RECONSTRUCTING AN AESCHYLEAN TRILOGY

b y A. J . Podlecki

The temptation to deal with the missing plays of Aeschylus’ trilogies of which one play survives has proved particularly hard to resist . (except for the satyr-play, Proteus) seems to have acted a s a sort of Siren-song, enticing otherwise sensible scholars into dangerous waters. The amount of energy, for example, that has gone into discussions of how the Danaid-trilogy (whatever i t s title really was) may have developed can be gauged by the length of the chapter which A. F. Garvie devotes to the subject in his recent study: at 70 pages i t i s the longest in the book.’ Garvie i s always fair to others’ vie-ws, and his very full presentation of the evidence - such a s i t i s - i s most helpful. I have relied heavily on his collection of material, as will appear from what follows.)

The survival of the whole Oresteia

a n f ac t ,

One who embarks on this treacherous voyage in hopes of avoiding the Sirens has his I t often appears to be (in Garvie’s phrase) a “thankless task”, and job cut out for him.

before getting very far into it one is tempted to agree with Rose’s testy remark that, given the scanty evidence, which has often had to be gleaned from late and unreliable sources - mythographical compilations, late lexicographers and grammarians - he regards “as waste of labour any attempt to make out how the matter was handled”.2 Still, labour must continue to be expended in the hope that by going over the same body of data yet again, we may turn up some fresh evidence, or fresh insights into the old evidence, and that our uncertainties about how these triptychs were conceived by their author can be significantly diminished. At the very least we may hope to discover some reasonably creditable se t of principles upon which reconstruction may proceed for the end-product to carry conviction. tantalizingly survives to make us wish to know more about how the lonely survivor fitted into i t s group of three (or, to be more precise, four; although the relation of the satyr- play to i t s tragedies i s a special problem): the Danaid- trilogy, Oidipodeia and Prornetheia.

I propose to discuss here3 the three trilogies of which one play

One assumption that might be questioned a t the outset i s that Aeschylus habitually composed thematically or mythically connected trilogies in which the story-line of the three plays led one into the next and in some sense culminated in the concluding play. The only definite assertion to this effect known to me i s the confused entry in the Suda- lexicon under “Sophocles”: K a i onj~bs T$$I TOG 6p&pa IT& 6pCipa h y o v i < d a r , &Ah& p i TE-rpaAoyiav, where the last word, tetralogian, i s Meursius’probably necessary emendation

for the MSS.’ mpaTohoyE?dai or uTpaTohoyiav, an interesting malapropism in view of the tradition about Sophocles’ generalship.

On the other hand, it would be foolish to deny that we have good evidence for the fact that some at least of Aeschylus’ plays were grouped in trilogies or tetralogies by the relationship of their stories, and not merely assembled, apparently helter-skelter, as Phineus, Persai, Glaucus and Prometheus (this last a real surprise and troublesome on several counts). that are not easy to hook up (from the little that is known or can be inferred from their content) with others in the group. problem: too many titles connected with what appears to be the same series of legends, and of which we have no clear idea of how - or even whether - they sorted themselves out into trilogies. Xantriae. In any case, it would be wrong to assume that Aeschylus’ poetic talents invariably channelled themselves along lines of interconnectedness and to insist on finding tight thematic or story links among the plays of the trilogies we are trying to reconstruct. B.C., already mentioned, which contained Persai and a Prometheus. most scholars have had to admit defeat in finding a nexus joining these plays.4

But there are plenty of titles in the over 80 plays listed in the Catalogue

Occasionally, on the other hand, we have the opposite

We hear of a Semele, Bacchae, Pentheus, Nurses of Dionysus and

The obvious counter-example, of course, i s the Phineus tetralogy of 472 Try as they might

Let us start with the Dunaid-trilog for which Professor Winnington-Ingram’s article provides a useful focus of discussion.g’ I want to make clear at the outset that his article seems to me one of the most lucid and temperate, as well as ultimately one of the most successful attempts at reconstruction of this kind that I have come across, so that any disagreements with his conclusions which may emerge should not be taken as criticisms of his basic good sense and judgment, which are present in large measure in this as in his other studies of Greek tragedy, but the inevitable result of close scrutiny of an exiguous body of data by separate, necessarily subjective, investigators. He begins with the just observation that “with one important exception” (he is referring to fr . 125 Mette, to which we shall return) the fragments of the lost plays of the trilogy “do not amount to much” - even this much is pure gain, an honest admission of how few are the pieces of really solid evidence which we have to move about, trying to fit them together into a convincing pattern, usually with a good deal of guesswork about the gaps in between. He then pro- ceeds to a fairly full statement of what his plan of attack is to be:

“In the Oresteia we can see how themes introduced in the Agamemnon are carried over into the Choephori and, in many cases, find their culmination in the closing scene of the Eumenides. It is a reasonable assumption that Aeschylus used similar methods in the Danaid trilogy and that themes which are developed in the Supplices were taken up and developed further in the succeeding plays. It is also worth bearing in mind that, i f any feature in the extant play seems to lack relevance or to receive emphasis disproportionate to its dramatic value there, it may look forward to the missing sequel.”6 Several prin- ciples or techniques of reconstruction come out into the open here, and it may be worth- while to underline them, and even give them labels. First, the ‘carry-over’ of important themes from play to play, leading to some kind of climax or culmination at the end of the trilogy; this we might term the principle of v p b o i a , ‘foreshadowing’, or ~b &pepov, a thematic joining among the plays. trilogy as in Oresteia: although here it is restricted to the inter-connexion of theme, a similar argument has often been applied by others with an unwarranted rigidity and with respect to wholly external and fortuitous elements such as ritual implications, cult- or festival- aetiologies, and so forth. This principle, ~b &o?ov perhaps, or ~b h o v often turns out to be, in unskilled hands, not a delicate tool for restoring plots of lost plays, but a blunt instrument. We are asked to believe that the Oresteia must serve as some kind of sacred paradigm which the poet followed unswervingly in creating his other trilogies; the theory takes no account of a possible development, or shift of emphasis, in his poetic vision,

Next the reference to “similar methods” i n the Danaid-

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and if this were in fact the way he proceeded, cutting all his garments from the same pattern, it would bespeak a poverty of invention unworthy of so subtle a writer - a s if he had to end every trilogy with the inauguration of a festival (if that i s really what i s going on at the end of E u m e n i d e s ) . appear to be irrelevant or disproportionately emphasized, in other words, the apparent &vwMahia of certain items in the extant plays from which i t may be possible to infer that their real value l ies not in what they contribute to the play at hand, but in how they were developed in the missing plays. This technique obviously works best with an opener like S u p p l i c e s , but an analogous procedure i s often employed with a closing play like the S e p t e m , where apparent irrelevances are taken a s ‘capping’ or ‘completing’ themes or details of the story-line introduced in the earlier plays.

Finally, Winnington-Ingram refers to elements which

Some additional principles emerge from Winnington-Ingram’s discussion of individual details in the Danaid-trilogy. as a criterion of choice from among the different versions of how the Argive King Pelasgus fared in the sequel. dorus (2.1.4 ff.) or as the result of a decision by the Argive d e m o s (Pausanias 2.19.3-4)? Or was he rather, a s the numerous references in S u p p l i c e s to the dangers of a bloody war between the Argives and Egyptians seem to hint (an application of the np6voia principle, this), killed in a battle waged in defence of the suppliants? “The economy of the trilogy would be embarrassed by the continued presence of a live Pelasgus : better that he should die and that Danaus should become king.”7 This, the principle of ~b n p h o v , i s employed again in his discussion of whether Aeschylus might have followed the story, preserved by Hyginus (Fabb. 168, 170) and Servius (on A e n . 10 497), that a s punishment for the crime of murdering their bridegrooms the Danaids were condemned to drawing water eternally in Hades. (np6woia) by the apparent irrelevance of Danaus’ comment earlier, “How could anyone who takes in marriage an unwilling bride from an unwilling father remain pure? If you do this, you cannot escape the blame for crime (or, ‘intemperate acts’, pcrraiov) even in Hades. The story i s that even there another Zeus gives last judgments on sins among the dead” (Supp. 227 ff.). But here Trp6voia must yield to ~ r p h o v : Winnington-Ingram finds such a plot-development inappropriate, and comments, “It may well be doubted whether an Aeschylean trilogy is likely to have come to a conclusion with the eternal punishment of a chorus.” Finally - and this i s really an extension of the argument from appropriateness - ~b E ) L K ~ s , what i s or i s not likely to have happened, given what we know of the poet’s usage or the expectations of his audience. It i s this principle which is applied, for example, to the question of when the Danaids perpetrated the murder of forty-nine of their Egyptian cousins. Winnington-Ingram finds it “unlikely that the murder of the bridegrooms, involving the passage of a night, took place in the course of a play. from Supp. 768-701, so did the A e g y p t i i [a hint here of ~b ’bov ?], and that the opening of the D a n a i d s revealed the murder of forty-nine bridegrooms and the sparing of the fiftieth.”’

An argument which might be termed ~b n p h o v i s used

Did he surrender his kingship to Danaus voluntarily, a s in Apollo-

Winnington-Ingram writes,

This might be thought to be foreshadowed

It i s more probable that, a s the S u p p l i c e s ended at nightfall [this can be inferred

I turn now to a more recent and much fuller treatment of how the trilogy may have developed, the chapter (V, which Garvie devotes to the subject in his book on the play which I have already mentioned. Garvie begins by making the sensible observation that the passage in Prometheus Bound 853 ff., where Prometheus prophesies the destiny of 10’s descendants, among whom will be the Danaids, i s “a more reasonable source for the Danaid trilogy than any account of the story in another author” (always granting, we must add, that the author of the Prometheus and the Supp l i ces - trilogy are the same person). “Yet even here, ” Garvie cautions, “we must admit that Aeschylus may have altered details to suit the different purposes of the two trilogies.”1° But the discre- pancies, a s for example in some details of the treatment of the Suppliants’ ancestress, 10, are for the most part minor and do not affect the point, that the main line of develop- ment in the trilogy must have been as Prometheus foretells: “In the fifth generation

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from your son Epaphus, 50 female offspring [Aeschylus’ phrase i s rather more high-flown] will once again go to Argos, quite against their will, in an effort to escape kindred marriage with their cousins; the men, with hearts aflutter, hawks not far behind in their pursuit of doves [the Aegyptiads are a l so called kirkoi a t Supp. 2241 will come hunting after marriages which it i s not right to hunt, and the god [goddess?] will begrudge the girls’ bodies,” p86vov 82 crocldrrov Y c ~ i OE6s (859). not been commented on. insist on remaining virgins”, it ought to mean that the Danaids were acting under some kind of divine sanction in slaying their cousins. the goddess of love herself? Aeschylus has them brought to trial for their action. Prometheus continues, and then the text annoyingly becomes corrupt, although Murray defends it on grounds that “obscuritas sermonis prophetam decet”. There i s something about war, Ares, which i s probably to be taken metaphorically, for lines 860-61 contain the phrase 8$UK?6VC+ . . V U K T I ~ ~ O U ~ ~ T G ) 8p&mi, a “boldness which involves watching by night and murder by women.” This conundrum, which may be more textual than pro- phetic, i s solved at once (as i s customary) in the lines which follow: “For each wife will deprive her husband of life by dipping her twice-whetted dagger in gore.” then allows himself the grisly comment, “May Cypris come to my enemies in this way.” A reference to Aphrodite’s speech on behalf of love in fr. 124M perhaps? “But one of the girls”, Prometheus continues, “shall be charmed by Himeros, desire, so that she not kill her mate, but her whetted purpose [i.e. to kill her husband, as her sisters do] will be blunted, and of two alternatives she will prefer to be called ‘strengthless’ (&vahKiS) rather than ‘blood defiled’ (piaiT6vos). She it i s who will bear a kingly line in Argos, but it i s a long account to go through i t fully. . .”, and with that Prometheus shifts ahead to his deliverer, Heracles.

The implications of this phrase have Unless it is merely a figurative way of saying, “the girls will

Were the girls acting under orders from If so, it seems unlikely (although not impossible) that

“The Pelasgian land will receive. . .”

Prometheus

It i s clear from the passage that Aeschylus did not diverge substantially from the story a s we know it from other sources: forty-nine of the Danaids slew their husbands, the sons of Aegyptus, on their wedding night (the phrase VuKrippoupiTG;) 8pbEi in 861 guarantees the time of the occurrence); one girl, here not named although we know her from else- where to have been Hypermestra, spared her spouse, Lynceus, because she was “charmed by Desire”. And it might be fruitful to speculate about an appropriate context in which Hypermestra preferred to be called “weak” rather than “murderess”. people of Argos and, as Pausanias reported, at a formal trial? This question of Hyper- mestra’s motivation raises the matter of what many critics have felt to be an ‘advance’- theme, .rrp6voia, in the Supplices, namely, the girls’ attitude to marriage. Danaids reject their cousins alone,” Garvie asks (221) “or are they averse to marriage with men in general?” In the long run, the distinction may not have mattered very much. be quite sure. “May I never, ever, become subject to the might of men,” the Chorus sing early in the play (392), and utterances of similar nature increase in frequency a s the action progresses. aversions which the Danaids manifest. Thus Winnington-Ingram writes: “The violent approach of the sons of Aegyptus has warped the feminine instincts of the Danaids and turned them against marriage a s such.”ll This i s an attractive suggestion and, if it i s correct, it opens up greater possibilities for how the sequel might have developed. Certainly a murder perpetrated merely in the name of some kind of ‘surface’ legality (the whole question of Egyptian endogamy in Supp., though long debated, has not been settled) will have been a much less interesting one than a crime which springs from deep, and in a sense diseased, psychological roots. have been very different according to whether i t was a simple purification of blood-guilt (Apollodorus (2.1.4) says the guilty sisters were purified by Athena and Hermes, and I can see no reason why this could not have formed part of the action of one of the plays in the sequel) or some deeper reconciliation of the girls to an institution for which they had felt such repugnance in the opening play.

Was it by the

“DO the

The question, put in so blunt a form, can perhaps not be answered. And ye t . . . we cannot

Attempts have been made to reconcile the two apparently different

And the denouement in the closing play will

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All their talk about how horrible men in general and their cousins in particular are might lead one to suppose that the Danaids were not cut out for marriage. are not suffragettes,” Garvie remarks; but, we might counter, they may be on their way to being spinsters. them just before, a s it were, the final curtain? Although the text i s moderately corrupt in several places and seriously mutilated in a crucial couplet, Danaus makes the point at such length and so repetitiously that his meaning i s not in doubt. The passage, in Weir Smyth’s Loeb translation,is a s follows: “Engrave these on your memories along with the numerous other wise saws you have heard from your father. I would have you bring no shame upon me, now when your youthful loveliness attracts men’s gaze. The tender ripe- ness of your summer fruit i s in no wise easy to protect; beasts despoil i t - and men, why not? - and brutes that f ly [the Aegyptiads had, a s we have seen, been compared to hawks chasing doves]. . . Love’s goddess” - unfortunately, just after this tantalizing mention of Cypris the text seriously falters, but in line 1001, karpomata stazonta, “fruit bursting ripe” (Smyth’s rendering) seems above suspicion (pace Page) - “ S O all men a s they pass , mastered by desire, shoot an alluring arrow of the eye at the delicate beauty of virgins. . . Bring no shame to us” (991-1008). Now, this emphasis on the Danaids’ physical charms, their marriageability, i s surprising to say the least; they are “ripe fruit”, in season (horan, 997), so much so that men are likely to cas t “bewitched arrows of desire” at them - and it seems to me more than coincidental that some of these very terms were used in the Prometheus of Hypermestra’s state of mind. 1004-5, compare‘ip~po5 OkACEi, P . V . 865; and the goddess Kh-rrpis i s mentioned in both passages. ought to be leading somewhere. Danaus’ admonitions to his daughters to be wary lest they arouse men’s passions ought to apply not to their cousins, whose passions are already aroused, but to the Argives among whom they are now, a s he tells them at 994, metics. “Bring no shame on me,” he twice urges them (996, 1008). part of the puzzle will not fall into place until the bride-race which some believe, on the bas i s of Pindar’s Ninth Pythian, among other accounts,12 that Danaus organizes in the final play to marry off his daughters to local husbands, after they have done away with their Egyptian ones. that we should have had to wait so long for i t to surface again. work into the action of one of the succeeding plays a scene in which the girls’ sworn vir- ginity came under threat not by their cousins, but by their Argive ‘protectors’? would have made a neat piece of stage excitement, the Egyptians and the Argives laying contrary claims to the Danaids’ affection, and the irony of the reversal would be piquant. Argive protectors become aggressors, Egyptian pursuers become defenders of their cousins. “Perhaps if we had the [Aigyptioil,” Garvie remarks, “we might be agreeably surprised by finding that Aegyptus’ sons were not so bad after all.”13 Conversely, the Argives may have turned out to be not such sterling characters as the first play suggests; they may even have reneged on their offer of asylum, elicited from them by their King by his persuasive powers (supp. 615 ff.). Some such development may be foreshadowed by Pelasgus’ remark a t Supp. 485: txpxfjs y;”p ptAaimos AE&, “the people like to cas t blame on their magistrates.” for a situation later in the trilogy in which a king i s repudiated by the people”;14 he thinks the king i s Danaus, but i t could just a s easily have been Pelasgus.

“The Danaids

What then are we to make of Danaus’ long, Polonius-like address to

With &AKTfipiov ~ 6 @ ~ p ’ . . . ‘I!&OV Supp.

On the principle of anomalia, a pointlessness in i ts present context, all this

It may be that this particular

But given the emphasis put upon the theme in Danaus’ lines, I doubt Did Aeschylus perhaps

That

Winnington-Ingram suggests that “the audience i s being prepared

Somehow connected with all of the talk about love and marriage in the Supplices must have been the famous and charming lines quoted by Athenaeus (13.600B):

The holy Heaven yearns to wound the Earth, And yearning (Eros) for marriage takes hold of Earth; Rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, Impregnates Earth, and she in turn brings forth for men The food of flocks and herds and Demeter’s gifts; And the woods put on their bloom from that moist Marriage rite. Of all these things I am the cause.15

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Athenaeus introduces the lines by remarking, “Aeschylus in the Danaids brings on Aphro- dite speaking a s follows:”, and we have no reason to disbelieve him. assumed that she spoke for the defence at Hypermestra’s trial, although others have felt that a trial of the forty-nine murderesses is more likely; but a s Garvie notes there i s “no necessity for a trial of any kind”,16 and those who suggest that a trial, of either Hypermestra or her sisters, formed the main action of the last play, are simply applying

(perhaps misapplying) the principle to ison from the Eurnenides. The only conclusion we are in fact entitled to draw,is the disappointing one that (again, Garvie’s formulation, 233), “Somewhere in the Aawai6q Aphrodite appears and makes a speech praising the power of Eypws.”

It i s generally

Another theme which recurs with too much insistence in the Supplices for it easily t o drop out of sight in the sequel i s that of the participation of the Argive demos in their king’s decision. In their opening lines the Danaids call upon the polis to which they have come (23). The girls ask the king when he arrives, with a bodyguard but otherwise very little sign of pomp, whether he i s “leader of the polis” (248). clear that they are seeking asylum from what i s likely to be violent onslaught of their cousins, Pelasgus says, “I hope that no strife afflict the city from unexpected, unfore- seen circumstances; the polis has no need of that” (357-8). He then pleads that he is unable to decide so serious a matter himself: “If the polis’ community i s befouled, then i t is the people’s business in common to work out a cure ; I shall not make any promises until I have communicated this to all the citizens” (366-9). The chorus, ignorant of the ways of democratic anachronisms, say, “But you are the polis, you are the dgmion . . .,” but later in this scene he reiterates his pledge, “I won’t do this without the demos, even if I have the power, so that the people can never say - pray god it doesn’t happen - ‘In your solicitude for interlopers you destroyed the polis’* (398-401). clear eye to get to the bottom of this,” the king moans, “to see that things work out without grief for the po l i s . . .” (407 ff.). threat of suicide does the king declare h is intention to “call together the residents and make the commonalty well disposed” (517-8). of the Argive assembly’s decree, “not doubtfully but by unanimous show of hands”, that they “spontaneously, without a herald” (622) should be given protection and subject to no demands for surrender, and any one of the citizens not coming to their aid in case of such a demand “to lose his rights and go into exile decreed by the people” (614). concludes his report by remarking that the Argive‘demos heard and responded to Pelasgus’ demagogic words (623-4). The chorus then burst into their great song of blessing upon Argos and her people: “May their state be regulated well, if they hold in awe mighty Zeus. . .warden of guest-right; . . .And may the people that controls the State guard i ts privileges free from fear - a prudent government counselling wisely for the public weal.”17

When they have made

“One needs a diver’s

Only after prolonged deliberation and the girls’

Danaus appears and reports the result

Danaus

From these and other passages Garvie concludes that “the fate of the city of Argos will be of some concern in the following plays”.’* a s he and others have been that this involvement necessarily issued in a war between the Argives and Egyptians. the rival claims of Danaus and the Argive king to the throne of Argos, and decided in favour of Danaus, after the occurrence of an omen: a wolf fought and overcame a bull, which was leader of a herd pasturing in front of the city wall. Animal imagery i s fre- quent in the opening play?9 and there i s even some emphasis on Argos’ walls (475, 955-6). But the fact that Pausanias seems in general to be following a version of the myth which named Gelanor, son of Sthenelus, as king of Argos may indicate that, a s Garvie remarked, “it i s unwise to look for traces of Aeschylus

I agree, although I am not so certain

According to Pausanias (2 .19 .3) the people of Argos heard

Pausanias a l so records a version in which Hypermestra was brought to trial by Danaus before a jury of Argives and acquitted (2.19.61, and Gruppe suggested a s long ago as 1834 that the title of the last play, Danaids, did not refer to the chorus, which he thought

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was composed of Argive citizens. new bridegrooms for the now nubile Danaids,“representatives of the state of Argos, which had undoubtedly played an important role in the action”.21) have indicated, is for some more full-blooded participation by the Argive demos, perhaps involving a change of heart, or even a change of side. to his daughters, “Don’t worry, the Argive vote i s binding, they will fight for you, I know” (739-40), may be a false scent. Pelasgus’ harangue, they might have been equally open to the demagogy of someone else, perhaps Aegyptus; the easy changeableness of popular assemblies was a fairly obvious fact of political life for a fifth-century Athenian dramatist.

(Winnington-Ingram postulates a subsidiary chorus of

My own preference, a s I

In that case, Danaus’ assurances

After all, if the Argives were able to be swayed by

One technique of reconstruction which I have not mentioned i s that of the ‘unique source’, some later version - Apollodorus, Pausanias, and even Ovid have been mentioned22 - which preserves the story-line allegedly used by Aeschylus. the blind adherence to any one later account of the legend, but it does seem to me that one of these has been unduly neglected, and it may turn out to be of some help to us in our attempts a t reconstruction. which record the valuable information that “Phrynichus the tragic writer says that Aegyptus came to Argos a s well as his sons”. T ~ V KYUTTTOV (KEIV can be justified from the context; the writer i s contrasting Phry- nichus’ version specifically with those writers, like Hecataeus, who maintained that only the sons and not Aegyptus himself came to Argos.) Now in the l ist of titles attributed to Phrynichus we find both a Danaides and an Aigyptioi, and we know that Aeschylus was accused by Glaucus of Rhegium of ‘borrowing’ the plot of his Persians from Phryni- chus’ P h o e n i ~ s a e . ~ ~ i as t i s explaining the reference in the Orestes to the “hill where they say Danaus first gathered the people and was brought to trial by Aegyptus”:

Garvie rightly questions

I am speaking of the scholia on Euripides, Orestes 872,

(I think that this interpretation of crw ~ I ~ U T T T ~ O I S

May he not have done the same in the Danaid-trilogy? The Schol-

Aegyptus came to Argos to avenge the murder (of his sons) but Danaus found about it and was calling the Argives to arms when Lynceus persuaded them to sett le their hostility by arguments, and he established jurymen for them, the best of the Egyptians and Argives . . .The jury was assembled at the highest hill where Inachus had assembled the people and advised them to settle; the place i s thus called ‘Haliaia’,Place of Assembly.

There are two possible connexions with Aeschylus’ treatment here. a passing mention at Supp. 497, though he i s not specifically called 10’s father here, a s he i s in the Prometheus; and the poet might have been alluding to a place and an insti- tution a t Argos similar to Athens’ Haliaia, and giving the Argive equivalent an aition of i t s own. In any case there i s sufficient material here for the middle play, while one of the other scholia on the same passage records what may have been the plot develop- ment of the final play, Danaids (in which I have no doubt that the main chorus was com- posed, a s in the first play, of Danaus’ daughter^):^^

Inachus i s given

Danaus became king of Argos. He gave his fifty daughters to the fifty sons of Aegyptus in marriage. He went to the oracle to inquire whether his daughters had in fact made a good match, but the god prophesied to him that he would ‘run a risk from it’, so he persuaded his daughters to kill Aegyptus’ sons. Lynceus, and this latter became king of Argos.

Only Hypermestra spared

Some unexpected plot-developments, to be sure, but not at all impossible for Aeschylus, especially in light of the importance (as we shall soon see) of a similar oracle in the Laius: the argument ~b 6po?ov thus rears i t s head once again. And for an extreme form of the argument from parallels in plot details , we may note the story in Pausanias that after the murder Lynceus escaped to a neighhouring district where he “lit a beacon-fire.

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For it had been agreed between him and Hypermestra that he should light the beacon if he escaped Danaus and reached some place of safety. beacon on Larisa, to show that she a l so was now out of danger. Therefore the Argives annually celebrate a festival of b e a ~ o n - f i r e s . ” ~ ~ Is this a combined foreshadowing of the beacon-signals in Agamemnon and the torchlight procession with which the Oresteia c loses?

They say that she kindled another

For the Oidipodeia (which I am sure was the trilogy’s title if Aeschylus gave it one) at least the date, the titles and their order are seoure. respectively Laius and Oedipus,26 and this shows at once that Aeschylus was presenting a legend familiar to us in i ts general lines from Sophocles’ plays. some caution “in i t s general lines”, because once again we are faced with the dauntingly difficult task of trying to discover which of the numerous variants that Aeschylus had a t his disposal he actually used; and we have only to ponder some of Euripides’ choices from this same stock of legends (the erratic nature of his version of the Antigone story, for example) to see how much freedom of choice a dramatist had. In the case of the Oedipus-trilogy we have some information about how the epic handled the story, and what appear to be Aeschylus’ echoes in the Septem of his own treatment in the preceding plays, but both of these potential sources of information turn out, as we shall see , to be mixed blessings.

The first two plays were called

I say , though, with

The fragments of the plays themselves tell us little enough. “Vom Oedipus des

The above-mentioned Aischylos”, wrote Ludwig Deubner, “wissen wir so gut wie n i c h t ~ ” ~ ~ - and that is very nearly correct. Oxyrhynchus papyrus seems to convey the information that “Laius spoke the prologue” ,28 which does not, however, take us very far. Mette attaches here another papyrus fragment (2256 fr. 78) in which only the words “Laios” and E@K&&v can be made out, the latter apparently meaning here “searched out”. Three lines are preserved in a scholion on Sophocles’ O.T. 733: “We were coming on our journey to the place from which the three highways art in branching roads, where we crossed the junction of the triple roads at P ~ t n i a e . ” ’ ~ The lines are guaranteed for Aeschylus, and clearly come from his treatment of this legend, but the Scholiast unfortunately fails to name the play. Mette and a majority of scholars assign the passage to the Laius, from a Botschaftsrede recounting Laius’ death. passage which survives from the missing part of the trilogy, could equally well belong to the Oedipus, where Weir Smyth and Murray put it; certainly the parallel account in Sophocles (O.T. 800 ff.) comes from Oedipus’ own reminiscences about the slaying, although this parallel perhaps carries little weight. One divergence between the two accounts, however, has often been pointed out, and may indeed be significant. Since Potniae i s south of Thebes, on the road to Plataea, Aeschylus’ version did not coincide with Sophocles’ in having Laius and Oedipus meet while the latter was on the way from Delphi. Stoessl and others have done, that Aeschylus had Oedipus saved and reared not in Corinth or Sicyon, but closer to home, perhaps in the hut of the shepherd to whom the exposure had been entrusted on Mt C i t h a e r ~ n . ~ ~ of the exposure of the infant Oedipus seems guaranteed by the citation of the word XuipI{Eiv, “to put in a pot”, by Schol. Ven. on Aristophanes, Wasps 289 (= fr. 171 Mette), where the ascription to Aeschylus and the explanation that the word means “killing of children by exposing them” justifies attaching it to the Oedipus story and emending the MS’s A&to to Aaip. nothing about the way Aeschylus may have managed the meeting between Oedipus and his father. assume, survived to tell the story, a s in Sophocles? The location of the meeting and

About the Laius we know only slightly more.

It i s a frustrating fact, however, that this fragment, the longest continuous

From the location of the meeting, it may be reasonable to surmise further, a s

That there was, in fact , some mention

On the other hand, from the three lines quoted above we can deduce

Was Laius in a wagon? Had he more than one attendant who, we must

8

the slaying, a t Potniae near Plataea, may suggest one further inference. (3.5.8) and Pausanias (10.5.4) record a version of the story in which Laius’ corpse was buried by Damasistratus, king of Plataea. followed, then the surviving attendant or attendants may not have returned to Thebes, a s in Sophocles, but perhaps went into hiding after the murder, only to emerge at some later time - in the course of the Oedipus perhaps - to narrate the events a t the Potnian crossroads and so to implicate Oedipus.

Apollodorus

If this was the account Aeschylus

Let me mention here two further attempts to extract fragments of the trilogy from late, and dubious, sources. An anonymous commentator on Aristotle’s Nicomachean E t h i c s (1110a 10) gives a l ist of plays in which he says Aeschylus “seems to have revealed some mystical teachings”, and among them is named the Oedipus .31 This has led some scholars to postulate a plot development along the lines of the opening scenes of the Coloneus, and in fact there is a scholion on O d . 11.271 which c i tes Androtion to the effect that Oedipus went to Athens where he became a suppliant a t the sanctuary of Demeter and Athena Poliouchos. followed by Sophocles i t does not follow that it did occur in Aeschylus’ play. The Aristotelian Scholiast’s l ist i s very heterogeneous, and may be sheer guesswork to explain the cryptic comment in the text of the Eth ics .

But just because this was not the version

There is a citation in the Etymologicum Magnum, TI 6; K a i ’ E ~ E ~ O V T O TOG a‘ipaToS K a i

& T T ~ T T U O V - “They tasted of the blood and spat it out” - AioxOhos ’EV TaiS nEppai@iaiv ia-ropE’i K a i ’Ev T+ v‘Aaiy, where the las t word, apparently nonsensical, was restored by Reitzenstein ’EV TQ m p i Aaiou. by Mette (fr. 173) a s allegedly coming from the Messenger speech relating how Laius’ killers performed some: apotropaic ritual to avoid a blood-curse. difficult to swallow.

This was taken over by Robert and has been accepted

To me this seems rather

That, apart from a few verses cited from the Satyr-play Sphinx (fr. 235, Mette, with i t s apparent back-reference to Prometheus’ wicker crown, creates more problems than it solves), i s the sum total of fragments, preserved or invented, of the first two plays of the trilogy. First, some speculation about where Aeschylus may have drawn his inspiration, and perhaps some of the actual details of his plot.

Where evidence fails , theory takes over.

There were possibly as many as four separate epics in the Cycle which dealt with Theban legends, the two principal ones being the Oidipodeia and Thebaid; of the latter Callinus in the seventh century maintained that Homer himseIf was the author. or, to be on the safe side, ‘the author of the Nekyia’ - tells the story of Epicaste and her son in O d y s s e y 11. shades of the Heroines

Homer -

Odysseus during his visi t to the Underworld sees among the

. . .fair Epicaste, mother of Oidipodes Who did a great wrong out of folly of mind (EiiGpEitJot v6oto) In marrying her son; and he, after slaying his father, Wed her. But he, though suffering grievously (&hyEa TT&UXWV) in lovely Thebes;. Continued to rule [this I take to be the force of the imperfect fivaum

in 2761 over the Cadmeians through the gods’ baneful will, Whereas she went down to Hades the strong gate-keeper, By fastening a noose from the lofty hall, Caught in the grip of her sorrow. To him she bequeathed Much suffering, such as a mother’s Erinyes accomplish.

(Od. 11.27 1-80)

Straightway did the gods make these deeds manifest to men.

9

Several items here seem to have had an influence on Aeschylus’ handling of the story. First , Epicaste entered into her marriage “in folly of mind’; we may compare the phrases with which Aeschylus describes the way ,that Laius begat Oedipus, KpaTqeEiS ’EK q1h6vI &kuhtdv (Sep t . 750; cf. 802 TrahathS Aaiou 6uo@uhiq, and 842 b u h a i 6’ ~ T I U T O I Aaiou), and a few lines later the Chorus comment that it was paranoia which “brought together the newlyweds” (Sep t . 756-7). itself again in Oedipus, whose marriage i s described in similar terms: he “came to his senses about his grievous marriage” (drp~ippov ~ Y ~ J E T O . . . &3Alov y&pov, S e p t . 778-9). At S e p t . 661 Eteocles accuses Polyneices of having attacked d v poi-ry q p ~ v d v and Oedipus is described as cursing his sons paivopkvq K p a G i q (Sep t . 781). The Homeric Epicaste invokes the Erinyes on her son (these are almost certainly to be taken as embodied curses, just a s Phoenix in I l iad 9 . 4 5 4 says that h i s father “called down the hateful Erinyes” upon him), and the Erinys looms large in Aeschylus’ treatment of the legend as we shall see. denied that Homer shows any knowledge of this version of the story, but it seems to me highly likely that this is just what the words a l g e a p a s c h 6 n in O d . 11.275 refer to, for such a phrase in Homer i s likelier to have a specific and concrete rather than a general connotation.

This ‘hereditary folly’, as it might be called, shows

Finally, the self-blinding by Oedipus. It i s often categorically

Elsewhere in Homer there occur passages where preliminary stages of the expedition of the ‘Seven’ are alluded to, mainly in what M. M. Willcock has aptly termed “mytho- logical paradeigmata” involving Diomedes’ father, Tydeus (Il . 4 . 3 8 4 ff., 5 . 8 0 3 ff., 10.285 ff.),32 but these are of little relevance here, since we know how Aeschylus handled that part of the story, at least . Book 23 of the I l iad , where we learn that Adrastus’ brother, Mekisteus, had gone to Thebes for the funer,al games of Oedipus, ~ E ~ O U T T ~ T O S Oi6iTr66ao / i s T&FV, “and he triumphed over all the Cadmeians” (11. 23.679-80). odd; Jebb thought that it indicated Oedipus’ assassination, and this suggestion has been accepted by G. L. H ~ x l e y , ~ ~ but I am not sure that it is anything more than a mis- applied formula. Even “fell in battle”, which i s what the phrase usually means (as at / I . 13.426),may not be inappropriate here. In any case , Aeschylus’ version of the story may have found room for these funeral games of Oedipus. to the Tr6tvia OiGi~rou UK&, which some have seen a s a reference to a hero-cult.) If so, we may surmise that the contest in which Mekisteus participated was boxing, and that he very likely fared better than his son Euryalus was to do against Epeius in the games for Patroclus ( I l . 23. 685 ff.).

There i s an additional, fleeting reference in

The word d e d o u p o t o s i s slightly

(At S e p t . 976 the Chorus refers

Let us turn from the earliest surviving treatment of the story, Homer’s, to those verses of the S e p t e m where, it has often been maintained, Aeschylus i s himself summarizing themes which figured in the preceding plays: the Second Stasimon, lines 720-91. Here, just a s Eteocles rushes from the stage with the despairing cry, “evils which the gods grant no man can escape” (719), the poet seems to be turning back and having his chorus remind the audience of what has gone before. This i s one of Aeschylus’ most evocative compositions, strongly reminiscent of the great early odes in Agamemnon. same impressionistic, almost dream-like, disregard of strict time-sequence, as the Chorus move freely from immediate past to present and back again to remote past , embodying in the flow of their song the inescapable sweep of fate which has destroyed three genera- tions of the house of Laius. goddess unlike other gods, telling-no-lies prophet-of-doom, a father’s prayed-for Erinys, in fear that she may have fulfilled [compare, with TEAbuai in 724, Epicaste’s Erinyes in the O d y s s e y who ’ E K T E ~ ~ O U U I V woes for Oedipus], the angry curses of baneful-minded &Nx&ppovo~, active; perhaps also passive, “crazed”] Oidipodes - and the epic term may be significant - this child-destroying strife has stirred her up.”

We find the

“I shudder in fear at the goddess who i s ruining the house,

Antistrophe a ‘seems to be alluding to the content of the curse: “A stranger, Chalybian

10

immigrant from Scythia, apportions the lots” that the brothers shall divide their inheritance in death; and les t the audience be left in any doubt about the correct solution to the ‘riddle’ of the curse, the Chorus proceed at once, as i s usual, to solve it in Strophe p‘, “%’hen once they have died self-slain, at their own hands, and the black earth has drunk their blood, what incantations can call i t up again?” (very close to Agam. 1019 ff.). Strophe p ’ ends with the words, “0 sorrows new, mixed with old ills for the house”, and they pick up .rrahaio?ai in 740 at once in the antistrophe: “Born of old (rahaiywfj) i s the offence I am speaking of, though it endure to the third generation, when Laius in despite of Apollo’s triple command at Pytho, earth’s prophetic centre, that he save the city by dying without children, overcome as he was [we are now into Strophe y’ ] by a love which drove him to madness, [I do not think this i s an over-translation of ’EK qnACv &pouht&v in 7501 sired death for himself, parricide Oidipodes, who dared to sow a root of blood in his mother’s sacred furrow, where he was nourished.” the powerful, but ambiguous, words: “Madness which destroys the mind (napdnroia pp~vdhq~) brought together the bridal pair” (755-6). somewhat with clich6s: “A wave of i l ls the sea brings on. . .” (though the words at the end have been thought to be of special significance: “I fear the city may fall with i t s kings”), but in Strophe 6‘ the Chorus take us back once more to the fatal past. “For heavy i s the fulfilment brought by curses uttered long ago” (.rrahai&ov). They then comment, a s other Aeschylean choruses do, on the dangers of “Prosperity grown too fat”. “For who of men”, they ask in the Antistrophe, “was so much admired by gods and mortals a s the honour which Oedipus then received, who rid the land of the Death which snatched i t s men [the Sphinx]. wretched marriage [they continue in Strophe E ’ ] his heart maddened with grief, he fulfilled CEET~~EUEV) a double evil: with his parricide’s hand h e . . .” (the text i s unfortunately corrupt, but the sense must have been, “put out his eyes”) and - in the antistrophe - “enraged at his sons for their [the epithet i s alas in doubt; “cursed” or “scanty” are p o ~ s i b i l i t i e s f ~ sustenance, he cas t at them bitter-tongued curses, that they should in future divide their goods with sword in hand. Now,” the chorus conclude this vast ode, “I tremble lest the swift-footed Erinys fulfil it.”

Then at the end of the strophe,

Antistrophe y’ relaxes the tension

But when he came to his senses, poor man, about his

Since evidence about the preceding plays in the trilogy i s so slim as to be almost non-existent, commentators have sifted through this Stasimon of the Septern for nuggets of possible information. curses’’ in Strophe a‘, ‘‘curses uttered long ago” in Strophe 6 ‘ and “bitter-tongued curses’’ in the last Antistrophe, together with the conundrum about the “Stranger from Scythia, bitter apportioner”, have offered seemingly suitable content for the Oedipus. Carl Robert in his massive study of the Oidipus legend left no aspect of the problem untouched, and he reconstructed the Aeschylean version a s f ~ l l o w s . ~ ~ opens Oedipus’ self-revelation has already occurred; Eteocles and Polyneices are ruling, and the first part of the action concentrated on Oedipus’ curse of his sons, while the last half dealt with Oedipus’ miraculous death, much a s in the Coloneus (there are in fact two alternative versions of the legend, which look as though they might have been earlier than that used by Sophocles: the above-mentioned Scholiast on Od. 11.271 (citing Andro- tion) brings Oedipus to Athens but says he was a suppliant in the sanctuary of Demeter and Athena Poliouchos. Or the story might have developed along lines of the account in Schol. to Soph. O.C. 91 where, after some local opposition, an oracle of Apollo bids the Thebans p i KIVE?V T ~ V ‘ I K ~ ~ V ~ f j s (3EoG. Sanctuary of Demeter at Eteonos where he had taken refuge, and an Oidipodeion estab- lished there - this will have been an aition for such a shrine to the hero did in fact exist in historical times. because he sees here a tie-in with Aristotle’s comment that Aeschylus, an example of a man who was “ignorant of the deed”, said “I did not know the mysteries were not to be spoken of”, and the Scholiast’s inclusion of the Oedipus in the l ist of offending plays.) The Oedipus ended, in Robert’s view, with the agreement between Eteocles and Polyneices for shared, or alternating, rule, and the violation of this arrangement by Eteocles which

The Chorus’ repeated allusions to “a father’s Erinys”, “angry

When the play

Oedipus’ remains are allowed to rest in the

The connexion of Oedipus with Demeter i s important for Robert,

11

precipitates the gathering of the invasion with which the closing play deals.

This alleged emphasis on Oedipus’ curse against his sons brings with it an apparent additional gain at the thematic level, for the Erinys, revealed now as the embodiment of the curse on the house, looms large not only in the stasimon we have been considering, but all through the rest of the Septem. In the opening scene Eteocles had addressed the “Curse and omnipotent Erinys of my father” (70) and in his exchanges with the Chorus he told them that “my dear father’s black and hostile Curse si ts by with dry and tearless eye”, watching him go off to fight his brother (695-6). times in the last section of the play. ticity of the final scenes; suffice it to say that the forger, if he was such, has picked up and worked - perhaps overworked - an important theme.) are announced, emphasis falls on the unerring, unfailing nature of Oedipus’ curse, the inevitability of its fulfilment. k v c r h q ~ KaK6piXVTiv, the Chorus had called it at the beginning of the Second Stasimon (722). “The cursing utterance sprung from a father did not fail,” they repeat later (840-1); and again: “Too true was the fulfilment wrought by father Oedipodes’ reverend Erinys” (885-6). And yet again: “Ares has made the paternal curse come true” (945-6). This emphasis has impressed some critics who wish to infer that the curse dominated the earlier plays as well. Solmsen called the curse the “Leitmotif of the trilogy”. the third play and preceding two”.36

The Curse will recur several (I choose to side-step here the issue of the authen-

Once the brothers’ deaths

For him “The Erinys-motif provides a connection between

What I find difficult, almost impossible, to believe, is that Aeschylus devoted a major portion of the Oedipus to a portrayal of the enraged father cursing his sons (the alleged reason for his doing so we shall see in a moment). For one thing, the ‘riddle’ of the curse seems to be sprung upon the audience here as if it were something novel, and once it is solved by the Chorus (who, as i s their wont, proceed to do so immediately in the next stanza, Strophe p‘, which opens with the words ~ T O K T ~ V W S 06~06dt1~70i Bdrvooi 734-5) there i s no surprise left. ment, which now appears inevitable, and the poet insists on doing this in the same riddling terms which Oedipus, the great riddle-solver, had himself used. announcing the brothers’ deaths reports that they have “made total apportionment of goods with tempered, Scythian steel” (8171, and in the disputed final section the Chorus return to the curse in phrases which seem to repeat almost verbatim its original utterance: “a harsh settler of strife, the stranger from across the sea sped from the flame, whetted steel, harsh and evil apportioner of goods, Ares, has made a father’s curse come true” (941-6). The picture i s clouded still further by what many have felt to be Eteocles’ incongruous comment at Sept. 709 ff. that “Oedipus’ curses have bubbled up; too true were the visions of phantasmata seen in dreams, apportioners of my father’s property”. This may be a secondary motif reinforcing the original curse, or it may be nothing but an ad hoc fabrication (like the peculiar thesphata, “prophecies”, which the ghost of Darius suddenly produces at Pers. 800-1, predicting that “few would return from many” who went to Greece) - but in any case it weakens considerably the picture of Oedipus uttering his curses on stage, which allegedly made up a large portion of the action of the Oedipus.

From then on the audience can be reminded of its fulfil-

Thus the Messenger

This suggestion of how to fill in the Oedipus is weakened still further by the trivial nature of the reasons for the curse which the Cyclic Thebaid offered. Two conflicting versions are recorded, but there i s little to choose between them. Athenaeus (11.465 E) quotes 10 lines in which Polyneices sets before his father a silver table that had belonged to Cadmus, then a gold cup full of wine. of his father, great misery fell on his heart, and he straightway called down bitter curses there in the presence of both his sons. him as he prayed that they might never divide their father’s goods in loving brotherhood, but that both might always have war and fighting. . .”37 The combination of the appa- rently tabooed heirloom table and cup (‘‘because they had set before him a cup which he

“But when Oedipus perceived these treasures

And the Erinys of the gods failed not to hear

12

had forbidden,” remarks Athenaeus) and the curse calling forth the Erinys might seem to point decisively to this a s the version to which Aeschylus i s alluding, were it not for another, and conflicting tradition preserved in a scholion to Sophocles O.C. 1375, where some lines are quoted also as coming from the cyclic Thebhid, in which Oedipus, on an occasion when his sons send him not the customary choice sections of a sacrificial victim, but a haunch, ioxiov, takes umbrage at what he imagines to be an affront to his dignity and exclaims, “0, my sons sent this to give an insult. . .” He then prays to Zeus King and the other immortals, that his sons should go down to Hades at each other’s hands” (fr. 3 K i n l ~ e l ) . ~ ~ a t his T P O ~ ” (7861, whatever the missing adjective might have been; but we may prefer to think, if on no other grounds than to prepon, that Aeschylus passed over that part of the story with only this brief allusion to the tradition.

We know from the stasimon in Septern that Oedipus was “angered

Robert himself emphasized the difficulty of determining which portions of the myth were selected for presentation on stage, and which simply as i t were ‘fell in between’ the dramatizations. The Chorus in the Septern recount at some length Oedipus’ disas- trous marriage and apparently also - though the text i s corrupt in a crucial spot (783-4) - his self-blinding. interval between the first and second plays, but Franz Stoessl emphasized this part of the stasimon in his reconstruction of the Aeschylean Oedipus.39 Stoessl proceeds by the very dubious method of eliminating from Sophocles’ treatment in the Tyrannus those elements which he feels to be “unmistakeably Sophoclean”, to leave a residue which he maintains was ur-Aischylos. and the Chorus; Oedipus i s confronted by the necessity to seek the murderer of Laius; Teiresias i s summoned (or perhaps Teiresias enters on his own); 11. Teiresias makes his revelations known, which stimulate further investigations; Laius’ attendant i s summoned (Stoessl argues from the placement of the triple cross roads in fr. 172 Mette that the whole Polybus-Corinth episode was absent from Aeschylus’ version, and this, as we have seen, seems likely enough); 111. a scene involving Oedipus and Jocasta; she reports the ancient oracle to Laius and the exposure of their child; the shepherd who was to have done away with the child i s summoned; admits he raised the child and V. Laius’ attendant appears and identifies Oedipus a s the killer (Stoessl thinks that these scenes may have occurred in reverse order); exangelos reports Jocasta’s suicide and Oedipus’ self-blinding; VII. a closing scene between the blind Oedipus and Creon a s in Sophocles. nique of reconstruction i s a series of scenes so flat and insipid that i t i s hard to believe that Aeschylus would have bothered to weave them into a play.

Robert maintained that this must already have taken place, in the

His scene-by-scene account i s a s follows: I. Oedipus

IV. the shepherd arrives and

VI. an

The result of Stoessl’s tech-

There remains the Laius. For Robert, the report of his death was the “Hauptinhalt des Stuckes” and this certainly came into it somehow, a s the three-line fragment already quoted shows. On the bas i s of a comment in Hyginus that “(Laio) in prodigiis ostende- batur mortem ei adesse de nati manu” (Fab. 67), Robert proposed that a portent had occurred, which perhaps Teiresias was called upon to interpret (we recall the long honorific reference to his mantic powers at Sept. 24 ff.). the pot may not have been successful, Laius was on his way to Cithaeron to see whether h i s earlier commands had in fact been carried out, when encountering Oedipus at the Potnian crossroads he was slain by him. A surviving attendant returned to narrate the king’s death, and the play ended with a threnos for the dead king: “Das ware durchaus Aischyleisch” Robert concludes.40 Perhaps, but we are left with the detail in the second stasimon of the Septern about Laius’ disobedience to Apollo’s oracle to “die without children and he would save the city” (748-9), and others have thought that it was this episode which was portrayed in the Laius. Indeed, there are a number of ‘back-references’ to this vahaiyevij mappaaiav in the play, and they are all formulated in terms of Laius’ foolishwilfulness, aboulia, which echo the philai abouliai of the Stasimon.

Afraid that the exposure in

Thus the Messenger alludes later to the vahaths Aaiou Guopouhias (802), and

13

the Chorus return to the theme in the Third Stasimon: /buhai S’ 6mcrr01 Aa!lou G I ~ P K E O ~ V (842). There was a version of the story according to which Laius had gone to consult the oracle because of continuing childlessness (this was followed by Euripides, Phoe- nissae 13 ff. and the author of the 6-line oracle preserved in the Hypothesis to Sophocles O . T . ) , but Tucker argued on the bas i s of the term vu~qhou~ by the Chorus in Septem - “madness brought together the bridal pair” (756-7) - that Aeschylus i s unlikely to have used this account.41 Tucker’s rejection, however, i s based on unjustifiable literalness in interpreting nymphious, which need mean nothing more than “married couple”. If we assume that this consultation of the oracle by Laius figured in the first play - and i t i s difficult to get rid of the impression that this rash conflict of wills, Laius’ against Apollo’s, formed some part of the action - what connexion (if any) are we to draw between this incident and the story preserved by Athenaeus (13.602F) and the Scholiast on Euripides, Phoen. 1760 that Laius was the first to “fall into lawless love” of Chrysippus? While being entertained by Pelops Laius became enamoured of his son and carried him off to Thebes in a chariot; in one version of the story (Schol.), Chrysippus committed suicide because of the disgrace, but in another (Hyginus, Fab. 85) Pelops made war on Thebes to get the boy back. Jebb maintained that, given the emphasis on the Curse in the Septem, “the Laius doubtless included the curse called down on Laius by Pelops when bereft by him of h is in Septem to a “father’s curse” or “curses uttered long ago” (70, 695, 766) the reference i s ambiguous, and the ambiguity may be significant. asser t s that he “finds it probable that Aeschylus did use the Chrysippus story”, although one may disagree with his contention that for the first play of the trilogy “the one suitable legend that involves Laius i s the Chrysippus story”.43 Although the curse of Pelops upon Laius for snatching away the boy, Chrysippus, does figure in some versions of the story,44 the absence of any allusion, however vague, in the surviving play counts against the suggestion. theme of the Laius, the Chorus’ comment about why Laius contravened Apollo’s instruc- tions not to beget children, KpaTqeeiS )EK cptACv h ~ o u A 1 6 v , ~ ~ would be almost nonsensical. Not that ambiguity of sexual preference i s in any way foreign to Greek myth, but one may fee l - the argument to prepon perhaps - that the Chrysippus legend would have made singularly unsuitable material for the first play.

I t must be admitted that in a number of the allusions

Lloyd-Jones in his Sather lectures

Furthermore, if Laius’ passion for Chrysippus were the main

One approaches the questions concerning Prometheia with considerable hesitation, since so much has been written about i t , and so few of the conclusions can be considered firm. Let me say at the outset that I believe that the Prometheus Bound i s by Aeschylus, and that it was the first play in a trilogy which we may call, for lack of a better name, the Prometheia. On the other hand, the question of date, in spite of the findings of the neN literary science of ‘stylostatistics’, seems to me still very much an open one; and so it would be rash to build any theories about how the trilogy developed on the assumption that it dates from Aeschylus’ later, or ‘Sicilian’ period, and that i t must have been built on structural techniques similar to those employed in the Oresteia. Nor am I at all certain that the Lyomenos, to which there are several references in the sources and from which something like 70 lines are preserved or can be restored, was necessarily the second play in the trilogy, following immediately upon the Desmotes; it is at l eas t theoretically possible that one of the other Prometheus t i t les intervened.

But even these rather minimalist assertions have been challenged.

Unlike the missing plays of the other two trilogies we have been considering, we know a fair amount about the Lyomenos. It is generally and probably rightly assumed that the names ‘Ge’ and ‘Herakles’ which occur in the dramatis personae of the DesmBt&s in most of the MSS. have found their way there erroneously from the following play and indeed, on the principle of ‘foreshadowing’ there are several clues dropped in the DesmStes that these characters will have roles to play in the development of the story. The fact that

14

Prometheus i s the son of Themis-Gaia (“of many names one shape”, as he himself remarks, 210) i s several times alluded to, and, more significantly, he seems to assign some share of credit to her for his oracular foresight. In the latter part of the play Prometheus returns repeatedly to the “secret”, which his mother presumably communicated to him that Zeus will undertake a marriage whose offspring i s fated (cf. 518) to be “mightier than his father” (naT6a (P~PTEPOU TraTpbS, 768 cf. also 908 ff.). that in the Lyomenos Themis-Gaia will appear and attempt to get her son to divulge the secret and, furthermore, that she will in fac t succeed where Hermes’ loud-mouthed bullying at the end of the DesmBtks has failed. with what we must assume Heracles’ role to have been, “the one who will release” Prome- theus, in the line just quoted (771), “against the will of Zeus”. In fact there i s a certain ambiguity in the play about how unwilling Zeus actually will turn out to be in the event; Prometheus had remarked to the Chorus earlier that “Zeus will calm his harsh wrath and come to terms of fas t friendship with me, a1~eir6wu L Y I T E ~ ~ O U T I (190-2), lines which are often cited by those who maintain that the unbelievably harsh portrayal of Zeus in the opening play i s modified considerably in the sequel. actually did appear, for, apart from his apparent misplacement in the cas t of characters of the Desm&&, his eventual arrival on the scene i s heralded in what seems to be an unmistakeable mp6uoia when Prometheus tells 10 that from her lineage will spring: “ a bold and famous bowman, who will release me from my sufferings; such was the oracle recounted to me by my mother, the ancient Titaness Themis” (872 ff.).

It has generally been assumed

But such a scene i s not at all easy to harmonize

We can be sure that Heracles

Those who favour the principle to homoion in reconstructing the trilogies have a fair The Chorus was composed amount of evidence on their side in the Lyomenos , at least.

of Titans, personifications of the earth-element, just a s the Oceanids in the first play had embodied the watery elements. (Whether this parallelism extended to the rest of the trilogy, a s , among others, Herington has proposed, cannot be determined.)46 To balance his graphic if somewhat confusing account of 10’s past and future wanderings in the DesmGtks Prometheus produces a corresponding itinerary for his deliverer in the Lyomenos. It may be that the confusion to which the fragments attest , involving some uncertainty about whether certain of the “labours” alluded to, for example, Heracles’ fight with the Ligurians, preceded or followed his visit to the Hesperides, i s the result of a similar break-up of the strict chronological order of Prometheus’ prophecies, a s in the first play. some length, the beneficent “inventions” by which he, like Palamedes, helped men out of the jungle to something like civilization, here someone - perhaps Prometheus himself again - speaks the lines: “gave wagons with horses, a s ses , oxen, to do slaves’ work and undertake their labours” (fr. 336 M).

And just a s in the opening play Prometheus recounted, proudly and at

Enough i s left to make a play and to show the general lines which the action of the Lyomenos must have followed; and, to please the ‘Homoi-ists’, there even appears to have been a good deal of parallelism: Prometheus’ prophecies of Heracles’ journeys to the West and North (fr. 326-330 M) balancing 10’s to the East and South, and so But the same can hardly be said of the Pyrphoros, which has generally been identified a s the third work in the trilogy. only twice, and the second of these is not above suspicion. A Scholiast on line 94 of the DesmBtks glosses the phrase T ~ U ~ U P I E T ~ ~ xpbuou with the remark “in the Pyrphoros he says he has been bound three myriads [ sc . of years]”,48 and Aulus Gellius quotes a line “being silent when he ought and speaking opportunely”, which he says comes from the Prometheus Pyrphoros and is similar to one in Euripides’ This was assigned by Thomson to an account of Heracles’ purification by Eumolpus, an ait ion, as Thomson argued, for the Lesser Mysteries at Eleusis with which he thinks the play ended.

Details are cited as specifically coming from this play

Various attempts have been made to flesh out these meagre notices, and the most

15

popular candidate has been an episode involving the centaur Chiron. At 1026 ff. of the Desrnbtks Hermes tells Prometheus to “expect no termination of your suffering until some god appears and takes upon himseK your sorrows, and wills to go to sunless Hades and the murky depths of Tartarus”. under the name of Apollodorus, there are two references to the story that Chiron, wounded by Heracles’ poisoned arrows during the latter’s fight with the Centaurs, looked longingly but vainly for death. Although it is not quite clear from Apollodorus’ text at 2.5.4, where there seems to be a corruption in a crucial place, what appears to be going on is that Chiron, with his incurable wound and longing to die - much as Philoctetes - but unable to because of his immortality, finally dies when “Prometheus gave the immortal to Zeus instead of himself”. (Alternatively, the text might mean, “Prometheus gave someone to Zeus to become immortal in his - i.e. Chiron’s - place”, which led D. S. Robertson to suppose that what we have here is yet another variant of the story of how Herucles achieved i m ~ r t a l i t y . ) ~ ’ since this is the only place where the myth occurs, and neither Heracles nor Chiron fit Hermes’ reference to 8EGv TIS 61dr6oxos (1027). there may be an additional significance in the detail, which seems to be emphasized by hvouahia at 1028-9, that Prometheus’ substitute is to go to “sunless Hades and the gloomy depths of Tartarus”. below earth to Hades and boundless Tartarus”, and it is possible that when he says at 1050-1, “Let Zeus hurl my body down to black Tartarus” - which is exactly what seems to be happening at the end of the play - we are to take him at his word, and assume that the second play (perhaps the Pyrphoros?) actually opened with an infernal setting.52 This would certainly give point to Aristotle’s linking in his discussion of the four eid& of tragedy at Poetics 1456a 3 of “Prometheus, Phorkides and T& Ev “AI~ou”. play might then have been the Lyomenos, with Prometheus still fixed to his rock, which will have been disgorged once again above ground but this time in a different spot. would remove the problem about the apparently different locales for the two plays and would also leave room for establishment of the ritual aition, described by Athenaeus of how “?ye place around our heads in honour of Prometheus crowns of osier, a substitute punishment for his binding”.53 Some, proceeding by way of ~b ~ P O I O V , have pointed to the apparent festivities at the end of Eumenides and wish to see in this meagre comment of Athenaeus the establishment of a full-scale Prometheia. d6nouement Aeschylus chose, it would make better sense for the Lyomenos (referred to by title by Athenaeus) to occupy in its trilogy the corresponding position of the Eumenides in the Oresteia.

In the mythological compendium that has come down

So far a s I can see there is no way of deciding between these,

If the individual in question was Heracles,

At 152 ff. Prometheus had expressed the wish to be “cast

The third

This

If this was the sort of

But can any of this really be thought to provide enough matter for a third whole play? Those who feel compelled to answer all questions about the lost trilogies have been driven to despair over this one. Out of such a sense of desperation one might point to a vase mentioned by Trendall and Webster, an Apulian kalyx-krater of the latter part of the 4th century by the Branca painter, now in Berlin (1969.9), which pictures what is obviously a theatrical representation of the Prometheus story.54 Among the characters depicted are a seated Apollo and Athena. a specific scene from the play a s a general representation of the legend, introducing characters not actually in the drama but having some connection with it, like Apollo and Athena”. and Athena actually have appeared, much as they do in Eumenides - another point for the ‘Homoi-ists’? Athena at least, who shared the potters’ cult in contemporary Athens with Hephaestus and Prometheus, would have been an appropriate dramatis persona, and the suggestion that she walked the boards of the Lyomenos is no more far-fetched than many other theories about the play.55

Trendall and Webster comment that this is “not so much

But while we are looking around for items to fill in the plot, why cannot Apollo

Finally, a word of caution about reliance upon the Oresteia for principles of structure or plot-development which Aeschylus ‘must have used’ in composing his other trilogies.

16

For one thing, this puts too tight a restriction on the poet’s creative genius, and does not allow for the fact that in the earlier trilogies he may have been working up to the perfection of technique which the Oresteia manifests. Secondly, there i s a great deal of variety among the three plays of the Oresteia, as well as, admittedly, continuity of major theme and foreshadowing and recapitulation of the main events, such as the murder of .Agamemnon and the vengeance which her children will wreak on Clytemnestra. We might perform the simple experiment of taking each of the component plays of the Oresteia in turn in isolation, and pretending that the other two did not survive. From the frequent mentions of the Erinys in the Agamemnon, for example, we might have foreseen that they would play some part in the sequel, but the title of the third play alone would not settle the question of whether they formed the Chorus; and even the lucky accident of the sur- vival of the plot summary in Harpocration’s Lexicon (=. the Hypothesis) would not have shown us how dominant they are in the las t play, in effect i ts heroines, as the daughters of Danaus in S u p p l i ~ e s . ~ ~ From backward glances to Clytemnestra’s murder of her hus- band, who could have reconstructed the powerful, icy confrontation between King and Queen in Agamemnon? Aeschylus had some choice in how he handled the children’s vengeance on their mother, a s the Sophoclean and Euripidean Electras show; could we have guessed how much of the Choephoroe would be taken up by the great incantatory kommos? Again, the bitter lines which Clytemnestra’s ghost utters at the beginning of Eumenides give us no clue to how the moving and piteous appeals to her son’s filial instincts were developed, and we should certainly not have guessed this from her hard, single-minded, decidedly un-maternal portrayal in the first play.

All in all then, i t may be salutary, if somewhat disappointing, to remind ourselves that in filling out these trilogies, the injunction “sprechen” (to adapt Wittgenstein’s dictum) ought perhaps to give way more often than it does to that of “schweigen”.

University of British Columbia, Vancouver

NOTES

1 Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge 1969).

2 Rose’s remark is quoted by Garvie, p. 163. struct the Danaid trilogy, his sentiments suit any of the other trilogies equally well.

3 A somewhat shorter version of this paper was presented to the seminar “New Light on Old Problems” conducted by Professors E. W. Handley and J . P. Barron at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, on 15 January 1973. for useful comments and suggestions.

4 See H. D. Broadhead, The Persae of Aeschylus (Cambridge 1960) Introduction, lv ff.

5 “The Danaid Trilogy of Aeschylus”, JHS 81 (1961) 141-52.

6 Ibid., 141.

7 Ibid., 142.

8 Ibid.. 143.

9 Ibid., 142.

10 Aeschylus’ Supplices, 180-1.

11 “Danaid Trilogy”, 144, with his reference there to K. von Fritz, “Die Danaidentrilogie des Aeschylus”, Philologus 91 (1936) 262 [= Antike und Moderne Tragodie (Berlin 1962) 1851.

Although Rose was speaking of attempts to recon-

I wish to thank members of the audience

17

12 Pind. P y i h . f X , 111 ff.; Apollod. 2 . 1 . 5 ; Paus. 3 .12 .2 . Note Winnington-Ingram’s argument from sb n p h o v : “The story of the foot-race . . . seems to lack dignity, and one may pefer to think that Aeschylus did not use it” (144).

13 Aeschylus’ Supplices. 196.

14 “Danaid Trilogy”, 148.

15 Fr. 125 Mette (cf. P . Oxy . 2255, f r . 14); I have somewhat modified Weir Smyth’s translation (Loeb Classical Library).

16 Aeschylus’ Supplices, 210.

17 Weir Smyth’s translation of 670 ff . and 698-700. his text here being identical with Page’s.

18 Aeschylus’ Supplices. 181.

19 Cf. vv. 30. 224. 351, 751, 758, 762, 887, 895; of possible importance i s the ‘saying’ quoted in v. 760. “wolves surpass dogs”.

20 Aeschylus’ Supplices, 170, 199.

21 “Danaid Trilogy”, 144.

22 See most recently, for example, S. Jakel, “The 14th Heroid Letter of Ovid and the Danaid Trilogy of Aeschylus”. Mnemosyne iv ser. 26 (1973) 2 3 9 4 8 .

23 The Medicean Hypothesis to Persae , inii.

24 “It can safely be assumed that the Danaids formed the Chorus of [the third] play” (Winnington- Ingram, “Danaid Trilogy”, 143 n. 12); Garvie’s hesitancy in this regard is surprising (“ . . .the Danaids may well have been the chorus”, Aeschylus’ Supplices 207).

25 Paus. 2 .25 .4 , translated J. 0. Frazer.

26 P . Oxy. 2256 fr.2, confirming the Medicean Hypothesis. genes (the Hypothesis) or Theagenides (the papyrus), in any case, the Dionysia of 467 B.C.

27 L. Deubner, “Oedipusprobleme”, Abhand. Berl. Akad., ph.-hist. K1. 1942, 4, p.40 (I owe this reference to Professor Lloyd-Jones).

28 P . 0 x y . 2256 fr.2 = fr.169 Mette.

29 Fr. 172 Mette, translated Weir Smyth. in a confused scholion to Euripides, Phoen. 1760 (see Deubner, n.27 above), in which are contained other details thought by some scholars to have occurred in the Aeschylean version.

30 F. Stoessl, Die Trilogie d e s A i s c h y l o s (Baden bei Wien 1937) p. 206.

31 Anon. in Ariot. E . N . p. 145, lines 24 ff . Heylbut (p. 15 in the testimonia in Wilamowitz’s ed.).

32 CQ n.s. 14 (1964) 144-5 (I endorse Willcock’s comment: “If it were possible to choose a lost work of Greek literature for recovery, the epic Thebaid would come high on a preference list”, 144.)

33 Greek Epic Poetry (London 1969) p.41.

34 The MSS. at 7 8 5 4 have &pa\as (accursed) ~ T ~ K O T ~ TW$, which G. C . W. Schneider re-accented

The archon’s name i s given a s Thea-

There i s also a reference to this Potnian crossroads

to &pcxtEs, “slender, scanty”. Murray, and now Page, citing 1 Sophocles O.C. 1375). although dtypiq has also found favour (Francken, Sidgwick. Robert).

Most modern editors have emended this to &pXaiaS (Wilamowitz,

Douglas Young, in an application of his “gentler remedies’’ suggested ThKVOlS 6 ’ (k’) &pal$ ~HKEV (GRBS 13 (1972) 26).

35 C. Robert, Oidipus (Berlin 1915) I. 252-83.

36 “The Erinys in Aischylos’ Septem”, TAPhA 68 (1937) 199.

37 Fr. 2 Kinkel. adapted from Evelyn White’s Loeb translation.

18

38 Yet a third variant. that when Oedipus had blinded himself and was leaving Thebes for exile his sons gave him no assistance for his journey (Eur. Phoen. 874 ff.; Apollodorus 3.5.91, seems an equally possible candidate.

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

Stoessl (above, n.30) 209 f f .

Oidipus I. 279.

T. G. Tucker in his edition of Seven against Thebes (Cambridge 1908) Introduction, p.xxv.

R. C. Jebb in his edition of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannug (Cambridge 1893) p. xvii.

The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley etc. 1971) p. 121.

E.g. in the ‘oracle’ to Laius preserved in Hypoth. Eur. Phoen. and the Scholiast on line 69 (Schwartz) of that play.

Sepf . 750; in Euripides this becomes mere sexual passion: 6 6’ ~ S O V ? 6obs €15 TE ~C~KXE?OV rrco&v, Jocasta herself remarks (Phoen. 21).

“A Study in the Prornetheia, I. The Elements in the Trilogy”, Phoenix 17 (1963) 186 f f .

George Thomson’s remark well sums up this approach: “Thus the poet seems to have invested the two plays with that organic symmetry which the study of his other masterpieces has taught us to expect” (Introduction to his edition of Prometheus Bound (Cambridge 1932) p. 32).

Fr.341 Mette; Herington, The Older Scholia of the Prometheus Vinctus (Leiden 1972) pp. 87-8.

N o d . Att. 3.19.4. The similarity of phrasing of Sept. 1, 619 and especially Cho. 582, has been noted.

G. Thomson (above. n. 47) 35-6. comparing Apollod. 2.5.12.

D. S. Robertson, “Prometheus and Chiron”, JHS 71 (1951) 150-5.

I have argued some of these same points in an article, “The Spectacle of Prometheus”, Class ica l Folia 27 (1973) esp. 284-7.

15.674 D; cf. 672 F (both listed a s fr.334 MI.

A. D. Trendall and T. B. L. Webster, Illustrations of Greek Drama (London and New York 1971) 111. 1.27 (p. 61).

Cf. Lloyd-Jones (op . c i t . in n.43 above) 97-103, for the suggestion that the thud play was the Women of Etna, which may have contained the well known Dike-fragment ( P . Owy. 2256 fr. 9 A).

On the assumption that Ennius was following Aeschylus closely, all that might have been inferred from the remains of Ennius’ Ewnenides (if we did not have the Aeschylean original) was that the model contained a trial in which Orestes pleaded innocent on grounds that he acted under compulsion and Athena (probably) pronounced him acquitted (see H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius (Cambridge 1967) frs. LXIII-LXVI, with commentary, pp. 283-9).

19