 399 D7: λύρα … καὶ κιϑάρα λείπεται κατὰ πόλιν χρήσιμα). Aristotle adds to the Platonic catalogue, besides the aulos, the cithara and three more stringed instruments, first the barbitos, a lower variant of the lyra, which is depicted until 400 BC on vase pictures as familiar in the symposion, then the heptagonon, an unknown type of harp, and the sambyke, a small and high pitched type of harp. Τρίγωνον and πηκτίϛ appear on vase-pictures in the hands of women, either in familiar context or for the amusement in the context of the symposion. This holds good for the aulos also. Countless pictures on vases show hetaeras playing the aulos in the symposion in unequivocal erotic contexts.

 Wegner 1949, 232, pl. 25.

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Interspersed among the stringed instruments is a long digression about the aulos (1341 a18 – 38), who shares with the professional stringed instruments the deficiency that it does not improve the manners and virtues of the children listening to it. A special deficiency of the aulos is the different character of the instrument: ‘Again, the aulos is not a moral instrument (ἠϑικόν) but rather one that excites the emotions (ὀργιαστικόν), so that it should be used in the kinds of circumstances where the spectacle offers more potential for κάϑαρσιϛ than for learning’ (1341 a21– 24, transl. Barker). Another deficiency is the fact that the aulos-player, unlike the lyra-player, cannot play and sing simultaneously (1341 a24/25). Thus aulos-playing, devoid of the meaningful word, cannot contribute to the education of player and listener. Of course, the argument is a weak one, given the possibility of citharodia. But it mirrors the deep distrust of every kind of pure instrumental music, which transpires in Plato’s Laws: ‘[componists] setting melody and rhythm without words, and using the kithara and the aulos without the voice, a practice in which it is extremely difficult – since rhythm and harmonia occur with no words – to understand what it intended and what worthwhile representation it is like’ (Laws II 669 E: μέλοϛ δ’ αὖ καὶ ῥυθμὸν ἄνευ ῥημάτων, ψιλῇ κιϑαρίσει τε καὶ αὐλήσει προσχρώμενοι, ἐν οἷϛ δὴ παγχάλεπον ἄνευ λόγου γιγνόμενον ῥυθμὸν τε καὶ ἁρμονίαν γιγνώσκειν ὅτι τε βούλεται, transl. Barker). In this section two new termini are introduced, ὀργιαστικόν denoting religious excitement and κάϑαρσιϛ in the sense of relief of affect. The former (ὀργιαστικόν) is an Aristotelian ἅπαξ λεγόμενον. It reappears only once, in Aristotle Politics 1342 b3, again in connection with the aulos, and the Phrygian harmonia. The cognate expression ἐξοργιάζοντα τὴν ψυχὴν μέλη (melodies which stir the soul to religious frenzy) appears only once (Politics 1342 a9/10) in connection with the κάϑαρσιϛ, and later only twice in Philodem, in connection with bacchic ecstasy.²¹ The latter terminus (κάϑαρσιϛ) reappears later several times (1341 b38/ 39, 1342 a11.14/15) and is better explained in its context. The orgiastic character of the aulos and its destination for solistic instrumental music without the support of the word entitled the forefathers, according to Aristotle, to exclude the use of the aulos from the education and from the life of free citizen, which had been usual before (1341 a26– 28: διὸ καλῶϛ ἀπεδοκίμασαν οἱ πρότερον αὐτοῦ τὴν χρῆσιν ἐκ τῶν νέων καὶ τῶν ἐλευϑέρων, καίπερ χρησάμενοι τὸ πρῶτον αὐτῷ). It is interesting that Aristotle (or his source) tries to find a chronological frame for this development: Before the Persian wars, the Greeks, because of their affluence (εὐπορία), had more leisure. And before and after them, because

 Philodem, De Musica col. 67.3, p. 130 Delattre; 96.8, p. 185 Delattre.

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of their deeds, with increased self-conscience, they were eager to learn indiscriminately (1341 a28– 31). Thus, they introduced aulos-play into education (1341 a32: διὸ καὶ τὴν αὐλητικὴν ἤγαγον πρὸϛ τὰϛ μαϑήσειϛ).

7 Instruments on Vase-Paintings Aristotle’s report is confirmed by Homer and vase paintings: the auloi are known as oriental instruments since the Doloneia in the Iliad (10, 13: αὐλῶν συρίγγων τ᾽ ἐνοπὴν); they accompany dancing on the description of Achilles’ shield (18,495: αὐλοὶ φόρμιγγέϛ τε βοὴν ἔχον). On the ‘Chigikanne’ (Rom, Villa Giulia, 640 BC) the auloi lead the phalanx of hoplites in war,²² as it was still usual in Sparta in the fifth century BC.²³ Since 570 they appear in the hands of the attendants of Dionysus, the Silenes,²⁴ and are used by hetaeras in the symposium in order to amuse drinking young men.²⁵ The use of the aulos in education can be easily checked by F. A. Becks Album of Greek Education, which shows that from 500 BC the aulos was part of musical education. For the education of young boys, the examples cover the first half of the fifth century BC and stop completely after 450 BC There are three examples for teaching of playing the aulos with or without the help of a stringed instrument,²⁶ three examples for the aulos in unspecified educational context,²⁷ and seven examples for teaching melodies with the help of the aulos.²⁸

 Simon 1981, pl. 25/26; VII; pp. 48 f.  See Thucydides 5.70: Λακεδαιμόνιοι [χωροῦντεϛ] δὲ βραδέωϛ καὶ ὑπὸ αὐλητῶν πολλῶν νόμῳ ἐγκαϑεστώτων.  See Simon 1981, pl. 52/53 (Florenz, 570/65, Hephaestus, Silen with aulos; XVI-XVII (Asby Castle, 530 BC, Dionysus, Silens with auloi), pl. 120/121 (München, 500/490, Silens with aulos, Dionysus, Maenads).  See Simon 1981, pl. 110 (Basel, 515 BC, Hetaera with aulos, joung men with win cup).  Beck 1975, nr. 97 (Wien, 500 – 470, pupil aulos-playing, teacher listening), nr. 98 (London, 470 BC, pupil aulos-playing, teacher listening), nr. 100 (pupil aulos-playing, teacher playing the barbitos).  Beck 1975, nr. 63 (Berlin, 450 BC, three pupils in the schoolroom, one of them with an aulos in hand. On the wall of the schoolroom tablets), nr. 9 (Schwerin, 460 BC, music lessons, one pupil with aulos in hand), nr. 113 (Oxford, 500 – 450, Aulosbläser in front of Herm, 2 pupils).  Beck 1975, nr. 54 (Berlin, 485 BC, the famous Duris cup, teacher playing the aulos, pupil singing), nr. 101 (Melbourne, 450 BC, teacher playing the aulos, pupil singing), nr. 115/16 (New York, 480 – 70, two pairs of aulos-playing teachers and two singing pupils), nr. 117 (Brüssel, 475 BC, teacher playing the aulos, pupil singing), nr. 119 (Oxford, 485 BC, teacher playing the aulos, pupil reading in a scroll, singing?), nr. 120 (München 475 – 50, teacher playing the aulos, pupil singing), nr. 121 (Leyden, 475 – 50, teacher playing the aulos, pupil singing). For the Duris-Cup (Beck 53/54) see the coloured reproductions in Brinkmann 2008, Abb. 98/99.

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The role of the aulos in the education of girls is different. There are some examples for the aulos in the contexts of private music-making.²⁹ But the bulk of the examples, which covers the period from 500 – 420 BC, is uniform: there are ten pictures of an aulos-playing female teacher training a girl for dance with krotala.³⁰ In two cases the girls dance to the music of the aulos without krotala.³¹ These scenes look rather like training of girls for the familiar profession of hetaeras. Vase-pictures give evidence for the widespread use of the aulos in the first half of the fifth century BC in every part of public and private life.³² For this fact, Aristotle quotes two examples. In Sparta, some χορηγόϛ (sponsor of the Chorus) played the aulos himself (1341 a33/34: καὶ γὰρ ἐν Λακεδαίμονί τιϛ χορηγὸϛ αὐτὸϛ ηὔλησε τῷ χορῷ), though it was usual to allot to the Chorus a hired professional as aulos-player. And in Athens nearly every free citizen (ἐλεύϑεροϛ) was able to play the aulos. The Athenian example for this is puzzling: Aristotle quotes an honourary inscription of some Thrasippus, who was the sponsor for the Chorus for a poet of Old Comedy, Ecphantides.³³ This poet was a contemporary of Cratinus, who quoted a fragment of him.³⁴ The usual form of such an honourary inscription of 476 BC, concerning the Phoenissae of Phrynichus and the sponsor of the Chorus, Themistocles, is quoted by Plutarch:³⁵ Θεμιστοκλῆϛ Φρεάρριοϛ ἐχορήγει, Φρύνιχοϛ ἐδίδασκεν, ᾽Αδείμαντοϛ ἦρχεν. Of course, such an inscription cannot give evidence for the widespread (ἐπεχωρίασεν) ability of Athenian freeborn citizens to play the aulos. Perhaps the Thrasippus-Inscription mentioned that the sponsor Thrasippus (like the unknown Spartan χορηγόϛ), or the poet Ecphantides himself,³⁶ accompanied the Chorus with the aulos. The vase pictures give evidence for a change of musical taste after 450 BC, for which Aristotle tries to find an explanation: ‘Their experience later caused them to reject it [the aulos], when they were better able to judge what is conducive to virtue and what is not. Similarly, they rejected many of the instruments used by the ancients’ (1341 a38/39: ὕστερον δ᾽ ἀπεδοκιμάσϑη, διὰ τῆϛ πείραϛ

 Beck 1975, nr. 400 (Petersburg, 450 – 20, girl with aulos, girl with lyra), Beck nr. 403 (Hamburg, 440 BC, girl with aulos, girl with lyra), nr. 404 (440 – 30, girl with aulos, girl with lyra).  Beck 1975, nrs. 374– 383; 391.  Beck 1975, nrs. 379; 395 (twice).  See Wegner 1949, 187– 198.  See PCG V T 3.  Ecphantides fr. 4 = Cratinus fr. 361.1.  Plutarch, Vita Themistoclis 5.5.  Thus the scholion to 1341 a35/36: Ὁ Θράσιπποϛ χορηγήσαϛ πίνακα τῷ ᾿Εκφαντίδῃ αὐλήσαντι ἐν τῇ χορηγίᾳ.

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αὐτῆϛ, βέλτιον δυναμένων κρίνειν τὸ πρὸϛ ἀρετήν καὶ τὸ μὴ πρὸϛ ἀρετὴν συντεῖνον; transl. Barker). There follows the aforesaid supplement to the list of unwelcome instruments, following the Socrates of Plato in the Republic. The ability to judge what is conducive to virtue and what is not is labelled since Abert as ‘Ethoslehre’.³⁷ Andrew Barker has admirably illustrated Aristotle’s contribution to the ‘Ethos’ of harmonies and rhythms, which draws on Plato’s famous music chapter in Republic book three. For the theory of rhythm (Republic 3, 399 E; see Aristotle, Politics 1340 b7– 10) Plato refers to Damon of Oa as source (᾽Αλλὰ ταῦτα μέν … καὶ μετὰ Δάμωνοϛ βουλευσόμεϑα). By extension, the same might be guessed for the chapters about harmonies (Republic 3, 399 D; see Aristotle, Politics 1340 a40-b5) and instruments (Republic 3, 399 C, see Aristotle, Politics 1341 a17-b1). Indeed, Francois Laserre included these paragraphs into his controversial collection of Damonian fragments.³⁸ Damon was political and cultural counsellor of Pericles.³⁹ After the construction of the Odeion of Pericles in 444 BC and the first Panathenaic contest in the new building in 443 BC he fell into disgrace in the polis for μεγαλομανία and τυραννοφιλία.⁴⁰ The τύραννος aimed at was of course Pericles.⁴¹ So Damon was ostracized after 443 BC and could not return to Athens earlier than 433 BC. Before his ostracismos he published his ‘Areopagiticus’, a pamphlet on music and education, of which scanty fragments remain. The ‘Areopagiticus’ might have been one reason for his ostracismos. Andrew Barker has assembled the elements of his theories carefully.⁴² But it is utterly improbable that Damon’s controversial pamphlet alone could have changed the opinion of the public concerning music so radically. For the elimination of the aulos after 450 BC we must look for other reasons. Aristotle gives us a hint in his last section on auloi.

8 Athena, Marsyas and the Auloi ‘The fable told by the ancients about the auloi also has a sound rational basis: they say that Athena invented the auloi and then threw them away. It makes a good story to say that the goddess did this because she was put out by the way it distorted her face; but it is more likely to have been because training in

     

Abert 1899. Barker 2005. Laserre 1954, 74– 79. Fr. A 2 and 7 Diehls. Fr. 1, 4 and 6 Diels. Cratinus, Cheirones fr. 191 and 240 Kock. Barker 1984, 168 – 169.

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aulos-playing contributes nothing to the intelligence, knowledge and skill being things that we attribute to Athena’ (1341 b2– 8; transl. Barker). The invention of the auloi by Athena is told by Pindar in 490 BC in the twelfth Pythian ode for the competition of the aulos-player Midas of Akragas. Athena invented the instrument, which she used first for the imitation of the lamentations of the sisters of the Gorgo Medusa, who had been beheaded by Perseus with the help of Athena. Later, she did not throw the instrument away, as the later sources tell, but gave it as a gift to mortal men together with a solo-piece for auloi, the lamentations of the sisters of Medusa, for which she coined the title ‘Nomos Polykephalos’. The shame of aulos-playing Athena appears later, in the Marsyas of Melanippides of Melos (about 480 – 430 BC).⁴³ Athena and her distorted face is depicted on vase-pictures: On a crater of the fourth century BC, Athena playing the aulos sees her face in a mirror, which is hold at her by a young man.⁴⁴ The version of the legend, which makes Athena throw away the disfiguring instrument, became canonical, as we can see by the famous bronze-group of Athena and Marsyas, a chef-oeuvre of the sculptor Myron of Erythrai, which was installed about 440 BC before the western front of the Parthenon⁴⁵ during the construction of the Periclean Parthenon, which was erected from 447– 432 BC by Ictinus and Callicrates. The Liebig-Haus in Frankfurt has the best replica in marble of the Myronian Athena; the best marble replica of the Myronian Marsyas is housed by the Museum of the Vatican. In the garden of the Liebig-Haus there is a bronze replica of the whole group, which was founded in 1982.⁴⁶ In Brinkmann there is a coloured copy of this group. Athena just has thrown away the auloi, which the curious Marsyas discovers in the same moment. It is obvious that the Athena-Marsyas-group on such a prominent place, under the western pediment of the Parthenon, must bear a political message of Pericles, like the figures of the Periclean Parthenon did. While the figures of the eastern pediment represented the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, the figures of the western pediment represented the struggle of Poseidon, offering the Athenians a fountain of salt water, and Athena, offering the olive tree. But what is the meaning of the Athene-Marsyas-Group? Some have seen hostility against Thebes,⁴⁷ from where the best professional aulos-players came.⁴⁸ But the legendary Marsyas had nothing to do with Boeotia, as he was at home in Phrygia,

     

Athenaios Deipnosophists 616 e: ἔρρετ᾽ αἴσχεα, σώματι λύμα / οὐ με τᾷδ᾽ ἐγὼ κακότατι δίδωμι. Brinkmann 2008, Abb. 17, Boston, fourth century BC. Pausanias 1.24.1. Brinkmann 2008, Abb. 47. See Brinkmann 2008, 78 – 79. See West 1992, 366, who lists for the fifth and early fourth century 14 aulos-Virtuosi from Thebes.

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as everybody knew. That aulos-players, which were hired for the accompaniment of the Chorus, tried already about 490 BC to push forward their part at the expense of the Chorus, transpires in the famous Pratinas-Fragment.⁴⁹ Interesting is the context in Athenaios: ‘But Pratinas of Phlius, when auletes and dancers who performed for hire took over the dance-floors, took offence at the way the auletes failed to play accompaniments for the Choruses, as had been traditional, but the Choruses, instead, sang accompaniments to the auletes’ (Athenaios 617 bc, transl. Barker). The author of Pseudo-Plutarch, De Musica dates these quarrels in the second half of the fifth century. ‘In the old days, up to the time of Melanippides, the composer of dithyrambs, the auletes were generally paid by the poets, which shows that poetry took pride of place, and the auletes were subordinate to their instructors, but later this custom too was abandoned’ (De Musica 1141 cd, transl. Barker). But these facts explain neither the abolition of the aulos in education, which is attested by vase-painting, nor the prominent position of Myron’s Athena-Marsyas-Group before the Periclean Parthenon. The solution must be sought in the political context. In 477 BC Cimon negociated the Ionic-Attic confederation, the cash of which was transferred in 454 BC from Delos to Athens. The place of it was later the opisthodom of the Parthenon. In 448 BC Pericles negotiated a peace-treaty with Persia and in 446 a peace-treaty with Sparta, which allowed Athens to transform the Ionic-Attic confederation into a naval empire. This situation created a new self-conscience of the Athenians, connected with an outgrouping of oriental barbarians. This might be the message of Myron’s group: Athene, the essence of intelligence, knowledge and skill (remember Politics 1341 b6 – 8) opposed to the barbarian from Phrygia, to whom the orgiastic and irrational instrument matches much better. Of course, everybody knew the pursuit of the legend: Marsyas, having trained aulos-play until virtuosity, aroused the jealousy of Apollo, who was victor in a tricky contest, and ordered Marsyas to be skinned. In the following section, Aristotle comes back to his topic, education: ‘We reject, then, a technical education in instruments and in performance on them. By ‘technical’ education we mean that which equips people for competitive performances’ (1341 b8 – 10, transl. Barker). Following Plato in the Laws (659 bc) Aristotle points to the fact that playing in competitive performances does not promote the virtue of the player himself, but only the pleasure of the listeners, which is a job for hired people and not for free men, and might deprave the players, who aim at assimilation to the depraved character of a depraved audience.

 Pratinas, fr. 708 PMG.

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9 Harmonies and Rhythms After the chapter on unwelcome instruments – namely all instruments with the exception of the seven-stringed lyre ‒ Aristotle embarks on the inquiry of harmonies, melodies and rhythms. This last chapter of Politics is interspersed with many references on the various sources used and is conveniently analysed following the hints given by these references. At the beginning, Aristotle gives a sketch of his program: ‘We must now turn then, to consider the harmoniai and the rhythms [in general] and with respect to education. We must ask whether all the harmoniai and all the rhythms should be used, or whether a division should be made, and next whether the same division should be prescribed by the people who take pains about education (τοῖϛ πρὸϛ παιδείαν διαπονοῦσι), or if they need a different one’ (1341 b19 – 23, transl. Barker). Of course, the starting point here is again the chapter about music in Plato’s Republic (III 399 – 400). But unlike Plato, Aristotle does not forget, as we shall see later, that there is music outside the educational programme for children also, which has to admit the most severe restrictions. The adult free citizen (ὁ ἐλεύϑεροϛ καὶ πεπαιδευμένοϛ) is able to listen to music with more licenses, while for the working people (βάναυσοι καὶ ϑῆτεϛ) there are no restrictions. This way Aristotle is able to accommodate his educational programme better than Plato to the realities of life and the situation of his time. It is interesting also, that Aristotle, unlike Plato, does not limit his analysis to harmoniai and rhythm, but considers μελῳδία also, like Aristoxenos, who treated as last chapter of harmonics μελοποιΐα:⁵⁰ ‘Thirdly, as we see that music consists in melodic composition and rhythms, we must neither forget the educative power that each of them has, nor neglect to ask whether music with good melody or music with good rhythms is to be preferred’ (1341 b 23 – 26, transl. Barker). The last sentence reminds us of a perhaps Aristoxenian dictum of De Musica: ‘Nowadays people’s interest is in the melody, whereas in the past they concentrated on the rhythm’ (οἱ μὲν γὰρ νῦν φιλομελεῖϛ, οἱ δὲ τότε φιλόρρυϑμοι; De Musica 1138 BC, transl. Barker). When checking this program of Aristotle against the rest of Politics, we have to admit that Aristotle just accomplished his model of different strata of music, which match the needs of the different strata of the people in the ideal state. About the moral qualification of rhythms and melopoiia we read nothing. Besides, the following pages are a medley of quotations from different sources, to which Aristotle is content to refer: ‘Now since I believe that many excellent things have been said  See Cleonides 1.179 Jan, 14.207 Jan.

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about these matters both by some contemporary musical experts (τῶν δὲ νῦν μουσικῶν ἐνίουϛ) and by those philosophers who have been well-acquainted with education in music, I shall hand over to them the people who wish to pursue a precise account of every detail, and deal with the issues only in general terms for the present, stating no more than their outlines’ (1341 b27– 32, transl. Barker). The philosophers quoted here might be Damon, Plato and Heraclides Ponticus, the contemporary musicologists (οἱ νῦν) Aristoxenos and others. Aristotle adopts from philosophers a threefold division of melodies, for which we cannot quote a definite source: ‘We accept the division of melodies that various philosophers make, classifying some as moral (ἠϑικά), some as invigorating (πρακτικά) and some as inspirational (ἐνϑουσιαστικά). They set out also the type of harmonia that is appropriate to each of them, a different one for each type of melody’ (1341 b32– 36, transl. Barker). The obiter dictum of Aristotle, that solo-dancing is able to imitate ἤϑη καὶ πάϑη καὶ πράξειϛ (Poetics 1447 a28), or Aristotle’s typology of Epos and tragedies (ἁπλή, πεπλεγμένη, ἠϑική, παϑητική: 1455 b32– 37 and 1459 b7– 09) does not help.

10 Paideia, Diagoge and Katharsis Aristotle takes pains to reconcile the division of his source with his own threefold division of the aims of music, which he gives first in chapter 5 as παιδεία, παιδιά (= ἀνάπαυσιϛ = λύπηϛ ἰατρεία) and διαγωγή (1339 b13/14). This division recurs with modifications in chapter 7 as παιδεία, κάϑαρσιϛ and διαγωγή (= ἀνάπαυσιϛ): ‘But we say that music should be used to give benefits of several sorts, not just one: it should aim at both education (παιδεία) and κάϑαρσιϛ (I shall not now [νῦν μὲν] enlarge on what I mean by κάϑαρσιϛ, but I shall explain it more clearly later [πάλιν … ἐροῦμεν], in my work on Poetics, and thirdly at amusement (διαγωγή) for the sake of relaxation (ἄνεσιν) and relief from tension (ἀνάπαυσιν)’ (1341 b36 – 41, transl. Barker). The meaning of κάϑαρσιϛ in the Poetics of Aristotle shall be explained at the end of this paper. It is interesting that Aristotle refers in the Politics to the Poetics as a treatise which he has not yet written. This means that the layer of Politics we are dealing with now is still older. Thus, the meaning of the terminus κάϑαρσιϛ must be explained first only on the basis of Politics. The terminus κάϑαρσιϛ itself was coined before Aristotle. The simple word καϑαίρω (to clean, purge) has many derivations. Interesting is κάϑαρμα in the sense of ritual purification in the Eumenides of Aeschylus (458 ΒC), where Apollo cleanses Orestes from blood-guilt

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(μύσοϛ) by washing his hands with the blood of a just butchered young pig.⁵¹ Aristotle himself uses κάϑαρσιϛ in the sense of ritual purification of the statue of Artemis polluted by Orestes.⁵² Very often κάϑαρσιϛ is used as a medical term,⁵³ denoting the excretion of morbid humours with the help of a medicament, the effect of which in the body is described in the Problemata as κάϑαρσιϛ,⁵⁴ which might be the evacuation (κουφίζεσϑαι) of a full stomach by a vomitive, of excrements by a laxative, or of a surplus of bile by a cure with hellebore.⁵⁵ Aristoxenos ascribed the terminus κάϑαρσιϛ to the Pythagoreans, who used medical means for the therapy of the body, and musical means for the therapy of the soul.⁵⁶ Aristoxenos himself seems to have used music for psychotherapy, as Theophrast in a treatise About the Enthousiasmos mentioned.⁵⁷ Musical therapy is ascribed also to Damon in a story, which sneaked later into the biography of Pythagoras himself: Damon encountered an aulos-girl playing a Phrygian melody for tipsy youngsters who behaved crazily. After he had ordered her to play a Dorian melody instead, they stopped immediately their mad behaviour.⁵⁸ It is interesting to see that the musical therapy alleged to Damon uses the method of allopathy: in order to check the enthousiastic effect of Phrygian melodies the aulos girl has to play a stately Dorian melody.⁵⁹ We shall see that the musical κάϑαρσιϛ of Aristotle uses instead a homoeopathic method. Unlike Plato, who banishes in the Republic (399) all harmonies except the Dorian and the Phrygian, Aristotle is able by his threefold division of aims of music, to use all possible harmonies, by distributing them on different levels: ‘It is clear, then, that all the harmoniai should be used, but not all of them in the same way. The most moral ones (ἠϑικώταται) should be used for education, while the most invigorating (πρακτικαί) and inspirational (ἐνϑουσιαστικαί) ones should be used when we listen to other people performing’ (1342 a1– 4, transl. Barker). Thus, the case of educational

 Eumenides 283: Φοίβου καϑαρμοῖϛ ἠλάϑη χοιροκτόνοιϛ.  Aristotle, Poetics 1455 b13 – 15: οἷον ἐν τῷ ᾽Ορέστῃ ἡ μανία δι᾽ ἧϛ ἐλήφϑη (IT 260 – 339) καὶ ἡ σωτηρία διὰ τῆϛ καϑάρσεωϛ (IT 1033 – 1055; 1163 – 1221).  See Flashar 1956.  Ps. Aristotle, Problemata 864 a31 ff: καὶ καλεῖται τοῦτο κάϑαρσιϛ.  See Horace Sat. II 3.82/83, A.P. 300 – 302.  Wehrli 1967, fr. 26: ὅτι οἱ Πυϑαγορικοί, ὡϛ ἔφη ᾽Αριστόξενοϛ, καϑάπερ ἐχρῶντο τοῦ μὲν σώματοϛ διὰ τῆϛ ἰατρικῆϛ, τῆϛ δὲ ψυχῆϛ διὰ τῆϛ μουσικῆϛ.  Aristoxenos, fr. 6 Wehrli.  Galen, De Hipp. et Plat. 5.455 Müller; Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 9.926 Eyssenhardt. The story is based on Pythagoras by Philodemus, De Musica col. 42.39 – 45 p. 69 Delattre, Cicero De consiliis suis, fr. 2 Orelli; Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.10.32, Boethius Institutio Musica 1. 1.  See Barker 2005, 141.

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music, παιδεία, seems settled: children must learn to sing and to play the lyre themselves, using morally appropriate harmonies like the Dorian and the respective melodies and, as we may guess, appropriate rhythms, in order to develop the ability to judge about good and bad music. The two other aims of music, κάϑαρσιϛ and διαγωγή, need more explication. Aristotle assumes that the soul of every man is affected by passions (πάϑη) like pity, fear and inspired ecstasy, though with different intensity. It is important that these three passions are mentioned as examples (οἷον ἔλεοϛ, φόβοϛ καὶ ἐνϑουσιασμόϛ), without excluding other similar passions. We notice that the definition of the tragedy in the Poetics (δι’ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παϑημάτων κάϑαρσιν: 1449 b27/28) is prepared. But here Aristotle selects the ἐνϑουσιασμόϛ as example: (1342 a7– 11, transl. Barker): ‘Some people are capable of being entirely possessed by this last disturbance (κίνησιϛ), but we observe that when these people make use of melodies that greatly excite the soul (ἐξοργιάζουσι μέλεσι), put of the resources of sacred melody (ἱερῶν μελῶν), they are put right again, just as if they had been given medication and purgation (ὥσπερ ἰατρείαϛ τυχόνταϛ καὶ καϑάρσεωϛ)’. This example makes evident that the Aristotelian terminus κάϑαρσιϛ has a twofold root, namely ritual and medicine. Besides, it appears that the Aristotelian treatment by κάϑαρσιϛ is a homoeopathic one. Enthousiasmos is created by orgiastic melodies. The soul is discharged (κουφίζεσϑαι) of it by an emotional crisis, which is provoked by still more supply of the same orgiastic music. This is the peculiarity of the Aristotelian κάϑαρσιϛ, which is far away from the primitive allopathy (Dorian against Phrygian) alleged to Damon (see above). But the passions pity and fear and other similar passions are not forgotten. They may be aroused and treated in the same way as the enthousiamos by listening to the respective melodies, which are not specified here, and after an emotional crisis the afflicted shall be discharged of the respective passions: ‘This must also happen to those who are particularly prone to pity or fear or emotion of any kind (τοὺϛ ἐλεήμοναϛ καὶ τοὺϛ φοβητικοὺϛ καὶ τοὺϛ ὅλωϛ παϑητικούϛ) and to others to the extent to which such things affect them: katharsis and alleviation come to all, and plesure with them’ (1342 a11– 15, transl. Barker). Again we see that pity and fear are only examples for a wider range of possible passions. The terminus for the discharge after the emotional crisis, κουφίζεσϑαι, is borrowed from the medicine, as we can see in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Problems.⁶⁰ It is important that the discharge of the respective passions is bound up with pleasure (κουφίζεσϑαι μεθ’ ἡδονῆϛ).

 Problems 868 a36: κουφίζεσϑαι ἐκ τῶν περιττωμάτων (about the excretion of superfluous

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Thus, the case of the enthousiastic melodies is settled also. Their aim is the release of passions by homoeopathic musical therapy, which was usual in the bacchic ritual with Phrygian aulos-music, as we shall see. About the invigorating melodies (πρακτικὰ μέλη) Aristotle has nothing to say ‒ if we do not adopt a convincing correction of the transmitted text by Sauppe: ‘In the same way invigorating melodies also provide harmless delight for people (ὁμοίωϛ δὲ καὶ τὰ μέλη τὰ πρακτικὰ (Sauppe; καϑαρτικὰ codd.) παρέχει χαρὰν ἀβλαβῆ τοῖϛ ἀνϑρώποιϛ; 1342 a15/16, transl. Barker). Thus, the invigorating melodies have found their aim also: it is harmless pleasure which contributes to amusement (διαγωγή), for the sake of relaxation (ἄνεσιν) and relief from tension (ἀνάπαυσιν)’.

11 The Spectators in the Theatre Aristotle does not specify the musical means for enthousiastic and invigorating melodies. He requests only the permission for the contestants in the theatre, to use the respective harmoniai and melodies. This leads to a lengthy excursus about the spectators of theatrical performances, which consist of free and educated men (ἐλεύϑεροι καὶ πεπαιδευμένοι) on the one hand, of vulgar people, artisans, hired menials and similar folks on the other hand (1342 a19 – 21), which must have their spectacles and contests for relief from tension (ἀνάπαυσιϛ) also. The souls of these folks are said to be bent away from their natural composure, just as there are deviating harmonies and melodies which are high-pitched and over-chromatized. But as everybody enjoys pleasure according to his nature (ποιεῖ δὲ ἡδονὴν ἑκάστοιϛ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν οἰκεῖον), the contestants in theatrical spectacles must have the liberty to use this kind of music in front of this class of spectators also. This section reminds of a puzzling chapter in Plato’s Laws, where he installs different competitions for choral lyric and dance for children, young men and maidens on the one hand, and monodic genres on the other hand, which are imitative (περὶ μονῳδίαν τε καὶ μιμητικὴν). These competitions are reserved for Rhapsodes, Citharodes and Aulos-Players.⁶¹ Aristotle, however, in order to defend the theatrical spectacles against Plato, admits only the lower class and adult citizens as listeners of invigorating and enthousiastic music in the theater, while he limits the music for children: ‘But for education, as we have said, we must use those melodies that are moral, and harmoniai of the same sort. The Dorian is of this kind, as we said

humours); 873 b21/22: παρ᾽ αὐτοῖϛ δὲ γενόμενοι οἱ αὐτοί, κουφισϑέντεϛ τοῦ πάϑουϛ (after intoxication by drunkennes).  Plato, Laws 6, 764– 766.

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earlier [sc. 1340 b3/4]’ (1342 a28– 30, transl. Barker). But this does not exclude other harmonies, insofar as they may be qualified as moral.

12 Two Polemics against the Socrates in the Republic It is puzzling that Aristotle seems to loosen his strict norm, the privileged position of the Dorian harmonia in education, in the last sections of Politics. This might perhaps find an explanation by a new source: ‘But we should accept any other harmonia that is recommended to us by those who are participants in the pursuits of philosophy and in musical education’ (1342 a31 δέχεσϑαι δὲ δεῖ κἄν τινα ἄλλην ἡμῖν δοκιμάζωσιν οἱ κοινωνοὶ τῆϛ ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ διατριβῆϛ καὶ τῆϛ περὶ μουσικὴν παιδείαϛ, transl. Barker). Earlier, Aristotle had already quoted contemporary musical experts (1341 b27/28: τῶν δὲ νῦν μουσικῶν ἐνίουϛ). We have to ask if the ‘participants in the pursuits of philosophy’ quoted for the polemics against the Socrates of the Republic in the last sections of Politics might be identified with Aristoxenos, the pupil of Aristotle. Therefore, we have to establish the biography of Aristoxenos:⁶² Aristoxenos was born in Tarentum. His floruit is the 111th Olympiad = 336– 332 (Fr. 1 Wehrli). He went over Mantinea to Corinthus, where he met Dionysius II after 344 BC. His visit to Thebes (Fr. 6 Wehrli) cannot be dated. When Aristotle entered the Platonic academy (367 BC), Aristoxenos was about 5 years old. When Plato died (347 BC), Aristoxenos was about 25 years old. This excludes an early contact of Aristoxenos with Aristotle. Later, Aristoxenos was a pupil of Aristotle (Fr. 1/ 2 Wehrli) in the peripatos (335/34– 322). After the death of Aristotle in 322 BC he applied for succession and scandalised about the election of Theophrastus (Fr. 1 Wehrli). Nevertheless, he was pupil of Theophrastus also and παράσιτοϛ of Neleus (Fr. 62 Wehrli). Thus, the older stratum of Politics, which we should like to assign to the adademic period of Aristotle (see above), cannot have been influenced by Aristoxenos. But it is possible that Aristotle later, after the foundation of his own school, the Peripatos, reworked the end of his manuscript (1342 a30 – 42 b34), wishing to integrate suggestions of his pupil Aristoxenos. The first polemic against the Socrates of Plato points to an inconsequence: Socrates retains in the musical chapter of the Republic (III 399) only the Phrygian along with the Dorian (οὐ καλῶϛ τὴν φρυγιστὶ μόνην καταλείπει μετὰ τῆϛ δωρι-

 See Wehrli 1967, fr. 1– 9, p. 47– 48.

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στί), while he dismisses all high-pitched and low-pitched harmonies.⁶³ On the other hand, Socrates banishes the aulos, the Phrygian instrument κατ᾽ ἐξοχήν, from the ideal state. This is the introduction of an interesting excursus on the Phrygian harmonia (1342 b3 – 12): ‘Among the harmoniai the Phrygian has the same power as does the aulos among instruments: both induce ecstasy and emotion (ὀργιαστικὰ καὶ παϑητικά). For all bacchic revelry and all dancing of that sort is done to the auloi more than to any other instrument, and these things also find what is appropriate to them in Phrygian melodies, out of all the harmoniai. Poetry itself makes it clear how the dithyramb is by common consent a Phrygian form’ (1342 b1– 7, transl. Barker). After this Aristotle adopts from his source (πολλὰ παραδείγματα λέγουσιν οἱ περὶ τὴν σύνεσιν ταύτην) an example, a story about Philoxenos’ dithyrambus Mysians.⁶⁴ According to it, Philoxenos tried to compose his Mysians in Dorian harmony, but the nature of the dithyrambus itself (ὑπὸ τῆϛ φύσεωϛ αὐτῆϛ) forced him back to the appropriate Phrygian harmonia.⁶⁵ The nucleus of this story might have been that Philoxenos used in the Mysians bold modulations of tonality. Indeed, for the dithyrambs of Philoxenos, Timotheos and Telestes modulations from Dorian to Phrygian and Lydian are attested.⁶⁶ This is confirmed by an other version of the same story, told evidently by Aristoxenos,⁶⁷ mentioning Philoxenos as an example for modulations from Hypodorian to Phrygian and Hypophrygian and finally to Dorian and Hyperdorian in his Mysians. This variant of the story makes sense. Evidently it was wrongly understood by Aristotle as a proof for the cogent Phrygian nature of the dithyrambus. The whole excursus about Phrygian must be integrated into the context of the Aristotelian polemic against the Socrates of Plato, who positioned Phrygian on a par with Dorian in the Republic (III 399) at the expense of the other, perhaps better qualified, harmoniai. Finally, Aristotle finds some new qualities of Dorian (1342 b12– 17): it is not only, according to general consent, the most steadfast and manly harmonia, but keeps also the middle position between the high-pitched and low-pitched harmonies. This is a central Aristotelian idea (ἔτι δ’ ἐπεὶ τὸ μέσον μὲν τῶν ὑπερβο-

 Plato, Republic 398 e: Τίνεϛ οὖν ϑρηνώδειϛ ἁρμονίαι … μειξολυδιστί … καὶ συντονολυδιστί … Τίνεϛ οὖν μαλακαί τε καὶ συμποτικαὶ τῶν ἁρμονιῶν; ᾽Ιαστί … καὶ λυδιστὶ αὖ τινεϛ χαλαραὶ καλοῦνται.  Aristotle Politics 1342, 10: διϑύραμβον τοὺϛ Μυσούϛ Reiz, Schneider; διϑύραμβον τοὺϛ μύϑουϛ codd.  For the Mysians, see West 1992, 364– 365.  Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De comp. Verb. 131 f.  Pseudo-Plutarch, De Musica 1142 F: ὁ ποιητήϛ {sc. Philoxenos}, οἷον εἰπεῖν, ἐν Μυσοῖϛ (Bergk, ἐν μούσοιϛ vel μούσαιϛ codd.).

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λῶν ἐπαινοῦμεν καὶ χρῆναι διώκειν φαμέν, 1342 b14/15). Therefore the Dorian must be privileged in the education of the youth. Yet, this does not exclude other harmoniai, as we shall see immediately. Only the Phrygian is ruled out completely by Aristotle. The last section (1342 b17– 34) is framed by two new aspects (σκοποί, ὅροι), the possible (δυνατὸν) and the proper (πρέπον), which are completed at the end to three by the Aristotelian μέσον: ‘everyone should set his hand to things that are possible and things that are fitting’ (1342 b18 – 20, transl. Barker). As this section seems to contradict the norm Aristotle has set out earlier (1342 a27– 29) by admitting low-pitched harmoniai (ἀνειμέναϛ ἁρμονίαϛ) with regard to elder people and the high-pitched variety of the Lydian to the children, Susemihl has attributed the whole section to an interpolator. We might prefer to attribute it again to a suggestion of Aristoxenos, which was imperfectly integrated by Aristotle: ‘For this reason some musical experts quite fairly find faults with Socrates for excluding the relaxed harmoniai from education’ (1342 b 23: διὸ καλῶϛ ἐπιτιμῶσι καὶ τοῦτο Σωκράτει τῶν περὶ τὴν μουσικήν τινεϛ, ὅτι τὰϛ ἀνειμέναϛ ἁρμονίαϛ ἀποδοκιμάσειεν εἰϛ τὴν παιδείαν; transl. Barker). With Aristotle might point to the same person as οἱ κοινωνοὶ τῆϛ ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ διατριβῆϛ καὶ τῆϛ περὶ τὴν μουσικὴν παιδείαϛ (1342 a31/32). The source for the story told about Philoxenos’ Mysians (1342 b8/9 οἱ περὶ τὴν σύνεσιν ταύτην) is, as we have seen, Aristoxenos (see above). A parallel to the two polemics against the Socrates in the Republic might point in the same direction: In chapters 17– 22 of De Musica of Pseudo-Plutarch the source, Aristoxenos, tries to explain by a series of examples, why the representants of good old music, the παλαιοί, used only a restricted compass of musical means: it was not because of ignorance (οὐκ ἀγνοίᾳ) but because of wilful preference (προαίρεσιϛ). This pattern (οὐκ ἀγνοίᾳ, ἀλλὰ διὰ προαίρεσιν) permeates the whole section and is extended to Plato also.⁶⁸ The last example stresses ‘that it was not through ignorance or lack of familiarity with them that Plato rejected the other styles, but because they were unsuitable for the kind of state he discusses’ (Δεδειγμένου δ’ ὅτι ὁ Πλάτων οὔτ’ ἀγνοίᾳ οὔτ’ ἀπειρίᾳ τὰ ἄλλα παρῃτήσατο, ἀλλ’ ὡϛ οὐ πρέποντα τοιαύτῃ πολιτείᾳ, transl. Barker). The προαίρεσιϛ of Plato, his will to regulate the education of the soldiers of the Ideal State, is clear enough. And the first example connects the ἄγνοια-προαίρεσιϛ-pattern with Aristoxenos:

 De Musica 1136 E (Plato), 1137 A (παλαιοί, Olympus, Terpander), 1137 Β (παλαιοί), 1137 D (Olympus, παλαιοί), 1137 Ε (Aeschylus, Phrynichus, Pancrates), 1137 Ε-F (Pancrates: οὐ δι’ ἄγνοιαν οὖν δηλονότι, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀπείχετο), 1138 A (contemporary conservatice componists: διὰ προαίρεσιν), 1138 (οἱ παλαιοὶ οὐ δι’ ἄγνοιαν, ἀλλὰ διὰ προαίρεσιν ἀπείχοντο), 1138 Ε (Plato).

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‘Since one of these harmonies [tense Lydian] is mournful and the other [slack Lydian] dissipated, it was only to be expected that Plato would reject them, and select Dorian as beeing appropriate for warlike and temperate men. This was most certainly not, as Aristoxenos says in the second book of his work On Music, because Plato was ignorant of the fact that the other two harmoniai can also be of use to a well-ordered state’ (1136 E-F: Τούτων δὴ τῶν ἁρμονιῶν τῆϛ μὲν ϑρηνῳδικῆϛ τινοϛ οὔσηϛ, τῆϛ δ’ ἐκλελυμένηϛ, εἰκότωϛ ὁ Πλάτων παραιτησάμενοϛ αὐτὰϛ τὴν Δωριστὶ ὡϛ πολεμικοῖϛ ἀνδράσι καὶ σώφροσιν ἁρμόζουσαν εἵλετο, οὐ μὰ Δι᾽ ἀγνοήσαϛ, ὡϛ ᾽Αριστόξενόϛ φησιν ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ τῶν μουσικῶν [fr. 82 Wehrli], ὅτι καὶ ἐν ἐκείναιϛ τι χρήσιμον ἦν πρὸϛ πολιτείαν φυλακικὴν; transl. Barker). The link between Aristoxenos in De Musica and Aristotle’s polemics against the Socrates in the Republic is the admission of low-pitched and high-pitched harmoniai beside the Dorian instead of the orgiastic Phrygian. But while Aristoxenos tries to explain the musical poverty of the Platonic Ideal State by Plato’s προαίρεσιϛ despite his better knowledge, the sources of Aristotle attack the Platonic Socrates overtly (1342 a33: οὐ καλῶϛ; 1342 b23: καλῶϛ ἐπιτιμῶσι). This does not exclude the possibility that we read in both polemics against Socrates suggestions of Aristoxenos.⁶⁹ For the admission of slack Lydian and tense Lydian the Politics offer a weak excuse: ‘For the sake, then, of a later stage of their lives, that of old men, people should practise harmoniai and melodies of these kinds too, and also any other such harmonia there may be that is suitable for children’s time of life because of its capacity to contain both elegance and educativeness together, something that seems to apply to the [tense] Lydian harmonia more than to any other’ (1342 b27– 33: ὥστε καὶ πρὸϛ τὴν ἐσομένην ἡλικίαν, τὴν τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, δεῖ καὶ τῶν τοιούτων ἁρμονιῶν ἅπτεσϑαι καὶ τῶν μελῶν τῶν τοιούτων. ἔτι δ᾽ εἴ τίς ἐστι τοιαύτη τῶν ἁρμονιῶν ἣ πρέπει τῇ τῶν παίδων ἡλικίᾳ διὰ τὸ δύνασϑαι κόσμον τ᾽ ἔχειν ἅμα καὶ παιδείαν, οἷον ἡ λυδιστὶ φαίνεται πεπονϑέναι μάλιστα τῶν ἁρμονιῶν … transl. Barker). After that there follows nothing more than a nonsensical repetition of the σκόποι (ὅροι) of education, the μέσον, δυνατὸν and πρέπον, which leaves all open questions unanswered. Perhaps the librarian, who was in charge to assemble the posthumous papers of Aristotle, tried to give the unfinished book 8 of Politics by this repetition some kind of conclusion. In all events, the syntax of the end of book 8 is chaotic: for the protasis ἔτι δ᾽ εἴ τίϛ ἐστι … μάλιστα τῶν ἁρμονιῶν cannot be followed by the apodosis δῆλον

 For a different reading of the clause ὡϛ ᾽Αριστόξενόϛ φησιν, see Meriani 2003, 72– 74.

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ὅτι τούτουϛ ὅρουϛ τρεῖϛ ποιητέον εἰϛ τὴν παιδείαν, τό τε μέσον καὶ τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ τὸ πρέπον. Therefore Susemihl suspected a lacuna before δῆλον.

13 The Katharsis in Aristotle’s Politics and Poetics Aristotle was content in Politics 1341 b38 – 40 to explain the meaning of κάϑαρσιϛ in general (νῦν μὲν ἁπλῶϛ) and promised to deal with it more clearly in his treatise on poetry (ἐροῦμεν σαφέστερον). But in the Poetics as it is transmitted, κάϑαρσιϛ appears only twice, once in the familiar sense of ritual purification,⁷⁰ and once more in the famous definition of the tragedy, which is understood as a imitation of a serious action … producing by pity and fear a katharsis of such emotions (1449 b24– 28: τραγῳδία μίμησιϛ πράξεωϛ σπουδαίαϛ … δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παϑημάτων κάϑαρσιν). The first book of Poetics deals with poetry in general, tragedy and epic poetry, while the second book of Poetics, which is lost, treated comedy. As it is extremely improbable that Aristotle attributed to comedy something like katharsis,⁷¹ we have to understand his definition of tragedy on the basis of his comments on katharsis in Politics, which is possible: Aristotle mentions the terminus κάϑαρσιϛ first (1341 b38 – 41) as one of the three aims of music, which are education (παιδεία), connected with moral (ἠϑικαί) harmonies and melodies, purgation (κάϑαρσιϛ), connected with inspirational (ἐνϑουσιαστικαί) harmonies and melodies, and finally amusement (διαγωγή) for relaxation (ἄνεσιϛ) and relief from tension (συντονίαϛ ἀνάπαυσιϛ), connected with invigorating (πρακτικαί) harmonies and melodies. Enthusiastic music is linked with the auloi and the Phrygian harmonia and thus intimately connected with bacchic rites (1342 b1– 6). Both are able to induce ecstasy (ὀργιαστικά) and emotion (παϑητικά). The emotions aroused by enthusiastic music may be pity (ἔλεοϛ), fear (φόβοϛ) and ecstasy (ἐνϑουσιασμόϛ). People who are prone to the excess to such affections can receive a therapy by listening to more enthusiastic music (ἐξοργιάζοντα μέλη) out of the store of dionysiac melodies (ἱερὰ μέλη) until they are discharged of their emotions (κάϑαρσιϛ), as if they had received a medicament (ὥσπερ ἰατρείαϛ τυχόνταϛ καὶ καϑάρσεωϛ). But the same mode of operation is effective with ordinary people: they also are discharged by enthusiastic music of their respective emotions  Poetics 1455 b14/15; see above p. 334.  See Pöhlmann 1995, 213 – 226.

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by κάϑαρσιϛ, which is a pleasing evacuation (κουφίζεσϑαι μεϑ᾽ ἡδονῆϛ). All in all, it appears that the Aristotelian notion of katharsis has its roots as well in ritual as in medicine. A similar mode of operation is attributed to the invigorating (πρακτικά) harmonies and melodies (1342 a7– 16). Already in 1342 a2– 4 Aristotle had stressed that only morally accepted music (ἠϑικά) might be practised in education, while invigorating (πρακτικά) and inspirational (ἐνϑουσιαστικά) music should be relegated to professionals for the delight of the listeners. This kind of music is incompatible with education, but falls into the competence of professionals competing in the theatre before a public, which consists of free citizens and vulgar people like artisans and labourers (1342 a16– 28). Thus, their aim is not education, but pleasure according to the nature of everybody (ποιεῖ δὲ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἑκάστοιϛ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν οἰκεῖον). The aspect of pleasure (ἡδονή) provides a bridge from the Politics to the Poetics, where Aristotle considers pleasure (ἡδονή) and imitation (μίμησιϛ) the two natural causes of poetry.⁷² As for Aristotle the aim of poetry is not education, but pleasure, he has to define the aesthetic pleasure (ἡδονή) of epic poetry, tragedy and comedy, which is produced by μίμησιϛ. Aesthetic pleasure is specific (οἰκεῖον) for every kind of poetry. The pleasure of epic poetry is the astonishment at the supernatural (Poetics 60 A 17: τὸ δὲ ϑαυμαστὸν ἡδύ). Epic poetry and tragedy produce different aesthetic pleasure (Poetics 62 B 13/14: δεῖ γὰρ οὐ τὴν τυχοῦσαν ἡδονὴν ποιεῖν αὐτὰϛ ἀλλὰ τὴν εἰρημένην). The aesthetic pleasure of tragedy and comedy is different. Not the pleasure of tragedy, but the pleasure of comedy, the laugther, might arise when the arch-enemies Orestes and Aegisthus would leave in a parody of the mythos the stage as best friends (Poetics 53 A 35/38: ἔστιν δὲ οὐχ αὕτη ἀπὸ τραγῳδίαϛ ἡδονὴ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῆϛ κωμῳδίαϛ οἰκεία … οἷον ᾽Ορέστηϛ καὶ Αἴγισϑοϛ φίλοι γενόμενοι ἐπὶ τελευτῆϛ ἐξέρχονται). The tragedy must not aim at every kind of pleasure, but only to the specific one (Poetics 53 B 10/11: οὐ γὰρ πᾶσαν δεῖ ζητεῖν ἡδονὴν ἀπὸ τραγῳδίαϛ ἀλλὰ τὴν οἰκείαν), as the pleasure of tragedy is produced by compassion and fear (Poetics 53 B 11– 14: ἐπεὶ δὲ τὴν ἀπὸ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου διὰ μιμήσεωϛ δεῖ ἡδονὴν παρασκευάζειν τὸν ποιητήν, φανερὸν ὡϛ τοῦτο ἐν τοῖϛ πράγμασιν ἐμποιητέον). Pity and fear arise, as we see, from the construction of the plot, but similarly from the visual impressions (Poetics 1453 B 1– 3: ῎Εστιν μὲν οὖν τὸ φοβερὸν καὶ ἐλεεινὸν ἐκ τῆϛ ὄψεωϛ γίγνεσϑαι). From the Politics, we have to supply that the acoustic impressions contributed to a high extent to the impressions of tragedy (see above

 Poetics 48 B 4– 19, esp. 4– 5: Poetics 48 B 4– 9: ’Εοίκασι δὲ γεννῆσαι μὲν ὅλωϛ τὴν ποιητικὴν αἰτίαι δύο τινὲϛ καὶ αὗται φυσικαί. τό τε γὰρ μιμεῖσϑαι σύμφυτον τοῖϛ ἀνϑρώποιϛ … καὶ τὸ χαίρειν τοῖϛ μιμήμασι πάνταϛ.

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p. 336).We must not forget that even the late tragedies of Euripides contain not more than about 70 % of spoken dialogue-verse, the trimeters. The rest is more or less music, not only Choruses, monodies and amoibaia, but also anapaestic and trochaic sections, which held the middle between song and speech. The prevailing instrument for accompaniment was the aulos, which, as the Poetics remind us, had the same effects as the Phrygian: both are orgiastic and emotional (Politics 1342 b3: ἄμφω γὰρ ὀργιαστικὰ καὶ παϑητικά).

14 Misunderstanding the κάϑαρσιϛ τῶν παϑημάτων Given the background of the Politics, there seem to be no problem in understanding the definition of tragedy. But the problems begin with the translations, especially in German. By translating ἔλεοϛ καὶ φόβοϛ by ‘Furcht und Mitleid’ the Greek notions assume a Christian and after Lessing a wrong philanthropic colour. The second problem is the meaning of the genetive case in the κάϑαρσιϛ παϑημάτων. While the Politics with κάϑαρσιϛ καὶ κουφίζεσϑαι μεϑ’ ἡδονῆϛ (Politics 1342 a14: discharging and release [of pity and fear] with pleasure) point clearly to a genetivus separativus, Lessing in his ‘Hamburgische Dramaturgie’⁷³ tried to see something like a genetivus objectivus: ‘Da nämlich … diese Reinigung in nichts anderem beruht, als in der Verwandlung der Leidenschaften in tugendhafte Fertigkeiten …’ (‘As this purgation is nothing but the transformation of the affections into virtuous dispositions’). Of course, Lessing was biased by his intention to establish a humanistic-philanthropic tragedy. Already Jacob Bernays⁷⁴ had refuted Lessing’s opinion. But the philanthropic reading of the Poetics survived. Wolfgang Schadewaldt, after having followed the history of the meanings of the words ἔλεοϛ καὶ φόβοϛ, recommended the translation by ‘Schauder und Jammer’, which is much closer to the Greek language, and brought together all arguments in favour of a genetivus separativus in the κάϑαρσιϛ παϑημάτων.⁷⁵ His pupil Hellmut Flashar⁷⁶ has demonstrated that the Aristotelian notion of κάϑαρσιϛ has its roots in Greek medical thinking. Nevertheless, the discussion is still open. Thus, I should like to resume the main facts: 1. The Poetics are not a history of tragedy of the fifth and fourth century BC, but a normative techne, derived mainly from Sophocles.

   

Lessing 1768. Bernays 1889. Schadewaldt 1960. Flashar 1956.

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3. 4. 5.

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In the eyes of Aristotle, the Greek theatre had nothing to do with education, but was a place for the pleasure of all adult citizens, who see, listen and hear tragedies, satyr-plays and comedies. The aim of tragedy is pleasure, which originates from the katharsis (discharging) of affections, namely pity and horror. The aforesaid affections are aroused by the plot of the tragedy, but also by the visual and musical impressions. The music of tragedy used therefore emotional and orgiastic harmonies like Phrygian and instruments like the aulos, which are relegated from the education of children.

Bibliography Abert, Η. (1899), Die Lehre vom Ethos in der griechischen Musik, Leipzig. Barker, Ε. (1931), ‘Life of Aristotle and Composition of Politics’, in: CR 45, 162 – 172. Barker, A. (1984), Greek Musical Writings, Vol. 1, The Musician and his Art, Cambridge. — (2005), Psicomusicologia nella Grecia antica, a cura die Angelo Meriani, Napoli. Beck, F.A. (1975), Album of Greek Education, Sydney. Bernays, J. (1889), ‘Grundzüge der verlorenen Abhandlung des Aristoteles über die Wirkung der Tragödie’, in: J. Bernays, Zwei Abhandlungen über die Aristotelische Theorie des Drama, Berlin, 1 – 132. Brinkmann V. (ed.) (2008), Die Launen des Olymp. Der Mythos von Athena, Marsyas und Apoll, Frankfurt. Burkert, W. (1975), ‘Aristoteles im Theater. Zur Datierung des 3. Buchs der Rhetorik und der Poetik’, in: MH 32, 67 – 72. Düring, I. (1966), Aristoteles. Darstellung und Interpretation seines Denkens. Heidelberg. Flashar, H. (1956), ‘Die medizinischen Grundlagen der Lehre von der Wirkung der Dichtung in der griechischen Poetik’, in: Hermes 84, 12 – 48. Hagel, S. (2010), Ancient Greek Music. A New Technical History. Cambridge. Hager, F-P. (ed.) (1972), Ethik und Politik des Aristoteles, Darmstadt. Hordern, J.H. (2002), The Fragments of Timotheos of Miletus, Oxford. Immisch, O. (1929), Aristotelis Politica, VII, Leipzig. Jaeger, W. (1923), Aristoteles, Berlin. Laserre, F. (1954), Plutarque, De la Musique, Olten-Lausanne. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1768), Hamburgische Dramaturgie 78. Stück, Den 29. Januar. Meriani, A. (2003), Sulla Musica Greca Antica, Napoli. Pöhlmann, E. (1995), ‘Die Komödie und die Klassik: Von Aristophanes bis Menander’, in: E. Pöhlmann (ed.), Studien zur Bühnendichtung und zum Theaterbau der Antike, Frankfurt am Main, 213 – 226. Preishofen, F. (1974), ‘Sokrates im Gespräch mit Parrhasios und Kleiton’, in: K. Döring / W. Kullmann (eds.), Festschrift für Hermann Gundert, Amsterdam. Schadewaldt, W. (1960), ‘Furcht und Mitleid’, in: W. Schadewaldt, Hellas und Hesperien, Zürich und Stuttgart 1960, 346 – 388. Simon, E. / Hirmer, M. und A. (1981), Die griechischen Vasen, München.

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Stark, R. (1972), Aristotelesstudien, München. Steinmetz P. (ed.) (1973), Schriften zu den Politika des Aristoteles, Hildesheim-New York. West, M. L. (1992), Ancient Greek Music, Oxford. Wegner, M. (1949), Das Musikleben der Griechen, Berlin. Wehrli, F. (1967), Die Schule des Aristoteles, Texte und Kommentar, Aristoxenos, Basel. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1903), Timotheos. Die Perser, Leipzig.

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Notes on Contributors Francisco Rodríguez Adrados studied classical philology at the University of Salamanca, and obtained his doctorate in 1946 from the Complutense University in Madrid. In the 1950s he was appointed to the Professor’s chair in Greek at the University of Barcelona and the Complutense in Madrid, where he continues to serve as Emeritus Professor. His research focuses particularly on general linguistics and Indo-European and Greek linguistics. He is also the author of numerous books and essays on Greek literature, philosophy and history. He is the editor of Emérita and Revista Española de Lingüística, in addition to the Spanish Greek Dictionary and the ‘Alma Mater’ collection of Greek and Latin classics of the CSIC. He is honorary president of the Spanish Society of Classical Studies and the Spanish Linguistics Society, in addition to being a member of the Academy of Athens and the Spanish Royal Academy. Chris Carey is Emeritus Professor of Greek at UCL. He has worked on early Greek poetry, Greek drama, oratory and law and is currently writing a commentary on Herodotos 7 for the Cambridge Green and Yellow series. John Davidson retired as Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2010. He has published extensively on Greek drama, especially the relationship between the Homeric texts and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, as well as the Reception of the Classics in New Zealand poetry. The fourth collection of his own poetry, scheduled for publication in the second part of 2016, deals with the life, work and reception of Richard Wagner. Paul Demont is Professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and Head of the PhD Program ‘Ancient and Medieval Worlds’. He has written extensively on archaic and classic Greek literature (especially medical texts) and its reception. Francis Dunn teaches Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also conducts research, primarily on Greek tragedy. His publications include Tragedy’s End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama (1996), Present Shock in Late Fifth-Century Greece (2007), A Commentary on Sophocles’ Electra (forthcoming), several edited volumes, and numerous articles, chiefly on Greek literature. Michael Edwards is Professor of Classics and Head of Humanities at the University of Roehampton, London. He has published extensively on the Attic orators, including commentaries on Antiphon, Andocides and Lysias, and a translation of Isaeus’ speeches. He was also one of the co-ordinators of the team that deciphered the new Hyperides text in the Archimedes Palimpsest. He is currently preparing an OCT of Isaeus and a commentary on Aeschines 3. He is President of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (2015 – 2017). Andreas Fountoulakis is Associate Professor of Greek Literature and Drama and Director of the Drama and Visual Arts Laboratory of the University of Crete. He is the author of Violence and Theatricality: Studies on Violence as a Dramatic Element in Classical and Post-Classical Greek Tragedy (1995) and In Search of the Didactic Menander: An Approach to Menander’s

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Comedy and an Exploration of the Samia (2004), (in Modern Greek), and co-editor of Thoughtful Adaptations: Cross-Cultural and Didactic Aspects of Cavafy’s Poetry (2007), (in Modern Greek). His research interests include Greek drama, Hellenistic poetry, the Second Sophistic and the reception of antiquity in Modern Greek literature. He has published widely on those fields and is currently working on gender and genre in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans. André Hurst is Emeritus Professor and former Rector of the University of Geneva. His books and articles mainly cover the domains of Greek epics and ancient theatre; he has also been involved in the editions of papyri (particularly the ‘Bodmer Papyri’). His most recent book is Dans les marges de Ménandre (Geneva, 2015, Droz). Justina Gregory is the Sophia Smith Professor of Classical Languages and Literatures at Smith College. She is the author of Euripides and the Instruction of the Athenians (1991) and a commentary on Euripides’ Hecuba (1999), and the editor of the Blackwell Companion to Greek Tragedy (2005). She has also translated (with Patrick Gregory) a selection of Aesop’s Fables (1975) and published numerous articles on Greek tragedy. Her current project involves concepts of education in Homer and tragedy. Andreas Markantonatos is the author of Tragic Narrative: a Narratological Study of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (2002), Oedipus at Colonus: Sophocles, Athens, and the World (2007), and Euripides’ Alcestis: Narrative, Myth, and Religion (2013). He has edited several multi-authored volumes, including Crisis on Stage: Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens (2012, together with Bernhard Zimmermann), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (2012) and Brill’s Companion to Euripides (2017), and has published widely on Greek drama and modern literary theory. He is currently completing a work entitled Euripides’ Heracles: Mortal Bodies and Immortal Memory. He is the Head of the Department of Philology at the University of the Peloponnese and Director of the Centre for Ancient Rhetoric and Drama (CARD). Franco Montanari is Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Genoa, Italy, and a member of several international research centres and associations. He is also Director of the ‘Centro Italiano dell’Année Philologique’ and of the ‘Aristarchus’ project on line. He has edited the new Ancient Greek-Italian Dictionary and published numerous books and essays on ancient scholarship and grammar, archaic Greek epic, and classical and Hellenistic poetry. Evangelos Moutsopoulos has been a Professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where in 1977 he was elected Rector. Since 1984 he is a Member of the Academy of Athens. He has been a Visiting Professor in many Universities and Research Centres of international prestige. Furthermore, he is an Honorary Member or a Corresponding Member of many national and international Academies and Philosophical Societies. As chairman of the Foundation for Research and Publications of Modern Greek Philosophy he has created the Corpus Philosophorum Graecorum Recentiorum (CPGR). He has also founded and, for more thirty years, has been directing the international philosophical journal Diotima. He is the author of 60 volumes of philosophical works and of 400 research articles in the fields of Ontology, Axiology, Aesthetics, Philosophy of History and History of Philosophy.

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Ioannis Perysinakis is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Department of Philology in the University of Ioannina. His teaching and research interests focus on ancient Greek Literature with an emphasis on moral values and political behaviour from Homer to the fifth century, development and revaluation of moral values in Plato and Aristotle, and the reception of ancient Greek in Modern Greek Literature. He has written extensively on Homer, Hesiod, lyric poetry, Greek tragedy, Plato and Modern Greek Literature. His publications (after PhD diss. Wealth and Society in Early Greek Literature, King’s College London 1982) include: Ἡ ἔννοια τοῦ πλούτου στὴν Ἱστορίη τοῦ Ἡροδότου (Δωδώνη Παράρτημα 31, Ἰωάννινα, 19982); Pindar’s Imagery of Poetry: The Nemean Odes (Dodone: Philology 1997/98); ᾿Aρχαϊκὴ Λυρικὴ Ποίηση. ᾿Aνθολογία μὲ βάση τὴν ἀρετὴ καὶ τὸν ἀγαθόν (Δ. Ν. Παπαδήμας, ᾿Aθήνα 2012). He is currently working on the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. Friedrich Egert Poehlmann, Prof. Dr. phil Dr.h.c *19. 06. 1933 in Nuremberg, Examination as church musician at 05. 08. 1953, Promotion to Dr. phil at 09. 05. 1958 , examination for High school teacher at 30. 10. 1958, teacher at High schools from 1958 – 1962, Assistent at University of Erlangen (FAU) 1962 – 1968, Assistent Professor at FAU 1968 – 1973, Associate Prof. at FAU 1973 – 1976, Full Professor at the University of Giessen 1976 – 1980, Full Professor of Greek Philology at FAU 1980 – 2001, from 30. 09. 2001 Prof. emeritus of FAU, visiting Professor in Athens and Corfu 1998, 2003, and 2005, Dr. h.c of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens at 20. 11. 2003, corresponding member of the Academy of Athens at 13. 12. 2011. Subjects: Ancient Greek Drama, theatre and music, church organ and its history. Suzanne Saïd is Professor Emerita of Classics at Columbia University. Her books include La Faute tragique (1978), Sophiste et Tyran ou le problem du Prométhée enchaîné (1985), Approches de la mythologie grecque (1993), Homère et l’Odyssée (1998), and (with M. Trédé and A. Le Boulluec) Histoire de la littérature grecque (1997). She has published extensively on Greek literature and mythology. Milagros Quijada Sagredo received her PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Salamanca. She is currently Professor of Greek Philology at the University of the Basque Country, where she teaches Greek literature and literary theory. She works mainly in the area of Greek drama, especially tragedy and Euripides. Her publications include: La composición de la tragedia tardía de Eurípides: Ifigenia entre los tauros, Helena y Orestes, Vitoria-Gasteiz 1991; Estudios sobre tragedia griega: Eurípides, el teatro griego de finales del s. V a. C. y su influencia posterior, Madrid 2011; Retórica y discurso en el teatro griego, Madrid 2013. Alan H. Sommerstein is Emeritus Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham and author of many books and articles on Greek drama, literature, language and society, including most recently two co-authored books on the oath in ancient Greece (2012, 2014) and an edition with commentary of Menander’s Samia (2013). He is editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Greek Comedy (forthcoming) and is preparing an edition with commentary of Aeschylus’ Suppliants. Georgios Vasilaros is Associate Professor of Greek at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He works mainly on Hellenistic poetry and Greek historiography (especially Xenophon’s Cyropaedia). He is the author of Der Gebrauch des Genetivus absolutus bei Apollonios Rhodios im Verältnis zu Homer (Hamburg / Athens, 1993) and of a Greek translation

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with commentary of Book I of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Academy of Athens, 2004). He is currently working on a commentary on Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus. Eleni Volonaki is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Department of Philology, University of the Peloponnese. She has studied Ancient Greek Literature in the Department of Philology, University of Crete and continued her post-graduate studies at the Department of Classics, Royal Holloway, University of London. She did her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Chris Carey, with the title: ‘A Commentary on Lysias’ speeches Against Agoratos (13) and Against Nikomachos (30)’, which has been revised and published in Modern Greek (Papazisis Press, 2010). She has taught courses of Ancient Greek Language and Literature at the Department of Classics, Royal Holloway University of London (1995 – 2004), at the Open University London (2003 – 2007), at the Hellenic Open University (2006 – 2014) and at the School of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of the Peloponnese (2004-now). She has published articles in international journals and chapters in collective conference volumes on Ancient Greek Law, Greek Rhetoric, in particular forensic and epideictic rhetoric and oratory, Greek values and epic poetry, Hellenistic rhetoric, and finally narrative, narratology and performance. She is currently working on the completion of a Commentary on Lykourgos’ speech Against Leokrates. Bernhard Zimmermann is Professor of Classics at the Department of Philology, University of Freiburg. He has published widely on various aspects of Greek and Roman literature. Among his most recent books are: Europa und die griechische Tragödie: Vom kultischen Spiel zum Theater der Gegenwart (2000), Sophokles, König Ödipus: Erläuterungen und Dokumente (2003), Epikur, Philosophie des Glücks (2006), Spurensuche: Studien zur Rezeption antiker Literatur (2009), and Seneca, Von der Gelassenheit (2010).

Academic Publications of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos A Monographs – Annotated Editions of Ancient Greek Texts Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy, Academy of Athens, Athens 1980, pp. xv + 246 +16 images. Monograph on postclassical tragedy (4th century BC) widely reviewed and cited. Demosthenes Against Meidias, Academy of Athens, second edition, Athens 1989, pp. xxxviii +227. With introduction, translation, commentary, and appendices (in Modern Greek). Parallel developments in post-classical (4th century BC) tragedy and comedy, Athens 1991, pp. 124+18 images. Monograph on the common trends in form and performance between fourth-century tragedy and Middle Comedy. Critical edition of the annotated texts (in Modern Greek). Dramatica. Studies in Classical and Post-Classical Dramatic Poetry, second edition, Athens, 2004, pp. 423. The volume includes articles published mainly in international academic journals from 1979 to 2001 on classical and postclassical dramatic poetry. Dionysius Thrax, Ars Grammatica, Athens, 2003. Introduction and editing, Greek Language Heritage, Athens 2003 (in Modern Greek).

Books in preparation: Αeschylus’ Lycurgeia: Introduction, text and commentary. Euripides’ Bacchae and Christus Patiens: Reception and motifs. The Middle Comedy poet Timocles: introduction, text and commentary.

Β Articles in Academic Journals and Conference Proceedings ‘The Influence of Rhetoric on Fourth-Century Tragedy’, Classical Quarterly N.S. 29 (1979) 66 – 76. ‘Deviations from Classical treatments in Fourth-Century Tragedy’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 26 (1979) 99 – 103. ‘The Hector of Astydamas: Reconstruction and Motifs’, Museum Philologum Londiniense, 4 (1981) 213 – 223. ‘Remarks on Moschion’s Account of Progress’, Classical Quarterly N.S. 31 (1981) 410 – 417. ‘Notes on the Vocabulary of Post-Classical Tragedy’, Glotta 60 (1982) 93 – 96. ‘Approaching and evaluating post-classical tragedy’, in: Conference Proceedings of the Scientific Staff of the Academy of Athens, Athens 1982, pp. 167 – 183 (in Modern Greek).

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‘Remarks on Tyrtaeus’ fr. 1 (Diehl)’, Lakonikai Spoudai 6 (1982) 3 – 13 (in Modern Greek). ‘Chaeremon’s Achilles Thersitoctonus. Reconstruction of a postclassical tragedy’, Platon 34/35 (1982 – 83) 55 – 67 (in Modern Greek). ‘Specific references to Messene-Messenians in the poetry of Tyrtaeus’, in: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Messenean Studies, Athens 1984, pp 92 – 100 (in Modern Greek). ‘Demosthenes and Spartan foreign policy in the Peloponnese’, Lakonikai Spoudai 8 (1986) 181 – 188 (in Modern Greek). ‘Some unrecorded words originating mainly from Greek Drama’, Glotta 63 (1985) 164 – 167. ‘P.Oxy. 3317: Euripides’ Antigone(?)’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 33 (1986) 107 – 111. ‘Demosthenes and the history of the Peloponnese in the middle 4th century BC’, in: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of Peloponnesian Studies, Athens 1987 – 88, pp. 515 – 529 (in Modern Greek). ‘Additional remarks on the possible attribution of some papyrus-fragments to post-classical tragedies’, in: Proceedings of the XVIIIth International Congress of Papyrology, Athens 1988, pp. 403 – 417. ‘Tragica II: A Retrospection’, Parnassos ΛΑ’ (1989) 379 – 402. ‘Addenda Lexicis from Aeschylus and Sophocles’, Athena 80 (1989) 269 – 277. ‘The Aegean in Theodectes’ work: the Mausolus’, Parnassos ΛΒ’ (1990) 12 – 23 (in Modern Greek). ‘A selective approach to tragedy in the Poetics: Mimesis –Mythos –Katharsis’, Platon 42 (1990) 107 – 116 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Translation’, Platon 43 (1991) 90 – 99 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Comic Fragment in PSI 1175: Commentary and Literary Motifs’, in: Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrology, Copenhagen 1992, pp. 336 – 343. ‘The Daphnis or Lityerses of Sositheus’, L’Antiquité Classique 63 (1994) 237 – 250. ‘Hellenistic Drama: developments in form and performance’, Platon 45 (1993) 117 – 133. ‘Womens’ position in poetry. From Sappho to Euripides’, in: Ancient Greek Women, Municipality of Athens, Athens 1994, 49 – 55 (in Modern Greek). ‘Critical remarks on fragments from Middle Comedy’, Platon 47 – 48 (1995 – 1996) 47 – 58 (in Modern Greek). ‘Boeotia in postclassical dramatic poetry’, Annals of the Society for Boeotian Studies, vol. 2 (1995) 989 – 1002 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Menedemus of Lycophron: Text and Commentary’, Athena 81 (1990 – 1996) 339 – 365. ‘Apollo in Aeschylus’ Eumenides’, in: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference, Academy of Delphic Studies, Athens 1996, pp. 17 – 23 (in Modern Greek). ‘Echoes of earlier drama in Sositheus’ Daphnis and Lycophron’s Menedemus’, L’Antiquité Classique 66 (1997) 121 – 143. ‘Aeschylus’ Fragments and Euripides’ Bacchae: Influence and Differentiations’, Platon 49 (1997) 42 – 67 (in Modern Greek). ‘A Survey of the Main Papyrus Texts of Post-Classical Tragedy’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung 3 (1997) 1034 – 1048. ‘Homer and Euripides: The Cyclops and the Troades’, Platon 50 (1998) 28 – 37. ‘Tendences littéraires d’Euripide à Ménandre: tragédie, comédie, drame satyrique’, Platon 51 (1999 – 2000) 34 – 49.

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‘The Exagoge of Ezekiel and Fifth-Century Tragedy. Similarities of Theme and Concept’, Drama (Beiträge zum antiken Drama und seiner Rezeption) 10 (2001) 223 – 239. ‘The philosophy of Music in the work of E. Moutsopoulos’ in: G. Xanthakis-Karamanos (ed.), Athlos. A Dedication to Evangelos Moutsopoulos, Athens 2001, pp. 69 – 73. (in Modern Greek). ‘Laudatio to Eric W. Handley’, in: Official Speeches, University of Athens 32 (2001) 643 – 650 (in Modern Greek). ‘Thoughts on the contemporary approaches to Ancient Greek literature’, in: Proceedings of the International Conference: Classical Education Nowadays, Platon Supplement 2 (2003) 315 – 325 (in Modern Greek). ‘Ancient Greek in the Curricula of Philology Departments’, in: I. N. Peryssinakis / A. Tsaggalidis (eds.), Language and Literature in Secondary Education, University of Ioannina 2003, pp. 387 – 395 (in Modern Greek). ‘N. Vrettakos’ contemplations on language’, in: Proceedings of the International Conference for the poet Nikiforos Vrettakos (Sparta 18 – 21/5/2001), Athens 2004, pp. 123 – 135 (in Modern Greek). ‘Democratic institutions and tragedy’, Platon 54 (2004 – 2005) 9 – 22 (= Proceedings of the 9th Seminar of the Council of Europe, Nicosia, pp. 30 – 41) (in Modern Greek). ‘Aeschylus’ Edonoi: Remarks on Style and Theme’, in: Actas del XI Congreso de la Sociedad Espaňola de Estudios Clásicos vol. II, Madrid 2005, pp. 553 – 563. ‘The radiance of lyricism. From Sappho to Elytis’, in: Scientific Lectures of the Department of Theatre Studies of the University of the Peloponnese, Athens 2006, pp. 199 – 204, (in Modern Greek). ‘Unknown aspects of Antonis Samarakis’ work’, in: One-day Conference for Antonis Samarakis, University of the Peloponnese, School of Humanities, Kalamata 2007, pp. 75 – 84, (in Modern Greek). ‘Wise Melanippe and Captive Melanippe: Theme, sources, myth, date’, in: The Woman in Ancient Drama, XIII International Meeting on Ancient Drama 2007 (Symposium Proceedings), European Cultural Centre of Delphi, pp. 139 – 150 (in collaboration with E. Kafritsa). ‘Technology in Homer’, in: S. A. Paipetis (ed.), Science and Technology in the Homeric Poetry, Patra 2008, pp. 41 – 44 (in Modern Greek). ‘The reception of Greek in contemporary English’, Sbornik 10 (2008) (dedicated to Professor Ksenja Gadjanski) Novi Sad, pp. 223 – 228. ‘Democratic values in Ancient Greek tragedy’, in: Democratic Principles of the Classical Era in Contemporary Political Institutions (Conference Proceedings, eds. Emm. Bechrakis –Chr. Charalambakis), International Foundation for Greek Language and Culture, Athens 2008, pp. 193 – 198 (in Modern Greek). ‘The language of the Hellenistic era’, Platon 56 (2008 – 2009) 31 – 38 (in Modern Greek). ‘The knowledge of Antiquity in the work of Nikiforos Vrettakos’, in: Greek Research in Australia (Proceedings of the Biennial International Conference on Greek Studies) Adelaide 2009, pp. 705 – 718 (in collaboration with Nadia Panagoulea), (in Modern Greek). ‘The Tegea inscription SIG3 1080: remarks on the performance of postclassical plays’, in: A. Martina / A.-T. Cozzoli (eds.), La Tragedia Greca. Testimonianze Archaeologiche e

354

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Iconografiche (Atti del Convegno, Roma 14 – 16 Ottobre 2004), Herder Editrice e Libreria, Roma 2009, pp. 51 – 66. ‘Reflections and new approaches in the curricula of humanistic studies’, in: M. G. Papazoglou (ed.), Greek Strategy for Higher Education. Alternative Approaches, Papazissis Press, Athens 2009, pp. 271 – 280, (in Modern Greek). ‘Dramatic Poetry and the Polis (5th-3rd century BC): a journey’, in: Two-day Conference: Ancient Greek theater and the Athenian city-state, Greek Open University, National Institute of Research, Athens 9 – 10 May 2009, pp. 22 (in Modern Greek). ‘Konstantinos Tsatsos on language and humanistic education’, in: Konstantinos Tsatsos: philosopher, political writer (Proceedings of International Conference Athens, 6 – 8 / 11/2009) Granada/Athens 2010, pp. 411 – 420 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Persae of Aeschylus and the Troades of Euripides: A similar approach to war on the part of the defeated?’, in: Perfiles de Grecia y Roma II. Actas del XII Congreso Espaňol de Estudios Clásicos, Sociedad Espaňola de Estudios Clásicos, Madrid 2010, pp. 735 – 741. ‘The Emperor Konstantinos Palaeologos on the basis of sources and traditions’, Platon 57 (2010 – 2011) 32 – 52 (in Modern Greek). ‘Text and contemporary performance of tragedy’, Platon Supplement 6 (2010 – 2011) 19 – 29 (in Modern Greek). ‘The “Dionysiac” plays of Aeschylus and Euripides’ Bacchae: Reaffirming traditional religion and cult in late fifth century BC Athens’, in: A. Markantonatos/B. Zimmermann (eds.), Crisis on Stage. Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens, de Gruyter (Trends in Classics, Suppl. vol. 13), Berlin / Boston 2011, pp. 323 – 342. ‘Laudatio to Professor Christopher Carey’, in: Official Speeches, University of Athens, 35 part 2 (2011) 505 – 513 (in Modern Greek). ‘Rhetoric and Society. The case of Demosthenes’ Speech Against Meidias’ (International Meeting “Oratory and Rhetoric in Classical Athens”, 05/20/2011), Platon 58 (2012) 79 – 87 (in Modern Greek). ‘Greek language and Classics in Greece and abroad. The perspectives for Cyprus’, in: Proceedings of the Conference Greek Language today and Perspectives, Cyprus Society for Language and Hellenic Language Heritage, Nicosia 2012, pp. 63 – 72 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Archelaus of Euripides: Reconstruction and motifs’, in: D. Rosenbloom & J. Davidson (eds.), Greek Drama IV. Texts, Contexts, Performance (Proceedings of the Conference “Greek Drama IV”, Victoria, University, Wellington, New Zealand, 3 – 6 July 2007), Aris & Phillips, London 2012 , pp. 108 – 126. ‘Hellenistic drama: tradition and innovation’, Stasinos XIII (2011 – 2012) 171 – 177 (in Modern Greek). ‘The Marathon battle as a topos of Athenian political prestige in classical times’, in: C. Carey & M. Edwards (eds.), Marathon – 2500 Years. Proceedings of the Marathon Conference 2010, Institute of Classical Studies, London 2013, pp. 213 – 221. ‘Fragmentary plays of Euripides with similar rhetorical motifs and story-pattern: the Aeolus and Melanippe the Wise’, in: M. Quijada Sagredo & M. Carmen Encinas Reguero (eds.), Retórica y Discurso en el Teatro Griego, Ediciones Clásicas, Madrid 2013, pp. 61 – 90. ‘Christus Patiens: Reception of Euripidean tragedies of passion’, in: G. Xanthakis-Karamanos (ed.), The Reception of Antiquity in Byzantium, with an Emphasis on the Palaeologan

Academic Publications of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos

355

Era, Research Institute of Byzantine Culture, Series of Monographs 1, Athens 2014, pp. 175 – 245 (in Modern Greek with extensive summary in English). ‘The Aeolus of Euripides: concepts and motifs’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 57 (2014) 49 – 60 (in collaboration with E. Mimidou). ‘Ancient Greek Language in Greek Education: Evaluation and perspectives’, in: Ancient Greek Language: Yesterday, today and tomorrow (Proceedings of an International Conference in the Academy of Athens), Hellenic Language Heritage, Athens 2015, pp. 111 – 120. ‘From the Attic dialect to the Hellenistic Koine and from Callimachus to the language of the Palaeologan era’, Platon Supplement 10 (2016) (in print).

Editorial Work A.

As Director of the Centre for Editions of Ancient Greek Texts of the Academy of Athens (1985 – 1994), she has supervised and edited three series of publications of Ancient Greek and Byzantine texts: 1st

B. C.

Commentaries, with introduction and text: Demosthenes (Against Meidias, Olynthiacs I-III), Arrian (History of Alexander) and Euripides (Electra). 2nd Critical editions with commentary: Porphyrius’ Life of Plotinus and Plotinus’ Enneades. 3rd Critical editions of Byzantine texts: Chronography by Ephrem and Konstantinos Manasses. Since 1997 she has been Editor-in-chief of Platon, the academic periodical of the Society of Greek Philologists. Editor-in-chief of the series ‘Ancient Greek Literature’ of Papazissis Press. The series comprises: 1st

Modern Greek Translations of Classical Monographs: i.

D. E.

History of Greek Literature by S. Saïd/M. Trédé/A. Le Boulluec, vols. 1 (2001) and 2 (2004). ii. Democracy in Classical Athens by C. Carey (2010). 2nd Editions of Ancient Greek Texts: Demosthenes On the Navy-Boards (2004), Literary Quotations from Aristotle’s Rhetoric (2005), Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1st and 2nd books) (2008), Plato’s The Apology of Socrates (2009), Pindar’s Twelfth Olympian Ode (2011), Lysias’ Speeches (Against Agoratos [13] and Against Nicomachus [30]) (2012), Thucydides’ Archaeology (2– 19) and Pentekontaetia (89 – 118) (2012), Plutarch’s Alexander (2015). 3rd Monographs in Ancient Greek Literature: Greek Mythology-Laconia (2006), Hippocrates’ On nutrition (2008), Plotinus’ Ontology (2009), The Style of Ancient Greek Prose (2 volumes) (2010, 2014), The Iconography of Euripidean Plays (2013). Editor of the volume Athlon in honour of Professor Evangelos Moutsopoulos (University of Athens, Athens 2001) She has supervised the publication of the multiauthored volume: Messinia. Contributions to its History and Culture, Papazissis Press, Athens 2012 (pp. 727).

356

F.

G.

Academic Publications of Georgia Xanthakis-Karamanos

Editor of the Proceedings of the International Conference ‘The Reception of Antiquity in Byzantium, with an Emphasis on the Palaeologan Era’, Research Institute of Byzantine Culture, Monograph Series 1, Athens (2014) pp. 394. Editor of the Proceedings of the Conference ‘Byzantium in the Palaeologan Era: Relations between East and West’, Research Institute of Byzantine Culture, Monograph Series 2 (in print).

Index Locorum Aeschylus Agamemnon 72 – 75: 202b-204: 844 – 846: 884 – 885: 913: 938: 1080 – 1081: 1085 – 1086: 1257: 1372 ff.: 1414 – 1420: 1440 – 1447: 1521 – 1529: 1577: 1604 – 1609: 1613 – 1614: 1625 – 1627: 1633 – 1635: 1636 – 1641: 1643 – 1646: 1646 – 1648: 1651: 1661: 1672 – 1673:

40 218 40 40 247 40 164 164 162 135 135 135 – 136 135 133 – 134 134 134 134 134 134 – 135 135 135 135 135 135

Choephoroi 55 – 58: 270: 272 – 274: 276 – 283: 299 – 303: 429 – 433: 524 – 533: 578: 672 – 673: 716 – 718: 863 – 865: 906 – 907: 1029 – 1033: 1040: 1046 – 1047:

42 160 160 160 43 43 102 245 42 42 43 135 22 43 43

Eumenides 24: 40 – 59: 232 – 234: 283: 433 – 435: 468 – 469: 480 – 481: 487: 489: 490 – 516: 566: 570: 690 – 694: 735 – 741: 762 – 766: 777 – 778: 894 – 900: 911: 913 – 915: 993 – 994:

158 158 22 333 – 334 23, 44 23, 44 23 45 44 22 44 44 44 – 45 23 23, 45 – 46 46 46 23 23 23 – 24

Persians 176 – 230: 249 – 514:

102 105 – 106

Prometheus Bound 11: 25 28: 25 231 – 236: 25 – 26 248 – 250: 26 268 – 270: 26 407 – 424: 25 442 – 506: 26 Seven against Thebes 2: 246 70: 39 146: 162 181 – 286: 38 375 – 652: 105 653: 37 679 – 719: 39 791 – 802: 37

358

Index Locorum

Suppliants 1: 183 – 184: 370 – 374: 398 – 401: 425: 492 – 493: 500 – 501: 600 – 610: 698 – 900: 918: 924: 932 – 933:

158 34 35 – 36 35 36 34 34 36 36 – 37 24 24 24

Anaximander B1 D-K:

202

Aristophanes

Antiphanes Poiesis fr. 189 PCG: Antiphon 1.13: 1.14 – 16: 1.15: 1.16 – 18: 1.17: 1.18 – 20: 1.20: 1.21: 1.22: 5.14:

18 49 – 50 18 18 69 69 63

Birds 466 – 563: 586 – 626: 1199 – 1261: 1253 – 1256: 1538: 1708: 1722: 1759 – 1762:

20 20 20 63 20 20 60 59 – 60

Clouds 518 – 532: 533 f.: 537: 537 – 539: 547: 547 ff.: 549 – 559: 556: 1456 – 1461: 1478 – 1485:

69 68 68 62 68 73 69 67 19 19

Frogs 1 – 34: 375 f.: 386 – 395: 405 – 410: 686 – 705: 718 – 737: 901: 906: 1419: 1501:

68, 73 70 70 70 70 70 68 68 19 19

Knights 40 – 43:

51 – 52

65

245 – 246 248 249 249 245 249 245,249 246, 248 246 45

Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.609 – 632: 1.609 – 909: 1.633 – 652: 1.653 – 720: 1.721 – 773: 1.774 – 860: 1.861 – 909:

Acharnians 45 – 55: 94 – 97: 129 – 133: 175 – 203: 497 – 500: 633 – 635: 861:

280 – 283 277 – 294 283 – 285 285 – 287 287 – 288 288 – 290 290 – 291

Index Locorum

125 – 143: 193 – 210: 220: 507 – 550: 510 f.: 520 – 540: 526 – 536: 537 – 540: 986: 1229 – 1252: 1249: 1321 – 1323: 1324 – 1334: 1387 – 1395:

19 19 19 71 – 73 69 73 72 – 73 72 – 73 67 19 53 – 54 54 52 – 53 60

Lysistrata 149 – 151: 551 – 554: 831 – 832: 833 – 834: 846: 869: 1076 – 1084: 1128 – 1158: 1161 – 1170: 1279 – 1321: 1290 – 1291:

63 19 63 19 63 63 63 62 61 – 62 22 19

Peace 102 – 108: 195 – 226: 239: 371 – 372: 403 – 413: 416 – 425: 734 ff.: 739 – 751: 749 f.: 750: 752 – 760: 764: 844: 847 – 849: 872 – 874: 877: 878 – 879: 879 – 880:

19 19 59 19 19 20 73 68 69 68 69 70 57, 59 57 – 58 58 – 59 58 – 59 58 63

887 – 904: 1337 – 1340:

58 – 59 59 – 60

Thesmophoriazusae 1059: 271 1166 – 1167: 21 1187 – 1188: 63 Wasps 751: 1023 – 1028: 1029 – 1037: 1044: 1051 – 1059: 1341 – 1344:

69 68 69 68 69 62

Wealth 8 – 15: 87 – 92: 418 – 425: 749 – 759: 768: 788 – 795: 1112 – 1117: 1188 – 1190:

54 – 55 20 56 55 – 56 56 56 21 21

Aristotle Poetics 1449a 15 ff.: 4 1449b 23: 189 1449b 24 – 28: 341 1450a 25 – 26: 75 1450a 29 – 35: 75 1450b 7 – 8: 75 1452b 28 – 1453a 39: 75 1453a 30 – 35: 29 1453b 1 – 3: 342 1454a 25 – 33: 225 Politics 1339b 13 – 14: 333 1340a 38 – 1340b 12: 320 1340b 20 – 1342b 34: 317 – 345 1340b 20 – 31: 321 – 322 1340b 31 – 1341a 17: 322 – 323 1341a 17 – b 18: 325 – 327, 329 – 330

359

360

Index Locorum

1341a 21 – 24: 1341a 38 – 39: 1341b 2 – 8: 1341b 19 – 23: 1341b 23 – 26: 1341b 27 – 32: 1341b 32 – 36: 1341b 36 – 41: 1342a 1 – 4: 1342a 7 – 11: 1342a 11 – 15: 1342a 15 – 16: 1342a 19 – 21: 1342a 28 – 30: 1342b 3 – 12: 1342b 12 – 17: 1342b 23: 1342b 27 – 33:

326 328 – 329 329 – 330 332 332 333, 337 333 333, 341 334 – 335, 342 335 335, 342 336, 342 336 336 – 337 338, 339 338 – 339 339 340

Arrian An. 7.4.4 – 7.5.6:

81

Asclepiades of Tragilus Tragodoumena FGrHist 12 F14:

Critias Sisyphus B25.12 – 15 D-K:

202

Demosthenes 19.246 – 250: 19.247: 23.62:

235 – 241 237, 239 45

Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.94:

82

Diogenes Laertius 2.33 185 Eupolis Baptai fr. 89 PCG:

68

Marikas fr. 194 PCG: fr. 208 PCG:

67 67

Euripides 282

Athenaeus Deipn. 1.20a: 2.40 f: 5.196a-202a: 12.538e-539a: 13.586d: 13.595e:

77 – 81 82 95 – 96 77 – 81 82 82

BGU IV.1050: IV.1099: IV.1100: IV.1101:

91 91 91 91

Cratinus fr. 213 PCG: fr. 342 PCG:

68 70

Bacchae 10 – 12: 13 – 22: 180 – 200: 278 – 283: 337 – 342: 378 – 385: 417 – 429: 769 – 774: 860 – 861: 1169 – 1171: 1179: 1330 – 1338:

28 96 28 28 28 28 28 28 28 109 109 28

Electra 221: 367 – 390: 367 – 400: 432 – 486: 699 – 746:

164 181 – 183 186 201 – 202 202 – 203

Index Locorum

973: 1246: Hecuba 59 – 97:

165 165

102

Rhesus 595 – 674: 780 – 786:

29 102

Galen

Helen 878 – 891: 1005 – 1007:

28 28

Ion 61 – 63: 67 – 73: 545 – 556: 859 – 922: 1353: 1482 – 1499: 1521 – 1548: 1557 – 1559: 1595 – 1603: 1614 – 1615: 1620 – 1623:

29 28 29 29 28 28 – 29 29 29 29 29 29

Iphigenia at Aulis 97 – 98a: 501b-502a: 1187: 1194b-1195a: 1264:

219 220 223 224 226

Comm. II in Hipp. Epidem. 3.239 – 240: 97 – 98 Ezekiel

Iphigenia in Tauris 42 – 49: 102 586: 245 Melanippe Wise fr. 486 Kannicht:

184

Orestes 866 – 956:

89

Phoenician Women 631: 164 1090 – 1263: 105 Suppliants 913 – 917:

[Euripides]

185

Exagôgê 68 – 89: 193 – 242:

102 – 104 105 – 106

Hermippus Vita Eur. 27:

98

Herodotus 1.8 – 13: 8.56 – 99: 8.109:

101 105 189

Hesiod Theogony 535 – 564: 567 – 613:

18 18

Works and Days 42 – 105: 213 – 285: 459:

18 17 – 18 192

Homer Iliad 1.184 – 187: 1.188 – 192: 1.407 – 410: 4.30 – 72: 6.407 – 439: 6.441 – 465: 6.479: 7.38 – 312: 7.92 – 93:

153 146 146 15 138 138 138 141 141

361

362

7.191 – 199: 9.222 – 223: 9.254 – 256: 9.259: 9.318 – 320: 9.628 – 632: 10.13: 11.541 – 565: 11.548 – 555: 11.558 – 562: 15.504 – 508: 15.733 – 734: 15.735 – 736: 15.742 – 746: 16.33 – 35: 16.114 – 122: 16.118 – 123: 16.126 – 129: 16.203 – 204: 16.278 – 282: 16.384 – 393: 16.439 – 443: 18.104 – 106: 18.495: 21.223 – 225: 22.20: 22.168 – 176: 24.22 – 76: 24.44: 24.525 – 533: Odyssey 1.7: 1.34: 1.29 – 30: 1.35 – 37: 1.298 – 300: 3.133 – 134: 3.255 – 312: 3.262 – 272: 3.303 – 310: 4.512 – 537: 9.216 – 234: 11.387 – 434: 11.410: 11.422 – 423: 11.429 – 430:

Index Locorum

141 145 151 151 151 – 152 147 327 142 142 142 145 – 146 139 – 140 146 139 147 142 140 140 147 140 16 15 149 – 150 327 149 151 16 15 – 16 147 – 148 15

11.439: 11.444 – 446: 11.452 – 453: 11.556 – 558: 13.124 – 164: 13.187 – 188: 22.317: 22.416: 24.15 – 204:

127 127 – 128 128 142 – 143, 154 17 17 16 16 128 – 129

[Longinus] Subl. 9.15:

18

Lycurgus 1.11: 1.100: 1.101: 1.149:

263 256, 257 – 258 261 – 262 263 – 264

Lysippus fr. 4 PCG:

68

Menander Sikyonian(s) 176 – 271:

89

P. Oxy. 2382: 2506:

101 131

Pindar 16 16 121 121 121 17 121 121 – 123 121 – 123 125 – 127 16 – 17 123 – 127 127 127 127

Pythian 5.122 – 123: 11.15 – 37:

246 130 – 131

Plato Euthydemus 291c-d:

246

Gorgias 512e:

247

Laws 666e: 669e:

186 326

Index Locorum

922a: Meno 73a 6 ff.:

186

183

Protagoras 321d-322c:

26

Republic 399c-d:

325

Symposium 187a-d:

313 – 316

94

Plutarch Alexander 8.3: 29:

81 – 82 77 – 80

Antony 75.4 – 5:

96 – 97

Crassus 33:

108 – 109

Moralia 334c-f:

77 – 80

Ser. Num. Vind. 10.555 A:

131

[Plutarch] On Music 1136 e-f: 1138 b-c: 1141 c-d: 1142 f: 1144 c-e:

Histories 23.10.12 – 16:

108

Scholia Aeschylus, Choeph. 733: 131 Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 1.804: 289 Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 1.855: 290 Aristophanes, Thesm. 1059: 84 Euripides, Or. 57: 89 Euripides, Or. 268: 89 Euripides, Or. 1366: 89 Sophocles

Plautus Menaechmi 7 – 9:

Polybius

340 332 331 338 322

Ajax 44 – 54: 51 – 52: 74: 815 – 816: 112 – 113: 118 – 126: 119 – 120: 125 – 126: 253 – 256: 364 – 367: 372 – 376: 407 – 409: 421 – 427: 430 – 480: 457 – 459: 485 – 524: 527 – 528: 550 – 551: 589 – 590: 652 – 653: 657 – 665: 761: 764 – 765: 766: 770 – 775: 774 – 775: 777: 815 – 818: 1026: 1073 – 1076: 1266 – 1267:

143 147 149 245 149 26 138 – 139 153 147 147 147 147 149 – 150 138 146 – 147 138 148 138 151 148 141 143 143, 150 143 143 – 144 151 143 141 245 153 152

363

364

Index Locorum

1271: 1273 – 1280: 1283 – 1287: 1340 – 1341: 1380:

152 139 140 – 141 154 154

Electra 4 – 10: 32 – 37: 51: 82 – 84: 417 – 423: 644 – 659: 1373 – 1375: 1376: 1379 – 1381: 1424 – 1425: 1425: 1508 – 1510:

158 – 159 159 – 160 160, 167 160 – 161 102 161 – 162 164 162 162 – 163 167 – 168 161 168 – 169

Oedipus the King 202 – 206: 914 – 924: 919 – 920: Philoctetes 1 – 25: 54 – 86: 96 – 122: 123 – 134: 127 – 131: 191 – 200: 530 – 534: 542 – 627: 542 – 552: 561 – 562: 570 – 571:

162 165 – 166 162

174 174 174 174 – 175 172 27, 177 172 171 – 178 175 175 175

591 – 597: 603 – 619: 622 – 625: 628 – 634: 791 – 792: 1326 – 1328: 1326 – 1341:

175 176 – 177 175 175 175 27 177

Women of Trachis 169: 169 – 177:

247 165

Stesichorus fr. 217 Page / Davies: 131 fr. 218 Page / Davies: 131 fr. 219 Page / Davies: 131 – 132 Suetonius Caligula 57.3 – 4:

108

Theocritus Idyll 17 112 – 116:

85

Thucydides Hist. 3.82 – 84: 5.47.11: 6.16.1 – 2: 6.28.2:

193 – 194 159 195 – 196 195

Velleius Paterculus 2.82.3: 109

General Index Achilles 138, 145 – 147, 149 – 151, 153 – 154, 201, 216, 221, 222, 225, 226, 227, 230, 306, 327 actor 196, 208, 216, 228, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 252, 317 Adams, S. M. 166 adaptations of drama 82 Adonis 83 – 84 Aegisthus 121 – 136, 187, 197 – 200, 202, 203, 208, 342 Aeschines 235, 236, 237, 238, 240 Aeschylus 22 – 26, 29 – 30, 33 – 47, 80, 82, 86 – 87, 105 – 106, 121 – 136, 189, 190, 196, 202, 214, 215, 218, 219, 245, 246, 247, 269, 278, 282, 284, 285, 286, 291, 299, 300, 301, 333 Aetnaeae (see Aitnaiai) Against Leokrates 251 – 268 Against the Stepmother 243 – 250 Agamemnon 39 – 41, 121 – 136, 218 Agamemnon 190, 191, 199, 200 – 203, 213 – 230, 239, 307 Agathon 71, 87 agathos 182, 183, 185, 186, 189, 191, 197, 207 Agên 82, 269 – 270, 273, 275 agon 10, 69, 139, 215, 218, 219, 222, 229, 230, 252 agônothetês 78 n. 19 agora 159 Agrionia 83 Aigisthos (see Aegisthus) aisa 15 Aitnaiai 25, 76 n. 6, 87 Ajax 137 – 154 Alcestis 27 Alexander Aetolus 83, 98 Alexander Romance 104 Alexander the Great 77 – 82, 86, 94 – 96, 104, 256, 266, 269, 270, 273, 275, 317 Alexandria 82, 84, 97 – 98, 100 – 101, 107 allegory 49 allusion 250, 289, 290, 291, 292 Amphiaraia 83

Amphitheus 18 anagnorisis 196, 208, 222 Anaximander 202 Andria 90 Andromeda 81, 83 Antigone 235 – 241 Antigone 238, 239, 303 Antigoneia 84 Antiocheia 84 Antiochus III 85 Antiochus VI 86 Antiope 183, 195, 196, 204, 288, 289 Antiphon 186, 243 – 250, 251 Aphrodite 19, 24 Apollo 22, 28 – 29,157 – 169, 204, 299, 331, 333 Apollo Aguieus / Aguiates 164, 166 – 167 Apollo Lykeios / Lykios 159, 161 – 163, 165, 168 Apollonius Rhodius 271, 273, 277 – 294 Archelaus of Macedon 86 – 87 Archelaus 76 n. 6, 87 Archippus 67 Areopagus 45 – 46 aretê 128, 182, 183, 185, 186, 197 Argonautica 277 – 294 Argos 39 – 40 Ariarathes 85 Aristophanes of Byzantium 98 Aristophanes 18 – 22, 49 – 64, 65 – 73, 195, 196, 247, 251, 269, 271, 275, 323 Aristotle 3 – 5, 11 – 12, 90, 102, 184, 185, 186, 189, 192, 197, 201, 207, 225, 238, 251, 253, 269, 271, 297, 317 – 345 Aristotle on music and theatre 317 – 345 Aristoxenus of Tarentum 321, 322, 332, 331, 333, 334, 337, 338, 339, 340 Arnott, W. G. 187 – 188 Arrowsmith, W. 187, 196 Artavasdes II of Armenia (see Artavazes / Artavasdes) Artavazes / Artavasdes 108 – 109, 272 Artemis 222, 226, 267, 334 Artists of Dionysus 82 – 83, 85, 89, 95 – 96

366

General Index

Asclepiades of Tragilus 282 Asia Minor 76 Asklepieia 83 asphaleia 82 Aspis 18, 108 Assmann, J. 93 Astragalistai 83 asylia 82 atê 105, 107, 109 Athena 19, 22 – 24, 46, 138 – 139, 143, 149, 201, 254, 266, 267, 279, 287, 321, 329, 330, 331 Athenocentricity 76, 100 Athenodorus 78 Athens 44 – 47, 54, 76 – 77, 78 – 80, 84, 89 – 90, 106 Attaleia 84 Attalids 86 Attalists 86 Attalus III 86 audience 182, 187, 190, 191, 193, 199, 201, 203, 208, 213, 214, 215, 219, 224, 225, 228, 229, 235, 236, 240, 251, 252, 253, 255, 257, 259, 262, 281, 331 aulos 251, 321, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331, 334, 336, 338, 341, 343, 344 autochthonia 261, 262, 265 Babylon 81 Bacchae 28, 76 n. 6, 108 – 109 barbarians 38 Barigazzi, A. 244, 245, 248 Barker, E. 319, 320, 321, 326, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 Birds 20, 66 Blundell, M. 166 body 62 Bryant Davies, R. 101 Burian, P. 34 – 35 Calchas 143, 148, 150 – 151 Caligula 108 Callimachus 98 Callixeinus 95 Cappadocia 85

captatio benevolentiae 91 Cassandra 121 – 136 Cassandreis 83 Chares of Mytilene 81 Chirones 66 Choephoroi 41 – 43 chorêgia 78 – 79 chorêgos 78 – 79 Chorus 4, 7 – 10, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 270, 287, 328, 331 Cistellaria 90 citizenship 90, 92 civic ideology 90 Cleophon 67 Clouds 69 Clytaemestra (see Clytemnestra) Clytemnestra 121 – 136, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 216, 217, 221, 222 – 230, 245, 247 comedy 4 – 5, 8, 11, 65 – 73, 82, 193, 229, 251, 275, 317, 323, 328, 341, 342 Compton-Engle, G. 54 costume(s) 50 – 54, 56 – 58, 60, 63, 88 Crassus 108 – 109 Crates 71 – 73 Cratinus 66, 68, 71 – 73 Creon 235 – 239, 274 Critias 202 Cucuel, C. 246, 248 cultural consciousness 81, 91 – 92 cultural language 99 – 109 cultural memory 87 – 99 Cusset, Chr. 287, 290 Cyme in Aeolis 84 Cyprus 76 daimon 220 Damon 314, 315, 320, 321, 329, 333, 334, 335 Danaid trilogy 24 Daphnis 83 ‘day of the king’ 86 De falsa legatione / On the False Embassy (by Demosthenes) 235 – 241 De Musica / On Music (by Pseudo-Plutarch) 322, 331, 332, 339, 340 De Roguin, Cl.-Fr. 162 death 151 – 152

General Index

decontextualization of tragedy 236 Delos 78, 84 demagogy 67 Demetrieia 84 Demetrius Poliorcetes 86 democracy 90, 94 Demoi 66 Demosthenes 235 – 241, 247, 252, 256 Demosthenes and Sophocles 235 – 241 Der Ring des Nibelungen 295, 299, 300, 301 deus ex machina 22, 28, 65, 177, 205, 290, 292 deuteragonist 237, 238, 239 didaskalos 236 Die Kunst und die Revolution 299 – 300 Dike Play(s) 25 dikê 108, 191, 196, 202, 203 Diogenes Laertius 185 Diognetus 83 Dionysalexandros 66 Dionysia 84 Dionysiac elements 3 – 4, 95 – 96 Dionysiac guild(s) (see Artists of Dionysus) Dionysiades 98 Dionysius I of Syracuse 98, 270 – 271, 272, 273, 275 Dionysius the Elder (see Dionysius I of Syracuse) Dionysus 4, 12, 19, 83, 85 – 86, 95 – 97, 269, 274, 275, 280, 291, 299, 300, 301, 317, 327 Dionysus Kathegemon 85 Dioscurides of Samos 87 dithyramb 4 – 5 divine 189, 202, 203, 217, 224, 226, 230, 273, 275, 289 dolos 228 Dorian harmony 321, 324, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 dramatic juxtaposition 194 dreams in tragedy 102 – 104 Due, B. 244, 245 Düring, I. 319 dynastic cult 84 – 86

367

Easterling, P. E. 89, 138, 190, 237, 238 Ecbatana 81 Ecphantides 328 education 70, 186, 236, 251, 252, 320, 321, 322, 323, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 344 Egypt 6, 76, 83 – 84, 92, 97, 104 eisangelia 254, 262, 265, ekkyklema 53 – 54 Electra (by Euripides) 181 – 212, 215 Electra (by Sophocles) 157 – 169 Electra 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 196 – 208, 298 Encheiridion 88 epainos 256, 260, 263 Ephesus 88 epic cycles 157 epic 189, 191, 197, 198, 214, 223, 247, 263, 273, 274, 277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 288, 290, 291, 292, 300, 304, 341, 342 epideictic oratory 226, 227, 255, 256 epitaphios logos 255, 256, 258, 261 Epitrepontes 88, 108 Eratosthenes 98 Erechtheus 251 – 268 ergon 166 error 5, 102 Eryximachus 313, 314, 315, 316 ethos 184 euandria 184, 196, 207 – 208 euboulia 184 eugeneia 183, 185, 198 eugeneis 184, 185 Eumenides 44 – 47, 333 – 334 Eumolpus 254, 255, 256, 261 Euphronius 98 Eupolis 66 – 69 Euripides 27 – 29, 71, 80, 82, 86 – 89, 98, 131, 181 – 197, 199 – 200, 201, 202, 204 – 208, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 222, 226, 227, 228, 229, 245, 247, 251 – 267, 269, 271, 278, 281, 282, 288, 289, 290, 291, 298, 299, 303, 304, 343 Euthydemus 246 Exagôgê 97, 100 – 107 Exathres 109

368

General Index

exodos 239, 280, 290 Exodus 100, 103, 105 – 107 Ezekiel 97, 100 – 107 ‘False Merchant Scene’ 171 – 178 Fartzoff, M. 33 festivals 83, 89 Finglass, P. J. 149 forensic oratory 252, 255, 256, 263 Frogs 22, 50, 66 Gagarin, M. 244 – 245 Garvie, A. 35 Gaugamela, battle of 80 gennaios 184 genre 90, 188, 213, 239, 243, 258, 300, 336 genres, mixing of 90 Gernet, L. 244, 245 Gerytades 66 Ghiron-Bistagne, P. 8 ‘glocalisation’ 99 gods in drama 15 – 30, 143 – 145, 148, 157 – 158 Goldhill, S. 186 – 187 Gottfried von Strassburg 295, 296, 297, 302, 303, 304, 308 Gould, J. 137 Great Dionysia 78 Great Procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus 95 – 96 Gyges 101 Hamburgische Dramaturgie 343 Hanink, J. 97, 235, 255, 258 harmonia 321, 324, 325, 326, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341 harmony 299, 313, 314, 315, 316, 320, 321, 329, 332 – 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 340, 341, 342 Hector 141, 148 Helen 28, 75, 107 Hellas 93 Henry V 273 – 274 Heracles 177, 247, 280, 290, 292, 298, 306 Heraclides Ponticus 320, 333 Heraclitus 313

Heraia 83 Hermes 19 Herodotus 93, 106 – 107, 189 Heros 90 Hieron 87 historic present tense 249 Homer 121 – 136, 137 – 154, 197, 206, 226, 245, 286, 287, 297, 304, 308, 327 Homer of Byzantium 98 Horsley, G. H. R. 166 hubris / hybris (see also ὕβρις) 38, 105, 107, 109 Hydaspes 82 Hyperbolos 67 Hypsipyle (by Aeschylus) 278, 284, 285 Hypsipyle (by Euripides) 278, 282, 291 Hypsipyle 277, 279, 280, 281, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 291 Hyrodes (see Orodes) identity 91 – 94, 99, 104, 106 Iliad 15 – 16, 137 – 154, 226, 287, 304, 327 imitation 189, 262, 273, 320, 330, 341, 342 India 81, 86 insult 146 – 147 intransigence 147 – 148 intrigue 206, 216, 217, 218, 221, 222, 228, 229, 230 intriguer 216 – 218, 229 Ion 28 – 29, 75 Iphigenia at Aulis 131, 213 – 231, 219, 220, 223, 224, 226 Iphigenia in Tauris 75 – 76 Iphigenia 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221 – 229 irony 177 Isocrates 93 Issus, battle of 80 Jason of Tralles 108 – 109 Jason 277, 279, 280, 281, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291 Jason’s cloak 277, 279, 280, 287, 288, 289 Jerusalem 107 Jews 92, 100 – 101, 104, 106 Julian the Apostate 273

General Index

Julius Caesar (by Suetonius) 269, 272 Julius Caesar 269, 272, 273, 274 kakos 181, 185, 197 Kassandra (see Cassandra) katachysmata 56 katharsis 317, 319, 333, 335, 341, 342, 344 Kells, J. H. 166 kings as tragic poets 269 – 276 Kirkwood, G. M. 138 Klytaimnestra (see Clytemnestra) Knights 66 – 68 koinê 99, 110 komos 8 – 9, 11, 13 Kratapaloi 66 Kybernetai 88 Kyriakou, P. 146 Lagids 86, 96 lampros 53 language 145 – 146 Laodice 85 Laodiceia 84 Laws 66, 185, 186, 204, 207, 236, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 323, 326, 331, 336 Le Guen, B. 79 – 80, 86 Lemniai (by Sophocles) 278, 284, 286 Lemnian deeds 277 – 294 Lemnian women 277 – 294 Lemnos 174 – 175 Leonhardt, J. 4 Lessing, G. E. 343 Leukadia 88 life 151 – 152 literary form 307, 308, 317 literary tradition 282, 288 logos 166 Lycophron of Chalcis 83, 98 Lycurgus 80, 97, 251 – 258 Lycurgus and Euripides 251 – 268 Lydian harmony 324, 338, 339, 340 Lykourgos (see Lycurgus) lyric 183, 188, 207, 222, 263, 277, 280, 281, 300, 336 Lysippus 68 Lysistrata 22, 67

369

Macedon 76 n. 6, 87 Macleod, C. W. 45 Magnes 71 – 73 Magnesia on the Meander 84 makarismos 65 Marathonioi 83 March, J. 165 – 166 Marikas 66 – 67 marriage 58 – 59, 89 – 90 marriage, law of 90 – 92 Marsyas (by Melanippides) 330, 331 mask(s) 52 – 53, 55 – 56, 59, 88 mechanema 221, 229 Medea 277, 279, 280, 291, 298 megalomania 148 – 151 Melanippe Wise 184 Melanippides of Melos 330, 331 Memphis 80 Menander 18, 56, 87 – 94, 99 Menander, house of 88 Menelaus 216, 218, 219, 220, 224, 229, 239, 287, 298, 304 Meno 183 messenger 220, 240, 244, 249, 279, 284, 292 Messenia 88 metaphor 49, 245, 246 miasma 135 Mikalson, J. 157, 167 Minadeo, R. 166 Miners 66 Misoumenos 88 Mithridates VI 86 Mnester 108 Monotropos 66 moral 184, 190, 192, 193, 197, 202, 204, 207, 223, 253, 259, 266, 322, 326, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 341 moral values in Euripides’ Electra 181 – 212 Moses 100, 102 – 104 Mouseia 83 murder 165 – 169 Musaeus 83 Muses 66 music and theatre 295, 296, 297, 301, 313 – 316, 317 – 345 music in education 321 – 322

370

General Index

musical instruments on vase-paintings 327 – 329 musical instruments 325 – 327 Mysians 338, 339 myth 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 213, 214, 215, 223, 224, 225, 228, 245, 255, 257, 262, 264, 281, 282, 283, 288, 291, 295, 296, 299, 304, 309, 342 mythology 66 Mytilene mosaic(s) 88 narrative 202, 213, 214, 216, 221, 228, 229, 244, 245, 246, 248, 249, 254, 287, 291 narrative patterns in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis 216 narratology 171 – 178 Near East 6 nemesis 105, 107, 108 Nemesis 66 Neoptolemus 173 – 177 Nervegna, S. 87 – 88 New Comedy 18 ‘New Dionysus’ 86 new music 71 Nicocreon of Salamis 78 Nicolaus of Damascus 101 Nielsen, I. 6 Nomos 324, 330 nursemaid 279, 285, 286, 292 Nysa 85 Odysseus 173 – 178, 219, 239, 304, 307 Odyssey 16 – 18, 121 – 136, 138, 197, 206, 245, 286, 288, 297, 308 Oedipus (by Julius Caesar) 269, 272, 273, 274 Oedipus (by Lycophron) 83 oikos 90, 99 olbos 105, 107, 109 Old Testament 100 oracle 160 – 161, 165, 167 – 168 Oracle of the Potter 104 Oresteia 22 – 24, 39 – 47, 56 n. 21, 121, 136, 158, 165, 189, 197, 215, 245, 249, 299, 300

Orestes 181 – 184, 186 – 188, 190, 191, 193, 195 – 208, 215, 225, 249, 333, 334, 342 Orestes 88 – 89, 131 origins of drama 4 Orodes / Hyrodes 108 – 109 Osiris 97 paideia 91, 93, 108 paideusis 93 Palestine 76, 100 pallakê 245, 248, 249 pan-Dionysism 3 – 4, 12 Panegyricus 93 pan-Hellenic ideals 75 – 76 pantomime 108 Papastamati, St. 58 paratragedy 71 parodos 200, 215, 218, 220, 228 parody 71 Pasicrates of Soloi 78 pathos 75, 206 patriotism 235, 255, 258, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265 Patroclus 140 patronage 84, 86 Peace 19 – 20 Peisander 67 Pergamum 85, 86, 100 Perikeiromene 90 Perinthia 88 Peripatetics 92, 94 peripeteia 56, 202, 206 Persai (by Timotheus) 324 Persia 81 Persians 33 – 34, 40, 76 n. 6, 105 – 106 personification 59, 62 Phaenippus 83 phallic hymns 4 – 5 phallos 62 – 63 Pharaoh(s) 80, 104, 107 Phasma 88 Pherecrates 66, 68 philanthropic god(s) 15 – 30, 17 Phili(s)cus of Corcyra 95 Philip II of Macedon 77, 108 Philoctetes 171 – 178 Philoxenus 338, 339

General Index

phronesis 184 Phrygian harmony 321, 324, 326, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 343, 344 Phrynichus 66 – 67 physis agathê 198 – 199 Pindar 129 – 133, 135, 153 Pisistratus 7 – 8 Plato 67, 93, 185, 186, 192, 197, 204, 207, 236, 246, 247, 273, 313 – 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 323, 325, 326, 329, 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340 Plautus 90 ‘Pleiad’ 83, 95, 98 Plokion 88 plot-reversal 102 Plutarch 108 – 109 Plutoi 66 poetic vocabulary 246, 247, 248 poetic 184, 190, 201, 213, 214, 216, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 252, 258, 259, 262, 263, 270 Poetics 189, 206, 225, 297, 317, 319, 320, 333, 335, 341, 342, 343 poetry in oratory 251 – 254 polis 33, 70, 76, 78 – 79, 90, 92, 94 – 95 Politeia (see Republic) political behaviour in Euripides’ Electra 181 – 212 political 183, 185, 189, 190, 195, 196, 197, 204, 208, 213, 228, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 265, 266, 275, 329, 330, 331 Politics 317, 318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 325, 326, 329, 331, 332, 333, 337, 340, 341, 342, 343 post-classical performances 89 post-classical tragedy 269 potion 244, 297, 298, 302, 303 Praxithea’s monologue 256, 257 – 262, 264, 265, 266, 267 prayer 161 – 163 Priam 148 priamel 185 prolepsis 172 prologue 196, 217, 218, 262, 270, 279, 280, 281, 292 Prometheus Bound 25 – 26, 76 n. 6 Prometheus Unbound 25 – 26

371

Pronomus of Thebes 324 – 325 propaganda 82, 84 – 86, 104 proskynêsis 81 prosopon fallacy 157 – 169 Prospaltians 66 protagonist 195, 237, 238, 239 Protagoras 93 prytaneion 93 Pseudo-Plutarch 322, 331, 332, 339, 340 Ptolemaia 84, 95 Ptolemais-Hermiou 83 Ptolemy I Soter 95 Ptolemy II Philadelphus 83, 85, 92, 95 – 97, 100 Ptolemy III Euergetes 97 Ptolemy IV Philopator 83 – 84, 271 – 272 Ptolemy VI 86 Ptolemy XII 86 Pylades 130 Pythagoreanism 285 Python of Catana or of Byzantium 82, 270, 273 recognition 102 reconciliation of Greece and Asia 81 Rehm, R. 85 religion 5, 7 Republic 185, 192, 207, 314, 317, 318, 320, 321, 323, 325, 329, 332, 334, 337, 338, 339, 340 reputation 151 – 152 retirement 66 Revermann, M. 58 rhêsis 235, 236 Rhesus 29, 102 – 103 Rhetoric 251, 317 rhetorical strategy 262 – 267 Rhinon 67 Rhodes 78, 84 rhythm 299, 314, 315, 316, 320, 323, 326, 329, 332, 333, 335 rhythms and harmonies 332 – 333 ritual drama 6 ritual 333, 334, 335, 336, 341, 342 Romaia 83, 84

372

General Index

sacrifice 215 – 219, 221, 222, 224 – 228, 254, 256, 259, 260, 261, 264, 265 Samia 88 Samos 78, 84 Sansone, D. 243 Sarapieia / Serapieia 83 satyr drama 269, 270, 275 satyricon 4 Scamander 149 Schadewaldt, W. 298, 300, 343 Schmakeit, I. A. 281, 284, 285, 287, 291 scholia 89 script-text(s) 84 Seleuceia 84 Seleucids 86 self-sacrifice 264, 265 Septuagint 100 – 101 Seven against Thebes 37 – 39 Shakespeare, William 273 – 274 Sicily 76 Sikyonian(s) 88 – 89, 90 similes 273, 288 Sisyphus 202 sophistic 187, 188, 190, 192, 202, 207, 208, 264, 316 Sophists and tragedy 188 Sophocles 26 – 27, 80, 82, 137 – 154, 157 – 169, 171 – 178, 190, 206, 215, 216, 235, 236, 237, 238, 247, 272, 274, 278, 284, 291, 298, 302, 303, 343 Sositheus 83 Soteria 83 Sourvinou-Inwood, Chr. 7 South Italy 76 spectators 336 – 337 spondai 50 spoudaioi 189 stasimon 201, 202, 287 Stesichorus 131 – 132 Stratagus 83 Successors 82 Suppliants (by Aeschylus) 34 – 37, 107 Suppliants (by Euripides) 185 Susa 81 Symposium 313 – 316 Synaristosai 88 syncretism 80, 97

Tagenistai 66 Talboy, Th. 27 Taplin, O. 46 Taxiarchoi 66 technitai (see Artists of Dionysus) Teisamenos 67 temperament, of Ajax 142 – 143 Teos 84 – 86 Terence 90 Tetralogies 246, 248 tettigophoros 53 Teucer 140 – 141, 151 – 152 The Caesars (by Julian the Apostate) 273 The Wild Ones 66 theatre 185, 188, 208, 266, 273, 299, 317 theatre and music 313 – 316, 317 – 345, 342, 344 theatre and the spectators 336 – 337 theatre building(s) 82 – 83 Theoi Adelphoi 85 Theoi Epiphaneis 85 Theoi Euergetai 85 Theophoroumene mosaic 87 Theophoroumene 88 Theopompus 67 Thesmophoriazusae 21, 62, 271 Thespis 7, 11 Thessalus 78 Thrasydaios of Thebes 129 – 130 Thucydides 93, 193 – 194, 195 – 196 Timotheus 284, 324, 325, 338 tisis 105, 107, 109 Titus (by Suetonius) 272 Titus as a tragic poet 272 Too, Y. L. 98 topicality in drama 109 – 110 Trachiniae 169, 247 tragedy 4 – 5, 7, 65, 69, 80, 94, 100, 102 tragic drama 237, 239, 240, 243 tragic poet 251, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 278, 279, 282, 284, 285, 291, 300 tragic poetry 197, 273, 279, 280, 283, 285, 286, 291, 292 Tragodoumena 282 tragoedia saltata 108 tragos 7

General Index

‘transparent comedy’ 66 – 68 Triptolemus 27, 29 Tristan und Isolde 295 – 310 tritagonist 235 – 240 Trojan War 139 Trojan Women 76 n. 6 Troy 39 – 40, 172, 175, 177 Tyche 108 Tyre 77 – 81, 94 underworld 66 Vérilhac, A.-M. / Vial, C. 91 – 92 Vernant, J.-P. 137 Vian, F. 278, 279, 280, 282, 292 Vlassopoulos, K. 99 voluntary-sacrifice tragedy 216, 217, 225 – 228 Wagner, Richard 295 – 310 Wagner and Aeschylus 299 – 301 Wagner and classical myth 295 – 310 Wagner and Euripides 298, 299, 303, 304

373

Wagner and his relationship with Greek tragedy 295 – 310 Wagner and Ovid 307 – 308 Wagner and Sophocles 302 – 303 wall-painting 88 – 89 war 183, 185, 186, 188, 193, 195, 197, 201, 226, 227, 254, 255, 259, 260, 272, 326, 327 wealth 183, 184, 185, 191, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202 Wealth 20 – 21 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von 3 – 5, 11 – 12, 318, 319 Winnington-Ingram, R. P. 148 – 149 Wisdom of Ben Sirach 100 Xanthakis-Karamanos, G. 103 – 104, 183, 296 xenismós 7 Zeus 19 – 21, 25 – 26 Zeus Aphiktor 158 Zeus Bromios 158

Index of Greek Words ἀγαθὴ φύσις ἀγοραῖος ἁμαρτία ἀναγνώρισις ἀθέμιτα / ἀθέμιστα ἀμαθία ἀστεῖος ἀστός ἄστυ ἀτημελέες αὐτουργός αὐτόχθονες

199 68 5, 102 75, 102 247 204 68 39 41 289 192 260

δάμιος δεξιός δήμιος δῆμος δόμος δράσαντα παθεῖν δῶμα

42 69 39 33, 40 – 41 41 204 41

εἱμαρμένη 246 – 247 ἔλεος 5 ἔνδοξος δουλεία 274 ἑστία 41 εὐγενεῖς 191 εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων 70 εὐτυχία 221

μείζονες μοῖρα

191 152

οἱ ἐκ πάλαι πλούσιοι 184 οἱ ἐξ ἀγαθῶν πάλαι 184 οἶκος 41 ὅμιλος 33 ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν 67 ὄχλος 33, 226 παλλακή 244 παρθενικαὶ ἀδμῆτες 286 περιπέτεια 75, 102 πολιήτης / πολίτης 33, 39 πόλις 33, 39, 41 πόλισμα 33 πολιτικῶς 75 πόντος Σικελός 195 προαίρεσις 339 προστατήριος 161 πρόσωπον 158, 165 – 166 ῥητορικῶς

75

σοφός / σοφώτερος 69, 220 στράτευμα 33 στρατιά 33 στρατός 33, 37, 40 Σωτήρ 86 Σωτηρία 221

ἦθος

320

κάθαρσις κακοστένακτος κενὰ δοξάσματα κεφάλαια

326, 333, 334, 335, 341, 343 271 195 236

τρίγωνον τρυγῳδία τυραννοφιλία

λαός λεπτολογία λεώς Λύκειος

33, 37 70 33, 37, 40 161 – 162

φόβος

5

χιονώδης

289 – 290

ὠμοβόρος

284

325 69 – 70 329

ὕβρις (see also hubris) 5