AESCHY I-US. S E P TEM 187-190; 750-757

by R. P. Winnington-lngram

I t seems to be a matter of temperament whether or not a man finds an excess of violence in the words with which Eteocles rebukes the frightened women of the chorus (181 ff.1. a commander is entitled to be sharp with those who are likely to spread panic among his troops. Still, this condemnation of womankind i s very sw’eeping. may I share my house with the female sex. lerable confidence; when she has become afraid, she is an even worse plague to house and city.” i s noteworthy. It is natural to reflect that the issues of the play are focussed upon the house and the city. upon Eteocles in his double role a s “lord of the Cadmeans” and a s “child of Oedipus”! When he speaks of a house. it is natural to think of his house; and it is hardly surprising that a French critic2 leans towards a psychological interpretation of his outburst. “C‘est la maternitk qu’Etkoclr. ha’it. Lar i l ne l’a connue, dans sa faniille, que souillee par I‘inceste.” his immediate family, linked a s it i s to his accursed state.

Clearly

“Neither in trouble nor in prosperity When a woman is dominant. she is a thing of into-

The double reference to the house ( @ ~ o I K o ~ , ~ ’ i ~ ( r ; l ) in this essentially political context

Eteocles might indeed have been affected by the horror of the sexual relation in

But is it a purpose - or a main purpose - of this speech to characterize Eteocles? Did Aeschylus ever write a speech of twenty lines (or even four lines in a speech) primarily for the sake of characterizing a person, for the sake of psychology? critic of Aeschylus i s probably wise to err on the side of caution, bearing in mind that. in Aeschylus, the word is likely to be more important than the man - the word (with a strange kind of life of its own) and the theme that i t subserves. arrests attention, not so much in itself a s in the context wherein it stands. KpaToSaa (189). Judgment of the tone of the speech is bound to be in some degree personal and subjective: the structure and relevance of lines 1W f . are susceptible of a more objective examination.

It i s a big question, but the

There is one word in this passage which

The lines constitute a generalization, a yvbpq. Gnomic argumentation is by no means uncommon in Aeschylus, but this particular form of gnomic argument is not so common. belongs to a type which H . Friis Johansen- classifies as “foil-antithesis”. generalization cons is t s of two contrasted elements, one of which (generally the former) has no relevance - or no immediate relevance - to the situation illustrated. examples which Johansen identifies are the following.

I t 3 In this type the

The only other Aeschylean At Persae 598-602, the lines 601 f . are

88

not re levant to the present position of Atossa , though, i t may be remarked, they are re levant t o her recent pas t and to that of the !’.rsian realm. trouble and prosperity. the Herald’s main theme a t that moment. But , a s Johansen points out! “ the concrete ant i - t h e s i s between the good and the bad things which he h a s experienced is constant ly present in the herald‘s mind“. 638 ff. are formally irrelevant, s ince he is the bringer of good news, but actual ly a l l too rele- vant , s ince it SO(’I! turns out that he brings bad news as well. T h i s mingling of good and bad is charac te r i s t ic of the whole scene . so that in both these ins tances - spoken by the same speaker in the r.ame circumstances a t the same point of time - the ‘irrelevance’ of the l e s s re levant element is purcly formal.

The contrast is of the widest general i ty: .I-urnernnon 551 f f . cont ras t s good things with bad, troubles being

.lgurn. 636 ff. g ives us in effect the same phenomenon in reverse :

T h e instance before u s differs from these other examples in two ways. F i r s t , the cont ras t lacks the wider generality of the others (trouble and prosperity. good and evi l ) , being remarkably spec i f ic : KpaToGua $V . . . 6Eiuoua 6E. f inds no relevance whatsoever e i ther (as in the Agurnernnon p a s s a g e s ) in the immediate context or ( a s in the P r r s a c ) in the recent pas t . remarkable.5 of confidence is transferred to the noun 8p&uos6 and the far from obvious Kpa-roGao is introduced into the main contrast .

Secondly, the l e s s re levant element (to put it mildly)

One may add that the choice of KpaToGua is itself In contrast to GEiuaoa one might have expected Bapaoba: ins tead , the notion

It is Kpa-roGua that d i sconcer t s and invi tes explanat ion.

So much c a n be sa id more or l e s s object ively. We are led to a quest ion which seems to demand an answer. Why is E t e o c l e s made to say - inappropriately, or so i t seems - to the frightened virgins of T h e b e s that woman, when s h e holds the upper hand, is a n intolerable Bp&oos - a word which can suggest not only confidence but criminality? One answer. partially sa t i s fac tory , might be that E t e o c l e s h a s in mind the p lace of women in the s t a t e , the re lat ive ro les of the male and of the female. A s Johansen h a s shown,’ the phrase which E t e o c l e s u s e s a t 182 ( ap ima ~ a ‘ i n&i uWTfipIa) i s a sarcas t ic echo of political terminology; thus the return to political language a t 200 ( & k i y a p &v6p’1 - ~ f i yuvfi ~ O U ~ E U ~ T W - -ra<weEv) is virtual ring- composition. prerogative: &v6pdv ~ & 6 ’ h i , oqdryia K&I XprpTfipia I BEo?oiv ~ ~ G E I V I T O A E V ~ O V TEIPW&WV (230 f . ) . T h e woman’s place is in the home (201. 232). are ill-counselled ( p i . . .pouh~6ou KaKGS. 223) and a breach of discipl ine (nEieap$o).8

E t e o c l e s regards even the rel igious ac t iv i t ies of the women as infringing male

Their ac t ions . pious though they may appear ,

The development ul th i s theme 1 4 interest ing in i t se l f , s ince h e knob from the evidence of

Not only 1% th i s theme prominent in the Danaid trilogy, but, in the Agurnemnon, he other (and later) plays that Aeschylus was greatly concerned about the right re la t ionship of the s e x e s . c h o s e to depic t Clytemnestra a s a woman with a hear t of manly counse l (&v6p6pouhov dap), who sought and obtained the mastery ( K ~ & T O S , Kpaniv, passim) with d isas t rous result^.^

T h i s is not however in itself a completely sat isfactory explanat ion of the surprising KpaToGaa in 189, which occurs in a context primarily domest ic (between (GVOIKOS and O’~K?). In any c a s e we have merely written a gloss on the original quest ion. Why should E t e o c l e s be made to repre- s e n t the panic-stricken piety of these terrified virgins a s a threat to male domination‘? It seems out of s c a l e , as though they had ever been or would ever be in a dominant position. An answer might be that the whole theme re la tes beyond the immediate context ; that, ear l ier in the s tory, a woman had overstepped the bounds s e t to the female s e x , had exercised mastery, had taken and given i l l counse l ; that s h e had in fac t over-persuaded her husband to a criminal a c t which destroyed his house and imperilled the s t a t e . If that were so. i t would not be surprising that E t e o c l e s was determined to keep women in their place.

By what name was the mother and wife of Oedipus known in this trilogy? J o c a s t a ? We cannot be sure , s ince no name occurs in the p a s s a g e s (753, 926 ff.) which expl ic i t ly refer to

89

her. action, it cannot be asserted that she played a role either in the Laius or in the Oedipus or in both plays. There may be some likelihood that she did, but, since we do not know, it would perhaps be wise to drop the matter a t this point, with the observation that, in the absence of the lost plays, the full significance of this scene and of this speech (181 ff .) may be irreco- verable.

For convenience let us ca l l her Jocasta. Intimately though she was concerned in the

First however let us look a t a passage in the Second Stasimon.

This ode (720-791) i I our most important evidence for the content of the lost plays. In i ts explicit reference to past events it i s unlike any other feature in the surviving play;” and i t s purpose i s , obviously, to place the immediate action in a long perspective, to pull the threads together in preparation for the final phase which c loses not this play only. but the trilogy a s a whole. In the relevant portions (742-57, 772-90) i t i s not always clear what should be attributed to the Laius and what to the Oedipus and what may have lain ‘&jw TGV Gpaphwv . only with the third strophe (750-757). which is printed a s follows in the Oxford text (ed.2):-

The evidence, even so, is tantalizingly inadequate and needs to be used with caution.

We are here concerned

KPaTqeE(I5 6 ’ EK cplhzV &aOUhtdV

kyEivaTo ~ ’ E V p6pov a h $ ,

OUTE paTpb5 byvav

bicav aipaT6euoav

vuclqAou5 cpp~vdhq~ .

lTaTPOKT6VOV Oi6ilT66aV,

omipas apoupav, ‘ iv ’ i~pt iqq,

%TAU * qrxpixvota auv6yE

In this short stanza there are two matters of controversy: the interpretation of .!K cpihEv 1 1 (pihwv codd.) @3ouhi6v, the identification of the bridegroom in the closing sentence.

concern is primarily with the first of these controversies, but the view taken of it may concei- vably affect the second. The bride was certainly Jocasta: but was the b’ridegroom Laius or Oedipus? Opinion is sharply divided. p p ~ v h h ~ i s ) i s language too strong to describe the state of mind of those who came together in ignorance of their relationship. “exactty describes an awakening from the state of mind depicted in 756 f .” I quote from Pro- fessor G. R . Manton, who, in his careful study of the stasimon, ’* advances a number of consi- derations which, in his view. favour the reference to Oedipus. The following argument seems on the face of it particularly cogent. would suggest that both were responsible. beyed it.” (;UTE VaTpos K T ~ . ) and the argument seems little short of decisive. unless we have reason to attribute responsibility to Jocasta. of the first line.

My

It i s felt by some that rapdrvoia (and cpp~vdhq5 or

To which it i s replied that E.rr<i F ’ & p ~ ! p p ~ ~ v E Y E V E T O (778 f . )

“The plural form of v u ~ ~ ~ o u ~ applied to Laius and Jocasta But it was Laius who consulted the oracle and diso-

Add that Jocasta’s role in the preceding sentence is to be impregnated by Oedipus It i s virtually decisive,

We must now return to the problem

Laius disregarded the oracle and begat a son, because he was over-mastered (KpcrTqBEiS ) by ill-counsels (&pouhidv). &pouh&~ (in which case we ought perhaps to read qih6v with Wilamowitz) or a dependent genitive. If an epithet, what does it mean? strong for him? traditional version of the story, used by Euripides a t Phoen.21 and echoed in the scholia to our passage ( h b TGV a h o G cpihov $6ovGv) . Equate .the Guapouhiai of Laius with his lusts (trans- late the word by “follies”), and the epithet is not perhaps too strained.13 i t is often hard to distinguish between the notions of ‘thoughtlessness’ and ‘ill-advisedness’. Was it that Laius, under the influence of wanton passion, just did not think? (750) must be considered in relation to Guapouhia5 (802) and pouha’i G I T I ~ T O ~ (842), of which the

Between these two words stands q ihov , which i s either an epithet of

And what was too For that matter, why did Laius disobey? An obvious explanation would be sexual desire; and it was probably so in a

With baouhos,&pouh\a,

But drpouhidv here

90

former slightly, and the latter strongly, suggest a deliberate decision rather than a wanton lapse. In that case qihwv in the sense of *dedr” becomes difficult to defend. on the alternative explanation that this is the Homeric use of $has in the sense of “own”? The popularity of this interpretation seems to be unmerited. The Homeric use has recently been examined and convincingly explained by Professor A. W . H . Adkins.14 The reason why the word i s used by the Homeric hero not only of persons, but of his own faculties and posses- sions, is because “he has these persons and these things which he can employ to ensure his continued existence”. It i s conceivable that a later writer might imitate this usage, without understanding i ts basis, in such a way a s to apply the epithet to a mental process which was positively disadvantageous. and 410 qihq ~ u x ~ and qihov KCap are modelled on the Homeric qihov K@, qihov ?TOP, q ihos 8up65, of which q p ~ v b s qihos 0p6vos a t Agam. 983 i s a mere expansion. such usages and the explanation postulated f a t q iha i &powhiat.

Can we then fall back

But there is certainly nothing like i t in Aeschylus. At Cho. 276

There i s a vast gap between

qihwv a s an epithet i s thus not easy to explain and defend. If it is a dependent genitive, Laius was over-persuaded by the bad advice of “friends” (or “relatives”), which a t first sight gives a poor meaning. But a scholiast suggests that the reference i s to his wife (<&vT‘I TOG ~ f j s y u v a i ~ i ) ~ ) . Since the suggestion i s by no means obvious, one would like to believe that it was made by someone who knew the lost plays. This however cannot be assumed,15 and the suggestion must be judged on i t s merits, which seem not inconsiderable, particularly a s regards the coherence of the stanza. If Jocasta shared the guilt, then, a s Laius was punished by death at the hands of his son, so she suffered the incestuous marriage. The interior of the stanza deals with the double punishment, and the role of Oedipus within it is subordinate to that of his parents.16 The madness a t the end will then balance the ill-counsels at the beginning; and it may be that an audience familiar with, and responsive to, ring-composition would tend to take both of the same mind and act. (At least , the case for taking the closing sentence of Laius and Jocas ta would seem to be strengthened.) (181 ff.),with i ts s t ress on the proper submissive role of women and the odd prominence given to the word KpaioSua, we may be the more inclined to believe that in the preceding story a woman had over-persuaded her husband with disastrous results. ( 189). prototype of Clytemnestra.” nothing but the recovery of the lost plays could establish the point one way or the other.

Now, if we look back to the earlier passage

KpaioSua 3 v yap oljx bpthrpbv 0p&uo5 p+ y u v i ~ o u h ~ u i i o (200) . KpaTqOiiS k~ qihwv &powAtCv (750) . Jocasta, then, a s a

Clearly, no certainty can be claimed for this suggestion; and

Finally, suppose it were true, suppose that Jocasta over-persuaded Laius to beget a son in

Or she defianceof the oracle, what will her motive have been? of a woman for children, playing on the natural desire of a man (and a king) for an heir. too may have had dynastic thoughts. it is the cause of dissension between the brothers. l* back to the beginnings of the story. royal wealth of Thebes should go out of the family for want of an heir. Le t me raise another question. On what did Laius consult the oracle? place enquiry of childless parents19; and Manton seems to assume this;?’ when he objects to taking vupqious at 757 of Laius and Jocasta. But have we the right to assume that Laius and Jocasta had had intercourse before the consultation of the oracle? The response given by the oracle would seem to suit better with such a question as : n 3 ~ u+(w ~ 6 h r v ; . In any case , a s Manton himself points out, i t was a paradoxical response, “since normally a king would regard it a s his duty to provide for the carrying on.of his own guardianship of the state by begetting a son.”

It could have been the natural desire

The theme of wealth is prominent in the extant play, where

Perhaps it was tolerable to neither king nor queen that the One would like to think that it was carried

It is natural to assume that it was the common-

But Laius and Jocasta, seduced by wealth, sought to know better than the oracle?

King’s College, London

91

NOTES

1 39, 203.

2 G. Miautis, Eschyle et la trilogie 108 f .

3 General reflection in tragic rhesis 106 f f .

4 op. c i t . 63 (on which account this example i s only said to approach the character of a foil-antithesis). On Persae 598602, op. c i t . 61 f.; on Agam. 636 ff., op. c i t . 111 f .

5 Noted by Tucker ad loc.: “Kpa-roha i s a t first sight a peculiar antithesis to Gduacra, but the real opposition of the latter is with Bp&uos .”

6 For Bp&uos applied to a person, cf. Eur. Andr. 261 (and we need not involve ourselves in the vexed problem of Agarn. 803).

7 op. c i t . 106, n.17.

8 cf. a lso 248. On rreieap)(ia see also note 17.

9 On Clytemnestra, cf. JHS 68 (1948) 130-147, where 1 seek to bring out the importance in this connexion of the words for mastery and counsel.

10 For whatever reason, Aeschylus handled the exposition of this play in an extraordinary fashion. the occasion of the war is the quarrel between Eteocles and Polynices, and though the climax of the action i s to be their single-combat, no word i s spoken of the quarrel, nor is Polynices named or his presence in the invading army-mentioned, until the play has run more than half i ts course (576 ff.); though the quarrel and the duel are the working-out of the curse of Oedipus, that curse is only mentioned once (69 ff.) in the earlier portion of the play.

On the Danaid trilogy, cf. J H S 81 (1961) 141-152.

Though

11 Both passages have textual variants in the tradition. and qpcvhAci~ is not important to the interpretation. corrected to &@uhidv by Dindorf; and this i s almost certainly the correct reading. are in the main divided between @owhia and &$owhiatS (for details see R. D. Dawe, Collation and investigation).

12 BICS 8 (1961) 77-84, esp. 8 0 f . On r r a p b o i a he writes: “The use of. . s u c h compounds of nap& in Aeschylus suggests rather the moral ignorance caused by divine agency irrespective of knowledge or ignorance of facts.” case is ignorance of facts involved. displayed moral ignorance. passages have this in common, that both imply the idea of an aberration of mind, a deviation from its sound and natural course. . .rrap&voia is closely related to one aspect of &-rq .” on the interpretation of Sept. 756 f . , but his commentary and the passages he cites (Manton’s passages, with the addition of Eum. 330) seem to favour the view that the n a p b o i a i s that of Laius and Jocasta. Ate supervenes upon a wrong decision and causes the mad disastrous act? Hence the difference of language between the beginning and end of the stanza?

Manton also argues that, since the description of the effects of the disobedience of Laius is not complete until 765, “ i f a sentence were needed to round off the subject of the disobedience. . .its place would be at the end of the antistrophe”. down to the birth of the sons and the threat to the city arising from the curse and the quarrel. Moreover, i f the relationship between strophe and antistrophe is a s Manton supposes, and if the strophe ends with the marriage of Oedipus, this would seem to imply that the whole series of “waves” i s subsequent to that marriage. of Laius: they rise and fall, and it is this latest towering wave (760) which threatens the ship of state, s o that the Chorus fears the city will he destroyed along with the princes

On OUVTF/E (756) he writes that the imper- fect i s appropriate for describing the state of mind which persisted before and after the action expressed by the aorists Crrrc\pas . . . ETha immediately preceding. other hypothesis.

13 cf. Tucker’s note ad loc.

In the last sentence the choice between q p ~ v h h q ~ In the first sentence M has @ovhiav, which was

The other MSS.

Clearly, if either hpowhip: or c@ovh’lai) were adopted, $hov can be nothing but a noun.

He ci tes (11.91 Agam. 223 ( n a p a o n & ) and Pers. 112 (98) (nuphci), but in neither Nor is it clear in what way the union of Oedipus and Jocasta

“The two Fraenkel, on dgarn. 1455 (nap&vovs ) refers to Sept. 756 f.

He does not pronounce

But on any assumption the strophe does not carry the story

But the waves of 758 ff. should be the series of troubles arising from the disobedience

Several of Manton’s other points are covered in my text.

But it i s not obviously inappropriate on the

92

14 CQ n.s. 13 (1963) 30 ff., e s p 32 f . “What things (so to speak) can the Homeric &ya06s rely on? He has his own limbs and psychological functions, his tools, weapons, possessions, and portion of land; and he has his wife, children, servants, and other dependants.”

15 There seems to be no clear evidence of such knowledge elsewhere in the scholia. On 710 it i s imp- lied that Eteocles was the dreamer, but this may have been a guess, if a good one (assuming a refe- rence back to the Oedipus, which i s likely, though uncertain).

16 On ~ U T C (753) Rose writes: “Prose would say 6 0 ~ 1 s ; the difference between the two prms. is slight and rather indefinite. that, he. . .”’ he killed his father and married his mother. which were the twin horrors. of examples in Aeschylus of the epic UTE used with the force of a simple relative (cf. P. Monteil, La phrase relative en grec ancien 120). considering whether we should not divide 6s TE and take the TE a s copulative (TTOTPOKT~VOV. . .&

Either, in such a context, i s equivalent to Lat. qui + subj., ‘seeing that, in This i s clearly wrong. Oedipus did not kill his father in that he married his mother:

Actually there are plenty

Nevertheless, since the horrors are twinned, it i s worth

TE VOTpbS K l h . ) .

17, %hen Eteocles speaks in praise of m r l O a p X \ a (224), an audience might well remember the failure of Laius to obey the highest authority, which was the prime cause of woe. raged to do so by the very odd way in which Eteocles is made to express himself (224 f.), in terms of a family of abstractions. Since it i s a riddle anyhow and riddles can often be read in more than one way, a suggestion may be hazarded which in the case of a more straightforward passage would be rightly condemned a s extravagant. The combination ~ t l ~ i p yudl may be intended to recall Jocasta, who was wife and mother to the same man. Both her husbands should have been “saviours”. to ac t accordingly; Oedipus saved the city from the Sphinx, but endangered it when he cursed his sons. of cirrrpa.$a.

They may have been encou-

This is generally recognized a s popular riddling speech.

Laius was told how to save the city, but refused

The mother-wife encouraged the disobedience of her husband and brought to birth the opposite

18 733, 947 ff. Note particularly the prominence of this theme in the Second Stasimon: 729 ff., 766 ff . (esp. 771), 790, in close association throughout with the theme of cursing.

19 This i s the version in Eur. Phoen. 13 ff., and it was doubtless traditional. But the oracle in the form given a t Sept. 745 f f . seems to have been the invention of Aeschylus, who may well have given his own version of the circumstances in which the oracle was sought and the motives from which it was disobeyed.

20 “The meaning of the word vupq\ou~ i s more appropriate to Oedipus and Jocasta a t the time of the begetting of their children than to Laius a t the time of the begetting of Oedipus.”

93