The Complete Euripides: Volume IV: Bacchae and Other Plays (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) 9780195373264, 9780195373400, 019537326X

Table of contents :
Contents
HERAKLES
Introduction
On the Translation
Herakles
Notes
PHOENICIAN WOMEN
Introduction
Phoenician Women
Notes
BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]
Introduction
On the Translation
Bacchae [Bakkhai]
Notes
Appendix: Reconstruction of the Fragmentary Ending
GLOSSARY
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
Z
FOR FURTHER READING

Citation preview

THE GREEK TRAGEDY IN NEW TRANSLATIONS general editors Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro founding general editor William Arrowsmith former general editor Herbert Golder THE COMPLETE EURIPIDES, VOLUME IV

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The Complete Euripides, Volume IV

Bacchae and Other Plays Edited by PETER BURIAN and ALAN SHAPIRO

1 2009

3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Bacchae Copyright q 2000 by Reginald Gibbons and Charles Segal Herakles Copyright q 2000 by Thomas Sleigh and Christian Wolff Phoenician Women Copyright q 1981 by Peter Burian and Brian Swann Compilation Copyright q 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Euripides. [Selections. English. 2009] Bacchae and other plays / edited by Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro. p. cm. — (The Greek tragedy in new translations) (The complete Euripides ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-19-537326-4; 978-0-19-537340-0 (pbk.) 1. Euripides—Translations into English. I. Burian, Peter, 1943– II. Shapiro, Alan, 1952– III. Title. PA3975.A2 2009 882.01—dc22 ’ 2008039934

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

‘‘The Greek Tragedy in New Translations is based on the conviction that poets like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides can only be properly rendered by translators who are themselves poets. Scholars may, it is true, produce useful and perceptive versions. But our most urgent present need is for a re-creation of these plays—as though they had been written, freshly and greatly, by masters fully at home in the English of our own times.’’ With these words, the late William Arrowsmith announced the purpose of this series, and we intend to honor that purpose. As was true of most of the volumes that began to appear in the 1970s—first under Arrowsmith’s editorship, later in association with Herbert Golder—those for which we bear editorial responsibility are products of close collaborations between poets and scholars. We believe (as Arrowsmith did) that the skills of both are required for the difficult and delicate task of transplanting these magnificent specimens of another culture into the soil of our own place and time, to do justice both to their deep differences from our patterns of thought and expression and to their palpable closeness to our most intimate concerns. Above all, we are eager to offer contemporary readers dramatic poems that convey as vividly and directly as possible the splendor of language, the complexity of image and idea, and the intensity of emotion and originals. This entails, among much else, the recognition that the tragedies were meant for performance—as scripts for actors—to be sung and danced as well as spoken. It demands writing of inventiveness, clarity, musicality, and dramatic power. By such standards, we ask that these translations be judged.

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

This series is also distinguished by its recognition of the need of nonspecialist readers for a critical introduction informed by the best recent scholarship, but written clearly and without condescension. Each play is followed by notes designed not only to elucidate obscure references but also to mediate the conventions of the Athenian stage as well as those features of the Greek text that might otherwise go unnoticed. The notes are supplemented by a glossary of mythical and geographical terms that should make it possible to read the play without turning elsewhere for basic information. Stage directions are sufficiently ample to aid readers in imagining the action as they read. Our fondest hope, of course, is that these versions will be staged not only in the minds of their readers but also in the theaters to which, after so many centuries, they still belong. a note on the series format

A series such as this requires a consistent format. Different translators, with individual voices and approaches to the material at hand, cannot be expected to develop a single coherent style for each of the three tragedians, much less make clear to modern readers that, despite the differences among the tragedians themselves, the plays share many conventions and a generic, or period, style. But they can at least share a common format and provide similar forms of guidance to the reader. 1.

Spelling of Greek Names

Orthography is one area of difference among the translations that requires a brief explanation. Historically, it has been common practice to use Latinized forms of Greek names when bringing them into English. Thus, for example, Oedipus (not Oidipous) and Clytemnestra (not Klutaimestra) are customary in English. Recently, however, many translators have moved toward more precise transliteration, which has the advantage of presenting the names as both Greek and new, instead of Roman and neoclassical importations into English. In the case of so familiar a name as Oedipus, however, transliteration risks the appearance of pedantry or affectation. And in any case, perfect consistency cannot be expected in such matters. Readers will feel the same discomfort with ‘‘Athenai’’ as the chief city of Greece as they would with ‘‘Platon’’ as the author of The Republic.

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The earlier volumes in this series adopted as a rule a ‘‘mixed’’ orthography in accordance with the considerations outlined above. The most familiar names retain their Latinate forms, while the rest are transliterated; -os rather than Latin -us is adopted for the termination of masculine names, and Greek diphthongs (as in Iphigeneia for Latin Iphigenia) are retained. Some of the later volumes continue this practice, but where translators have preferred to use a more consistent practice of transliteration of Latinization, we have honored their wishes. 2.

Stage directions

The ancient manuscripts of the Greek plays do not supply stage directions (though the ancient commentators often provide information relevant to staging, delivery, ‘‘blocking,’’ etc.). Hence stage directions must be inferred from words and situations and our knowledge of Greek theatrical conventions. At best this is a ticklish and uncertain procedure. But it is surely preferable that good stage directions should be provided by the translator than that readers should be left to their own devices in visualizing action, gesture, and spectacle. Ancient tragedy was austere and ‘‘distanced’’ by means of masks, which means that the reader must not expect the detailed intimacy (‘‘He shrugs and turns wearily away,’’ ‘‘She speaks with deliberate slowness, as though to emphasize the point,’’ etc.) that characterizes stage directions in modern naturalistic drama. 3.

Numbering of lines

For the convenience of the reader who may wish to check the translation against the original, or vice versa, the lines have been numbered according to both the Greek and English texts. The lines of the translation have been numbered in multiples of ten, and these numbers have been set in the right-hand margin. The (inclusive) Greek numeration will be found bracketed at the top of the page. The Notes that follow the text have been keyed to both numerations, the line numbers of the translation in bold, followed by the Greek lines in regular type, and the same convention is used for all references to specific passages (of the translated plays only) in both the Notes and the Introduction. Readers will doubtless note that in many plays the English lines outnumber the Greek, but they should not therefore conclude that vii

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

the translator has been unduly prolix. In most cases the reason is simply that the translator has adopted the free-flowing norms of modern Anglo-American prosody, with its brief-breath-and-emphasis-determined lines, and its habit of indicating cadence and caesuras by line length and setting rather than by conventional punctuation. Even where translators have preferred to cast dialogue in more regular five-beat or six-beat lines, the greater compactness of Greek diction is likely to result in a substantial disparity in Greek and English numerations. about the translations

The translations in this series were written over a period of roughly forty years. No attempt has been made to update references to the scholarly literature in the Introductions and Notes, but each volume offers a brief For Further Reading list that will provide some initial orientation to contemporary critical thinking about the tragedies it contains. this volume

This volume contains three dramas from Euripides’ last decade that might be called his ‘‘Theban tragedies.’’ Only one, however, deals with the story of the House of Laios familiar from Sophocles’ Theban plays: Phoenician Women, which dramatizes the quarrel between Oedipus’ sons, Eteokles and Polyneikes, and its terrible consequences. Bacchae (or Bakkhai, as our translators prefer, using a direct transliteration of the Greek title) goes back several generations into Thebes’ legendary past; one of its characters is Kadmos himself, the city’s founder, and Pentheus, the current king, is his grandson. Herakles takes place in Thebes, but its hero is Theban only, as it were, by adoption. His parents had to flee their home in the Argolid and took refuge in Thebes, where Herakles was born, brought up, and won the hand of the king’s daughter Megara. Despite their shared location, these three plays have very distinct characters and dramatic shapes. Herakles is perhaps the closest thing to Sophoclean heroic tragedy that Euripides ever wrote. At its heart, however, is a deep question about the meaning of heroism. Euripides gives us a willfully divided dramatic action. Its first movement raises questions about Herakles’ heroism in his absence. Lykos has seized power in Thebes and is threatening to kill his

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family, and doubts arise about the hero’s valor, about the meaning of his labors and whether he has indeed survived them, and about his claim to be a child of Zeus. When Herakles returns triumphant and just in time to kill the usurper, it appears that both his heroism of strength and physical endurance and his divine birth have been fully vindicated. Just at this juncture, Euripides stages the sudden appearance from on high of two goddesses: Iris, acting as the agent of Hera’s relentless hatred of Herakles, and Lyssa (Madness), whom she forces, under protest, to drive Herakles into raging insanity. With this unprecedented visit by ‘‘gods from the machine’’ in the dead center of the play, a whole new drama is launched. When Herakles learned that his family had almost been annihilated while he pursued his famous labors far from home, it made him question the meaning of his heroic deeds: ‘‘A man’s first obligation is to defend / His wife and children, his old father. / My labors and all I suffered—the madness of it!’’ (738–40 / 574–75). Only now does the full madness of it reveal itself. Having saved what he loved, he now destroys it in an access of blind rage that continues his deeds of violence but tragically misdirects them. Herakles awakes from his deeds to the full horror of what he has done. We can compare his situation to that of Ajax (in the tragedy of Sophocles that bears his name), who must face the humiliating fact that he has directed his wrath against the flocks rather than his enemies. Ajax, unwilling to endure his enemies’ mockery, kills himself. Herakles, whose deed is far more terrible, not surprisingly decides to follow suit. Once, again, however, an unexpected intervention changes the course of the drama. Herakles’ friend Theseus, the ruler of Athens whom he has just rescued from the Underworld, now arrives to lead him back to life, persisting despite Herakles’ despair to offer a bond of solidarity and friendship that cannot abolish the suffering but in the end makes it possible to go on. The gods having failed him, Herakles lets his mortal friend lead him, ‘‘a little boat in tow’’ (1784 / 1424), depending on his friend as once others had depended on him. Phoenician Women is not focused like Herakles on one central figure; indeed, it is notable for what we might think of as its epic (or almost cinematic) scope. Euripides revisits a broad swath of Theban legend to produce a succession of pathetic incidents, encompassed in a carefully symmetrical structure containing matter enough for several tragedies. Unlike Sophocles, Euripides

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allows Jokasta to live on after Oedipus’ fall, and Oedipus, accompanied by Antigone, only leaves Thebes after the failed attack of the Seven against Thebes, which Jokasta tries desperately but unsuccessfully to avoid and which brings the self-willed mutual slaughter of the brothers Eteokles and Polyneikes, and Jokasta’s own griefdriven suicide. As in Herakles, however, Euripides punctuates his pageant of Theban history at the mid-point of the play with an unexpected incident, this time apparently of his own invention: Kreon’s son Menoikeus sacrifices himself to save the city by leaping into the lair of the dragon Kadmos killed, and for whose slaying Ares still demands vengeance. Kreon, horrified, tries to prevent his son’s death, but Menoikeus sends him away on a pretext and shoulders his destiny proudly and willingly. Thus, a single act of selfless concern for the community stands out amid a dramatic action given over almost entirely to attempts to achieve private desires at whatever expense to the common good. The point is reinforced by the Phoenician women of the play’s title, an unusual chorus in that they are outsiders, merely passing through on their way to serve Apollo as temple slaves at Delphi, but still connected to the descendants of Kadmos by common ancestry. They know Thebes’ bloody history and they empathize with its continuing sufferings, and their odes constitute a song cycle of the Theban past, in which every act of creation is implicated in new destruction, bloodshed, and sorrow; every willful choice is part of a tragic fatality; and fate works through the desires and ambitions that govern human choices. Phoenician Women was very highly regarded in antiquity and upon its rediscovery in the Renaissance, but its failure to conform to Aristotelian expectations led to long periods of disparagement or neglect. More recently, its formal daring and conceptual complexity have increasingly begun to be recognized. The situation of Bacchae is different: it is a recognized masterpiece and one of the few Greek tragedies that is regularly staged, but there is profound disagreement about what it tells us about the power of Dionysos. The plot takes the form of a kind of revenge tragedy, since it shows how this powerful god established his cult in Greece by punishing those who opposed its spread. How one reacts to the struggle between Dionysos, bringer of the release of wine, destroyer of

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rigid categories and restraints, lord of transformation and ecstatic possession, and his antagonist Pentheus, guardian of good order against threats of subversion and chaos, may say more about oneself than about Bacchae, which pronounces no simple judgment. As Dionysos himself says, he is ‘‘most terrible to mortals and most gentle’’ (980 / 861). Of course the deck is stacked. Dionysos—under whose auspices and at whose festivals tragedy was produced in Athens—is in control from the start, both protagonist and theater director, as it were, appearing in the prologue in human form as his own priest in order to bend Thebes to his will, and at the end as deus ex machina to allot the survivors their fates. He brings with him a chorus of Asian devotees, who sing his praises and communicate the ecstasy of a ‘‘civilized’’ participation in his cult, as fifth-century Athenians will have known it. He has also driven the women of Thebes into the wild in Bacchic ecstasy. They only turn to nonritual violence when threatened; on their own, they live a peaceful and idyllic life in a land that literally flows with milk and honey (814–17 / 708–11). And yet, from Pentheus’ perspective, the fact that they have escaped from their homes, that they are living outside the control of their men, of the city, of their ruler, is simply intolerable. Challenged, these will turn murderous, endowed with supernatural power. Blinded by Dionysiac blurring of vision, Agaue¨ will kill her own son and think that she has slain a mighty lion. Pentheus’ attempts to contain and control Dionysos fail abjectly, and among the most terrifying moments of the drama are those in which Dionysos bends the young king to his will, culminating with a ‘‘robing scene’’ in which Pentheus, now dressed in the womanly garb of the Dionysiac devotee, is primped and sent forth by the god, ostensibly to spy on the women in the mountains, but really to meet his death at their hands—literally to be torn limb from limb by the hands of his maddened mother. The drama is repeatedly couched as a clash of competing ‘‘wisdoms’’ in regard to Dionysos: the chorus’ willing embrace of Dionysiac ecstasy; the ‘‘rationalizing’’ assimilation by Kadmos and Teiresias of a force they hope to exploit for the profit of city and family; Pentheus’ utter rejection, in his rage for order and control. When Pentheus surrenders to Dionysos, however, he is clearly surrendering to something within himself; and Dionysos’ triumph embodies a divine ‘‘wisdom’’ that holds such

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revenge as he takes here as necessary and just. The audience is left to feel both the necessity and the justice of Dionysos’ dispensation— and to pity its victims. Bacchae is perhaps the greatest of all demonstrations of the elemental force known to the Greeks as Dionysos—and of its potential horror. The translations in these volumes were originally published in 1981 (Phoenician Women) and 2001. The poets are among the most prominent currently writing in America. Reginald Gibbons is a poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic, artist, and professor of English and Classics at Northwestern University. He has published some thirty books, including eight volumes of poetry, and he was for many years editor of TriQuarterly, an international magazine for new writing. In addition to Bacchae, he collaborated with Charles Segal on a translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, also for this series. Tom Sleigh, who directs the MFA Creative Writing program at Hunter College (CUNY), has published six volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Space Walk, won the prestigious Kingsley Tufts award in 2008. Brian Swann has published more than fifty books, including poetry, fiction, children’s books and poetry in translation. His translations include a number of twentieth-century Italian masters, and he has become a leading translator, editor, and interpreter of Native American literatures. Peter Burian, a General Editor of this series, is Professor of Classical and Comparative Literatures at Duke University and has published both translations and critical studies. The late Charles Segal taught at a number of major universities and at the time of his death was Walter C. Klein Professor of Classics at Harvard University. Segal was a prolific and versatile scholar; among his many books and articles on subjects ranging from Homer to twentieth-century reception of the classics are influential studies of Sophocles and Euripides. Christian Wolff was a professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College until 1999. Internationally renowned as a composer, he is also the author of several widely admired essays on Euripides.

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CONTENTS

HERAKLES

Translated by TOM SLEIGH with Introduction and Notes by CHRISTIAN WOLFF

Introduction, 3 On the Translation, 25 Herakles, Notes,

28

95

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

Translated by PETER BURIAN and BRIAN SWANN

Introduction, 111 Phoenician Women, Notes,

126

189

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

Translated by REGINALD GIBBONS and CHARLES SEGAL

Introduction, 201 On the Translation, 233 Bacchae [Bakkhai], 244

CONTENTS

Notes,

303

Appendix: Reconstruction of the Fragmentary Ending,

GLOSSARY,

347

FOR FURTHER READING,

xiv

363

339

HERAKLES

Translated by TOM SLEIGH

With Introduction and Notes by CHRISTIAN WOLFF

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INTRODUCTION

Herakles is a figure rarely found in Athenian drama playing a tragic role. Darker aspects of his life appear briefly in Homer. Achilles evokes him as prototypical of a hero’s tragic mortality (Iliad 18.117–18). Odysseus, visiting the world of the dead, meets Herakles’ ghostly double who is haunted by his former life of misery (Odyssey 11.601–26). More commonly Herakles is characterized by his fantastic exploits, by his geniality and by an immense capacity for endurance capped by final successes. This most famous and ubiquitous hero appears in the worlds of fairy tale and legend, close to the gods in the ancient time of the heroes, but also in the aristocratic world of the wellborn who achieve successes in their competitive life; and, as one can see in religious cult and dramatic comedy, he can be found to be a comfortably familiar figure of everyday life. Euripides’ play brings something of all these facets of the hero together to tragic effect, which may well be something like a dramatic experiment, bold and risky. This introduction will look at the play’s structure; how the hero is characterized by his deeds and by his family relations, human and divine; at the role of the gods and the place of religious practice in the play’s action; and, emerging out of all these, the role of poetic performance as the play itself draws our attention to it. I

The play, while centrally focused on a single heroic figure (as rarely in Euripides1), is marked by an apparently irregular and sometimes 1. Medea and possibly Hecuba, in the plays named after them, are comparable. The single male heroic figure of Herakles is quite unusual among Euripides’ surviving plays (the youths Hippolytos and Ion, in the plays named after them, and Pentheus in Bakkhai come closest). I would like to acknowledge here my debts to many scholars who have written about this play. A particular debt is owed to Helene Foley’s Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides (Ithaca 1985). My sense of the play’s ending is close to Pietro Pucci’s strong reading in ‘‘Survival in the Heracles,’’ an appendix in his The Violence of Pity in Euripides’ Medea (Ithaca 1980). Anne Michelini’s chapter on Herakles in her Euripides and the Tragic Tradition (Madison 1987) is also valuable.

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violently surprising dramatic movement. This movement or structure, as in all Attic tragedies, is made out of a number of plot elements or actions, variously combined and transformed. At the start both hero and his family are in mortal danger. The family—old stepfather, wife, and three boy children—are on stage, huddled around an altar of Zeus the Savior, a spectacle that signals the familiar plot element of supplication. The helplessness of Herakles’ family is occasioned by his absence on the last of his famous Twelve Labors (the descent to Hades to bring back its monstrous guardian dog Cerberus), that is, Herakles’ confrontation with death. The supplication plot involves the helpless and weak—often women, children, the old—taking refuge at an altar, putting themselves under a god’s protection. Religious and political issues are at stake: Will the deity of the altar provide efficacious protection? Will the human community where the altar is located protect and enforce the altar’s sanction? In this instance the human community of Thebes has been at war with itself.2 A tyrannical usurper, Lykos, has emerged after assassinating the city’s legitimate ruler, Kreon, father of Megara, Herakles’ wife, as well as her brothers. In a spirit recalling contemporary political realities,3 Lykos will not put religious scruple above his political self-interest. He means to destroy what remains of his enemies; the children represent future avengers and legitimate claimants to his power. In response to Lykos’ threat to remove them violently from the altar’s protection, Herakles’ wife persuades her reluctant, determinedly hopeful father-in-law, Amphitryon, that the family should give itself up voluntarily for execution and so maintain a semblance of dignity. She also gets from Lykos a concession, to be allowed to dress the children for death. This briefly delays the execution, gets Lykos temporarily off stage and makes possible Herakles’ all but too late arrival. The suppliant action, ending in apparent failure, is followed by another set of actions, whose outlines are again drawn from a standard repertoire: return (nostos) of the hero, rescue or recovery (soˆteria), and a revenge.4 2. The civil war in the background of the play’s action is a contemporary realistic, not mythic, feature of the play. Intense internal political conflict was endemic to a number of Greek city-states, not least among them Athens where there was a bloody, though short-lived, oligarchic coup in 411 b.c.e. We have no firm date for Herakles, but there are grounds for putting it close to the time just preceding that coup, somewhere between 417 and 414. 3. The breakdown of traditional, religiously sanctioned values is vividly expressed by Thucydides, famously at 3.82–84. The great majority of supplications reported by the historian were ineffective or violated. 4. These patterns are found, for example, in the Odyssey, Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers and the Electra plays of Euripides and Sophocles. In each of these there is also a recognition scene, perhaps suggested in this play by Megara’s momentary hesitation in recognizing Herakles (669–70 / 514). Revenge in these works involves some kind of deception and ambush, not Herakles’ usual mode of action: his initial impulse to use outright force is modified, fitting the pattern (727–37 / 565–73, 750–69 / 585–604).

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INTRODUCTION

The suppliant story and the rescue dovetail, but the efficacy of the altar’s divine sanction is left in doubt. The savior Herakles arrives after the altar is abandoned; Megara says, ‘‘He’ll be more help to us than Zeus’’ (680 / 521–22). As for the communal, political support normally expected for the altar’s sanction, it has been notably absent. The rescue is quickly sealed with the revenge killing of Lykos, a double reversal (what Aristotle in the Poetics calls peripeteia) in which the lives of the helplessly endangered noble family of Herakles are saved, and the dominating criminal usurper Lykos is overthrown and killed. The initial plot structures are played out and the drama might be finished.5 This halting of the dramatic movement—not yet half the time of the play has elapsed—is unsettling and might cause what has happened to feel, in retrospect, rather sketchy and perfunctory (though much of importance has been said that remains to be addressed). In parallel with these actions the chorus of old men, citizens of Thebes and supporters of the legitimate royal household, sing and dance their songs, about old age and its weaknesses—their utter helplessness, which links them to Herakles’ family, about Herakles’ great past achievements, the Twelve Labors—manifestations of extraordinary endurance and victorious strength; and, as rescue and vengeance are done, about the power of youth and the vindication of the gods’ justice. Their weakness is offset by the power of their poetic performance and their declaration of enduring dedication to it. Their last triumphant song is instantly followed by the appearance above the house roof 6 of two divine figures, and they are abjectly terrified by these unexpected presences looming over them. Divine appearances are normal at the beginning of a play, where they serve as prologue, explaining and foretelling; and at a play’s conclusion, where they mark part of a resolution and complement it with prophecy. This abrupt appearance of deities in the middle of the play is a very unusual structural feature, an enactment of disruption. Instead of a divine epilogue we get a prologue for a new sequence of events. The dissonances of this moment are underscored by the nature of the deities themselves: two maiden figures, one, Iris (which means rainbow), familiar messenger of the Olympian gods, the other, Lyssa (which means frenzy, raging madness), belonging to a more ancient pre-Olympian world; the first 5. As it is after the sequence of these patterns in, for example, Sophocles’ Electra. 6. A not uncommon but still striking theatrical effect. Since Iris is said to be coming from and returning to Olympos, that is, on high, the actor playing her part is most likely to have been suspended from the ‘‘machine’’ or crane and swung up and in and out of view above the roof of the stage building representing Herakles’ house. Lyssa will enter the house as Iris swings away. She is thus more likely to have stepped out on the roof (from behind the building) and gone off the same way, as if down into the building.

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complacently vindictive, the other paradoxically restrained and judicious. The two maiden goddesses represent and act for the mature, enraged, and wronged wife of Zeus, Hera. The divine incursion foretells and sets in motion a new action—divine punishment,7 the gods’ version of a revenge action. A further, more astonishing peripeteia is set in motion. Herakles in his madness becomes the agent of what he had come to prevent. What he had for a moment achieved—a return, a rescue, and a revenge—is just as quickly, in the case of the first two, reversed, and, in the case of the latter, revenge, is made to recoil on himself. The initial action of suppliancy, too, first elided by Herakles’ initial rescue, is dreadfully replayed. The children when prepared for execution are presented, with bitter irony, as sacrificial victims: ‘‘Where’s the priest and his knife?’’ (594 / 451). This marked the apparent failure of the play’s opening suppliant action. Now the undoing of the rescue is marked by Herakles’ going mad in the process of performing a sacrificial ritual, a formal, technical procedure that involves the slaughtering of animals, intended to purify him after the revenge killing of Lykos and his men. Both the earlier supplication and now the madness-inducing sacrifice take place at an altar of Zeus (59–60 / 48, 1211 / 922). In the face of Herakles’ madness Amphitryon supplicates (1269 / 968) and the third, last surviving child assumes the traditional suppliant posture (1292–93 / 986–87) only to become Herakles’ final sacrificial victim (1302 / 994). However, the divine ‘‘prologue’’ does not quite prepare us for two further actions. The first is recognition (what Aristotle called anagnoˆrisis), a learning of what is really the case and who one really is.7 Herakles, with Amphitryon’s help, comes to realize what he has done; he makes an initial recovery from mad delusion and self-alienation. But the process of coming to understanding continues as Herakles wrestles with an identity now threatened after extreme disaster, in desperate need of recovery or perhaps redefinition. He first intends to commit suicide to salvage his honor. Then, as the play moves to its conclusion, that decision is reversed (a kind of peripeteia again). Linked with this process is a second action of rescue. Herakles’ arrival to rescue his family came for them unexpectedly, in the face of utter despair. Now the Athenian hero Theseus appears unexpectedly, though his recent rescue by Herakles in Hades had been reported—as the cause of Herakles’ near-fatal delay in coming to rescue his family (784–85 / 618–19). Herakles’ rescue 7. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King dramatizes an outstanding example. This recognition has behind it the traditional notion of knowing oneself as a human being, as mortal and subordinate vis-a`-vis the gods. This may be what is meant when Iris says, ‘‘It’s time he [Herakles] learnt the depths of Hera’s rage’’ (1087 / 840–41).

6

INTRODUCTION

came just in time, only to be utterly negated. Theseus, supposing he was coming to offer help against Lykos, is too late for that, and so perhaps too late to have forestalled the occasion for Herakles’ madness. This second rescue, like the process of anagnoˆrisis, is complex. Theseus will offer a refuge in Athens for the hero who is now a polluted killer of his own family and thus forbidden to live in Thebes. But first Herakles must be persuaded to live. Again there is a structural replay: Herakles’ wife, Megara, had persuaded the family to give up hope of rescue and accept death nobly as, she says, Herakles would have wished it. So now Herakles argues for suicide as the honorable response to the condition of his life, which he regards as beyond all hope of redemption. Megara and the family were rescued, as it were, in spite of themselves, and then destroyed. Herakles—and here the story pattern shifts8—changes his mind. With Theseus’ help he persuades himself to go on living. (Megara had persuaded Amphitryon to give up hope, and he had changed his mind in doing so.) Herakles decides to accept the saving help of Theseus, and by making that decision he becomes again, with Theseus, a rescuing figure—now of himself. These transmuted actions of recognition and rescue finally conclude with yet one more peripeteia, which frames the whole play. The plot was set in motion because of Herakles’ absence. His return brings a victory, saving his family and home, and perhaps the city of Thebes. This is followed by defeat and destruction of family and (literally) his house. Coming home Herakles makes himself homeless; his return brings about his departure in exile. The powerful, victorious hero finally leaves the stage defeated and broken, so weak he has to be held up by Theseus. Yet Theseus is there to hold him up and take him to another, adopted home in Athens, which is also the home of Euripides’ dramatic production. Euripides’ play has often been considered structurally flawed, lacking in coherence and unity. In fact it has underlying it a powerful, almost relentlessly repeating and transforming structural procedure. It is not the play’s structure that lacks cohesion, it is the whole story, generating the destabilizing transformations and reversals, contained within the play’s structure, that threatens a larger coherence of meaning. II

Herakles is the central figure around whom questions of meaning are raised. One can trace them along two interconnected lines throughout 8. In Sophocles’ Aias the great warrior hero, like Herakles, is made mad and humiliated by the gods. Aias, adhering to an older, individualistically sustained heroic code, resists the appeals of those closest to him and commits suicide. On the issues involved see Sumio Yoshitake, ‘‘Disgrace, Grief and Other Ills: Heracles’ Rejection of Suicide,’’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 114 (1994): 135–53.

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HERAKLES

the play: Herakles’ traditional, heroic achievements, principally his famous Twelve Labors, and, what may well be a distinctively Euripidean innovation, a various—both mythic and realistically intimate—representation of Herakles’ family relationships. Herakles undertakes the labors traditionally9 as expiation for killing his children in a fit of madness. But at the start of our play we hear that the labors are performed as payment to Eurystheus, Herakles’ cousin and ruler of the region around Argos, so that Amphitryon, once native there and now in exile, might be able to return.10 This arrangement is said to have been instigated by Hera or brought about by necessity, a doubled motivation, both mythic and abstract, that introduces us from the start to the play’s characteristically multilayered perspectives on its action: mythic or legendary, abstract and rationalistic, contemporaneous—historical and political, and personal or psychological. It is, then, Herakles’ own individual choice to undertake the labors on behalf of his human foster father. The first labors we hear about are two of the best known: killing the Nemean Lion and destroying the many-headed Hydra. But we hear about them from Herakles’ enemy Lykos who debunks and trivializes them as mythic exaggerations irrelevant to the uses of the human community, the city-state (polis). Lykos also goes on to attack Herakles’ iconic weapon, the bow, as a coward’s, good only on one’s individual behalf, in contrast to the shield and spear of those fighting with true courage in the close, interdependent combat of hoplite formation. Having the politically and morally villainous Lykos argue effectively for a positive, communal ideology is a characteristically disconcerting Euripidean move. One might tentatively see it as pre-emptive. From a realistic, contemporary point of view the exaggerations of mythic stories are acknowledged, yet because this realism is articulated by an otherwise negative figure, symbolic weight and space for the myth’s expressive fantasy is still allowed. In defending Herakles’ reputation and his use of the bow Amphitryon briefly refers to an association of Herakles with the gods’ mythic world, but then, as though admitting the irrelevance of such a 9. The traditions are fluid. The majority of the labors are essentially folktale material where motivations are a mix of the mysteriously necessary and arbitrary. Tasks are imposed on the (young) hero so that he may prove himself. Herakles’ exploits extend into his maturity, which gives him more weight as an individualized heroic figure. On Herakles’ traditional story material and its development see, for example, Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979). 10. The cause of Amphitryon’s exile is his killing of Alkmene’s father Elektryon who is his uncle as well as his father-in-law. This exile for kin-killing prefigures Herakles’ killing of his own family and his subsequent exile. Herakles’ labors, which will end in his madness, are contingent on Amphitryon’s crime (1562–64 / 1258–60).

8

INTRODUCTION

world, he adopts the rationalizing terms of Lykos’ argument. Amphitryon’s arguments, though, thus make Herakles’ use of his fabulous bow seem no more than a calculated stance. And, more pointedly, the play’s subsequent events will show the drastic inadequacy of such rationalism. Herakles’ madness will be the terrible refutation of Amphitryon’s claim, at the center of his argument, that the bow makes the hero’s autonomy possible. Focus on the bow in this debate also evokes for a moment a facet of Herakles’ traditional and archaic character as heroic hunter,11 a role played at the margins of human communities, in the wild, among threatening, often monstrous animals, in a realm of initiatory activities and stories. Early in the play, however, Herakles’ image is drawn into a contemporary political and intellectual world at odds with his older, traditional heroic character. Euripides is asking what can such a hero mean to us [Athenians] now? After the exchange between Lykos and Amphitryon Herakles’ family give up all hope of the hero’s return. They despair at what they have been persuaded are the limits of his mythic prowess. In contrast a long choral ode follows, amply filling the mythic space, sung and danced by the old Theban citizens who are deeply loyal to the hero and his family. But they, too, assume Herakles’ death. Their ode is a poetic memorial and a dirge, finely wrought and archaically stylized. The effect is of distancing or at least a retrospective view. The splendor of the labors debunked by Lykos is reasserted. Herakles’ exploits are often those of a culture hero who has made the world safer from the forces of a violent wildness—including the alternative community of Amazons against whom he has led an expedition, asserting an ideological hierarchy of differences between Greek male and ‘‘barbarian’’ female warriors. In several labors the hero does the gods service (though Athena, often his patron deity, is notably absent: she will appear later in the play). Other labors, the quest for the golden apples and for ‘‘the triple-bodied herdsman,’’ called Geryon, as well as for Hades’ dog Cerberus, touch on themes of transcendence—immortality and the afterlife. Herakles’ involvement with wild forces also leads to their appropriation. He brings them back from his journeys, or a part of them. The lion provides his distinguishing dress, its skin on his back, its head covering his own. The Hydra supplies the poison for his arrows. The celebration of the labors stops short of the last, the descent to Hades to get Cerberus. The chorus assumes that Herakles has at last failed. But he does return, though, as it turns out, bringing Hades— 11. Archaic examples are Orion and Actaeon. Odysseus in the Odyssey, as master of the bow, has assimilated this role, among his others. In his madness Herakles will become hunter again, of his own family (see 1270–72 / 969–71). On the background and implications of Herakles as bowman see Helene Foley, Ritual Irony (Ithaca, N.Y. 1985), 169–75.

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HERAKLES

death—back with him. This last labor is the fulcrum of the play’s action. It also makes the intersection of a mythic world, celebrated in the choral song, with the more immediate, realistic world of family and politics visible to the audience on stage. Herakles’ absence during the Hades journey triggers the play’s initial crisis, his family’s dilemma. When he actually appears on stage, Megara has to reassure herself that he’s not a ghost, not a ‘‘dream flickering in the sun’’ (674 / 517). Amphitryon will even ask if Herakles really went to Hades (776 / 610). But the final requirement of this labor, that Cerberus be brought to Eurystheus, is not yet fulfilled. This delay in finishing the labor, motivated by Herakles’ desire to learn first about his family’s condition (783 / 617), makes possible his being just in time to save them from Lykos (balancing his being almost too late because of taking the time to rescue his friend Theseus in Hades). Herakles’ first response to what he finds at home also links the traditional, heroic mode, in all its violence—he proposes singlehandedly to tear down Lykos’ palace, kill and decapitate him and slaughter all Thebans who had owed him support but failed to provide it—to more familiar realities. Strikingly, too, the hero measures what he owes his own family against his great mythic achievements. His enemy Lykos had scathingly contrasted the fabulous labors of lion and hydra with the exercise of civic military values. Herakles now contrasts these same two labors (just previously celebrated without qualification by the chorus) with his ability to save his family and his willingness to share the risk of death they have endured on his account. Euripides draws his great hero, unusually, into an intimate domestic family orbit. Herakles asserts an equality among human beings, irrespective of status or wealth, on the basis of a universal human affection for children (799–804 / 632–36). After Lykos is killed the chorus blend Herakles’ older and immediate achievements into a continuing series. Lykos, so far a purely secular figure, joins the company of conquered dangerous beasts (his name, meaning wolf, is, so to speak, activated). But they do not sing about the saving of Herakles’ family, insisting instead on the justice done with the downfall of Lykos and the restoration of the city’s legitimate authority.12 They appear to be bracketing the exceptional character of Herakles’ assertions about his labors and his love for his children. Perhaps too

12. The chorus seem overenthusiastic in this. They call Herakles ‘‘our king’’ (951 / 746, cf. 982 / 768 and 1049–50 / 809–10). But he says nothing about any claim to rule in Thebes, nor do his traditional stories. The play indicates that Lykos had a substantial following in the city. As the play progresses Thebes’ political problems fall into the background; one assumes they remain unresolved. The fortunes of the city and of Herakles’ family are kept apart (770–71 / 604–5, 1067–68 / 824–25).

10

INTRODUCTION

they are made to anticipate in this way the oncoming demonstration of a highly problematic gap between heroic and domestic values. In the divine prologue to Herakles’ killing of his children, Iris links the hero’s labors, now called bitter contests, to the infanticide. The labors appear now as a precondition of Herakles’ downfall, a heroic achievement allowed so that it can be crushed by greater powers. This prologue indicates, perhaps irreconcilably, both a greater backdrop for Herakles’ destiny and his destiny’s peculiarly specific conditions. A kind of cosmic or natural hierarchy and balance may be suggested, which the preSocratic philosopher Anaximander had called dikeˆ (justice or the way of things). Mixed with this, and more explicit, is an archaistic religious perspective in which Herakles is made into an example of the impossibility of human autonomy where divine powers are active. Cosmic nature is suggested by Iris as rainbow and Lyssa as raging turbulence, daughter of Night and Heaven who invokes the Sun (1107 / 858). Lyssa uses the language of natural cataclysm, ocean storms, earthquake, and thunderbolt (1112–14 / 861–62, see also 1195 / 907) to describe what will happen to Herakles. On the other hand, Iris says that the basic distinction of divine and human will disappear if Herakles ‘‘doesn’t pay the penalty’’ or ‘‘render justice (dikeˆ).’’ Yet Lyssa protests on Herakles’ behalf in the name of a normative, social principle of justice based (as was Anaximander’s cosmic justice) on the notion of reciprocity. Why is Herakles paying a penalty when he has ‘‘brought the wild powers of the earth to heel / And leveled the waves of the storming sea’’ and ‘‘raised up the honors of the gods / That the arrogance of human beings knocked aside’’ (1099–1102 / 851–53)? She recalls in summary both what the labors achieved and the recent killing of the impious Lykos. No answer is forthcoming to the question she raises. We have instead a raw, unresolved clash of human and divine spheres. Herakles will succumb to what is both cosmic justice and a malevolent power represented in grossly anthropomorphic terms that are also family terms. The high religious law of retribution is embodied in the jealous rage of the offended wife of Zeus. A divine father is a way of accounting for the extraordinary capacities of heroic figures. But the mix of human and divine is problematic and ambivalent. Herakles’ actual, so to speak, biological father is the divine Zeus. His human mother is Alkmene. He has a human foster father in Amphitryon and a divine stepmother in Zeus’ wife Hera. Herakles himself is a bastard with no fixed origin in one or another community.13 13. In Athens, starting in the latter part of the fifth century b.c.e., one could only be a citizen with full legal and political rights if both parents were Athenian citizens. From an Athenian viewpoint Herakles is illegitimate not only as the issue of an adulterous union but also because he has one

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There is in this family configuration a pattern of crossing categories: human and divine; male and female; ‘‘real,’’ or according to nature and what one might call functional or socially legitimated. At issue, too, are absence and presence and differing modes of perception and knowing: what is imagined and what is visible, that is, what is represented by language and reported myth and what is dramatically present and witnessed on stage. Thus the ‘‘real’’ father, Zeus, is notably absent, invisible and uninvolved; though much called on he never shows any signs of himself. Alkmene, the biological, human mother, is simply absent.14 Those who are effectively present are the human substitute father and the divine stepmother. For the events of the drama they are the functional figures, and they contrast sharply. Amphitryon (on stage more than any one else in the play) is old and physically helpless, yet in words and feeling, however imperfectly, an untiring source of support for the hero and his family, sustaining hope at the start, defending Herakles’ reputation in argument and, after the catastrophe, helping to guide Herakles gently out of his madness. Herakles will consider him as ‘‘true father . . . more than this Zeus!’’ (1570 / 1265). Hera, though never visible on stage, is represented by deities who, even if in an archaizing poetic and dramaturgical style that might suggest some ironic distance, make a theatrically indelible impression. Everyone on stage will attribute what they set in motion directly and feelingly to Hera. The human, old, weak, all but helpless yet emotionally supportive figure is countered by a divine, mature, powerful and malevolently destructive one. Each also crosses gender stereotypes. Amphitryon’s part suggests a concerned parent from Olympos and the other from Thebes. One of his best known cults, in the Attic district of Kynosarges, was reserved exclusively for illegitimately born sons. 14. She must be presumed dead. Usually, as for example in Euripides’ Children of Herakles, she survives her son. Her absence, on the one hand, highlights and isolates Hera’s relationship to Herakles. On the other hand, Alkmene as a potentially supporting female figure is replaced in the earlier part of the play by the strongly independent figure of Megara. References to Alkmene in the play are very few: Lykos and Iris are scornful of her; Herakles refers to her in despair on account of her adultery with Zeus; the chorus invoke her positively only once, as granddaughter of the hero Perseus and mother of Zeus’ son. The configurations of Herakles’ family make an interesting comparison with those in Euripides’ Ion, a play probably produced within a few years after Herakles. The young Ion, hero to be, is presumed an illegitimate orphan child. He turns out to be the son of the god Apollo and a human mother, the Athenian queen Kreousa. As in Herakles’ case these roles are doubled, but with significant differences. Ion gets a surrogate human father, Xouthos, and has had a foster mother (or stepmother) who is human, though a virgin priestess of Apollo (and as such outside of the normal structures of family and marriage). The human father is deceived into believing that he is the real father (thus averting social and political scandal and disadvantage). The stepmother is a benign and rescuing figure. Apollo, the divine father, though distant, still manages—through others and with some hitches, but in the end successfully—to set things right. In this story of the Athenian ruling house, the female and mother figures are integrated into a final action of rescue and return, even though Kreousa had twice misguidedly tried to kill the child she once did and then did not know was hers.

12

INTRODUCTION

mother’s, Hera’s a competitive and punishing father’s. Herakles himself is represented movingly as father and husband, then both roles are destroyed. Though his descendants, the Herakleidai, are notable in myth and ideological history, here he survives only as a son. He will try to cast himself as father to Theseus after he has lost his own children (1759 / 1401), but he leaves the stage finally like ‘‘a little boat in tow’’ after Theseus, as his own children had been ‘‘the smaller boats’’ in tow after him (1784 / 1424, 798 / 632). These confusions and subversions of normal roles are part of the ambivalent fabric of tragedy. The anomalous family structure as well as the relation of hero as hero to family are involved. Herakles’ heroic identity requires deeds of force and violence, carried out usually far from home. When he comes home to save his family and be with them, looking forward to passing on his fame, his heroic example, to his sons, the heroic identity, with its divine baggage, will not adapt; it selfdestructs. One might suppose that Herakles brings home the craziness that makes great warriors and that his madness, a caricature of his heroic behavior, is psychologically plausible. But the play does not encourage this view. It insists on a more traditional, and more opaque, connection between the gods’ power and the hero’s identity. What happens to that identity when its victorious course has come to an end, one could say when the gods are done with Herakles, is the burden of the play’s last phase. After the catastrophic killing of his family Herakles determines to kill himself, then he is moved to reconsider and chooses to go on living. This change of mind evolves through a debate with Theseus. In making his argument for suicide Herakles looks back over his life and declares it to have been no life at all, ‘‘a botch’’ (1561 / 1257). The basis of his family line, irregular from the start, led only to trouble. His famed achievements—he mentions his infant feat of strangling serpents put into his cradle by Hera, four labors (again lion and hydra, also centaurs and Hades) and his battle on the side of the Olympian gods against the monster Typhon and the Giants—are no more than instances of his life’s wretchedness. ‘‘Labor’’ (the Greek word is ponos15) refers to what is achieved by hard, determined effort as well as to the pain and misery such effort may bring with it. In the first case labor is bound up with producing social values and is rewarded by fame; in the second case it is only abject suffering and a potential source of ignominy. Herakles now 15. On ponos and its relation to Herakles, see Nicole Loraux, The Experiences of Tiresias (Princeton 1995): 44–58. This book is also to be recommended for its account of the figure of Herakles in classical Greek culture.

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only sees, and feels, the latter. He joins child-killing to the sequence of his traditionally celebrated labors, calling it his last labor, his culminating misery. Iris, with fierce irony, had forecast the infanticide calling it ‘‘the crown of all his [Herakles’] labors’’ (1086 / 839). Herakles acknowledges this subversion of his heroic life’s meaning. Suicide seems the only logical response. It also implies an autonomous action dictated by no outside force. But it will not happen. One could say that Herakles’ traditional stories, known to everyone, will not allow the figure on stage to do what he has argued is his only choice. The focus and emotional force of the drama on stage must allow the audience to suspend their fuller knowledge of those stories. But the play does draw specific attention to a kind of framing around the dramatic figure of Herakles: the hero’s familiar presence in actual Athenian cult activities, his association with shrines and his representation on monuments. In trying to persuade Herakles to go on living Theseus offers to take him to Athens to be purified of the pollution from the bloodshed of his kin. In addition Theseus offers a share of his property, including sacred precincts, and he promises, after Herakles’ death, sacrificial honors and monuments. This is etiology, a common Euripidean practice, linking figures in a drama to a contemporary cult and thus anchoring the fluid, onetime-only dramatic material of a play to permanent or ever repeating real-life, social-religious practices. This usually takes place at a play’s end as part of an epilogue. Herakles’ etiology here, though, is closely bound up with the play’s ongoing action and the hero’s confrontation with his identity. The etiology is a reminder of a Herakles familiar to Athenians as a strong, protective, and victorious figure whose cults are sites of genial festivity—a figure similar to the one celebrated by the chorus after Lykos’ defeat. This consolatory perspective, however, is in strong tension with the drama before us. If Herakles’ heroic life is shown to have no meaning, to be helplessly subject to uncontrollable forces, whether called gods or chance, what might this say about the hero whom Athens celebrates? Or what might it say about the coherence and viability of Athenian cult and the wider social fabric of which it was part?16 Giving Herakles asylum in Athens may also be seen as belonging to an ideologically colored, yet also strongly ambivalent, pattern found in other tragedies. Taking in Herakles, Athens displays her openness, her enlightened and generous support of heroes who have been driven into exile because of deeply polluting crimes: the matricide by Orestes, the inces16. I raise these questions hypothetically. We have no sure way of addressing them, but they do suggest themselves.

14

INTRODUCTION

tuous parricide by Oedipus, the infanticide by Medea. These figures bring their ambiguous fame to the city and enhance hers, and their pollution may work as a kind of inoculation for its host community as well as a source of the religious power inherent in the ambivalence of accursed and sacred. Like the etiology this is a perspective on the play’s horizon, put to the city’s service, while still suggesting the mysterious opacity of divine involvement in heroic life. On stage Athens’ representative is Theseus, but he acts more on his own account than the city’s. He is moved by personal friendship and a debt due for the saving of his life. He is also shown as weak and ordinary. He is generous and devoted toward Herakles, but we also know that he signally failed on a private adventure in Hades from which he had to be rescued. His arguments are conventional: misfortune is universal, one must endure it; Herakles should live up to his reputation as the great hero of Greece. Herakles responds to the friendship and generosity but not to the arguments: ‘‘My troubles . . . what have they got to do with all your talk?’’ (1673 / 1340). The hero changes his mind on as near to his own terms as he can manage. He decides to go on living because he thinks of his reputation as a warrior who, because of his human mortality,17 must not give way even in extreme adversity. Concern for a soldier’s reputation, for a civic role, outweighs living with the infamy of having killed one’s own family. But the pull between asserting a warrior’s identity and the intense grief felt at its private cost is strong. Herakles, as he says, succumbs for the first time in his life to tears (1693–94 / 1354–56, and see 1752 / 1394). In his long speech of decision the central portion is taken up by lament for his family and instructions to his father for their funeral. He invokes, then, in one breath the ‘‘bitter sweetness’’ of last kisses for his dead wife and children and the ‘‘bitter companionship’’ of the weapons that are both the mark of his warrior identity and, vividly personified as physical and speaking presences, the killers of his sons. His bow, arrows, and club have been lying on the ground beside him from the time he emerged from his madness (1402–3 / 1098–1100). Now he hesitates between leaving them and picking them up. In a theatrically marked gesture he does the latter. Herakles states that with these weapons he achieved glory in Greece and that without them he would risk ignominious death at his enemies’ hands. He suggests a kind of blend of a civic, military model of behavior (what Lykos had invoked in 17. The theme of mortality is part of the play’s movement toward a kind of humanistic realism, a sense of life apart from divine and heroic myth. But that movement is only partial, and here there may also be an allusion to an older, epic heroic code in which human mortality is the basis of life-risking action for the sake of immortal fame. This is Achilles’ story in the Iliad (see also Iliad 12.322–28).

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his attack on Herakles’ reputation) and his traditional identity as the Panhellenic hero of the labors, the identity he had just drastically devalued. The weapons tie him more firmly to the latter, though. The issue of fame or reputation and of disgrace joins the two. The possibility of Herakles’ enduring fame is derived from his mythic and heroic status, his disgrace from his domestic catastrophe. The former exists as poetic tradition in imagination and song, the latter is witnessed dramatically on stage. The heroic deeds are Herakles’ independent achievement, it would appear; the killing of his family was beyond his control. Yet the goddess Hera is an inextricable thread between the deeds and the killing. Herakles’ speech of decision ends with her (1751 / 1393). Embedded in his name she is always part of him. That name means Hera’s fame. That is, he is both famous and infamous on her account. Or, to put it another way, the contradictions inherent in the hero’s being must be attributable to a divine source. Herakles’ reference to Hera is the last time a deity is mentioned in the play. The play ends entirely within a human sphere, which also is ambivalent (and thus the more affecting). Theseus tries to strengthen Herakles’ resolve by recalling the heroic labors (and this is the last time they are mentioned), only to have Herakles revert to his despair of their worth in the face of what he now suffers (1768–69 / 1410–11). Herakles then calls up the memory of the Athenian hero’s wretchedness in Hades, which causes Theseus to admit that there he himself was ‘‘less than the meanest soul’’ (1774 / 1416). Both heroes are brought close to an ordinary humanity. The play’s concluding theme is friendship. Herakles extols it above wealth and power. But this oversimplifies. It is Theseus’ wealth, won by service to his city (1655–57 / 1326–27), and Athens’ power that makes this friendship viable. Yet a look back will recall that friendship has also been shown as helpless (the chorus, Amphitryon, Lyssa), unreliable (the citizens of Thebes, the Greek world) or simply absent where expected (Zeus). Friendship, philia in Greek, is a wide-ranging notion, comprising social and political alignments as well as the mutual ties and obligations of kin and personal relations of feeling. This last is, as the play implies, hazardously contingent on the rest. The play’s concluding action, departure for the haven of Athens, is also hedged by a detour. At the start we were waiting for Herakles to complete his last labor, bringing the monster dog Cerberus back from Hades to Eurystheus in Argos. At the end, that task has still to be completed. Because of the loss of his children Herakles does not trust himself emotionally to carry it out alone; he asks for Theseus’ help (1741–45 / 1386–88). The shadow of Hades, of things having to do with death, is cast over the length of the play. There are, from beginning to 16

INTRODUCTION

end, journeys to and from Hades, impending death, dirges and laments, dressing for death, killings, corpses, funeral and burial arrangements, contemplation of suicide. The horizon of Herakles’ future seems also to include little else. No further heroic achievements are so much as hinted at. The cult honors he is to receive in Athens are predicated on his death, when he descends ‘‘to Hades’’ (1662–63 / 1331),18 one last time. The final lines of the play chanted by the chorus are a lament for the loss of Herakles, the greatest of friends. The audience may remind itself that this is Thebes’ loss. It should be Athens’ gain, but only as foretold, to be realized outside of the drama that has been witnessed. III

At the heart of the tragedy there is subversion. Presumed norms of order are called into question: the coherence of mythic and heroic values, political order, the relationship of public and private life. Religion and poetry are part of this, too. The first through the gods of myth, as recounted and dramatized, especially where questions are raised about justice or theodicy, and through reference to the relationship of gods and humans in the actual religious practices of cult ritual. The issue of poetry is acutely involved because Euripides’ drama and its language are the means by which all these subversions are represented, and this poetry is itself part of a normative tradition. Among the gods two link Herakles’ story to Athens. Athena, offstage, brings Herakles’ madness to an end, with a violence appropriate to it, hurling a rock at his chest. (This rock, ‘‘inducing a sane mind,’’ was reportedly shown as a sacred relic in a sanctuary of Herakles in Thebes.) Amphitryon confusedly sees her action as a hellish earthquake (1195–97 / 907–8), but it saves Herakles from killing him (1309–15 / 1001–6) and so could be seen as forecasting Athens’ role in providing a refuge for the hero and a way to support his decision to go on living. The goddess does again recall Herakles’ ambivalent relationship to the gods. She is called ‘‘child of Zeus’’ (1189–90 / 906)—as he had been (192 / 170–71, 890–91 / 696)—just when his human vulnerability is ineluctably demonstrated. Another connection to Athens is through Dionysos (again, a child of Zeus). Like the Herakles of the Athenian cult, Dionysos is associated in the city with joyous festivity. The chorus set the two side by side in their 18. Notice, too, the imagery of Hades in the account of Herakles’ madness, and his supposing himself to be back in Hades when he awakes from his madness (1406–10). Hades is also mentioned as a realm, connected to the goddesses Persephone and Demeter, where the salvation of the Eleusinian Mysteries is available. At line 779 Herakles refers to his being initiated. Reference to these mysteries, though made in passing and eclipsed by the action that follows, constitutes another link to Athenian cult life.

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song, ‘‘for Herakles / To crown his victor’s brow. / As long as Bakkhos keeps on / Splashing out wine . . . ’’ (870–71 / 680–82). But god and hero are subject to tragic inversion. Herakles’ madness is represented as Dionysiac. Madness [Lyssa] dances like a Dionysian celebrant through Herakles’ house (1179–81 / 898–99). Dionysiac imagery runs through the account of Herakles’ frenzied actions (1266–67 / 966–67, 1388–89 / 1084–85, 1430 / 1122, 1450 / 1142). He is called a Bakkhic celebrant from Hades, ‘‘drunk—on death’’ (1427 / 1119). The Dionysiac power linked to madness, that destroys his family and, in some sense, himself, manifests itself in Thebes.19 But as god of the theater Dionysos is connected to Athens in the city’s great festival for him, the Dionysia, an essential part of which included the performance of this play. A kind of self-referencing points to this connection. Herakles’ madness is represented as alienated mimetic action. He is described miming a journey from Thebes to Argos, and then he casts his own family in the role of his enemy Eurystheus’. His family and the household slaves are at first spectators, the latter not knowing whether to laugh or be afraid. Then this play within a play goes badly wrong. The boundaries between actor and onstage audience are erased. Illusion, of which Dionysos is a master, becomes ruinous delusion. Herakles’ Dionysiac madness is also an image of subverted theater. Hera is the last named deity in the play, Zeus the first. He is immediately introduced as Herakles’ father and then in a cult function: the theater altar is identified as belonging to Zeus the Rescuer.20 It was dedicated by his son. But the altar proves to be useless; Herakles was the rescuer. We later learn about another altar to Zeus inside the house (1211 / 922), where Herakles attempts a purification ceremony only to be struck down by the madness ordered by Hera. Zeus’ role as father is addressed by Amphitryon. The god, having ‘‘borrowed’’ Amphitryon’s wife and thus made himself closest kin to Herakles’ family, is doubly indebted. He should be a friend (philos), especially in time of need. If he is not, Amphitryon says in an unusual indictment, his heart is ‘‘hard,’’ failing in moral feeling or ‘‘without justice.’’ Amphitryon, human and mortal, claims a higher moral status than the ‘‘great’’ god’s (381–92 / 339–47). Zeus falls outside the reach 19. As commonly in Attic tragedy Thebes and Athens are antithetical mythical constructs, Thebes being the tragically subverted city serving as a foil to an idealized Athens. On this see Froma I. Zeitlin, ‘‘Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama,’’ in John J. Winkler and Froma I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysus? (Princeton 1990): 130–67; and Froma I. Zeitlin, ‘‘Staging Dionysus between Thebes and Athens,’’ in Thomas H. Carpenter and Christopher A. Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca 1993): 147–82. 20. This is imagined for the play in Thebes. There was in fact a building and statue in Athens dedicated to Zeus the Rescuer. See Jon D. Mikalson, ‘‘Zeus the Father and Heracles the Son,’’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 116 (1986) 89–98, esp. 90 n. 2.

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INTRODUCTION

of humanly conceived morality (compare also 830–31 / 655–56). This asymmetry between divine power and human moral expectations, expectations that the gods are traditionally meant to enforce, is especially pointed because Zeus is regarded as most particularly concerned with justice. That justice is understood at least as having to do with a larger structure of order, among gods and between gods and human beings. Divine justice is celebrated by the chorus after the defeat of Lykos. It is attributed to the gods in general and its manifestation is taken to confirm that Zeus is the true father of Herakles. The god seems somehow to be a philos after all and is proved to be the divine source of the hero’s noble greatness. This realignment of the claims of human morality with a turn of events that the chorus attributes to the gods turns out to be as temporary as can be. The word just has barely been sung (1058 / 815) when Iris and Lyssa appear. The gods may have something to do with punishing the wicked, but this says nothing about rewards for the good. Herakles, who carries out Lykos’ punishment, is made mad. That Lykos is punished could be attributed simply to Herakles’ superiority as a warrior and the lucky timing of his arrival back in Thebes. What Iris calls his punishment is attributed to Hera, and the meaning or justice of it, as noted earlier, is obscure. Iris does explain that Zeus and Necessity (or Destiny; compare lines 30–31 / 20–21) had protected Herakles from Hera until the labors were finished. Now Zeus can do nothing. He himself is subject to a higher, more abstract force that for the moment allows Hera to have her way. The unfolding of Zeus’ uselessness runs parallel with the fading and transforming of the traditional heroic figure of Herakles. Zeus provides an initial condition of the play’s story. Herakles finally reduces him, alluding ironically perhaps to a standard prayer formula, to a ‘‘whoever’’ (1567 / 1263) and holds Amphitryon to be his father (1569– 70 / 1265). The immediate driving force of the story is Hera. Her involvement is vivid and direct. No one questions it or who she is. Herakles cannot shake her off. He can only cry out in outrage and disgust: ‘‘Who would stoop so low as / To pray to such a goddess?’’ (1630–31 / 1307–8). Zeus perhaps represents the inscrutability of divine power intellectually; Hera unquestionably represents it emotionally. We recall, too, how each deity is cast in family and gender roles: the remote, inaccessible father and the angry, resentful, all-too-involved stepmother. The most direct discussion of the gods occurs between the speeches of Theseus and Herakles when the latter decides to go on with his broken life. Theseus uses the same anthropomorphic terms that Amphitryon had in his challenge to Zeus. The gods, he says, do and suffer bad things—lawless sexual unions and repressive violence against fathers, yet their life on Olympos goes on. So should Herakles, only a mortal, 19

HERAKLES

endure his life. The form of the argument as consolation is conventional enough and as a kind of rationalizing it has a contemporary resonance.21 But it is awkward, creating something like a cognitive dissonance. The underlying point is that misfortune comes to all beings and there is no choice but to submit. To this Herakles essentially agrees (1695 / 1357, 1750–51 / 1392–93). The gods, too, are subject to a greater and indeterminate power, the uncontrollable turn of events called tukheˆ (what happens). But surely we notice that the argument’s examples do not fit. Misfortune comes to Herakles against his will while the gods chose to inflict theirs on each other. Within this play, too, there is no hint of sexual irregularity on Herakles’ part, and he has devoted his life to serving both his fathers. One might think of Zeus’ adultery with Herakles’ human mother (but Theseus’ example refers only to gods) and violence in the family to assert power (but by Hera against the human Herakles). Theseus’ argument could imply that sexual drives and the forceful pursuit of power are universal, apart from any distinction of human and divine. Herakles, at any rate, responds first with a cry of anguish and then a dismissal of what Theseus has proposed. But he cannot let the argument go. He asserts a belief that the gods have nothing to do with illicit sex and power relations; true deity is free of such constraints, ‘‘needing nothing’’ (1678 / 1345–46). Euripides here draws on pre-Socratic (the philosopher-poet Xenophanes) and more recent (the Sophist Antiphon) speculative thinking—which will be taken up by Plato and Epicurus. But what Herakles asserts would undercut his whole story by denying the mythic configurations that shape it. And that story will not go away. His speculative challenge to myth is emotionally and dramatically overcome or bypassed. A vision of deity untainted by human characteristics is given striking expression and then left suspended. Herakles himself will end his speech with a cry against Hera, a goddess who could not have existed as a goddess in his theology. Myth and its gods are indispensable to tragic drama. They provide both some sense of coherence through a story line, the causation of narrative, and are a kind of emblem of the human psyche as it is irreducible to rational accounting. Herakles’ theology is a challenge to the drama itself, a challenge met at least by the fact that the drama continues. Euripides has folded into this deeply dramatic moment of his play a metadrama about his function as dramatic poet. Both Theseus

21. There is a particularly harsh instance in the argument Thucydides represents the Athenians making for their takeover of the island of Melos: they cite the example of the gods to justify their unrestricted exercise of military power for the sake of political domination (Thucydides, 5.105.2). See also Godfrey W. Bond, ed., Euripides, Heracles (Oxford 1981): 393.

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INTRODUCTION

and Herakles, the one using myth, the other denying it, refer questioningly to poets: they might be lying (1642 / 1315); their accounts are ‘‘wretched,’’ that is, responsible for false representations of the gods (1680 / 1346). This suggests a competition between poetry and speculative thought in which poetry subsumes the latter while maintaining its own power of fictional creation, a power, though, acknowledged to be ambivalent. In Herakles one may also see that his view of the divine here could refer to himself. Where Theseus calls up an image of heroic submission and endurance, Herakles attributes to true divinity an autonomy and self-sufficiency that might have defined his own heroism, but that is now utterly lost to him. Herakles’ theology isolates the gods and thereby undermines two working assumptions of Greek ritual practice, that the gods are involved in human affairs, for good or ill (ritual seeks to encourage the one and abate the other), and that there is some reciprocity between gods and humans; both notions are basic to sacrifice, for example (they were also presupposed by Amphitryon’s earlier indictment of Zeus).22 But ritual is a substantial part of the play’s dramatic fabric. As noted, it is mostly shown as failed or perverted: supplication doesn’t work, sacrifice goes very wrong, Bakkhic celebration turns murderous. Though this might appear to risk a subversion of actual religious practice, the dramatically enacted subversion can give richer definition to what is represented as subverted. The representation of ritual gone awry is a generally familiar feature of Greek tragedy. That in addition the drama is itself part of a ritual and civic occasion (Dionysos’ festival) suggests that actual ritual is not so much challenged as dramatized in its ambivalent power, and may in fact in this way be reinforced. In the play, poetry is also represented as intrinsic to ritual performance, especially in the singing and dancing of the chorus who regularly signal self-referentially what they are doing: for example, performing a dirge to music modeled on Apollo’s (399–406 / 348–51, compare 132–33 / 109–10); invoking to celebrate victory the Muses, Dionysos, and the music of lyre and pipe (856–87 / 673–94); performing a paean, a song of thanksgiving and victory, like the maidens at Delos worshiping Apollo (878–91 / 687– 96); and calling for ritual dance and festivity in Thebes (971–78 / 761–64). All this is before Herakles’ catastrophe. After it is forecast by Iris and Lyssa the chorus’ vision sees their dance and music taken over and perverted by the mad hero: ‘‘The dances are beginning . . . not the dances / Of the god 22. See Harvey Yunis, A New Creed: Fundamental Religious Beliefs in the Athenian Polis and Euripidean Drama (Go¨ttingen 1988).

21

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of wine . . . The pipe keeps shrieking / Notes of ruin’’ (1163–78 / 891–97). The chorus sing only one more formal song, although nearly a third of the play is still to come. This song is their shortest, disturbed and rhythmically irregular (there is no usual balance of corresponding stanzas). It is a shocked response that compares the greater enormity of Herakles’ mad crime to the daughters of Danaos’ killing their forty-nine bridegrooms and the Athenian princess Prokne’s killing of her one son (1329–33 / 1016–22). These mythic parallels (like the ones Theseus uses in trying to persuade Herakles to live) are suggestively and unsettlingly oblique. The crimes cited apply to Herakles insofar as they concern spouse and child killing, respectively. But they are committed by women who have deliberately plotted them, if under great duress. Herakles, the man, is declared simply doomed to madness (1336–37 / 1023–24) and acts for no cause of his own, unwittingly. Prokne’s slaughter of her child, quite remarkably, is called sacrificing to the Muses (1334–35 / 1021–22). There is here a tragic nexus of ritual and poetry (in the context of an Athenian story, too). As with Herakles, intrafamilial killing is represented as perverted ritual. The reference to the Muses may recall that because of her crime Prokne was turned into the beautifully singing nightingale. In the myth this was an act of the gods; in effect it is a poetic invention, a kind of rescue operation for a hideous crime whereby the crime is powerfully registered while poetry asserts its power, and indeed draws it from the very horror of the crime. Euripides’ play as a whole does something like this with the tragedy of Herakles, but, one might say, more realistically. Herakles occasions the beautiful songs of the chorus, then the hero’s devastating ruin puts an end to them. Just after their short formal song the chorus refer one last time to their ritual activity, asking what lament or dirge they might sing or what dance of Hades they might perform (1338–41 / 1025–27). There is no hope of an answer. They and their poetry, traditional and close to ritual, are overtaken by the story’s events. For what remains of the play they are almost completely silent and motionless. Yet the play goes on, moving through an extended conclusion in which its hero, with his companion’s help, wrestles with how after utter catastrophe one can go on. Herakles tries to put the greatest distance possible between himself and the mythic, divine forces who seem to be the cause of his unjust downfall. Theseus tries to recall the hero to his previous greatness and, not without contradiction, to his human mortality, so that the two might be joined in the strength for endurance. What we see on stage allows neither effort easily to be regarded as a success. Divine power is overwhelming and unaccountable, undeniable in its effects, and necessary for the whole story to be 22

INTRODUCTION

told. Herakles’ strength at the end is disturbingly fragile and completely dependent. We are left with the emotional impact of that. Out of this bleakness some balancing—consoling is perhaps too much to say— factors remain. To the extent that the gods are distanced, humanity emerges in sharper relief and definition. The figures on stage at the end have been drawn—forced—to a greater self-reliance, at the ideal center of which is friendship. The gods of myth are both devastating and yet also distanced. They could be seen as extreme cases in both their violence and lack of care. Yet their power may also be partly channeled and regularized in ritual that, though perverted within the play, outside of it is still glimpsed as part of a civic community’s ordered life. The humane Theseus makes an unusual personal disavowal of the effects of pollution from Herakles’ hands stained by the blood of his kin (1521–25 / 1218–20, 1537–39 / 1232–34, 1758 / 1400). But the play allows no question about the religious and civic law requiring the hero’s exile from Thebes and his ritual purification for the pollution he has unintentionally incurred (see 1652 / 1322). Though they can hardly be forgotten, at the end of the play there is no more talk of gods. We are left with the work of Euripides’ dramatic poetry, which has included and then moved past the traditional singing and dancing of his chorus. This poetry, like the figure of Herakles, is shown to be part of a tradition that has become unsettlingly fragile and in need of readaptation. Euripides has somehow, perhaps just barely, held the threads of the drama together, has made the play possible, and sent its action home to Athens.

Christian Wolff

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ON THE TRANSLATION

I wanted a line that could embody swift shifts in mood and thought, whose nimbleness and speed kept pace with the play’s sudden reversals and disasters. In the speeches, I generally used a pentameter-based line frequently broken up into smaller units and a trimeter-based line for the choruses. When the original or my English demanded it, I’ve broken with this scheme, particularly in the alternating, single lines of dialogue known as stichomythia. (In the case of turnover lines, short turnover lines are aligned flush right. To avoid long turnover lines, I’ve indented the entire line to the left so that the line can fit within the bounds of the right margin.) I’ve benefited from Christian Wolff ’s literal version of the play and his corrections and suggestions. I’ve also consulted many other versions and/ or commentaries, especially those of Godfrey Bond, Michael Halleran, William Arrowsmith, and Shirley Barlow. My hope is that this translation will live on both the page and the contemporary stage. What I’ve attempted to do is reimagine Euripides’ play from the inside, to get the feel and timbre of the characters’ voices, and to embody those voices in a way that doesn’t violate the spirit of Euripides’ Greek. At the same time, I’ve tried to make those voices over into contemporary English full of the nuances and subtleties, the intimate qualities of morals and mind, of each character’s individual habits of speech.

Tom Sleigh

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HERAKLES

Translated by TOM SLEIGH

With Introduction and Notes by CHRISTIAN WOLFF

CHARACTERS

amphitryon Herakles’ foster father megara Herakles’ wife chorus of Theban Elders lykos the usurping power in Thebes herakles son of Zeus and Alkmene, foster son of Amphitryon iris messenger of the gods madness messenger theseus ruler of Athens herakles’ three sons Followers of Lykos and of Theseus

Line numbers in the right-hand margin of the text refer to the English translation only, and the Notes on the text beginning at p. 95 are keyed to these lines. The bracketed line numbers in the running head lines refer to the Greek text.

Outside of herakles’ house. Seated at the altar of zeus the rescuer, amphitryon, megara, and her three sons by herakles.

amphitryon Say the name Amphitryon of Argos And the whole world snaps to. I’m the very man— That same Amphitryon who shared his wife with Zeus. You’ll recognize my father, Alkaios, And Perseus, my grandfather—another household name. And as for my son, can there be anyone Alive who hasn’t heard of Herakles? I’ve settled here in Thebes. Thebes, where dragonteeth Were broadcast and sprouted full-grown fighters Berserk to kill each other. Ares kept a few back From the slaughter and they put down roots— their children’s Children grew up here in this city Kadmos Built from the ground up. And from them Sprung Kreon, the son of Menoikeus— Kreon, who was our king; and the father Of Megara here . . . Once the whole city Turned out to celebrate her wedding, Singing and playing pipes as Herakles Led her through the streets—home to his father’s house. But my son left home. Left me and Megara And all his in-laws here in Thebes. He wanted To take back dear old Argos, a city so huge You’d think the Cyclopes planned it— those high-built walls Shadowed me when I had to flee to Thebes For striking down Elektryon. Well—for me, To brighten an exile’s grief, and take back

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[19–48]

Home ground, he had to make a deal. He struck a tough bargain with Eurystheus: Tame the old powers, make the whole world safe— And Eurystheus would let him and me go home. Who knows If Hera’s hatred or Necessity itself Made him shake hands on such a price? He pushed through to the end—now, one labor’s left: To force his way through the jaws of Tainaron And bring back from the underworld Its three-headed watchdog. But Hades Swallowed him like light. He still hasn’t come back . . . There’s an old story among the Thebans: Old King Lykos, who was married to our Queen Dirke, Once held power here. This was before Zethus And Amphion controlled the city’s seven gates. Twins sired by Zeus, they were nicknamed the white colts. But Lykos’ son, who was named after his father —Kadmos didn’t breed him; he came from Euboea— Ambushed the city. Civil war had broken out. But I’ll cut the story short: Lykos killed Kreon. And killing made Lykos boss. Now our blood ties To Kreon have become a noose. Because my son is Down in the dark depths of the earth, Lykos— That hero, new strongman of Thebes—plans to murder us: Herakles’ little boys. His father. His wife— Murder on top of murder, like using Fire to put out fire: Me, I’m just a blathering Old nuisance. I scarcely count. But these boys— If they grow to men, they’ll pay back blood with blood. When Herakles went down to the blackness Underground, he left me behind—to play nursemaid To these boys. Now all I can do is kneel 30

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HERAKLES

[49–75]

With their mother before this altar— And pray to Zeus the Rescuer . . . this altar, A reminder of what my son’s spear can do; That he set up to celebrate his great victory Over the Minyans. But us, we’re worse than beggars— No food; nothing to drink; no clothes. We’re camped Out here on the bare hard ground. Locked out Of our own house. Destitute. Doomed. And as for friends— Well, most won’t lift a finger. And those that will Have no power. When bad luck catches up to you, You learn that friendship won’t stand up to misfortune. No matter how two-faced my worst friends’ smiles, I wouldn’t wish on them this trial of friendship. megara So, old man—remember when you commanded Our Theban spearmen? You razed the city Of the Taphians. But the gods work out our fates In ways too crooked and devious for human eyes. My father was acclaimed great. His greatness Was my luck—I wasn’t brought up wanting. My father was rich and had the power To protect us from his rivals’ spears; But power and wealth make for greed; and spear Lifted against spear is the way to power. My father Had us children as a further blessing— And as for me—my luck, and his will, granted me Your Herakles. But now that’s over. Dead. Flown. And you and I, old man—we’re done for; And along with us, these three chicks of ours, Huddling and nestling under their mother’s wing. They can’t help themselves, they keep asking After him: ‘‘Mother, where’s our father gone? What’s he doing? When will he come home?’’ They don’t understand, they’re just too young . . . The way lost children stumble blind at night,

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HERAKLES

[76–102]

They call out, ‘‘Father? Father?’’ I keep Putting them off. Distracting them with chatter. But when they’d hear the door latch creak, they’d all scramble up And run to hug their father’s knees. So, old man— What are our chances? I’m counting on you To rescue us. The borders are sealed tight, Guards everywhere, patrols bottling up Every road. Our friends have let us down. If you’ve got a plan, let’s hear it. We all know What will happen if we keep on standing here.

100

amphitryon My girl, I don’t know what to say. Our troubles Call for hard thought, not casual chatter. When you’re weak, what can you do but wait? megara Wait for something worse? Do you love your life that much? amphitryon I’m still alive, aren’t I? Even that gives me hope. megara I love being alive, too. But it’s hopeless to hope for what can’t be. amphitryon By playing for time, hard times can be cured. megara The time spent waiting is worse than being tortured. amphitryon Look. The wind can change course. The storm Blows over, and our troubles melt like mist. Trust to Herakles. He still may come To rescue us—me, his old father, you, his wife. Try to stay calm. The tears welling up In your boys’ eyes, brush them away; Tell them a story that will make their crying stop, No matter how much a lie the story seems to you. The wind blowing against us, that makes us Desperate now, won’t always be this strong— It’ll blow itself out. Good luck, too, 32

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[103–32]

Blows hot and cold. Everything changes; Things look as if they’ll never end and then— Before we know it—they, too, are swept away. We have to keep on. That’s what courage is. Only if we lose heart can they call us cowards. Enter chorus. chorus To this high-roofed house We come like ghosts, Apparitions leaning on our staffs, Our voices ghost-voices Whispering round an old man’s bed. The dying swan whose song is sad Can’t match ours for misery. What good is our good will When things go from bad to worse? You boys have lost your father. Old man, you’ve lost your son. And you, unhappy wife, Our words can’t touch your grief: Your man is locked away Down in the house of death. Keep moving. Heavy step By step lift your tired feet The way a horse pulls the weight Of a chariot up a rocky slope. If anyone needs your help, Give him a steadying hand The way when we were younger, Fighting with our spears, We drove off the enemy For the glory of our country. Look at those boys’ eyes Gleaming like their father’s: Fierce. Stony. A stare That hardens one to stone. Yes. And they’ve inherited 33

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[138–63]

Their father’s rotten luck. Along with his good looks. Greece, what defenders you lose If you lose these boys!

160

Look—it’s the headman, Lykos, Strutting toward the house. Enter lykos, with followers. lykos You, who claim you’re Herakles’ father, And you, his wife—allow me a few questions, Won’t you? I thought you might. Let’s face it: I’m in charge here. I’ll ask whatever I want. Still nursing your hopes? A snap of my fingers— And you’re done. Or are you cracked Enough to think that these boys’ father, Who’s dead—will suddenly show his face? Aren’t you ashamed of your stupid blubbering? And all because you’re about to die . . . you, Who bragged all over Greece about pimping Your wife to Zeus—and you, who boasted That your husband was a hero. What’s so glorious About killing some slimy marsh snake? Or that Nemean Lion— He claimed he strangled it with his bare hands . . . But everybody knows he trapped it in a net. Your case has more holes than a net, If that’s all the evidence you’ve got. He’s a nobody— He made his reputation by slaughtering Dumb beasts. Let’s see him with a shield On that brawny left arm, parrying a spearthrust. But he uses a bow—handy for retreat. A bow’s for cowards. A man with real guts Stands his ground, face to face, when a spear

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[164–88]

Comes hurtling through the ranks. So—killing His sons isn’t cruelty, but shrewd policy. We all know who killed Kreon. We all know Who took away his throne. I’m not about To let these cubs grow up and bare their fangs.

190

amphitryon Zeus, Herakles is your son, too. Use your power To defend him! My part’s to speak out Against such stinking lies— with the Gods As my witnesses, Son, I’ll make him eat his words; I’ll show him up for the liar that he is: You’re unspeakable, to call my son coward! But maybe Zeus’ thunderbolts don’t impress you? Or Zeus’ chariot that my son drove into battle When the gods fought against those giants, The monstrous children of the earth? Stuck between their ribs, The arrows of Herakles taught that gang a thing or two. And afterwards, my son took his place among The other gods to sing the victory song! Or go to Pholoe, you dirty tyrant, And ask the Centaurs—those four-legged savages— Who they think is the bravest man on earth: Herakles. My son. That’s how they’ll answer. Herakles, Whose courage you talk down— but since you think He’s such a phony, why don’t you go back To your hometown, Dirphys in Euboea— And ask what your own people think of you? Who calls you brave—let alone a hero? There’s no place in all Euboea That could talk up one brave deed you’ve done. And as for sneering at that thinking-man’s invention,

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HERAKLES

[189–215]

The bow— let me put you straight. Your infantryman Is a slave, hauling around his spear and shield. He’s at the mercy of his fellow soldiers In the ranks. If the man next to him Holds back or breaks rank because he’s scared, He’s dead— and because someone else turned coward. And if your spear shaft breaks—your sole weapon Against death—you might as well be standing naked. But let’s say you’ve got a bow—and you’re a good shot. First, you can shoot arrows all day, as many arrows As you want: you can always defend yourself. And second—you can fight at long range. Your enemy Can’t spot you. While they’re taking heavy Casualties, the wounds from your arrows Are all the enemy can see. And you—you’re snug As a baby. They can’t strike back. In war, That’s the best strategy. To train your firepower On whoever’s in range while you keep Your own head down. So that’s that. I’ve put The record straight. For every claim you made, The truth is really just the opposite. And these boys—why murder them? What have They done to you? Of course, you’re smart in one thing: Since you’re a coward, you fear a real man’s children. But that we should have to die to prove your cowardice— That’s the worst. Our swords would be at your throat— We, who are your betters— if Zeus’ mind were just. But if power over Thebes is your game, Send us into exile. You leave us unharmed, No one will harm you. Just like that—

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[216–44]

God can turn the wind against you. And you, city of Kadmos! Don’t think you’ll get off Without my curses. Is this how you show gratitude To Herakles and his sons? Herakles, who 250 Single-handedly routed the whole Minyan army, And made you Thebans free to hold up your heads again? In fact, all Greece ought to be ashamed: I can’t keep quiet! Greece should be on the march, Campaigning with all she’s got to protect these boys! She owes it to Herakles! His labors cleared the earth and seas Of monsters: For us, he made things safe. But look at them, boys—these Thebans don’t lift a finger. Nor do the other Greeks. And me, what can I do? I’m useless as the rattling of my tongue. 260 I’m winded. Utterly spent. Just look at me, I’m trembling! If only I were young and strong again, My spear would bloody those blond curls of his. I’d drive the coward beyond the bounds of Atlas— Past land’s end—trying to dodge my spear! chorus Whether his words come easily or not An honest man always can find inside Himself a reservoir of authentic speech. lykos Go on, keep babbling! Pile up and up your tower Of words. But to pay you back, I’ll do more than talk. You there, go to Helikon—and you, to Parnassos. Tell the crews there to cut down a stand of oak And bring the logs here. To keep our friends Cozy and warm, we’ll pile wood around the altar. And once the flames get roaring, we’ll have

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HERAKLES

[245–69]

A roast— the whole lot of them— that should teach you The dead have no power here. From now on, I’m the one who calls the shots. (To Chorus.) You burned-out old fools! For taking their part, you’ll weep for more Than Herakles’ sons. I’ll give you something real 280 To cry about: Your own houses torn down Around your ears. That should teach you Who’s in charge here. And who’s a slave. chorus Ares tore the teeth from the dragon’s jaws And planted them like seeds. We sprouted up, Earth’s sons, Thebans who don’t scrape or bow To murderers like you. These staffs we lean on Make good clubs. You control the young men, But watch out! You’re a stranger here— I’ll hand you your head. You can’t push us around. I’ve worked myself to the bone. But all I’ve worked for Won’t go to you—you, an outsider! Go back where You came from. Do your dirty work there. As long as I’m alive, you won’t harm a hair On these boys’ heads. Herakles left his sons— But he hasn’t gone so far under the earth That we forget what we owe him. He saved Our country. You destroyed it. Took over. Cheated him of the honor that he’s due. Call me an agitator, but friendship commands That I help Herakles—now, when he needs it most. If only my right hand was strong enough To grip my spear again. But I’m spent. 38

290

300

HERAKLES

[270–96]

If I were younger, you wouldn’t get away With calling me slave! Instead of your filthy pleasures, We’d live honorably here in Thebes. But our city was torn apart by civil war. Thebes went mad and took bad counsel. Otherwise, you’d never have come to power.

megara Thank you for standing up for us. Old friends Are the truest friends. But be careful your anger Doesn’t put you in danger, too. Amphitryon, For what it’s worth, hear me out. I love these boys— How could I not? My labors gave them breath And nurture. I’m afraid of dying. Of death. But it’s hopeless to fight against our fate. We have to face the fact: We die. But to be burned Alive—the butt of our enemy’s jokes: To me, that’s worse than death. We have a code to live up to, our family honor Must be preserved. You made your name As a great soldier. It’s unthinkable For you to die a coward’s death. And no one Needs to remind me that these boys’ father Wouldn’t lift a finger to save his sons If it meant disgracing our family name. I’m like him in that: If your heart is good And true, when you see your sons disgraced, It breaks you. So think about it— What are you pinning your hopes on? Do you really believe that your son will return From the earth’s depths? Who, of all the dead, 39

310

320

330

HERAKLES

[297–320]

Has ever come home from Hades? Or do you imagine all our talk will persuade Lykos to feel sorry for us? Maybe If your enemy’s a man of conscience And honor, you can touch his heart And he’ll show you mercy. But this man Is a savage. It even occurred to me, What if we begged to have these children Sent into exile? But isn’t that worse? To save their lives, only to make them Beggars? And when it comes to exiles, You know the old saying: ‘‘Your host’s smile Turns to a frown in a single day.’’ We have to face up to death—it’s coming anyway. Old friend, I challenge you: Face it with us. I know how brave you are at heart. When the gods trap you in their schemes, To fight against them shows spirit— But it’s hopeless. Fate itself nets us in. What must happen happens. We can’t escape.

340

350

chorus If only I had my old fighting strength back, I’d shove his threats back down his throat. But I’m old. Done in. Good for nothing. Amphitryon, It’s up to you to fight clear of this trap. amphitryon I’m no coward. It’s not longing for life That keeps me from facing death. But these boys— They’re the sons of my son. I want To save them. But what I want can’t be. Go ahead. Cut my throat. Stab me. 40

360

HERAKLES

[321–41]

Or throw me off a cliff. But do us one favor: Murder us before you murder these boys. Spare us the sight of that— their last breath Gasping, ‘‘Mama!’’ ‘‘Grandpa!’’ For the rest, Since you’re so eager, go ahead. No one Gets off death. We have to die. megara Grant me a last wish, too—I’m begging you. One favor from you will oblige us both. Let me dress up my children for their deaths. Unlock the door to our house. Give these boys At least this much of their inheritance.

370

lykos I can give that much. Men, unlock the doors. Go on. Take what you need. I don’t begrudge you Funeral robes. And when you’re finished dressing, I’ll be back— and give you away to the world below. Exit lykos, with followers. megara Boys, let’s go in. Follow your poor mother Into your father’s house. Everything He had has been taken away from him. But no one can take away from us his name. Exit megara and children into herakles’ house. amphitryon So, Zeus. You slip into my bed, you take What you want— and you pay me back like this? You were one of us . . . I thought of you as my friend— You and I the father of Herakles! But Zeus, Now, all that means nothing. And I’m nothing 41

380

HERAKLES

[342–58]

But a weak old man. But I’m better than you— Who call yourself a god. I have my principles, I haven’t betrayed the sons of Herakles. But you— you’ve Abandoned us, your own people. You don’t Lift a hand to help. Either you’re blind 390 To the troubles of human beings. Or you’re heart’s hard. Without justice. Exit amphitryon into house. chorus When victory’s all we know, Our songs are full of joy. But then they turn to grief: We know hatred. Strife. Death. And both our joy and grief Blend in Apollo’s notes So pure they break our hearts . . . With his golden pick he plucks Taut strings that quaver Deep in the inner ear Hearing beneath that sound The deads’ toneless music Welling from underground. I’ve learned to sing in praise Of my friend lost In darkness. My song A wreath for his labors— For everything he suffered. A life lived in all our faculties Is happiness; and the glory Of the dead. Like Herakles, whether We’re children of gods or men, Each moment takes our measure: We live the best way we can.

42

400

410

HERAKLES

First, he killed the lion prowling In Zeus’ wood. He cloaked Himself in its tough hide, Used its jaws as a hood. Golden hair, tawny mane, Who could tell beast from man? Next he drew his bow, Arrow after arrow killing A centaur in its mountain pasture. They trampled down furrows Until crops wouldn’t grow, Tore up pines and brandished Them like spears, or set The pitch on fire: Whole towns Torched, driven into hiding! Peneios, the river god, who Peered up from his swirling waters, Mount Pelion’s valleys And Homole’s grassy slopes Witnessed the devastation: Backs and rumps of horses, Sharp hooves, swift runners, Appetites of wild creatures— Faces just like ours. Look: They were monsters, Half animal, half human, Rampaging over Thessaly, instinct At war with reason. So Herakles took aim: His bow shot straight. He had to hunt down The stag with golden horns And dappled hide that drove The farmers from their fields And battered the countryside. Killer on impulse. Beast mind. High on the mountain shrine Its blood stained his hand

43

[359–78]

420

430

440

450

HERAKLES

[379–93]

When he slit its throat In sacrifice to Artemis, cruel Goddess of the hunt. Unbridled in the barn Diomede’s mares neighed for more Than oats. Their teeth snapped And tore, devouring Their master’s guests. Herakles had his work cut out To curb such appetites. To the bit and chariot He broke their spirits, Teeth champing iron Instead of human guts. Like a man obsessed He kept on going, under orders From Mycenae’s king Who set him labor After labor. So Herakles Pushed past all common Human limit, crossing Silver-flowing Hebros Whirlpooling toward the sea. He reached the tall Headland near a river Called Anauros where Springs from underground Lured travelers to rest: Pure water. Pure pleasure. But the place hid a monster: Kyknos, who loved slaughter, And beheaded his own guests. Herakles took aim: The springs boiled and gushed. Then he traveled to where The horses of the Sun, Panting, lathered, end Their daylong run,

44

460

470

480

490

HERAKLES

Sky turning bloody when Light sinks in the West. There in the garden Of Singing Maidens Pure as their song, He plucked the golden apples From the flashing bough. But the apples cost blood. He had to shoot the coiling Dragon whose scales, flaming red, Smouldered round the tree.

[394–415]

500

In hidden coves and cays He hunted pirates down And made the open sea safe For sailors at their oars. He came to Atlas’ mansion, And stretching out his arms, balanced Heaven on his back: His strength Was more than human to bear Up under the weight Of the gods’ immaculate Halls glittering with starlight. He recruited troops From every town in Greece And crossed the black sea’s Storming waves, mind fraught As the great rivers that Pour into a delta marsh Teeming with birds and fish. But the abundance in his head Was his own violence Trained on the Amazons Fierce as the god of war, Ready to fight fire with fire. Their cavalry went down Before Herakles’ club, blood Staining their shining robes.

45

510

520

530

HERAKLES

[416–33]

The Greeks stripped their corpses Knocked sprawling in the dirt— And back in Mycenae, As if it were the pelt Of a wild beast, Herakles Hung up for all to see The dead queen’s golden belt. He faced down Lerna’s hydra Barking and howling, Its murderous teeth snapping In all its thousand heads That he chopped off and seared To ash. And on the tips Of his arrows he smeared Her slobber so lethal He brought down Geryon, The triple-bodied herdsman, With a single shaft. He ran whatever course Fate set him—and he won. But the crown of all his labors Is common to everyone: The end of endeavor, Of all we hold most dear. He sailed into the harbor Of sighs and tears, of airless Hades where our sails go slack. Hero, slave, everyone But the gods disembark. And no one crosses back. His house is ruined. He’s been abandoned By his friends. His children Are queued up for Charon’s boat That ferries us one way. Don’t talk to me of gods; Or Justice; Wrong or Right.

46

540

550

560

HERAKLES

[424–58]

Only your strong hands, Herakles, can set Things straight. You alone Can rescue them. But you’re gone. When I was young and strong I knew what a spear was for! All of us when we were young And fighting in the ranks Would have stood by these children. But I’m useless. Broken down. The old days’ glory is done— And I’m done with them. Only those who are young And strong can be truly happy.

570

580

Enter megara, amphitryon, and the three boys. There they are, dressed in funeral robes, The sons of Herakles who once dazzled The whole world with his strength. See his wife Dragging her boys by the hand, Balking like colts against their traces. And here comes Herakles’ poor Father, as broken down as we are. It’s true that as we get older Our spirits get heavier from the weight Of all we suffer: My eyes are blurry. I can’t keep blinking these tears away.

590

megara Where’s the priest and his knife? We’re ready To be butchered—though the butcher calls it sacrifice. Here the victims are—now lead us off to Hades. We make a mismatched team under one yoke: Old and young, children and their mother— All pulling together toward our deaths. I gave you boys life, nursed you, reared you. And for what? So that those who hate us 47

600

HERAKLES

[459–82]

Can humiliate us for their pleasure Before they cut us down? Now I’m looking At your faces for the last time . . . I had high hopes For you— but those are done. Hopes I built On your father’s promises. Your father. Who’s now dead . . . He planned to give you Argos and all her rich farmland. Eurystheus’ palace And his power were to be yours. Remember How your father draped the lion skin He wore as armor over your shoulders? And you were to rule Thebes and all her chariots— The plains round the city that my father Passed on to me were your inheritance: You behaved Like your father’s son when you asked for Thebes The way other children ask for toys: And he gave it to you. Remember the huge Carved club he used to carry? He’d put it In your right hand and pretend that it was yours. And he promised you Oechalia That he took with his well-aimed arrows. Your father’s care for you boys was as great As his strength: For three sons, he intended To raise up three kingdoms. And I was to choose For each of you a wife from Athens, Thebes, or Sparta— To moor you the way a ship’s stern hawsers do So you’d ride out all storms safe and happy. But the winds have shifted round on us: Fortune’s given you your own deaths for brides. And my tears have become the lustral water For the ritual bath . . .

48

610

620

630

HERAKLES

[483–505]

more pain to bear. Your old grandfather gives the marriage feast For Hades—which makes death your bitter in-law. If I hug you first, which should I hug last? Do I kiss this one? Or hold you close? You’ve seen how a bee goes flower to flower And gathers nectar for the hive— if only I could gather All the sorrow that we suffer And condense it into a single drop That I could weep for us all . . . Herakles, Love, if any words from here Ever make their way below, listen to me now: Your father and your boys are about to die— And I’m to die, too. All Greece once called me Blessed because of you. So help us. Come. Even if it’s just your shadow. Or come As a dream. That’s all you need to do— These men are such cowards—to stop them From slaughtering your sons. amphitryon

My girl, keep praying To the gods below while I raise up my hands To the sky: Zeus, help these children now! If you intend to help at all. One moment more— And it will be over. But I’m wasting my breath. I’ve prayed and prayed— and nothing happens. We can’t avoid death. We have to die. And as for life, old friends, what does it amount to? The best we can hope for is to fend off pain Between dawn and dark.

49

640

650

HERAKLES

[506–24]

Time could care less About our hopes. It rushes off on its Own business—and it’s gone. Just look at me, The prime example: Who didn’t sing My praises or call me famous or applaud me For accomplishing great things? Wealth. Reputation— The wind blows them away just like a feather: All you’ve worked for is wrecked in a single day. The wind keeps shifting. Nobody’s secure . . . We were all boys together, grew up with one another. So take a long, last look at your old friend.

660

herakles appears in the wings. megara It can’t be. Who could believe it? Father, Is that Herakles? My own dear husband?

670

amphitryon My girl, I can’t say. I’m speechless. megara It is Herakles. They told us he’d gone down Forever under the earth— unless he’s come back As a dream flickering in the sun. But I’m not dreaming— or seeing things My aching mind makes more real than day: It’s Herakles, your son! Boys, run to him! Hold tight to his coat. Never let him loose! Hurry now! He’s come to rescue us: He’ll be more help to us than Zeus! herakles moves on stage. herakles

There it is— My own roof—and the gate before my house! Just sunlight on my face and hands Gives me such pleasure—

50

680

HERAKLES

[525–41]

I made it back home. Alive. Bless these old walls! There my boys are— Before the gate. What? What’s all this? They look to be dressed—for their own funerals. Heads crowned with wreaths. And my wife— Out of doors?—surrounded by that crowd of men! And there’s my father— in tears! Tell me what’s happened here? What’s come over this house?

690

My love, my husband . . .

megara

amphitryon My boy, welcome as sunlight to these old eyes! megara You’re alive—and now you’ve come—in time to rescue us! herakles Will someone tell me what’s happened here? Father? What is all this? Murder, that’s what.

megara They want to murder us!

Forgive me, old man, For speaking out before you. A woman Feels her troubles more readily than a man. They were about to kill my boys. And me. herakles Great God Apollo! What will you tell me next? megara My brothers and my old father—they’re all dead! herakles How? What happened? Or was it someone’s spear? megara Lykos killed them. He’s the power now in Thebes.

51

700

HERAKLES

[542–59]

herakles Was it a fair fight, spear against spear? Or the waste of civil war? megara Civil war. He lords it over us, the upstart, and our seven gates. herakles But what frightened you and the old man so? megara He planned to murder us: Me, your father, and your boys. herakles Kill them? What made him fear my orphaned sons? megara That one day they’d revenge my father’s death. herakles Why are my children dressed up like the dead?

710

megara We put on funeral robes . . . to get ready for our own deaths. herakles He was about to murder you? That breaks me! megara Our friends abandoned us. We were told that you were dead. herakles But why did you lose heart that I’d come back? megara Eurystheus’ heralds kept telling us you were dead. herakles Why did you leave our home? Locked out of our own gates? megara He forced us. Dragged your father out of his bed. herakles No respect for age? Where’s his sense of shame? megara Lykos feel shame? The only goddess he knows is force. herakles My friends while I was gone—were they so scarce? megara Friends? If your luck goes bad, you have no friends. 52

720

HERAKLES

[560–83]

herakles All I suffered in the Minyan wars, they shrug that off? megara I’ll say it again: bad fortune has no friends. herakles Those wreaths of death— tear them off your heads! Look up into the sunlight—look! After death’s Darkness, feel how the sun comes back to warm us! My work’s cut out. Now let me go about it. With this hand I’ll tear down around his ears The pillars of this upstart tyrant’s house. Then chop off His perverted head and throw it to the dogs 730 To gnaw. This victorious club Will make the rounds of Thebes and pay its respects To the ones who turned traitors— despite all I suffered For them! Or I’ll fill the air with arrows Raining like a cloudburst round their heads Until Ismenos overflows with corpses And Dirke´’s pure waters boil with blood. A man’s first obligation is to defend His wife and children, his old father. My labors and all I suffered— the madness of it! I let down those whom I ought to die for— After all, they were about to die for me. Killing lions and hydras for Eurystheus And not toiling for my own sons’ threatened Lives— that’s honor and glory for you! Had that been the outcome of all my labors, Who now would call me Herakles the Conqueror? chorus It’s only right that a man should stand up for his sons,

53

740

HERAKLES

[584–611]

His old father, and his wife who’s his faithful mate. amphitryon Son, it’s always been your way to love your friends And hate your enemies. But don’t move too fast.

750

herakles Am I rushing into something, Father? amphitryon Lykos and his gang—a bunch of lazy, Big-spending climbers, who went bankrupt While trying to pass themselves off as wealthy— Raised the riots that brought Thebes down: They wanted to rob their neighbors And fill their pockets. You were seen Entering the city, so don’t be caught offguard: Your enemies will come swarming soon enough.

760

herakles I could care less if the whole city saw me! But a bird settled on an ill-omened perch— I knew right then there was trouble, So I slipped undetected into Thebes. amphitryon Well done. Now go in and greet your household gods— Let your fathers’ house welcome you face to face. Soon Lykos will arrive to haul us off To slaughter—your wife, your sons, and me. If you wait inside, he’ll fall into your hands— And no risks. Don’t stir up things in Thebes Until you set things straight in your own house. herakles I’ll do as you say—I’ll go inside. Just feel that warmth. After all I went through In the earth’s sunless depths, I won’t forget To thank the gods who protect our home. amphitryon Son, I’m eager to hear—did you really go down to Hades? herakles Yes: I dragged up to the light his three-headed watchdog.

54

770

HERAKLES

[612–33]

amphitryon Did you fight? Or was he a gift from the goddess? herakles I had to fight. The Mysteries I witnessed gave me strength. amphitryon Where’s the monster now? At Eurystheus’ house?

780

herakles At Hermione. In the earth goddess’s sacred grove. amphitryon Does Eurystheus know you’ve returned from the earth’s depths? herakles No. I came here first to see how things stood. amphitryon What kept you such a long time underground? herakles I stayed to rescue Theseus from Hades. amphitryon Where’s he now? Returned to his homeland? herakles In Athens, glad to have escaped the underworld. Boys, let’s go in. Go with your father Into our house. You’re happier, aren’t you, Going in than when you were coming out. Don’t be frightened any longer. Dry your tears. And you, my wife, take heart—stop trembling. You can stop clutching my coat— I don’t have wings; I’m not going to run from those I love. Well! They won’t let me loose— they cling To my coat tighter. How close you came To the razor’s edge. Here, take my hands— I’ll be the ship that tows the smaller boats Into harbor. How could I not want To take care of these boys? Human beings

55

790

800

HERAKLES

[634–58]

Are alike in this: Whether we’re powerful Or not, whether our luck is good or bad, We love our children— some of us are rich, Some poor— but all of us love our children. Exit herakles, amphitryon, megara, and the boys. chorus Old age weighs me Down worse than Etna’s Stones. It’s drawn like a curtain Between me and the sun. Gold bars that fill palaces, An Eastern king’s wealth, Won’t buy me back my youth. What I long for most— To come again full flower In body, heart and soul— All the spoils of power And privilege can’t restore. This side of the grave, Whether we lock our gate Or sleep out in the street, Youth is what we crave. I hate old age, its feet That stink of death creeping Closer every hour. Whirl it off like trash Spinning in the storm. Let the waves capsize it, Drown it in the deep. Banish it from the city. Keep it far from my home. The gods’ ways aren’t our ways: Who knows what they think Of what we think is wise? But if they thought as We do, they’d grant a second 56

810

820

830

HERAKLES

Youth to a life of virtue. Having run their race To death, the good would catch Their breath and double Back to sunlight while The wicked and mean Live out their single span. We could tell good from bad As clearly as when a cloud Shifts to reveal the stars To sharp-eyed sailors. But the gods’ ways aren’t ours: Between good and bad action, They don’t draw a clear line. And time, as the years roll on, Does not lay things bare Or blind us with the truth. A bad man rakes it in While a good man stays poor. Age walks on their faces. Wealth outlives them both. Song is what I live for. Song that joins together The Graces and the Muses, Each interwoven gesture The currents of a river. To me, music is water I couldn’t live without. Even though I’m old And my muse is Memory, What life is left to me I’ll use to sing her praise— She taught me to weave A song for Herakles To crown his victor’s brow. As long as Bakkhos keeps on Splashing out wine And my hands stay strong To pluck the lyre’s strings

57

[659–83]

840

850

860

870

HERAKLES

[684–703]

Or play the shrilling pipe, I’ll keep on with my song: The Muses who set me dancing Still guide my crippled feet. The girls of Delos sing Their victory song At the temple gate Of bright-voiced Apollo, Son of Leto. They dance in a circle, White feet so beautiful That an old graybeard like me Feels rising in his throat, Here before your gate, A song the dying swan Might sing—but still a song Of praise for the son Of Zeus: Though his birth Was divine, his deeds Surpass that high beginning: As he strove to rid the earth Of monsters, wild beasts, Of shapes that glide and prowl When the house goes still, Through fear and struggle He became our double— His labors made him Human, open to it all; But he also had to kill, Rage like a wild animal. That we mortals have the chance To lead a tranquil life We owe to his violence. Enter lykos, with followers. Reenter amphitryon. lykos So Amphitryon—you aren’t a moment Too soon. You took your own sweet time In getting dressed for death. Go on: 58

880

890

900

HERAKLES

[704–25]

Tell the wife and sons of Herakles To come here, too—and without any fuss— That’s the deal we struck when you agreed to die.

910

amphitryon You drive me hard in my misery. My son is dead—isn’t that grief enough? You’re the power here; we all bow to you. Why press us so hard? You command us To die: Now. And so we will die: What you order us to do, we must obey. lykos Where’s Megara—and those cubs of Alkmene’s dead son? amphitryon As near as I can make out—I suppose—

920

lykos What do you mean, you ‘‘suppose’’? Tell me what you know. amphitryon She’s kneeling before the hearth-goddess’s altar to pray— lykos For what? Praying won’t save her life . . . amphitryon A hopeless prayer. For her dead husband to return. lykos He’s not here now. And he’ll never come. amphitryon Never . . . unless some god raises him from the dead. lykos Go inside the house and bring her out. amphitryon That would make me an accomplice to her murder. lykos Well, well . . . such scruples! But no fears hold me back From dragging out this mother and her sons. Guards, follow me in. The pleasure Of ending this ‘‘labor’’ will be all mine. Exit lykos and followers. 59

930

HERAKLES

[726–58]

amphitryon Well, go ahead—when fate commands, you, too, obey. Someone else will bring your labor to an end. What you did was evil—expect evil in return. Justice, my friends, this is justice— a net thrown Over his head, swords hidden in the mesh . . . There he goes, the coward— itching to murder us While he’s the one being led to slaughter. I’ll go in and watch him bleed. Nothing could be sweeter. He’ll pay the just price—blood for blood.

940

Exit amphitryon. chorus The gods demand reprisal: Evil Turns back on the man who commits evil. The river of Lykos’ life flows backwards To death. You’ll pay with your own blood For all the blood you shed. For lording it Over your betters, your time comes to suffer. Each step brings you closer to the fate You planned for others. I’d lost all hope That he’d return—my eyes smart with tears, I’m so glad to see our king. Come on, old friends, Let’s look inside the house— I want to see If it all happens the way we’d hoped. lykos (from inside Herakles’ house) Help! Help! chorus From inside the house the first note sounds sweet. Another note, another—and the tune’s soon over.

60

950

HERAKLES

[754–73]

lykos (as before) Country of Kadmos! They’ve laid an ambush! They’re murdering me! chorus

Yes, blood for blood, Murder for murder. For what you owe, You’re paying the full price. Who was the liar Who claimed the gods have no power? It had to be a human being. Only flesh and blood Could spread such a senseless story. A lawless man. A scoffer. Old friends, Our enemy—and all his evil—is wiped away. The house has gone silent. Joy makes me want to dance. Our friends won out! Just as I’d hoped! After grief and pain, when Good fortune starts to shine, Every rut in every street Brims over with light. The dancers’ flashing feet Make us join their dancing And tears that flowed down Inspire in us new songs. Take to the streets, celebrate This change of fortune! Dancing, singing, feasting— The whole town seems divine! The upstart eats dirt— And power flashes From the brow Of our rightful king Who set sail over Acheron. I’d given up all hope That he’d return From death’s chill harbor. But hope reversed despair. The gods watch over

61

960

970

980

HERAKLES

The races that we run, The unjust and the just In breakneck competition— Gold and Good Fortune, Power and Lawlessness Are the horses we lash Into a lather to pull Our chariot faster Than Law gaining on us hard, Coming up on the outside. Yoked to his ambitions, What driver looks ahead To the homeward stretch? Whipped on by his own will, He hurtles forward In the black chariot Of worldly success: Spoke and axle snap— He’s thrown head over heels Into drifting dust. River Ismenos, put on Your whirlpooling crowns! All the gleaming streets Flowing out like rivers To our city’s seven gates Join in the dancing Of Dirke´’s rippling flow And of Asopos’ daughters Whose heads toss like waves Above their father’s waters Running cool, bright fingers Through their streaming hair. Join in the victory song Of our own Herakles! Rocky woods of Delphi, Muses on Mount Helikon, Make your voices echo off These walls of stone Where our ancestors sown

62

[774–94]

990

1000

1010

1020

HERAKLES

[795–819]

From dragon teeth sprang up Armored in bronze and hand on Our country to their children’s Children whose eyes burn With the saving light of dawn. Think of the bed that a god And a human being shared, The divine and mortal Both longing to embrace The same bride, Alkmene, Granddaughter of Perseus. I doubted at first that Zeus Took part—but the years Don’t lie: They shine down, Zeus, on Herakles your son, And reveal his strength To be superhuman. In Pluto’s prison He broke the chains of death And came back to the sun From the depths underground. Power that settles On the chosen man Proves that Herakles Is worthier than That low-class climber. Put a sword in his hand, Make him stand and fight— And you’ll find out fast Whether the gods still favor A cause they think is just.

1030

1040

1050

iris and madness appear above the roof. Up there! Look! Do you feel the same stroke Of terror? Old friends—are those phantoms Hovering above the house? Let’s get clear of this! 63

1060

HERAKLES

[820–42]

Come on, old bones! Move it! On the double! Healing Apollo, don’t let them near us! Keep them off! iris Don’t be spooked by us, old men. This is Lyssa— Her nickname’s Madness—the child of Night. And I—I am Iris. I serve the gods. We don’t mean to hurt you or the city. Just one man’s house is lined up in our sights: The one known as the son of Zeus . . . and Alkmene. As long as his labors made his life bitter, Necessity shielded him; and Zeus himself Held Hera and me off. But he’s carried out Eurystheus’ orders, so Hera’s dreamed up Another labor; and I’m in on it: To stain Herakles’ hands with the blood of his own kin And weigh him down under the guilt of murdering His sons. Virgin daughter of black-shrouded Night, Madness, you have no children: Don’t let your heart Go out to him. Wind it up tighter And tighter in your breast until it lets loose Such fits of madness the soles of his feet Burn and tingle to leap after his sons! Let the sails of murder swell so full He jams the tiller with his bloody hands And ferries his own children over Acheron— His children, the crown of all his labors. It’s time he learnt the depths of Hera’s rage. And my rage, too. We gods are done for, And human beings might as well take over If he gets off without paying our price. madness The gods wince at the sight of me

64

1070

1080

1090

HERAKLES

[843–66]

For the office I perform— but I’m noble at heart: My mother is Night, my father Heaven. I take no pleasure in afflicting human beings I count as friends. And I don’t want to see You and Hera stumble—so hear me out: Herakles’ fame reaches from here to the gods —It’s his house you’re sending me against. He brought the wild powers of the earth to heel And leveled the waves of the storming sea. Single-handedly, he raised up the honors of the gods That the arrogance of human beings knocked aside. Take my advice and give up this plan: It’s monstrous!

1100

iris Spare us. Hera’s and my schemes don’t need your counsel. madness I’m trying to set you on the straight road: You’ve gone astray. iris The wife of Zeus didn’t send you to show how temperate you are. madness As the Sun is my witness, I’m doing what I don’t wish to do. But if that’s how it has to be, if necessity binds me To do what you and Hera ask, I’ll plunge ahead The way a pack of hunting dogs bark and snap To be unleashed: When I enter Herakles’ heart 1110 And make it beat louder and louder in his ears, Breakers pounding on a reef, or the ground Shaking and cracking wide, or lightning slashing Through gasping clouds, won’t match my rage: I’ll smash through his roof and rampage room to room, Slaughtering his sons. And the murderer won’t know That his hands are stained by the blood of children He bred from his own flesh—until in his breast the storm

65

HERAKLES

[867–83]

Of my frenzy blows itself out. Look there: Like a runner jumping The starting line, he’s off— then stops, starts, head 1120 Tossing, pupils bulging while the whites of his eyes Roll up; his breath pants hard, his head lowers Like a bull about to charge: Hear his snorts And bellows, as if he called to the demons Howling among screeching spirits of the dead— I’ll make you dance even faster to my notes Of terror! Run along now, Iris. Your path of honor Takes you soaring back to Olympos. My job Is to slip unseen into Herakles’ house. Exit iris and madness. chorus City of Thebes, grieve: Can’t you hear those notes Piercing as arrows, Venomous as snakes? Such music makes me weep For the son of Zeus, Greece’s Best defender, the flower Of all manhood cut down By the ache in his mind. Lost to himself, we lose Him, too, his spirit rent By those crazing notes. Or else he hears a chariot Gaining from behind: The daughter of Night Whips her horses on, Hair writhing and hissing Like a hundred snakes, Gorgon-gaze turning

66

1130

1140

HERAKLES

[884–93]

Human beings to stone. The god blinks— and the wind Of fortune swings around. The god blinks— and a man Massacres his sons.

1150

amphitryon (within the house) Oh, unbearable! chorus Zeus, your son Is being trampled down As though he weren’t your child. And Herakles’ sons, too, Will be lost to him. Vengeance Slashes his mind to bits; Madness breathes in his face And makes him wild . . .

1160

amphitryon (within) Wretched house! chorus The dances are beginning— Listen—not the dances Of the god of wine Joyously brandishing His ivy-covered staff; But pulsing in the mind A silent drumming . . . amphitryon (within) The walls, the roof! chorus What is that throbbing? Not the pleasant ache Of grapes crushed to wine For the wine god’s oblations— But a pounding in the head That drives us to the edge . . .

67

1170

HERAKLES

[894–912]

amphitryon (within) Children! Stay away! Run! chorus The pipe keeps shrieking Notes of ruin. Driven Wild by the chase, he hunts You down. Madness dancing Drunken through the house Won’t dance for nothing . . .

1180

amphitryon (within) Stop! Don’t . . . such suffering! chorus Poor old man, your troubles Break my heart—grief won’t stop Howling! Weep for Herakles’ father And the wife and mother Who bore him sons for this! Look! A whirlwind shakes the house! The roof is caving in! amphitryon (within) Wise Athena, child of Zeus Who sprung full-blown from his head, Why are you doing this? You’ve smashed this man’s house The way you smashed the giant Who attacked Mount Olympos. You’ve sent a shockwave Shuddering from heaven down To Hades’ darkest pit!

1190

Enter messenger. messenger White-haired old men—. Why do you cry out

chorus Like that?

Inside the house . . . horrible.

messenger

No need

chorus For an oracle. I can guess . . .

68

HERAKLES

[913–31]

The boys—they’re dead.

messenger

1200

chorus Ahh . . . AHHHH . . . messenger Grieve for them. Believe me—there’s reason to grieve. chorus Murdered—by the hands of their own father! Could a man be that savage? messenger

I’m tongue-tied: The words won’t come— for what we’ve suffered here . . .

chorus Tell us however you can— about his boys— Cut down by his own hands . . . Come on, now. Speak. What happened when the gods smashed the house? And the poor madman’s sons— how did they die? messenger The victims . . . to be sacrificed . . . had been placed Before Zeus’ altar. Herakles had thrown The body of the king out of doors. The house was ready to be purified. There stood his boys—fine-looking youngsters— And Megara and the old man.

1210

The basket, With the sacrificial knife and barley, Had already been carried round the altar. We kept silent, observing the holy hush. And then . . . reaching out his hand . . . to take the torch And plunge it in the lustral water— 1220 Herakles stood frozen in his tracks: Dead silent. Suspended. Not there. His boys Kept staring at him—

69

HERAKLES

his face contorts: He looks . . . deranged. The whites of his eyeballs Rolling up. Veins gorged and bloodshot. Foaming at the mouth, slobber dripping down His beard. His laughter was twisted, Out of control: ‘‘So father,’’ he says, ‘‘why waste time With sacrifices and cleansing fire? I might as well kill Eurystheus first And save the trouble of doing it all again. When I cut off Eurystheus’ head And bring it back here, then I’ll wipe My hands of blood. Pour out that water! Throw down those baskets! My bow— Bring it here! And my club! I’m off to storm Mycenae. We need crowbars and pickaxes. Those Cyclopes Are good builders, every stone squared to The red chalk line and tamped down by masons’ hammers! But iron will pry up the cornerstones And smash those high-built walls to bits!’’ Then he was off, talking like he had a chariot: He jumps up into it, his fingers gripping air The way a charioteer grips the rail, His free hand lashing down to whip his horses on. We didn’t know whether to laugh . . . or shy away In fear. Finally, someone whispers: ‘‘Is the chief fooling around— or off his head?’’ He was pacing wildly back and forth All through the house— he rushes into the main hall And shouts, ‘‘I’m here in Nisos’ city!—’’ Right there

70

[932–54]

1230

1240

1250

HERAKLES

[955–80]

In his own home! He lies down on the floor, still dressed For sacrifice, and begins to make a feast. He was at that only a moment before He shouts, ‘‘I’m nearing the woods of Corinth!’’ Like an athlete at the games there, he stripped down And began a wrestling match— only he wrestles With the air or with clouds of dust as he Tumbles in the ring. Acting as his own herald, He quiets the crowd and calls out: 1260 ‘‘The winner of the crown—glorious Herakles!’’ Next, he was in Mycenae, cursing out Eurystheus; his father clings to his massive hand And says, ‘‘Son, what’s got into you? All this make-believe traveling . . . Surely, The blood of these upstarts hasn’t made you come Unglued?’’ By now the old man was trembling, But Herakles thought Eurystheus’ father Clung to his hand and begged his mercy. He shoves the old man off, strings his bow 1270 And nocks an arrow, ready to shoot down His three little boys: He thought they were Eurystheus’ sons! The children got so scared They rushed around this way and that, One ducking under his mother’s skirt, One crouching down in the shadow of a pillar, The last huddling like a bird beneath the altar. Their mother cries out: ‘‘You’re their father— Are you going to kill your own flesh and blood?’’ The old man and the whole crowd of us 1280 Started shouting— he chased his son around The pillar, spins the boy about, and shoots him

71

HERAKLES

[981–1003]

Through the heart. The arrow knocks him backwards Against the pillar where he gasps and collapses, Staining the stone with blood. Herakles Crows his own triumph: ‘‘One down, Eurystheus! Your fledgling here has paid the price for all your hate.’’ The next boy was cowering down by the altar’s Lowest step, hoping he was hidden. But when he sees his father swing round 1290 With his bow to take aim, he throws himself down Before his father’s knees. He lifts up his hand In appeal to his father’s beard and neck And cries out: ‘‘I’m your son, Father—yours— Not Eurystheus’! Herakles’ eyes Like a Gorgon’s are rolling in his head— And when he sees that the boy is too close For him to draw his fatal bow, he raises His club . . . and the way a blacksmith hammers Red-hot iron, he swings it down on his boy’s 1300 Blond head, smashing in the skull— his second son lay dead. So he moves on to slaughter his third victim. The mother was wild now with all she’d seen— She swooped down in front of him and snatched Her boy away into the house and locked the door. He starts prying at the door frame and digging up The posts— as if he really were tearing down The Cyclopes’ walls!— and with one arrow, shoots dead His wife and son. His father’s next—he charged The old man—but something— a shimmering 1310 That firmed up into Athena’s shape (At least that’s how it looked) shook her spear Above her helmet’s crest—

72

HERAKLES

[1004–33]

she hurled a boulder Against Herakles’ chest— it knocked him senseless And stopped his bloody rampaging. His back Struck a pillar that had snapped in two when the roof Collapsed— and he lies there now, sprawled against its base. We all crept out from where we were hiding And helped the old man tie him to the pillar With good strong rope, double and triple knots— 1320 So when he wakes, he won’t add more blood To blood already shed . . . A man who’s murdered His wife and sons— and there he sleeps! . . . Oblivious. Not knowing what he’s done. There’s nothing you’d call blessed about such sleep: No human being could be more miserable. Exit messenger. chorus The memory of bloodshed stains the mind. It’s like a film blurring everything we see. Greece can’t forget the blood Danaos’ daughters Shed at Argos: Infamous slaughter. But this latest labor of Zeus’ son surpasses That butchery . . . Or I could tell you How Prokne murdered her only son— Poets try to blot the blood with song But such violence stains even the Muses’ minds. Prokne had only the one boy— while you, Herakles, Driven on by Madness —father, destroyer— Murdered all three. I can’t find the tune To grieve for what you’ve done. The steps of the dance, The words of the song that would placate The dead, 73

1330

1340

HERAKLES

[1034–60]

and help us bear our grief, just won’t come . . . Look: They’ve thrown back the bolts. The great doors Are creaking open . . . The doors open and reveal the bodies of megara and the children, with amphitryon mourning them; herakles, asleep, is tied to a broken pillar. And there . . . are the children. Only look at them! They lie at their father’s feet; their father— Asleep . . . resting from the labor of slaughtering His sons: A terrible sleep so heavy headed He can’t feel the rope’s knots tying down his body To the broken pillar of his home. And here comes the old man—each step heavier, More bitter than the last . . . his soft moaning Like a bird mourning her unfledged young.

1350

amphitryon Old men, let him sleep. Keep still. Give him This moment of forgetfulness before He wakes to what he’s done. Old friend,

chorus I can’t keep back my tears:

For you. The children. And for him—who wore the victor’s crown. amphitryon Move back. Don’t cry out! Make no noise That will rouse him from his sleep so deep and calm. chorus It’s terrible . . . so much blood . . . Keep quiet!

amphitryon You’ll get us all killed!

. . . rises to engulf him.

chorus

74

1360

HERAKLES

[1061–75]

amphitryon Can’t you grieve in silence, old friends? If he wakes, He’ll break free of these ropes and go rampaging again. He’ll destroy us all: The city. His father. His own home. I can’t . . . I can’t keep from crying.

chorus

amphitryon Quiet! I need to lean down to hear his breathing. chorus Is he sleeping? amphitryon

He’s asleep, all right. If you can call this heavy-bodied slackness Sleep . . . for a man who’s killed his wife and children With his bowstring’s deadly hum. Go on, then—grieve.

chorus amphitryon I’m grieving with you.

Grieve for these dead boys.

chorus

1370

amphitryon This tears my heart out. Grieve for your stricken son.

chorus amphitryon Ahh . . . chorus Old friend. amphitryon

Hush. Don’t make a sound. He’s stirring now, He’s turning. There— he’s awake! I’d better hide Inside the house. Don’t be afraid. Darkness still weighs

chorus His eyelids down. amphitryon

Be careful there! Watch out! After all this—it’s not dying I’m afraid of.

75

HERAKLES

[1076–96]

To lose my light would ease this misery. But if he wakes and murders me— he’ll add The guilt of his father’s blood to the blood He already owes the Furies. chorus

amphitryon

1380

That day you took Vengeance on the Taphians for the blood Of your wife’s kinsmen, storming their fortress Surrounded by the sea— that would have been A glorious day for you to die. Run, old men! Get clear of this house! Run as far as you can From his rage! There—he’s awake! Soon, he’ll be drunk On killing again, murder on top of murder: He’s set to go rampaging through the city!

1390

chorus Zeus, why should you hate Herakles so fiercely When he’s your own son? He’ll drown in such rough seas Of suffering and pain. herakles wakes. herakles

Huhhhh . . . I’m still alive. I’m seeing—what I should see. Clear sky. The ground. These shafts of sun. Like arrows. My head’s aswim . . . and my mind’s All choppy like the sea after a storm. My breath swells high and hard into my aching lungs. Not flowing easy, the way it should. What? Moored like a ship? Ropes around my chest and arms— me?— Herakles? Anchored fast to this cracked stonework—

76

1400

HERAKLES

[1097–1116]

And next to me: Bodies. All dead. There’s my bow . . . and arrows Scattered on the ground . . . which have always stood by me . . . The way a fellow soldier would . . . Weapons that have Protected me the way I’ve protected them. Have I gone back down to the underworld? Run that race for Eurystheus over again? But I don’t see Sisyphus hunched at his boulder. Or the god of death. Or the scepter of Demeter’s child . . . Persephone . . . the god’s wife. 1410 I’m out to sea with all this— I’m lying here, Helpless . . . at a loss to say where I am. Where could Herakles be helpless? Hey! Friends! Where are you? Is there anyone around Who can cure me of this murkiness in my brain? Everything’s a jumble. Nothing’s the way it should be. amphitryon This cuts me to the heart . . . Old friends, should I go to him? chorus You won’t go alone—I’ll stand by you in your trouble. herakles Father—why are you hiding your eyes? You’re crying! Don’t stand so far off—I’m your son, Father—yours.

1420

amphitryon Yes. No matter how desperate things are—you’re still my child. herakles What’s happened to me? Have I done something—to make you weep? amphitryon Even a god—if he cared enough to know—would grieve. herakles That terrible? But you still haven’t told me.

77

HERAKLES

[1117–34]

amphitryon There. It’s in front of you. If your mind’s clear enough to see. herakles Tell me! You act like things are changed—for the worst! amphitryon If your mind’s not drunk—on death—then I’ll tell you. herakles My mind? What’s the riddle? What are you hiding? amphitryon I’m still not sure—if your mind’s completely sound. herakles But I don’t remember—any uproar in my mind.

1430

amphitryon Old men, should I untie my son—or not? herakles Untie me. I won’t let this pass. Whoever shamed me . . . amphitryon (untying him) . . . What you’ve done is burden enough. The rest, let go. herakles So silence is all the answer that I’ll get? amphitryon Zeus! Do you see what misery Hera’s sent down on us from heaven? herakles Is it Hera’s spite, then, that struck me down? amphitryon Let the goddess alone. Bear up under your own bitter life. herakles My life—is ruined then. You’re about to tell me something terrible. amphitryon There. Look at them. The bodies—of children. herakles I can’t bear to think of what I’m seeing! amphitryon They weren’t enemies—these children—when war broke out against them. herakles War? Who did this? Who—destroyed them?

78

1440

HERAKLES

[1135–56]

amphitryon You. Your bow and arrows. And the god who lent a hand. herakles You’re saying I killed them? You—my own father— messenger of this horror? amphitryon You were—driven mad. To answer you this way destroys me. herakles And my wife—was I the one—responsible? amphitryon All of this . . . by one hand. Yours. herakles I can’t bear up under all this. I’m swallowed up by clouds of pain. amphitryon So now you know why I was weeping . . . herakles And I tore down my house in my madness?

1450

amphitryon I only know this: Everything you had is changed to grief. herakles Where did I go mad? Where did my soul betray me? amphitryon There. By the altar. As you purified your hands with fire. herakles For murdering my sons—my dear little boys—I should Take my own life. Be judge and jury For my children’s blood. Hurl myself from A sheer cliff. Stab a sword deep into my side. Or set myself on fire and burn away The shame that will make everyone turn Their backs on me. theseus approaches in the wings. There’s—Theseus! My kinsman and my friend: He’s in the way Of my plans to kill myself. He’ll see my shame: My children’s blood will defile the eyes Of my dearest friend. 79

1460

HERAKLES

[1157–83]

What can I do? Wings can’t fly high enough, there’s no place Deep enough for me to hide my shame. I can’t bear the sight of my own shadow! I’ll hide my head in darkness. Away from the sun. I won’t let my blood-guilt stain the innocent. herakles covers his head. theseus comes forward, with followers. theseus Sir, I’ve come from Athens. My troops are posted Down by the banks of the Asopos. I’m here To offer your son a crack allied force: A rumor reached us that Lykos had overthrown The government and was pressing you—hard. Old friend, whatever my hand or my spearmen Can do, we’re here to do it. Herakles Brought me back from the underworld— alive. For that, I owe him a helping hand. What’s this? Bodies—scattered about the ground. It looks like we’ve come too late—your troubles Have outmarched us. These boys—who killed them? That woman sprawled there—whose wife was she? Children don’t stand in the ranks of spearmen: This looks out of bounds—some new atrocity. amphitryon Lord of the hilltop olive tree— theseus

Are you all right? Your voice—sounds broken—with grief.

amphitryon We’ve been destroyed! Destroyed by the gods’ hands . . . theseus These boys you’re crying over—who are they? amphitryon Their father is my son: He bred them.

80

1470

1480

HERAKLES

[1184–1204]

He murdered them. Their blood is on his hands.

1490

theseus What you say—can’t be! I only wish it weren’t!

amphitryon

theseus It’s unspeakable—what you just told me! amphitryon Our whole lives are swept away. Like trash. theseus What happened? How did he do—what he did? amphitryon Madness like a wave shipwrecked his mind . . . With arrows dipped in the venom of hydra’s blood. theseus Hera’s hand is behind all this. But who is it Lying there beside the bodies? amphitryon

theseus

My son— My son who performed so many labors. Who stood shoulder to shoulder with the gods And bloodied his spear against the giants On the Plains of Phlegra . . .

1500

Was any human being Ever cursed with a fate worse than this?

amphitryon There’s nobody alive who’s faced Greater trials or suffered worse torments. theseus Why is he hiding his head under his cloak? amphitryon Shame to meet your eye. Shame before his kin and friends. Shame at the blood of his butchered sons. theseus I’ll take my share in his pain. Someone uncover him. amphitryon Child! Uncover your face, hold up your head To the sun: Against your grief, 81

1510

HERAKLES

[1205–29]

friendship Like a wrestler throws its weight. Son, my old eyes Can’t keep from tears—I’m begging you By your beard, your knees, your hand: Don’t let this rage Run away with you—don’t play the lion Hungry for your own blood. This race to death Only swells the flood: There’s been enough grief and pain. theseus You—huddled there—you think you’re destroyed— But look up: We’re your friends. Show us your face. There’s no cloud black enough that can hide this horror 1520 From the sun. Why are you waving me away— Warning me off from all this bloodshed? Are you afraid your words will strike me down With contagion? But I can bear it if your suffering Falls on me—you stood by me once: You led me From the underworld back into the sunlight. I hate fair-weather friends—whose gratitude Goes stale. Who’ll take their share of a friend’s good luck, But won’t sail with him when his luck turns sour. Stand up and face us. Uncover your head. 1530 The gods shake the dice— and we have to endure Whatever Heaven sends. To face up to fate Without flinching: That’s courage in a man. theseus uncovers herakles’ head. herakles Theseus—have you seen what I did to my own children?

82

HERAKLES

[1230–45]

theseus They told me. . . . The suffering you point to—I see it well enough. herakles So . . . why have you exposed my head to the sun? theseus You’re human . . . nothing human can stain what is divine. herakles Steer clear of me. Run from my infection! theseus No vengeful spirit of the dead can taint the love between friends. herakles I have no friends. . . . But I’ll never regret having been yours.

1540

theseus You helped me when I needed it—now I’m here to stand by you. herakles Stand by me? A man who butchered his own sons? theseus Now that trouble drags you down—yes, my tears are for you. herakles Can any man alive have done anything this terrible? theseus Misfortune like yours reaches from the earth . . . clear up to heaven. herakles So now you understand—I want to die. theseus Do you think the gods care one bit about your threats? herakles The gods follow their own stubborn course . . . as I will toward the gods. theseus Watch what you say—boasting will only get you in deeper! herakles My hold’s so filled with grief there’s no place to stow more.

83

1550

HERAKLES

[1246–66]

theseus What? If you’re thinking of . . . Where is your rage driving you? herakles To death. Back where I just came from—back to the underworld. theseus Now you’re talking like any ordinary man. herakles And you—who aren’t suffering—who are you to give advice? theseus Is this Herakles talking? Herakles, who’s endured so much? herakles But never this much! I’ve been pushed to the wall. theseus You!—who made the world safe. Great friend to all human beings! herakles What good do they do me? Hera’s the one who lords it over us. theseus Don’t be a fool. Greece won’t let you die such a pointless death. herakles Hear me out. What I have to say will show up Your advice. My life has been a botch, First to last: I take after my father— Who killed my mother’s father—and disregarding Such a blood-curse, married Alkmene who gave birth . . . To me. When the foundation’s laid so badly That the whole house tilts, the sons Inherit . . . grief. Zeus (whoever Zeus is!) Bred me as a target for Hera’s hate. Don’t be angry with me, old man: You’ve acted The way a true father would—more than this Zeus! When I was still nursing at my mother’s breast,

84

1560

1570

HERAKLES

[1267–85]

The wife of Zeus sent gorgon-eyed snakes into My cradle to poison me. When I grew up, My arms and legs were sheathed in muscle Tight-woven as a herdsman’s cloak— but why go over All those labors I endured? Lions; Many-headed monsters with three bodies; Giants; charging hordes of sharp-hooved centaurs— I wiped them out. Slaughtered them all. Even that bitch The hydra, two heads sprouting back for each one I lopped off—I killed her, too . . . my labors Stretched in front of me, horizonless As the night sea— until I reached the dark world Of the dead: At Eurystheus’ orders, I brought back from the gates of Hades The three-headed watchdog snapping and snarling . . . But my final labor— blood on blood— oh, I triumphed— Was to butcher my own boys!— and set The capstone on my house of slaughter. My fate’s come to this—the law says I have To leave: My own dear Thebes can’t stand The sight of me! If I stayed, what temple Would let me enter? When they saw me coming, Even my friends would cross the street. A life as cursed and bloody as mine —Just who will dare to speak to me? Well, you say, there’s Argos—isn’t Argos Home ground? But Argos exiled me.

85

1580

1590

HERAKLES

[1286–1305]

So how about some other city? But there, they’d all look at me slyly Out of the corners of their eyes— and they’d whisper, ‘‘Isn’t that him? the child-killer?’’ their tongues Like doors slammed shut against me . . . Gossiping the way people do behind locked doors: ‘‘So that’s Zeus’ bastard! the one who murdered His wife and sons! What’s he hanging around here for? Someone should tell him to clear off!’’ I counted myself Happy once—and to find out that my happiness Would come down to this: Blood. Death. I can’t bear to think of it. That man’s lucky Who’s known misery since his birth. His pain Drags after him, familiar as the sun. I’ve come to the end of everything— My fate’s unspeakable: The earth cries out Against me, forbidding me to touch the ground, Rivers and waves shrink away from me, Hissing, ‘‘Don’t come near!’’ I’m no better than Ixion, Chained forever to a wheel of fire. The best fate I can envision is that no Greek Who ever knew me when my luck was good Should ever have to see my face again: A life like that—what good is it. I hate it: Useless; bloody; cursed. And all so that Zeus’ wife— The glorious Hera—can take pleasure in her hate: Dancing on Olympos, her sandals ringing loud While her feet pound the gleaming floor. She’s got what she schemed for— she’s smashed

86

1600

1610

1620

HERAKLES

[1306–24]

To pieces, foundation and all, the pillar That held up Greece: Who would stoop so low as To pray to such a goddess? Driven by Petty jealousy—because this Zeus crept Into a mortal woman’s bed . . . And so She’s destroyed the one man all Greece looked on As a friend— though that man was blameless And did nothing to deserve such hate.

1630

chorus It’s Hera who’s behind all this. No other god But the wife of Zeus. You’re absolutely right in that. theseus Listen to me: What’s the point of killing yourself? Human beings have to suffer. So be patient. Bear up. Show your true strength. Fate lets no one off, Not even the gods— if the poets haven’t lied. Don’t the gods trample on lawful love when They sneak off on the sly? And haven’t they thrown Their own fathers into chains for the sake Of gaining power? But there they are, Still living on Olympos— managing just fine Despite their crimes. Do you think you’re better Than the gods—you, who are only human? If they endure their fates without crying out, Why shouldn’t you? So leave Thebes. Live up to the law—and come with me To Athena’s city. I’ll purify your hands 87

1640

1650

HERAKLES

[1325–47]

Of blood. And give you a home and a share Of everything that’s mine. All the gifts My people gave me for killing the Minotaur And saving the fourteen young people That beast would have devoured, I’ll give over to you. Throughout my country, fields and pastures Have been reserved for me—all these I’ll cede to you and you’ll hold them in your name As long as you live. And when you die And descend to Hades, Athens will raise up Stone monuments to your memory and make sacrifices In your honor. The honor that Athens wins In serving you will be our city’s crown of fame And make us renowned through all of Greece. I owe this to you: You saved my life. Now that you need a friend, I can pay back What I owe. But if a god makes up his mind To reach out to a mortal man, he needs No human friends: The god’s help is enough. herakles My troubles . . . what have they got to do with all your talk? I can’t believe the gods shrug off unlawful love affairs. Or wrap chains around each others’ hands— I’ve never believed that—and I can’t be persuaded. No god— if he is a god— lords it over another. A god is self-contained. Perfect. Needing nothing. He’s his own atmosphere. And his own world. All this talk: It’s only poets mouthing lies . . . I’ve thought it over—my head feels muffled 88

1660

1670

1680

HERAKLES

[1348–63]

In dark clouds— but to kill myself— To blink or flinch away from what fate deals: That’s the kind of man who’ll run from a spear Thrusting in his face. I won’t turn coward. I’ll endure what I have to—and wait for death. I’ll go with you to Athens; and I’ll owe A thousand thanks for all your gifts. Theseus— Look at the countless labors my fate ordained. I didn’t turn aside from one—even when My heart seemed to freeze inside me And the air and light felt immovable as stone. I never allowed myself a single tear. And now here I am— my cheeks— are stained. It’s come down to this: I’m chained to my fate. No matter how hard I fight, I can’t escape.

1690

Old man. You see what’s ahead of me: Exile— From Thebes. And you see that with these hands I butchered my own boys. Prepare them for the grave, Wrap their bodies— and bury them out of sight. 1700 The law won’t allow murderers like me To touch my own children. Your tears are all the honors That they’ll get. Lay them in their mother’s arms, Their heads on her breast. Mother and children Together to the last. I tore them from Each other’s arms . . . and killed them . . . not knowing 89

HERAKLES

[1364–79]

What I was doing: Ignorant. Raging. The ache In my mind blotting everything out. Bury them, old man. And once the ground Covers them, stay on here . . . painful though it will be. Force yourself to keep going. Don’t lose heart. I need your help to bear up under my own sorrows.

1710

Boys: Your father— who brought you into the world— Destroyed you: Herakles the Great. Heroic Herakles. All the labors I went through to make your lives Easier, and give you the best inheritance I could: Glory. Fame. Honor— You won’t need them now . . . not ever. And you, my unhappy wife—so patient Through all those years of lonely waiting, So loyal to me and to our bed— This is your reward . . . my wife; my boys . . .

1720

and me, The monster who did all this: My head’s splitting With it . . . I’ve been unyoked from my children And my wife. You can’t know the bitter solace Of kissing you like this— or the bitterness Of touching my bow and club, my weapons That I’ve loved and kept by me all these years: Now I can barely look at them. I can’t bear To keep them . . . or part with them either. Brushing against my ribs, they’ll whisper over and over, ‘‘With us, you killed your wife and sons: 90

1730

HERAKLES

[1380–99]

If you keep us, You keep your children’s murderers.’’ How can I sling my bow and club over my shoulder? What will I say to excuse it? But if I throw away My bow and club—these weapons that helped me Do what no one else in Greece has done— I’ll be throwing away my life. My enemies Will come looking for me, and I’ll die In utter shame. I can’t leave them behind, too— No matter how much they hurt me.

1740

Theseus— One last thing—help me take to Argos The savage watchdog of the dead. The pain Of my dead sons—I’m afraid of what might happen If I go alone. Country of Kadmos! And all you people of Thebes! Cut your hair In mourning. Grieve with me. See my children Into their graves. Raise your voices together, Mourn for me and my dead— for we’re all As good as dead . . . all of us struck down By a single blow from Hera’s hand. theseus Come on now, get up. My poor, dear friend—you’ve wept enough. herakles I can’t get up. My legs are like stone. theseus Necessity is a hammer that breaks even the strong. herakles I wish I were stone. Blank as stone. Past grief. theseus That’s enough. Take your friend’s hand. herakles Be careful. I’ll stain more than your clothes with blood.

91

1750

HERAKLES

[1400–1416]

theseus Go on. Stain them. My love for you will protect me from infection. herakles All my sons are dead. Now, you’ll be my son. theseus Put your arm around my neck. I’ll steady you. Come this way.

1760

herakles The yoke of friendship. But one of us in despair. Father—this man—choose a man like him for a friend. amphitryon The country that nursed him is blessed in its children. herakles Theseus! Help me turn around. I want to see my boys! theseus But you’re only wounding yourself more . . . herakles Oh god, I want to see them—and I want to hug my father. amphitryon Child, I’m here. With open arms. What you long for, I want, too. theseus Herakles! Have you forgotten who you are? All your labors? herakles My labors—they were nothing—next to this. theseus Herakles. This weakness will be scorned if someone sees you.

1770

herakles So my life makes you scornful . . . it didn’t use to. theseus Look, you’re asking for scorn. Where’s the old heroic Herakles? herakles When you were down in the underworld, how high was your courage? theseus I was completely crushed. Less than the meanest soul.

92

HERAKLES

[1417–27]

herakles Then how can you say that my suffering degrades me? theseus Go ahead. Lead on. Father—goodbye.

herakles

Goodbye, my child.

amphitryon herakles Bury my boys.

But who’s going to bury me?

amphitryon herakles I will.

You’re coming back? When?

amphitryon

After you’ve buried them.

herakles amphitryon How? herakles

[I’ll send word to Thebes and bring you back To Athens.] Now— take in these boys. The earth itself Can hardly bear up under their weight. Everything I thought was mine sank in storming seas My shameful deeds stirred up. Now, I’ll follow In Theseus’ wake, a little boat in tow. If in your heart you put wealth and power Over loving friendship, I tell you—you are mad. Exit theseus and herakles.

chorus Flickering, uncertain, now we must go, As if already we were ghosts weeping and sighing, Wandering the earth’s depths.

93

1780

HERAKLES

[1428]

Among all Our other losses, we’ve lost our dearest friend. Exit amphitryon and chorus.

94

NOTES

1–126 / 1–106

The prologue consists of a typical expository monologue to orient the audience; then there is an exchange between Amphitryon and Megara that establishes the psychological and ideological conflict of the play’s first part: between hope based on a view of life’s fundamental mutability and a noble determination to withstand one’s enemies without compromise in a situation that, seen realistically, appears to be utterly without remedy. Mixed in with the first view is faith in Herakles’ heroic capacities, even in the face of death, while the second is felt to be consonant with a Heraklean heroic ideal of dignified endurance—also in the face of death. The main genealogical line referred to here is (as relevant to the play): Zeus Perseus Alkaios

Elektryon

Amphitryon

Alkmene

Sthenelos Zeus

Eurystheus

Herakles

3 / 1 who shared his wife Zeus came to Alkmene’s bed while Amphitryon was off on a military campaign. 8–13 / 4–7

Thebes, where dragonteeth . . . from the ground up The central foundation myth of Thebes. Kadmos was the sower of the teeth. At the core of the story there is fratricidal violence that recurs in Theban stories and is reflected in the civil war in the background of this play.

95

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22–23 / 15–16

a city so huge The city of Argos, politically important in the fifth century, is in the legendary world of the play blended with Mycenae (and Tiryns) famous for massive stone structures (Cyclopean) but otherwise of no importance in the historical period.

38–44 / 26–30 There’s an old story Mythographic tradition makes the older Lykos regent of Thebes after the death of Kadmos’ grandson Pentheus. He is married to Dirke´ (an indigenous Theban figure with the name of one of the city’s major rivers (see 736 / 573 and 1009–15 / 781–84) and in mortal conflict with another strain of Thebes’ foundation stories, Amphion and Zethus, children of Zeus and Antiope; Amphion’s lyre-playing was instrumental in building Thebes’ famous walls. The play’s Lykos may be Euripides’ invention. He replicates his father’s role of ambivalent outsider who threatens a more legitimate, local ruling line. 62 / 49 to celebrate his great victory Translates Herakles’ primary, traditional and cult epithet, kallinikos (literally, of fair victory). It’s used throughout the play (eight times in all), in the end with bitter irony. 73 / 60 the city of the Taphians Amphitryon’s notable achievement as a young warrior. He was avenging the deaths of Alkmene’s brothers (see 1382–83 / 1080). 94 / 76–77

Distracting them with chatter Like Tell them a story at line 117 / 99. This is at once ordinary and realistic and draws attention to the lies implicit in all storytelling, including the stories told within the play: see lines 1642 / 1315, 1680 / 1346 and Introduction, p. 22.

125 / 105–6 That’s what courage is A striking and unconventional redefinition of courage (areteˆ), assimilating the warrior’s traditional virtue to an ideal of behavior for the weak and helpless nonwarriors. Megara will reject this ideal in the name of unsubmissive heroic behavior that, she says, is alone fitting for the hero Herakles’ family. The last part of the play will show a testing of the viability of a new sense of courage in the figure of the defeated hero himself. 127–60 / 107–37 Parodos or choral entrance song. There are fifteen chorus members accompanied by a player of the aulos—an oboelike reed instrument. They sing, here rather briefly, in two stanzas having the same rhythmic and melodic patterns, followed by a third (152–60 / 130–37) that shifts, as they respond to the desperate scene before them, to a more rapid tempo. They also dance in coordination with the rhythms of the song, we assume, because of their extreme old age, with deliberate, measured steps (perhaps indicating the effect old age has on their movements as 96

NOTES

they describe them at 142 / 119ff). Their age links them with a more glorious and mythic world of the past while making it impossible for them to be of any practical help in the present. 152–54 / 130–31 Look at those boys’ eyes Literally, ‘‘flashing a Gorgon’s gaze like their father’s.’’ This evokes the family link to Perseus who killed the Gorgon Medusa and used her snaky head as a weapon. There is also a suggestion of the double-edged nature of such heroic achievement, engaging with and defeating monstrous forces then partly embodying them oneself. The Gorgon motif recurs at 1148 / 883, 1296 / 990, and 1572 / 1266. 163–265 / 140–235

First episode (dramatic unit between choral songs).

176 / 152

some slimy marsh snake Lykos reduces the mythic monster Hydra’s name to a common noun hydra, that is, water snake.

178 / 154

He claimed he strangled Again an untranslatable verbal maneuver on Lykos’ part, playing brochois (with nets)—the normal and ordinary way of capturing a wild animal, off brachionos (the arm’s or bare-handed)— the heroic way. Such verbal tricks were characteristic of contemporary speculative and sophistic rationalism.

198–99 / 177 Zeus’ thunderbolts . . . Zeus’ chariot Herakles was often represented in Greek art as fighting alongside the Olympian gods against the rebellious earth-born Giants. He is usually in Zeus’ chariot using his bow, complementary counterpart to Zeus’ spear, the thunderbolt. See also lines 1103–4 / 852–53, 1500–1502 / 1192–94, 1578 / 1272. 234–35 / 202–3 while you keep / Your own head down Renders the notion of being impervious to unforeseen circumstances. What follows in the play will make this claim deeply ironical. 284–309 / 252–74 The chorus probably in the single person of their leader, the koryphaios, speaks these lines, by far the longest such speech by a chorus in Greek tragedy. The length of the speech strongly underscores a frustrated anger of helplessness and the gap between an older heroic community of Thebes and the ruthless politics that, indifferent to the past, now dominate the city. 284 / 252 Ares tore the teeth Refers again to Thebes’ founding myth (see lines 8–13 / 4–7), though here assigning the sowing of the dragonteeth not to Kadmos but to Ares. This may be in order to evoke the chorus’ past as warriors. 97

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393–582 / 348–450 First stasimon, a choral song with dance, usually consisting of paired stanzas (strophe and antistrophe), each pair with its own repeated meter, or rhythm, and melody. The formal structure of this stasimon is unusual, long overall (the longest in Euripides) and exceptionally stylized. There are three paired sets of stanzas and each individual stanza is followed by an additional shorter stanzaic unit. All of these shorter units are identical in rhythm and melody except the third pair, which is slightly varied and extended by one line. Overall, then, a musical refrain is intertwined with the usual succession of sets of strophes and antistrophes. Such continuing refrains, very rare in tragedy, are characteristic of religious cult songs, as are some of the rhythms of the rest of the stasimon. Thus a formal lament is suggested. At the same time the musical structure, certain stylistic elaborations, and the recital of the hero’s great achievements also recall the victory songs for athletes that we know from Pindar. Herakles was regarded as the founder of the Olympian games and the imagery of athletic competition often accompanies him. Athletic contests and the tests of the Twelve Labors are akin. The traditions of the labors and which particular ones make up a set, usually of twelve, are somewhat variable. Here the chorus celebrate the Nemean Lion, the Centaurs, the Golden Hind, the Horses of Diomedes, the outlaw Kyknos, the Apples of the Hesperides, the ridding of pirates from the seas (this is a unique item among collections of labors, also in its generalized character), holding up the earth for Atlas, defeating the Amazons, the Hydra, the monster Geryon (guardian of special—otherworldly—cattle that Herakles must steal), and the descent to Hades to get Cerberus. This choice of labors locates Herakles over a wide geographical range, which underplays his sometimes close association with the region of the Peloponnese and highlights his Panhellenic character. 419 / 359

Zeus’ wood A sacred precinct at Nemea in the northern Peloponnese.

473 / 388

Mycenae’s king Eurystheus.

498 / 394

Singing Maidens The Hesperides or daughters of the evening star.

594–804 / 451–636

Second episode.

608–21 / 462–73 Herakles’ future plans for his three sons would have settled them at three sites in various parts of Greece important in his life stories. The play illustrates the roles of Argos and Thebes. Oechalia is a city associated with Herakles after the events of this play (he sacks it after a quarrel 98

NOTES

with its king over the king’s daughter). The name of the city is a momentary, slightly disorienting reminder of what Euripides’ choice of material for this play has otherwise excluded. 624–25 / 476–78 And I was to choose / For each of you a wife The extension of Herakles’ presence in Greece through his sons was also to have been achieved through marriage connections. These, however, appear to have a more contemporary relevance: Athens and Sparta, at the time of the play’s production in the next-to-last decade of the fifth century b.c.e., have been at war over ten years, and Thebes was aggressively allied with Sparta. 668 / 513

As Amphitryon concludes his farewell speech, Herakles (immediately identifiable by his lion-skin costume and the weapons he carries) appears coming down the long eisodos or passageway alongside the stage building (there is one at each side), probably at the audience’s left, indicating the way to and from ‘‘abroad.’’ (The eisodos at the right would then indicate the way into the city of Thebes.) By about line 680 / 522 he reaches center stage.

747 / 582 Herakles the Conqueror That is, kallinikos, as at line 62 / 49 (see note there). 778–79 / 612–13 gift from the goddess? . . . The Mysteries The goddess is the queen of Hades, Persephone. This alludes to and rejects a version of the story of fetching Cerberus in which the hero simply gets divine help. The Mysteries are the Eleusinian Mysteries closely associated with Athens. They held out the promise of a blessed existence after death. Traditionally Herakles was said to have been initiated into them in preparation for the Hades journey. The more general support of initiation, which also makes a connection to Athens, takes the place of the particular assistance of a goddess. 785 / 619

I stayed to rescue Theseus Theseus with his close friend Peirithoos had undertaken the reckless project of abducting Persephone from Hades. They failed and were imprisoned there.

805–906 / 637–711 Second stasimon. Two pairs of stanzas, each stanza self-enclosed in content. The rhythms are Aeolic, similar in kind to those of the first pair of stanzas and all the refrains of the first stasimon. In form this is a song of praise for Herakles’ newly demonstrated valor, combining stylistic features of a hymn and an athlete’s victory song. 806–7 / 638–40 Etna’s / Stones The weight of the volcanic mountain was said to imprison either the monstrous giant Typhon or Enkelados after their 99

HERAKLES

defeat by the Olympian gods with Herakles’ help (see lines 1577–78 / 1271–72 and 1193–94 / 906–8). 821 / 649–50

old age Herakles was represented on a number of Athenian vases dated to the first half of the fifth century b.c.e.—subduing the personification of old age, Geras. In his cults at Athens the hero is also most frequently associated with ephebes, young men on the threshold of maturity. In the version of his legend in which he is rewarded by the gods for his services to them and to mankind he is given Hebe, Youth personified, as his bride (see Euripides, The Children of Herakles 910–16).

864 / 679 my muse is Memory The goddess Memory or Mnemosyne is mother of the Muses. 878 / 687 The girls of Delos The Delian maidens or Deliades were an actual ritual choral group on Delos, the island in the Aegean sacred to Apollo, Artemis, and their mother, Leto, who gave birth to them there. Athens took particular interest in the place for reasons of politico-religious legitimation and had ‘‘purified’’ it about ten years before the production of Herakles. The Deliades were also known in Greek poetry from the time of the Homeric ‘‘Hymn to Apollo’’ (ca. 7th century b.c.e.) as figures of legend. This combination of mythic past with contemporary religious practice is similar to the double role of the play’s chorus who perform as Theban elders in a mythic story and as ritual actors in the Athenian festival of Dionysos (see Introduction, p. 18). The Deliades sing before Apollo’s temple, the play’s chorus sing before Herakles’ house (887 / 691–92): the chorus seem to praise Herakles as a god, even as something more (compare lines 891–93 / 696–97 and 680 / 521–22), or at least as one who is a savior when the gods are not. Herakles is raised as high as possible before his downfall. 888 / 692

A song the dying swan See also line 132 / 110. The comparison is quite intricate: the chorus members’ white hair is like the swan’s plumage; the swan’s song is thought to be strong and piercing, appropriate both to lament and victory-song; swans were believed to sing most beautifully just before they die—the chorus are very old and death pervades the play; and finally the swan is sacred to Apollo at Delos, which recalls the (paradoxical) association of the young Delian maidens and the aged Theban men (see previous note).

907–66 / 701–62 Third episode. Between lines 942 / 734 and 966 / 762 the chorus sometimes speaks, perhaps only in the person of their leader, and 100

NOTES

sometimes sings. The sung lines are paired off to make rhythmic stanzas. The rhythm, called dochmiac (slantwise), has an irregular, staccato, and excited feeling to it. 967–1058 / 763–814 Third stasimon. The opening call for dancing, already set off by line 965 / 761, is self-referential (the chorus are made to remind us that they are—lively—ceremonial dancers as well as actors in a play). The song is a celebration of Herakles’ new victory over Lykos, marking a high point for both the hero and the civic and divine world of which he is meant to be a part. Such songs have a ritual dimension, and here there are repeated rhythms and words typical of ritual song form. In Sophocles there are often choral songs of joy or triumph just before final catastrophe. Here Euripides will make such a juxtaposition exceptionally abrupt and surprising. 1059–1326 / 815–1015 The dramatic movement is now more fluid and continuous, less distinctly contained in the larger fixed structures. The fourth episode (1059–1129 / 815–74), the appearance of Iris and Lyssa, is prefaced by choral exclamations and followed by a nonstrophic choral song mostly in dochmiac rhythm (1130–62 / 875–90; see note on lines 907–66 / 701–62), which takes the place of a formal fourth stasimon. Further choral singing in a similar rhythm is now interspersed with cries of Amphitryon from inside the house (1163–97 / 891–908); this starts the fifth episode (1163– 1326 / 891–1015) and runs parallel to what is going on concurrently inside the house, the killing of Herakles’ family (similar in structure and function to lines 942–66 / 734–62 that were sung, with interspersed cries from off-stage, while Lykos was being killed). An exchange follows between the chorus (singing) and a household slave (speaking) who has come out from inside the house to report what has happened there. His report, an extensive messenger’s narrative, concludes the episode. 1064 / 823

This is Lyssa Again a mythic personification of a common noun meaning mad fury, used in Homer for that which possesses berserk warriors and by subsequent poets for god-sent madness. It can also mean rabies, dog madness, thought to be transmitted from wolves: lyssa appears to be derived from lykos (wolf), as in the name of Herakles’ antagonist.

1093 / 843–44 my father Heaven Lyssa’s father is the primeval cosmic god Ouranos, father of Zeus’ father Kronos. Literally Lyssa says here that she is born from Ouranos’ blood, which may evoke the violent story of Ouranos’ castration by Kronos: Ouranos’ blood falling on Gaia (Earth) produced, among others, the Giants and the Furies, avenging spirits with whom Lyssa is here associated (see 1159–62 / 888–90). 101

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1104–29 / 855–74 The spoken rhythm, iambic trimeter otherwise throughout the play, shifts here to trochaic tetrameter, which has a quicker, more excited movement. It is, according to Aristotle (Poetics 4.1449a20–23), a rhythm original to the earliest tragedies. Euripides brings it back for occasional use in his later plays with an effect of stylistic archaism. 1187 / 905

Look! A whirlwind shakes the house! In a way characteristic of Greek drama’s theatricality, verbal metaphor, actuality, and an imaginary staging of that actuality are blended here in the representation of the destruction of Herakles’ house. The metaphoric sense of the building’s ruin is clear enough (later Herakles will apply the metaphor to his life: see lines 1565–66 / 1261–62, 1628–29 / 1306–7). The actuality is variously reported. Lyssa had said she would ‘‘smash through his [Herakles’] roof’’ (1115 / 865), but also that she would be invisible (1129 / 873). The chorus from the stage imagine what is going on (1163 / 891, 1169 / 894) and evoke now what the audience should ‘‘see,’’ the house roof caving in. Then from offstage Athena is confusedly described in terms suggesting a natural disaster, an earthquake (1192–97 / 906–8). Next a household slave as messenger comes out of the house and describes the physical damage done by Herakles (1306–7 / 998–99) and by the earthquake or Lyssa (1315–17 / 1006–8). Finally Herakles appears on stage tied to a piece of broken column (1319–20 / 1009–11 and 1334–48 / 1022–38). We do not know how the destruction was actually staged. (Similar questions are raised by the god Dionysos’ destruction of a palace in Euripides’ Bakkhai.) Probably the audience visualized most of it in their mind’s eye, guided by the actors’ words, though sound effects seem quite possible and could have been effective. The only actual, visible sign of the physical damage may have been the piece of column to which Herakles is tied.

1210 / 922–23

1236 / 943

The victims . . . to be sacrificed This is a purification sacrifice to cleanse the house of bloodshed in the revenge killing of Lykos. It takes place in the house’s inner courtyard.

I’m off to storm Mycenae There is a strong irony or grim logic in having the hero who has traveled so widely confuse the space of his own home with those of his travels.

1266 / 966–67

The blood of these upstarts Amphitryon refers to a belief that shedding blood can derange one; the audience has been supplied with a quite different cause for the madness.

102

NOTES

1310 / 1002–3

but something—a shimmering Because the messenger’s speech is in every other respect realistic or naturalistic, the supernatural appearance of the goddess Athena (for which we had been prepared at 1189–97 / 906–8) is described in a somewhat hedged way: her ‘‘shape’’ (1311 / 1002) could refer to an apparition, as Iris and Lyssa had been called phantoms at their first appearance on stage (1060 / 817), but also to a statue, the visible form by which the goddess was known to everyone.

1327–41 / 1016–27 Fifth ode or choral song. Like the previous ode (1130–62 / 874–90) this replaces a formal stasimon—it is brief, nonstrophic, and primarily in the unsettled dochmiac rhythm. 1329–30 / 1016–18 the blood Danaos’ daughters / Shed The fifty daughters of Danaos faced a compulsory marriage with their cousins. All but one of them killed their bridegrooms on the wedding night. 1333 / 1022–23 How Prokne murdered Daughter of Pandion, the king of Athens, Prokne with her sister Philomela killed her son Itys and fed him to her unknowing husband Tereus. This was revenge for Tereus’ rape and mutilation of Philomela. Though he had cut out her tongue to silence her, Philomela represented Tereus’ crimes by weaving a picture of them. Prokne, Philomela, and Tereus are then turned into nightingale, swallow, and hoopoe, respectively. 1342–1791 / 1029–1428 Exodos. Aristotle uses this term (meaning exit and outcome) to designate what follows the last choral ode of a play. In Herakles this is the extended aftermath of the catastrophe. It includes (a) an exchange between the chorus and Amphitryon, mostly sung; (b) Herakles’ speeches as he awakens and then determines on suicide, framing oneline exchanges (stichomythia) with Amphitryon in which the hero realizes what he has done; (c) the unexpected entrance of Theseus leading to exchanges first between Amphitryon (singing) and himself (speaking) then himself and Herakles and then three longer speeches, two by Herakles, the first explaining his determination to kill himself, the second explaining his change of mind; these frame Theseus’ speech to dissuade the suicide and offer help in Athens; a brief passage of exchanges among Herakles, Theseus, and Amphitryon and then a few closing lines by the chorus will conclude the play. 1342–43 / 1029–30 The great doors / Are creaking open This refers to the door of the stage building that represents Herakles’ house. In all likelihood the sleeping Herakles, tied to a representation of a piece of broken pillar, 103

HERAKLES

and the corpses of the children and Megara were brought forward through this door on the ekkyklema, a wooden platform on wheels used to bring out into view figures from the indoors (not representable on the Athenian stage)—usually corpses (killing and even, in most cases, dying were not represented on stage) and sometimes those who were for some reason immobilized. The ekkyklema will then be the means of removing the bodies from the stage at the end of the play. Amphitryon here walks on through the door after the ekkyklema has been pushed out. 1383 / 1078–80 Vengeance on the Taphians See 72–74 / 60–61 and the note on 73 / 60. 1443 / 1135

You. Your bow For great achievements and great disasters Greek thinking and imagination tend to accumulate or overdetermine causes. Here personal agency, its instruments, the weapons (as though personified: see 1727–33 / 1376–81), and a higher power, sometimes individualized (as Hera, for instance), sometimes abstract (as the god or fate or the like) are combined. Each of these has something like equal weight, though a character’s perceptions and feelings about them may variously shift. Here Herakles responds as if he were simply the agent: ‘‘You’re saying I killed them?’’ Later he will call himself blameless (1635 / 1310). Theseus attributes what Herakles has done now to Hera (1497 / 1191), now to Heaven and fate (1531–32 / 1227–28, compare 31 / 20–21).

1461 / 1154

My kinsman and my friend See Introduction, p. 16, on friendship, philia. It is usually tied closely to family relationship and especially to the network of kinship connections among the highborn. Theseus and Herakles are related through both their mothers, Aethra and Alkmene who shared a grandfather, and their divine fathers, the brothers Poseidon and Zeus. In the civic mythology of Athens, Theseus, the younger hero, is in many ways both modeled on and a more localized version of, specific to Athens, the older, Panhellenic figure of Herakles.

1469 / 1162

my blood-guilt stain Any shedding of human blood, intended or not, created a pollution that was regarded as infectious to sight, touch, and hearing. A murderer was forbidden all religious and social interaction, and to reduce the risk of infection his trial had to take place outdoors. This archaic belief was in force in civil settings, but there are indications of rationalistic views less impressed by it. Theseus in the name of friendship and in spite of Herakles’ protests will disregard the risk of pollution to himself (1521–25 / 1218–20, 1537–39 / 1232–34, 1758 / 1399).

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1485 / 1178

the hilltop olive tree This refers to the citadel of Athens, the Acropolis. The olive tree, located there, is iconic, sacred to Athena who had given the olive to the community; in return she became the city’s patron.

1500 / 1192–94 1514 / 1208

Who stood shoulder to shoulder See note on 198–99 / 177.

By your beard This signals the traditional ritual gestures of supplication. Compare lines 1292–93 / 987.

1515 / 1210–11

don’t play the lion The lion comparison originates in Homer, standing for a heroic and often self-destroying ferocity. Herakles has both mastered the lion and put on its skin, that is, taken on the contradictory impulses of heroism. Amphitryon here urges a rejection of an older heroic temper.

1530 / 1226

Stand up Herakles since waking up has been sitting, we may imagine, huddled up. At Theseus’ arrival he covers himself with his (probably) lionskin cloak, out of shame and to prevent the pollution to one who might see him. He is now uncovered but does not find the strength to stand up—this seems implied by lines 1752–60 / 1394–1402 that indicate his being helped up and supported by Theseus. Up to that moment, then, only just before the play’s end, Herakles remains as he had appeared at the beginning of the exodos (at line 1342 / 1029), on the ground, surrounded by the corpses of his wife and children, and speaks from there.

1547 / 1242

Do you think the gods care . . . about your threats? A pair of lines may be missing from the Greek text before this line. They must have made clearer the nature of Herakles’ threats and his response in the following line. There is a general sense that Herakles wants to assert his autonomy in the face of his misfortunes. He would achieve this by taking his own life. Both the claim to autonomy and suicide are taken by Theseus as a challenge to the gods (the challenge may have been made explicitly by Herakles in a missing line)—a challenge, Theseus insists, that can only be useless if not actually dangerous.

1559 / 1254 Greece won’t let you die Compare Amphitryon’s charge to the contrary at lines 253–59 / 222–28. In fact it will be Athens, through Theseus, that will provide the conditions for Herakles’ survival. Athens stands in for Greece as a whole: Thucydides reports Perikles making the claim that Athens is ‘‘a school for Greece.’’ 1562 / 1258

I take after my father This alludes to the archaic and tragic notion of guilt inherited through the family. Herakles sees himself cursed through both his fathers because of Amphitryon’s blood guilt and Zeus’ adultery. 105

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1590 / 1281 the law says This is the contemporary religious and civic requirement that any one who has spilled human blood (except under conditions of war) must go into exile to be purified. This is what brought Amphitryon to Thebes (24–25 / 16–17). 1598 / 1285 But Argos exiled me This is in a political sense. Herakles’ rival cousin Eurystheus, under Hera’s protection, holds the power there. 1626 / 1304 Dancing on Olympos Hera is imagined dancing in triumph over Herakles’ downfall, as the chorus had danced in triumph over that of Lykos. 1631–32 / 1309 Driven by / Petty jealousy It should not be forgotten that legitimate marriage is the goddess Hera’s particular domain. Her vindictiveness against Herakles is also part of the strong sanction she exercises on behalf of a social and institutional norm. The injustice or plain irrationality, of course, is that the sanction is exercised through Herakles because of the transgressions of his divine father. 1641 / 1314

Fate lets no one off Fate translates tukheˆ, the uncontrollable turn of events, an abstract concept, not a mythic force. The same notion is expressed at line 1695 / 1357 and, blended with the figure of Hera, at 1751 / 1393.

1642 / 1315

if the poets haven’t lied Whether poets tell the truth or not is sometimes a theme of earlier Greek poetry. Its appearance in a dramatic setting is unusual, though characteristic of Euripides and his tendency to open up the texture of his drama and make his audience aware of an imaginative process at work. More often this is done by having a character or the chorus question some feature of a myth that is particularly contrary to normal human understanding, for example, Helen’s birth from an egg (Helen 21) or the reversal of the sun’s course (Electra 737–38).

1664 / 1332

Stone monuments There were a number of shrines and monuments to Herakles throughout Athens and its environs. The temple called Hephaesteum or Theseion built around the middle of the fifth century b.c.e. in the agora, the city’s central gathering place, had sculptures representing in parallel the deeds of Herakles (nine labors) and those of Theseus.

1686 / 1351

I’ll endure what I have to—and wait for death This translates a sense of the manuscript reading of the Greek. Finding such a sense too close to Herakles’ rejected intent to commit suicide, many scholars have accepted an emendation that would translate as ‘‘find the strength to 106

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endure life.’’ But this is unnecessary and perhaps a touch modernizing. Herakles says he will find the strength to endure the worst, including the most powerful adversary, death. For the relentless presence of death in the play see Introduction pp. 16–17. 1753–55 / 1395–97 My legs are like stone . . . I wish I were stone Being like stone is proverbial for lack of feeling, sometimes due to an excess of feeling (as in the story of Niobe who in her extreme grief at the loss of all her children is turned to stone, though paradoxically still weeping: see Iliad 24.602ff.). The image here may be additionally suggestive. It can recall a number of earlier references to the Gorgon who turns one to stone, first evoked in connection with the fear inspired by Herakles’ heroic power, then for the forces that turn this power against him (see note on 152–54 / 130–31). Here the image refers as well to Herakles’ physical weakness, so great that he can hardly move, and to the concomitant emotional weakness that keeps him clinging to his dead family. The figure on stage is caught in a death-like immobility—that could be seen to anticipate the stone monuments that had been promised to commemorate him at his death (1662–64 / 1331–33). There is a powerful tension and connection, finally, between Herakles’ desire to be oblivious of his grief, in effect, to die, as he had first intended after the catastrophe, and the public memorial that he is to become. The image of stone just as the play is about to end, may also draw our attention to Euripides’ dramatic medium that is another form of commemoration wherein Herakles is less a fixed, monumental figure than a fluid and contradictory representation of what it might mean to be human. 1779–80 / 1421 This passage is in brackets because the Greek text contradicts line 1710 / 1365 where Amphitryon is asked by Herakles to stay in Thebes. Though there is a clear tradition of a tomb of Amphitryon at Thebes, there is no known connection between him and Athens. 1791 / 1428 There are final exits in the three different directions available to human actors on the Athenian stage. Herakles supported by Theseus goes out (probably) at the left of the stage building, that is, in the direction away from Thebes (see note on line 668 / 513). The bodies of the dead family (on the ekkyklema: see on lines 1342–43 / 1029–30) are brought back into the house through the door that marks the center of the stage; Amphitryon accompanies them. The chorus, perhaps as they sing their last lines, move out at the right-side entrance, that is, in the direction of the main space of the play’s location, the city of Thebes. Each of these groups moves slowly, with difficulty. 107

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PHOENICIAN WOMEN

Translated by PETER BURIAN

and BRIAN SWANN

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INTRODUCTION

I

Euripides’ Phoenician Women, esteemed in antiquity, is largely despised or neglected today. And in truth, it is not an easy play to understand, or to like. Many have despaired of finding coherence in its profusion, in so much seemingly frigid pathos with no clear emotional center, so many characters with no hero, such a welter of events with no obvious organizing principle. Some have called it a pageant rather than a drama, as if that distinction obviated the need for cohesion. Others have seen it as thinly disguised political allegory, claiming apparent faults of construction as proof of some hidden intent. Still others have performed more or less radical philological surgery on the received text, in hopes of saving the evidently good limbs and organs. Finally, a few have sought out themes and images that bind the various episodes more or less closely together, but generally stopped short of demonstrating the coherence of the drama as a whole.1 To begin with, let us recognize that what the author of the third argument found in our manuscripts already singled out for criticism, ‘‘overfull and episodic construction,’’ is a deliberate and crucial part of Euripides’ dramatic strategy. Far from concentrating on a single issue, Euripides is at pains to include as much as he can fit in. He allows 1. Literary (as opposed to strictly philological) studies of Phoenician Women are not numerous. We have found the following recent work of value: A. J. Podlecki, ‘‘Some Themes in Euripides’ Phoenissae,’’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 93 (1962), 355–73; D. J. Conacher, Euripidean Drama (London and Toronto, 1967), 227–48; J. de Romilly, ‘‘Phoenician Women of Euripides: Topicality in Greek Tragedy,’’ Bucknell Review 15 (1967), 108–32; E. Rawson, ‘‘Family and Fatherland in Euripides’ Phoenissae,’’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 11 (1970), 109–27. We owe a special debt of gratitude to a new and enlightening study by Marilyn B. Arthur, ‘‘The Curse of Civilization: The Choral Odes of the Phoenissae,’’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81 (1977), 163–85.

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Jokasta to survive to see her sons’ death before killing herself, and then brings Oedipus on to mourn them all. Apparently unwilling to choose between the two ends that the tradition awarded Antigone, he takes them both (if our text of the exodos is so far to be trusted) and, over the protest of an outraged scholiast, sends Antigone off to brave Kreon’s wrath by burying Polyneikes, and to accompany her blind old father into exile. The Phoenician maidens of the Chorus, caught at Thebes by the outbreak of war while on their way to Delphi, depict themselves as distant relatives of Kadmos, the Phoenician who founded Thebes, and then go on to rehearse Theban history from the very beginning. And lest we regard this as mere poetic window-dressing, Euripides makes Kreon’s son Menoikeus sacrifice himself, at the bidding of the seer Teiresias, by leaping into the cave of the dragon that Kadmos had killed long ago, in order to placate Ares’ lingering anger at its slaying and thus to save the city. This sheer luxuriance of material is what everyone notices right away about Phoenician Women, but its formal organization tends to be overlooked. The material is not, as is often alleged, loosely strung together; on the contrary, it is shaped into a structure of almost alarming rigor.2 The central episode is—of all things—Menoikeus’ sacrifice. Around it the other scenes are ranged in axial symmetry. Jokasta’s prologue, setting out the troubled history of Laios’ house, is answered at the end of the drama by the survivors, Oedipus, Antigone, and Kreon, considering its bleak future. Similarly, Antigone’s lyric contemplation of the Argive army drawn up for battle in the teichoskopia that follows Jokasta’s monologue is answered after the battle by her lyric monody of lament, which then becomes a duet with Oedipus. And the long episode in which Jokasta fails to reconcile Eteokles and Polyneikes is brought to fulfillment at the beginning of the exodos in the messenger’s description of the duel that proved fatal to both sons and their mother. Around the central episode itself are the scene in which Kreon and Eteokles plan for the coming battle, and the messenger’s report of the Theban victory in that battle. Furthermore, as we shall see, the choral lyrics that frame these episodes are a close-knit song cycle evoking the legendary and miraculous past in whose context the action of the drama takes on its full meaning. II

So far then, we have described a welter of matter in an intricate formal framework. If we can relate the two, we shall perhaps have a cogent 2.

Cf. W. Ludwig, ‘‘Sapheneia’’ (diss., Tu¨bingen, 1955), esp. 130–35.

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account of the play’s peculiarities and the beginnings of an interpretation. We have seen that the sacrifice of Menoikeus is the formal epicenter. Given that the play’s primary concern is with the fate of the house of Laios, represented by no fewer than five of its most famous figures, is it not odd that Euripides should give pride of place to an otherwise practically unattested son of Kreon, whose noble act he may well have invented for the occasion?3 And that Menoikeus’ function should be to redeem the land of Thebes not from Oedipus’ pollution or the curse that rests on his sons, but from Ares’ wrath at the slaying of a serpent so long ago? It is evident that Euripides is playing with the received mythical tradition. One is reminded of the free invention that characterized the roughly contemporary Orestes. Does the tradition (embodied, for example, in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes and Sophocles’ Antigone) treat Eteokles as the high-minded defender of his city’s freedom against a foreign foe? Euripides makes naked ambition for power the ruling passion of this Eteokles to the exclusion of any love for his country or his family. ‘‘Let the whole house fall to ruin!’’ Eteokles tells his mother, and in what were apparently the play’s most famous lines in antiquity (often quoted, we are told, by Julius Caesar) he expresses a philosophy worthy of Plato’s Thrasymachos: ‘‘This one thing makes wrong right: power.’’ Is Polyneikes, the ‘‘man of much strife’’ as his name suggests, traditionally the very figure of rebellious daring? Euripides gives this Polyneikes a timid entrance, skittish at every noise and every movement despite the truce his mother has arranged, and brings out in him strains of concern for his family and affection for his native place that seem almost to belie the fact that he is leading an Argive army to sack the city. Is Kreon the advocate par excellence of the claims of the state over those of the family? When Teiresias informs this Kreon that his son must die to save the state, he replies without a moment’s hesitation (1057–58 / 919),4 ‘‘I wasn’t listening. I didn’t hear. / City, goodbye!’’ and goes on to plot Menoikeus’ escape. And so it goes. But this play with tradition is by no means an isolated phenomenon, an end in itself. Euripides is never concerned simply to criticize his predecessors or ‘‘correct’’ their telling of the old tales. His innovations—even where, as in much of his later work, they court a selfconscious and rather brittle literariness—always serve a larger purpose. In the case of Phoenician Women, Euripides’ peculiar treatment of both plot and character emphasizes elements of volition and choice. The story of course brings with it all the trappings of fatality—curse, 3. F. Vian, Les Origines de The`bes (Paris, 1963), 206–15, marshals evidence for previous versions of this episode, but the results are inconclusive. 4. Unless otherwise indicated, line references throughout are to the English version.

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prophecy, foreboding—and yet everything that happens is grounded most circumstantially in the workings of the will. The point can perhaps best be made by examining the great debate of the brothers whom Jokasta has brought together in hopes of a reconciliation. Here, Euripides seems almost to abandon the world of myth in favor of a version of contemporary reality. All three speakers couch their arguments in elaborate and self-conscious specimens of the new sophistic rhetoric, full of neat antitheses, clever paradoxes, and aphoristic climaxes. Eteokles justifies his unrelenting ambition with the will-topower ethics of the unabashed tyrant,5 and Jokasta answers with an Athenian democrat’s praise of equality as the foundation of civilized life. Polyneikes dwells on the hardships of exile, a very real element of contemporary experience and an important theme in this play. But by pressing his rightful claim on what is his—a share in the rule of Thebes—Polyneikes becomes a traitor to the city he has come to sack, if he cannot win it by negotiation. And of course he cannot. The point of this elaborate debate, as of many others in Euripides, is precisely its inability to change the course of an action already fixed by the passionate intransigence of the agents. Eteokles’ whole bag of rhetorical tricks and philosophical conundrums is not really designed to persuade his interlocutors; he is simply restating his refusal to yield what he wants—and already has—merely because someone else wants it, too. Polyneikes makes it clear that he will press his claim no matter what the cost. Jokasta neatly beats both brothers at their own rhetorical game, but her refutation of one’s ambition and the other’s treason does not budge either a bit. Eteokles caps her speech by declaring that (639 / 588) ‘‘the war is words no more,’’ and in the acrimonious stichomythy that closes the episode both brothers merely illustrate once more the disastrous failings of which she has convicted them.6 The debate scene embodies the central change that Euripides has made in the legendary material, and has indeed elevated to one of the organizing principles of his play. This we might call the triumph of selfinterest, with its concomitant reduction to chaos and arbitrariness of the whole nexus of relations within family and community. To put it baldly, Euripides takes the story of a fated fall and transforms it into a story of self5. W. R. Connor, ‘‘Tyrannos Polis,’’ Ancient and Modern: Essays in Honor of Gerald F. Else (Ann Arbor, 1977), 95–109, makes the useful point that eagerness to acquire tyranny is rooted in commonly accepted Greek attitudes. We cannot assume that an Athenian would regard Eteokles as simply idiosyncratic or depraved. 6. This point is neatly emphasized in the messenger’s account of the fatal duel, where Jokasta’s sarcastic reproaches of her sons are unwittingly echoed by their friends as encouragement. Compare, for example, ‘‘Polyneikes, you can set up a statue to Zeus as trophy, and give glory to Argos’’ with Jokasta’s sarcastic ‘‘What trophies can you dedicate to Zeus?’’

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destruction through the passionate pursuit of selfish ends. We must immediately add that this is only one part of a complex dialectic; we shall shortly see fatality at work in a somewhat unexpected form. And yet, over against the legendary tradition, there can be no doubt of the force of Euripides’ innovation. To take the most obvious example, the conscious choice of each brother to kill the other in order to rule alone makes of their mutual slaughter something willful and even gratuitous in a way that it is not in Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes. This is underlined in the episode that follows the debate, in which Eteokles plans battle strategy with Kreon. In Aeschylus, Eteokles’ considered choice of warriors to face the Argive captains finally and horribly leaves only himself to defend the seventh gate against his brother, and thus, as he recognizes, to fulfill Oedipus’ curse. In Euripides, Kreon, after considering several ill-advised suggestions of Eteokles, proposes selecting seven captains to stand at the gates. Eteokles agrees, with the remark that it would be too timeconsuming to name their names, but that he hopes to have his brother set against him, and to kill him. This is surely not, as is often supposed, a cheap shot at Aeschylus but rather a clear statement of Euripides’ vastly different purpose: to show his characters actively pursuing destructive and self-destructive ends, not being reluctantly overtaken by their fates. The Euripidean Eteokles, like the Aeschylean, is aware of his father’s curse, and indeed refers to it just after announcing his desire to meet his brother in battle. But the reference is framed as a curiously detached, almost sardonic reproach against Oedipus (869–72 / 763–65): When my father put out his eyes, he proved himself a fool. I cannot praise him, for he knew that his curses might kill us.

Eteokles’ recognition of his father’s curse is clearly no more a deterrent to him in the pursuit of his ambition than the arguments of justice and fair play. Euripides, rehearsing in 410 b.c. (the likely date of composition of Phoenician Women) the old tale of the fall of the house of Laios, could hardly have missed the chance it afforded to dramatize the factional strife, the ruthless jockeying for power, the easy equation of personal advantage with common good, that were to prove so ruinous for Athens. This was the season of Alkibiades’ return from exile, and it is interesting to see that words which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the brilliant Athenian renegade in a speech to the Spartans could, if recast in verse, almost be spoken by the Polyneikes of our play:

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I have no love for my city when it does me wrong, but only when it gives me my rights. Indeed, I do not consider myself to be attacking my own country, but rather to be rewinning a country that is mine no longer. The man who really loves his city, if he loses it unjustly, will not refrain from attack; on the contrary, desire will lead him to try anything to get it back. [The Peloponnesian War, VI, 92.4]

This is not to say that Phoenician Women is about Alkibiades, or the struggle of Athenian factions, or that it is designed to further the policy of reconciliation of exiles, or to oppose it. Rather, Euripides seems to feel (as does Thucydides) that at the root of the political crisis in Athens is the loosing of civic ties, the replacement of public interest with the conflicting, largely selfish interests of individuals and groups within the state. The themes of self-seeking and self-destruction in Phoenician Women are the dramatic expression of this civic concern. III

Self-destruction is opposed by self-sacrifice, self-seeking by selfless dedication to the common good in the Menoikeus episode. The contrast of Menoikeus’ attitude with that of his cousins in the debate scene, and of his own father here, could hardly be more striking. To the revelation by Teiresias of Ares’ strange and sudden demand that a pure victim descended from the sown-men be sacrificed to avenge the dragon once slain by Kadmos, Kreon reacts as we might expect Polyneikes or Eteokles to in the same circumstances (1103–4 / 963–64): ‘‘I’ll never sink so low that I’d / slaughter my son to ransom my city.’’ Kreon’s privatism where his own personal concerns are at stake is such that he does not stop to weigh alternatives or debate the issue with himself. The conclusion is foregone, and Kreon moves headlong into the task of getting his son out of town before anyone else finds out about Teiresias’ oracle. But for Menoikeus the opposite conclusion is equally foregone. He shrewdly does not try to argue with his father; instead he tricks him into leaving by artful dissimulation, and then announces his true intention. Rather than earn the reproach of cowardice and betray family and fatherland by going into exile, he will offer his soul to save the city and free his native soil. Menoikeus is one of a line of noble young idealists in Euripidean drama who give their lives for what they see as a higher purpose.7 Each case is different and must be interpreted in its own dramatic context, but all share certain characteristics, including an essential isolation of the 7. Other figures of self-sacrifice in Euripides are Alcestis in the play that bears her name, and Evadne in Suppliant Women, although the latter’s self-immolation on her husband’s pyre is demanded by no one, serves no communal function, and indeed seems almost a parody of the heroism of the other Euripidean victims.

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victims from the world that surrounds them. The victims’ youth is not only a function of whatever ritual or narrative reason is adduced in the text, it is a token of an innocence essential to the meaning of their deeds. Makaria, in the early Children of Herakles, offers her life spontaneously and without reservation so that her brothers and sisters will not have to leave the refuge they have found at last in Attica from the ruthless King Eurystheus. She appears and disappears even more abruptly than Menoikeus, an emblem of nobility and self-sacrifice, unsullied by any ambition beyond winning glory for her deed, freely choosing honor over life itself. Iphigeneia in Iphigeneia at Aulis, perhaps Euripides’ last play, is a much more fully developed, and much more equivocal, figure than Makaria, but when she realizes the inevitability of her slaughter, she turns it into self-sacrifice by the same impulses toward generosity and glory that prompted Makaria. We are free to regard her belief that she is dying for Greek freedom as self-delusion; it is nevertheless impossible to overlook the love for her father (whose weakness she alone in the play does not recognize), the desire to prove herself worthy of her noble line, and the longing for lasting honor that propel her to the sacrificial altar. As Aristotle says of the young, they prefer the noble to the convenient, following their natural bent rather than calculation (Rhetoric II, 12). Menoikeus is such a youthful idealist in a play otherwise dominated by the willful and the self-seeking. (Jokasta of course is neither, but she is also totally ineffectual.) His self-sacrifice offers a distinctive, but isolated, image of civic responsibility and the relationship of the individual to family and community. Euripides has chosen to place at the center of his play a vision of self-sacrificing patriotism that emphatically deflects the main story line, but lights up a stage upon which the city has until now been only the object of conflicting claims and ambitions. The illumination is only momentary, however, for after Menoikeus’ departure we return to the same kind of ‘‘realism’’ (as everyone calls it for lack of a better word) that we observed in the first half of the play. The sacrifice itself appears again only as a pathetic incident (chiefly in Kreon’s laments); its effect on the city’s survival is given only the most casual mention, as at the beginning of the brilliant messenger speech that describes Thebes’ victory. The single combat by which Eteokles and Polyneikes agree to settle their conflict, and the fate of Thebes, embodies in an active and decisive form the desire of each to kill the other simply to achieve his own ends. Antigone’s lyric dirge turns the focus of the drama definitively toward the private and pathetic. Oedipus emerges from his solitude to mourn the sons whom his curse has killed and the wife who has chosen to join them in death, but above all to lament his own miserable fate. 117

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When Kreon tells Oedipus that the city’s well-being demands his expulsion, he answers purely in terms of personal pathos (1788–89 / 1620–21): ‘‘Why are you killing me, Kreon? For you / do kill me if you cast me out of this land.’’ This equation of exile with death (Polyneikes, thinking of the exile’s lack of political freedom, had merely called it slavery) neatly reverses Menoikeus’ choice of death for the city’s wellbeing over shameful exile. Antigone casts her lot with Oedipus and chooses exile over marriage to Haimon, a choice sometimes said to be like that of Menoikeus in its self-sacrifice. But Antigone, like Oedipus, regards exile only as a matter of personal suffering, not of her country’s best interest. And her passionate rejection of Kreon’s attempt to insist on the marriage (she threatens to become another Danaid and slay her bridegroom, and Kreon the family man immediately relents) has more of the self-willed ruthlessness of Oedipus’ sons than the selflessness of Kreon’s. As regards Kreon’s political wisdom, since it includes not only the exile of Oedipus but also the denial of burial to Polyneikes enjoined on him by Eteokles, we cannot help viewing it with a certain suspicion. At the center of Phoenician Women, then, is one deliberately isolated scene of ideal civic heroism, issuing in the play’s only act grounded in a true understanding of the relation of self to family and state. Yet it is an act of self-destruction, and one moreover whose meaning the rest of the drama manages successfully to ignore. By reversing the play’s leading terms of self-interest, the Menoikeus episode embodies a standard that can be held up to the action as a whole. The structure that results is not particularly comfortable, but it is by no means incoherent either. It contains the direct expression of its own limitation, the self-examination of a vision deeply felt and profoundly disturbing. IV

The Menoikeus episode is central to Phoenician Women in another way, as well, for it links the dramatic action directly to the early history of Thebes, which until this point has been largely restricted to the choral lyrics. Now it becomes clear that Theban saga, far from performing a purely decorative function, must be understood as a determinant of the events we are witnessing. Teiresias announces that, for Thebes to be victorious, Ares requires a descendant of the men sprung from serpent’s teeth to sacrifice his life in repayment for Kadmos’ killing of the serpent. Menoikeus responds to the demand with a fatal leap into the monster’s very lair. Why this curiously archaizing and exotic turn of events in a play so heavily infused with an atmosphere of fifth-century realpolitik?

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We can start to answer the question by observing that Euripides has been careful from the outset to establish links between Thebes’ past and the play’s present. Jokasta opens her prologue by lamenting the day that Kadmos came to Thebes, thus connecting her present sorrows with the city’s very foundation. But it is the Chorus that systematically unfold the tale of Thebes’ past, preparing us for the moment when it merges with the present. The Chorus are Phoenicians, like Kadmos, and they have repeated his journey. They are moreover related to the Thebans through common descent from Io. Thus, while foreigners not directly affected by the action, they can be expected to show more than casual acquaintance with Theban legend, and more than casual interest in the city’s fate. There is of course a deliberate contrast to the passionately involved, even hysterical chorus of Theban women in Seven against Thebes, but as usual Euripides’ purpose is not simply to be different from Aeschylus. His dramatic strategy calls for a chorus that can provide, with dispassionate authority, the long view of history as a guide to the meaning of the action. In the parodos, the Chorus explain that their final destination is not Thebes but Delphi, and then contrast that peaceful sanctuary with the war about to break out around them, setting the gleam of Dionysos’ fires on the cliffs above Delphi against the baleful flames that light up Ares’ cloud of war over Thebes. In the first stasimon they turn their thoughts to the founding of Thebes. Here, too, there is an underlying dichotomy, but now it resides entirely within Thebes. First there is the arrival of Kadmos, following the calf with which Apollo signaled his destination, a place all running streams and lush, fertile fields. Even the birth of Dionysos is fully subsumed into this peaceful idyll.8 Then, suddenly, Ares’ serpent is there, bloody and hostile, to guard the life-giving waters. Kadmos kills it and scatters its teeth in the soil; the soil gives birth to a race of armed men but immediately reclaims their bloodied corpses. Thus the foundation legend is a mixture of positive and negative symbols, the gentle calf and the wheat-bearing fields giving way inexorably to the fierce serpent and earth’s crop of violent men. The central contrast that we have observed in the parodos and first stasimon is extended in the second stasimon in a number of complex ways. The strophe again pits Ares against Dionysos, showing him in effect usurping and perverting the proper attributes of the Theban god. The antistrophe moves Theban saga forward to the birth of Oedipus and his conquest of the Sphinx. Here is at once a replication of Kadmos’ 8. Appropriately, the Chorus, as they dance their tale in the orchestra, symbolize Dionysos’ beneficence by his dancing with young Theban maidens, just as in the parodos their own dances in honor of the gods symbolize the order and harmony of Delphi.

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slaying of the dragon and an implied identification of victor and vanquished. Both Oedipus and the Sphinx are creatures of the mountain; better that neither should have lived. The Sphinx shares Ares’ attributes of hostility to the city and the perversion of the power of music; Oedipus gives birth to new strife in the form of his sons, whose birth is described as monstrous. The epode expresses the full complexity of the past the Chorus have been evoking: we return once more to the founding of Thebes, but this time the evocation of ‘‘the race sprung from the teeth of that / beast-eating, redcrested serpent’’ (951–52 / 820–21) yields to images of peace and productivity: the wedding of Harmonia, the rising of the city walls to Amphion’s lyre, the birth of kings. The beast in man is a recurrent theme in the later plays of Euripides. The Ion, for example, images Kreousa, a descendant of earthborn Erecthonios and the bull-shaped Kephisos, as (in Ion’s words) a ‘‘viper or serpent . . . no less venomous than the drops of Gorgon blood with which she tried to kill me.’’ In Orestes, the ‘‘beast-like spirit of murder that ever destroys our land and cities’’ (and has, in Tyndareus’ eyes, already transformed Orestes into a serpent) fully brutalizes Orestes and Pylades. Menelaos, rushing to the burning palace where they have attempted to kill Helen and now hold Hermione at knife point, calls their acts ‘‘deeds of two lions—for I will not call them men.’’ In the Bacchae, the equation of man and beast is far more extensive, and part of a terrifying abolition of all normal distinctions. Pentheus, for example, imprisons a bull that he imagines to be the priest of Dionysus; and his own mother, in her bacchic frenzy, mistakes him for a lion, strikes the first blow against him, and carries his head home on a stake, still thinking it a glorious hunting trophy. The same liminal confusion of man and beast pervades Phoenician Women, but with the difference that here man’s bestiality is paradoxically a productive as well as a destructive force. The sownmen offer the play’s clearest paradigm of this duality. Sprung fully armed from the womb of Earth, on which Kadmos has scattered the teeth of a chthonian monster like seeds, they immediately engage each other in combat, drenching the ground with their blood. But ten survive to become the forebears of the Theban people.9 Man’s origin in the earth, his residual identity with the bestial, is the fertile source of his very life, but at the same time dooms him to bloodshed and violence.

9. Similarly Io, the ‘‘horned maiden’’ whom Zeus turned into a heifer, pursued as far as Egypt, and made pregnant with the calf-child Epaphos, is repeatedly invoked as ancestor of the Phoenician, and thus the Theban, royal house.

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The early history of Thebes, then, as it is developed in the choral lyrics of Phoenician Women is a unity of opposites, a cycle of struggles between forces of creation and destruction, which keep merging, changing form, reappearing, and which finally stand revealed at the heart of the dramatic action. In the words of Marilyn Arthur, ‘‘The monster and the monster-slayer each contain their own opposite, so that they are locked together in a cycle in which the hero becomes the city’s bane, and the monster its savior.’’10 Menoikeus’ self-sacrifice becomes comprehensible as part of this cycle. Descended from the serpent’s teeth, he is converted into the city’s savior by becoming the serpent’s prey. But the fatal duel of Polyneikes and Eteokles belongs to the cycle as well. Kadmos killed a monster and sowed its teeth as the seeds of beastly creatures who died in brutal struggle. Oedipus slew the Sphinx and sowed a beastly brood in his mother’s womb, who now destroy themselves. The third and fourth stasima reinforce this sense of an inclusive and necessary circularity in the history of Thebes. Immediately after Menoikeus’ exit, the Chorus return to the Sphinx and its monstrous ravaging of youths, and then naturally to Oedipus, his monstrous marriage and accursed offspring. Only in the second half of the antistrophe do they celebrate Menoikeus’ heroism, but their prayer to bear sons like him is addressed to Athena (1203–9 / 1062–1066), you who held the stone that slew the serpent, you who turned the mind of Kadmos to the deed from which all this devouring and destruction is derived!

Because so little is said, and so late, about Menoikeus, this ode has been criticized since antiquity for its irrelevance. And yet it is the clearest expression in the entire drama of the interconnectedness of the bloodshed that marks Thebes’ history. With Menoikeus’ death, the monster is appeased and Thebes saved; but the circle is not yet closed, for the sons of Oedipus carry the bestial element within them as an inheritance from their father. The brief, almost breathless, final stasimon makes this clear by picturing the foes as ‘‘twin beasts’’; the messenger who reports their fatal duel compares them (1513–14 / 1379–80), as they charge at each other, to ‘‘wild boars slashing 10. Op. cit. (note 1, above), p. 173. How much this discussion owes to Professor Arthur’s insights will be evident to anyone who has read her article.

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with their tusks.’’ The violence that began when the city began and that is, as it were, the reverse of the coin of order, cannot be escaped. This, not the traditional curse of Oedipus construed as an isolated and willful act of wrath, is the agent of fatality in Phoenician Women. It is a pattern perpetuated obsessively, but unwittingly. The more heroically, defiantly, autonomously, people seem to themselves to be acting, the more fully they are participating in it. The elaborate nightmarelike symmetry of the duel between the brothers, in which each blow is answered by an equal counterblow until the fated equilibrium of mutual slaughter is reached, is perhaps the clearest example.11 The juncture between fatality and the apparently free and willful choice that is the mainspring of the dramatic action is thus necessarily and deeply ironic. The play that results from so radical an irony is complex and defies facile judgments. Its range is extraordinary, even for Euripides. It might be compared with another play that flouts tradition, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, in its ornate cynicism, hapless idealism, and underlying pessimism about human values. And yet, of course, that play is far less somber and far more bitter than this. One thing is certain: Phoenician Women is not a failed tragedy of the Aristotelian or any other persuasion. It is an experiment on a grand scale, the work of a restless and daring mind. V

The date of Phoenician Women cannot be established with certainty, but the internal evidence of style and meter places it securely among Euripides’ late plays. And there is helpful, although inconclusive, external evidence. The comment of a scholiast on Aristophanes, Frogs 53, strongly implies that our play is a few years later than Euripides’ lost Andromeda, which we know to have been produced in 412 b.c. A terminus ante quem seems to be established by the poet’s departure for Macedonia in 408 or 407. Thus the likeliest years for the production of Phoenician Women are 409–407. An argument to the play by the grammarian Aristophanes, which unfortunately appears in a badly mutilated form of our manuscript tradition, can be interpreted to mean that Phoenician Women was produced third in a tetralogy that began with Oinomaios and Chrysippos (plays that, like Phoenician Women, presumably involved the working out of fatal curses), but this interpretation is by no means certain. Our play might also have been produced together with the extant Orestes, which we can date securely to 408. 11. This symmetry is well brought out by R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (tr. P. Gregory, Baltimore, 1977), 44–45.

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The text of Phoenician Women has not suffered more than most from the vagaries of manuscript transmission, but it shares with a few other plays (notably Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes, which also shares its subject, and Euripides’ own posthumously produced Iphigeneia at Aulis) the widespread suspicion that the author’s text has been tampered with already in antiquity, and that in particular the exodos (which in Phoenician Women is very long indeed) has suffered large-scale interpolation for later performance.12 Any editor or translator must wrestle long and hard with this issue, made all the more complex by the fact that most of the suspect passages cannot simply be excised, since, if they are indeed interpolated, they must have supplanted genuine passages necessary for the advancement of the plot. Our approach, after some vacillation, has been to excise only such lines as seemed to us indefensibly otiose or nonsensical (in truth, no more than one might excise in many another play of Euripides), even though this means retaining material about which we have strong reservations. Our only substantial cut is from line 1737 (Greek text) to the end, where we are inclined to accept Wilamowitz’s view that the received text preserves a spurious doublet to 1710–36. Feeling that our readers have a right to know what we have chosen to omit, we offer plain prose versions and brief rationales for each of our cuts in the Notes on the Text. The reader will also find there some indication of our doubts concerning passages we have chosen to retain. The text on which this translation is based is an eclectic one, most closely resembling that of A. C. Pearson (Cambridge, 1909), from whose annotations we have also derived much help. VI

As for the translation, it will speak for itself, but a few general comments may help orient the reader to our procedures. We have not aimed at a thoroughly ‘‘vernacular’’ version. The play is at once close and remote, colloquial and brocaded in expression and texture. Its characters are rulers, its rhetoric formal, its encounters stylized; and yet its multiple layers of irony, its constant shifts of tonality, keep undercutting the ‘‘heroic’’ matrix, the comfortable or expected response.

12. This view has recently gained strong support from E. Fraenkel, Zu den Phoenissen des Euripides, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1963, Heft 1 (Munich, 1963). Further discussion by H. Diller, Gnomon 36 (1964), 641–50; H. Erbse, Philologus 110 (1966), 1–110; M. Reeves, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 13 (1972), 541–74; D. J. Mastronarde, ‘‘Studies in Euripides’ Phoinissai’’ (diss., Toronto, 1974); M. W. Haslam, Classical Quarterly 26 (1976), 4–10.

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Greek tragic texts are libretti (as the creators of opera in late sixteenthcentury Florence were quick to understand), verbal tokens of a total theatrical experience wedded to music and dance, to the visual cues of masking and costume convention, gesture, and movement in theatrical space. Much of this experience is forever lost, but the translator who does not try to conjure it up in his mind’s eye and ear will never be fully in touch with the text. We have tried to make our version an enactment, speakable (in the case of the choral lyrics, one might say ‘‘danceable’’), capable of being performed as well as read. It would be our greatest reward to see it reach sympathetic production, for drama, especially Greek drama, lives fully only in the theater. If, as has been said, ‘‘the translator of poetry walks a tightrope across an abyss,’’13 one might suppose that collaborative translators, each tugging at the other to pull him a little closer to his own position, would run a special risk of disastrous falls. We can only say that this has not been our experience. Each has helped the other to keep his balance whenever he seemed to be bending back too far in the direction of philology, or leaning out too far toward poetic fancy. Ours has been, from the beginning, a genuine collaboration, although conducted by correspondence, sometimes between continents, and not without depressions, doubts, and delays as we strove toward a mutual understanding of Euripides’ complex, often paradoxical conception. We are grateful to William Arrowsmith for his careful guidance in our final stages as well as his unfailing encouragement throughout, and not least for his patience.

peter burian brian swann

13. John L. Foster, ‘‘On Translating Hieroglyphic Love Songs,’’ in S. Baker, ed., The Essayist (New York, 1977), 128.

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Translated by

peter burian and

brian swann

CHARACTERS

oedipus son of Laios and Jokasta, once king of Thebes jokasta Oedipus’ mother and wife polyneikes son of Oedipus and Jokasta, exiled by Eteokles eteokles Polyneikes’ brother, ruling in Thebes antigone daughter of Oedipus and Jokasta tutor of Antigone kreon brother of Jokasta menoikeus son of Kreon teiresias the prophet messenger chorus of Phoenician maidens

Line numbers in the right-hand margin refer to the English translation only, and the Notes beginning at p. 189 are keyed to these lines. The bracketed line numbers in the running headlines refer to the Greek text.

The scene is Thebes. The stage building, with its central double doors, represents the royal palace. jokasta, unattended and dressed all in black, her hair closecropped as a sign of mourning, enters through the central doors.

jokasta Sun, flaring in your flames, what a harmful ray you hurled at Thebes that day when Kadmos quit seaswept Phoenicia, and came to this country. Here he married Harmonia, child of Kypris. His son Polydoros fathered Labdakos, father of Laios. Men know me as Menoikeus’ child. My father called me Jokasta. Laios married me, but after a long marriage with no children he drove to Delphi, to petition Apollo for the children he craved for his house. But the god replied: 10 ‘‘Lord of horse-rich Thebes, do not fling your seed into the furrow, flouting the gods. If you make a son you make your own murderer. Your whole line will wade through blood.’’ Yet Laios did succumb to lust. Flush with liquor, he planted a seed in me. Then, seeing his mistake, and recalling the god’s words, he gave the child to cowherds to discard in the meadow of Hera under the scaur of Kitha´iron, first inserted spikes of iron through his ankles. Hence the name ‘‘Oedipus,’’ 20 ‘‘Swell-foot,’’ by which Greece came to know him. But the men who minded Polybos’ horses carried this child to their chief, and laid him in their mistress’ lap. She received the result of my birthpangs, put it to her breast, and persuaded her lord she’d borne a boy. Later, when his first beard had begun to bloom, either having thought things out for himself, or having heard the gossip, my son departed for Delphi to discover his true parents’ identity. Laios my husband also left 30 for Delphi, to see if the son he abandoned were alive or dead. Together they reached the same spot, the split 127

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in the Phokis road, and Laios’ driver roared: ‘‘Out of the road, stranger! Make way for a king!’’ But he walked on, proud, without a word, though the horses with their hoofs bloodied the tendons of his feet. Then followed—but why not steer straight to the point? Son killed father; took chariot and team to bring to Polybos, who brought him up. But when the Sphinx ravaged the city with her raids, and my husband had died, my brother Kreon made it known that my bed was the prize for the person who unraveled the subtle maiden’s riddle. And somehow it happened that Oedipus my son understood the Sphinx’s song, and took the scepter of this country as reward, and took as bride her who bore him, the miserable man— and she who bore him did not know she was sleeping with her son. So to my child I gave birth to two children, two males, Eteokles and Polyneikes the powerful, and two females, one her father called Ismene, the other I called Antigone. Then, when he realized that marrying me he had married his mother, this Oedipus who sustained all sufferings struck slaughter into his eyes, bloodying the pupils with clasps of beaten gold. And when my sons’ cheeks were clouded with beard, they buried their father behind bolted doors, hoping fate might be forgotten, a fate that needed too much clever contrivance to explain away. He is alive, in his lodging, suffering his fate. He curses his sons with the unholiest curses: prays they split their patrimony with sharp steel. They fell to fearing the gods would make his prayers flower, if they lived together, and made up their minds that the younger, Polyneikes, would be the first to leave this land in voluntary exile, while Eteokles would stay to wield the scepter, and year by year they’d exchange rule. But when Eteokles enjoyed the helmsman’s bench he held to it tight. He took up all the throne and exiled Polyneikes from this land. When Polyneikes arrived in Argos, he made 128

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Adrastos his relative by marriage, and mustered a great army of Argives with himself at the head. And now he stands against these seven-gated walls claiming his father’s scepter and his share in the land. But to cure this strife I have caused son to come to son by a truce, before they use their spears. The courier I sent says Polyneikes will come. But you who sit in the shining folds of sky, Zeus, save us! Reconcile my children. Your wisdom should not allow the same man to be mastered by misfortune forever.

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jokasta returns to the palace. The old tutor appears on the roof of the stage building, followed by antigone, who remains at first on the ladder behind the stage building, only partly exposed to view. tutor Antigone, your father’s green branch, glory of his house, since your mother lets you leave the women’s quarters for the highest part of the palace, to scan the Argive spears as you had begged, stay here while I survey the path in case there’s someone walking there below. If we are seen, it could rain reproach on me, a slave, and touch you, too, a queen. But I’ll tell you everything I know, everything I saw and heard when I took the wine of truce to your brother, and brought his tokens back.

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At the front of the roof, looking around. No, there’s no one near the palace. Climb these old cedar steps and look at the plain. See the huge army of your enemies encamped along the banks of Ismenos’ stream, and Dirke´’s. antigone Stretch, yes stretch an old hand to a young hand, and help me lift my feet from the ladder. 129

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tutor Hold my hand, lady. You’ve come at the crucial moment. The Argive army’s on the move. It has just now decamped. They’re dividing the companies one from another. antigone Ah, lady, daughter of Leto, Hekate, the whole field flashes with bronze! tutor Well, Polyneikes has not just come for a visit, but in high blood, with many horsemen.

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antigone The gates, with their bolts and the brass-bound portcullis before the walls that Amphion made with music, do they hold fast? tutor Be brave! Inside at least the city is safe. But look at the fighter out in front!

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antigone Who is he, that captain with a white crest leading his men, lifting high on his arm the bronze shield? tutor One of their captains, lady. antigone But who? Where’s he from? Tell me, old man, what do men call him? tutor Hippomedon. He boasts of Mycenaean birth and lives by Lerna’s stream.

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antigone Oh, how arrogant he looks, how horrible to look at! Just like an earth-born giant in pictures, star-bright, not like our mortal species. tutor Can you make out that man crossing the waters of Dirke´? antigone Another kind again, his armor a contrast. Who is he?

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tutor Tydeus, son of Oineus, from Aitolia. A man warlike as their Ares. antigone Old friend, is this the man who married the sister of Polyneikes’ wife? How outlandish his dress, half-foreign! tutor Yes, all the Aitolians carry large leather shields, child, and throw their javelins more skillfully than anyone. antigone How are you so familiar with these facts? tutor I remember the signs I saw on their shields. antigone Who is that passing by the monument of Zethos, that youth with the long wavy hair and a fierce look on his face? A captain, for behind him on foot, his men crowd round in full armor. tutor That is Atalanta’s son, Parthenopaios.

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antigone I ask Artemis, who roams the hills with his mother, to tame him with arrows since he comes to my city to sack it.

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tutor But they have justice on their side, which I’m afraid the gods will see. antigone Where is he, born of the same mother as me, to a fate of much suffering? Wise old man, tell me the whereabouts of Polyneikes.

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tutor He stands beside Adrastos, by the tomb of Niobe’s seven daughters. Do you see? antigone I can see, but not clearly. I see a kind of silhouette, the cast of his profile. If only I could fly, a windblown cloud through the air to my brother. . . . If only I could throw my arms at last around the dear neck of the unhappy exile! How glorious he looks in his gold armor, old man! He is gleaming like dawn’s darts!

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tutor He will soon be here at the palace under a truce, to fill you with happiness. antigone But old friend, who’s the man mounted in a chariot, holding the reins of white horses? 132

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tutor Amphiaraos, mistress, the seer. And with him victims for sacrifice, brought to shed welcome blood for the earth. antigone Oh, daughter of Leto, dressed all in light, Selanaia, gold circle of sheen— his goad is so calm and controlled as he taps each of his horses in turn! But where is the man who with brute arrogant blasts batters our city?

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tutor Kapaneus? There, sizing up the towers for the right place to put his scaling-ladders. antigone Ah, Nemesis, and deep-swelling thunder of Zeus, smoky light of the lightning, it is for you to put his proud boasting to sleep! He is the man who said he would seize the women of Thebes and hand them over to the households of Mycenae and the trident of Lerna: enslave them to the spring Poseidon’s trident struck from the rock at Lerna for love of the nymph Amymone. O Artemis, golden-haired daughter of Zeus, save me from slavery! tutor Child, go back inside the house and stay in the cover of your women’s quarters, for you

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have satisfied your wish, you have seen what you wanted to see. The city’s in confusion. A crowd of women’s running toward the palace. And women are quick to find fault. Once they’ve chosen a target, they launch the attack, and bring up reinforcements. It gives women some sort of pleasure to say nothing good about one another.

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Exit antigone by the ladder behind the stage-building, followed by the tutor. As they disappear from view, the chorus of Phoenician captive girls enter the orchestra, singing. chorus Leaving Tyrian foam, I have come as firstfruits for Apollo from the island of Phoenicia, a slave for the dwelling of Phoibos under the snow-locked ledges of Parnassos. Oars hauled me over Ionian seas whose fruitless plains flow round Sicily. Since Zephyros spurred his breezes the sky was filled with a lovely rushing of air. Chosen for Loxias as loveliest prize of my city, I was carried to Kadmos’ land, to the towers of Laios that are kin to the glorious line of Agenor. I have become a handmaid of Phoibos, dedicated like a gold votive offering.

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But still the waters of Kastalia wait for me to wash in the service of Phoibos the splendor of my virginity, my hair.

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O rock, flashing with the flare of tossing torches over the frenzied heights of Dionysos, and you vine that daily let drop the many-globed grapecluster 270 as you send out shoots; O cave, you cave of the serpent Apollo slew, you sacred mountains scattered with snow, let me leave Dirke´’s stream and dance to honor you deities, become the daring dancer of the god beside the inner cavern and Earth’s navel! 280 But now I see before the walls Ares berserk, kindling blood to blaze against this city— oh, stop him! The griefs of kin are held in common, and Phoenicia suffers, too, if this town of the seven towers suffers in any way. Shared blood, shared children were born of 290 horn-bearing Io. I have a share in this suffering. Around the city a black cloud of shields bursts into blood-red

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flames of battle which Ares will soon assess, bringing to the children of Oedipus evil from the Erinyes. O Pelasgian Argos, I am afraid of your power, and the gods’. Not without right the man who comes against our country flings himself into this furor.

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Enter polyneikes from the left, looking warily about him as he proceeds toward the palace doors. polyneikes The gatekeeper’s locks have let me inside the walls, which makes me fear that once my feet are in the snare, the Thebans won’t let me out unbloodied. I must keep my eyes open, watchful this way and that for a trick. My hand is heavy with this sword: I shall collect proof of my courage. Ha! Who’s this? Or does a shadow scare me? Everything seems startling to the man who takes risks, whenever his soles touch enemy soil. My mother, who got me here under a truce—I trust her. And I do not trust her. But a bulwark looms near. Close by are hearths for sacrifice, and the palace is not empty. Here, I’ll drive my sword into its dark scabbard, and demand from these women near the house who they are. Foreign ladies, tell me, from what land did you set sail for the palaces of Greece? chorus Phoenicia was the land that reared me. But Agenor’s leader grandchildren have sent me here as firstfruits of battle for Phoibos. The famous son of Oedipus wanted to send me on to the awesome oracle of Loxias, and to his hearth. But at that instant, the Argives sent their arms against the city. 136

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And now you answer me. Who are you, traveling to Thebes and its seven towers? polyneikes Oedipus is my father, son of Laios. Jokasta, child of Menoikeus, is my mother. The Theban people call me Polyneikes. chorus O kin of Agenor’s sons, my lords, by whom I am banished, I fall to my knees before you, master, honoring the customs of my home. In time’s long turning you’ve returned to your land. Mistress, mistress! Come quickly from the house! Throw the doors open! Do you hear, mother who bore him? Why do you take so long to leave the house and hold your son in your arms?

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Enter jokasta from the palace. jokasta Your Phoenician cry I heard, girls, and I drag my old legs with shaking steps. Ah, child, at last, after countless days! Come to your mother’s breast, bring your cheeks to mine! Let your dark curls fall over my face! Ah, you have arrived unexpected, unhoped for, into your mother’s arms! What shall I say? With hands and words, or dancing in the whirl of joy, I can relive the old delight! Ah, child, you left your father’s land in desolation, banished by a shameless brother, yearned for by your friends, yearned for by Thebes. That is why I keep my white hair short. 137

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Weeping, I let it grow unkempt in my grief. I am not wearing white robes, son. In their place I’ve wrapped around me these black rags. The blind old man in the palace, ever since the like-feathered pair of you slipped the jesses of home, persists in his intent to kill himself, seeking the sword and the noose to toss over the beam. He curses his children, and with loud continual cries hides himself in the gloom. But you, my son, I hear have married, and have the pleasure of making children in a foreigner’s mansion. You cherish a foreign kinship—misery for your mother, for Laios, and his long-famed race is the ruin of an alien marriage. I did not light the torch, as is the happy mother’s custom when a son marries. The river Ismenos was deprived of his share in the solemnities, the pleasure of providing the water, when you went ahead with your wedding. Throughout the city of Thebes the entrance of your bride was silent. Curse these griefs, whether caused by war or quarrels or your father or the fate that’s held revel in Oedipus’ house! Upon me the weight of the evil is fallen. chorus The pangs of childbirth are frightening and painful leader for women. And so all women worship their children.

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polyneikes Mother, after careful thought, I have come 400 carelessly among my enemies. But no one can choose not to love his native soil. He who says otherwise loves words, not truth. I was so frightened, I came in such fear that some ruse of my brother would ruin me, that I walked through this city clutching my sword, turning my head this way and that. Only one thing gave me comfort: your truce, and your pledge that let me pass through ancestral walls. I came weeping, seeing after so long the seats and altars of the gods, the gymnasia where I was reared, the waters of Dirke´. I have been exiled from these, 410 living in a strange land, my eyes streaming tears— but I go from one grief to another. I see you, your hair cropped close, dressed in black robes. O, my sorrows! How strange and monstrous, mother, is hatred within families. jokasta It is wrong for one of the gods to destroy the family of Oedipus. And it all began when your father wrongly married me and made you. It all began when I gave birth. But what can be done? We have to endure what the gods give. Without hurting you, I don’t know how to ask what I want to know. And yet I’m forced to ask.

420

polyneikes Ask. Ask anything you want. Whatever you want, mother, is dear to me. jokasta Well then, I’ll ask this first. What is it like to lose one’s native land? Is it great loss? polyneikes The worst loss of all. Words can’t describe it. jokasta But what’s it really like? Why is exile so hard? polyneikes Because a man’s tongue is not free. jokasta Not speak freely? A slave’s life! polyneikes You must endure the arrogance of power. jokasta Too painful! To share the folly of fools!

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[395–415]

polyneikes You have to violate your nature. You live a slave’s life to survive. jokasta But exiles live on hope, or so the saying goes. polyneikes Hope’s lovely to look at, but lives in the future. jokasta And doesn’t time say plainly hopes are vain? polyneikes In time of trouble, hoping has a sort of charm. jokasta How did you find food before you married money?

440

polyneikes Some days I had enough. Others, nothing. jokasta Your father’s friends, didn’t they help? polyneikes You’d better be a success! Misfortune has no friends. jokasta But surely your high birth helped you to rise? polyneikes Not having hurts. You can’t eat rank. jokasta A man’s country is the dearest thing he has. polyneikes Too dear for words to say. jokasta How did you get to Argos? What was your plan? polyneikes I don’t know. The god summoned me to my fate. jokasta The god is wise. How did you happen to marry? polyneikes The prophecy of Apollo. The god spoke to Adrastos. jokasta What did you say? I don’t understand. polyneikes He prophesied that Adrastos’ daughters would marry a lion and a boar. jokasta What do you have to do with these wild animals, son? polyneikes It was night. I came to Adrastos’ door.

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[416–42]

jokasta A wandering exile, looking for a bed? polyneikes Yes. Then someone else arrived. An exile like me.

460

jokasta Poor man. Who was he? polyneikes Tydeus, son of Oineus. jokasta Why did Adrastos think you were wild beasts? polyneikes We fought over a bed. jokasta And that was when Adrastos understood the oracle? polyneikes And gave us both his daughters in marriage. jokasta Was your marriage a happy one? polyneikes Happy to this day. I have no complaints. jokasta How did you recruit the army you led against Thebes? polyneikes Adrastos swore to his new sons-in- law he would repatriate us both, me first. And many chief men of the Danaans and Mycenaeans are here, doing me a painful favor, but a necessary one. For I’m leading an army against my own city—I swear by the gods that I go to war with no relish against relatives only too willing to fight. But unraveling these wrongs lies in your hands, Mother; to reconcile kin again, thus saving me, yourself, and the whole city from suffering and grief. It may be trite, but I still say: ‘‘Properties and money are a man’s best friend, and have the greatest influence in the end.’’ So with ten thousand men I come to look for them. A beggar is no nobleman.

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[443–70]

chorus Here’s Eteokles now, coming to leader this reconciliation. Jokasta, as their mother you must say what you can to reconcile your sons.

490

Enter eteokles from the right. In dress and general appearance he closely resembles polyneikes, but his entrance is as swift and imperious as his brother’s was hesitant and skittish. He is attended by a small retinue of unarmed servants. eteokles Mother, I’ve come. I’m here as a favor to you. What’s all this about? Someone had better start explaining. I’ve halted my work of mustering the citizens about the walls and setting ambushes for chariots in order to hear your impartial arbitration—that’s why I agreed to your request to allow this fellow here inside our walls under a truce. jokasta Enough, Eteokles! Haste brings no justice. Slow speech achieves the greatest wisdom. Calm your angry eye and outbursts of anger. You are not glaring at some gorgon’s head, severed at the throat. This is your brother. —And you, Polyneikes, look at your brother. If you look him in the eye, you will speak softer; you will hear him better. I have some sound advice to give you both. When kinsmen and brothers are angry with each other, let each look the other squarely in the eye. Let both keep in mind the purpose of their meeting, and forget old grievances. Polyneikes, you speak first. You come with your Argive army, claiming to be wronged. Now may some god reconcile your grievances! polyneikes Truth is single by nature, and what is right needs no many-colored gloss. It has

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[471–502]

its own right measure. But the unjust argument, unhealthy, diseased, needs the medicine of clever words. I looked forward to my share, as he to his, in our inheritance, hoping to escape the curses which our father Oedipus heaped on our heads long ago. I myself, of my own free will, renounced this land, yielding it into his hands for one year’s circle, with the intent of ruling in my turn. In this way I hoped to avoid envy and hate, by not doing wrong and then suffering it in turn— but this is what’s happened: he who swore by the gods with solemn oaths kept no part of his promise. Instead, he clings to power and keeps my share in this state. Even now I am prepared, on condition that I get what’s mine, to send my army away from Thebes, and to take charge of my own house, turn and turn about, and then to transfer it back to him at the end of my year. I will not plunder my own city. I will not set my scaling ladders against this city’s walls—not unless justice is denied me. And I summon the gods to witness that, though I myself have acted justly, my country has been stolen from me, wickedly, impiously. This is how things stand, Mother, stated simply, without the entanglements of words. It takes no great intelligence to see that I have spoken justly—or so it seems to me.

520

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540

chorus Although I am not Greek, what you have said leader seems sensible and right. eteokles If all men agreed on what is wise and just, there’d be no argument, no strife. But now, nothing is like or equal, except in name. The fact is something else again.

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Mother, I’ll tell you plainly without pretense, I’d run to the rising of the sun, I’d go beneath the earth, if I could have absolute power, the greatest god of all. Power is good, Mother. I will not give it up. I want it for myself. It would be cowardice to lose the great good thing and settle for the less. Besides, I’m ashamed to think that he should achieve his ends by coming here with arms to sack this city. What disgrace for Thebes if, for fear of Mycenaean spears, I surrender my scepter to him. He had no right to come here with arms to seek a settlement. Reason can accomplish everything that enemy steel can do. So, if he wants to stay here on some other terms, I’ll grant it. But I will not yield to his demands. Now I can rule alone I will not be a slave to him. So, send out fire, unsheathe swords, harness horses, fill the plain with chariots! I will not part with power! This one thing makes wrong right: power. In other things I’m all for virtue.

[503–36]

560

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chorus You should not praise such actions. leader They are not noble. Justice cannot tolerate them. jokasta My son, there’s more to old age than misery. Experience sometimes speaks more wisely than the young. Why pursue the worst of gods, Ambition? Let her be, my son, she is an evil goddess. To many houses and happy cities she has come and gone, leaving wreckage in her wake. And this is the goddess you go wild for! Wiser, child, to honor Equality, who binds kin to kin, city

144

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to city, ally to ally. Equality is man’s natural law, but the Less is always fighting against the More—so dawns the day of hate. And Equality established our numbers. Equality made measures and weights for man. The lightless eye of the night and the light of the sun move equal through the cycle of the year. Each one yields, neither resents the other. So sun and night are slaves for mortal men. But you cannot accept an equal share in your own house, and consign his share to him? Where’s the justice in that? Why praise power, that injustice which you call happiness? Why exaggerate its importance? No! It’s empty! Or do you hope to pile up wealth—and its wealth of trouble? What is this ‘‘more’’? Always ‘‘more’’? Just a word. For the wise man sufficient is enough. Come, let me ask you. Which do you really prefer: to stay in power, or save your city? Is your answer power? But what if Polyneikes conquers you; if Argive spears conquer the Kadmean? Will you see your Theban city shattered, most of its women taken captive, raped by enemy soldiers? Then Thebes will reap only grief for this wealth you chase in the name of your ambition. So much for you. Now, Polyneikes, I speak to you. This favor Adrastos did you was sheer folly, and you were mad to attempt the sack of Thebes. Suppose you do lay waste this city— which heaven forbid! What trophies can you dedicate to Zeus? And how will you start the sacrifice to celebrate destroying your own country? How will you inscribe the shields you place along the banks of the Inachos? ‘‘When Polyneikes had sacked Thebes, he set these shields up in honor of the gods’’?

145

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Never let that be your fame in Hellas, son! But suppose that you are beaten. Suppose his army conquers yours. How then can you return to Argos, leaving thousands of corpses behind? Some Argive is certain to say: ‘‘Adrastos, what disaster you’ve brought on us with this bridegroom. In one girl’s marriage all Argos has been ruined.’’ Two evils then face you, child: if you fail at Thebes, you lose Argos also. Tame your excesses, both of you! When twin follies converge, the result’s disaster!

[576–601]

630

chorus O gods, bring this mischief to an end. leader Make the sons of Oedipus agree again. eteokles Mother, the war is words no more. This meeting was wasted. Your goodwill has brought us nothing. We could never come together except on my terms: that I keep my power and rule this kingdom. Spare your tedious cautions! Let me go! (to polyneikes) And you—clear out or die!

640

polyneikes At whose hands? Show me the man who’s swordsman enough to kill me, and not die himself! eteokles Open your eyes. I am that man. Do you see these hands, and this sword? polyneikes What I see is a rich man. A coward clinging to life. eteokles And you have to bring so many men to make this cowardly nothing kneel? polyneikes A careful captain’s better than a rash one. eteokles Loudmouth! You trust the truce to save you— polyneikes It saves you, too! A second time I claim the scepter and my share.

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[601–12]

eteokles And again we reject your claim. My house is mine. I’ll keep it mine. polyneikes Taking more than your share? eteokles Yes. Now get out!

660

polyneikes O altars of my ancestral gods— eteokles Which you plan to plunder. polyneikes Hear me! eteokles Who are you calling? What god will listen to a man who fights his own country? polyneikes O homes of our gods, gods of the white horses— eteokles Who hate you. polyneikes I have been driven from my country— eteokles Which you have come to destroy. polyneikes Unjustly, O gods!

670

eteokles Call on the gods of Mycenae, not Thebes. polyneikes You have no gods! eteokles I’m not my country’s enemy, like you. polyneikes You chased me off and took my share. eteokles Yes—and I’ll take your life, too. polyneikes O father, do you see my sufferings? eteokles He also sees what you’re up to. polyneikes And you, Mother? eteokles On your lips, that name is obscene. polyneikes O city of Thebes!

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[613–23]

eteokles Clear off to Argos! Go call on the waters of Lerna! polyneikes Don’t worry. I’m leaving. I’m grateful to you, Mother. eteokles Get out! Get out of this land! polyneikes I’m leaving. But let me see my father first. eteokles Not a chance. polyneikes Then let me see my sisters. eteokles You’ll never see them again. polyneikes Oh, my sisters!

690

eteokles Why call for your sisters? You’re their worst enemy. polyneikes Mother, goodbye. jokasta Goodbye! You see what good is left me! polyneikes You have lost your son. jokasta I was born to suffering and sorrow. polyneikes This man insults my very nature. eteokles I have returned him insult for insult. polyneikes Where will you fight? By which tower? eteokles What’s it to you? polyneikes To take my position opposite, and kill you. eteokles I plan exactly the same for you. jokasta No, my sons! For god’s sake, what are you doing? polyneikes You’ll soon see.

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[624–45]

jokasta Won’t you try to escape your father’s curses? eteokles Let the whole house fall to ruin! polyneikes My bloodstained sword will be lazy no longer! I call the gods as witnesses, and the land that weaned me, that dishonored, insulted, I am driven from my country like a slave, as though I were not just as much my father’s son as he. And so, Thebes, for the fate you suffer, lay the blame on him, not me. I marched to Thebes against my will. Against my will I was driven out. Apollo, lord of the roadways, O house that sheltered me, farewell! And you, friends of my youth, and you honey-laden altars of the gods. I do not know if I shall ever speak to you again. But my hopes are not asleep. I still believe that with the help of heaven I’ll conquer him and win this kingdom back.

710

720

eteokles For the final time—get out! How right that our father, with divine foreknowledge, named you ‘‘Polyneikes,’’ since ‘‘discord’’ is what you are.

jokasta enters the palace, and polyneikes exits on the left. eteokles and his attendants retire to the right side of the stage, where they remain motionless during the choral song. chorus Kadmos came from Tyre to this land where a wild calf fell to its knees, thus fulfilling the divine oracle that directed Kadmos to settle the wheat-thick plains where from lovely river water

149

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the moisture sinks in its fullness into Dirke´’s green and deep-sown ground. Here a mother bore Bromios, son of Zeus, over whom twisting ivy sent its tendrils tipped with green, covering him in its leafy shade while he was still a baby, to make him smile. Dionysos, partner in dances of young Theban girls and women who raise ‘‘Evoe´’’ for him. Here slid the gory snake whose pupils darted from place to place; the savage guard of Ares’ spring and streams that make the land grow green. While fetching lustral waters, Kadmos killed him, blow upon blow to his brute head from the crystal rock he held tight in his monster-killing fist. At the order of the heavenly unmothered one, Pallas Athene, Kadmos scattered the great snake’s teeth and they fell into the furrows of rich fields. Then through the surface of her soil Earth erupted the likeness of armed men. Slaughter with a soul of iron drew them down again to bare earth and soaked in blood the soil 150

[646–74]

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[675–99]

that had shown them to the sunlit breezes of upper air. I invoke you, Epaphos, offspring long ago of our ancestor Io, and offspring of Zeus. I call on you with foreign cries, ah, with foreign prayers. Come, come to this city founded by your descendants and devoted to the goddesses we name in the same breath: Persephone and dear Demeter, ruler of all things, nurse of all things, Earth Mother.

780

790

Epaphos, look after this land and send the goddesses with torches held high in their hands. To the gods who sit in power everything is easy. eteokles (to an attendant) You, stir yourself, and bring back Kreon, son of Menoikeus, brother of my mother Jokasta. Tell him this: I want to talk with him on domestic matters, and things that touch the common good before I take my place among the spears and start the battle. No, wait. Enter kreon from the left. He saves you trouble by coming here himself. kreon I’ve been looking for you everywhere, my lord Eteokles. I’ve searched all the gates and guard-posts in Thebes, trying to find you.

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[700–725]

eteokles I wanted to see you, too. When Polyneikes and I met to parley, I saw there’d be no reconciliation. kreon I’ve heard he has great things in store for Thebes, thanks to his alliance with Adrastos, and his army. But all this is in the gods’ hands. I’ve come to tell you of a dangerous new development.

810

eteokles What new development? kreon We’ve captured an Argive soldier. eteokles What’s he say they’re up to now? kreon Their army is about to surround Thebes. eteokles Then Thebes must answer, and meet them in the field! kreon In the field? This is youthful brashness! eteokles Beyond the trenches. That’s where we’ll meet them. kreon We’re few. They’re many.

820

eteokles I know they’re powerful—at boasting. kreon Among Greeks, Argos has a great reputation. eteokles Take courage! I’ll pile the plain high with their corpses! kreon I hope so. But a great effort will be needed. eteokles And that way, I won’t keep my men cooped up inside the city. kreon But victory comes from good advice. eteokles You advise me then to take a different road? kreon Try them all. You can get trapped in one. eteokles A night-attack, perhaps? Surprise them by ambush? kreon Good. Provided you can get home safely.

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[726–49]

eteokles Night’s neutral, but it favors the bold. kreon If things miscarry, darkness can bring disaster. eteokles What if we attacked when they were eating? kreon There’d be some panic, but victory’s what we need. eteokles If they retreat, they’ll have to cross the Dirke´ ford. And it’s too deep. kreon It’s a good idea to proceed with caution. eteokles What about a frontal attack? With cavalry? kreon They’re in strong positions, protected by chariots. eteokles What’s left then? Do I surrender Thebes?

840

kreon Of course not! Think. You’re a clever man. eteokles Can you propose a better plan than mine? kreon I’ve heard them say seven men have been chosen . . . eteokles Seven men? Seven’s no great number. kreon Each of the seven will lead a company to assault each of our seven gates. eteokles What should we do? Not just sit and wait! kreon Appoint seven men of your own, one to each gate. eteokles For single combat, or in command of troops? kreon Commanders of the bravest troops you have. eteokles I see. To keep the walls from being scaled. kreon Assign them adjutants. One man can’t see everything. eteokles Chosen for courage or intelligence? kreon Both. One’s worthless without the other. eteokles Agreed! I’ll go to the seven gates and station 153

850

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[750–85]

commanders there, as you suggest. I’ll pit seven men of mine against their seven. But there’s no time now to name each commander, not with their army camped right under our walls. I’m on my way. We must get moving. With luck I’ll find my brother opposite me. I’ll take him prisoner, or kill him for coming to destroy my city. But if I fail, it’s up to you, Kreon, to arrange the marriage of my sister Antigone to your son Haimon. Here and now, before I leave, I confirm the agreement for betrothal which we made before. You are my mother’s brother, so I hardly need to say: Take good care of her, for your sake and mine. When my father put out his eyes, he proved himself a fool. I cannot praise him, for he knew that his curses might kill us. One thing is still undone: we must know if Teiresias has some guidance for us. I’ll send your son Menoikeus, who bears your father’s name, to fetch Teiresias. He’ll gladly speak to you, but me he hates for questioning his prophetic skill. And now, attendants, bring out my arms and armor. We go now to the ordeal of blood, and Justice who goes with us will bring us victory. We pray to the goddess Precaution, kindest of divinities, to preserve this city. Exit eteokles to the left, followed by his attendants. kreon remains on stage throughout the Choral song. chorus Ares, bringer of suffering and pain, why are you so possessed with blood and death? Why so out of tune with the feasts of Bromios, with the glad dances of girls, garlands on their heads?

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Why don’t you shake your curls loose and sing a song to the flute’s breath when the Graces lead the dance? Instead you incite Thebans and Argives to slaughter. You dance before your band of revelers a grim dance no music graces. You do not brandish the thyrsos in a wild whirl, you are graced with no fawn’s skin. But you stand in your chariot shaking the curb-chain, making the colts’ hoofs clatter, and rush to the flowing Ismenos, where you sit with your cavalry inspiring the Argives against the sons of the sown-men, that armed, shield-bearing band of revelers lined up along the town’s stone walls to oppose them. Yes, war’s a terrifying god who has planned these horrors for the kings of this land, for the Labdakids whose life is suffering and pain. O glen of holiest leaves, haunt of many wild beasts, O eye of Artemis, snow-covered Kitha´iron, you should never have nourished the boy abandoned to die by exposure, the son of Jokasta, Oedipus, the child ejected

155

[786–804]

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from the house, pierced with gold pins. If only that monster of the mountain, the Sphinx, had not brought sorrow to this city with her dissonant songs, she who, sent by Hades to hurt this land once, swooping down on these walls, snatched up the children of Kadmos with her taloned feet, high into the untrodden light of the blazing upper air. And now another ugly war springs from the sons of Oedipus and spreads its way through house, through city. What is not noble is never by nature good. Nor are those children lawful— a mother’s labor and a father’s shame! For she came to the bed of blood kin. Earth, you gave birth, you gave birth once, so I heard in my far-away home, to the race sprung from the teeth of that beast-eating, red-crested serpent, glory and shame of Thebes. And once the gods came to the wedding of Harmonia, and the walls of Thebes rose high to the sound of the lute, towers rose high under the sway of Amphion’s lyre, between Dirke´ and Ismenos, two rivers whose waters come pouring down to the green plain. And Io, our horne`d ancestor, bore kings of the Kadmeans. But this city where good was heaped on good, now stands above the precipice of war. 156

[805–33]

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[834–62]

teiresias enters from the right, one hand resting for guidance on his young daughter’s shoulders. teiresias is blind and very old, and accordingly his movements are slow and halting. His white hair is set off by a wreath of gold leaves, and in one hand he carries a bundle of small tablets. At his side walks menoikeus, a young man of perhaps seventeen. teiresias Lead on, child, like the sailor’s star. You are the eyes for my poor blind feet. Guide my steps toward smooth ground. Go first. Don’t let your poor weak father stumble. Your hands are young and pure. Take these oracular tablets which I prepared at the holy place where I divine the future, observing signs and omens from the birds. Young Menoikeus, how much farther do we have to go to find your father? My old legs ache, and I’ve walked so much I can hardly move them any more.

970

kreon Courage, Teiresias. You’re approaching harbor; you’re close to friends. Help hold him up, son. Old men, like invalids, need a helping hand. teiresias Well, we’re here. Why did you send for me in such haste?

980

kreon You’ll find out. But first collect your strength and catch your breath. Try to forget your rough journey. teiresias I’m very tired. Only yesterday I traveled back to Thebes from Athens. There was war there, too, against Eumolpos, and I made the Athenians victorious. This golden crown you see on my head was awarded to me as firstfruits from the spoils of battle. kreon I view that crown of yours as a good omen, Teiresias. As you know, we’re in rough water here, waiting for the Argive wave to break. King Eteokles, fully armed, has already gone out to meet the Mycenaean attack.

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[863–91]

He gave me orders to learn from you the knowledge that might save the city. teiresias If Eteokles had asked, I would have kept my mouth shut, and withheld my oracles. But since you ask me, I’ll speak. Kreon, this country has been diseased from the time when Laios, disregarding the gods, fathered wretched Oedipus, the son who married 1000 his own mother. The awful blood-stained ruin of his sight is a shrewd contrivance of the gods, and a warning to all Hellas. And the sons of Oedipus who tried to hide these things with the passage of time, as though they could outwit the gods, acted with brutal stupidity. They afforded their father neither honor nor exile. They stung that anguished man to anger. Diseased, degraded, he screamed terrible curses against them. I warned them. I did everything I could to help— 1010 and won hatred for my pains from the sons of Oedipus. I tell you, Kreon, they both will die, each one at the hand of his brother. Their deaths are near. There will be corpses everywhere, corpses piled on corpses, men struck down by Argive and Theban arrows, and there will be mourning and wailing in the land of Thebes. And you, too, poor city of Thebes, will be buried with them if no one heeds my words. Far better for Thebes that none of the brood of Oedipus should live 1020 in this land as citizens, let alone as kings. A father’s sacred curse possesses them; they will destroy this city. But because the evil here outweighs the good, one way out, one way only, remains to us. What that way is, it is not safe for me to say.

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And it will be bitter to those to whom Fate gives the power to preserve the city. And so, farewell. I am leaving. I am one among many. I will suffer what happens. What else can I do?

[891–910]

1030

kreon (grabbing his arm) Don’t go, old man! teiresias Get your hands off me! kreon Wait! Why are you leaving? teiresias It is good fortune leaves you, Kreon, and not I. kreon Tell me how to save the city and its people. teiresias Now you want to know. Soon you will not. kreon How can I not want to save my city? teiresias Is that what you really want to do? You really want to know how? kreon What could I be more eager to know? teiresias All right, then. I’ll tell you. But before I begin, is Menoikeus still here? kreon He’s not far away. Quite near you, in fact. teiresias Tell him to leave now, and get as far from my prophecies as he can. kreon My son, because he is my son, will say nothing. teiresias Then you want me to speak with him present? kreon He’ll be happy to hear we’re all going to be saved.

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teiresias Then here is my prophecy. To save the city of the Kadmeans, this is what you must do: sacrifice Menoikeus here for the good of the land. You yourself insisted that I speak.

[911–30]

1050

kreon What are you saying? What do you mean? teiresias I have told you what you must do. kreon You’ve spoken much evil in a little time. teiresias Evil for you, but great good for the city. kreon I wasn’t listening. I didn’t hear. City, goodbye! teiresias The man is not himself. He shies back. kreon Goodbye, and go! I have no need of your oracle.

1060

teiresias Is your bad luck enough to kill the truth? kreon Oh, I fall to my knees and beg you— teiresias Why do you fall down before me? Bow to evils that cannot be cured. kreon Keep your mouth shut, and don’t spread this about the city. teiresias What you command is shameful. I’ll not keep quiet. kreon What are you trying to do to me? Kill my son? teiresias That’s for others to decide. My part is to speak. kreon How did this evil choose me and my son? teiresias You’re right to challenge me and raise the question.

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In the grotto where Earth brought forth the snake that guards Dirke´’s streams, Menoikeus must be sacrificed and his red blood flow as libation for the Earth, for the ancient guilt of Kadmos, the cause of Ares’ anger, he who now exacts vengeance for the killing of his serpent. Do this, and Ares is your ally. If Earth receives fruit for fruit, blood for blood, then she who once sent up sown-men, progeny with helmets gold as ears of wheat, will be friendly toward you. One from this race must die, one who first saw light as a child of the serpent’s teeth. You are all that remains to us of that race of sown-men— you and your sons. The coming marriage of Haimon makes it unlawful to sacrifice him, for though he is not married yet, and has not touched the marriage bed, he has a bride. But this boy’s life is bound up with the city’s. By dying he could bring us safely through, and make a bitter welcome for Adrastos and his Argives, dropping dull death over their eyes, gathering glory for Thebes. Decide which you will save: city or son. You’ve heard all I know. Child, lead me home. Whoever practices the craft of burnt offerings must be mad. If he reads signs that mean misfortune for those who consult him, he earns their scorn. And if he softens the truth out of pity, he betrays his sacred trust. Apollo should prophesy for men, since he alone fears no one.

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Exit teiresias to the right, led slowly by his daughter. During his exit, menoikeus stands impassively. kreon is sunk in an attitude of despair. chorus leader Kreon, why so silent? Why so quiet? kreon Yet this is a shock for me, too. What can anyone say? It’s clear what I

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should say, but I’ll never sink so low that I’d slaughter my son to ransom my city. All men love their children, and no one would surrender his child to be killed. I wouldn’t want someone to praise my patriotism as he was slaughtering my son. So I myself, in the prime of life, would be prepared to die and deliver my land. Come child, before the whole city learns. Ignore the selfish prophecies of seers, and get away at once, for he’ll be going round the seven gates telling all this to the captains. If you outstrip him, you’re safe. If you delay, we’re lost, and you die.

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menoikeus Where shall I run? To what city? Which of our friends? kreon Wherever you’ll be furthest from this place. menoikeus Tell me where, I’ll go. kreon Pass by Delphi. . . . menoikeus But going where, father? kreon Aitolia. menoikeus And from there? kreon Make for Thesprotia. menoikeus The holy temple of Dodona? kreon Yes. menoikeus How will that help me? kreon The god will guide you. menoikeus And what will I do for money? kreon I’ll give you gold. 162

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menoikeus Thank you, father. kreon Now go!

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menoikeus I’ll go to Jokasta, your sister, whose breasts I sucked when I lost my mother. When I’ve talked to her I’ll leave, and save my life. kreon Yes, run! Don’t hang around here! Exit kreon to the left. menoikeus Women, how well I have allayed my father’s fears, lying to get what I want! He wants me to run, depriving the city of its fate, and making me a coward. Cowardice might be forgiven an old man, but if I became a traitor to my country there’d be no pardon. No! I’ll save my city. I’ll give up my soul for my country. What disgrace, if those who have no oracle hanging over them, and not in the god’s power, should stand by their shields and fight for their land without flinching while I, betraying father, mother, city, run off like a coward. No matter where I went, I’d be contemptible. No, I swear by Zeus who lives among the stars, and by blood-red Ares who once made the sown-men who sprang from the soil lords of this land, that I will take my stand on a high battlement, and sacrifice myself in the serpent’s sacred dark enclosure, where the prophet said that I should free my land. Exit menoikeus to the right. chorus You came, you came, winge`d child of earth, of Ekhidna who lives underground, snatcher of men, killer of men, maker of groans, greedy

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mongrel monster with wandering wings and claws sticky with raw meat. You who grabbed boys from Dirke´’s banks and with your riddling dirge brought a murderous Fury and bloody anguish against this land. A blood-boltered god sent you to make mothers mourn and young girls cry in their chambers. Groans echo through the streets, gusts of sighs and wailing wherever the winge`d woman snatched some man from the city. As time passed, Apollo’s priestess sent pitiful Oedipus to this land of Thebes, first to the people’s joy, then to their sorrow. For he made an evil marriage with his mother when he’d unraveled the riddle and so stained our city, wading through blood into polluted strife, and casting down his children with his curses— the miserable man! We admire, we admire the young man who goes to his death to defend

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this land, leaving Kreon, but bringing victory to the seven-towered gates of this city. May we mother such a child! May we bear such sons, O Pallas, you who held the stone that slew the serpent, you who turned the mind of Kadmos to the deed from which all this devouring and destruction is derived!

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messenger rushes in from the left and pounds on the palace doors. messenger Is anyone inside there? Open up! I must see Jokasta.

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(pause) Inside there! You’re taking your time, Queen Jokasta, come out to hear what I have to say. Wipe your eyes. Stop your groans. Enter jokasta from the palace. jokasta Dear friend, you haven’t brought the news of Eteokles’ death, have you? The death of the man by whose shield you’ve always marched, warding off every attack. Is my son alive or dead? I must know. messenger Don’t tremble so. He’s alive. I can quiet your fears. jokasta The circuit of walls, with their seven towers, they’re safe? messenger Nothing is changed. The city isn’t sacked. jokasta How close did the Argives come?

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messenger Too close. But Kadmean courage was stronger than the spears of Mycenae. jokasta Answer me one thing, and swear by the gods your answer’s true. Is Polyneikes still alive? messenger Both your sons are still alive. jokasta Bless you! Now tell me, how did you turn back the Argive army from the gates when you were cooped up in the towers? Tell me, so I may go to the blind old man inside the house here and bring him joy, since this land’s been saved. messenger When Kreon’s son had killed himself for his country by standing on the high tower and piercing his neck with his sword, this land’s savior, your son placed seven companies and captains at the seven gates, to guard against the Argive army, ordering reserves of horsemen and hoplites to their stations as the second line of defense at the wall’s weak points. From the sheer citadel he watched the white Argive shields swarm down the hill of Teumessos, and, approaching the earthworks, break into a run and close in on the city. Battlecry and trumpet broke out together, from our walls and from over there. Then Parthenopaios, son of Atalanta who hunts with hounds, was first to lead a company with shields pressed rim to rim against the Neitian gate. At the center of his shield was the emblem of his house, Atalanta shooting the Aitolian boar. The seer Amphiaraos attacked the Protidan gate, with sacrificial victims in his chariot, but wisely bearing no proud blazons on his weapons. Hippomedon strode to the Ogygian gate with a sign at the center of his shield. The sign was Argos, eyes spangling his whole body. Some eyes were open, watching their stars rise,

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while some were closed since other stars had set. All this we could see clearly when he was dead. 1260 Tydeus took his place before the Homoloidan gate. On his shield he had a lion’s pelt with bristling mane, and Prometheus the Titan carrying a torch to burn the city. At the Krenaian gate the attack was started by your son Polyneikes. On his shield the fillies of Potniai leapt and fled in panic—they were somehow made to move on pivots from inside, and spun round so they really seemed to rage. But Kapaneus, angry as Ares in battle, led his company against the Elektran gate. On his iron-backed shield 1270 an earthborn giant carried on his shoulders the whole city which he had wrenched from its roots with crowbars—a hint to us what our city would suffer. Adrastos was at the seventh gate, his shield filled with a hundred hydra heads, the glory of the Argives. And from our walls they grabbed the Kadmean children in their jaws. I had time to note all this as I was carrying the password to our commanders. Then we began to press the attack with javelins and arrows, 1280 with slingshots, and a clatter of stones. When we were winning, Tydeus and Polyneikes both shouted at the same time: ‘‘Descendants of Danaos, you hoplites, you cavalry and charioteers, why hang back and wait for their projectiles to smash you to bits? Why don’t you charge in a body at the gates?’’ When they heard this, no one held back, and many fell, heads laid open. And you would have seen throngs of our soldiers tumbling and diving to the soil, lifeless, soaking 1290 parched earth with gouts of blood. And now the Arcadian, Atalanta’s son, crashing into the gate like a whirlwind, calls for twin-blade axes, and torches to raze the town to the ground. But Periklymenos, son of the sea-god, stopped his raving with a stone, a coping-stone

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from the battlements, heavy as a cartload. He crushed the blond head and shattered the sutures of his skull, and the cheeks, already red-bearded, turned red with blood. Only a lifeless body will go home to his mother, she of the deft bow, daughter of Mount Mainalos. When he saw this gate was safe, Eteokles went to the others, and I went with him. I saw Tydeus with his shieldbearers tight about him hurling their Aitolian spears at the towers, so the defenders left their clifflike battlements. But back again came your son, like a hunter summoning his pack. He regrouped and rallied his men and set them again on the towers. We took off to another gate since we had saved this one from falling. But how can I describe how Kapaneus raged? Holding a long-necked ladder, he came running, boasting not even one of Zeus’ thunderbolts could stop him from taking the city apart from top to bottom. While he spoke he was being stoned, so crawling up the ladder, rung by rung, he crouched under his shield. But just as he was climbing over the coping of the walls, Zeus struck him with lightning. The earth rang, terrifying everyone. Kapeneus’ limbs were split apart, scattered everywhere. His hair sailed into the sky, his blood spurted onto the earth, his arms and legs whirled about like Ixion’s on his wheel. His charred body crashed to the ground. When Adrastos realized Zeus was against him, he drew back his men beyond the ditch. Our men, too, saw the favorable sign from Zeus, and charged out—chariots, cavalry, hoplites—and began thrusting their spears right into the heart of the Argive line. It was pandemonium. Many lost their lives—they fell from their chariot-rails, wheels shot into the air, axle heaped on axle, corpse piled on corpse. Well, today we’ve stopped 168

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the destruction of our towers. If this town will be as fortunate in future, that’s up to the gods. For now, one of the gods has saved her. chorus Victory’s a glorious thing, and if leader the gods grant even better fortune may I share it.

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jokasta Fortune and the gods have been good, for my sons live, and this land, too, is spared. But Kreon’s reaped the harvest of this marriage I made with Oedipus. He’s lost his son— which benefits the city, but brings him only grief. Get back to your report. What else are my sons planning? messenger Forget the future. So far you’ve enjoyed good fortune. jokasta That sounds suspicious. I can’t let it pass. messenger What is there to say? Your sons are safe. jokasta I want to know if all will continue to be well.

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messenger Let me go. Your son can’t spare his servant. jokasta You’re hiding something dreadful in the dark. messenger I won’t bring bad news hot after good. jokasta You must, unless you can vanish into air. messenger Why wouldn’t you let me go, after the good news, instead of insisting I reveal the bad? Your sons—with more swagger than sense—intend to fight hand to hand in front of the armies. To the assembled Argives and Kadmeans they have spoken words that should never have been spoken. 1360 Eteokles started it, standing on a high tower, insisting on silence in

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the armies: ‘‘Commanders of the Danaans here assembled, citizens of Thebes: do not for my sake or the sake of Polyneikes gamble away your souls. I all alone, to save you from harm, will fight with my brother, and if I kill him, I’ll rule my kingdom alone. But if he worsts me, this land is all his.’’ That is what he said, and your son Polyneikes rushed from the ranks at once to second his words, while both Argives and Thebans shouted their approval. On these terms a truce was made, and in the no man’s land between the armies, the leaders took oaths to abide by it. So these young men, both sons of Oedipus, sheathed their bodies in bronze, and their comrades helped each arm. They stood gleaming in the sun; their faces did not pale. Each was hot and eager to hurl his spear at the other. From all sides their comrades encouraged them with words like: ‘‘Polyneikes, you can set up a statue to Zeus as trophy, and bring glory to Argos.’’ Or: ‘‘Eteokles, now your city is at stake. If you win, you will be king.’’ This is how they incited them to fight. Then the priests sacrificed sheep to see whether the victims burned with stiff spires of flame, or whether the fires flickered damply. They marked the highest mounting of the blaze, which signals victory, or loss. But if, with wise words, spells, or potions, you can help—go stop your sons from this disastrous fight. There’s terrible danger. jokasta Antigone, my child, come out here in front of the house. The gods have decreed you should take no more pleasure in dances, or other girlish delights. Instead, you and I must stop your brothers from dying at each other’s hands. Enter antigone from the palace.

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antigone Mother, what new calamity have you called me out to hear? jokasta Daughter, your brothers’ lives are lost.

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antigone What are you saying? jokasta They have decided to fight hand to hand. antigone What are you trying to tell me, mother? jokasta Nothing that will please you. Now come with me. antigone And leave here? Where are you taking me? jokasta To the army. antigone I feel awkward among crowds. jokasta This is no time for modesty. antigone Then what will I do? jokasta Bring an end to your brothers’ feuding.

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antigone How, mother? jokasta We’ll bend our knees, and beg them. (to messenger) Lead us to that no man’s land! (to antigone) Quick, quick, girl! If I can reach my sons before they fight, my life is saved. If they die, I’ll die with them. Exeunt jokasta and antigone in haste, led by the messenger. chorus Aiai, aiai, My heart shivers with a sudden pang. Through my body

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pity flows, pity for the poor mother. Two sons. . . . Which will pierce—oh, her suffering— his brother’s neck, which will pierce his brother’s soul with bloody stroke through the shield? And I, miserable creature, which dead man shall I mourn? Oh god, oh god, twin beasts, blood-crazed souls, brandishing spears to cut a fallen foe to pieces. Fools, ever to think of single combat! With Asiatic laments I will raise a cry of mourning, and give the dead the tribute of my tears. Fated death is not far off. Daylight will decide what is to be. This death need not have happened, but the Erinyes ordained it. There, I see Kreon walking this way. His face is clouded. I will stop this mourning. Enter kreon from the right, walking slowly and with bowed head. kreon What can I do now? Shall I start crying and feel sorry for myself, or for my city swathed in fogs as if floating over Acheron?

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My son lies lifeless, having given his life for this land. For this he gained a noble name, but a name that crazes me with grief. I have just taken his body from the serpent’s lair—my whole house cries out in anguish. Now I have come, this old man’s come, to his old sister Jokasta so she may wash the wreckage that was my son, and lay it out. He who has not yet died ought to honor the gods below by honoring the dead.

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chorus Kreon, your sister’s left the house, and taken leader young Antigone with her. kreon Where have they gone? What new crisis now? chorus She heard her sons have challenged each other to fight leader in single combat for the kingdom. kreon What? I was so engrossed in tending my son’s corpse I’ve heard nothing of all this.

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chorus Kreon, your sister set off some time back. leader The fight to the death must be over by now: The sons of Oedipus must have settled their score. Enter messenger from the left. messenger Miserable as I am, what can I say? kreon This prelude means that we are lost. messenger I bring terrible news. kreon To add to what we have already. Out with it! messenger Your sister’s sons are dead. kreon Grief, grief for us all. House of Oedipus, have you heard,

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two sons killed by the same calamity? chorus leader It would weep if it had feelings. kreon I am crushed by this weight of misfortunes. messenger There is more. kreon What else could there be? messenger Your sister died with her sons. chorus The lament, raise it, the cries! With your white arms rain blows on your head!

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kreon Miserable Jokasta, what a close to your marriage and your life the Sphinx’s riddle has made! How did it happen, this triple death? messenger You know of our success at the towers. You could see it all from the walls. Then when the young sons of Oedipus had put on their bronze armor, they came and stood between the armies, two brothers, two commanders, bent on combat. With a look toward Argos, Polyneikes began his prayer: ‘‘Lady Hera, I am yours since I married 1500 the daughter of Adrastos, and I live in your land. Let me kill my brother, and steep my right hand, bringer of success, in his blood.’’ He prayed for a crown of shame, to kill his brother. Many were overcome by tears at this terrible thing. They looked at each other, exchanging glances. But Eteokles, facing the temple of gold-shielded Athena, prayed: ‘‘Pure daughter of Zeus, let me plunge this sword into my brother’s side, and kill the man who comes to plunder my land.’’ 1510

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But when the firebrand was flung—a sign, like the Etruscan trumpet, for the battle to begin—they charged, and like wild boars slashing with their tusks, they slashed at each other, cheeks flecked with slaver. Then they rushed in with spears, and crouched beneath the circle of their shields so steel might glance harmlessly off. If one saw the other’s eye over the rim he jabbed his spear at him, trying to get him first. But they kept their eyes so sharp at slits in the shield, thrusts were spent without effect. More sweat trickled down spectators than fighters, their friends were so afraid. But Eteokles stumbled against a stone, and put a limb outside the shield. Polyneikes, seeing an opening for his steel, struck it with his spear: the Argive shaft pierced Eteokles’ thigh. The whole Argive army raised a warcry. But, seeing the shoulder that had dealt the blow exposed, the injured Eteokles stabbed Polyneikes in the chest, which cheered the Kadmeans. But the spearhead broke off. Desperate, Polyneikes retreated step by step. Then, seizing a lump of marble, he threw it, and snapped his brother’s spear in half. So the battle stood balanced since both had lost their spears. Then, seizing their sword-hilts, they strode to the same spot. Their shields clashed: locked together, they raised the clamor of combat, till Eteokles thought of a Thessalian feint he’d learned when he visited their land. Abandoning his attack, he brought his left foot back behind the shield and, careful to protect his belly, put his right leg out and plunged his sword through Polyneikes’ navel, driving it clean to the backbone. Bending double, so ribs and bowels meet, Polyneikes drops with a gush of blood. Eteokles, now in full command, throwing down his sword,

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begins to strip his brother’s armor off, and, being so intent on that, ignored all else. And that was his ruin. For Polyneikes, gasping for breath, but still clutching his sword, just manages to thrust it out and lodge it in Eteokles’ liver, Polyneikes, the first to fall. So, gripping earth with their teeth, the two now lie side by side. They do not share the kingdom. chorus Oh, Oedipus, how I mourn your sorrows. leader A god seems to have heard your curses.

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messenger There are still more sorrows. When her sons had fallen and were leaving this life, at that moment, their mother, with Antigone, arrived breathless and rushed to them. Seeing them breathing their last, she moaned: ‘‘O sons, I came quickly to your cries, but too late!’’ Dropping down beside them, she began to weep and mourn, grieving that her breasts had ever given milk. Their sister, her companion in grief, cried out: ‘‘Our mother’s comfort in old age, 1570 destroyers of my marriage, my dearest brothers!’’— But then Jokasta heaved a heavy sigh. Eteokles heard his mother. Holding out a dank hand, he did not speak, yet spoke to her with tears from his eyes, token of his love. But his brother still breathed. Staring at his sister and old mother, Polyneikes said: ‘‘We are dead, mother. I pity you and this my sister here, and that corpse, my brother. He who was closest to me became my enemy, 1580 Though love still bound us. Take me, you who brought me into this world, and you born of the same mother, bury me in the soil of my fathers, and soothe the angry city so I may get just that much of my father’s land though I lost the rest. Mother, close my eyes.’’ He put her hand upon them

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himself, and ‘‘Goodbye,’’ he said, ‘‘for now the dark is closing in on me.’’ Both breathed out their bitter lives together. But the mother, seeing this sight of misery, overcome with suffering, 1590 seized a sword from the dead and did a dreadful thing. Through the center of her throat she stuck the steel, and now she lies in death between her sons, embracing both. The soldiers sprang to their feet and started to quarrel. Our side claimed my master won, theirs that Eteokles was the winner. The generals argued, too. Some said Polyneikes struck first, others replied that since both died victory meant nothing. At this point, Antigone withdrew and the soldiers rushed to arms. By happy foresight, 1600 the Thebans were sitting by their weapons, so we attacked before the Argives had time to buckle on their armor. Not one stood his ground. The plain swarmed with their flight and flowed with the blood of bodies pierced by our lances. When we had won, some set up a statue of Zeus as a trophy, while others stripped shields and weapons from Argive corpses and sent the spoils to the city. Still others are with Antigone, bearing bodies here for loved ones to lament. Some of this day’s struggles ended in joy for our city, others in bitter sorrow. 1610 chorus These sorrows are not just a tale that’s told. Soon you can see at the palace door three corpses dropped by fate into common death, winning dark eternity together. Enter antigone from the left, followed by soldiers who carry the corpses of jokasta, eteokles, and polyneikes. While antigone sings and dances her dirge, the

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soldiers slowly and reverentially carry the bodies to the center of the stage, set them down before the palace, and form a guard of honor beside them. kreon remains motionless on the right, absorbed in his grief. antigone Not veiling the silk of the cheek where my curls fall, and not feeling a young girl’s shame at the blood-red flush under my eyes or the blush on my face, I am borne along, a bacchante of the dead. I tear off the band that bound my hair. I drop the softness of this saffron robe. I conduct the corpses with my many groans. Polyneikes, you lived up to your quarrelsome name— to my city’s sorrow! Your quarrel (not quarrel but killing on killing!) has soaked the house of Oedipus in blood, bitter blood. House, what choral song or music of lament to my tears, to my tears, can I summon? I bring these three bodies, mother and sons, the delights of the Fury who destroyed the house

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of Oedipus from the moment that he grasped the monster’s song, so hard to grasp, and killed her while she sang. O my father, my father, out of all the many sufferings this flesh of a day is heir to, what Greek or barbarian, what famous prince from the past has suffered such raw sorrow? O creature that I am, how I cry out! What bird, perched on the high-crowned branch of olive or oak, with the tears of a mother bereft echoes my groans? With tear upon tear I drone this dirge, alone, about to lead my life to the end of my days among my tears. On whose tomb shall I toss the offering shorn from my hair? On the breasts of the woman who nursed me, or the wounds cut into my brothers’ corpses? Ay, ay! Leave your house, old father. Show your blind eyes, your pitiful age, you who at home,

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having drawn down dark mist over your eyes, drag out a long life. Do you hear me as you drift on aged feet through dark halls or lie in misery on your bed? The palace doors open. oedipus emerges alone, tapping his way with a stick. oedipus Girl, why do you goad me into the light with your terrible tears, a bedridden creature from dark chambers, this stick support for my blind foot? A shadow of thin air, a corpse from the clay, a winge`d dream?

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antigone Father, you must know this disastrous news: your sons are dead. And so is your wife. oedipus Ah, my suffering . . . I groan for all this, I cry out. How did three souls leave the light at once? What death did they die? Speak, child! antigone I don’t say this to reproach or mock you, but in misery I say your avenging spirit, laden with sword and fire and ghastly battles, has gone against your sons—oh, my father! oedipus Oh, oh. . . . antigone Why these groans now? oedipus They were still my children . . . . antigone You would endure agony in those sockets

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that once were eyes if you could still see the sun’s chariot sweep across the sky, and see the bodies of the dead.

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oedipus My sons’ fate is clear. But my wife, my poor wife, what death swept her away, child? antigone Everyone heard her tears and cries. She offered her breast to her sons; a suppliant, she rushed to offer it in supplication. She saw her sons at the Elektran gate where they lunged at each other with spears in a field flowering with lotus. The mother saw them, lions in their lairs, warlike still despite their wounds, and the crimson libation of cold blood which Ares offers and Hades accepts. Seizing the hammered bronze sword from the slain she dipped it in her flesh. Gripped by grief for her sons she fell on top of their bodies. The god who brings all things to pass has heaped on our house all this suffering.

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chorus This day has let loose much evil leader upon the house of Oedipus. kreon An end to these tears! It’s time to think of burials and tombs. Oedipus, listen. Power over this land was placed in my hands by your son Eteokles, when he gave the hand of Antigone your daughter to Haimon with a dowry.

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I forbid you, therefore, to live longer in this land, for Teiresias declared clearly that so long as you linger here, Thebes will never flourish. So leave us. I do not speak in arrogance, nor as your foe, but because I fear your avenging spirit could hurt this land. oedipus From my birth I was fated to be wretched and miserable, more than any other man. Even unborn, even before I came into the light from my mother’s womb, Apollo warned Laios I would become my own father’s killer. What a creature I am! And when I was born, the father who made me tried to kill me, thinking he’d made a natural antagonist, since he was fated to die at my hands. And he sent me, still puling for the breast, to be food for beasts. But I was kept alive—Kitha´iron ought to have dropped into the depthless chasms of Tartaros since it didn’t destroy me! But no, the god granted me to serve Polybos, my master. And when I had cut down my own father, quarry of demons that I am, I bedded my mother, and begot the brothers and sons that I have slain. So I conveyed Laios’ curse. But I wasn’t born so bereft of sense that in these acts against my sons and my own eyes I cannot see the gods’ intervention. Well then, what must this miserable man do? Who will come with me to guide my blind steps? She who has died? If she were living she would. Or my fine brace of sons? They’re far from me. Or am I still so young that I can make a living for myself? Where? Why are you killing me, Kreon? For you do kill me, if you cast me out of this land. Well, I’ll not be abject and twine my arms around your knees. I won’t betray my nobility

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[1624–52]

of birth, even if it goes the worse for me. kreon I’m glad you’ve said you will not shame my knees. I cannot let you live here. As for these corpses, this one must be carried into the house. The other, who came to sack this city, his home, this Polyneikes, dump him with the others outside the borders of this land. Now proclaim this to the Kadmeans. Anyone who is caught crowning this corpse with wreaths of green parsley, or placing it in the earth, will earn death for his pains. As for you, Antigone, get inside the house, and behave as befits a pure and virgin girl whom dawning day will bring to Haimon’s bed. antigone O father, we sorrowing creatures lie steeped in evils. I moan more for you than for the dead. It’s not that your life’s divided into dark and light: you’ve walked in darkness from birth. But you, our renowned new ruler, why do you want to insult my father by shoving him out of the country? And why make laws against a miserable corpse? kreon Eteokles decided that, not I. antigone A foolish decision. And you’re a fool to obey. kreon What do you mean? Isn’t it right to carry out commands? antigone Not if they’re vicious, spat out with venom. kreon Isn’t it right to give this body to dogs? antigone No! For the ‘‘right’’ you impose on him is not just. kreon He came as a stranger to destroy his own city.

183

1800

1810

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[1653–71]

antigone And for that he paid his penalty to the gods. kreon Let him pay the penalty also with his tomb.

1820

antigone How was he wrong? He only came for his share in the land. kreon Once more, just so you can grasp it: this man will go unburied. antigone I will bury him, even if the city forbid it. kreon Then you bury yourself, too, close by his corpse. antigone Is it not noble for two friends to lie together? kreon Grab her, and get her into the house! antigone throws herself on polyneikes’ corpse. antigone I will not let go of this corpse! kreon Young woman, the gods’ decrees go counter to your wishes. antigone This, too, has been decreed: offer the dead no outrage. kreon I tell you, no one shall pile the damp dust around him.

1830

antigone Kreon, I beg you, by his mother Jokasta here . . . kreon You’re wasting your time. Nothing can change my mind. antigone At least let me bathe the body. kreon That, too, the city forbids. antigone But—to cover his cruel wounds with bandages . . . kreon In no way will you reverence this corpse. antigone My precious brother! At least I’ll press your mouth to mine. 184

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[1672–88]

kreon It bodes no good, this wailing before your wedding. antigone You’re mad! I marry your son? Not while there’s breath in my body! kreon You have no alternative. How will you avoid the marriage? 1840 antigone This night will number me among the daughters of Danaos. kreon You see how openly she insults us? antigone This steel knows what I’ll do, this sword by which I swear. kreon Why so fierce to be free of this wedding? antigone With this most unfortunate of fathers I’ll face exile. kreon There’s nobility in you—and no small amount of nonsense. antigone No doubt. But I’ll die with him. Maybe that will open your eyes. kreon Then clear out! You’ll not kill my son. Leave at once! kreon signals the soldiers to follow, and exits to the right. oedipus O daughter, it’s kind of you to care for me this way . . . antigone How would I feel if I married, and you wandered into exile alone? oedipus Stay here and be happy. I shall accept my lot. antigone And who will be your guide, blind as you are. oedipus Falling where fate guided, I shall lie on the ground. antigone Now where is the Oedipus of the glorious riddle?

185

1850

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[1689–1708]

oedipus Gone. The same day blessed and broke me. antigone Then shouldn’t I, too, share your pain? oedipus It’s a hard life for a girl exiled with her blind father. antigone No, but noble, if the mind is noble. oedipus Then lead me on, so I may touch your mother. antigone Here, put your hand on your dead wife.

1860

oedipus My mother, my most miserable wife. antigone All evils lie heaped with her here. oedipus The bodies of Eteokles and Polyneikes, where are they lying? antigone Stretched out in front of you, father, side by side. oedipus Place my blind hand on their unlucky faces. antigone Here, hold your dead sons with your hand. oedipus Dear fallen sons, wretches fathered by a wretch. antigone The name ‘‘Polyneikes’’ is dearest to me. oedipus Even now, child, Apollo’s oracle is being fulfilled. antigone In what way? Do you mean there’s worse to come? oedipus I am to die an exile in Athens. antigone Where? What Attic refuge will receive you? oedipus Holy Kolonos, home of the horse god. But come. Help this blind father of yours,

186

1870

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[1709–36]

since you wish to share in his flight. To exile. antigone Stretch here your dear hand, old father. I am your guide, the breeze to blow your ship.

1880

oedipus I am on my way, child. Be my sad guide. antigone Yes, yes, saddest of the girls of Thebes. oedipus Where shall I put my foot? So. Come, be my staff. antigone This way. Come with me. This way. Walk this way with all the strength of a dream. oedipus That it should come to this, wandering, an old man, having to flee my own country. I am suffering, suffering.

1890

antigone Suffering? Why speak of it? The god of retribution doesn’t even see evil, let alone punish mad deeds. oedipus I am he who climbed the height of wisdom, the man who unraveled the beast-woman’s dark riddle. antigone Why hark back to the Sphinx’s bitter days? Speak no more of past successes. All the time, this was in store— exile from your land and death somewhere.

187

1900

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

[1758–63]

oedipus O people of a famous land, look at Oedipus. I alone battered to bits the power of the bloodthirsty Sphinx. And now I am driven dishonored, in torment, from this city. But why these tears, why all this useless whining? I am only a man, and must bear what the gods give. oedipus, supported by antigone, slowly moves off to the left; the chorus exit to the right.

188

NOTES

1–233 / 3–201 1/3

Prologue

Sun, flaring in your flames The play begins in our manuscripts with two verses whose authenticity is highly suspect: ‘‘O you cutting a path through heaven among the stars, and mounted on a chariot inlaid with gold, . . . ’’ M. W. Haslam, ‘‘Euripides, Phoenissae 1–2 and Sophocles, Electra 1’’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975), 149–74, shows that an early collection of hypotheses to Euripidean plays cites our line 1 as the first line of Phoenician Women.

4 / 7–8 Here he married Harmonia The genealogy of the Theban royal house as it appears in Phoenician Women:

Kadmos =

Harmonia

Polydoros Menoikeus

Labdakos

Laios

JOKASTA

POLYNEIKES

189

ETEOKLES

=

JOKASTA

KREON

= OEDIPUS MENOIKEUS Haimon

ANTIGONE

Ismene

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

6 / 10

Menoikeus’ child The manuscripts insert a line at this point, ‘‘And my brother Kreon was born of one and the same mother.’’ Jokasta’s relation to Kreon is duly mentioned in line 41 / 47; whoever introduced it at this point presumably wished to emphasize it.

45 / 51–52 the scepter of this country In the manuscripts, this is preceded by a line of similar import: ‘‘And so he was set up as ruler of this land.’’ One or the other of these lines is likely to be an interpolated doublet, and possibly both are spurious. 115 / 115 made with music The Greek text speaks merely of ‘‘stony work consisting of a wall,’’ but the word translated as ‘‘work’’ (organon) is often used to mean ‘‘musical instrument,’’ and Amphion raised the walls of Thebes by playing his lyre (cf. line 956–59 / 823–24). 151 / 142 I saw on their shields In the manuscripts, this is followed by two probably spurious verses: ‘‘when I went to make a truce with your brother [¼line 93–94 / 97]; and having seen the signs, I know the men in their armor’’ (a clumsy expansion of the idea in 151 / 142). 222 / 188 Amymone Poseidon rescued this daughter of Danaos from the advances of a satyr when she was fetching water for her father, and then seduced her himself. To commemorate the affair, he struck a rock at Lerna with his trident and produced an ever-flowing spring. 234–304 / 202–60 Parodos or choral entrance-song: The Chorus enter in three rows of five, led by a flute player. Their song identifies them and explains their presence in Thebes, but the central part is devoted to their final destination, Delphi, the pan-Hellenic shrine shared by Apollo and Dionysos. These gods are not invoked in Nietzschean contrast but as harmonious emblems of peace and civilization in contrast to the destructive power of Ares (war) that hangs over Thebes. 236 / 204

from the island of Phoenicia The ancient city of Tyre was built on an island, but because of supposed difficulties in the chorus’ description of their voyage, some scholars have preferred to take the phrase as referring to Carthage, a Tyrian colony. It is difficult to see how the audience could have understood so imprecise an allusion. As for the voyage, one can easily enough imagine the maidens sailing south of Crete, west of the Peloponnese (the Ionian sea refers broadly to the waters between Greece and Italy, and puts us in mind of Io, ancestor of Phoenicians and Thebans alike), and through the gulf of Korinth to the port of Thebes. 190

NOTES

From Thebes they were to have been taken to their final destination, Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, but the outbreak of war has intervened. 254–56 / 217–19 the towers of Laios that are / kin to the glorious line / of Agenor Behind this bold figure is a claim of kinship between Tyrians and Thebans: Agenor was the father both of Phoinix, ancestor of the Phoninikians, and Kadmos, founder of Thebes. At 289–92 / 247–49, the Chorus take the claim of common ancestry even further back, to the Argive priestess Io, Agenor’s great-grandmother on most accounts. 264–66 / 226–27 O rock, / flashing with the flare / of tossing torches Reference is to the lower slopes of Mount Parnassos, which rise directly behind the sanctuary at Delphi, where at certain times strange shimmering lights could be seen. These were explained as the god and his revelers dancing with torches in their hands. 268–69 / 229–30 you vine that daily / let drop A miraculous vine in the precinct of Dionysos at Delphi was said to produce one ripe cluster of grapes each day for the god’s libation. 272–73 / 232–33 cave of the serpent / Apollo slew Apollo, while still a child slew the monstrous Pytho in order to claim Delphi for his own seat. Cf. Kadmos’ slaying of the chthonian serpent at Thebes (lines 759–64 / 662–65). 291 / 248

horn-bearing Io Zeus changed Io to a cow in order to conceal her from his jealous consort, Hera.

300 / 256

O Pelasgian Argos The Pelasgians were, for the Greeks, the old autochthonous inhabitants of their land. Argos appears with this epithet as early as Homer (Iliad 2.681), and Aeschylus, in the Suppliants, makes the eponymous Pelasgos king of Argos and most of mainland Greece.

305–72 / 261–638 387 / 347–48

First episode

his share in the solemnities The Theban river is depicted as a kinsman to whom would befall the task of providing water for the ritual ablution of bride and bridegroom on the day before the wedding. He is denied his privilege because the wedding was held elsewhere. Likewise, the arrival of the bride is called silent in line 391 / 349 by contrast to the celebration that should have greeted her, had she really come to Thebes.

191

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

415 / 374 hatred within families In the manuscripts, this is followed by four lines that appear to be an awkward attempt at pathos: ‘‘How enmity finds reconciliation difficult. Well, what is my old father doing within the house, whose sight is dark? And my two sisters? Could it be that they lament my miserable exile?’’ The problem here is not primarily linguistic—the first questions are not, as has been suggested, bad Greek for ‘‘how are they faring?’’ but quite standard Greek for ‘‘what are they doing?’’ to which the last question implies a possible answer. But the whole passage is intrusive and receives no reply whatever from Jokasta. 483 / 438 It may be trite The closing lines of Polyneikes’ speech look suspiciously like the sententious addition of a later interpolator, inspired perhaps by Polyneikes’ complaints of poverty at 441 / 401. The arguments for deletion are not conclusive, however, and we have decided to retain the lines despite our doubts. (Certainly, both the jarring sentiment and the anticlimactic ending can be paralleled elsewhere in Euripides.) 605–6 / 554

For the wise man sufficient / is enough The manuscripts add four lines at this point: ‘‘Mortals do not possess goods as their own; rather we hold and care for what belongs to the gods. Whenever they wish, they take it back again. Wealth is not steadfast, but merely of a day.’’ We are persuaded by the argument that these lines are Euripidean, but interpolated from another context by a process of transfer from the margin of a copy-text into the body of the play.

666 / 606 gods of the white horses These are Amphion and Zethos, whom Euripides here and elsewhere depicts as Dioskouroi, divine offspring of Zeus like the Spartan twins Kastor and Polydeukes. 717–18 / 631

Apollo, lord / of the roadways Polyneikes addresses the cult image of Apollo Agyieus that stood outside the doorway of Greek dwellings, great and small, to propitiate both arrivals and departures; it thus makes a natural starting point for the farewell to his house and familiar surroundings. The cult image was usually a plain conical pillar of stone.

728–96 / 639–90 778 / 678

First stasimon

Epaphos is an appropriate recipient of the chorus’ prayers as ancestor of both Thebans and Phoenicians; he was grandfather of Agenor (see note on 254–56 / 217–19).

192

NOTES

787 / 684–85

Persephone and dear Demeter The cult of these goddesses was apparently prominent in Thebes; the scholiast records a story that Zeus gave Thebes to Persephone as a wedding present. This passage, however, appears to reflect the Athenian traditions as much as Theban: the torches held by the goddesses (793–94 / 687) reflect the importance of fire in the Eleusinian mysteries. In any case, invoking the goddesses reinforces the ode’s themes of the soil and its fertility.

797–881 / 691–784 Second episode 877 / 772

with his prophetic skill This is followed in the manuscripts by five suspiciously clumsy lines: ‘‘To the city and to you, Kreon, I command this: if I should win, never to entomb the corpse of Polyneikes in this Theban earth, but to kill the one who buries him, even if it is a dear one. So much for you. But to my attendants I say,’’ etc. The arguments for deletion are complex, and perhaps not perfectly decisive, but we have found them persuasive. Apart from linguistic arguments, two general points can be made. 1. The lines embody an almost coy foreshadowing of what is to come in the legendary tradition. For example, if Eteokles wins, he can see to preventing his brother’s burial, except in the unlikely (but, as we know, true) case that he should both win and be killed. And the clause ‘‘even if it is a dear one,’’ seeming all too neatly tailored to the case of Antigone. 2. Eteokles has announced the ‘‘one thing’’ (873 / 766) that still remains to be done. Now he is ready to arm and depart. The lines are intrusive.

882–966 / 785–833 Second stasimon The first part develops a consistent metaphoric depiction of Ares, god of war, as a kind of perverse incarnation of the Theban god Dionysos, lord of wine, music, and revelry. Rather than joining in the festive dance (885–93 / 785–88), Ares is dancing-master of death, shaking curb-chains instead of the thyrsus, and inspiring his devotees to slaughter. 917–18 / 800 the Labdakids / whose life is suffering and pain Eteokles and Polyneikes are Labdakids as descendants of Labdakos, father of Laios; the patronymic puts their strife into the context of the curse upon the whole royal house. They also share the epithet of Ares himself in the opening line of the ode, polymokhthos, ‘‘of the many toils.’’ 928 / 805

with gold pins These are presumably the same as the ‘‘spikes of iron’’ stuck through Oedipus’ ankles at line 19 / 25, though the apparent inconsistency of the materials has led some to take up the suggestion of the 193

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

scholiast that the reference is to the golden clasps with which Oedipus blinded himself (56 / 61). 967–1153 / 834–1018 Third episode 984–85 / 844

war . . . / against Eumolpos Euripides, with fine irony, connects Teiresias’ ‘‘saving’’ of Thebes in this scene with a similar incident at Athens. His victory there consisted of announcing to King Erectheus the necessity of sacrificing his daughter in order to win a war he was waging against the Eleusinians led by Eumolpos. This was the subject of Euripides’ Erectheus, produced a decade or more before Phoenician Women. A long fragment survives in which Queen Praxithea consents to the sacrifice in order to save her land.

1154–1209 / 1019–66 Third stasimon 1155–56 / 1019–20 winge`d child of earth, / of Ekhidna This is the Sphinx, child of an earth-spirit and consequently regarded as earth-born herself. 1180–81 / 1043–44 Apollo’s priestess sent / pitiful Oedipus The Pythia at Delphi merely told Oedipus that he would murder his father and marry his mother; he went to Thebes on his flight from those he imagined to be his parents in Korinth. 1210–1416 / 1067–1283

Fourth episode

1217 / 1074 warding off every attack This is followed in the manuscripts by a line that is quite otiose and said by the scholiast to be missing from many copies: ‘‘What new word do you come to announce to me?’’ 1245–77 / 1106–38 The elaborate description of the seven Argive commanders has been suspected as an interpolated substitute for the Antigone/tutor scene (lines 84–233 / 88–201). Aside from its duplication of the matter of those lines, the objections to this passage involve a certain number of stylistic and linguistic oddities conveniently reported and discussed by D. J. Mastronarde, Phoenix 32 (1978), 105–28. 1255–56 / 1113–18 The sign / was Argos These lines are apparently corrupt, but no entirely satisfactory emendation or interpretation has been proposed. We take the text to suggest a picture of Argos, with some eyes open and some closed, against a starry field. Argos’ eyes are likened to constella-

194

NOTES

tions that keep emerging and disappearing as time passes: at any moment some are to be seen. 1265 / 1124 the fillies of Potniai An equivocal emblem: These mares belonged to a son of Sisyphos named Glaukos, who prevented them from mating. In revenge, Aphrodite, goddess of love, turned them against him, and they ate their master alive. 1275–76 / 1135–37 a hundred hydra heads, / the glory of the Argives Adrastos’ shield has a depiction of the Lernaean hydra, which Herakles slew, and whose venom made his arrows deadly. (We omit 1136 in the Greek text, ‘‘holding hydras in his left hand,’’ as an obvious doublet of 1136.) 1362–63 / 1224 silence in / the armies There follows in the manuscripts a redundant line apparently interpolated by someone who felt that Eteokles’ speech needed a clearer marker, and reported by the scholiast to be missing in most copies: ‘‘He spoke, ‘O leaders of the land of Hellas. . . . ’ ’’ 1369 / 1232

this land is all his Three lines follow in the manuscripts: ‘‘You, o Argives, cast aside the fight and go to your country, not leaving your lives here. And the people of the sown-men suffice, who lie dead.’’ The last line is a metrical and linguistic makeshift. The first two are unobjectionable as Greek, but pallid and anti-climactic.

1393 / 1261

There’s terrible danger This is followed in the manuscripts by two lines: ‘‘And the prize is fearful; there will be tears for you, deprived of two children on one day.’’ This bland anticipation of the double death is seemingly confected out of two lines from Sophocles’ Antigone.

1415 / 1281

my life is saved The manuscripts add: ‘‘If you come after, we’re lost, and you die.’’ This is the same as line 1114 / 976 and appears to be an interpolation here.

1417–51 / 1284–1309 Fourth stasimon 1452–1907 / 1310–1766 Exodos This term, defined by Aristotle as the remainder of the tragedy following the final choral ode, obviously includes more than the characters’ departure from the stage, or what we would call the final scene. The exodos of Phoenician Women is unusually long and rich. 1636–37 / 1493 you lived up / to your quarrelsome name The name Polyneikes can be derived from the Greek words polus, ‘‘much,’’ and neikos, ‘‘strife.’’ 195

PHOENICIAN WOMEN

1735–36 / 1574–75 crimson libation / of cold blood There is a grim play on the custom of offering libations (of wine, not blood) in honor of the dead. 1799–1800 / 1632 crowning / this corpse This is not a special tribute, but simply a customary part of Greek funerary practice. 1801 / 1633

death for his pains The manuscripts add a line borrowed almost without change from Sophocles, Antigone 29: ‘‘Leave him unwept, without a tomb, a feast for birds.’’

1841 / 1675

the daughters of Danaos Forty-nine of the fifty daughters killed their husbands, the sons of Danaos’ brother Aigyptos, on their wedding night.

1873 / 1707

Holy Kolonos, home of the horse god Poseidon, god of horses as well as of the sea, had a sanctuary at this suburb of Athens. This line, assuming that it is authentic, is the first mention of Oedipus’ death on Attic soil, a story enacted a few years later in Sophocles’ last play, Oedipus at Colonus.

1901 / 1736

and death somewhere As indicated in the Introduction, the authenticity of much of the final scenes, from the entrance of Oedipus, has been suspected. While we have chosen to retain most of the received text, we find it impossible to credit to Euripides the bizarre exchange that now follows: antigone: Leaving tears of yearning with my maiden-friends, I go far away from the land of my fathers, wandering in no maidenly way. oedipus: Ah, the excellence of your spirit! antigone: In my father’s misfortunes at least it will bring me glory. Wretched me, for the outrages against you and my brother, who is gone from our house, an unburied corpse, miserable, whom I shall cover with earth in secret, even if I must die for it, my father. oedipus: Appear before your companions. antigone: Enough of my lamentations. oedipus: But prayers before the altars . . . antigone: They are sated with my woes. oedipus: Go at least where is the precinct of Bromios, not to be trodden, on the mountain of the Maenads . . . antigone: To him for whom I once ran on the mountains, dressed in the Kadmean fawn-skin, in Semele’s holy rout? To render thankless service to the gods?

To go no further, Antigone and Oedipus have already started into exile (cf. 1874–76 / 1708–9), and there is no apparent motivation for the visits Oedipus suggests. This appears to be the work of a bungler. 1902–7 / 1758–63 We include these lines in order to give some semblance of a closing, but without any confidence that they are the lines Euripides

196

NOTES

wrote to end his play. They are closely modeled on the closing lines of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus; the people addressed in 1902 cannot be the Chorus, but no one else is present. After 1902 we omit a line almost identical to Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus 1525, but with the wrong verbal person for this context: ‘‘he who knew the glorious riddles and was a very great man.’’ We have also excised the closing choral tag, shared with Euripides’ Orestes and Iphigeneia in Tauris, but singularly out of place at the end of this play: ‘‘O great awesome victory, keep hold of my life, and do not stop crowning me.’’

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

Translated by

reginald gibbons and

charles segal

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INTRODUCTION

DIONYSOS

Dionysos is the god of Letting Go. One of his cult titles repeatedly alluded to in the Bakkhai is Lysios, the Releaser. He liberates from the constrictions and restraints of ordinary social life. He does this through his gifts of wine, by his breakdown of inhibitions in group ecstasy and excited dancing and singing, and through the lesser intoxications of the illusion-inducing power of the mask and the theater. He offers a liberating surrender of self that, in the extreme and nightmarish form envisaged in the play, brings homicidal madness. In its more benign version, however, it offers the restorative blessings of festivity, collective enjoyment, and the exhilarating release of barriers between oneself and others. Letting go, surrendering control, yielding to the intoxicating effects of wine or exciting music, total fusion with the group in emotional participation and exultation in our animal energies—these are the gifts that Dionysos holds out to Thebes and through Thebes to all of Greece, that is (in our terms), to the civilized world. The king of Thebes, Pentheus, is repelled by this new cult, but he is also increasingly fascinated and drawn in. For him, as for us (and perhaps for many in the original audience), Dionysiac worship is both thrilling and dangerous. On a psychological reading (and this has been a traditional way of approaching the play), Dionysos fundamentally challenges Pentheus’ view of what he is and thus opens up an identity crisis that ends in disintegration, both emotional and physical. In their first face-to-face encounter, Pentheus is blind to the numinous power in the Stranger’s presence (587 / 501), ‘‘Where is he, then? My eyes don’t see him here.’’ The Stranger makes a direct assault on his identity (592 / 506): ‘‘You don’t know what your life is, nor what you’re doing, nor who you are.’’

201

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

Tragic drama involves us in the lives and feelings of individuals; and here we have no trouble in responding to the antagonisms of the Bakkhai. Pentheus, king of Thebes, and Dionysos, the new god just arrived from Asia Minor, are both doubles and opposites. They are in fact cousins (Se´meleˆ, Dionysos’ mother, is the sister of Agaue¨, Pentheus’ mother); both are young; both, in very different ways, are inexorably determined to establish their place and authority in their city. Pentheus, ruler of the heavily walled, seven-gated city of Thebes, is concerned, if not obsessed, with law and order and with his martial authority. Dionysos, who appears in the play disguised as the handsome Stranger from Lydia, arrives with a band of exotically dressed women devotees who praise the new god’s blessings of wine and song to the accompaniment of foreign-sounding flutes and drums. It is as if a group of outlandishly dressed Hare Krishnas perform their dances in front of an orderly Midwestern City Hall. Or one might compare Pentheus’ crackdown on the maenads with modern authorities’ response to the drug culture— except that for Euripides’ contemporaries Dionysos is already an established god and has a firm place in their religious and civic life. The psychological conflicts are involving, but much more is at stake. What we might read as the language of the self is also the language of religious revelation, the announcement of the mysteries and the rites of which the new god is the center.1 Dionysos’ arrival also raises the question of the balance between restraint and release in a healthy social order. Just fifty years before the Bakkhai, the Furies of Aeschylus’ Eumenides declared (528–30): ‘‘Neither a life of anarchy / nor a life under a despot / should you praise. / To all that lies in the middle has a god given excellence.’’2 And soon afterwards Athena herself, patron goddess of Athens, endorsed these principles in the reconciliation that gives the dread goddesses a firm place in her city (690–700): ‘‘In this place shall the awe / of the citizens and their inborn dread restrain / injustice, both day and night alike, / so long as the citizens themselves do not pervert the laws / by evil influxes . . . / Neither anarchy nor tyranny shall the citizens defend and respect, if they follow my counsel; / and they shall not cast out altogether from the city what is to be feared. / For who among mortals that fears nothing is just? / Such is the object of awe that you must justly dread . . . ’’ The mood in Athens at the time of the Bakkhai is very different, and yet the issues are similar. Once more a

1. See my essay, ‘‘Euripides’ Bacchae: The Language of the Self and the Language of the Mysteries,’’ in my Interpreting Greek Tragedy: Myth, Poetry, Text (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 294–312. 2. This and the following translation from the Eumenides are from Hugh Lloyd-Jones, trans., Aeschylus: Oresteia: Eumenides (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1970).

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strange and potent divinity is at the city gates, and the city must find the safe and proper way of accepting or rejecting him. Aeschylus’ Athens could find a mode of accommodation with those awesome powers in accordance with its civic and religious institutions. In the Bakkhai the Theban ruler would resist to the death, barricade the city, and lock up the intruders.3 But the divine intruder here is not a dread, quasi-monstrous underworld power but a pleasure-giving, laughing god with long blond hair and the flush of wine on his face. Yet just this allure in the god’s outward appearance makes him all the more insidious to Pentheus. What is it about Dionysos and his gifts that makes us hesitant to accept them or suspicious of the benefits they bring? Why should Culture resist the impulses to pleasure and the free play of animal instincts to which the god beckons? Why should we not simply welcome a god who offers us joy in our kinship with nature and delight in spontaneous emotional and physical expression? These questions become most acute when we are face to face with the gifts Dionysos offers, hear the exciting music of his worshipers, and are drawn to leap with pounding feet into the Dionysiac dance and join in the shouts of euhoi with the ecstatic dancers. It is at this point, when Dionysos actually begins to transform our being, that resistance arises. This is the point at which the stage action of the Bakkhai begins, with the dancing of the god’s initiates and the arrival of the god himself, in the guise of the luxurious Stranger, the Eastern Barbarian, the Other—beautiful and seductive but also in some way terrifying. Whether the play means us to identify with the triumph of the god or with the cost to his human antagonists remains the basic interpretive question. Euripides’ presentation of the gods is never simple, and interpreters continue to be divided between a Euripides who defends the religious tradition and a Euripides who criticizes it.4 Euripides wrote his play, I believe, in a way that allows his audience to experience the 3. On the different modes of Athenian and Theban response to such outsiders see Froma I. Zeitlin, ‘‘Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama,’’ in John J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysus? (Princeton, 1990), 130–67; also her ‘‘Staging Dionysos between Thebes and Athens,’’ in Thomas H. Carpenter and Christopher A. Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca, N.Y., 1993), 147–82. 4. To take a recent example of extreme positions, for Seaford the play is essentially a celebration of Dionysos’ positive, unifying role in the polis (Richard Seaford, ed. and trans., Euripides, Bacchae [Warminster, 1996], 46–51; also his Reciprocity and Ritual [Oxford, 1994], 255–56, 293–327), whereas for Stephen Esposito, ed. and trans., The Bacchae of Euripides (Newburyport, Mass., 1998), 1, ‘‘Euripides’ Bacchae is arguably the darkest and most ferocious tragedy ever written.’’ For the diversity of recent opinion see C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1997), Afterword, 349–93; also Paul Woodruff, ed. and trans., Euripides, Bacchae (Indianapolis, 1998), xxix–xxxviii.

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conflicting responses that Dionysos can arouse. In my view Euripides is neither attacking nor defending Dionysos, any more than he is celebrating some sort of conversion from his previous skepticism about the Olympian religion. Rather, he examines the problematical aspects of the cult, reveals both its beauty and its horror, and thereby explores the phenomena of collective violence and madness in ways that reach beyond the play’s historical and religious moment. DIONYSOS AND THE BAKKHAI

Three and a half centuries after its first official performance in Athens in 405 b.c.e., the Bakkhai figures in what is surely the most bizarre moment of literary reception in the annals of theater. In 53 b.c.e. the victorious Parthian commander brought the head of the defeated Roman general, Crassus, killed in battle, to a feast at the Parthian court. A Greek tragic actor who was present as part of the entertainment—one Jason of Tralles—seized the head and recited lines 1324–26 / 1169–71 of the Bakkhai, the horrific moment when the still mad Agaue¨ enters carrying the severed head of her son, Pentheus: ‘‘ . . . from the mountain, / And for this house, we bring in a blesse`d hunt, / A fresh-cut tendril.’’ The performance delighted the audience, Plutarch reports, and Jason received a huge reward from the Parthian king (Life of Crassus 33). There are fascinating coincidences of this event with the original creation and perhaps trial performance of the Bakkhai at the court of King Archelaus of Macedon in the last decade of the fifth century b.c.e. A play written at the northern fringes of the Greek world about the encounter of Greek and non-Greek (‘‘barbarian’’) cultures is reenacted centuries later (albeit partially) in an even more remote setting and with myth transmuted to life—with an even more perplexing mixture of beauty and savagery and an even sharper clash of cultures. Plutarch implies two contradictory audience responses, that of the delighted Parthians who, as Plutarch describes the scene, enter into the performance with gusto, and that of his own intended audience of cultivated Greeks (and perhaps Romans) in a more stable and, on the whole, more peaceful world, with which we can easily identify two millennia later. This contradictory mixture of pleasure and horror in audience response is prophetic of the play’s reception and imitation from antiquity to today; and what Gilbert Norwood called ‘‘The Riddle of the Bakkhai’’ (Manchester, 1908) continues to puzzle, disturb, and provoke. Exactly why, in the last years of his long life (ca. 480–406 b.c.e.), Euripides left Athens for Macedon we do not know. He may have been lured by Archelaus’ ambitious cultural program, which attracted poets

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and musicians from the entire Greek world. Living in Macedon, in any case, Euripides may have had a more intense experience of the collective and individual emotions stirred by the Dionysiac rituals that are at the center of the Bakkhai. The women of that region, Plutarch reports in his Life of Alexander the Great, were especially given to orgiastic rites in Dionysiac-Orphic bands, or thiasoi (sg. thiasos), that practiced ecstasy, possession, and snake handling.5 Yet plays on Dionysiac themes had been a part of the tragic repertoire; and most of the attributes of Dionysos in the Bakkhai were familiar to Athenians, whether in cult, myth, or art. The play won first prize when it was performed in Athens shortly after the poet’s death.6 Ambiguity seems to be an essential part of Euripides’ conception of Dionysos. The god is ‘‘[m]ost terrible to mortals and most gentle,’’ as he himself (in disguise) states at a climactic moment (980 / 861). Like other gods of Greek tragedy—one thinks especially of the Aphrodite of Euripides’ Hippolytos—Dionysos exacts terrible punishment for slights to his divinity; and, as in the case of Aphrodite, that punishment takes the form of an exaggerated and destructive enactment of the god’s gifts, here the deadly initiation of Pentheus and the murderous ecstasy of the Theban maenads. Euripides’ audience would have other points of reference for this mixture of beauty and fearfulness in the god: Dionysiac myths of both male and female violence against kin, tales about the god’s miracles on his arrival at new places, ominous stories about the invention of wine, initiation ceremonies, descents to the underworld, citywide rituals of masking and dressing as satyrs, processions in which phallic images are carried by young girls, fertility rites, sacred marriages, and above all festive times when the new wine is opened and tasted. In contrast to what the play itself might suggest, Dionysos’ widespread and popular festivals generally have happy associations in Greek religion and are characterized by an atmosphere of license, freedom, and good cheer. We have little experience of such public, religiously sanctioned 5. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, c. 2. The references to northern Greece and to the rivers of Macedonia (Bakkhai 409–15, 568–75) are indications of the play’s composition there. 6. See Thomas H. Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford, 1997), 117–18. For an excellent overview of Dionysos, with abundant bibliography, see Albert Henrichs, ‘‘Dionysos,’’ in Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawforth, eds., Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1996), 479–82; idem, ‘‘ ‘He Has a God in Him’: Human and Divine in the Modern Perception of Dionysos,’’ in Carpenter and Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 13–43; also Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 161–67, 237–42; Carlo Gasparri et al., ‘‘Dionysos,’’ ‘‘Dionysos/Fufluns,’’ ‘‘Dionysos/Bacchus,’’ etc., in Lexicon Iconographiae Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich and Munich, 1986), vol. 3, part 1, pp. 414–566; vol. 3, part 2, pp. 296–456 (plates). For further bibliography see my Dionysiac Poetics, 405–11.

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suspension of normal restraints on social behavior. Our closest analogies are perhaps Halloween or the carnival festivals that survive here and there. Mob excitement turning from exhilaration to violence at rock concerts or soccer matches and the like provides some secular parallels, and the intervention of the police on these occasions indicates the threat that society feels in such outbursts. As Dionysos tells us in his opening lines, he is the son of Zeus but also the child of a mortal mother, the Theban Se´meleˆ, the daughter of Kadmos and aunt of Pentheus. This collocation of divinity and mortality also reflects his paradoxical combination of Olympian status and closeness to the earth as a divinity of fertility and liquid energy. He can claim native Greek origins; but, in the guise of a handsome Lydian youth, he leads a band of female Dionysiac worshipers from Asia Minor. In fact, the Greeks of the archaic and classical periods generally imagine Dionysos as a foreign latecomer from Thrace or the East (where he may well have his earliest origins). As a new god, he is sensitive about his prerogatives and zealous to command the appropriate respect. In fact, Dionysos seems to have been already established in Greece in the Bronze Age, for his name occurs on Linear B tablets in the Mycenaean archives of Pylos and Crete around 1250 b.c.e. For the Greeks of all periods Dionysos is best known as the inventor of viticulture and the god of wine. More than two thousand archaic and classical vases depict him in this role, leading bands of satyrs and bacehants amid vines, clusters of grapes, and entangling ivy. These trappings of his worship express the access to the untrammeled energies of wild nature that he offers to his followers. On the vases his bacchants wear the fawnskin, leap and dance energetically, handle snakes and other wild animals, and carry the thyrsos—a fennel stalk tipped with a cluster of ivy leaves. The accompanying satyrs, half-human and halfbestial, with pointed ears and horses’ tails, enact an uninhibited release of animal energy with exuberant dancing, drunkenness, and a frank sexuality that still keeps these vases in storerooms.7 This more frivolous spirit is reflected not only in the satyrs’ imaginative antics in vasepainting but also in the comedies and satyr plays that were presented along with the tragedies at the Great or City Dionysia and the lesser Dionysiac festival, the Lenaea. In Aristophanes’ Frogs, for instance, another play in which Dionysos is a main character, the god’s ambiguous sexuality, unheroic demeanor, and fondness for wine, women, and song are a source of fun and laughter. 7. On the vases the god’s female companions are probably nymphs rather than mortals. See Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery, 52–69; Sarah Peirce, ‘‘Visual Language and Concepts of Cult in the ‘Lenaia Vases,’ ’’ Classical Antiquity 17 (1998), 59–95, especially 54–67.

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At Thebes and other cities (but not, apparently, at Athens) the female devotees of Dionysos went out on the mountain in an excited religious procession, known as the oreibasia (literally, mountain walking), of which the play gives an imaginative version in the two long messenger speeches. The combination of unsupervised women in a forest or on a mountain, a festive atmosphere, and wine was a scenario to excite suspicion, and Pentheus’ response may not have been atypical. Euripides’ Ion and fourth-century comedies make such festivals the setting for the sexual encounters that eventually produce the foundlings required by these plots.8 More broadly, the stories and images associated with Dionysos may express the threats and the anxieties that the maledominated society of fifth-century Athens feels toward the free expression of female emotion. It is symptomatic of this culture that women who are carried away by unrestrained feelings of joy, anger, or grief are described in Dionysiac imagery—and maenad means, literally, mad woman.9 Agaue¨ exemplifies the dangers of this Dionysiac emotion. In the insane ecstasy of the all-female band of worshipers, she tears apart her son like one of the animals shown on the vases (a ritual sparagmos or rending) and then exults over his body rather than lamenting over him, as women traditionally do in group threnodies in this society, and as she will in fact do when sanity returns.10 Happily, the gifts of Dionysos that dominate the two most popular festivals of the god at Athens are less complicated. At the Anthesteria the new wine is opened; at the Great Dionysia, where the Bakkhai was presented, there are phallic and other processions, choral song, and performances of tragedies and comedies. Both of these festivals have solemn moments, but the predominant mood is jollity, spontaneity, freedom from constraint, and exuberance. The odes of the first half of the Bakkhai reflect this spirit. An Attic red-figured vase of the latter half of the fifth century offers a remarkable parallel to the joyous atmosphere of the play’s first stasimon, where Dionysos ‘‘[R]ejoices in festivities / And loves the goddess Peace—who gives us / Our plenty and rears our 8. Pentheus reiterates his conviction that these maenadic rites are the occasions for illicit sex: see 260–77 / 221–38, 416–18 / 353–54, 541–45 / 455–59, 573 / 487, 793–95 / 686–88. For the lasciviousness in Dionysiac myth generally see Seaford, Reciprocity, 265–67. 9. See, e.g., Aeschylus, Seven against Thebes 835–36, Suppliants 562–64; Sophocles, Trachinian Women 216–20; Euripides, Hecuba 684–87 and 1075–78, Phoenician Women 1489–90. Bacchantic imagery also frequently describes violent and destructive male emotions, such as the fury of war or madness, as in Sophocles, Antigone 135–37 or Euripides, Herakles 889–93. See in general Renate Schlesier, ‘‘Mixtures of Masks: Maenads as Tragic Models,’’ in Carpenter and Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 89–114, especially 98–114. 10. See Bakkhai 1323–55 / 1168–99 and in general my Dionysiac Poetics, 362–66, with the further references there cited.

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children’’ (498–500 / 418–20). This vase depicts a youthful and sensual Dionysos surrounded by female figures who personify Peace, Grape Blossom, and Ripeness. They offer trays of fruit while a satyr quietly plays a lyre and another satyr, personifying Revel (Koˆmos), stands nearby. Hovering above Dionysos, a winged putto, symbolizing Desire, holds out a fillet.11 Even this peaceful scene, however, shows the more unruly side of the god’s gifts, for a satyr is about to attack one of the females. At Athens, Dionysos also has important civic functions and is identified with the city’s democratic spirit. He is a leveling god whose gifts are available to all and are celebrated in ways that blur the divisions of male and female, young and old, rich and poor, human and animal. His major festival, the Great Dionysia, expresses the strength, unity, and political concerns of the city.12 This festival opened with a procession in which an ancient wooden statue of the god was carried from his shrine at Eleutherae, in the border territory near Thebes, to the god’s precinct adjoining the theater, in the heart of the city, thereby symbolically linking the periphery of the city’s territory with its center. Other events here, in the theater of Dionysos, have political and patriotic meaning: the libations by the ten elected generals, the display of the tribute paid by the subject allies of Athens’ naval empire, and the parade of young men of military age whose fathers had been killed in battle and who were raised at state expense. (This is not to say that the plays presented at the festival necessarily endorse a political ideology or are propagandistic.) At the Anthesteria Dionysos marries the wife of the King Archon, who has the ritual title of Basilinna, the Queen, in what may be a symbolical form of a Sacred Marriage (hieros gamos), promoting the well-being of the city through the union of god and mortal. Throughout Attic tragedy Dionysos is invoked as a god of purification who can help the city at moments of crisis. In Sophocles’ Antigone the troubled chorus calls upon him in these terms: ‘‘Thebes you honor as the highest of all cities, with your lightning-struck mother; and now, when the city with all its people is held fast in disease, come with purifying foot over the slopes of Parnassos, over the roaring straits of the sea’’ (1137–45).13 In the sculpture and vase-painting of the archaic and classical periods, including the metopes of the Parthenon, Dionysos 11. For the vase see Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery, plate 36B and his account, pp. 100–101. 12. See Simon Goldhill, ‘‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology,’’ in Winkler and Zeitlin, eds., Nothing to Do with Dionysus? 97–129, especially 98–106; see also my Dionysiac Poetics, 356–59. On Dionysos and the theater see P. E. Easterling, ‘‘A Show for Dionysos,’’ in Easterling, ed., Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1997), chap. 2, especially 36–38, 44–53. 13. See also Sophocles, Antigone 147–54 and Oedipus Tyrannos 209–15.

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joins in the gods’ battle against the Giants, a symbolic conflict between chaos and order particularly popular after the Persian Wars.14 As Iakkhos, the divine child associated with Demeter, goddess of grain and the fertility of the earth, he has a place in the goddess’ important mystery cult at Eleusis at the southern border of Athens. By the late fifth century Dionysos also has mysteries of his own into which men and women can be initiated with the promise of a better life in the hereafter. He also has an important place in the elaborate mythology of the socalled Orphic mysteries, though their date is controversial. In an old mythical tradition Dionysos himself descends to Hades to bring back his mortal mother, Se´meleˆ. Recent archaeological discoveries have confirmed these chthonic and initiatory associations and given fresh significance to the puzzling statement of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Herakleitos (sixth-century b.c.e.), ‘‘Dionysos and Hades are the same.’’15 Mystery religions and foreign cults, such as those of Bendis, Kybele´, or Sabazios, were becoming more popular in late fifth-century Athens; and scholars have suggested that Euripides is using the myth of Dionysos’ arrival from the East as a way of exploring the malaise about these new divinities.16 Initiation into the mysteries of Dionysos has many resonances in the play. At his first miracle in the play, the shaking of the palace by earthquake (the so-called Palace Miracle, 671–701 / 576–603), his worshipers see a bright light; as Richard Seaford has shown at length, such visions of light are often a part of the mystic experience.17 The Stranger’s dressing of Pentheus as a maenad before leading him to his death on Mount Kitha´iron probably evokes the robing of the initiand in such mystery rites. By changing his or her ordinary clothes for the special garments of the god’s worship, the initiand takes off his old identity and is symbolically reborn into a new life as a devotee of these mysteries. 14. See Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery, chapter 2; also Richard Seaford, ed., Euripides, Cyclops (Oxford, 1984), on lines 5–9. 15. Herakleitos, 22B15, in Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 5th ed., 2 vols. (Berlin, 1950–52). For a recent overview of Dionysos’ connections with Hades and passage to the Underworld see Fritz Graf, ‘‘Dionysian and Orphic Eschatology: New Texts and Old Questions,’’ and Susan Guettel Cole, ‘‘Voices from beyond the Grave: Dionysos and the Dead,’’ both in Faraone and Carpenter, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 239–58 and 276–95, respectively. On initiation into the Dionysiac mysteries see Richard Seaford, ‘‘Dionysiac Drama and the Dionysiac Mysteries,’’ Classical Quarterly 31 (1981), 252–75; idem, Reciprocity and Ritual (Oxford, 1994), 280–301; idem, ed., Bacchae, 39–44; Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 33–35, 95–97. See also my Dionysiac Poetics, 353–55, with the further bibliography there cited. 16. See H. S. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion I: Ter Unus (Leiden, 1990), 131ff. 17. For the initiatory elements discussed here see the references to Seaford’s work above, note 15; also his comments on 606–9, 616–37, 912–76 (Greek line numbers) in his edition of the play.

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Simultaneously, initiation brings a figurative death to one’s past life. The robing scene, then, along with its demonstration of the god’s uncanny power, ‘‘Most terrible and most gentle,’’ also dramatizes Pentheus’ movement, as an initiand, into a realm of experience that he has denied and that is hidden from him. These initiatory motifs, however, have their particular function in the tragic action. Nothing in the play suggests a mystical rebirth or renewal. In its tragic perspective initiation brings bloody death, not rebirth. Like all the rituals enacted in the play, its positive meaning is perverted.18 The play disturbs us precisely because Dionysos’ life-enhancing and lifedestroying powers stand so close to one another. The bacchants, who voluntarily accept the god, experience the happiness that the opening ode promises. Having refused the blessings of the god, the Thebans shown in the play experience his destructive side. The vases show the nymphs in Dionysos’ entourage both fondling and destroying the same wild animals (usually fawns or wild felines);19 thus the play shows the Theban maenads abruptly turning from a paradisiacal mood of Golden Age harmony with nature (783–817 / 677–711) to an irresistible and uncontrollable frenzy of killing and plunder (843–77 / 735–65). Inevitably, Dionysos’ cult was far more restrained in practice than the mythical representations might suggest.20 The eating of raw flesh described in the Bakkhai’s first ode and hinted at after the sparagmos of Pentheus (1339 / 1184) is attested only once in the historical period and in a much milder and more banal form than in the play. In an inscription from Miletos in the third century b.c.e. the worshipers are to ‘‘throw in the piece of raw flesh,’’ which may have consisted in token bits of meat prepared and handed out in advance. We should, then, be cautious about taking Euripides’ portrait of the god and his rites as a faithful indication of his cult in the ancient city-state. Both the vases and the play are mythical representations, not depictions of actual events. Nevertheless, such scenes do reveal an ambivalence about Dionysos in the Greek imaginary, that is, in the representational forms that the ancient Greeks use to explore their conceptual and emotional world. Dionysos is, as an anthropologist might say, ‘‘good to think with’’ precisely because he calls into question the barriers between the animal and human realms and between the 18. On the ironic inversions of initiatory passage see my Dionysiac Poetics, chapter 6, and also Helene Foley, Ritual Irony (Ithaca, N.Y., 1985) 208–18. 19. See Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery, 114. 20. Jan N. Bremmer, ‘‘Greek Maenadism Reconsidered,’’ Zeitschrift fu¨r Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55 (1984), 267–86; Albert Henrichs, ‘‘Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina,’’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 82 (1978), 121–60.

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pulsing energies of nature and the order and discipline required for civilized life. N O M O S A N D P H Y S I S : D I O N Y S O S A N D ‘ ‘ T H E N A T U R A L ’’ The conflicts over Dionysos in the play implicate one of the major philosophical and ethical debates of the late fifth century, the dichotomy between nomos and physis, terms of wide-ranging import for Euripides’ contemporaries.21 Nomos (law or custom) implies social practice and established institutions. Physis (usually translated as nature) refers to forces that are generally restrained by nomos: the instincts, the appetites, the demands and impulses of the body. Physis shows up in culture as an artificial imposition on something more basic or more essential than human institutions. It includes those aspects of the natural world that are beyond human control or not made by human design but to which humankind may be subject. Contemporaries of Euripides use arguments from physis to suggest the existence of dangerous, aggressive traits in humankind that law has to keep in check, or to demonstrate that law is an artificial constraint on underlying, amoral animal appetites we would all gladly indulge if we dared. The latter is the position of the Unjust Argument of Aristophanes’ Clouds, developed in a more radical direction by Plato’s Kallikles in the Gorgias and Thrasymakhos in the Republic. Nature is here defined as a ruthless human will to power that seeks domination wherever it can. But the nomos-physis dichotomy can also take a more benign form, where the institutions of society (nomoi) are seen as themselves rooted in nature (physis) or where nature even offers relief from the restraints or the harshness of certain social institutions.22 Such theories attempt to bridge over the gap between nomos and physis, and these, too, find resonances in the Bakkhai.23 While Dionysiac worship has affinities with nature in releasing our emotional energies and bringing us closer to the life force of plants and animals, the play is far from extolling physis over nomos. Both the chorus and Teiresias, for instance, imply that Dionysos’ worship brings law and

21. For the nomos-physis dichotomy in the play and its relation to the Sophistic movement see W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1969), 55–134; G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, 1981), 111–130. For a brief and lucid recent discussion see Desmond Conacher, Euripides and the Sophists (London, 1998), 99–107. 22. These views resemble the respective positions of the so-called Anonymus lamblichi (number 89, chapter 6, in Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker) and the controversial and fragmentary On Truth attributed to Antiphon the Sophist (87 B44, in Diels-Kranz). For discussion see Guthrie 84–107 and Kerferd 115–16. 23. For some of the complexity of nomos and physis in the play see my Dionysiac Poetics, 20–22, 31, 344, and chapter 3 passim.

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nature together. At various points in the play, the chorus of Lydian bacchants, Kadmos, and Teiresias all urge the acceptance of the worship of Dionysos as part of the established laws or customs (nomoi) of the mass of the common people. As the chorus sings at the end of their second ode, ‘‘Whatever everyone, all / Simple, ordinary people, / Prefer and do, this I accept’’ (513–15 / 430–32). The chorus associates its god with ancient and widespread religious practices involving the joyful celebration of fertility, the vitality of nature, and the old Near Eastern earth- and mother-goddess, Kybele´. The prophet Teiresias has a more rationalistic approach; he appears, anachronistically, as an adherent of the fifth-century intellectual movement known as the Sophistic Enlightenment. For him Dionysos is virtually an allegory for the principle of liquid nurture, complementing Demeter, goddess of grain and agriculture (321–34 / 274–85; see also 236–40 / 200–204). Near the end of its fourth ode, the third stasimon, the chorus makes its most explicit and most philosophical statement about this harmony between nomos and physis in Dionysiac cult (1022–27 / 893–96): ‘‘It costs so little / To believe that it does rule— / Whatever the divine may be, / Whatever over long ages of time / Is accepted as lawful, always, / And comes to be through nature.’’24 On this view, Dionysiac religion allows the necessary release and expression of the animal energies that are part of nature but within the framework of the established social institutions, the nomoi. Pentheus takes the opposite position: for him the nomoi, the institutions of society, are culture’s necessary imposition on nature. He is suspicious and fearful of the dangers inherent in instincts and impulses that are not checked and channeled by social control. The followers of Dionysos might respond that these instincts are essential parts of human beings and so must be part of culture, too. On this view the nomoi must make a place for this part of ourselves, otherwise culture itself is flawed and precarious. In other words, as lines 1022–27 / 893–96 (cited above) imply, nomos is itself grounded in physis. When the chorus repeatedly invokes sound good sense and wisdom (soˆphrosyneˆ and sophia), it refers to the balance between nature and culture, instincts and law, that exists when Dionysos has his proper place within the city. The wisdom that the chorus claims for its god (sophia) contrasts with the cleverness (to sophon) of its opponents who would exclude Dionysos and keep the city under a narrow, authoritarian definition of both law and culture (see 469 / 395, 1002–6 / 877–81). 24. The text and interpretation of these difficult but important lines follow E. R. Dodds, ed., Euripides, Bacchae, 2nd edition (Oxford, 1960), on 890–92, 893–94, 895–96 of Greek text.

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The play, however, unsettles and destabilizes the two positions. Both sides claim the virtues of sound good sense and wisdom. But Pentheus, ostensibly defender of the laws of the city, is far from rational and is carried away by emotional violence and excess. The worshipers of Dionysos, initially at least, praise peace and calm; but the play’s most spectacular manifestation of Dionysiac ecstasy is a wild and murderous vengeance and a mad lust for blood. Early in the play the young king, the old prophet of Thebes, and the Lydian representatives of Dionysos all claim the authority of nomos: all, in their own way, present themselves as defenders of culture. But by the end all three are in some way discredited, Pentheus by the repressiveness and self-blindness that accompanies his violence, Teiresias and Kadmos by their utilitarian rationalizations and interested motives (the glory of Thebes and the prestige of established religious authority), and the chorus by its increasing fanaticism and murderous vengefulness that its god, in the closing scenes, does nothing to mitigate. RESISTANCE, EPIPHANY, AND ILLUSION

The Bakkhai tells the story of how Dionysos overcomes the resistance to his worship at Thebes, and it is a widespread story type in myths about the god. It is a tale of triumph but also a tale of pain. Aeschylus dramatized a similar myth in his trilogy about the Thracian king Lykourgos who rejects the worship of the god, is driven mad, and chops his son to bits with an ax thinking that he is attacking a vine sacred to the god.25 Aeschylus wrote another trilogy on Dionysos’ arrival at Thebes, which included a Semele´ and a Pentheus. This myth, like all the myths that tragedy retells, could be rendered in a number of different ways. Euripides seems to have followed the outlines of Aeschylus’ plot, but with more emphasis on the human psychology and perhaps also on the problematical side of divine justice.26 The Bakkhai dramatizes a recurrent mythical narrative in which a city refuses to accept Dionysos and he then turns its women against their own flesh and blood in bacchantic madness. After proving his divinity at Thebes through the filicidal madness of Agaue¨, Dionysos proceeds to Argos, where he similarly drives the women mad so that ‘‘on the mountains they devour the flesh of the children whom they held at the

25. See Homer, Iliad 6.130–40 and Sophocles, Antigone 955–65. 26. For the Aeschylean plays about Dionysos see Dodds, ed., Bacchae, Introduction, xxviii-xxxiii; Seaford, ed., Bacchae, 26–28 (Greek lines), with further bibliography. The hypothesis to Euripides’ Bakkhai attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium (third century b.c.e.) says, ‘‘The myth is found in the Pentheus of Aeschylus.’’

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breast.’’27 When the daughters of King Minyas at Orkhomenos ignore his festival and continue their sober women’s work of weaving, the looms suddenly sprout vines and grapes and the room drips milk and honey. These women then rush forth to the mountain where one of them tears apart her child.28 Similarly in the Bakkhai the Theban women leave the looms for the mountain and then abruptly change from sending forth wine, milk, and honey to shedding blood.29 Such myths may reflect the power of the god to release women from the control of the patriarchal household;30 but they also show how suddenly he can shift from fostering to destroying life. In the resistance myth of Lykourgos discussed above, for example, the king not only chops up his own son but also by his death restores the fertility of the land. In such myths of Dionysos, fertility and destructiveness are always dangerously close. Theatricality is fundamental to Dionysiac ritual, with its masked dancers, choral performances, and processions of citizens who dress up as satyrs and march around with images of the phallus.31 As god of the mask, Dionysos offers his worshipers the freedom to be other than themselves and so to engage in the playful license that characterizes his festivals.32 The possibility of acting out another identity, of entering into a self that is not one’s own, obviously underlies the dramatic performances that are an important part of those festivals. The mask can also be frightening: it is risky to step out of one identity into another. The remarkable scene in which the Stranger dresses the Theban king as a maenad—that is, as the ultimate Other as far as Pentheus is concerned—examines the danger and the pleasure of losing oneself in the power of illusion, including dramatic illusion.33 27. Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.5.2. These Argive women are probably to be identified with the daughters of King Proetus, who in some versions are driven mad by Dionysos: see Apollodorus 2.2.2. 28. Aelian, Varia Historia 3.42; see also Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.389–415. The madness of Ino follows a similar pattern and, though sent by Hera, also has Dionysiac associations: see Apollodorus 3.4.3 and Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.520–30. See Burkert, Greek Religion 164; Seaford, Reciprocity, 291–92. 29. For the looms see Bakkhai 147–48 / 118; cf. 601 / 514, 1394–95 / 1236–37, and for the change from nurturing liquids to bloodshed, and vice versa, see Bakkhai 166–77 / 135–45, 786–881 / 680–768. 30. On Dionysos and liberation of women from the household see Seaford, Reciprocity, 258–62, 301–11, 326–27; also his ‘‘Dionysos as Destroyer of the Household: Homer, Tragedy, and the Polis,’’ in Carpenter and Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 115–46. 31. Seaford, Reciprocity, 266–75. 32. On Dionysos and the mask see Franc¸oise Frontisi-Ducroux, Le Dieux-masque: une figure de Dionysos a` Athe`nes (Paris, 1991); idem., Du masque au visage (Paris, 1995), 105–16; Henrichs in Carpenter and Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 36–39; my Dionysiac Poetics, 372–73; Eric Csapo, ‘‘Riding the Phallus for Dionysos,’’ Phoenix 51 (1997), 255–58, with references to earlier literature. 33. See my Dionysiac Poetics, chap. 7, with the Afterword, 369–78. To the references there cited add Easterling, ed., Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, 165–73, 193–98; Mark Ringer, Electra

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The late fifth century was much interested in the nature of artistic illusion, which, in any case, is associated with Dionysiac masking. This, too, finds dramatic enactment in the play. Thus as Pentheus here moves from the margins of the spectacle, as an onlooker, to its center as the hunted beast-victim, the scene also explores the process of surrendering to illusion. Although Pentheus stands initially in the place of the audience, as it were, eager to see the spectacle that the Stranger has offered to him, he soon becomes the central figure in the little drama of destruction that Dionysos has staged and for which he has dressed his ‘‘actor,’’ Pentheus. The episode thus explores the crossing of the boundary between spectator and participant in a terrifying way. Dionysos makes his presence felt among his worshipers in a burst of numinous energy that inspires awe, joy, and a sense of power. This sudden, mysterious appearance is a regular feature of his cult. Euripides draws on this cultic background in constructing his play as a sequence of epiphanies, each of which marks a new stage of the action.34 Dionysos’ first word, and the first word of the play in the Greek, heˆkoˆ, ‘‘I have come’’ or ‘‘I am here,’’ suggests that the entire play can be viewed as his epiphany.35 In the later epiphanies within the play, the god makes himself known miraculously in a blaze of light or, more ominously, in the form of an animal, particularly a bull. The signs of the god’s presence gradually become stronger and more dangerous: from the Stranger’s assertions of the god’s presence in his face-to-face interrogation by Pentheus (537–607 / 451–518), to the ‘‘great light’’ accompanying the earthquake that shakes the palace and the bull-like phantom with which Pentheus wrestles in the dark enclosures of the palace (717–39 / 618–36). When Pentheus later emerges from the palace robed as a maenad and is completely in the god’s power, he sees the god in the form of a bull (1054–57 / 920–22). That scene ends with the chorus’ prayer for a Dionysiac epiphany (1153–55 / 1018–19): ‘‘Appear as a bull! As a snake / With many heads, for us to see you! / As a lion with a mane of fire!’’ The prayer is answered in effect by the god’s appearance in the Second Messenger’s speech, which must have aroused the same frisson of horror and awe in the ancient audience as it still does today (1224–29 / 1082–85): and the Empty Urn (Chapel Hill, 1998); Gregory Dobrov, Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Oxford, 1998). 34. The epiphanies and miraculous metamorphoses of the god are also prominent in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (Hymn 7 of the Homeric Hymns). See Henrichs in Carpenter and Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus, 16–22. 35. See Dodds, ed., Bakkhai, on line 1, p. 62; also Giorgio Ierano`, ed., Euripide, Baccanti (Milan, 1999), p. 98.

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‘‘And as the voice proclaimed these things, / A rising light of holy fire was set / Between the earth and heaven. The high air / Was still; the leaves of all the trees were still—/ You would not have heard one animal / Stir or cry out.’’ The contrasting effect of these epiphanies corresponds to the contrasts in Dionysos throughout the play. To his worshipers they bring joy and relief; to outsiders, terror and danger. Dionysos intensifies the power of his epiphanies by concealing his divine appearance beneath the guise of the Lydian Stranger. Even his disguising of Pentheus in his revenge plot is paradoxically a form of revelation as it brings to light a hitherto hidden side of the young king. Dressed and led as a maenad to the mountain, Pentheus loses his vaunted control over women and sexuality. Not only can he no longer control the boundaries between interior and exterior, city and mountain, self and other, but he can no longer control his own sexuality. The Lydian Stranger (Dionysos in disguise) gradually emerges as the young king’s repressed alter ego, the side of himself that he would keep locked behind the fortified walls of his city or confined in the dark prison of the palace. Failing to do this, Pentheus suffers a fragmentation of self that, in the play’s nightmare vision, is physically enacted in the sparagmos, the ritual rending of his body by the bacchants. THE PLAY

Euripides begins this play, as he does several others, with a god who explains the background and describes the future course of events. This god, Dionysos, however, has taken on mortal form (5 / 4) and will be an actor in his own plot. His disguise also points to some of the unique qualities of Dionysos’ cult: the importance of epiphany (the god’s sudden revelation of himself to his worshipers), his closeness to his worshipers, and the intense closeness of his presence that he makes them feel—qualities that the following ode will soon exhibit. Dionysos begins with the story of his birth. Se´meleˆ, daughter of Kadmos and sister of Agaue¨, became pregnant with Dionysos by Zeus. Hera, Zeus’ jealous wife, tricks Se´meleˆ into asking her divine lover to appear before her in his full celestial splendor (Zeus being the god of the sky, lightning, and thunder); and she is killed by the lightning flash of this private epiphany. The results of Se´meleˆ’s fatal request are still visible in the smoking ruin at Thebes that is now her tomb and her memorial, and Dionysos has made this burgeon with grapevines. Zeus saved the child by keeping him in the ‘‘male womb’’ of his thigh (the world’s first incubator) until he was ready to be born (614–17 / 523–27). Dionysos, now a young god (as he generally is in late fifth-century

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representations),36 has come to Thebes to vindicate his status as the son of Zeus, to punish the Theban royal family for refusing his worship, and to introduce his rites to Greece, beginning with his birthplace. He has driven mad Se´meleˆ’s sisters, including Pentheus’ mother Agaue¨, and along with them all the women of Thebes, and sent them outside the city to Mount Kitha´iron (44–53 / 32–38). There, as the play begins, they are celebrating Dionysos’ rites as the first bacchants of Greece. As Dionysos concludes the prologue, the exotically dressed chorus of Asian bacchants enter the orchestra to the excited rhythms of flute (and perhaps drum) and proclaim its god in an exquisitely beautiful first ode (the parodos, 84–202 / 64–167). Calling to the bacchants to join the rites, the chorus display the distinctive features of this new god’s worship: delight in song, ecstatic dancing, the excitement of pulsing animal life, and the forgetting of self in the surge of intense group emotion. The first real action of the play, however, shows a very different area of the god’s power as the two elders of Thebes—the prophet Teiresias and the former King Kadmos—enter carrying the fawn skin and the thryrsos, emblems of Dionysos’ worship, on their way to join his devotees on the mountain. The scene may have its comic aspect, but it also shows Dionysos’ universal power. He transforms Thebes’ most sober citizens to roles completely different from their accustomed ones. This is a modest and, so far, benign indication of the god’s power to change radically those who acknowledge his power. But, as Pentheus now enters, the sight of the old men in Dionysiac dress infuriates him, and he ridicules both the worshipers and the god. Pentheus’ first lines on the stage (254–88 / 215–47) define the issues of his conflict with Dionysos: the city’s control of women, sexuality, and the reinforcement of restraints and boundaries. He dwells on the seductive effects of the new cult on women and pays particular attention to the erotic attractions of the young Lydian Stranger (see 273–77 / 235–38). He will imprison the bacchants in the city, hunt down and put in chains those on the mountain, and have the Stranger’s head, with its tossing hair, severed from his body. This very punishment will be Pentheus’ own fate, in accordance with the play’s basic structure of reversals between the young king and the young Stranger, aggressors and victims, active and passive figures, hunters and hunted. ‘‘Yet another wonder,’’ Pentheus cries scornfully, when he sees the new converts. He at once puts the blame on Teiresias, threatens 36. Sixth-century representations of Dionysos show him as a mature adult with a full beard. By the last half of the fifth century he is shown as a graceful, beardless youth, as in the reclining figure (probably) on the east pediment of the Parthenon, around 440 b.c.e.

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him with prison, and fulminates against the cult’s corruption of women (289–306 / 248–62). The ridicule that Pentheus heaps on these male bacchants, however, will eventually be directed at him when he dons maenadic dress (1044–1105 / 912–70); and there the laughter will be mixed with the tragic emotions of pity and fear. In the carefully calibrated reversals, the god will laugh at him (1156 / 1021; cf. 959 / 842, 973–74 / 854–55), and the ‘‘wonders’’ that he scorns (289 / 248) will soon attest the god’s irresistible power (534 / 449, 773 / 667, 799 / 693, 822 / 716, 1203 / 1063). The Teiresias scene enacts one of the play’s central problems: how to bring Dionysos and his cult into the city. It also inaugurates the pattern of verbal debate or contest (agoˆn) between a representative of the new god and his opponent. The old men offer a tame Dionysos, easily assimilable to the rational discourses of profit, utility, and allegorical interpretation. Pentheus’ angry response quickly dispels the lectureroom atmosphere of Teiresias’ speech and the grandfatherly mildness of Kadmos’ admonitions. He escalates the violence, orders his attendants to destroy Teiresias’ places of augury, reiterates his commands to imprison the bacchants and their leader, and condemns the Lydian Stranger to death by stoning—another punishment that will later turn back on himself (409–21 / 347–57; cf. 1240–42 / 1096–98). Teiresias, in his turn, repeats his warnings about Pentheus’ own madness; and the two elders exit as they entered, feebly stumbling off to make their way to Dionysos’ rites on the mountain (428–32 / 363–66). The choral ode that follows once more contrasts Pentheus’ violence with the festive joy and beauty of a god associated with Holiness, love, the Muses, the vegetative fertility of nature, peace, plenty, and good sense. This Dionysos, far from disrupting the household, as Pentheus thinks, ‘‘will keep / The household safe and whole’’ (464 / 392f.). The chorus utter a brief warning about Pentheus’ ‘‘unbridled’’ mouth and lawless madness (457–59 / 386–88), but in general this is a serene and happy ode, and it forms the background to Pentheus’ first faceto-face encounter with the Lydian Stranger, whose calm and self-control contrast sharply with the angry, excited young king (547–607 / 461–518). Pentheus’ authority has already been challenged by his attendant’s opening announcement that the imprisoned bacchants were miraculously freed (527–33 / 443–48). The ensuing agoˆn (contest) with the god/ Stranger, now in the line-by-line exchange known as stichomythia, rather than in the set speeches of the previous scene, only increases Pentheus’ bafflement and wrath. The ending of this contest exactly parallels the previous one: Pentheus once more issues orders of

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imprisonment, and his opponent exits with a warning about punishment from the god (595–607 / 509–18; cf. 406–35 / 343–69). The next ode, the second stasimon (608–70 / 519–75), celebrates Dionysos’ miraculous birth from the thigh of Olympian Zeus; but it also describes Pentheus as a savage monster, child of the earthborn Ekhı´on. This ode has a more threatening tone than the last as the chorus prays to the god to ‘‘end the insults of a murderous man’’ (651 / 555). Yet it returns to the beauty of Dionysiac song in lush poetry that associates Dionysos with an Orphic closeness to nature, fertilizing water, and vegetative life (652–70 / 556–75). This radiant evocation of Dionysos leading his maenads over the mountains and rivers of northern Greece is suddenly interrupted by the god’s cry, ‘‘Io! / Io Bakkhai! Io Bakkhai! Hear me, hear my voice!’’ (671–72 / 576–77), which resumes the excited mood of the chorus’ opening song (‘‘Onward, Bakkhai! Onward, Bakkhai!’’ 108–9 / 83). Dionysos now displays his power in his first epiphany; and the mysterious collapse of the palace and accompanying flashes of light and fire in this Palace Miracle introduce the next agoˆn between god and king (671–701 / 576–603). Whether or not the palace actually collapses and how such an event might have been staged remain disputed: the palace seems intact in the scene between Kadmos and Agaue¨ at the end of the play. In any case, Dionysos has begun to reveal himself for the power that he is; and that power includes his irresistible spell, whether of ecstasy, illusion, or madness. Now the tables are turned, and Pentheus is stymied at every move. Dionysos (continuing in the guise of the Lydian Stranger) takes control of the narrative and the stage action as he encourages his recently imprisoned bacchants (the chorus) and describes the events inside (710–40 / 612–37). The brief face-to-face encounter that follows again focuses on the issue of boundaries and enclosure as Pentheus shouts, ‘‘I order the circle of walls and towers completely closed!’’ (757 / 653). But, as the previous scene has shown, the god infiltrates the defenses of the city and the palace as mysteriously as he begins to infiltrate the defenses of Pentheus’ mind. The face-to-face conflict is interrupted by a sudden shift to the realm outside those city boundaries, the wilds of Mount Kitha´iron where the women of Thebes are now raging as maenads. The god has thus destroyed Pentheus’ control over the boundaries of his realm in two complementary directions: He has liberated his own Lydian bacchants from the palace within the city, and he has sent the Theban women outside the walls to be maenads on the mountain. The abrupt reversal within the maenads’ behavior there, from Golden Age bliss to a frenzy of 219

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bloodshed (783–881 / 677–768), anticipates the bloody reversal soon to afflict Pentheus and Agaue¨. The Messenger’s account at first only hardens Pentheus in his resistance to the god. The long scene between Pentheus and the Stranger that follows then repeats the structure of the previous contests, an agoˆn between the god’s representative and his antagonist that soon turns into a tense, line-by-line verbal duel (893– 963 / 778–846). In this succession of conflictual scenes, Dionysos increasingly displays his power, and Pentheus increasingly displays his vulnerabilities. We recall that Pentheus is a youth (321 / 274, 1110 / 974), almost beardless (1340–42 / 1185–87), is still unmarried, and cannot have been king for very long. His mildness (relatively speaking) toward Kadmos and Kadmos’ corresponding gentleness toward him in his first stage appearance may even evoke a certain sympathy and lay a basis for greater sympathy later.37 Pentheus makes the wild threats characteristic of the stage tyrant, but for all his bluster he remains an ineffectual youth. He fails in all of the threats that he makes in the course of the play. When he calls out Thebes’ armed forces in response to the news of the women on the mountain (896–902 / 781–86), the troops seem not to arrive. When he acknowledges his failure to keep the Stranger in prison, his renewed threat of punishment is almost laughable (909–10 / 792–93): ‘‘Will you stop lecturing me and—since you’ve escaped your bonds—/ Hold onto your freedom? Or I’ll punish you again!’’ Dionysos checks Pentheus’ furious (but futile) energy by unexpectedly asking, ‘‘Do you want to see [the maenads] sitting together on the mountain?’’ (928 / 811), and Pentheus is suddenly under his spell. In this quiet and terrible moment the god asserts his power over his antagonist through the mysterious bond that he has always known was there between them. Pentheus surrenders to something in himself as well as in Dionysos. Dionysos hints at an offer to bring the women and ‘‘save’’ Pentheus; but, just when Pentheus seems to break free of the Stranger’s allure by ordering his attendants to bring his weapons instead, the Stranger utters the single syllable ‘‘Aaah!’’ outside of the regular meter, and then makes the offer that Pentheus cannot resist. With a single word the god exposes and releases all the longings that Pentheus has fought against in himself. In fact, his loss of self-control plays directly into his

37. Although Pentheus sees Kadmos’ dress as laughable and warns him not to rub off his madness on him (291–92 / 250–51, 406–8 / 343–44), he lays the blame chiefly on Teiresias (296–306 / 255–62), against whom he rages furiously—in the manner of Creon in the Antigone and Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannos—while he has gentler words for Kadmos (293–96 / 251–54; cf. 408 / 345–46), and Kadmos addresses him in a similar way (389–405 / 330–42).

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opponent’s hands, for it reveals that emotional vulnerability by which Dionysos will destroy him. Pentheus leaves the stage muddled and undecided (962–63 / 845–46): ‘‘I think that I’ll go in. For I must either / Proceed against them armed, or suffer your advice.’’38 His conversion from resistance to surrender is bracketed by his two statements about taking up arms (926 / 809, 962–63 / 845–46). The hesitation itself marks a radical change from the determined and impetuous energy of his previous responses to the god. The discrepancy between his bluster and his inaction shows a king no longer fully in control either of his city or himself and foreshadows his ignominious defeat. By even entertaining the Stranger’s proposition, Pentheus has already mentally exchanged the male warrior’s weapons for the female devotee’s dress and cap. This passage is a masterpiece of characterization in its depiction of the Stranger’s role as Pentheus’ repressed alter ego; it is also central for the reversals of gender roles that underlie the action. Throughout the play Pentheus has insisted on rigidly defined categories of space, age, and gender. In this scene he considers it the greatest possible shame if ‘‘what we’re made to suffer / We should suffer at the hands of women’’ (901–2 / 786). Dionysos, who has already demonstrated his epithet Lysios, ‘‘the one who releases,’’ to the imprisoned bacchants, also ‘‘releases’’ men and women from the constraints of their usual roles and views of themselves. The aged Kadmos and Teiresias, we recall, feel restored to youth in their zeal to worship the god. Now the Stranger changes Pentheus from warrior to maenad as he leads him from the city gates and walls to the mountain forests and streams. On the mountain the women are not only free of male supervision but, as hunters and warriors, they also take over the attributes of male power. In the more benign side of that freedom, they turn from domestic work and confinement in the house (weaving at the loom and nursing their infants) to suckling wild animals (805–9 / 699–702). More radically still, the nurturing function of the domesticated female body turns outward miraculously to make streams of water, wine, milk, and honey spurt or flow from the earth (811–17 / 704–5). Both scenes enact a kind of Dionysiac maternity, redirecting maternal energy from culture to nature in a generosity that breaks down the boundaries between human and animal. The women leave their traditional and socially useful roles in the patriarchal household for a supernatural communion with nature in 38. Pentheus’ confusion in 963 / 846 is conveyed in part by the ambiguity of the word translated as suffer peisomai, which means both I shall obey (from peithoˆ) and I shall suffer (from paschoˆ): see my Dionysiac Poetics, 251–53.

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an all-female society in the wild. Yet to come is the nightmarish perversion of female roles when the mother kills her son and takes him back into her own body in the Dionysiac feast (1338–39 / 1184). For Pentheus the victory of Dionysos means not merely the dissolution of all the boundaries and divisions that he has so intensely defended. It also involves a regression from the role of adult king and warrior to confused adolescent and finally to infantile helplessness before a raging, all-powerful mother. When he capitulates to Dionysos’ temptation, he not only yields to a voyeuristic sexuality (of which his mother is, in part, the object) but also moves backward from the status of hoplite warrior—that is, the armor-wearing adult citizen-soldier—to the status of the ephebe. The ephebe is the youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty who carries light weapons and has the particular task of patrolling the mountainous frontier country as a scout and a ‘‘spy.’’ Hence, when Pentheus is unable to take up those ‘‘arms’’ in 926 / 809 and 962–63 / 845–46 and instead agrees to become a spy using guile and concealment on the mountain (955 / 838, 1048–50 / 915–16, 1088–89 / 953–54), he fails at a major point of male generational passage and is fixated at the ephebic stage. Simultaneously, he becomes the hunted instead of the hunter, a woman instead of a man, the sacrificial victim instead of the sacrificer, a beast instead of a human being, and the despised scapegoat instead of the powerful king.39 Symmetrical with Pentheus’ collapse of identity is Dionysos’ victorious assertion of his. In his call to the women at the end of the scene, the Stranger, though addressing Dionysos, comes close to breaking out of his disguise and resuming his divine identity, as he foretells Pentheus’ humiliation and death at his mother’s hands (964–80 / 848–61). The ode that follows Pentheus’ surrender and incipient defeat celebrates the beauty of Dionysiac freedom (981–1001 / 862–76). The maenads can now dance like a fawn leaping in the green woods as it joyfully outruns the hunter and his hounds (981–1043 / 862–911). But, as the ode goes on, it exemplifies a combination of beauty and vengeance analogous to Dionysos’ own combination of gentleness and fearfulness (979–80 / 860–61). ‘‘But those whose lives are happy / Day by day— those / I call the blesse`d,’’ the chorus conclude (1041–43 / 910–11), as the Stranger ushers Pentheus out of the palace in the maenadic dress that is the sign of just how unfortunate his life will prove to be on this day. As Pentheus shifts from fulminating ruler to obedient maenad and from the god’s antagonist (theomakhos) to his sacrificial victim, the 39. There are numerous hints at Pentheus’ change from king to sacrificial victim: 910–11 / 793–94, 976–77 / 857–58; cf. 954 / 837, 1069 / 934.

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balance between what is ‘‘most gentle’’ and ‘‘most terrible’’ in the god also begins to shift (979–80 / 860–61). The odes of the first half of the play primarily depict Dionysos’ liberating exuberance, whereas those of the concluding section are increasingly preoccupied with vengeance.40 In the fifth and last full ode that the chorus sing, the fourth stasimon (1113–59 / 977–1023), murderous thoughts predominate. The Lydian bacchants demonize the now helpless young king as a dangerous monster whose throat they would slit in self-righteous fury (1125–32 / 987–90). In the second stasimon this hatred was mitigated by the closing epode, with its lyrical evocations of the beauty of nature and Orphic song (contrast 630–38 / 540–44 and 652–70 / 556–75). Now there is no alleviating gentleness. Whereas the earlier epiphany brought a comforting light and freedom to oppressed worshipers (cf. 706–7 / 608–9), this new epiphany is destructive (1220–60 / 1078–1112). The escalation of the vengeance from the Palace Miracle to the tearing apart of Pentheus, to be sure, is the inevitable consequence of the king’s failure to heed the earlier and milder manifestations of Dionysos’ power. Yet the justice of the punishment does not lessen its horror. The fourth stasimon, the prelude to the god’s bloody vengeance, seems to belong to a world totally different from the lyrical beatitudes of the opening ode; yet these are the same bacchants. The god whose epiphany they invoke in the form of bull, snake, or lion is to show a ‘‘laughing face’’ as he hobbles his foe beneath the murderous herd of his maenads (1153–59 / 1018–23). The bloody hunting and eating of raw flesh that belonged to the joyful ecstasy of the chorus’ entering ode (169–71 / 138–39) now show their darker colors. The maenads in the Second Messenger’s speech, like those of the First Messenger’s speech, begin with ‘‘pleasant tasks’’ as they entwine their thyrsoi with ivy and sing bacchantic songs to one another (1190–93 / 1051–55). Yet their benign side is now much more limited. The liquid abundance of the first speech—the wine, honey, and milk spouting from the earth—has no place here; and the water of this setting is part of a harsher, more dangerous landscape, dominated by enclosing ravines and fir trees (1189–91 / 1051–52, 1239–46 / 1095–1100). So, too, the maenads’ change to murderous fury is much more abrupt as the god excites them to vengeance. His power now totally dwarfs his mortal opponents and worshipers. Whereas he had no direct intervention in the first scene on Kitha´iron, now he makes his will known in an awesome, mystical moment that binds heavens to earth in a flash of light and brings silence 40. See my Dionysiac Poetics, 243–44, 385; also Hans Oranje, Euripides’ Bacchae: The Play and Its Audience, Mnemosyne Supplement 78 (Leiden, 1984), 101–13, 168–70.

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to the whole forest (1224–29 / 1082–85). The sparagmos (ritual tearing apart) that follows is as bloody as before, but now the victim is a designated human being, not a cow or bull, and the agents are not the collective band but the victim’s mother and aunts. Euripides spares us none of the horror. Pentheus begs in vain for mercy as he stares up into Agaue¨’s rolling eyes and foaming mouth; the maenads play ball with the torn flesh; and Agaue¨ finally carries the head impaled on the top of her thyrsos and parades it over the mountain as a triumphant huntress (1263–1301 / 1115–47). The Messenger ends with a few lines of cautious generalization about moderation, good sense, and piety toward the gods (1302–7 / 1148–52). In the studied symmetries of this play, these lines correspond to the First Messenger’s closing generalizations about the blessings of Dionysos (882–88 / 769–74). That First Messenger directly addressed Pentheus and praised Dionysos as the giver of wine, without which there is no sex ‘‘nor anything of pleasure for us mortals’’ (885–89 / 771–74). The Second Messenger ends with the ‘‘wisdom’’ of ‘‘piety and good sense’’ rather than with what is ‘‘pleasurable’’ (1304–7 / 1150–52). With Pentheus’ death, the mood is defensive rather than hedonistic. The chorus’ behavior is also different. In responding to the First Messenger, it was far more hesitant and merely praised Dionysos as inferior to none of the gods (890–92 / 775–77). Now it is openly defiant, bursting out in lyrical exultation to celebrate the death of its opponent with shouting and dancing (1308–10 / 1153–55). This outcry marks the maenads’ total victory, but the emotional intensity is also carefully framed by a formal symmetry. The Messenger began his speech with a reference to the serpent-born ancestry of the Theban royal line, and the chorus takes that up at the end (cf. 1161–63 / 1024–27 and 1310 / 1155). The Messenger had been outraged when the chorus rejoiced at the sufferings of his master (1172–77 / 1036); the chorus’ lyrics now give free rein to that exultation; and there is no voice of protest to hold them back. This scene brings home how different is this chorus’ behavior from the usual role of the chorus in Greek tragedy. Far from identifying with the polis or with a communal voice of familiar moral generalizations, this chorus shockingly opposes the polis and so leaves the play without a voice of collective concern or normative civic morality.41 At the end of the third stasimon, for example, we are uncertain how to reconcile the chorus’ commonplaces about divine punishment and the vicissitudes of 41. On this aspect of the chorus see my essay, ‘‘Chorus and Community in Euripides’ Bacchae,’’ in Lowell Edmunds and Robert W. Wallace, eds., Poet, Public, and Performance in Ancient Greece (Baltimore, 1997), 65–86.

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mortal life with its role as Lydian devotees of an ecstasy-inducing god. The ambiguity of its role in this respect corresponds to the ambiguities surrounding Dionysos’ place in the polis that the play explores. The Messenger, whether out of fear or pity, is eager to be off before Agaue¨ returns (1302–3 / 1148–49), and we now see her on the stage for the first time. Back from the mountain, she displays the grisly hunting trophy, her son’s head, with which she intends to adorn the palace. The scene is the visual climax of Dionysos’ inversions of Pentheus’ world. Not only does Agaue¨ take on the usual male roles of victorious warrior and triumphant hunter, but the victory song that she shares with the chorus is also a cruel parody of funerary lament, which often takes just this form of a lyrical exchange between a single woman and a choral group.42 This unknowingly bereaved mother here utters cries of joy rather than of mourning. There are hints, too, of sacrificial inversion as Agaue¨ invites the chorus to share this feast (1338–39 / 1184); and we recall that the Messenger described her as priestess (hierea) as she ‘‘began the slaughter’’ of Pentheus (1262–63 / 1114). Like a proud, victorious warrior, Agaue¨ takes her position before the palace, addresses the citizens of Thebes, and displays her victory trophy, the head that she would affix to the palace walls that Pentheus had so frenetically defended (1358–70 / 1202–15). When Kadmos enters with the mutilated body, Agaue¨, still under the god’s spell, holds Pentheus’ head in her arm and boasts of her triumph in the traditional terms of masculine prowess. In a cruel irony, she wishes that her absent son could take after his mother in hunting (1411–14 / 1252–55). Kadmos gradually leads her back to sanity in a line-by-line exchange (stichomythia) that has been compared to the process of bringing someone out of a psychotic episode.43 It may be that in Macedon Euripides witnessed such techniques for bringing maenads back to sanity. At this point the text has suffered some disruption (for the second half of the play there is only one surviving manuscript); the following scene, known as the Compositio Membrorum, or putting together of the limbs, is fragmentary. We can, however, reconstruct a good deal of it from various ancient sources and from the (probably) late Byzantine play, The Passion of Christ (Christus Patiens), which drew heavily on the Bakkhai (see Appendix, pp. 339–46). Agaue¨ must have fit the head to the rest of the corpse and joined Kadmos in piecing the body together and lamenting over it. The scene is unexampled in Greek tragedy, and there is 42. Lines 1316–19 / 1161–64, at the end of the strophe, prepare for this anomalous combination of the tears of the funeral dirge and the joyful shout of the victory celebration. See above, n. 10. 43. See George Devereux, ‘‘The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides’ Bacchae,’’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 90 (1970), 35–48.

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considerable controversy about how it was staged. Agaue¨’s lament, which is almost entirely lost, must have been intensely emotional. Kadmos is more formal as he praises his grandson as the ruler of Thebes who always protected the old man (1491–1505 / 1310–22); but the funeral eulogy contrasts ironically with the death of a youth who has only threatened battle against the women of his household and is killed by female maenad hunters, not male warriors. At the end of the lament Dionysos appears as deus ex machina, presumably now in his Olympian form and no longer in disguise, and speaks from the roof of the stage building, or theologeion, which is often used for such scenes. The first part of his speech is lost, but the extant portion reveals a tone of harshness and self-vindication rather than compassion or understanding. He commands the exile of both Agaue¨ and Kadmos. Agaue¨, polluted with the blood of her child, cannot remain in the city; Kadmos, along with his wife Harmonı´a will become serpents, lead an Illyrian tribe against Greek cities, and attack Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. Here, as often in his endings, Euripides incorporates other parts of the mythical tradition. For Kadmos there is an additional irony. This founder of a Greek city who came originally from the barbarian (non-Greek) land of the Phoenicians and killed the serpent that guarded the spring of Dirke´ at Thebes will be turned into a serpent to lead barbarian hordes against Greek cities. For a Greek of this period exile is a terrible fate, depriving him or her of political power, civil rights, and family associations and protection. There is a small glimmer of light as Dionysos foretells Kadmos’ eventual translation to the land of the blest, but this does not shine very brightly in the gloom of pollution, exile, and separation. The gods of Greek tragedy do not pardon; and their retributive justice is not necessarily commensurate with the offense. Pentheus, like Lykourgos in the earlier resistance myth, provokes the god’s wrath by the vehemence of his opposition and meets his inevitable end. Even the acceptant Kadmos is punished: although he accepted the god, he did not do so in the right spirit. Similarly, the suffering of Agaue¨ and her sisters, like that of the daughters of Minyas at Orkhomenos, seems out of proportion to their offense, their initial doubts about the god in the prologue (33–43 / 25–31). Kadmos feebly protests that gods should be above mortal anger, but Dionysos attempts no moral justification and merely claims an ancient decree from Zeus and commands quick obedience to the necessity of ‘‘what you must do’’ (1565–68 / 1348–51). In the old myths, Dionysos’ revenge by murder within the family is cruel and brutal, and perhaps the audience would have regarded it as merely the traditional punishment. Yet Euripides introduces a criticism of 226

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anthropomorphic divinity that is not answered. As elsewhere, he leaves us with the incomprehensibility of the gods’ justice and the gap between human and divine perspectives. The play closes with a pathetic farewell between the aged grandfather and the grieving mother of Pentheus. The two mortal survivors are crushed by the catastrophe and by their impending exile. Like Hippolytos and Theseus at the end of the Hippolytos, they cling to one another for solace before they are forced to part forever. The play has shown us the beauty of those rites, but the closing scene also forces us to think about their other side. The last words are reserved for Agaue¨ (leaving aside the banal choral tag, which may be a later addition). Her only wish is to rejoin her sisters, sharers in her exile, and to have no further contact with bacchantic ritual. The movement is centrifugal and the mood funereal, especially if the request of her penultimate line, to be led ‘‘where no reminding thyrsos has been dedicated,’’ evokes the tomb (1607 / 1386).44 The play ends with women, female experience, and the bacchants of the title; but Agaue¨’s final line, ‘‘Let such things be for other Bakkhai’’ (1608 / 1387), gives an ambiguous welcome to the future cult. We cannot know how this closing scene was staged, but Pentheus’ torn body, whether carried off at the end or left behind as Kadmos and Agaue¨ exit, remains a powerful, inescapable image. It evokes, among other things, the horror of a whole family’s extirpation as we see the doom of three generations of the royal line before us.45 DIONYSIAC ANAGNORISIS

The ending of the play exemplifies something in the experience of Dionysos that we may call a Dionysiac anagnorisis (recognition): wild abandon and exultation followed by a sad reawakening to a painful reality. In everyday terms, this is the experience of recovering from the wine-induced happiness of the god’s gift, that is, a hangover. But in the action of the play this recognition is enacted first in a relatively 44. Seaford ed., Bacchae, on Greek line 1386, citing 1157 (our 1312). Seaford on line 1387 (1608), however, would find in the reference to ‘‘other Bacchants’’ a dramatization of ‘‘the aetiological myth of D[ionysos’] cult at Thebes.’’ But the mood is certainly not that of triumphant celebration of the founding of a new cult but rather the speaker’s sense of loss and despair. For Esposito, for example, on 1387 (p. 91), ‘‘Agave’s rejection of Dionysos and his devotees could not be more emphatic and in this final rejection she carries on the spirit of her son.’’ 45. We are not told explicitly that the royal line is wiped out, but the play suggests as much, especially as it refers several times to the death of Pentheus’ cousin, Akta´ion, son of Agaue¨’s sister, Ino. The image of the three destroyed generations at the end is the reverse of that of Odyssey 24.514–15, where old Laertes rejoices at the three generations of his restored household standing together in victorious battle against their enemies.

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gentle way in the Theban maenads’ return from the mountain (877– 81 / 765–68); then more grimly for Pentheus (see below) and when Agaue¨ comes out of the Dionysiac ecstasy and realizes what she has done; and finally when Kadmos’ bacchantic joy in the freedom from old age, which was the first stage action of the play (203–53 / 170–214), gives way to the acknowledgment of his impotence as an ‘‘old man’’ (1502 / 1320, 1572 / 1355, 1584–87 / 1364–67). This Dionysiac anagnorisis differs in tone from the kind of anagnorisis that Oedipus, for example, experiences at the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. Oedipus, having blinded himself to the visible world, gains a deeper insight into the invisible powers surrounding his life and, more broadly, into the tragic nature of the human condition. In his journey from illusion to reality he gains a clearer understanding of the deceptive surface of appearances amid which he has lived and ultimately a new inner strength (see Oedipus Tyrannos 1414–15, 1455–58). When Agaue¨ and Kadmos awaken from illusion they can discern only their utter misery and their helplessness before the divine power that has destroyed them. Pentheus emerges from the god’s spell only long enough to recognize his imminent death at the hands of his murderous mother and aunts. He never discovers who the Stranger really is, nor does he gain any insight into the causes of his suffering. ‘‘And he will know that Dionysos, son / of Zeus, was born a god in full,’’ the god himself (in disguise) predicted, as he leads Pentheus to his death (978–80 / 859–61). But at the end of the next scene Pentheus leaves the stage in a quasihypnotic trance, and the narrative of his death is silent about his learning anything about the god. Agaue¨ and Kadmos perceive more; but the psychological rather than the intellectual aspect of their recognitions is dominant; and the shock and horror overshadow the glimmers of a deeper moral understanding. ‘‘Be sensible and revere all that belongs to the gods,’’ the Second Messenger advises as he reports the results of the Theban maenads’ liberation on the mountain (1307 / 1152); but this moralizing solution is hardly adequate to the tragic experience that the play enacts. Throw off your chains and be free, Dionysos tells his worshipers; but the play then dramatizes the process of awakening to the horrors that this freedom has perpetrated. In their fresh enthusiasm for celebrating Dionysos early in the play Kadmos and Teiresias joyfully forget their age and feel young again (223–26 / 187–89). In bringing Agaue¨ out of her madness, however, Kadmos again takes on the full weight of his years and the sad wisdom that goes with his age. Still under the god’s spell, she reproaches her father for the killjoy crabbedness of his years (1410–11 / 1251–52): ‘‘Old age in humankind is so ill-tempered, / And has such scowling eyes!’’ But 228

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he rightly counters her bacchantic madness with a knowledge that consists in groans and a truth that consists in misery (1448 / 1287): ‘‘Unhappy truth, how wrong the moment when you come to us!’’ The myth of Oedipus, as Sigmund Freud suggested in a celebrated discussion, is at some level about the necessary restraints that Culture imposes on the residues of our animality.46 Its divinity, Apollo, is a god who enforces limits and insists on the boundaries between mortality and divinity, between bestiality and humanity. The myths surrounding Dionysos, however, explore the liberation of our animality and the freedom from the repressive constraints of Culture. If the Oedipus myth shows happiness to be a tragic illusion, Dionysos celebrates the place of wine, joy, and festivity in human life; and, as the Bakkhai several times remarks, Dionysos’ gifts accompany those of Aphrodite (493–96 / 413–15, 887–89 / 773–74). If the Oedipus myth demonstrates the disastrous consequences of breaking down differentiation, the myths around Dionysos exult in a joyous closeness of humans to the world of nature and animals. Dionysos, then, would seem to have a natural affinity to comedy; and this is true to the extent that numerous comedies and satyr plays use Dionysos, or Dionysiac figures, as their major characters. Yet, as the Dionysos trilogies of Aeschylus also indicate, the relation of Dionysos to Culture is deeply a tragic theme. Euripides raises, but does not fully answer, the question of how to enjoy the Dionysiac intoxication without the wildness followed by horrified recognition. One answer, as I have suggested elsewhere, may lie in the god’s other gift to Athens, not the maenadic ritual (unattested for Attica) but the gentler ecstasy of the dramatic performances at the festivals in honor of Dionysos, for these bring the god Dionysos safely into the polis and combine the pleasures of freedom with ‘‘calm’’ or ‘‘serenity’’ (heˆsychia), abandon and ecstasy with emotional balance or sound mind (soˆphrosyneˆ). Here the recognition of truth brings cathartic integration rather than horror, madness, and pollution.47 Dionysos’ explosive revelations of his identity change the world and worldview of the mortals he encounters. The reversals of strong and weak, persecutor and persecuted, so essential to the structure of the play, also raise the fundamental problem of where our sympathies lie. The first half of the play makes it easy for us to sympathize with the Stranger and his entourage against his overexcited persecutor, who behaves as the 46. See, for example, S. Freud, ‘‘Preface to Theodor Reik, Ritual: Psycho-Analytical Studies’’ (1919), in James Strachey, ed., The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17 (London, 1955), 261. 47. See my Dionysiac Poetics, 339–47.

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typical stage tyrant (compare Creon in the Antigone). But, as the god’s revenge spreads from the now helpless Pentheus to Agaue¨ and Kadmos, our view of Dionysos becomes more complicated. The audience knows that the god will triumph and that his cult, with its blessings and its dangers, will enter Thebes and thence all of Greece. Yet the play remains divided between the beauty of these rites, conveyed in the lyrics of the first four odes, and the ruthlessness of the god’s vengeance as it unfolds at the end. We never feel that Pentheus is right. Presumably a less vehemently hostile response would have averted the catastrophe. Yet, like many Greek tragedies, the Bakkhai makes us feel both the inexorability of divine justice and pity for the human victims. Euripides calls Dionysos that complex of impulses and energies in ourselves that can suddenly swing from joyful exultation to wild, savage murderousness. Total surrender to the ecstasy of group emotion in religious observance is beautiful and exalting; but, as both Euripides’ era and our own know all too well, the breakdown of inhibitions in mass emotion can also lead ‘‘normal’’ men and women to atrocities of almost unimaginable horror. Proving himself a god—that is, an eternal, elemental power and an existential force—Dionysos also demands that we recognize and come to terms with his place in our world. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am chiefly responsible for the Introduction, Notes, Appendix, and most of the Glossary, but Reginald Gibbons and I have shared our views on nearly every aspect of the play, and I have profited greatly from his sensitivity to language, tone, and dramatic situation. I thank him for a collaboration that has also held the warmth of friendship. Peter Burian, series editor, and Oxford University Press editor Susan Chang helped with constructive criticism, encouragement, and patience. Like all those who have worked closely with the Bakkhai, I am painfully aware of how controversial many of its basic features remain. I owe many debts, which I could not fully acknowledge in this volume, to all of the commentators who have struggled with these problems and especially with the multiple and often contradictory features of Dionysos, notably E. R. Dodds, Albert Henrichs, and Richard Seaford. Specialists will see at once how indebted I am to their scholarship. Giorgio Ierano` kindly sent me a copy of his newly published Italian translation (with introduction and notes) at a timely moment. Early drafts of my work on the play were done during my tenure as the Marta Sutton Weeks Senior Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center of Stanford University in 1997–98, an honor for which I am deeply

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grateful. The work has also been sustained by the loving support of my wife, Nancy Jones, and enriched by the imaginative transformations of Greek myth by my daughter Cora, who has made Se´meleˆ a household word in ways that Euripides would never have foreseen.

Charles Segal

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THE TEXT

I have based this translation on the editions of the Greek text by E. R. Dodds (1960) and Richard Seaford (1996); on reference to translations by classicists, including those by Seaford himself, Stephen Esposito, William Arrowsmith, and others; on the extensive scholarship in Dodds’ notes to his edition; and on Charles Segal’s Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (1997) and his specific suggestions for this new version of the play. Charles Segal has supplied me with his reconstruction of the gaps in the surviving Greek text, which I have versified. (For further details on the lacunae, see the Appendix.) Brackets in the translation mark major conjectural or reconstructed passages, but many smaller such passages are presented without brackets, to avoid cluttering the English-language text. TRANSLATING THE LANGUAGE OF THE PLAY

In this translation I have tried to leave the reader with what will seem convincing and authoritative to the mind and the ear without need of additional comment. So the following remarks are for the reader with an interest in the problems of translation and curiosity about the poetic form of the Greek text. From John Herington’s account of the origins of Greek tragedy (Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition, University of California Press, 1985), I understand the whole play as a very long poem in several parts that differ from each other in terms of diction, poetic line, and structure. Although I cannot represent in the translation the different Greek meters and poetic forms that Euripides used, I have tried to compose the different parts (dialogue, narrative,

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odes) in distinguishable ways. (More about meter, later.) I have tried to find language that represents the Greek as closely as I can do so in order to give some flavor of the compression and metaphoric intensity of the original, while at the same time producing an English that is idiomatic, however distant it may be, especially in the odes, from speech. In fact, the Greek of the tragedies in ancient Athens was a language used only on stage, in performance, not in daily life, nor was it based on the dialect of Greek that Athenians spoke. So I should probably have sought even more strangeness in the English translations in order not to misrepresent the linguistic color of the original. I hope that all the lines of the translation are both sayable and playable; yet I also sought to get a certain small resistance into them, which is the residue of their overdetermined meaningfulness and linguistic peculiarity, that is mostly absent from real speech in real life. To translate the play in such a way as to make it most sayable, for the sake of idiomatic and even colloquial speech (which is not what the Greek stage emphasized, but is how we play most of our dramas in our contemporary world), would be to lose some of the intricate pattern of repeated words and formulaic modifiers, figures of speech, and meaningful periphrasis. To translate the play in such a way as to preserve as much as possible of the word repetition, wordplay, formulas, and figurative language would be to lose, for the sake of the rich linguistic texture and literariness of the drama, some of its playability. In between lie ways of compromise that may produce, if only linguistic luck can equal the translator’s labor, some measure of both dimensions of this ancient drama as a work in our own present-day language. There’s nothing new about this problem of translating a Greek drama except that in translating Euripides’ Bakkhai I myself happened to be the translator who was caught inside it, and my translation is my attempt to solve it. As is often the case in the most remarkably integrated and richly signifying literary works, it seems that nearly every single word in Bakkhai not only plays its small role in this or that unfolding sentence, but also adds meaning to the work as a whole—an effect that makes study of this work a process of gradually becoming aware of patterns of interrelated words, images, dramatic situations, kinship relations, and other elements as well as of ceaselessly moving one’s attention back and forth between each detail and the whole. (Fittingly, this movement of our literary attention was long ago christened by philological criticism with a word derived from ancient Greek, hermeneutic—from the name of Hermes, the minor immortal who served as messenger of the Greek gods, circulating among them and between them and mortals.)

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Inevitably, in a work so richly meaningful, word by word, and written with such compressed syntax and with such a multitude of figures of speech, every decision in translation has to be interpretive. And this particular drama has given rise to uncertain, contradictory, and disputed interpretations. For one reason or another, many of the key Greek words in the play either remain ambiguous or had a meaning for the ancient Greeks that we cannot confidently establish for ourselves, living as we do in a different culture that has lost close contact with nearly every aspect of the material culture and ways of thinking and believing of the Greeks. We have the privilege of being able to see the remains of ancient Greek culture, but we cannot return entirely to the Greek mind. And we are also in the odd position of seeing an ancient word not only as itself but also in the light of all that it turned into, in later centuries, as it evolved and gathered around itself meanings and associations that are entirely extraneous to its Greek meanings and associations. So in hearing words like wisdom, happiness, initiation, sound mind, nature, and others, how can we get very free of our customary meanings and find a Greek meaning? Furthermore, Euripides turns many words to an ironic meaning as he stages the contest of will between Dionysos and Pentheus, the illusions of Pentheus and Agaue¨, and the rationales of Teiresias and Kadmos, so he, too, is already putting into question the meanings that were evident to the Greeks. There are many puns and double meanings, words put into etymological play, poetic devices. Also, because the syntax of Euripides’ Greek is extraordinarily compressed, a translation into English requires more words and lines than did the original. Euripides also puts the play’s figures into situations in which illusion and reality, the mind of the god, the ancient Greek experience of divinity, and the meaning of the action are not only subject to disagreement among us, today—because there is so much about ancient Greece that we do not know—but also seem somewhat indeterminate by design. What, for example, are we to believe more—that the chorus of Lydian women (the willing Bakkhai rather than the forced, crazed Bakkhai of the house of Kadmos) feel a benign and ecstatic adoration of Dionysos and see him as the creativity of life itself, or that they feel a murderous unmitigated anger at Pentheus and see Dionysos as the rightly unappeasable destroyer, or that they feel pity for Agaue¨ when Dionysos feels only rage? Or all three? All of this linguistic and literary richness is found in a text that is not only incomplete and corrupted in many places by those who copied it over the centuries, but that also stands—as we see it—in uncertain relation to earlier lost literary works, to mythology, and to the actual practices of worship of Dionysos. (See Charles Segal’s 235

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Introduction in this volume.) Furthermore, later Christian attitudes— toward a god of death and rebirth, a god who is a son of god, and human history in which a father-god intervenes—are inextricably already a part of many present-day readers’ thinking, and these attitudes of ours color our understanding of the play in ways foreign to it because they so thoroughly color our language; after all, the everyday English that we speak is very Christianized in its figures of speech, its traditional symbols, and in the connotations of certain words. We think, for example, of what happened to the potent pre-Christian symbolism of wine when it became Christianized. From this tangle of problems—which even if they can to some extent be formulated can never be completely solved—let us turn to some practical aspects of the translation. The vocabulary of Euripides’ play is not especially large, but is sometimes very peculiar; and, as I mentioned, some words are repeated or turned with telling effect, either reinforcing a meaning, or undercutting it with irony, or echoing earlier meaning in a new way. In this translation, I have tried to approximate at least some of these patterns of repetition, although in English, unfortunately, it happens that for some of the frequently used Greek words, the English equivalents (like wretched or miserable) are lumpy and lack pathos. In the Greek, Dionysos, the chorus, and the mortal characters use language differently from each other and differently at different moments (when Agaue¨, for example, returns to Thebes with her grisly trophy, she enters singing the lines of an ode that is completed in repartee with the chorus; but with her father, shortly afterward, her dialogue is spoken). To try to suggest such differences, I have varied both the diction and the meter of the translation. In Greek all the choral odes were chanted or sung; the dialogue was apparently performed as speech—but presumably very performed, nevertheless. But, as I shall explain, the effect in English is inevitably flattened out, for reasons having to do with the poetic and linguistic resources of English itself, which are fewer than those of ancient Greek. This may be the best place for me to note for readers new to ancient Greek drama a few aspects that affect how we should read even a translation of those works. In Greek performance, three male actors played all the principal roles (including those of female characters); the chorus also was male, and when representing women also wore women’s clothing; all the actors wore masks, which included hair. On stage, all the playing of women’s roles was a male imagining and performing of female experience—speech, song, and act—and in the audience, the response to this performance was also entirely or almost 236

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entirely male, for just as there were no women on stage, there may have been none in the audience. The existing styles and forms of poems and performance that the dramatists used in order to construct the large structure of the drama had been devised earlier for smaller audiences and more intimate spaces. But the audiences attending the dramas could be very large, and the theaters were outdoors, so even when and where the acoustics were best, I imagine that the actors must have needed to produce a kind of stylized shouting for the dialogue; the chanting and song may also have relied on powerful artificiality of emphasis and effect in order to be heard. Add all these circumstances to the peculiar language of the plays, found nowhere else in Greek life, and the problem of translation becomes so steeped in cultural difference that it is no wonder that most translations are, as much as anything else, simply evidence of the difficulty—and on some level the impossibility— of the task. It’s no surprise that translations of ancient Greek drama often seem to sound strange when we have the feeling that perhaps they should sound familiar, and familiar when they should sound strange. Even if my command of ancient Greek were adequate for me to understand well the meters of the verse and the effects of chanting and singing on the sounds of the lines, these cannot be represented well in English, because, first, the linguistic compression of the Greek is impossible to reproduce in idiomatic English, and, second, the poetic resources of English are smaller than those of Greek not only in terms of the formal resources available to the poet but also in an audience’s knowledge of and responsiveness to verse forms and poetic structures. Although ancient Greek makes frequent expressive use of the sounds of words—with alliteration, repetition, and rhythm—it does not rhyme. I have not rhymed the translation, either (except in the very last lines, a perhaps sententious little tagged-on poem addressed to the audience as a way to mark the ending), although rhyming in English could be defended as a strategy for formalizing and complicating the English somewhat. Instead, I have tried to create a certain irregular intensity of the sounds of the words in English, where appropriate. Furthermore, the dramatic resources of our contemporary stage, while very nearly infinite in theory, seem smallest in practice precisely where tragedy in an ancient Greek style would need them: in deliberately artificial, stagey chanting and singing of lines that would have to be, in some serious way, different from any imaginable American musical, yet not nearly as elaborate or as removed from our popular culture as is opera. Spectacle, such an overpowering aspect of nearly all our contemporary entertainment, was not at all an important element of ancient Greek drama, as this play shows. Instead, playwright and actors and 237

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audience were all absorbed in the wonderfully vivid descriptions that the messengers give of what has happened elsewhere. Even assuming that, to some readers and listeners, lines of metrical verse in English do still convey rhythmical nuances and qualifications of meaning (and rhythmical pleasure), there is no way in English to represent the sound of the rich variety of meters and song of the original. Greek poetry used pitch and stress and the variety of metrical feet as well as the variation in pattern and length of the poetic line, whereas traditional English poetry is far less flexible, and works by establishing one dominant meter and varying the rhythms of speech stress within it, without often varying the length of the line. So, once a meter is established in the opening lines of a poem in English, the foot does not normally change except by certain minor, accepted, occasional substitutions that simply add to the pleasures of linguistic rhythm and allow the poet some expressive wiggle-room within the scheme. This is especially true of the meter that predominates historically in verse in English, which is iambic. To clarify this difference with ancient Greek: the Greek odes mix various kinds of feet in lines of various length, whereas an English poem may but often won’t vary the length of the line, and all the feet will be the same (most often, iambic). Meter in English gets its wonderful subtlety and liveliness from playing the infinite variety of the rhythmic possibilities of natural speech with and against the expected but not compulsory unvarying pattern of the way meter regularizes those rhythms. As I have mentioned, ancient Greek, a highly inflected language, can cram far more meaning into a few words than can English. So, while it seemed the most natural thing in this translation to use a (sometimes loose) iambic meter for the dialogue, I have often needed more feet than five, the customary length of an English iambic line, and so I have stretched the lines to six and seven and even eight feet in order to keep them single in those parts of the play (called the stichomythia) when the pace is fast and in Greek each character speaks only one line. I have used blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) for the narrative and discursive speeches; but in this case—and again, because English needs more words than Greek to say the same thing—I have used not more feet but rather more lines than there are in the original in order to keep the rhythm of the speeches steady and authoritative. (The one exception is the speech by Dionysos, disguised as the Stranger, that begins at line 714, which is cast in lines of six feet instead of five, in order to represent a change in the Greek meter to a longer line—perhaps this metrical difference marks the peculiar circumstance that in this speech the god himself is a messenger recounting what has happened 238

ON THE TRANSLATION

elsewhere, but he is not the usual mortal messenger.) In the odes, I have used a fairly free, but somewhat accentual measure, so as to try to catch the energy of the very beautiful original by composing a rhythmically syncopated sort of line, of varying length, which quickens or slows with the syntax. Beautiful in what way? In sound, in the compression of the syntax, in the striking figures of speech and in formal symmetry. The odes—sung and danced at those crucial moments in the play when the chorus performed them between scenes of dialogue—were composed so that each pair of stanzas, strophe and antistrophe, is formally congruent, having the same number of lines and similar metrical patterns. I have produced only analogous, not exact, symmetries in the translation, although of course I have followed the Greek ode’s presentation in these formally similar stanzas of substantively different and contrasting emphases. A FEW SPECIFIC WORDS

For the sake of the foreignness, the very Greekness, of Bakkhai—the ancient Greek language, Greek beliefs and attitudes, and the Greek performance of poetry—I decided to de-Latinize the proper nouns, despite the classicists’ convention of using a Latin name for the play (Bacchae) and Latin names (Bacchus, Cithaeron, etc.) for characters and place names. The Latin overlay seems to me to put another screen between us, as common readers rather than classicists, and the Greekness, and thus to tame some of the sheer strangeness of what was Greek. But I have had to depart from my own rule in using some proper names and Greek words that are already so well known in English by a conventional Latinized and Anglicized pronunciation that is not very like the Greek (Cyprus, Acheron, Hades, etc.) that I have assumed the reader might be distracted by having to pronounce them in any other way. (Translation is much like politics in the necessity of compromise; in fact, translation is very much politics of a cultural kind.) I also want to make note of the following Greek words, some of which are untranslatable: hybris: Instead of using hubris for this particular key word, I have used various phrases, different in different contexts, mostly to avoid using a word that, although it now exists in English, does not mean what the Greek original meant. The original term conveys in Greek a sense of violent mistreatment, of violation and insult, of affront to dignity and honor, of insolence, offense, outrage, and overstepping the bounds of what is proper.

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ON THE TRANSLATION

thyrsos: (plural: thyrsoi, pronounced thu¨r-soss, thu¨r-soy): This was a light staff made from a stalk of fennel to which some ivy was fastened at the top. I have sometimes left the word in this transliterated form, and at other times translated it (or another Greek word for it) as staff or rod. It has a curiously double significance in suggesting both male and female—aside from its obvious symbolic relationship to the male phallus, it also suggests, in the ivy tendril with which it is crowned, the force of growth in nature; and when the thyrsos is used by women as a weapon, Euripides also contrasts this delicate, light object, completely from nature, with what it can and does defeat— the heavy, forged iron and bronze spears of the settled world and of male warriors. thiasos: I have translated it variously, often as troupe; it is a band of the women who are celebrants or worshipers of Dionysos, called Bakkhantes or Bakkhai (pronounced backh-eye, with an aspirated kh), after one of the god’s other names, Bakkhos. In this translation, the Bakkhantes are called the Bakkhai, throughout. (This one awkward transliteration seemed enough. I also used maenads [pronounced mee-nads], a familiar Latin word that seems unavoidable because it is already familiar to us in this form, which is in fact the Latin transliteration of another Greek name for the Bakkhai, the Greek mainades; this word in Greek means women who are mad, raving, or frantic.) In addition to Bakkhos, Dionysos (a name that in Greek would have been pronounced something like ‘‘dee-oh-nu¨-soss,’’ with the second syllable uttered at a higher pitch, and the d perhaps pronounced like our voiced th) has several other names, used at different moments by Euripides either to bring the particular significance of one of the names into play where it is relevant or to fit the Greek meter. Bromios (pronounced brome-ee-oss), suggests thundering or roaring. Euios (pronounced eh-ooh-ih-oss), is related to the cry Euhoi! (pronounced eh-ooh-hoy!), used by the thiasos as an ecstatic exclamation. The name Iakkhos also suggests an ecstatic shout. Another exclamation of the thiasos is Io! (pronounced ee-oh)—this is used by Dionysos and the Bakkhai as an expression of joy, fear, sorrow, or alarm, to call each other. Zeus is said in the play to call Dionysos Dithyrambos (pronounced dithu¨r-am-boss), which associates Dionysos both with poetry (see our word dithyramb) and with a pun in Greek on his 240

ON THE TRANSLATION

having been born twice—once from Se´meleˆ and again from Zeus’ thigh, neither birth having been natural, since Se´meleˆ was killed by Zeus’ lightning when she was still carrying her child. I have translated other Greek interjections as Oh or Ah or even Aiee, rather than such outdated interjections as Alas. Only Dionysos and the chorus of Bakkhai utter the unusual Aah! The pronunciation of the names of the main characters, and a few who are only mentioned, are Agaue¨ (ah-gau-eh; some translators Latinize this name to Agave); Ekhı´on (eh-khee-on), the father of Pentheus; Ino (ee-no), sister of Agaue¨, thus another daughter of Kadmos, along with Autonoe¨ (au-ton-oh-ee—the ton rhyming with our preposition on); Kadmos (kad-moss); Pentheus (penth-ee-us); Se´meleˆ (seh-mel-eh), mortal mother of Dionysos; and Teiresias (Ty-rees-ee-ahss is our contemporary pronunciation of his well-known name); the earlier death of Autonoe¨’s son Akta´ion (ack-tie-on) is a prefiguring of the fate of his cousin Pentheus. Here and in the text of the play, the diacritical marks (accents and diaeresis) are not those of the Greek but are intended to aid pronunciation in English. See the notes by Charles Segal for comments on the group of key Greek words having to do with mind and attitude that I have translated with such variations as wise, of sound mind, self-controlled, clever, smart, of good sense. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am most grateful to Charles Segal for his help with this translation; his counsel has been unfailingly wise, learned and friendly. For the extraordinary opportunity to work with him on this project, I am thankful to Oxford University Press and the coeditors of this series, Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian. The reader of this new version of Euripides in our own language and our own time should attribute any failure of ear or inventiveness to me.

Reginald Gibbons

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

Translated by

reginald gibbons and

charles segal

CHARACTERS

dionysos the god, who except at the beginning and the end of the play appears in the mortal form of his disguise, the stranger. Also called bromios (the Thunderer or Roarer), bakkhos, iakkhos (a name suggesting his holy cry or shriek), and euios (suggesting a cry of joy) chorus of bakkhai women from Lydia, in Asia Minor, who as worshipers of Dionysos have accompanied him to Greece teiresias the elderly blind soothsayer kadmos elderly founder of Thebes (a small Bronze Age city), who was formerly the head of the royal household of Thebes pentheus grandson of Kadmos; about eighteen or twenty years old two messengers various attendants (servants, guards) agaue¨ daughter of Kadmos and mother of Pentheus

Line numbers in the right-hand margin of the text refer to the English translation only, and the Notes on the text beginning at p. 303 are keyed to these lines. The bracketed line numbers in the running head lines refer to the Greek text.

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

dionysos the god enters, alone, and stands before simple architectural shapes representing the tall royal house of Thebes, the adjacent monument to his dead mother, se´meleˆ, and the ruin of her house, destroyed perhaps twenty-five or thirty years before, at dionysos’ birth. From the ruin smoke is still rising.

dionysos I, son of Zeus, have come to Theban soil— I, Dionysos, to whom Se´meleˆ, Kadmos’ daughter, gave a fiery birth When flames of lightning burst to bring me forth. Having changed my shape from god to mortal, Now I have come to where two rivers flow— The waters of the Dirkeˆ and the Isme´nos. I see beside the royal house the tomb Of Se´meleˆ, my mother, lightning- struck; And here’s her ruined house still smoldering With the live flame of Zeus—the immortal rage And violence of Hera against my mother. But Kadmos I praise—he set aside this precinct As sacred to his daughter’s memory. And then I covered it all around with vines Of wide green leaves and clusters of the grape. Leaving the country of the Phrygians, And the Lydians, rich in bright gold, and going Up to the heights of Persian plains, hard beaten By the sun, then onward to the high-walled towns Of the Baktrians, the grim hard lands of the Medes, To opulent Arabia and all Of Asia Minor, where in fine tall-towered Cities by the salt sea, barbarians And Greeks all mix together, I have come First to this city, here among the Greeks, After I set everyone in Asia Dancing and founded my rites there, so that All mortals would see that I am a god. It was Thebes, in all of Greece, that I made

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the first to raise the women’s ecstatic cry. I clothed Thebes in the fawn skin, and I gave Into its hand the thyrsos, too—the ivy Javelin—because my mother’s sisters, Who should have been the last, and the least inclined, To deny me, did just that: denied that I Am Dionysos, the son of Zeus. They said That Se´meleˆ had been taken by a man And that she only claimed it was Zeus who was To blame for the wrongdoing in her bed— They thought this claim the sophistry of Kadmos. My mother’s sisters gloated to everyone That this lie was the reason Zeus had killed her. So, like a gadfly I have stung these sisters To a frenzy, out of their very homes, to live Crazed in the mountains. And I made them wear The trappings of their service to me, also. The whole female seed of Kadmos’ kin, Every woman of that family, I’ve driven from their homes in a state of madness, And now, together with my mother’s sisters, They sit on rocks, without a roof, beneath The pale green pines. For Thebes must fully learn— Despite itself, if need be, what neglect Of my Bakkhic rituals means. And I, revealed To mortals as the god she bore to Zeus, Must speak in defense of Se´meleˆ, my mother. Kadmos has handed all authority Of rule to Pentheus, his daughter’s son, Who is at war with deity itself When he behaves toward me as he does— He is excluding me from his libations, Making no mention of me when publicly He calls upon the gods. But I will show To him and Thebes that I was born a god. When I’ve set this place to rights, I’ll travel To yet another country, to reveal Myself again. And if this Theban city Angrily takes up weapons and tries by force

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[20–50]

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[51–70]

To bring the Bakkhai down from the mountainside, I will lead the maenads into battle— That is why I’ve taken mortal shape, Changed form to what in nature is a man.

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Now the chorus begin to file on stage from one side; they do not hear what dionysos is saying; some of the chorus carry drums like large tambourines and others carry thyrsoi. And you, my sisterhood of worshipers, Who left Mount Tmolos, fortress of Lydia, You whom I brought from among barbarians To sit beside me and share my wanderings, Now you must beat your drums—the Phrygian drums Invented by Mother Rhea and by me! Surround this royal house of Pentheus And beat the drums, so Kadmos’ city hears! I will go up the canyons of Mount Kitha´iron, To where the Bakkhai are, and join their dance.

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dionysos exits. Throughout the play, some of the lines sung or spoken by the chorus are uttered by all together, others only by the chorus leader or other members of the chorus; during the odes, as the chorus sing, they also dance. Parode (opening ode) With accompanying drums.

chorus

Asia I left, sacred Tmolos I left behind me, And for Bromios I race to sweet toil And weariness that is no toil nor weariness, And I cry out in praise of the Bakkhic God— Who’s standing in the road? Who’s in the way? Who’s In the great house? Move aside! Come out! Let everyone keep mouths pure

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[71–100]

In holy silence! For I will always sing in praise of Dionysos The hymns that tradition says are his: O Blessed, truly happy is he Who knows the rituals Of the god, who joins his spirit With the holy worshipers in the mountains, Who through the holy purifying rites Becomes one of the Bakkhai And in the one right way celebrates The mysteries of our great mother Kybe´leˆ And swings the thyrsos high Overhead and wears a crown Of ivy and serves Dionysos!

strophe

Onward, Bakkhai! Onward, Bakkhai!— Leading Bromios, god and child of god, Dionysos, home from the mountains of Phrygia To these Greek streets, broad Streets for dancing, broad Greek streets, Bromios! O antistrophe Dionysos!—who once lay curled Within his mother in her pangs of childbirth When to earth flew the lightning of Zeus And at his thunderclap she thrust The child too early from Her womb and left this life. Then instantly Zeus the son of Kronos Took the infant into his own thigh, Where he covered him and closed With golden pins this chamber Of a womb hidden away from Hera’s sight. When the Fates measured out The term, then Zeus himself gave Birth to the god with the horns of a bull, 248

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[101–34]

And crowned him with a crown of snakes— Which is why the maenads catch these eaters of What is wild and braid them through their hair.

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Crown yourself with ivy, strophe O Thebes where Se´meleˆ lived! Abound, abound in Evergreen Leaves and red berries, consecrate Yourselves as Bakkhai with Sprays of oak and pine! Over your dappled fawn skins drape White woolen curls and strands, And with all your violent fennel-rods Be holy! Now the whole earth Will dance together when Bromios leads Worshipers to the mountain, to the mountain— Where the throng of women Wait together, stung to a frenzy and driven Away from their shuttles And looms by Dionysos!

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O chamber of the Kou´reteˆs, antistrophe O sacred reaches of island Crete!— Where, in the cave of the birth Of Zeus Triple-crested Korybante¨s Devised for me The circle of stretched hide! In the frenzy of the dance They joined this beat with the sweet Calling breath of Phrygian Pipes, they gave the drum, Pounding for the Bakkhic cries Of ecstasy, to Mother Rhea. From her, the Mother Goddess, Ecstatic satyrs took it To the festivals where every other year Our Dionysos rejoices when everyone is dancing.

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[135–69]

How sweet he is in the mountains, epode When running with his worshipers he throws Himself to the ground, wearing his holy fawn skin— Rapture of killing and the spilled Blood, of eating Raw the flesh of the hunted goat! Racing across the mountains of Phrygia, of Lydia! Bromios leads us! Euho´i! From the earth comes flowing milk, flowing Wine, flowing nectar of bees! The Bakkhic One Lifts his blazing torch high, The sweet pine smoke streams Like Syrian frankincense as he races Holding the staff of fennel— Running and dancing, joyously Crying, Dionysos stirs The straggling maenads to shake With rapture and he whips His long fine hair in the air of heaven. Amidst their joyful cries He roars to them, ‘‘Onward, Bakkhai! Onward, Bakkhai! You are the pride of goldGiving Mount Tmolos, Sing of Dionysos to the thundering drumbeats, Your shouts of rapture exalt The god of joyful cry With Phrygian crying and calling, When the melodious holy Pipes with holy notes Resound around those Who throng to the mountain, To the mountain!’’ Then, like a joyful foal, when it plays Near the grazing mare, the woman Worshiper swiftly, nimbly leaps!

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[170–93]

scene i teiresias enters—an old man moving feebly. teiresias Who’s there at the gate? Call Kadmos from the house— Age´nor’s son, who left his city, Sidon, Came here and built these towers of Thebes. Go in, Someone, say that Teiresias has come To see him. He knows why I’m here, and what Agreement I have with him—of one old man With an older one—to craft our thyrsoi, wear Fawn skins, and crown our heads with ivy tendrils.

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kadmos emerges from the royal house—also old and moving feebly. kadmos Ah, my dear friend!—I recognized your voice From inside my house as soon as I could hear you— It’s a wise man’s wise voice. And now I’m ready! I have put on these trappings of the god. For he’s my daughter’s child, our Dionysos, A god revealed to mortals, whom we must Magnify in any way we can. So where do we go now to dance? And what Are the steps our feet must learn? Where do we toss These old gray heads? Explain, Teiresias, Tell me as one old man to another—you Are the wise one. And I won’t weary, not In the least, pounding my thyrsos on the earth All day and all night, too—and what a joy To forget that we are old! teiresias

Then you feel just As I do—young! I’ll try to dance the dance.

kadmos Do we go up the mountain by chariot? teiresias No—that would not honor the god as much. kadmos Shall one old man lead the other like a child to school?

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[194–218]

teiresias The god will lead us effortlessly to himself.

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kadmos Are we the only ones in Thebes to dance for Bakkhos? teiresias Yes—only we have any sense, the rest have none. kadmos We have delayed too long, now. Take my hand. teiresias See, then—join hands with me, make two hands one. kadmos I don’t despise the gods—am I not mortal? teiresias In matters of the gods, we don’t engage In sophistries. Traditions of our fathers, Which we received when time began, cannot Be overthrown by argument, not even By the utmost thought that sometimes reaches wisdom.

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kadmos Because I want to dance and wear a crown Of ivy, will some person say I show No respect for my old age? teiresias

Not so. The god Makes no distinction between the young and old When men are called to celebrate his dance. He wishes to be honored and exalted By all alike, and no one is excluded.

kadmos Since you can’t see this light, Teiresias, I will interpret for you with my words: Here’s Pentheus—he’s striding, filled with zeal, Toward the house—Ekhı´on’s child, to whom I gave the power to rule this soil. But how Flustered he is! What new wild thing will he say? With a few attendants, pentheus enters, very agitated. pentheus Just when I happen to be outside this land, What do I hear? New evils! Women leave Our houses for bogus revels (‘‘Bakkhic’’ indeed!), Dashing through the dark shade of mountain forests 252

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[219–52]

To honor with their dancing this new god, Dionysos—whoever he may be— And right in their midst they set full bowls of wine, And slink into the thickets to meet men there, Saying they are maenads sacrificing, When really they rank Aphrodite first, Over Bakkhos! I’ve caught and shackled some By the hands, in city prisons, under guard, And those at large, I’ll hunt down on the mountain: [Ino, and Agaue¨—who by Ekhı´on Gave birth to me—and Autonoe¨, the mother Of Akta´ion.] I’ll bind them up in nets of iron And stop their evil Bakkhic revels fast. People say some stranger has arrived, A sorcerer, a Lydian casting spells, His long blond hair perfumed, his cheeks as red As wine, his eyes with the charm of Aphrodite’s. And all day long and all night, too, they say, He mingles with young girls, he promises them His mysteries of joyous rapture—but If I catch him around here, within our borders, I’ll stop him pounding with his thyrsos and tossing His hair—for through his throat I’ll cut his head Off of his body. He says Dionysos Is a god, he says Dionysos was Sewn into the thigh of Zeus! But Dionysos Was burnt up with his mother by the flame Of the lightning bolt—because she lied about Her marriage-bed with Zeus. Such terrible things— Don’t they deserve hanging, as outrages Beyond outrage, whoever this stranger is?

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pentheus notices the two old men. But here’s Teiresias, the prophet, dressed In dappled fawn skins! Yet another wonder! And mother’s father—how ridiculous!— Reveling like the Bakkhai with his thyrsos! Sir, I reject the sight of you like this— Old age without a shred of sense. Won’t you

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Shake that ivy off and drop that thyrsos, Father of my mother? Teiresias, You talked him into this—you introduce Yet another god to mortals so You can interpret the omens of birds and make People pay you at burnt offerings. If your white hair did not protect you, you Would be imprisoned, held with all the Bakkhai For having brought these sinister mystic rites Among us here—for when the women have The bright grape-cluster gleaming at their feasts, There’s nothing healthy in these rites, I say. chorus What sacrilege! Irreverence! O stranger, Do you not revere the gods and Kadmos— Who planted the crop of earth-born men? Will you, Ekhı´on’s child, bring shame on all your kin? teiresias It’s no great task to speak well, when a man’s Intelligent and starts well with good words. But you: your tongue runs smoothly, as if you had Some understanding. Yet your words are senseless. A man like you, whose strength is that he’s bold, Who’s good at speaking, too, can only make A bad citizen—for he lacks good sense. As for this new god whom you mock with laughter— The greatness he will have in Greece surpasses My power to explain. Listen to me, Young man—there are two great first things that we As mortals have: the goddess of the Earth, Deme´ter—call her by whatever name You wish—gave us our solid food, and he Who came next, Se´meleˆ’s child, gave us liquid— From the grape—as counterpart to Deme´ter’s bread. The god’s invention, it gives us poor mortals Release from pain and sorrow, when we’re filled With what flows from the vine; it gives us sleep, When we can forget the evils of the day. Nor for us mortals can another drug For suffering surpass it. Himself a god,

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[284–315]

He is poured out to the other gods, so that From him we mortals have what’s good in life. And you—you laugh and mock him for his birth From Zeus’ thigh? I’ll teach you the excellence Of this: When Zeus snatched Dionysos up From the flames of his own thunderbolt, and brought The infant to Olympos as a god, Hera would have hurled the child from heaven. But Zeus, opposing her, devised his scheme— One such as only a god could ever form: He broke away a limb of the body of air, The aether that surrounds the earth on high. He gave this limb to Hera to pacify her, Thus saving Dionysos. Later, when mortals Said that the god was stitched in Zeus’ limb, His thigh, they changed the high to thigh (because On high the god was hostage to a goddess) And told the story to fit the change of words. This god is also prophet: there’s mantic power In both the Bakkhic and the crazed—for when The god completely fills the body, those He maddens tell the future. He has his share Of Ares, too—for soldiers, fully armed, Drawn up in battle ranks, may fly in fright Before they’ve even touched their spears: this, too, Is madness put in men by Dionysos. And you will see him leaping on the heights Of Delphi, some day, torch-flame in his hand, Brandishing the Bakkhic staff, up there On the high plateau between the two tall peaks, And great through all of Greece. So Pentheus, Believe me—do not boast that mortal rule Masters men, nor think that you are wise, When thinking, the way you do it, is diseased. Welcome the god within this land and pour Libations, crown your head and join the Bakkhai. It’s not for Dionysos to compel Women to modesty and self-control In matters of Aphrodite, for modesty

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With respect to everything lies in their nature. Consider that even in the Bakkhic revels A woman of true self-control will not Be corrupted. Do you see this? You rejoice When shouting hordes stand at the city gates To give honor to the name of Pentheus— I think that Dionysos, too, enjoys The pleasure of acclaim. So I—and Kadmos, Despite your mocking him—will crown our heads With ivy and will dance. A gray-haired pair, Yes. But we must dance, even so. And you Will not persuade me with your words to fight Against divinity. You are acting most Painfully mad. No drug can cure your sickness When it seems some drug has made you sick.

[316–44]

380

chorus Old man, with such good words you do not shame Apollo. Your praise for Bromios shows your wise good sense. kadmos My boy, Teiresias has said to you Only what he should say. Live as we do, And not beyond the order of the laws. Right now you are extremely flustered, so Your thinking makes no sense. And even if This is not the god, consider him A god and call him such. And tell a lie For a good cause—that he is Se´meleˆ’s son— So it will seem she gave birth to a god, And all our clan is honored. You know how Akta´ion ended: female hounds, the eaters Of raw flesh, dogs that he had raised, tore him Apart: and this was his sad fate for boasting In mountain meadows that he was a hunter Greater than Artemis! May you not suffer This! Come, let me crown your head with ivy. Join us in giving to the god full honor. pentheus Let go of me! Off to your Bakkhic rites! Don’t smear your stupid folly onto me!

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[345–69]

I’ll punish him who taught you to be foolish. To his attendants. Quickly, go where this man has his seat For interpreting the meaning of bird song— Pry it apart with bars and tear it down, Pile everything together in one heap, Throw his holy ribbands to the wind And rain. With this one deed, I’ll bite him hardest. The rest of you, search Thebes until you find This stranger who looks female, who has brought A new disease that sickens all our women, And who corrupts their beds! And if you find him, Bind him and bring him here, so that he may Receive his justice: death by stoning—after He sees a bitter Bakkhic revel in Thebes! teiresias You stubborn man, how ignorant you are Of what you’re saying! Earlier, you acted Crazy enough, but now you’re truly mad. Kadmos, for his sake—savage though he is— And for the city’s sake, let’s go to plead That the god do nothing unusual. Come with me, and bring your ivy staff, Help me stay on my feet, and I will do The same for you—it would bring shame on us If we two elders fell, but go we must. We must be slaves to Bakkhos, son of Zeus. May Pentheus not make your house repent, Kadmos. I say this not to prophesy— The fact is there: the fool speaks foolish things. After their brief moment of youthful liveliness and then their argument with pentheus, teiresias and kadmos exit, moving shakily again; pentheus goes into the royal house. The chorus dance and sing.

257

410

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

chorus

[370–98]

First stasimon (second ode) O Lady Holiness, strophe Revered among the gods, O Holiness, you Who on golden wings Pass soaring above the earth— Do you hear these words Of Pentheus? Do you hear His wrong, impure, unholy Insults against Bromios, Se´meleˆ’s son, the first-blessed god At the festive banquets crowned with Lovely garlands of flowers and ivy?— The god whose part, there, is To join the dancing worshipers, To laugh with the notes of the pipe, To end our worries when The gleaming grape-cluster arrives At our great feast in celebration Of the gods and when Amidst the ivied feasts the wineBowl wraps sleep around all the men.

Mouths unbridled and antistrophe Folly flaunting the law End in misfortune, But a life of calm And of wise thinking Will not be Wrecked by storms, And will keep The household safe and whole. For even though the gods dwell so far Away in the air of heaven, they See what mortals do. Intellect is not wisdom. And to think in a manner Not right for mortals means Life will be short. Who Would pursue great things

258

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[399–427]

If doing so meant losing what Is already his? That is the way, as I see it, And bad counsel, of madmen. O let me go to Cyprus, Island of great Aphrodite, To Paphos where gods of desire Cast a spell on the mortal mind— Blooming Paphos luxuriantly Fruitful with the waters of The wide barbarian rainless River of a hundred mouths— And to Pieria, most beautiful Habitation of the Muses Where sacred Mount Olympos Slopes gravely downward— Lead me there, Bromios! Bromios, god of ecstatic Cry who guides the Bakkhai! There we will find the Graces, There we’ll find Desire, There the very law is To celebrate your mysteries!

strophe

Our god, the son of Zeus, antistrophe Rejoices in festivities And loves the goddess Peace—who gives us Our plenty and rears our children. To the rich and the poor alike Our god has given The delight of wine, that frees us From our grief, and he hates Anyone who does not Want to live, both by day And by precious night, a life Of blessed happiness, and Anyone who does not want to Keep a wise heart

259

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510

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[428–54]

And a wise mind safe From arrogant men. Whatever everyone, all Simple, ordinary people, Prefer and do, this I accept.

scene ii pentheus enters again from the royal house, converging with guards entering from offstage, two of whom are holding between them, by the arms, the stranger, whose hands are bound. guard Here we are, Pentheus! We’ve hunted down The prey, the one you sent us out to catch— Our search was not in vain. We found this beast Was gentle, and he didn’t run, but held out His hands to us, he didn’t even pale, His cheeks stayed flushed with wine, he laughed and said To bind his hands and lead him off—he waited To make that job quite easy for us. I was Ashamed. I said, ‘‘Stranger, I don’t arrest you Because I want to, but because I was sent By Pentheus, who ordered me to do it.’’ As for the Bakkhai you locked up, the ones You took away and bound and shackled in chains In the town prison—now they’re gone! Set free! They’re running away towards the mountain clearings, Leaping and calling on their Dionysos As a god. Their ankle-chains just fell away By themselves, the doors no mortal hand had touched Swung wide open, unbolted. Full of wonders, This man has come to Thebes!—but whatever is To happen next is your concern, not mine. pentheus Untie his hands. He’s in my net, he won’t Escape me now. Well, you do have the shape Of a man whose body women don’t find ugly. Isn’t that just what you came here for? 260

520

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540

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[455–76]

Your hair is much too long to be a wrestler’s, Flowing down to your cheeks that way, and full Of lust. You’ve kept your skin quite fair, by staying Out of the sun, and well in the shade, to hunt For Aphrodite, pretty as you are. First, tell me of your home, your family. dionysos I will tell you readily—it’s easy. You’ve heard of Mount Tmolos, thick with flowers? pentheus Yes, it makes a circle around the town of Sardis. dionysos I am from there—my country’s Lydia.

550

pentheus These rites you bring to Greece—where are they from? dionysos Dionysos himself, the son of Zeus, initiated me. pentheus Some Zeus from over there, who begets new gods? dionysos None but the Zeus who yoked Se´meleˆ to himself, here. pentheus Were you compelled by him in dreams, or awake in daylight? dionysos Face to face—and he gives me mystic rites. pentheus These mystic rites of yours—what are they like? dionysos They must not be known by mortals who aren’t Bakkhai. pentheus How do they benefit the ones who make the ritual sacrifice? dionysos That’s not for you to hear—although it’s worth your knowing. pentheus You counterfeit a good reply, so that I’ll want to hear. dionysos The rites of the god would scathe a nonbeliever.

261

560

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[477–95]

pentheus The god—you claim you saw him clearly—what was he like? dionysos Whatever he wished—I did not order him about. pentheus How cleverly you channel this aside, and say not a thing! dionysos Wise things to the ignorant will sound like nonsense. pentheus Is Thebes the first place where you’ve brought the god? dionysos Among barbarians, these rites are danced by everyone. pentheus Because they have less sense than do we Greeks. dionysos In this, at least, they have good sense—but different customs.

570

pentheus Do you perform the rites by day?—or night? dionysos Mostly at night—because the darkness has its holiness. pentheus It’s treacherous, for women, and corrupts them. dionysos What’s shameful can be found even by light of day. pentheus You must be punished for your evil sophistries. dionysos And you—for ignorance and lack of piety toward the god. pentheus What Bakkhic boldness! An acrobat of words! dionysos Tell me what I’ll suffer. What terrible thing will you do to me? pentheus First I’ll have that delicate hair cut off. dionysos My hair is sacred—I grow it for the god. pentheus Next, give up that thyrsos with your own hand. 262

580

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[496–516]

dionysos Take it from me yourself: I carry it for Dionysos. pentheus We will guard your body inside, in chains. dionysos The god himself will set me free, whenever I so wish. pentheus Yes—if you call him while standing with the maenads. dionysos He’s right here, now, and sees what I am suffering. pentheus Where is he, then? My eyes don’t see him here. dionysos He’s where I am. Because of your irreverence you cannot see him. pentheus Hold this man. He scorns both me and Thebes. dionysos I tell all of you: don’t bind me—I am sane and you are not.

590

pentheus And I say: I rule you and they’ll bind you. dionysos You don’t know what your life is, nor what you’re doing, nor who you are. pentheus I am Pentheus, Agaue¨’s son, Ekhı´on was my father. dionysos Your name means grief, and you are suited for it. pentheus Begone. Confine him to the horses’ stalls So that he may see only gloom and darkness. You can do your dancing there. And these Women you’ve brought as your accomplices In evil, we’ll either sell or—once I’ve stopped Their hands from beating on these drums—I’ll own As household slaves working at looms, inside. dionysos I’m ready to go. What is not meant to be, I won’t have to suffer. But you! The god In whose existence you do not believe,

263

600

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[517–43]

Dionysos, will chase you down and then Exact his compensation for your insults. In putting us in chains, it’s him you wrong. dionysus and pentheus exit, with guards, into the royal house. The chorus dance and sing. chorus

Second stasimon (third ode) O Lady Dı´rkeˆ, riverstrophe Daughter of Akhelou¨s, blessed Maiden—once, you took into Your waters the infant of Zeus, When his father plucked that child From the flames of his own Immortal fire to hide Him in his thigh, and cried out, ‘‘Go, Dithyrambos, twice-born, into My male womb. I reveal You, Bakkhos, to Thebes, To be called by this name.’’ But blessed Dı´rkeˆ, You push me away when I have Filled your banks with ivy-crowned dancers. Why do you reject me? Why do you run from me? Someday, I swear By the joyful grape-clusters Of Dionysos’ vine— Someday you won’t be Able to think of anything but Bromios.

Pentheus, the spawn Of earth itself, reveals He is descended from A dragon, fathered by earthBorn Ekhı´on as a monster With the face of a beast, No mortal man but some

264

antistrophe

610

620

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[544–75]

Savage murderous giant who Battles the gods. And soon He’ll bind me with ropes because I Belong to Bromios! Already He holds in his house My reveling companion, hidden Away in dark prison. Do you see this, Dionysos, O son of Zeus?—that those Who praise you are in bonds And must struggle against them? Come, Lord, come down from Olympos brandishing your thyrsos With its golden face! End the insults of a murderous man! Dionysos—where on Mount Nysa, epode The mother-nurse of all wild creatures, Are you leading your worshipers with Your thyrsos? Or are you atop Korykian mountain peaks? Or perhaps in the dark thick forests of Olympos Where Orpheus playing his lyre gathered Around him the listening trees, Around him the listening beasts? O much-blessed Mount Pieria, Euios will make you sacred, Dancing his revels with His troupe of Bakkhai Across the rushing River Axios He’ll come with the whirling maenads, And over the river Lydias, father Of fortune, giver of gladness— Clearest waters of Lydias, I hear it said, That fatten that realm of famed horses. scene iii These lines are sung.

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[576–601]

dionysos From within the royal house, in the god’s voice. Io! Io Bakkhai! Io Bakkhai! Hear me, hear my voice! chorus Who’s shouting? Who? And where’s that cry from? That shout of Euios that summons me! dionysos Io! Io! I call again, I— Son of Se´meleˆ, son of Zeus! chorus Io! Io! Master, master, Come to your holy followers, O Bromios! Bromios! dionysos Lady Earthquake, come shake the floor of the world!

680

chorus Aaah! Aaah! Pentheus’ rafters will pitch till they tumble! Dionysos is here in the halls! Revere him in awe! We do! We do! Do you see at the top of the columns, the lintels of stone, So high, that are breaking apart? Thundering Bromios is shouting His triumph from inside the house! dionysos Bring the torch burning to strike bright as lightning! Burn and burn down the whole house of Pentheus! chorus Aaah! Aaah! Do you see the fire? Do you see Se´meleˆ’s holy tomb surrounded By flames from the lightning that Zeus Once hurled from heaven? Throw yourselves down, maenads! Throw your shaking bodies to the ground! The Lord will come into this house

266

690

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[602–624]

To pile it upside down in a heap— The Lord, son of Zeus!

700

End of sung lines. Now dionysos enters from the house, still disguised as the stranger. dionysos Barbarian women, are you so startled and so filled with fear That you fall to the ground? What you seem to have felt Was the Bakkhic god shaking apart the house of Pentheus. All of you rise up now and be brave and stop your trembling. chorus O greatest light of the joyful cries of the Bakkhanal, What joy to see your face in my desolate loneliness! dionysos Did you feel afraid when you saw them take me inside, Did you think I was cast into Pentheus’ dark prison? chorus How could I not? If you met some disaster, who would protect me? When you met that unholy man, how were you freed?

710

dionysos Easily I saved myself, without the slightest toil. chorus Didn’t he tie your hands tightly with knotted ropes? dionysos That’s how I humbled and insulted him: he thought He had bound me, but never held and never touched me— He only hoped he did. So when he led me in, His prisoner, to the manger, and he found a bull there, He bound its legs and hobbled its hooved feet, not mine. Breathing out his very spirit, he was dripping sweat, Biting his lips, as I sat near, completely calm, Watching him. And at that moment, Bakkhos entered, Shaking walls and striking fire at his mother’s tomb. When Pentheus saw this, he thought his house was burning

267

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[625–48]

And he rushed around and told his servants to bring water— To bring the river Akhelou¨s itself! His slaves Worked hard but all their labor was pointless and in vain. Then he quit his toiling. Thinking that I had escaped, He lifted a dark sword high and rushed into the house. Now Bromios—it seems to me, at least, that this Is what took place—now Bromios made a phantom shape 730 Hover in the courtyard and Pentheus chased after it, He charged headlong at this shining air, stabbing it through As if he thought that he could slaughter me. Beyond All this, Bakkhos did more to him, to bring him low: He shook the buildings down—the place has all collapsed. So much for Pentheus. Bitterly he is staring At the bonds he put on me. Exhausted, he has dropped His sword and fallen down—for he dared battle against A god, but he is only a man. And I came out Quite calm, to you—without a thought of Pentheus. 740 Do I hear footsteps in the house? It seems to me He’ll come out, now. And after all that has happened, what Can he say? But even if he still is blowing hard, I will endure him easily, because a man Who is wise has self-control and gentleness of temper. pentheus enters from the royal house—furious and ‘‘flustered.’’ pentheus What terrible, strange things I’ve suffered, now! That foreigner I had just tied up escaped! Oh! Oh! There he is! What is this? How can you Appear outside, here in front of my house? dionysos Slow your steps! Your temper needs a calm foundation! pentheus How did you untie yourself and get out?

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750

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[649–71]

dionysos Didn’t I say—or didn’t you hear—that someone would set me free? pentheus But who? You’re always bringing in something strange. dionysos He who grows for me the vine of clustered grapes. pentheus For Dionysos, that boast is more reproach than praise. I order the circle of walls and towers completely closed! dionysos What good will that do? Don’t the gods leap walls? pentheus You’re oh so smart, so smart except in what would count. first messenger enters as dionysos is speaking the next line. dionysos Where it’s needed, there of course I’m smart. But now this man has come from the mountainside— Listen to him and learn what he will tell. We will wait—we will not run away.

760

first messenger Pentheus, you who rule this Theban ground, I have just arrived from Mount Kitha´iron, Where glittering falls of brilliant snow still lie. pentheus What is it that you’d tell us with such zeal? first messenger Seeing the sacred maenads, whose bare limbs Moved swift as spears when they flashed away from Thebes Stung to a frenzy, I come here to tell you, My lord—as I would tell the city, too— That what they’re doing now is strange, is greater Than any wondrous miracle. I wish To hear if I can speak freely of what I saw—or do I need to trim my sails? I’m afraid of how your thoughts will rush, my lord. I fear your kingly temper and your power.

269

770

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[672–709]

pentheus Speak! For in any case you’ll not be harmed By me—one should not rage at those who are just. The worse the things you say about the maenads, The more I’ll add to the punishment of him Who introduced his wiles among the women. first messenger When the sun’s rays began to warm the earth, Our grazing herds of cattle were ascending Toward the high crags, and that was when I saw Three troupes of women: Autonoe¨ was leader Of the first troupe, and then Agaue¨ herself— Your mother—was in charge of the second troupe, And Ino of the third. And all were sleeping— At their ease, some of them were lying down On soft pine needles, others on oak leaves, Resting their heads on the ground wherever they wished. And modestly. Not drunk—as you have said— From the wine bowl, nor to the tunes of the pipes Hunting one by one for sex in the woods. Your mother must have heard our cattle lowing, For she stood up with a drawn-out cry to wake The women, who threw their deep sleep from their eyes And rose quickly—a marvel of good order And good grace: women young and old, and girls Who have yet to be yoked in marriage. First They let their hair fall to their shoulders, then They tied their fawn pelts up—those that were loose—, Fastening the dappled skins with snakes That licked their cheeks. Some women cradled wild Gazelle kids and wolf cubs close in their arms To suckle them with their pale milk—because Those who have just given birth have left Their babies home and now their breasts are swollen. They crowned themselves with ivy, oak leaves, vines. One of them struck her thyrsos on a rock, From which a cold fresh stream of water leapt. Another touched her fennel-staff to earth, And up flowed springs of wine. And those who longed For milk began to dig by hand, and spurts

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

Of it surged up. Honey began to pour From the ivied rods they carry. So, if you Had been there, too, and seen what I have seen, You’d pray to Dionysos rather than Condemn him . . . We began to argue, a bit— Cowherds and shepherds gathered to compare These strange, miraculous events—and one Of us, who used to wander through the town, And was good at talking, said, ‘‘All of you who Live on these sacred mountains: shall we hunt Agaue¨, mother of lord Pentheus, Take her from these Bakkhic revels, and gain The master’s favor?’’ This was a good idea, We thought—and where they would come by, we hid In thickets for an ambush. When it was time, They raised their sacred staffs to begin their dances, Calling together on Bromios as ‘‘Iakkhos,’’ The son of Zeus. And all the mountain, all The creatures of the wild, joined them till nothing That lived was left outside the running dance. Agaue¨ happened to fling herself near me, And I sprang out, leaving my hiding place, To try to take good hold of her, but she Called to them, ‘‘O hounds of the chase, these men Are hunting us! Follow me! Follow me Bearing not arms but thyrsoi as your weapons!’’ We ran away from them—to escape being torn Apart by the maenads. But with their bare hands, Not with weapons of iron, then they began To attack the grazing herds. You would have seen One woman by herself with just her hands Pulling in two a big young heifer that Had swelling udders and was bellowing, And meanwhile others were dismembering The full-grown cattle, flaying them to shreds. You would have seen the ribs and hooves hurled up, Thrown down, flying through the air, and pieces

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[710–41]

820

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[742–72]

Hanging from the trees, still dripping blood. Even arrogant bulls were stumbling, forced To the ground, the anger in their horns outweighed By the countless hands of girls—their rags of flesh Were torn from them much faster than you could Have blinked your royal eyes. And then like birds They rose and sped across the spreading plains Where Theban wheat grows thick beside the river— 860 On towns in Mount Kitha´iron’s foothills they fell Like enemies, and plundered Hysia´i And Erythra´i, and turned them upside down. They snatched the children of those towns from their homes, And everything they carried on their shoulders Stayed where they put it and never fell, without Their even having tied it to themselves! And in their hair they carried blazing fire, Which did not burn them . . . People in the towns Felt fury at this pillage and fought back. 870 And that, my lord, was an awful thing to see: For men threw pointed spears and yet could draw No blood, neither with bronze nor iron—instead, The women, hurling thyrsoi with their hands, Dealt those people many wounds, and made Them turn their backs and run. Women defeated The men—and not without some god. After that, They returned to where they had departed from— Those springs the god had given them. They washed The blood away, and what was on their cheeks 880 The snakes cleaned off by licking . . . And so, O master, Receive this god, whoever he may be, Into our city, because his power is great— Both in other matters and also, as I Have heard them say, in this: it’s he who gave To mortals the vine that stops all suffering. And if wine were to exist no longer, then

272

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[773–801]

Neither would the goddess Aphrodite, Nor anything of pleasure for us mortals. chorus I’m frightened to speak freely to the king, But even so, it must be said to him That Dionysos is beneath no god! pentheus Outrageous Bakkhic violence blazes up Close by like wildfire—and to Greeks this is An intolerable rebuke! I won’t delay! Go to the Elektran Gate! And summon all Our troops!—bearers of heavy shields and riders Of swiftest horses, those who carry spears And those whose hands make bowstrings sing with arrows. We go to war against the Bakkhai! This is Too much to bear—that what we’re made to suffer We should suffer at the hands of women.

890

900

dionysos Pentheus: you have heard me speak, but you Do not do what I say. And even though I’ve been mistreated by you, still I tell you Not to raise arms against a god—be calm, For Bromios will not let you force the Bakkhai Down from the mountains that resound with joy. pentheus Will you stop lecturing me and—since you’ve escaped your bonds— Hold onto your freedom? Or I’ll punish you again! dionysos I would sacrifice to him instead of kicking angrily Against the pricking goads—mortal fighting a god. pentheus Sacrifice is just what I’ll do, by slaughtering the women— Who entirely deserve it, in those canyons on Mount Kitha´iron. dionysos You will be routed—and disgraced, that Bakkhai With ivy rods should turn away bronze shields. pentheus There’s no way forward, wrestling with this stranger, Who won’t be silent, whether suffering or free. 273

910

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[802–14]

dionysos And yet—my friend—it’s possible to set things right. pentheus But how? Being a slave to those who are my slaves?

920

dionysos I’ll bring the women here, without one weapon. pentheus Undoubtedly some trick you play on me. dionysos What trick, if I by my devices wish to save you? pentheus You made a pact with them to be Bakkhai forever. dionysos Of that, be certain—but my pact is with the god. pentheus To an attendant. Fetch me my weapons! To dionysos. You—be silent, now! The attendant leaves to bring pentheus his weapons from the royal house. pentheus turns to follow him. dionysos Aaah! pentheus stops and looks back at dionysos, and as they speak, returns to him. Do you want to see them sitting together on the mountain? pentheus Yes, I do—for that, I’d give a countless weight of gold. dionysos But why do you feel such desire for this? pentheus It would pain me if I saw them drunk.

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930

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[815–33]

dionysos And yet you’d see with pleasure that which gives you pain? pentheus Yes—sitting beneath the fir trees, without a sound. dionysos But they will track you down, even if you hide. pentheus A good point—so I’ll go openly to them. dionysos Shall we lead you, then? Will you undertake the journey? pentheus Lead me fast as you can—this waiting irritates me. dionysos Put on the ritual robe of linen, then. pentheus What for? Am I, a male, supposed to rank myself as female? dionysos So they won’t kill you if they see you’re male.

940

pentheus You’re right, again. How smart you’ve always been. dionysos It was Dionysos who taught us these things so well. pentheus What should I do to follow your advice? dionysos I’ll go inside the house and dress you there. pentheus In what dress? Women’s? But I’d be ashamed. dionysos You’re not so eager to watch maenads, any more? pentheus What dress do you intend to clothe me in? dionysos First, on your head, I’ll make your hair much longer. pentheus And the next piece of my adornment—what will it be? dionysos Full-length robes that reach your feet, and a headband.

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950

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[834–48]

pentheus Is there anything more you’ll add to this? dionysos Yes—a thyrsos in your hand, and a spotted fawn skin. pentheus No—I wouldn’t wear a woman’s clothes. dionysos To war against the Bakkhai means great bloodshed. pentheus You’re right. First I must go and spy on them. dionysos That’s wiser than to hunt down evils with evil. pentheus But how can I go through the town and not be seen? dionysos Along deserted streets—I’ll show you where. pentheus Anything’s better than the Bakkhai laughing that they’ve won. dionysos So we’ll go in [ . . . ] [ . . . ] I have to ponder what to do.

pentheus

dionysos Of course! Whatever you decide, my plan is set. pentheus I think that I’ll go in. For I must either Proceed against them armed, or suffer your advice. He goes into the royal house. dionysos Returning to address the chorus: Women! The man is heading toward our net. He will come to the Bakkhai, where he’ll meet

276

960

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[849–73]

His justice—death. And now, Dionysos, things Will turn your way—for you are not far off. Let’s take our vengeance on him: first, derange His mind and put him in a giddy frenzy— For in his right mind he will never want To wear a woman’s clothes, but if he drives His chariot off the road of sanity, He’ll wear them. Then, I want him to be laughed at By everyone when he is led through town A man-turned-woman—after his terrible threats! I’ll go dress Pentheus in what he’ll wear To Hades—sacrificed by his mother’s hand. And he will know that Dionysos, son Of Zeus, was born a god in full, and is Most terrible to mortals and most gentle.

970

980

He follows pentheus into the royal house. The chorus dance and sing. chorus

Third stasimon (fourth ode) Will I ever celebrate strophe All night with white foot Flashing in the Bakkhic dance? Will I ever fling back My head and let the air Of heaven touch my throat With dew, like a fawn at play In the green joy of meadows?— Having escaped just when the frightening Hunt encircled it, when the guards were standing watch Close around and it has Leapt the strongly woven Nets and then the hunter Has cried the hounds Onward and the fawn with utmost Straining effort has run Fast as storm-wind and raced

277

990

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[874–901]

Through river-watered plains To reach the deserted wilds and take joy In being where no mortals come and the leafy Forest stands above thick shade?

1000

What is wise? What gift from the gods Do mortals judge more beautiful Than to hold our outstretched Strong hand over an enemy’s head? What is beautiful is what is always loved. The unremitting power antistrophe Of the divine begins only Slowly to move, but Always moves. It brings To reckoning those mortals Who honor senseless Arrogance and who with mad Beliefs do not give The gods their due. For in their intricate way The gods conceal the slow foot of time To lull us while they hunt down The desecrator. Never Should one think or act As if above what is Accepted as the law Of things. It costs so little To believe that it does rule— Whatever the divine may be, Whatever over long ages of time Is accepted as lawful, always, And comes to be through nature. What is wise? What gift from the gods Do mortals judge more beautiful Than to hold our outstretched Strong hand over an enemy’s head? What is beautiful is what is always loved.

278

1010

1020

1030

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[902–23]

Happy is he who escapes epode A storm at sea and finds safe harbor. Happy is he who has risen above Great toils. In different ways, Some persons outdo others In their wealth and power. And hopes are as many as those who hope— Some will end in rich reward, others in nothing. But those whose lives are happy Day by day—those I call the blesse`d.

1040

scene iv dionysos enters from the royal house; he calls back inside. dionysos You, Pentheus!—rushing toward what you should Not rush to see, zealous for what should not Evoke such zeal—you, Pentheus, come out! Come out in front of the house, reveal yourself To me, come out here wearing women’s clothes, Clothes of maenads, clothes of Bakkhai, ready To spy on your own mother and her troupe. pentheus enters from the royal house, dressed as a woman, wearing a wig, a sash around his head, and a long linen robe like a dress, and carrying a thyrsos. You have the very form of Kadmos’ daughters. pentheus In fact, it seems to me I see two suns, A double seven-gated fortress of Thebes. You lead me forward, so it seems, as a bull, You seem to have grown two horns upon your head. Were you, all this time, an animal? For you have certainly been . . . bullified. dionysos The god who earlier was ill-disposed toward us, comes with us, 279

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[924–48]

At peace with us. You’re seeing what you should see, now. pentheus How do I appear? Don’t you think I’m standing The way that Ino stands? Or as Agaue¨—Mother—does?

1060

dionysos Looking at you, I seem to see them, here. But a lock of hair has fallen out of place, It’s not where I tucked it up beneath your sash. pentheus Inside, when I was shaking it back and forth, Acting like the Bakkhai, it came loose. dionysos But since our task is to take good care of you, I’ll put it back—but hold your head up straight. pentheus Arrange it all! I’m dedicated to you. dionysos Your belt is slack. And then the pleats of your robe Do not hang straight, below your ankles, either.

1070

pentheus No, it seems to me they don’t, on my right side. But on this side it’s all straight at my heel. dionysos You’ll certainly think I’m the first of all your friends, When you’re surprised to see how modest the Bakkhai are. pentheus Which way is more as the Bakkhai do—to hold The thyrsos in my right hand or my left? dionysos Raise it right-handed, in time with your right foot. I commend you on how changed your mind is. pentheus Would I be able to carry Mount Kitha´iron, Canyons and Bakkhai, too, on my own shoulders? dionysos Yes, if you wished. Before, your mind was sick, But now you have the kind of mind you should have.

280

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[949–68]

pentheus Should we bring strong bars? Or should I use bare hands to pry it up, And set my arm or shoulder underneath the mountain top? dionysos Don’t go destroying the shrines of nymphs up there, And the haunts of Pan, where he plays his reed pipes. pentheus You’re right. It’s not by force that we must conquer The women. I will hide among the trees. dionysos You will be hidden as you should be hidden— A stealthy man who goes to spy on the maenads.

1090

pentheus I think they’re flitting through the woods like birds, Then fluttering in the nets of making love. dionysos And isn’t that just what you’ll guard against? You will catch them, if you are not caught first. pentheus Escort me up the widest street in Thebes, Since I’m the only man who’d dare to do this. dionysos You alone must bear all this for Thebes— Just you! That’s why the contest you deserve Awaits you. Follow me—I’ll escort you To salvation. But someone else will bring you back . . . . . . She who gave birth to me.

pentheus

dionysos You’ll be remarkable to everyone . . . That’s why I’m going.

pentheus dionysos You will be carried home . . .

. . . It’s soft delight you speak of!

pentheus

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[969–86]

dionysos . . . in your mother’s arms. You’ll force me to be spoiled.

pentheus dionysos Yes, true spoiling.

But I only claim my due.

pentheus

pentheus exits. dionysos His words follow pentheus offstage: Terror, terror and awe surround you, now. You’ll suffer something terrible, you’ll find A fame that rises all the way to heaven. Open your arms, Agaue¨ and your sisters, Daughter-seed of Kadmos—I bring this youth To the great contest, and both Bromios And I will win. What happens next will show.

1110

He exits. The chorus dance and sing. chorus

Fourth stasimon (fifth ode) Hounds of Fury, rush to the mountain, strophe Where the daughters of Kadmos gather their troupe. Sting them to madness Against this man who mimics woman, The madman spying on the maenads! His mother from some tall pole or rocky cliff Will catch first sight of him, She’ll call out to the maenads, ‘‘Who is this, O Bakkhai, Who has come, who has come to the mountain,

282

1120

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[987–1019]

To the mountain, searching for us, O daughters of Kadmos, We who run freely over the mountainside? What was it that gave birth to him? He was not born From the blood of women, but from a lionness, Or he’s descended from the Libyan Gorgons! Let Justice appear! Let her Carry a sword for killing, And stab through the throat Ekhı´on’s unjust, ungodly, unlawful Earthborn offspring!

1130

Because he, of lawless attitudes antistrophe And sacrilegious rage against your mystic rites, Bakkhos, and those of your mother, Sets out with maddened heart and false ideals To conquer by force what is unconquerable! Him, death will not be slow to teach to have Right thoughts about the gods. Whereas to live rightly as a mortal is to live without the penalty of grief. Let the clever be clever, But I rejoice in hunting What is great and is clear, what leads Life to right things, what leads us By day and by night to be holy And reverent, to cast aside all customs That do not belong to justice, and to honor the gods. Let Justice appear! Let her Carry a sword for killing, And stab through the throat Ekhı´on’s unjust, ungodly, unlawful Earthborn offspring! Appear as a bull! As a snake With many heads, for us to see you! As a lion with a mane of fire!

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epode

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1020–38]

Go, great Bakkhos, O beast! with your laughing face Circle in a net of death this hunter of Bakkhai Who falls now under the trampling herd Of the maenads!

scene v As if many hours had passed, a new messenger enters. second messenger O house once fortunate in all of Greece! House of that patriarch of Sidon who planted In the soil the dragon-crop that was born from earth As men—how I must grieve over you, now, Although I am your slave—but even so!

1160

chorus What is it? Do you bring some news of the Bakkhai? second messenger Pentheus, Ekhı´on’s child, is dead. Singing.

chorus O Lord Bromios, revealed as a great god! second messenger What do you mean? What did you say? Do you Rejoice at what my master suffered, woman? chorus

Singing. I am a stranger here. I sing a foreign song to cry in joy. No longer do I cower in fear of being chained.

second messenger Do you consider Thebes as so unmanly That you will not be punished for what you say? Singing.

chorus Dionysos, Dionysos, not Thebes, Has the power to rule me!

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1038–69]

second messenger You women can be pardoned for that, but joy At suffering others have already borne is wrong. Singing.

chorus Tell it to me, describe it to me, how does The unjust man, the agent of injustice, die?

second messenger After we left the settled ground of Thebes, And crossed the streams of Aso´pos, we climbed up Steep slopes of Mount Kitha´iron—Pentheus And I, for I was close behind my master And that Stranger who escorted us on our Procession to the place where we would watch. We were careful not to speak, nor to make A sound when stepping, when we hid ourselves In the grassy valley so that we could see them Without them seeing us. There was a ravine Surrounded by high cliffs, braided by streams, And shaded by stands of pine, and there the maenads Were sitting, their hands engaged in pleasant tasks— Some put new ivy curls at the crown of a staff, And others—like young fillies that had been Unharnessed from embroidered yokes—at rest, Called out a Bakkhic song to one another. Pentheus—poor, reckless man—who was Unable to view the women, said, ‘‘O Stranger, From where we stand I cannot see to where Those faking maenads are, but if I climbed A tall-necked tree, on higher ground, I’d see Clearly what those shameless maenads are doing.’’ And then the Stranger performed some wondrous deeds— He reached to the top branch of a fir tree As tall as the sky and pulled it downward, down, Down till it touched the black earth and it formed Half a circle, like a bow drawn back Or the wheel-curve that’s traced by the taut end Of a pegged string. That is, with his bare hands The Stranger bent the mountain fir in a way 285

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1070–1102]

No mortal could. And seating Pentheus Among the branches, he began to let The tree straighten itself, passing it through His hands so gently that it didn’t buck And throw its rider off, till it rose as far As the air of heaven, my master on its back, At the top. Instead of seeing maenads, though, He was seen by them—for, as soon as he rose Up there, the Stranger disappeared, and a voice From heaven—Dionysos’ voice, I’d think— Cried out, ‘‘Young women! I have brought you the man Who makes a mockery of you and me And of my mystic rites! Now take revenge On him!’’ And as the voice proclaimed these things, A rising light of holy fire was set Between the earth and heaven. The high air Was still; the leaves of all the trees were still— You would not have heard one animal Stir or cry out. The women, since the sound Had reached their ears from no apparent source, Stood up and looked this way and that. Again Came the command, and when they recognized That it was Dionysos’ voice, these women, Daughters of Kadmos—[Agaue¨ and all her kindred Of the same seed,] and all the Bakkhai—rushed At him as fast as doves, [but by the quickness Of their running feet]. And mad with the god’s breath They leapt the icy torrents and jagged boulders. When they saw my master sitting atop That tall fir tree, at first they picked up stones And flung them at him with tremendous strength, They clambered up on rocks as high as towers, Some threw fir branches like crude javelins, And others hurled their thyrsoi through the air Of heaven at poor wretched Pentheus. But not a thing could reach him. And as his height Was greater than their fury, there he sat, Caught in an impossible place. But at last

286

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1103–34]

They started tearing up the roots of the tree, Striking with oak branches like thunderbolts— With bars of wood, not iron, they used as levers. When all this toil proved useless, Agaue¨ said, ‘‘Maenads! Make a circle and take hold Of the trunk—let’s capture this tree-climbing beast And stop him from revealing to anyone The secret dances of the god.’’ They put Countless hands on the tree and pulled it out Of the earth. Sitting high up, high he is When he starts to fall, and hurtling toward the ground With countless groaning cries, he crashes down. Pentheus knew that now he was at the edge Of calamity. And his mother was the first, As priestess, to begin the slaughter. She Falls on him and he tears the headband from His hair so that wretched Agaue¨ will Recognize him, not kill him, and he touches Her cheek as he begins to say to her, ‘‘Mother, it’s Pentheus, your child! It’s me! You gave birth to me in Ekhı´on’s house. Have pity on me, Mother! Don’t kill me For my wrongdoing!’’ But she was slavering, Her eyes rolled up, she was possessed by Bakkhos, Not thinking as she should, and Pentheus Did not persuade her. Taking with both her hands His left forearm and setting her foot hard Against the ribs of this ill-fated man, She tore his shoulder out—not by her strength But by the ease the god gave to her hands. And Ino had destroyed his other side, Breaking up his flesh, and Autonoe¨ And the Bakkhai mobbed him and everyone was screaming At the same time—he groaning his last breath, And they raising the war cry of their triumph. One of them was flaunting a severed arm, Another held a foot still shod for hunting, His ribs were being bared by clawing nails,

287

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1135–62]

And all with bloodied hands were playing games By tossing hunks of the flesh of Pentheus. His corpse lies scattered among the rugged rocks And deep within the forest in thick foliage— It will be difficult to find it all Again. His pitiful head, which his mother took In her own hands, she put at the top of a thyrsos, She carries it across Kitha´iron’s slope As if it were a lion’s head, she leaves Her sisters with the dancing troupe of maenads. Rejoicing in this hunt that is so unLucky, she comes to town calling to Bakkhos, Her fellow hunter, her comrade in the chase— Triumphant Dionysos, through whose power What she wins for a trophy is her tears. I must go now, away from this disaster, Before Agaue¨ comes back to the house. Wise moderation and a reverence For what is of the gods—this is what’s best. And this, I think, of all possessions owned By mortals, is the wisest one to use. He exits.

1290

1300

The chorus dance and sing.

chorus

Fifth stasimon (sixth ode) Let us dance the Bakkhic dance! Let us shout the doom Of Pentheus, descended from a dragon-snake! He put on women’s clothes, He carried the fennel-rod of Hades, The thyrsos that is the warrant of his death! And at his fall, a bull was in command! You Bakkhai of the house of Kadmos, You have changed your famous hymn of triumph To tears, to lamentation.

288

1310

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1163–80]

Beautiful contest—to plunge her hand in the blood Of her child, to drip with it! I see Agaue¨, mother of Pentheus, With rolling eyes she’s rushing toward the house. Welcome her to the revelers of the god of rapture!

1320

closing scene agaue¨ enters carrying a mask before her as if it were a head; alone, she dances as she sings, along with the chorus, this ode: agaue¨ You Lydian Bakkhai . . .

strophe

O, why do you call to me, woman?

chorus

agaue¨ Because, from the mountain, And for this house, we bring in a blesse`d hunt, A fresh-cut tendril. chorus I see you, I welcome you as our sister-reveler. agaue¨ Without nets, I captured This young creature, As you see.

1330

chorus In what part of the wilderness? Mount Kitha´iron . . .

agaue¨ chorus Mount Kitha´iron?

. . . killed him.

agaue¨

chorus Who struck him first? agaue¨

That honor was mine. Blessed Agaue¨ I am called, in the sacred troupes. 289

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1181–97]

chorus Who else? It was Kadmos—his . . .

agaue¨

chorus Kadmos’ what? agaue¨

His daughters— But after me, after me—who put their hands on this wild creature. Most fortunate was the hunt. So share this feast.

antistrophe What, poor woman?—share this?

chorus

agaue¨ This young bull-calf Had just begun to sprout a little beard To match his delicate crest of hair, like a helmet.

1340

chorus Yes, his hair makes him seem a beast of the wild. agaue¨ Bakkhos the wise Hunter cunningly set the maenads On this beast. chorus For the Lord is a hunter. agaue¨ Are you praising him? We are praising.

chorus

agaue¨ And soon the rest of Kadmos’ family . . . chorus And Pentheus, your son, among them . . . agaue¨

. . . will praise his mother— For having caught this prey so like a lion.

chorus Strange prey.

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1198–1224]

Killed in a strange way.

agaue¨

chorus Are you exulting in this? agaue¨

I rejoice In what great things this hunt achieved, Great things revealed to all! End of ode and dance.

chorus Then show the townspeople the prey, poor woman, That brought you victory, that you bring with you. agaue¨ Thebans! You who live in this citadel Of lovely towers, come see the beast, the prey We daughters of Kadmos hunted down—and not With nets nor spear-throwers but with the points Of our own white-fingered hands. What need is there For hurling useless lances? Why be proud Of what spear-crafters make? We caught this one With just our hands and tore the beast apart! Where’s my old father, now? Let him come here. Where’s Pentheus, my child? Let him bring tall Well-built ladders to raise against the house, Let him fix to the high triglyphs this head Of a lion which I myself have hunted down. kadmos enters, followed by attendants carrying a litter on which the parts of pentheus’ body lie. kadmos Follow me as you carry the sad weight Of Pentheus—follow me, men, to the front Of the house. I bring his body with me after I toiled in endless searching till I found it Lying in the rough canyons of Mount Kitha´iron, The pieces scattered here and there in thick Impenetrable woods. For when I had Already come back to the town with old Teiresias, from the Bakkhai, and had passed

291

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1225–1249]

Within these walls, again, I heard from someone Of what outrageous acts my daughters had Committed. And once more to the mountainside I went, and retrieved the child who died at the hands Of the maenads. And I saw Autonoe¨, Who bore Akta´ion, son of Arista´ios; And Ino, too, there, in the thickets, both Of them still stung to frenzies, wretched women. But someone said Agaue¨ was dancing down With Bakkhic steps toward home.

1380

He turns to agaue¨. Nor was that Untrue, for I see her—unhappy sight.

1390

agaue¨ Father! Now you may boast that of all mortals You begot by far the best of daughters— All of us, but me especially, Who left the loom and shuttles for greater things— The hunting of wild beasts with my bare hands. See what I carry in my arms—the reward I’ve won, the prize for prowess, which will hang high On your house: take it, Father, in your hands, Exult in my good hunt and call your friends To feast, for you are blesse`d, blesse`d, now, By what we have already brought to be. kadmos Aside. O grief too great to be grasped, grief . . . Murder Done already by such pitiable hands. To agaue¨. Yes, what a perfect sacrificial victim You have struck down, for the gods, to welcome Thebes And me to such a feast. What suffering!— First yours, then mine. The god, lord Bromios, 292

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1250–72]

Destroys us justly, yes—but goes too far, For one who was born into this very house. agaue¨ Old age in humankind is so ill-tempered, And has such scowling eyes! I wish my child Were good at hunting, and were made just like His mother, when with the young men of Thebes He would go pursuing wild beasts—but instead, The only thing that he can do is fight Against divinity. You must rebuke him, Father! Would someone call him into my sight, To see his mother, me, most happily blessed?

1410

kadmos Groaning. Oh. . . . When you begin to understand What you have done, you’ll suffer terribly. But if, till the end, you were to stay like this, As you are now, you’d not be fortunate, Although in your trance you’re not unfortunate.

1420

agaue¨ But what is painful, or not good, in this? kadmos First, look up just a moment at the sky. agaue¨ All right. Why do you say for me to look there? kadmos Is it the same, or did it seem to change? agaue¨ It’s brighter than before, and seems more clear. kadmos And is there still a fluttering in your spirit? agaue¨ I don’t know what you mean. But somehow, I do Feel more myself, my mind is different. kadmos Will you listen to me, and answer me? agaue¨ Yes, Father—I’ve forgotten what we said.

293

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1273–88]

kadmos To what house did you go when you were married? agaue¨ You gave me to Ekhı´on—‘‘the Planted Man,’’ as they say. kadmos And in his house, what child did you bear for your husband? agaue¨ Pentheus—from my union with his father. kadmos Now, then—whose countenance do you have in your arms? agaue¨ Not looking, yet. A lion’s—so the women said, in the hunt. kadmos Look at it now—it’s not much toil to look.

1440

agaue¨ Oh! What am I seeing? What’s this I’m holding in my hands? kadmos Look closely now, and understand it better. agaue¨ Doomed woman that I am, I see the greatest grief. kadmos Does it still appear to you to be a lion? agaue¨ No. I am doomed. It’s Pentheus’ head I’m holding. kadmos Yes—something that was mourned before you recognized it. agaue¨ Who killed him? How did this get in my hands? kadmos Unhappy truth, how wrong the moment when you come to us! agaue¨ Speak! My heart is leaping in fear of what’s to come.

294

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1289–1300a]

kadmos You and your sisters were the ones who killed him.

1450

agaue¨ Where did he die? At home? Where did this happen? kadmos Just where the hounds once tore apart Akta´ion. agaue¨ But why did this man, destined for ill, climb Mount Kitha´iron? kadmos To mock the god, and all your Bakkhic revels. agaue¨ But how did we ourselves get to the mountain? kadmos You all went mad, and all the town was driven to Bakkhic frenzy. agaue¨ Now I see that Dionysos crushed us. kadmos Yes, outraged by outrage. For none of you acknowledged him as a god. agaue¨ Father—where’s the dear body of my child? kadmos I made a long hard search for it; I bring it with me.

1460

agaue¨ Has all of it—the limbs—been placed together decently? kadmos [No, not completely, for you still hold his head.] She approaches the body of pentheus. [agaue¨ Pity me—for I who once was blessed With happiness, am wretched now. These men Will not put you properly in your tomb. But then, how can I? And in what sort Of tomb? And covered with what sort of robes? How can I lift these limbs, and kiss torn flesh That I myself gave birth to? How can I, As miserable as I am, take care of you And lift you to my breast? What wailing dirge Can I sing? 295

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1300a–15]

We must bury him, but what Small consolation this is to the dead! Come then, old man, and let us fit the head Of this poor child into its proper place, And fit together all his body as best We can, the parts in harmony again. O face most dear to me, and cheeks of a child! She lays the head in place, then arranges the bloody remains, piece by piece, as she speaks. Finally, with robes brought by kadmos’ attendants from the royal house, she covers the body. Look—with this veil, I cover up your face. With these fresh robes I shelter you, your bloodSmeared limbs, gashed and sundered from each other.] [...]

1480

To kadmos. How much of my madness did Pentheus share with me? kadmos He proved himself to be like you—he refused To revere the gods. Uniting everyone In one great ruin—all of you and himself— He destroyed this house—including me, for I, Who have no sons, see this one child of yours, Poor woman, die the worst, most shameful death. Through him this house began to see, once more. He addresses the body.

O child, born to my daughter, scourge of the city, You held our house together. No one dared Insult this old man, if they saw that you Were near, for you’d inflict just punishment. But now I’ll be cast out of my house, dishonored— The great Kadmos, who planted the Theban race, And reaped the fairest crop. You most-loved man

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1316–29a]

(For even though you exist no more, still you Remain for me the dearest of all, child)— No longer will you touch your hand to my chin, Nor put your arms around me, nor will you call me Your mother’s father, nor say, ‘‘Has someone been Unjust to you, old Sir? Dishonored you? Who disturbs your heart by troubling you? Tell me—I’ll punish him who’s unjust to you, Father.’’ But today I’m torn by sorrow, And you are ruined, your mother to be pitied, Your whole clan ruined. Anyone who feels Superior to the gods should study this: Pentheus is dead—believe in the gods! chorus Kadmos, I grieve for you, but your grandchild received the justice he deserved, although for you it is hard.

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agaue¨ Father! You see how my life is overturned. [ . . . ] dionysos appears on the roof of the royal house. [dionysos . . . Agaue¨, you must leave this city, now, That was so eager for killing. You must know And live the punishment that you deserve. I shall proclaim the sufferings that this man, Kadmos, will bear: against me you have brought Unseemly words, false claims that from a man, A mortal, Se´meleˆ gave birth to me. Nor was this affront sufficient outrage For you—therefore was Pentheus killed by those From whom he least deserved it, because he used Chains and taunting words against me: this Was what your people did, in frenzied rage, Against the benefactor who had loved them. Pentheus deserved his suffering. The evils you and all your people must Now suffer, I will not conceal from you: You shall leave this city as a captive

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1329a–45]

Of barbarians, a slave, in exile from Your home. For it is prophesied that you Must make your way through every foreign land, A prisoner held at spear-point—you will endure Innumerable woes. Because you all Must pay the penalty for the foul pollution Of unholy killing, you shall leave this city And look upon your native land no longer. It is not holy for murderers to stay Among the tombs of those whom they have killed. Man of misfortune, to city after city You will go, bearing the yoke of slavery.

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kadmos From all that you have done, it is clear to me you are a god.] dionysos And then, you will be changed to a dragon-snake, Your wife, made monstrous, too, will take the shape Of a serpent: Harmonı´a, Ares’ daughter, Whom you took to wife, even though you Were mortal. And you and she, as was foretold By an oracle of Zeus, will drive an oxcart For a chariot, and lead barbarians And ravage many cities with numberless troops. But after they despoil the oracle Of Apollo, they will undergo a journey Homeward of misery. And yet the god Ares will save both you and Harmonı´a And give you new life in the land of the blesse`d. I, Dionysos, say these things as the child Not of a mortal father but of Zeus. If you had chosen to think rightly when You did not wish to, you’d be happy, now, Having gained as your ally the child of Zeus.

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kadmos We beg you, Dionysos—we have been unjust to you. dionysos You understood too late; when you should have known us, you did not.

298

BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1346–68]

kadmos Now we see, but you are too hard on us. dionysos Yes. Because I, born a god, was so dishonored by you. kadmos It is not fitting for gods to rage as if they were the same as mortals. dionysos Long ago, my father Zeus ordained all this. agaue¨ Aiee. It is decided, Father. Exile, misery. dionysos Why, then, do you delay what you must do? kadmos To what an overwhelming end we’ve come, My child—you and your poor wretched sisters, And I, also. I must go out among Barbarians—an old uprooted settler. And more than that, the gods ordain that I Myself will lead a horde back into Greece, A rabble army of barbarians! Harmonı´a—Ares’ daughter!—a snake! And I, a serpent, too. Attacking Greek Altars and tombs, commanding many spearmen. Nor, in my wretchedness, will I be freed From suffering: not even after I sail The River Acheron, that plummets so Steeply downward, will I be given peace. agaue¨ O Father, I am exiled deprived of you! kadmos Why, my miserable child, do you embrace me, Since I am like a useless old white swan? agaue¨ But where can I go now, cast out of my fatherland? kadmos I do not know. Your father is a weak ally. agaue¨ Good-bye, my house. Good-bye, City of my father’s kin.

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

[1369–88]

I leave in sorrow, banned From my own bedroom.

1590

kadmos Go, now, my child, to Arista´ios’ house . . . agaue¨ Father, I grieve for you . . . kadmos

And I for you, my child. And I am weeping for your sisters.

agaue¨ It is a terrible blow That Lord Dionysos Has sent down on your house. kadmos Yes, because of us he suffered things So terrible, dishonored was his name in Thebes. agaue¨ Farewell, Father. kadmos

Farewell, my forlorn daughter— Although you cannot now fare well.

agaue¨ To the chorus. Lead me, companion escorts, where With my sad sisters we’ll be exiled. Let me go where neither polluted Mount Kitha´iron can see me, Nor can I see Mount Kitha´iron, Where no reminding thyrsos has been dedicated. Let such things be for other Bakkhai. agaue¨ and kadmos exit in opposite directions. Singing as they exit.

chorus

Many are the shapes of what’s divine,

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Many unforeseen events the gods design. What seemed most likely was not fulfilled; What was unlikely, the god has willed. Such were the things that end in this decline.

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NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The commentary of E. R. Dodds (Introduction, note 24) remains fundamental for all serious study of the play. Useful comments are also to be found in Esposito (Introduction, note 4); Ierano` (Introduction, note 35); G. S. Kirk, ed. and trans., The Bakkhai by Euripides (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1982); Jeanne Roux, Les Bacchantes d’Euripides (Paris, 1970–72), 2 vols.; Seaford, Euripides, Bacchae (1996, Introduction, note 4); R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge, 1948). The most authoritative recent critical edition of the Greek text is James Diggle, Euripidis Fabulae, III, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford, 1994). These works are cited by author’s name below. Detailed bibliographies may be found in Ierano`, Seaford, and the second edition of C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae, (1997, Introduction, note 4). 1–73 / 1–54 prologue Euripides usually begins his plays with a long speech by a major character, occasionally a god, and this figure sets out the background and future course of events. When a god or other supernatural figure speaks the prologue (as in Alcestis, Hippolytos, Hecuba, Trojan Women, and Ion) and a different god appears at the end, that divinity in the prologue exits and remains aloof from the rest of the action. Here Dionysos, in the guise of the Lydian Stranger, will continue on the stage as a major participant in the events and then reappear as deus ex machina at the end. His announcement signals the central role of disguise and recognition in the play and is also consistent with the importance of epiphanies, wearing masks, and changing shapes in the cults and myths of Dionysos.

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1–2 / 1–2

son of Zeus . . . Dionysos Dionysos is often etymologized as son of Zeus (Dios huios). Other etymologies include a link with Dionysos’ sacred mountain, Nysa.

2–3 / 2–3

Se´meleˆ, Kadmos’ daughter, gave a fiery birth Refers to the birth of Dionysos from Se´meleˆ’s incinerated body after her destruction (engineered by Hera) by Zeus’ lightning. Zeus then rescues the infant Dionysos from her womb and preserves him in his thigh, a tale to which the play several times alludes. See below on 11–12 / 9.

11–12 / 9

the immortal rage / And violence of Hera against my mother Hera’s wrathful persecution of the children born from Zeus’ loves is a recurrent feature of Greek myth. A papyrus fragment of Aeschylus’ lost tragedy, Semele´ or the Water Carriers, confirms that Hera came to Thebes disguised as a priestess in order to trick Se´meleˆ into her fatal request from Zeus; see H. W. Smyth, ed. and trans., Aeschylus, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 2, ed. Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 566–71; see also Plato, Republic 2.381d.

17–23 / 13–17 Leaving the country of the Phrygians, / And the Lydians . . . Asia Minor The Greeks often trace Dionysos’ origins to Asia Minor (and also to Thrace, northeast of Greece). On Phrygia see below on 78–79 / 59. Whereas in their myths the Greeks depict Dionysos as a late, foreign import, the appearance of his name on Mycenaean Linear B tablets shows that he was probably established in Greece by at least the thirteenth century b.c.e.; see Introduction, p. 206. 21–22 / 15–16 Baktrians . . . Medes . . . Arabia The first two places belong to central Asia, and all three lie at the remote fringes of Greek geographical knowledge at this period. It has sometimes been suspected that these lines are a later interpolation, reflecting a world subsequent to the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century b.c.e. But Euripides’ references imply no very specific knowledge, and the Greeks were familiar with the Persian Empire from the late sixth century. The far-flung geography suggests both the universalism of the god and his exotic appearance to the inhabitants of the first Greek city he visits. 30 / 23 It was Thebes Thebes, the birthplace of Dionysos, was famous for its worship of the god; logically, then, it is the first Greek city to receive his worship. 32–33 / 24–25 fawn skin . . . thyrsos . . . ivy These familiar trappings of Dionysiac worship are frequently depicted on numerous vases from the sixth century 304

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b.c.e. on. His female worshipers on these vases often wear fawn skins and brandish the thyrsos, a long fennel stalk (also called the narthex) tipped at the end with a bunch of ivy leaves. Its potential use as a weapon (here javelin), as it sometimes is on fifth-century vases, foreshadows the dangerous side of maenadic ecstasy later in the play (see line 874 / 762). But the maenads also use the thyrsos to call forth water, milk, and wine from the earth (lines 811–17 / 704–11), and in that scene it also drips with honey. 45–50 / 32–36 To a frenzy, out of their very homes . . . driven from their homes . . . madness From the outset, the play presents two groups of Dionysos’ female worshipers, the Lydian women of the chorus and the women of Thebes. The Lydian women are his willing devotees, are in the city with their god, and (with one exception) are never called maenads or mad. The women of Thebes are devotees by constraint. Dionysos has driven them to Mt. Kitha´iron outside Thebes, and they are maenads in the literal sense, that is, mad women. Dionysiac cult allows women to indulge in the open expression of violent emotions that fifth-century Athens (like the mythical Theban king Pentheus) regarded with suspicion. The approved behavior of women in this society is summed up by the term soˆphrosyneˆ (modesty, self-control, sound good sense) and it also implies submission to male authority. It is a key concept in the play, claimed by both sides. In his accusations of the maenads, Pentheus consistently uses it in the authoritarian sense—as the opposite of license, disorder, and disobedience—whereas the chorus and the Lydian Stranger claim for Dionysos’ worshipers a kind of soˆphrosyneˆ that Pentheus cannot understand, using the word in its more general sense of good mental health, a sound and balanced mind. 52–53 / 38

They sit on rocks . . . pale green pines In contrast to most of the Olympian gods, Dionysos’ shrines are often (though not exclusively) in the country; and his worship, as here described, may also take place outside the city.

58–59 / 43–44 Kadmos has handed all authority . . . The play offers no explanation for the absence of Ekhı´on, one of the Planted Men and Pentheus’ father, who would be the logical successor to Kadmos. 60 / 45 at war with deity itself Euripides’ verb, theomakhein (literally, to fight against the god), occurs several times later in the play (383–84 / 325, 638 / 544, 738–39 / 635–36, 1415–16 / 1255) and casts Pentheus into the role of the god’s monstrous antagonist in the resistance myth that characterizes the acceptance of Dionysos’ cult in Greece. See 630–38 / 537–44, with the 305

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note on this passage below. The story of the Thracian king Lykourgos is a similar myth of a king who disastrously fights against the god. See Introduction, p. 213. 68–69 / 50–51 Theban city / Angrily takes up weapons This full-scale battle between maenads and the forces of the city never actually takes place and so is sometimes regarded as a narrative trick, a suggestion of an event that will not in fact occur in the play. Yet Pentheus does threaten such a battle (896–902 / 781–87), and it is realized in miniature in the First Messenger’s speech when the maenads defeat the herdsmen and attack the villages on Kitha´iron (858–77 / 748–64). The lines also foreshadow the dangerous side of the Theban maenads, who prove capable of fighting as if in military formation (see 830–41 / 723–33). 78–79 / 59

the Phyrgian drums / Invented by Mother Rhea and by me! The chorus here draws on a common identification between the Greek goddess, Rhea, mother of Zeus and Hera, and the Phrygian mother goddess of mountains and ecstatic rites, Kybele´, who is named explicitly later, line 104 / 79.

84–202 / 64–169 parode or parodos The first entrance of the chorus into the orchestra, always a spectacular moment in the Greek theater. The chorus wear elaborate costumes and here are accompanied by the aulos (closer to an oboe than a flute), and probably by the drums (actually more like tambourines) to which the chorus allude in lines 154–65 / 124–34. The dominant meter of this ode is the ionic a minore ww– –, which recurs in several other odes as a rhythmical leitmotif that helps unify the play. 87 / 66–67

no toil nor weariness The peace that Dionysos brings to those who accept him is a recurrent feature of the play. It is shown in the initial behavior of the maenads in both the Messengers’ speeches and in the contrast between Pentheus’ frenzy and the Stranger’s cool detachment in the scene in the stables (lines 719–20 / 620–22, 736–38 / 633–35). See below on lines 720 / 622 and 744–45 / 641.

99–100 / 75–76 who joins his spirit / With the holy worshipers this extraordinary phrase expresses the fusion of the individual worshiper with the collective emotions of the whole band of worshipers. The Greek, thiaseuetai psukhan, is, literally, something like ‘‘makes himself or herself part of the holy band [thiasos] with his/her inner spirit or personal consciousness’’ [psukhan].

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128 / 100

the god with the horns of a bull Dionysos’ identification with the bull (symbol of fertility, energy, animal exuberance) recurs throughout the play (e.g. 717–19 / 618–20, 1054–56 / 920–22, 1153 / 1018, 1314 / 1159). His epithets in cult and in poetry often allude to his taurine form, and in the Hellenistic period, he is often represented with the horns of a bull. Within the Bakkhai Dionysos appears as a bull and also receives the sacrifice of a bull in his honor. The maenads tear apart bulls in the frenzy of their sparagmos (ritual rending of animals) in the First Messenger’s speech; and Pentheus is himself torn apart as a young bull-calf dedicated to the god (1340 / 1185) in the sparagmos that ends his life, a rite to which a bull leads the way (1314 / 1159). See also below on lines 717–19 / 618–20.

129–31 / 101–4 a crown of snakes . . . and braid them through their hair Greek vases depicting Dionysiac scenes in the fifth century often show maenads handling snakes, and the practice reappears in the description of the Theban maenads in their revel on Kitha´iron in 804 / 697–98. Here as elsewhere Euripides draws on Dionysiac imagery generally familiar to his audience. In 1017 the chorus prays to Dionysos to appear in the form of a ‘‘snake with many heads.’’ 141 / 114

violent fennel-rods The unusual epithet suggests the dangerous side of the Dionysiac worship that will appear later; compare the fennel-rod of Hades, 1312–13 / 1157–58, and see the note on that passage below. The combination of violence and holiness belongs to the paradoxical mixture of gentleness and terror in the god; see 979–80 / 860–61 and the note on that passage, below. Pentheus himself uses this same word (violence [hubris] in his vehement attack on the cult (288 / 247, 893 / 779), so that the recurrence of the word may also indicate the massive reversal of power in the course of the play. See below on 605–6 / 516–17.

142–43 / 114

the whole earth / Will dance A characteristically Dionysiac expression of the fusion between humankind and nature in this cult. It is exemplified in the maenads’ behavior in the First Messenger’s speech (804–17 / 697– 711), where all the mountain and its wild inhabitants join in the Bacchic dance (833–35 / 726–27).

143–44 / 115 when Bromios leads / Worshipers A controversial and much-discussed passage. We have translated the most widely accepted emendation of the unmetrical reading of the manuscripts. An alternative and less likely emendation of the text would give the sense, whoever leads the sacred band is Bromios and so would make the leader an incarnation of 307

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Dionysos; but here, as in 166–67 / 135–36, the reference is probably to Dionysos himself, as Bromios, the Thunderer, leading the maenads. 149–61 / 120–29 Kou´reteˆs . . . birth of Zeus . . . Korybante¨s . . . Rhea An etiological myth to explain how Dionysos comes to be worshiped with the exciting sounds of the flutes and drums that belong to the cult of the Phrygian mother-goddess Kybele´ or Rhea. The Kouretes (attendants of Rhea) and Korybantes (attendants of Kybele´) are distinct groups and belong to different cults, but Euripides fuses them here as part of his identification of Rhea and Kybele´. In the myth of Zeus’ birth, to which Euripides here refers, the Koure´tes drown out the cries of the infant Zeus whom Rhea has hidden away in a cave on Crete in order to protect him from being swallowed by his father, Kronos (see Hesiod, Theogony 459–500). Hence they are later associated with initiatory rites for young men. The ecstatic satyrs (163 / 130) are the regular attendants of Dionysos and appear frequently in Dionysiac scenes on the vases. In their part-equine attributes (horses’ ears, tails, and hooves) and uninhibited appetites for wine, play, and sex, they embody the release of animal energies in Dionysiac rites. Euripides may also be alluding indirectly to the story of Rhea-Kybele´’s purification of Dionysos from the madness with which the ever-vengeful Hera afflicted him (see Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.5.1). 164 / 133 every other year In Thebes and other cities, the maenadic rites of Dionysos, that is, the procession of the women celebrants on the mountain (the oreibasia), occur in midwinter of alternate years. 167–71 / 136–39 throws / Himself to the ground . . . eating raw the flesh Euripides here refers to the ritual oˆmophagia (literally, raw-eating) in which Dionysos leads his maenads to hunt wild animals (most commonly fawns or felines) on the mountain and then tear apart and devour the raw flesh. There has been considerable controversy about the opening lines of this epode. Some interpreters think that the reference is to the god himself falling upon the hunted animal. For such a scene Roux compares Herakles falling upon a stag on a metope of the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi at the beginning of the fifth century b.c.e.: illustration in Franz Brommer, Heracles (1979), trans. S. J. Schwarz (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1996), plate 8. Others have taken the reference to be to the worshiper falling to the ground either in ecstasy or exhaustion or in a trance (Dodds), or in expectation of the god’s epiphany (Seaford 1996). The most likely text of the passage seems to indicate Dionysos. If these masculine forms are taken (as they sometimes are) as a generic reference 308

NOTES

to any worshiper, they are awkward for a ritual celebrated by an allfemale band of bacchants. 189–90 / 154

pride of gold- / Giving Mount Tmolos We follow Diggle and others in reading the nominative, khlida, in apposition with Bakkhants rather than the dative from given in the manuscripts. For the locale see above, on 17–23 / 13–17.

198–99 / 165 to the mountain, / To the mountain With most interpreters, we assume that the chorus’ direct quotation of Dionysos’ words end here. Thus the doubled Onward, Bakkhai of his opening is symmetrical with the doubled to the mountain of his ending. 203–47 / 170–209 This scene between Kadmos and Teiresias has been variously interpreted. It is the first demonstration of the power of Dionysos in Thebes, but it also seems to have humorous touches. The closest parallel in Euripides’ work is the miraculous rejuvenation of Herakles’ companion Iolaos in the Children of Herakles (Herakleidai). There, however, the rejuvenation actually takes place, whereas here the two old men go tottering off to the mountain holding one another up and afraid of falling (430–31 / 364–65). Interpreters remain divided about the scene’s possible humor. Among the incongruities is the suggestion of male bacchants, carrying the thyrsos and wearing the fawn skin (see 209–10 / 176, 289–92 / 247–51), although men do participate in other aspects of Dionysos’ cult. The scene may be a partly serious and partly comic anticipation of Pentheus’ dressing as a maenad, with its tragic results. He, too, will insist on being the only man to undertake such a task, but in the sense of being a scapegoat-victim punished by the god, not a celebrant (1096–97 / 961–62). On the serious side, Dionysos often rejuvenates his worshipers, notably in Aristophanes’ Frogs 345–48, where the old men in a procession in honor of the Eleusinian Dionysos, Iakkhos, ‘‘shake off the pains of old age and their aged years.’’ See below, on 229 / 193. 203–4 / 171–72 Kadmos . . . who left . . . Sidon Kadmos left his Phoenician homeland in search of his sister, Europa (carried off by Zeus in the guise of a bull), and came to the site of Thebes, which he founded after killing the dragon-snake that guarded the spring of Dirke´. As a culture hero, he is also said to have brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece—a role reversed at the end of the play in his transformation into a serpent that leads a barbarian army against Greece. See Introduction, p. 226.

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213 / 179

wise man’s wise voice This is the play’s first reference to wisdom (sophia), which becomes a major theme. Sophia also means the cleverness or rationalism of those who resist Dionysos and so contrasts with the god’s deeper wisdom. It is used pejoratively on both sides in the sense of merely clever or tricky. In its profounder, ethical sense it raises the questions of who is wise, the god or his mortal opponent, what wisdom is, and what kind of wisdom Dionysos and his cult offer.

215–16 / 182

our Dionysos, / A god revealed now to mortals This line is generally considered a later interpolation, modeled on line 979 / 860.

229 / 193 lead the other like a child to school a pun on the word paidagoˆgos (literally leader of a child [pais ¼ child]), the aged attendant (usually a slave) who looks after the master’s young male children in the house, as at the beginning of Euripides’ Medea. The wordplay is part of the humorous undercurrent in the whole scene, but there is a serious side, too, in its implications for Dionysos’ demand for universal worship (no distinction between the young and old, 244 / 206–7) and his cultic rejuvenation of his worshipers (see above on 203–47 / 171–72). 231–32 / 195–96 Are we the only ones . . . Yes—only we have any sense ‘‘Have any sense’’ in 232 / 196 anticipates the many inversions of sanity and madness in the play and the question of what is wisdom or self-control (sophia or soˆphrosyneˆ); see above, on 213 / 179. These lines (among others) indicate that all of Thebes and not just the royal family is implicated in the rejection of Dionysos: see, e.g., 53–55 / 39–40, 68–70 / 50–51, 896–900 / 781–85, 1172–73 / 1036, 1456 / 1295. While the Theban women are punished by becoming maenads, the men are kept in the background, perhaps because the main axes of conflict are between the strange new arrival and the rigid, authoritarian king and between male control and (supposed) female subjection and constraint. 236–37 / 200

we don’t engage / In sophistries Another controversial passage. Euripides is alluding to the Sophists, traveling lecturers and professional speakers who taught techniques of argumentation and developed rationalistic critiques of moral behavior. The passage has puzzled interpreters because Teiresias here seems to be rejecting the kind of rationalistic skepticism or agnosticism characteristic of many of the Sophists, whereas he himself adopts sophistic rationalism in his interpretation of Dionysos in 320–54 / 274–301. The contradiction may be part of a parody in the presentation of Teiresias; or one or more lines may have dropped out around 236–37 / 200. Some interpreters have emended the text or 310

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reassigned the lines to Kadmos; others have suspected that the passage is the work of a later interpolator. If we keep the text of the manuscripts, the most likely view is that Teiresias is not aware of the contradiction and (as seems to have been the case with many of the Sophists) uses his rational argumentation to support what he sees as the established institutions. Read in terms of the action of the play, his rationalistic optimism will prove to be inadequate to grasp the complexities and contradictions of Dionysos. Of the Sophists the best known are Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodikos, Hippias, and Thrasymakhos; and many of them appear as Socrates’ interlocutors in the dialogues of Plato. Among the many subjects they discussed is the relation between traditional social practices (nomoi, also translated customs, laws) and nature (physis). See Introduction, pp. 211–12. The suggestion made in several odes (especially 1025–27 / 895–96) that tradition and nature coincide in Dionysiac cult is perhaps also in the background here in the hint that these ‘‘traditions of our fathers’’ are timeless and so also rooted in ‘‘nature,’’ not inventions of a specific historical moment. The invocation of timeless tradition for a new god seems odd, but the third stasimon also argues for the reconciliation of Dionysiac cult and timeless nature (1018–27 / 890–96). Euripides may be implying that Dionysos’ worship fulfills a timeless need that mortals have always had and so belongs to physis (nature), even though it arrives in Greece only at a specific historical moment. 239 / 202 overthrown by argument Refers to a lost work by the Sophist Protagoras (active about 450–420 b.c.e.), the Argument-Overthrowers (Kataballontes Logoi), which may have dealt with the possibility of making a good case for both sides of a debate. 259 / 220 Dionysos—whoever he may be The expression ‘‘whoever he may be’’ is a common ritual formula expressing piety and reverence toward a god, whose exact title and attributes may not be known. In the mouth of Pentheus, the phrase has the opposite meaning, as he is so scornful of Dionysos’ divinity. It carries a certain irony, therefore, especially when it recurs, with its more usual reverent overtones, in the speech of the First Messenger: ‘‘this god, whoever he may be’’ (882 / 769). 267–69 / 229–30 Ino . . . Akta´ion These details of Pentheus’ family are intrusive here and are probably a later interpolation, made up from references later in the play. For Akta´ion see below on 398–99 / 337.

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280–81 / 241 I’ll cut his head / Off of his body Euripides loses no time in depicting Pentheus’ violent and impulsive character. The threat turns back against him later. 296–301 / 255–58 Teiresias, . . . white hair did not protect you A king’s threats against an aged prophet and accusations of venality are attributes of the ‘‘stage tyrant’’ and are familiar from the encounters between Creon and Teiresias and Oedipus and Teiresias in Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus, respectively. For an early example see Homer, Odyssey 2.184–93. 307–10 / 263–65 What sacrilege . . . bring shame on all your kin? The chorus’ response is in line with traditional Greek values and may well have the audience’s sympathy at this point. The chorus depict the tyrannical young king as disrespectful of both the gods and the family. 311–16 / 266–71 It’s no great task to speak well . . . good at speaking . . . A bad citizen Teiresias begins with familiar rhetorical motifs that call attention to the Sophistic elements in his speech. 320–21 / 274 Listen to me . . . two great first things Teiresias again draws on contemporary arguments characteristic of the Sophistic movement. He seems to be alluding particularly to the Sophist Prodikos, who explained the origins of religion as an allegorical divinization of forces or principles useful for human life (here the blessings of grain and wine). The extreme intellectualism of Teiresias’ defense of Dionysos may be intended to suggest the failure of such rationalism to grasp the essential nature of Dionysos and his cult. See above on 236–37 / 200. 335–36 / 286–87 his birth / From Zeus’ thigh In the manner of the Sophists, Teiresias uses etymology to rationalize the story that Zeus saved the infant Dionysos by sewing him up in his thigh. He relies on a three-way pun (hard to render into English) between meˆros, (thigh), meros (‘‘piece’’ of aether, here translated as ‘‘limb’’), and ho-meˆros, hostage. Regarding the story of Dionysos being sown in Zeus’ thigh (meˆros) as too fanciful, Teiresias has Zeus break off a ‘‘piece’’ (meros) of aether to fashion into a hostage (homeˆros) for Hera, who is always jealous of Zeus’ children by other women. Just how we are to understand this revision is a matter of much discussion. Is Euripides just poking fun at Sophistic rationalism? Or is he suggesting Teiresias’ limited grasp of what Dionysos is? Or both? See above on 236–37 / 200.

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351–58 / 298–305 mantic power . . . those / He maddens tell the future . . . madness As in the preceding lines, Teiresias relies on a specious etymological argument, the association of ‘‘mantic’’ and ‘‘manic’’ power. Etymological associations of this nature are frequent in Greek literature. For a similar play on ‘‘mantic’’ and ‘‘manic’’ see Plato, Phaedrus 244b-c. 354–57 / 302–4 his share / Of Ares, too . . . touched their spears The description of Dionysos’ martial potential (Ares is the god of war) may hint at the maenads’ defeat of warriors armed with spears later and Pentheus’ failure to carry through a contest of arms against Dionysos’ cult. 359–62 / 306–8 heights / Of Delphi . . . between the two tall peaks The reference is to the two crags of Mount Parnassus known as the Phaidriades (the Gleaming Rocks) just above the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where Dionysos held sway during the winter, while Apollo was absent. The place is a famous site of maenadic revels. See Sophocles, Antigone 1126–30. 371–72 / 316 for modesty / With respect to everything This verse is omitted in a quotation of this passage in late antiquity and is probably interpolated. It bears a suspicious resemblance to Hippolytos 80. 385–86 / 326–27 No drug can cure your sickness The antithesis here seems rather artificial, and (if the text is correct) the awkwardness may be due to an attempt to make a rhetorical point. Teiresias seems to be saying that Pentheus’ madness must be due to (harmful) drugs but at the same time is beyond healing by medicine. There is a play on the double sense of pharmakon as both poisonous and medicinal drug. 387–88 / 328–29 do not shame Apollo . . . praise for Bromios The chorus’ reply indicates how easily a polytheistic religion accommodates different divinities. There is no trace here of the division between Apollo and Dionysos developed in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. 396–98 / 335–36 he is Se´meleˆ’s son . . . all our clan is honored Kadmos adduces another, more practical reason for accepting Dionysos’ worship, namely the honor that accrues to the royal family from this connection to a god. 398–99 / 337 You know how / Akta´ion ended Akta´ion, cousin to Pentheus (and to Dionysos), is torn apart by his own hounds because he insults Artemis, goddess of the wild and the hunt. In this version the insult consists in boasting of his superiority in the hunt. In the version told by Ovid, Metamorphoses (3.138–252), and probably alluded to by Callimachus 313

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in his account of the blinding of Teiresias after seeing Athena in her bath (Hymn 5.109), the insult consists in accidentally seeing the goddess naked while she is bathing in a forest pool. She then transforms him into a stag, and he is hunted down and killed by his hounds. In another version his offense is the wooing of Se´meleˆ (Apollodorus, Library of Mythology 3.4.4). Kadmos’ warning about Akta´ion is fulfilled in the close parallelism of the deaths of the two young men: they meet their death in the same part of Kitha´iron, and both are torn apart by wild creatures that have been part of their familiar, domestic life, Pentheus by his mother and aunts turned to raging wild women, Akta´ion by his own hounds who turn against him (see 1385 / 1227 and 1452 / 1291). The Akta´ion myth was well known to Euripides’ audience. It is represented on a number of vases in the mid-fifth century and on a metope from temple C at Selinus (Selinunte) in Sicily, also from the mid-fifth century. 409–13 / 346–50 Quickly, go . . . Throw his holy ribbands to the wind For similar angry threats against a prophet compare the passages from Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus cited above, on 296–301 / 255–58. Even so, the threats indicate a shocking impiety on Pentheus’ part and prepare us for the divine vengeance. 412 / 349 Pile everything together in one heap The phrase ‘‘in one heap’’ anoˆ katoˆ, literally ‘‘up and down,’’ recurs twice later to describe Dionysos’ own violence of revenge against his adversary: first in the destruction of his palace in 700 / 602, ‘‘to pile it upside down in a heap,’’ and then in the enraged Theban bacchants’ attack on the villages of Pentheus’ kingdom ‘‘(plundered Hysiai / And Erythrai and turned them upside down,’’ 862–63 / 751–54). It is as if Pentheus calls forth the only side of Dionysos that he can perceive, an unleashing of chaotic, destructive violence. 420 / 356–57 death by stoning Having threatened the Stranger with decapitation in 280, Pentheus now threatens him with this punishment that is reserved for particularly heinous crimes, particularly sacrilege or kin murder (the former is probably intended here). The threat once more emphasizes Pentheus’ violence and lack of self-control. In both cases the threats recoil upon Pentheus himself: he is to be decapitated and he will be pelted with stones by the maenads for a sacrilegious intrusion upon their rites (1240–41 / 1096–97). 429–31 / 364–65 Help me stay on my feet Some have seen a touch of humor in these two doddering elders supporting one another as they stagger up the 314

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mountainside in Bacchic dress (see above on 203–4 / 171–72); yet more serious issues are also involved. Teiresias’ self-consciousness of the feebleness of his years here in 430–31 / 365 contrasts with Kadmos’ exuberant forgetting of old age at the beginning of the scene. The end of the play brings a more tragic contrast between old age and Dionysiac exuberance: see 1410–11 / 1251–52, 1502 / 1320, 1585 / 1365, and Introduction, p. 228. 433 / 367

Pentheus . . . repent Here, as in several other places, Euripides plays on the name Pentheus and the Greek noun penthos (grief). See also 594 / 508, 962–63 / 845–46, 1402–3 / 1244–45.

436–515 / 370–432 First stasimon (second ode) Invoking the personification of Holiness or Purity, the chorus reacts to Pentheus’ violence in the preceding scene by continuing to depict him as an impious enemy of the god on the one hand and by emphasizing the peace, beauty, festivity, and abundance of Dionysiac worship on the other hand. The invocation of Aphrodite, the Graces, and the gods of love and desire (478–96 / 402–15) in an ode to Holiness contrasts sharply with Pentheus’ accusations of lubriciousness in Dionysos’ cult and once more emphasizes its benign, innocent aspects. The far-flung geography, from Egypt and Cyprus to Pieria and Olympus in northern Greece, like the rivers of Macedonia in the next ode (665–70 / 568–75), once more underline the universality of the god and the wide acceptance that awaits his worship in Greece. The motif of longing for a remote place of peace and beauty in the second strophe recurs elsewhere in Euripides, notably in the ‘‘escape odes’’ of Hippolytos (732–75) and Helen (1451–1511). 482–85 / 406–8 Paphos . . . rainless river Another controversial passage. If the text is right, Euripides is alluding to a belief that the waters of the Nile somehow fertilize Aphrodite’s island of Cyprus, where her celebrated shrine at Paphos is located. Some editors emend ‘‘Paphos’’ to ‘‘Pharos,’’ a small island off the coast of Egypt mentioned from the Odyssey on. Yet the erotic associations of Aphrodite’s Cyprus so emphatically placed at the opening of the strophe strongly favor the manuscript reading, Paphos. For other editors, however, it is this opening reference to Cyprus that corrupted an allegedly original Pharos to Paphos. 501 / 421–22 To the rich and poor alike Euripides here emphasizes the egalitarian, democratic aspect of Dionysos, who is traditionally associated with the people rather than the aristocrats. The ode ends with the same sentiment in the reference to simple, ordinary people in 514–15 / 430–32. 315

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537 / 451

Untie his hands The manuscripts here read, You are mad, which a later hand in the Palatinus corrected to take hold or seize (probably after 589 / 503). Attempts to maintain the manuscript reading are unconvincing, and with Dodds, Diggle, and Seaford we accept the emendation.

548–49 / 462–63 Mount Tmolos, thick with flowers . . . makes a circle It is characteristic of the Dionysiac Stranger that he thinks of the flowers on the mountain and not of the gold for which it is famous. Pentheus, on the other hand, associates the mountain with the encirclement or enclosure of its neighboring city, Sardis, the capital of Lydia. See above on 189–90 / 154. 549–94 / 463–508 This taut scene of line-by-line exchange (or stichomythia) is full of tragic ironies as Euripides plays on the god’s presence in mortal guise (see especially 563–64 / 477–78, 586–88 / 500–501, 606–7 / 516–18). As Seaford suggests, there are probably references to the language used in the initiatory ceremonies of the Dionysiac mysteries. The scene has a pendant in the analogous exchanges later in which the Stranger leads Pentheus into a more sinister initiation to Dionysiac worship, 919–61 / 802–44 and 920–1105 / 803–970. 584 / 498

The god himself will set me free Allusion to Dionysos’ cult title, Lysios, he who looses or releases, whether from the cares and tribulations of life or from sufferings in the underworld.

601 / 514

household slaves working at looms Pentheus would reassert the male control over the women of the household that is suspended when they leave the looms (and the house) for the Dionysiac procession to the mountain. Working at the loom is the traditional occupation of women in the household and the sign of the obedient, industrious wife. According to the parodos the madness sent by Dionysos has driven the women of Thebes away from their looms (146–48 / 118–19).

605–6 / 516–17 will chase you down and then / Exact his compensation for your insults The Stranger’s warnings of punishment for Pentheus’ insults (hubrismata) harks back to the chorus’ warning in the previous ode (444 / 375) and of course foreshadows his doom. The warning now comes from the god himself (in his guise of the Lydian Stranger). The word hubris in both these passage implies outrageous behavior that violates the rights and honor of another person. Both sides make accusations of hubris against the other throughout the play (e.g., 288 / 247, 895 / 779 by Pentheus; 444 / 375, 606 / 516, 651 / 555, 714 / 616, 1564 / 1347 by 316

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Dionysos or the Chorus). Kadmos’ acknowledgment of Pentheus’ ‘‘insult’’ in 1458 / 1297 is perhaps an intentional echo of Pentheus’ accusation of the god in 288 / 247. 608–70 / 519–75 Second stasimon (third ode) As in the preceding ode, the chorus emphasizes the joyful and musical side of Dionysiac worship, especially in the last strophe (652–70 / 556–75), where fertilizing water takes up the themes of 482–85 but also harks back to the role of the saving water of the Theban spring of Dirke´ at the ode’s beginning (608–11 / 519–22). Yet the chorus’ warnings against Pentheus for his insults (hubris, 651 / 555) also become sharper (630–51 / 537–55), leading directly into the god’s answer to their appeal in the so-called Palace Miracle that follows. 610–11 / 521–22 you took into / Your waters The washing of the infant Dionysos by nymphs or by his nurses occurs elsewhere, but Euripides is the only extant source for washing him in Dirke´’s water. Possibly he is drawing on Aeschylus’ lost play, Semele´ or The Water Carriers, which may have included an account of Dionysos’ fiery birth; see above, on 11–12 / 9. 616 / 526

Dithyrambos Euripides here refers to an ancient and popular (but erroneous) etymology of the word from dis-, twice, and thura, door or gate: as if the twice-born god is he who ‘‘comes twice to the gates’’ (of birth).

630 / 537

The manuscripts have the words ‘‘What rage, what rage’’ at the beginning of this antistrophe. They can be construed grammatically as the direct object of ‘‘reveal’’ (‘‘What rage does Pentheus reveal, he the spawn of the Earth,’’ etc.), but metrical considerations tell against them, and with Diggle and others we regard them as spurious.

630–38 / 537–44 Pentheus, the spawn / Of earth itself . . . Ekhı´on as a monster . . . battles the gods As the offspring of a serpent and of the earth, Pentheus’ father, Ekhı´on, is a monster (at least in the chorus’ eyes), and his name, too, has serpentine associations (cf. ekhidna, viper). The chorus here suggests that the monstrosity of this earthborn father continues in the son. The children of Earth, like the Giants mentioned here or primordial creatures like the ancient monster Typhoeus, are figures of disorder who combat the Olympian gods; and so the chorus uses them as a model for Pentheus’ hostility to Dionysos. In 309–10 / 265 the chorus mentioned Pentheus’ ancestry without the pejorative tone here. The positions harden on both sides.

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652 / 556

Mount Nysa Of the various locations given in antiquity for this holy mountain of Dionysos, Thrace in northern Greece would perhaps be the most appropriate to this context. Along with Olympus, Parnassus, and the local Mount Kitha´iron, Nysa is invoked as a place for the Dionysiac oreibasia—the maenads’ procession on the mountain.

658–60 / 562–63 Orpheus . . . listening trees . . . listening beasts In his music that reaches across the boundaries between the human and natural worlds, Orpheus has close associations with Dionysos. In Aeschylus’ lost play, the Bassarids, set in northern Greece, he is torn apart by Thracian maenads in a distinctly Dionysiac scenario. He comes to be regarded as the mythical founder of the Orphic mysteries, in which Dionysos plays a central role. Here his power of song is also relevant to the sympathy between humankind and the natural world in the ecstasy of Dionysiac worship. See 804–17 / 697–711, 833–35 / 726–27. 665–69 / 568–75 Axios . . . Lydias The reference to these rivers of Macedonia may be due to Euripides’ residence there while he was writing the play. See above on 436–515 / 370–432. 671–701 / 576–603 In this scene, known as the Palace Miracle, Dionysos intervenes miraculously with an earthquake that shakes Pentheus’ palace. Simultaneously, fire blazes up from Se´meleˆ’s tomb. Following directly upon the chorus, the scene is set off formally from the rest of the action by the excited meters of the chorus’ lyrical dialogue with Dionysos, whose offstage voice is heard invoking the goddess of earthquake for the destruction of the palace (680 / 585). The chorus may have divided into half-choruses or individual singers for their lyrical responses here. The excitement continues in lively trochaic tetrameters (702–45 / 604– 41), as Dionysos, in his disguise as the Stranger, emerges from the palace and describes the frenzy and frustration of Pentheus. The regular meter of the iambic trimeter (the usual dialogue meter) resumes only with Pentheus’ return to the stage at 746 / 642. The scene is the first of Dionysos’ epiphanies in the play and the first open display of his supernatural power. As such, it marks a shift in the balance of power from the mortal to the god in the play’s long central section that culminates in Pentheus’ final exit for his death, dressed as a maenad and totally in the god’s power, at 1105 / 970. The toppling of the palace is both a visual symbol for the collapsing authority of the king, identified with the integrity of his house, and (as in Euripides’ Herakles) a sign of the imminent disintegration of his sanity.

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How much of this scene was actually staged? The rudimentary stage machinery and stylized conventions can hardly have permitted the actual toppling of the palace, which, in any case, seems to be standing when Agaue¨ enters before her dialogue with Kadmos at 1356 / 1200. Possibly drums and violent movement by the chorus, accompanied by the excited meter of 671–701 / 576–603, were enough to suggest the event. The chorus’ vivid ‘‘Do you see . . . Do you see’’ in 693–94 / 597–98 may imply some special scenic effects at Se´meleˆ’s shrine, which was probably part of the stage set; but this, too, may have been left to the imagination or understood as the language of religious epiphany. Pentheus mistakenly assumes that the god’s flash of fire in 721–24 / 622–24 means that his palace is on fire. But, even if nothing happens to the stage building, this does not mean that we should regard the shaking of the palace merely as an illusionistic trick by the Stranger, as was suggested by interpreters early in the century, such as Gilbert Norwood (The Riddle of the Bacchae [Manchester, 1908]) and A. W. Verrall (The Bacchants of Euripides and Other Essays [Cambridge, 1910]). Euripides’ audience would probably have regarded the combination of a bright light, a mysterious divine voice from an invisible source, shaking of the earth, and thunder as regular features of a god’s epiphany (compare the ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Dionysos’ epithet Bromios, ‘‘the Thunderer’’). As Seaford suggests, some of these effects may be suggestive of the Dionysiac mysteries. Euripides, finally, may be alluding to Aeschylus’ play about Lykourgos’ resistance to Dionysos in his Edonians, of which a verse, quoted admiringly in the treatise On the Sublime 15.6 (probably of the late first century c.e. and attributed to Longinus) describes the king’s palace as seized by a Dionysiac frenzy: ‘‘The palace is full of the god, the roof is in a bacchic revel.’’ Aeschylus was known for his bold stage effects, and Euripides may be deliberately recalling his predecessor’s work. The descriptive trochaic tetrameters of the following scene (702–45 / 604– 41) are also an archaic feature of tragedy and characteristic of Aeschylus. 697 / 600

Throw yourselves down, maenads The only place in the play where the Lydian women of the chorus (in contrast to the maddened women of Thebes) are called maenads, which carries the suggestion of madness. The word here may be due to the intensely Dionysiac nature of the scene, but it may also subtly foreshadow the more aggressive stance of the chorus in the latter part of the play.

702 / 604

Barbarian women This is a somewhat odd way for the Stranger (himself a Lydian and so a ‘‘barbarian’’) to address his followers. He addresses them

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only as Women in 964 / 848 and calls the Theban maenads Young women in the epiphany of 1221. Possibly the term underlines their strangeness to Thebes and so (like maenads in 697 / 600, above) begins to mark their increasingly aggressive and adversarial relationships to the city. See below on 964–80 / 848–61. 706 / 608 O greatest light of the joyful cries of the Bakkhanal Light is a common metaphor in Greek literature for relief and salvation and so is appropriate for the joy that the chorus now feels with the return of its leader; but the close association here with Dionysiac ritual may carry associations of the god’s mystery rites and their symbolism of rebirth, as at Eleusis, where the birth of the divine child Iakkhos is ‘‘accompanied by much fire.’’ The light may also remind us of the miracle of the epiphany that we have just witnessed. See below, on lines 729–32 / 629–31. The play frequently uses the word Bakkhanal, generally in the plural, of Dionysos’ bacchic rites or revels (e.g., 55, 373, 827). 717–19 / 618–20 found a bull . . . dripping sweat Pentheus’ sweaty wrestling with a bull in the stables of the palace anticipates his vision of the Stranger as a bull in 922 as he passes even more directly under the god’s power of illusion, which is also prominent in the following lines, especially 729– 32 / 629–31. For the recurrent motif of the bull as an epiphanic form of Dionysos throughout the play, see above on 128 / 100. The panting and sweating in these lines may also carry sexual overtones; and we may recall Pentheus’ suspicions of the bacchants’ licentiousness at his entrance (304–6 / 260–62), his interest in the Stranger’s sexual attractiveness in their first scene together (538–45 / 453–59), and the chorus’ ode on Aphrodite and Cyprus (478–96 / 402–15). In his heated wrestling with the bull, closely associated with male sexuality, Pentheus seems to be struggling with his own animal and sexual nature; and the god becomes an increasingly radical version of a sensual alter ego that Pentheus cannot integrate into his current self-image. 720 / 622

completely calm ‘‘Calm’’ returns repeatedly in this scene (as it does elsewhere in the play) for the contrast between the peacefulness of the benign side of Dionysos and the increasing bafflement of his mortal antagonist. See also 738–40 / 635–37, 751 / 647 and the Stranger’s advice to Pentheus to ‘‘be calm’’ in 906 / 790. See also 460–65 / 389–92 and below on 745 / 641.

725 / 625

To bring the river Akhelou¨s itself Akhelou¨s is here used by metonymy for water in general, but perhaps with a touch of mocking humor directed 320

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against Pentheus’ frantic and futile response to the miraculous events going on around him. 729–32 / 629–31 Bromios made a phantom shape . . . shining air The manuscripts at 730 / 630 read ‘‘light,’’ phoˆs, which many editors emend to phasm(a), phantom, apparition. ‘‘Made light’’ is not very natural Greek. The manuscript reading has been defended, however, as a reference to the initiatory imagery of the scene and the mystic associations of light out of darkness (so especially Seaford, and see above on 706 / 608). In line 732 / 631 a noun after ‘‘shining’’ has dropped out in the manuscripts; so a word must be added to fit both meter and syntax. Aether (pure air) is the most widely accepted supplement; other editors prefer eidos (form, likeness, image). 735 / 633

shook the buildings down—the place has all collapsed The details of this rapid and phantasmagoric narrative are not entirely clear and possibly were not meant to be. Dionysos may be referring to his destruction of the palace shortly before (680–701 / 580–603) or, possibly, to the outlying buildings, the stables where Pentheus sees the bull.

739–42 / 636–39 And I came out / Quite calm . . . He’ll come out, now Dionysos echoes his opening words in the play as his appearance from the palace now constitutes a new, special epiphany for his worshipers. His ‘‘calm’’ exit also contrasts markedly with Pentheus’ excited ‘‘coming out’’; gestures doubtless reinforced the contrast. The manuscripts at 739 / 636 read ‘‘leading forth maenads,’’ which cannot be right and is generally emended to read ‘‘I came out.’’ 742–43 / 639 what / Can he say Possibly an echo of Kadmos’ phrase introducing Pentheus at his first entrance in 254 / 215. 744–45 / 641

746 / 642

a man / Who is wise has self-control The repetition of the key moral terms ‘‘wise’’ and ‘‘self-control’’ (sophos and soˆphroˆn) once more signals the contrasting views of these virtues by Pentheus and Dionysos. This combination of calm, wisdom, and self-control also harks back to the benign vision of Dionysiac worship in the first stasimon, 460–65 / 389–92. See above on 45–50 / 32–36 and 213 / 179.

What terrible, strange things I’ve suffered The verb here, pepontha (I’ve suffered), may contain another play on Pentheus’ name (cf. penthos [suffering, grief].

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755–57 / 651–53 The interruption of the line-by-line repartee is unusual, but not unexampled (see Seaford, whose view of the text we accept). Most editors assume that a line (or more) has been lost, either after 755 / 651 (so Diggle) or after 756 / 652 (so Dodds). If such an approach is taken, we prefer Dodds’ solution, which gives 756 / 652 to Pentheus (as in our text) as an ironical reply to Dionysos’ statement about wine, in keeping with Pentheus’ suspicions in 259–61 / 220–23 and 304–6 / 260–62, with a lacuna following 756 / 652. Line 757 / 653 would then be a response to a lost statement of Dionysos about entering or having entered Thebes. 759 / 655

You’re oh so smart, so smart Another play on the word sophos (wise) and the issue of wisdom. See above on 213 / 179.

766 / 662 glittering falls of brilliant snow still lie Whether the reference is to fallen snow or to snowstorms is debated. At present snow does not lie on Kitha´iron all year long, but it may have been cooler twenty-five hundred years ago. Snowstorms are possible during a good part of the year. Greek tragedy does not usually indicate a particular season of the year, but the reference here may be a reminder of the midwinter time of the oreibasia, the maenadic revel on the mountain. Seneca, Oedipus 808 refers to ‘‘Kitha´iron’s snowy ridge.’’ 783–889 / 677–774 The first of two long and highly detailed Messenger speeches about the Theban maenads’ activities on Mount Kitha´iron. Its pendant, the Second Messenger’s speech at 1180–1307 / 1043–1152, also ends with a generalization about Dionysos’ gift to mortals. See Introduction, p. 224. Both speeches present visions of a beatific calm and harmony with nature, followed by an abrupt change to violence and bloodshed, thereby showing the two faces of Dionysos. 804 / 697–98

Fastening the dappled skins with snakes See above on lines 129–31 / 101–4.

811–17 / 704–11 Struck her thyrsos . . . honey . . . from the ivied rods Miracles involving milk, honey, wine, and water are traditionally attributed to Dionysos and his maenads. See Plato, Ion 534a, ‘‘The bacchants, when they are inspired, not in their senses, draw forth honey and water from rivers.’’ These miraculous events remind us of Dionysos’ association with fertility and the liquid life and energy of nature. A miraculous dripping of honey also accompanies Dionysos’ epiphany to the daughters of Minyas who resist his cult at Orkhomenos (Aelian, Varia Historia 3.42, and see Introduction, p. 214, with note 29). 322

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822 / 716

These strange, miraculous events Some editors delete this line as an interpolation based on 773 / 667, but the play’s continual hammering away at these repeated ‘‘wonders’’ effectively depicts Pentheus’ stubbornness and folly. See Introduction, pp. 220–22.

822–24 / 717 one / Of us, who used to wander through the town . . . good at talking What exactly is this city-slicker doing among cowherds and shepherds on the mountain? Euripides’ Messenger perhaps means to suggest a contrast between the more naive, instinctively religious, and acceptant country folk and the skeptical, worldly man of the town. By the end of the speech the Messenger clearly classes himself with the believers. Euripides may be alluding also to the pernicious effects of the demagogic politicians of late fifth-century Athens, often satirized by Aristophanes. 833–34 / 726–27 And all the mountain . . . joined them A characteristically Dionysiac fusion of the human and natural worlds. In a glorious Dionysiac ode of the Antigone, the fifth stasimon (1115–54), Sophocles’ envisages Dionysos as the chorus leader of a cosmic dance of ‘‘fire-breathing stars’’ (1146–54). Compare also the verse from Aeschylus’ Edonians cited above, on 671–701. 847 / 737–38

Pulling in two a big young heifer With Dodds and Diggle, we accept the emendation of the eighteenth-century classicist J. J. Reiske, ‘‘pulling’’ (helkousan) in place of the manuscripts ‘‘holding’’ (ekhousan).

851–57 / 740–46 ribs and hooves hurled up . . . rags of flesh / Were torn from them The sparagmos (ritual dismemberment) of the cattle by the enraged maenads is another warning to Pentheus. The verb in the phrase still dripping blood in 853 / 742 prefigures Agaue¨’s description of Pentheus’ mangled body in her lament over him at the end of the play (‘‘blood-dripping limbs,’’ a line restored on the basis of Christus Patiens 1471, see Appendix). Compare also 1285–88 / 1134–36 and 1318–19 / 1163–64. 862–63 / 751

Hysia´i, Erythra´i Villages on the north slope of Mount Kitha´iron, directly on the way to Thebes.

864 / 754 snatched the children . . . from their homes This maenadic activity is corroborated by the evidence of vases and some late literary evidence. It contrasts with the peaceful, nurturing actions of the women before the herdsmen’s attack (789–817 / 683–711). At the same time, the maenads have left behind the nurture of their own infants at home and instead 323

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suckle the young of wild beasts (805–9 / 699–702). They thus threateningly disrupt and invert the normal restrictions and obligations of women in the Greek household. 866–73 / 755–60 Stayed where they put it and never fell The text has suffered some disruption at this point. Manuscript L breaks off at 865 / 755. The remaining manuscript, P, places the phrase ‘‘bronze and iron . . . to the black earth’’ after 866 / 755 and connects the metals with the maenads’ plunder from the houses; but ‘‘black earth’’ is probably an interpolation, and ‘‘bronze and iron’’ probably goes with the account of the battle in 873 / 758–59. We have translated accordingly. 893–94 / 778–79 Bakkhic violence blazes up / . . . like wildfire Pentheus’ angry comparison of the maenads’ attack to fire again points up the gap between his perceptions of Dionysos and the numinous reality of the god. Fire has been a recurrent attribute of Dionysos’ miracles, first at the tomb of Se´meleˆ (‘‘the live flame of Zeus’’ around her tomb, 11), then at the shaking of Pentheus’ palace (692–96 / 596–99), later in the illusion of fire that Pentheus tries to extinguish there (722–25 / 622–26), and finally in the Messenger’s account, shortly before Pentheus’ outburst in the ‘‘blazing fire’’ that plays around the hair of the maenads themselves (868 / 757). 927 / 810

Aaah! This exclamation from the Stranger stands outside the regular meter and so calls attention to his sudden change of tactic. The disguised Dionysos now begins to establish his uncanny, quasi-hypnotic control over Pentheus.

938 / 821

ritual robe of linen Of Egyptian origin, linen robes seem to have funereal and initiatory associations.

946 / 829 eager to watch maenads The Stranger’s phrase (literally to be a spectator of maenads) can also apply to a dramatic performance and is part of a pattern of self-reflexive reference to staging and dramatic illusion. 962–63 / 845–46 I think that I’ll go in . . . suffer your advice These two verses are Pentheus’ last, feeble protest against Dionysos’ power over him. He speaks as if he still had a choice between following the Stranger’s advice or going armed (i.e., leading his troops against the maenads as he was so vehement about doing in his immediate response to the Messenger’s speech, 893–902 / 778–86). In fact, once he has begun to listen to this advice, he has already surrendered to the god’s power. Line 962 / 845 also 324

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plays on the double meaning of verb peisomai, ‘‘I shall obey’’ and ‘‘I shall suffer,’’ in the latter sense recalling the suffering or grief (penthos) contained in Pentheus’ name. See on 433 / 367, 1402–3 / 1244–45. 964–80 / 848–61 Women! The man is heading . . . gentle This address to the women, harking back to the address to the barbarian women in 702 / 604, confirms the new stage in the humiliation of Pentheus. Although the Stranger here addresses the Lydian bacchants of the chorus with privileged foreknowledge of Pentheus’ death, he nevertheless does not completely abandon his disguise as the Stranger; note his address to the god in 966. His summary of the action of the rest of the play reveals how quickly Dionysos has taken control of Pentheus: within the space of some thirty lines the king changes from proud and hostile antagonist to humiliated and ridiculous victim. The dressing of Pentheus probably reflects actual Dionysiac rituals, in which men dressed in women’s clothing. See Dodds on 854–55 / 743–44. Simultaneously, it is an ironic version of an adolescent rite of passage (that often involves temporarily dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex), a perverted initiation into the Dionysiac mysteries, the preparation of the victim for sacrifice, and the dressing of a corpse for burial (what he’ll wear / To Hades, 976–77). 979–80 / 860–61 Was born a god in full, and is / Most terrible . . . most gentle The text and meaning of these important lines are controversial because of the problematical phrase en telei, which we take to mean something like ‘‘completely’’—Dionysos is ‘‘in every sense a god.’’ Diggle suggests the emendation en merei, in the sense ‘‘in turn,’’ but Euripides generally uses that phrase with verbs and not in the kind of noun-copula-predicate adjective construction that we have here. Whatever the exact sense of en telei, the two superlatives must go closely together, and the lines must mean that Dionysos is ‘‘most terrible and most gentle to mortals.’’ The two sides of Dionysos have been everywhere in evidence throughout the play, and it is the terrible side that we see here; but the Stranger’s last word, most gentle, reminds us of the balance, which again becomes visible in the following ode. 981–1043 / 862–911 Third stasimon (fourth ode) This ode marks a turning point in the play. Its theme is divine justice (especially in the antistrophe), but it begins with a green world of wild forests that harks back to the earlier odes and to the harmony with nature shown in the First Messenger’s speech. The closing epode, a general reflection on the precariousness of human happiness, touches on the motif of the blessedness and calm that the chorus numbered among Dionysos’ gifts in their entering ode, but it 325

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puts Pentheus’ life into the broader philosophical perspective that one expects from the chorus in Greek tragedy. 984–85 / 864–65 Will I ever fling back / My head Dionysiac vases of the fifth century often depict maenads dancing in just this pose, with the head flung back. 1002–6 / 877–81 (repeated in 1028–32 / 897–901) What is wise . . . What is beautiful is what is always loved The text has a minor problem, but the sense is clear. The chorus asserts its pleasure in contemplating vengeance on its enemies, anticipating the more intense expression of this theme in the next ode. The ‘‘wisdom’’ of the gods, as the following antistrophe implies, holds the justice of such revenge. The last line, an ancient proverb, implies their recognition of the rightness of the divine vengeance that Dionysos has now set in motion against Pentheus. At the same time, of course, the play also makes us wonder about the ‘‘wisdom’’ and ‘‘beauty’’ in this vengeance. Some interpreters believe that the last line implies a negative answer to the question about the beauty of this vengeance, but that view does not fit the following antistrophe, nor does it square with the chorus’ behavior in the following ode and their response to the Second Messenger. 1022–27 / 893–96 It costs so little . . . comes to be through nature The chorus here asserts the harmonious agreement of nomos and physis (custom-law and nature), and then seems to be suggesting their further association with the divine, that is, their coming together in the worship of Dionysos. See above, on lines 236–37 / 200, and Introduction, pp. 211–12. The syntax is very dense, and commentators offer a range of possible interpretations. 1041–43 / 910–11 those whose lives are happy The language of blessedness harks back to the chorus’ opening ode (96–99 / 72–73), but at the point when Dionysiac worship also begins to reveal its ‘‘terrifying’’ side (979–80 / 861). See above, on 981–1043 / 862–911. 1044–1105 / 912–70 This scene is Pentheus’ last appearance on the stage. He is now totally in the god’s power and is dressed as a maenad, in striking contrast to his martial challenge to the god in the previous scene (893–902 / 778– 86). His vision of a double sun becomes a literary commonplace for insanity in classical writers (e.g., Virgil, Aeneid 4.469–70). The scene has many levels of meaning. In ritual terms, it is an epiphany of the god in his bull-like form as he leads his antagonist to his doom (see 1153 / 1018, 1314 / 1159, and above, on 128 / 100 and 717–19 / 618–20). It is a ‘‘dedication’’ of Pentheus (1069 / 934) as a sacrifice to the god and 326

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prepares him to be a scapegoat-victim who alone will take upon himself all the ills of the community and purge them by his death (1096–99 / 961–63). It is a failed rite of passage by a transvestism that will turn the youth not into the adult hoplite warrior but into a scout or spy (1090–91 / 955–56), which is the task of the ephebe (youth between eighteen and twenty) before achieving full warrior status. And it is a sinister initiation of Pentheus into the Dionysiac mysteries, promising a ‘‘salvation’’ from which in fact there will be no return (1101 / 965). The scene also uses the ritual structure of procession—contest—celebratory revel (pompeˆ— agoˆn—koˆmos) that is then repeated for Agaue¨ when she enters to celebrate her ‘‘contest,’’ the victorious ‘‘hunt’’ in which she has killed Pentheus. In both cases, of course, the celebratory meaning is ironically inverted: see Introduction, notes 17–18. The scene is also a remarkable piece of dramatic self-reflexivity or metatragedy in which the poet calls attention to the theater’s creation of dramatic illusion by masking and dressing. More specifically still, it enacts the specific theatricality of Greek drama generally, in which male actors dressed in female garb play women’s roles. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (Women at the Thesmophoria), produced in 411 b.c.e., shortly before Euripides left Athens, offers a comic version of this scene in an analogous plot: Euripides, accused by the women of Athens of revealing their vices, gets a relative of his to dress as a woman in order to infiltrate their sacred festival, where he is caught and (this being comedy) rescued. 1049–50 / 916

ready / To spy on your own mother and on her troupe The Greek word for troupe here, lokhos, can also mean ‘‘military band’’ (as a troop or squad of soldiers) and ‘‘ambush.’’ These additional meanings add to the tragic ironies of the reversals, as the warrior-king is destroyed by women and in the dress of a woman rather than under arms.

1051 / 917 You have the very form We are reminded of Dionysos’ change of his own ‘‘form’’ in the prologue (73 / 54). 1057 / 922

bullified Euripides uses an unusual word, which on its rare occurrences elsewhere in tragedy means ‘‘act like a bull’’ (i.e., act with bull-like savagery or look at with bull-like savagery, but not to become a bull). The word signals the special effect of Dionysos’ private epiphany in his taurine shape in a scene that is much concerned with disguise, illusion, and metamorphosis. For the ritual importance of the god’s appearance as a bull, see above, on 128 / 100 and 717–19 / 618–20.

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1071 / 936

below your ankles Pentheus is now wearing the ‘‘full-length robes’’ that the Stranger described in 950 / 833.

1086–87 / 951–52 Don’t go destroying the shrines of nymphs . . . And the haunts of Pan Humoring his deluded victim, the Stranger would protect these haunts of the rustic gods from a Pentheus who, even in his madness, has destructive tendencies (cf. his threats against Teiresias’ seats of augury in 409–51 / 346–81). Pan’s love of flutesong and dancing with the nymphs in wild mountainous places suggests his affinity with the maenads on their mountain revels or oreibasia. The Homeric Hymn to Pan relates that ‘‘bacchic Dionysos’’ took particular delight in Pan’s birth when his father Hermes showed him off on Olympus (Homeric Hymns 19.45–46). 1103–5 / 968–70 Soft delight . . . force me to be spoiled The Greek contains a play on the word spoil (trupheˆ), from a root meaning to break up, so that there is an ironic allusion to the breaking up of Pentheus in the maenadic sparagmos (ritual tearing apart). This last dialogue between Pentheus and the Stranger increases the emotional intensity by accelerating the line-by-line repartee into half-line exchanges, a device known as antilabeˆ. 1108 / 972 A fame that rises all the way to heaven An ironical reference to the motif of ‘‘fame reaching to the heavens’’ in Homeric epic, indicating how far Pentheus falls short of the heroic ideal. 1109 / 973

Open your arms, Agaue¨ The Stranger’s address to Agaue¨, who, of course, is still offstage, marks the completion of the god’s revenge. It continues the pattern of the offstage cry of Dionysos to his worshipers in the Palace Miracle (692–701 / 596–603) and his two addresses to them at 702 / 604 and 964 / 848. This is the last time that the god appears in disguise. When we next hear his words, they will be the direct address from the heavens, as reported in the mysterious epiphany described by the Second Messenger (1219–29 / 1078–85).

1113–59 / 977–1023 Fourth stasimon (fifth ode) This is the last regular ode that the chorus sings, and their mood is now dominated by the lust for bloody revenge, especially in the refrain of 1128–32 / 991–996 and 1148–52 / 1011–16. As Dionysos begins to execute his punishment of Pentheus, his maenad chorus increasingly shows its murderous side. 1113 / 977 Hounds of Fury, rush to the mountain The chorus echo the cry of the opening ode (187 / 152, 198–99 / 165), but the mood is now totally 328

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different as the god’s followers, yielding to their own rage, urge on the maddened Theban maenads much as Agaue¨ did in the First Messenger speech (‘‘O hounds of the chase,’’ 839 / 731). ‘‘Hounds of Fury’’ (or Madness, Lyssa) evokes the Furies or Erinyes, dread vengeful deities of the Underworld. Fury here (in Greek Lyssa) is a fearful chthonic divinity, personification of destructive madness. In Aeschylus’ lost play, Xantriai (The Wool-carders), which had a Dionysiac subject, the ‘‘goad of Fury’’ is invoked for the rending apart (sparagmos) of someone who is resisting the god, probably Pentheus. In Euripides’ Herakles Fury is sent by Hera to drive Herakles to the homicidal rage in which he kills his wife and children and actually appears on the stage (Herakles 843–73). 1117 / 980 Against this man who mimics woman The chorus refers back to the Stranger’s description of Pentheus in 975 / 855 as ‘‘a man-turnedwoman,’’ about to be led out of the town to the mountain. 1118 / 982–83 from some tall pole or rocky cliff The Greek word skolops (pole) is unattested elsewhere in this sense. It usually means stake or other sharppointed instrument and may be corrupt, a gloss or mistaken conjecture for Euripides’ original word. We should recall that there is only one surviving manuscript for the play after line 865 / 755. 1125–26 / 988–90 not born / From the blood of women In its vengeful fury, the chorus demonizes Pentheus, making him the offspring of the monstrous Gorgons. The chorus had called Pentheus a monster in the second stasimon (630–38 / 537–44); now their outcry is fiercer. The discrepancy between the bestial antagonist that they imagine and the confused youth whom Dionysos has just led to his doom also begins to shift sympathy toward Pentheus. There is no mitigation of his impiety and folly, but his sufferings begin to appear in a different perspective as the full horror of the god’s punishment emerges. This ode has an important role in that shift of perspective. 1138–43 / 1102–7 Him, death will not be slow to teach . . . / What is great and is clear The text of this passage has many uncertainties; our translation follows Dodds, but with no great confidence. 1143–52 / 1007–16 what leads us . . . to be holy / And reverent . . . Earthborn offspring! The contradictions in this chorus are strongly marked here. The chorus hark back to the motifs of Dionysiac wisdom, calm, and holiness in the previous odes but then repeat their call for bloody, throat-slitting revenge in the refrain. They conclude with a prayer for a Dionysiac epiphany, 329

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but the god is to appear in the bestial and aggressive forms of bull, manyheaded snake, fiery lion, and hunter. The maenads are a deadly herd, beneath whom Pentheus will fall; and the metaphor emphasizes the collective emotion of the thiasos, the band of devotees. We may also be reminded of Dionysos as leader of the maenads in the oreibasia, the mountain revel, ‘‘throwing himself’’ (literally, falling) upon the hunted prey in the first ode (167–68 / 135–36); and yet the contrast between this ode and that first ode is striking. At the same time the god, in his calm remoteness, has a ‘‘laughing face,’’ which now makes us understand the sinister power behind the laughter of the Stranger when he is led before Pentheus for the first time in 516 / 434. 1160–61 / 1024–25 O house . . . of that patriarch of Sidon This honorific reference to the founding of the city and the Planted Men offers a perspective on Thebes’ origins very different from that of the chorus in the previous ode (1125–27 / 988–90). After line 1164 / 1027, ‘‘Although I am your slave— but even so!,’’ the manuscript contains the additional line ‘‘For decent slaves must bear the sorrows of their masters’ fate,’’ which, with most editors, we regard as a later interpolation, based on Medea 54. Some editors would excise also the preceding two lines, 1161–62 / 1025–26, which mention Kadmos’ Phoenician origins and his foundation of Thebes; but the reference to the ‘‘house’’ alone, without a proper name, seems too bare. In contrast to the First Messenger, who addressed Pentheus, the Second Messenger addresses only the ‘‘house’’ of Kadmos, not Kadmos himself, who will enter only later. His audience is only the Lydian maenads of the chorus, hostile to that house, and they will receive the catastrophic news with the rejoicing that unsettles this Messenger. 1180–1307 / 1043–52 Second Messenger’s speech In the structure of the play this long narrative is symmetrical with the First Messenger’s speech, but now the destructive side of the maenads predominates, and their calm and peaceful activities receive only a brief description (1191–96 / 1052–57). The intruder into the maenads’ rites is now the king himself, not the herdsmen, and the result is a far more deadly and horrible sparagmos: the rending of human flesh and not just of cattle. The landscape, too, is correspondingly harsher (1189–90 / 1051). 1208 / 1066–67 wheel-curve the text and meaning of this comparison have been much discussed. Some scholars have thought the reference to be to a kind of lathe.

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1219–21 / 1077–79 the Stranger disappeared, and a voice . . . Cried out The Stranger of the first two-thirds of the play is now replaced by the full divine power of Dionysos, made manifest by the voice from the sky, see below on 1224–33 / 1082–83. The details of this epiphany have close resemblances to the divine summoning of Oedipus at the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (1621–30), Sophocles’ last play, written not long after the Bakkhai. These resemblances may be due to literary convention, but it is possible, as Dodds suggests, that Sophocles might have read an advance copy of the Bakkhai in late 407 or early 406 b.c.e. 1221–22 / 1081 the man / Who makes a mockery The mockery (or laughter) now is wholly on Dionysos’ side, see 521 / 439 and 1156 / 1021, and above, on 1143–52 / 1143–52. 1224–33 / 1082–83 as the voice proclaimed . . . Dionysos’ voice This is the decisive epiphany of Dionysos and the answer to the chorus’ prayer at the end of the previous ode (1153–59 / 1018–23). The sudden silence, bright light, and voice from the heavens are all signs of the god’s supernatural presence. Compare the earthquake, offstage voice, and flash of light in the Palace Miracle, 690–707 / 594–609. See above, on 671–701 / 576–603. 1234–35 / 1092 With Dodds, Diggle, and many editors we bracket these lines as a later interpolation. 1239–96 / 1095–1143 The narrative of Pentheus’ death This extraordinary passage, a detailed description of a Dionysiac ritual rending (or sparagmos), is the climax of Dionysos’ vengeance and of the homicidal insanity that he unleashes against his adversary. It is dense with ritual implications and ironic inversions of ritual. Pentheus is simultaneously a maenad and a victim of maenads, a scapegoat-victim, a hunted beast, a ‘‘young bullcalf’’ (see 1340 / 1185) and a wild lion (see 1295 / 1142, 1351 / 1196), and most spectacularly perhaps a surreal thyrsos brandished in a maenadic procession on the mountain, where his head will replace the ivy cluster at the tip of the fennel-stalk (1140–41 / 1004–5): see Christine M. Kalke, ‘‘The Making of a Thyrsus,’’ American Journal of Philology 106 (1985), 409–26. As a wild lion, he evokes the scenes on Dionysiac vases, where ecstatic maenads tear apart wild felines and carry their body parts. There are a number of vases that represent the sparagmos of Pentheus, as early as the late sixth century b.c.e.: see Carpenter, Dionysiac Imagery (Introduction, note 6), 116–17, with plates 46–47. It would be interesting to know how much Euripides’ account owes to Aeschylus’ lost Pentheus. 331

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1250 / 1103–4 Striking with oak branches like thunderbolts The text and meaning of this line are controversial. The verb, strike as with a thunderbolt, has Dionysiac associations (compare Dionysos’ epithet, Bromios, the Thunderer, and the role of thunder and lightning at this birth), and so it is suggestive of the supernatural power that the god has given his maenads in their irresistible violence against Pentheus. We have adopted an emendation (accepted also by Seaford) that makes the maenads use these branches as levers to uproot the tall fir tree in which Pentheus is trapped. The manuscript, supported by a papyrus fragment, has the oak branches as the direct object, in the accusative case (i.e., ‘‘striking the oaken branches as if with thunder,’’ which Dodds accepts). If, with Dodds, we keep the transmitted text, the reference is perhaps to the role of oak in the bacchic ritual, as in the opening ode, where fir and oak are combined (consecrate / Yourselves as Bakkhai with / Sprays of oak and pine! 136–38 / 109–10; cf. also 810 / 702–3, where the maenads crowned themselves with ivy, oak leaves, vines). But the manuscript reading makes it hard to connect whatever the maenads are doing with the goal of their efforts at this moment of the narrative. 1254 / 1107–8

this tree-climbing beast Pentheus now appears to the maenads as one of those animals that maenads hunt down and tear apart. The reversal of human and bestial, hunter and hunted pervades the play and becomes even stronger with Agaue¨’s appearance in the next scene. Compare also the First Messenger’s speech, 839–43 / 731–35, and the end of the previous ode, 1156–59 / 1020–23. The god, too, appears as both the hunter and the beast.

1255–56 / 1108–9 revealing to anyone / The secret dances of the god In contrast to these secret rites on the mountain, the Lydian maenads’ procession through the city in the opening ode, though requiring holy silence, is visible to all. Pentheus’ disguise in order to spy on the Theban maenads in 1089– 91 / 954–56 emphasizes the secrecy. Like other mysteries, they are forbidden to the profane. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae offers a comic analogy: see above, on 1044–1105 / 912–70. Early in the play, on the other hand, Kadmos and Teiresias will go to the mountain to honor the god, but nothing is said of their joining the women in their maenadic dances (see above, on 231–32 / 195–96). 1283 / 1133

raising the war-cry of their triumph The maenads’ cry is that of the male warrior in martial victory, which continues the pervasive inversion of gender roles. Diggle emends the manuscript text to read oˆloluzon, which refers to the distinctively female cry, at ritual occasions, especially the 332

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sacrifice of an animal (see Dodds on line 31 / 24). For a good defense of the manuscript text see Seaford. 1312–13 / 1157–58 the fennel-rod of Hades, / The thyrsos that is the warrant of his death A controversial passage that has been much emended and that Diggle still marks as corrupt. The manuscript reading, ‘‘trusty Hades,’’ makes little sense, but the modern emendation ‘‘pledge of Hades’’ (involving the change of a single letter in the Greek) is now confirmed by a papyrus fragment of the fifth century c.e. and is widely accepted by editors. The thyrsos is a ‘‘pledge of Hades’’ in the sense that it is the token that will admit Pentheus to Hades, realm of death, in a perverted and destructive form of initiatory passage to the underworld. Hence our translation, ‘‘warrant of his death.’’ 1314 / 1159 a bull was in command! Compare Pentheus’ vision of the Stranger as a bull as he leads him to the mountain in 1054–57 / 920–22 and his wrestling with the bull in the palace in 717–18 / 618–19. 1316–17 / 1161–62 hymn of triumph . . . lamentation This song, which prepares for Agaue¨’s entrance with Pentheus’ head, is a perverted form of the ritual pattern of procession—contest—revel: see above, on 1044–1105 / 912–70. In the play’s pervasive reversal of gender roles, the mother is the victorious athlete, hunter, and leader of a revel (koˆmos), all exclusively masculine activities. Simultaneously, victory song fuses with funerary dirge, for the triumphant line-by-line antiphonal responsion between the women of the chorus and Agaue¨ in what follows (1323–55 / 1168–99) is also evocative of female funerary lament. 1318–19 / 1163–64 to plunge her hand in the blood / Of her child the text of this passage has been much discussed. With Dodds, we adopt the emendation of the nineteenth-century classicist Adolf Kirchhof (balein), which makes the expression parallel to that of Medea 1283. 1324–26 / 1169–71 Because . . . for this house, we bring in a blesse`d hunt, / A fresh-cut tendril In 1292–93 / 1139–41 the Messenger described Agaue¨ as placing the head on the tip of her thyrsos; now, as she appears on the stage for the first time, she carries it in her arms, thereby fulfilling the Stranger’s promise to Pentheus in 1103–4 / 967–68. This entrance ranks with that of the blinded Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus as one of one of the most powerful and shocking visual spectacles of the Greek theater. The ‘‘fresh-cut tendril’’ belongs to the Dionysiac imagery of the vital

333

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energies of nature; but there is deep tragic irony in the mad Agaue¨’s confusion of the ivy-like curling plant with the curling hair of the captured beast. See on 1340–42 / 1185–87, below. For Plutarch’s account of the performance of this scene with the head of Crassus at the Parthian court see the Introduction, p. 204. As the tragedies in Euripides’ time were performed by three main actors (all male), presumably the actor who played Pentheus now took the role of Agaue¨. The head of Pentheus that she/he carries is perhaps the mask that this actor had just worn in that role, or else closely resembles it, stained, perhaps, to represent its decapitated state. 1329–30 / 1174–75 This young creature, / As you see A phrase has dropped out of the manuscript, perhaps referring to Pentheus as looking like a young lion. 1339 / 1184

So share this feast An allusion to the oˆmophagia, the maenads’ devouring of their hunted prey raw on the mountain. The half-line leaves open the horrible possibility that the maenads actually devoured some of Pentheus’ body. When Agaue¨ returns to Thebes and is still mad, she repeatedly urges Kadmos to hold a feast (1400 / 1242, 1406 / 1247), as if the hunted beast were not a lion (see 1329–30 / 1174–75, 1439 / 1278 or 1444 / 1283) but an animal more appropriate for a feast, like the ‘‘young bullcalf ’’ of 1340–42 / 1185–87 (below)—a deliberate vacillation between Pentheus as sacrificial victim (like a bull) and as hunted wild beast: see my Dionysiac Poetics (Introduction, note 4), 40–45.

1340–42 / 1185–87 This young bull-calf . . . his delicate crest of hair, like a helmet Pentheus’ head appears to Agaue¨ confusedly as that of both a young bull and a lion (1350 / 1196; see also 1439 / 1278, 1444 / 1283). The reference to the crest (for which Euripides here uses the usual Greek word for helmet) may also suggest Pentheus’ failure to achieve the warrior status for which he was arming himself at the moment when he fell under the Stranger’s spell (926 / 809, 963 / 845). 1358–70 / 1202–15 On the gender reversals in Agaue¨’s delusion of herself see above on 1316–17 / 1161–62. 1376–77 / 1220–21 scattered . . . in thick / Impenetrable woods The line is suspect and has been deleted by some editors, but we believe it to be genuine. 1385 / 1227

Akta´ion See above on 398–99 / 337.

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1397 / 1238–39 the prize for prowess The reference here is to the usual prize for valor (aristeia) awarded to the best warrior—another inversion of gender roles in Agaue¨’s madness. See above on 1283 / 1133, 1316–17 / 1161–62, 1358–70 / 1202–15. 1399–1400 / 1242–43 call your friends / To feast, for you are blesse`d, blesse`d On the horror and ambiguity of this feasting see above, on 1339 / 1184. The repeated blesse`d echoes the beatitudes of the Lydian worshipers in their opening song (97 / 72) but with cruel irony as we now see the dark side of Dionysiac ecstasy. 1402–3 / 1244–45 O grief . . . pitiable hands If the lines are genuine, grief (penthos) contains another play on Pentheus’ name. Editors have doubted the authenticity of the lines, largely because of the syntactical irregularity in 1402 / 1244. With Dodds and others, we believe the lines to be genuine, except for the second half of 1402 / 1244 which means something like ‘‘on which I cannot look,’’ and for syntactical reasons is probably to be considered corrupt. Possibly a line or two has dropped out of the manuscript at this point. 1415–16 / 1255

fight / Against divinity Agaue¨ now echoes Dionysos’ warning description of Pentheus in the prologue (60 / 45).

1425–41 / 1264–80 look up . . . at the sky . . . What’s this I’m holding in my hands? This scene has been compared to a psychotherapeutic intervention. See Introduction, note 43 on page 225. Living in Macedonia may have given Euripides some experience of how maenads and others in ecstatic states were brought back to normal consciousness. 1461 / 1300 On the problem of the lacunas in the text here and in 1512 / 1329 see the Appendix. We have supplied Agaue¨’s lament as she pieces together Pentheus’ body (a scene known as the Compositio Membrorum) from the (probably late) Byzantine play, the Christus Patiens, a dramatic version of the Passion of Christ that draws heavily on this and other Euripidean plays. 1482–1509 / 1301–26 Following upon Agaue¨’s lament (as we suppose) in the gap after 1461 / 1300, Kadmos now makes his lament over the body. He emphasizes the loss to the house as a whole and, as befits a former king, puts greater emphasis on the public world, Pentheus’ defense of his grandfather’s honor and dignity in the city. This lament of an aged

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king over a grandson who (it would seem) is the last male survivor of the house (1487–89 / 1305–8) should be compared with Peleus’ lament over his slain grandson, Neoptolemos, at the end of Euripides’ Andromache. Peleus, however, receives consolation from his divine wife, Thetis, appearing as dea ex machina, in contrast to the harshness of Dionysos as deus ex machina here. There is a further irony in Kadmos’ lament: it echoes a heroic pattern in Homeric father-son relationships, for it harks back to Achilles’ request for information about his father, Peleus, when he meets Odysseus in Hades (Odyssey 11. 494–503): Tell me if you have any news of blameless Peleus, whether he still has honor among the Myrmidons, or whether they dishonor him in Hellas and Phthia, because old age holds his hands and feet. If I should come there to my father’s house as his helper, up into the rays of the sun, even for a little while, such as I was once in broad Troy when I slew the best of the host, truly would I make hateful to them my strength and my invincible hands, to them who do him violence and deprive him of honor.

Although Kadmos’ situation in the Bakkhai is that of Achilles’ father, Peleus, rather than of the Achilles who speaks these lines in the Odyssey, the father-son relationship is still analogous. Kadmos praises Pentheus in the terms that evoke the traditional heroic code of the mighty son who is defending an old, impotent father against enemies who surround him and would ‘‘do him violence and deprive him of honor’’ (cf. ‘‘dishonored,’’ 1494 / 1313, 1502 / 1320). Like Achilles, too, Kadmos combines defencelessness against dishonor with the threat of insult (hubris, 1492 / 1311, cf. Achilles’ line about violence and dishonor, Od. 11.503). But of course Pentheus and his unheroic death in female dress and at the hands of women are at the furthest possible remove from the heroic spirit of Achilles; and the situation is the reverse of that of the Odyssey passage, with the old man, not the son, as the speaker. 1512 / 1329 The second major lacuna in the text. It probably contained the first part of Dionysos’ prophecy. Here, too, we have provided a restoration on the basis of the Christus Patiens; see the Appendix. 1543 / 1330 changed to a dragon-snake This part of Dionysos’ prophecy harks back to the mythical origins of Thebes, which Kadmos had founded by slaying the serpent that guarded the spring of Dirke´ at the site of Thebes. There is, perhaps, a cruel irony in this transformation of Thebes’ founder into the form of the monstrous creature that he had defeated in his youth.

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1545–46 / 1332 Harmonı´a, Ares’ daughter The marriage of a mortal man and a goddess was a mark of exceptional happiness. Pindar, Pythian 3.88–92, cites the bliss of this wedding and that of Peleus and Thetis as the highest felicity for mortals but adds that it is followed by the inevitable sorrows of mortality. 1547–52 / 1333–38 And you and she, as was foretold . . . undergo a journey Euripides here alludes to traditions, mentioned in Herodotus (Histories 5.61 and 9.43), according to which the exiled Kadmos, transformed into a snake, leads a people from Illyria (in the area of northwestern Greece or Albania) known as the Encheleis against Greece, where they will sack Apollo’s shrine at Delphi. 1555 / 1339

land of the blesse`d Like some other heroes with divine connections (Peleus, Achilles, Menelaus), Kadmos will eventually be transported to Elysium, the land of the blest.

1580–82 / 1361–62 not even after I sail / The River Acheron . . . peace Kadmos finds no solace in Dionysos’ promise of Elysium in 1555 / 1339. While translation to Elysium usually means avoidance of Hades (so, for instance, for Menelaus in Homer, Odyssey 4.561–69), Kadmos seems to assume the normal process of a mortal end. Possibly he thinks that he will go to Hades first and be taken from there to Elysium, but the point of the lines is probably his intense feeling of continuing misery rather than any precise underworld topography. The lines add to the mood of unrelieved sorrow at the end. He has none of the ‘‘peace’’ or ‘‘calm’’ that belongs among the blessings enjoyed by the god and his worshipers (e.g., 460 / 389, 720 / 622, 740 / 636, 906 / 790). 1585 / 1365 a useless old white swan The exact point of the swan image has been much discussed. The primary associations are probably of the white hair of old age and the swan’s lament at its death. 1592 / 1371

to Arista´ios A line has dropped out, and it is unclear exactly where Kadmos is telling Agaue¨ to go. The reference completes the pattern associating Pentheus’ suffering with that of his cousin Akta´ion.

1598–99 / 1377–78 Yes, because of us he suffered things / So terrible The manuscript here reads ‘‘I endured from you terrible things,’’ which would have to be spoken by Dionysos. The attribution of lines to speakers is notoriously unreliable in our manuscripts. Line 1568 / 1351 looks like Dionysos’ exit

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line, and so we follow most editors in emending 1598 / 1377–78 and assigning it to Kadmos. The change in the Greek wording is slight. 1609–13 / 1388–92 Many are the shapes of what’s divine This choral tag closes four other plays (Alcestis, Medea, Andromache, and Helen). Though originally written by Euripides, it was not intended for this play and is a later addition.

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APPENDIX: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FRAGMENTARY ENDING

The text of the second half of the Bakkhai (from line 866 / 755 on) depends on a single surviving manuscript, the fourteenth-century Palatinus (P), which has lost some material near the end of the play. There are two places where there is a jump in the sense that indicates a possible lacuna in the manuscript. The first lacuna comes after 1461 / 1300, the second after 1512 / 1329. The text of the first passage is as follows: agaue¨ Father—where’s the dear body of my child?

1459 / 1298

kadmos I made a long hard search for it; I bring it with me.

1460 / 1299

agaue¨ Has all of it—the limbs—been placed together decently? 1461 / 1300 [...] agaue¨ How much of my madness did Pentheus share with me?

1482 / 1301

The interruption of the line-by-line question and answer (stichomythia) between 1461 / 1300 and 1482 / 1301 indicates that something has been lost, but it is still debated whether this gap contained only a few lines or an extensive passage, presumably containing Agaue¨’s lament. That there exists a substantial lacuna in the second passage, after 1512 / 1329, is generally agreed, but what it contained obviously depends on the

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reconstruction of the first passage. In line 1512 / 1329 Agaue¨ exclaims, ‘‘Father! You see how my life is overturned.’’ In the next line of the manuscript text, 1543 / 1330, Dionysos has already entered and has been prophesying Kadmos’ exile and transformation into a serpent. Somewhere in this part of the play Agaue¨ lamented over Pentheus’ body. There are two interrelated problems: first, whether Agaue¨’s lament came in the first or second lacuna (that is, after 1461 / 1300 or after 1512 / 1329), and, second, whether or not she pieced together Pentheus’ torn body on the stage (a scene known as the Compositio Membrorum). For reasons that will appear below, I believe that both lacunae are extensive, perhaps fifty to sixty lines in the first and some twenty in the second. Reconstruction of the missing verses depends on a few remarks and quotations from later ancient authors, on the Christus Patiens (The Passion of Christ), a twelfth-century Byzantine play about the Passion of Christ once attributed to Gregory the Great, and on a papyrus fragment to be discussed later. The Christus Patiens is a cento of verses drawn from the entire corpus of Euripides’ plays. It makes heavy use of the Bakkhai and includes lines that probably came from the play’s lost portions. Fundamental for the reconstruction of the scene is the remark of the third-century c.e. rhetorician Apsines: In Euripides Agaue¨, mother of Pentheus, having passed beyond her madness and having recognized her own son now torn apart, accuses herself and arouses pity . . . In this passage Euripides’ wish was to arouse pity for Pentheus, and he has in fact aroused it, for the mother holding each of his limbs in her hands laments over each of them.

Apsines’ comment indicates that Agaue¨ not only laments over the body, which is a familiar enough motif in Greek tragedy, but also, at the least, handles the mangled parts, which is unexampled in the genre. Some scholars have argued that Agaue¨ merely touches or caresses the limbs and does not actually piece the body together on the stage. Favoring an on-stage Compositio Membrorum is the ending of Seneca’s Phaedra (middle of the first century c.e.), where Theseus recomposes the mangled body of his son, Hippolytos (lines 1247–74). Seneca may be imitating Euripides’ scene with Agaue¨ and Pentheus. But it can also be argued that Seneca is elaborating the Euripidean material in a new and characteristically Senecan way. On the negative side, too, is the omission of this scene from the First Hypothesis of the Bakkhai; but this summary of the play contains a number of textual corruptions and is perhaps itself fragmentary toward the end.

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If Agaue¨ merely handles or caresses the torn but already recomposed body, Kadmos’ reply in the gap after 1461 / 1300 was something like this: ‘‘Yes, the body is all decently put together, for we gathered the bloody parts scattered over the stones and trees and bushes. But you still hold the head in your hands.’’ Agaue¨, then, amid renewed tears, places the head on the corpse and enters upon her formal lament. If, on the other hand, she does recompose the body, Kadmos would have replied: ‘‘No (it is not decently composed), for you and your sisters left the limbs scattered far and wide; but, in so far as we could, we have brought them together; and here are the torn pieces on this bier.’’ Agaue¨ and Kadmos then join in piecing the fragments together. As the final gesture, Agaue¨ would lay in place the head, which she carries. The difference between the two reconstructions lies ultimately only in the degree of the horror; and it is not surprising that many find the more gruesome second alternative too outrageous even for late Euripides. In either case, if we are to believe Apsines, Euripides has given a sensationally grisly twist to the lament over a brutally torn corpse, as we find it, for example, in Sophocles’ Ajax of around 450 b.c.e. (lines 896–973) or in Euripides’ own Trojan Women of 415 b.c.e. (lines 1156–1237), about a decade before the Bakkhai. In both of these earlier plays the body is on stage and the physical ugliness of the wounds is much in evidence, but neither body is torn to bits nor requires the handling or adjusting of the parts, as in Agaue¨’s lament. On either reconstruction of Agaue¨’s lament, she would conclude with a final, tearful view of the body as she covers it with a veil or shroud. Kadmos then says something like, ‘‘My miserable daughter, I pity you, but such is the cruel madness that Dionysos sent upon you.’’ Agaue¨ responds with line 1482 / 1301, where our text resumes, ‘‘How much of my madness did Pentheus share with me?’’ She asks this question in her continuing self-accusation, which, as Apsines remarked (see above), accompanied her recomposition of the body. With the deepened understanding that comes in the course of her lament, she shifts from blaming Dionysos, as she does in her moment of recognition in 1457 / 1296 (‘‘Now I see that Dionysos crushed us’’) to blaming herself and her ‘‘madness’’ in 1482 / 1301. In his reply Kadmos explains Pentheus’ guilt (1483–84 / 1302), ‘‘He proved himself to be like you— he refused / To revere the gods,’’ whereupon he moves into his own briefer and less violent lamentation (1490–1509 / 1308–26). Taken together, the laments of Agaue¨ and Kadmos, whatever their relative order, complement one another as characteristic modes of female and male mourning in the polis. Agaue¨ is intensely physical, as one would expect from a mother. She handles and touches the torn body, perhaps caresses and kisses it, probably refers to having given birth 341

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and nursed Pentheus (see Christus Patiens 1256, below), and finally covers the corpse with a robe or veil that she carries (Christus Patiens 1123, 1470–72, below), much as Tekmessa, for example, covers the body of Ajax (Sophocles, Ajax 915–16) or Hecuba does that of Astyanax in the Trojan Women, 1218–20. A strong argument for placing Agaue¨’s lament before Kadmos’ is staging. Her entrance with Pentheus’ head is a spectacular coup de the´aˆtre, vividly remembered centuries later, as Plutarch’s anecdote in his Life of Crassus attests (see the Introduction, p. 204); but it is hard to imagine Agaue¨ standing with that head all through the following scene. It is easier to suppose that she placed the head on the body in the lacuna after 1461 / 1300. In this way Kadmos speaks his lament over a fully recomposed body. For the dramatic rhythm of the play, too, it seems more effective for Agaue¨’s highly emotional lament to precede Kadmos’ speech. Kadmos’ somewhat calmer lament would then modulate to a less vehement emotional tone and help lead into the speech of Dionysos, with its prophecy of the future. On this reconstruction Agaue¨’s inquiry about the body and its condition in 1459–61 / 1298–1300 (cited above) leads naturally into the lament (with or without the Compositio Membrorum). Her entrance with Pentheus’ head at the beginning of the scene (1356 / 1200) has alerted the audience to the grisly scene that follows. The line-by-line dialogue of the ‘‘psychotherapy scene,’’ in which Kadmos gradually brings Agaue¨ back to sanity and reality, leads inexorably to her readiness to confront the consequences of her actions. First she recognizes the head (1445 / 1284); then she asks who was the killer and receives the direct reply, despite the pounding of her heart (1449 / 1288), ‘‘You and your sisters were the ones who killed him’’ (1450 / 1289). Her exclamation of recognition at 1457 / 1296, ‘‘Now I see that Dionysos crushed us,’’ shows her moral readiness and growing strength for the experience that she must now undergo. When she next asks (1459 / 1298), ‘‘Father— where’s the dear body of my child?’’ she is fully prepared to face this most visible and horrible sign of her madness. Kadmos’ response, ‘‘I made a long hard search for it; I bring it with me’’ (1460 / 1299), can be taken as an implicit stage direction, calling attention to the body that his attendants carried in on the bier. Line 1460 / 1299, in fact, seems to hark back self-consciously to Kadmos’ entrance with the body at 1371 / 1216. In his commentary on the Bakkhai, E. R. Dodds argues that line 1482 / 1301, ‘‘How much of my madness did Pentheus share with me?’’ ‘‘seems to belong more naturally to an earlier stage, at which Agaue¨ is still trying to get the facts clear’’ (p. 232). But the line makes equal sense as part of a movement back from the intense emotion of her lament, with its awful 342

APPENDIX

physical contact with the body, to an attempt to understand the cruelty of Dionysos’ punishment. The line thus helps effect a transition to the more restrained (if still painful) mood first of Kadmos’ lament and then of Dionysos’ prophecy. It also shows Euripides continuing to hammer away at the cruelty of the god’s revenge, as the two mortal protagonists struggle to understand it and come to terms with it (1456–58 / 1295–97, 1482 / 1301, 1561–67 / 1344–50, 1592–99 / 1371–78). New evidence for the missing lines emerged some forty years ago in the form of some small scraps of a papyrus codex from Antinoe¨ (also called Antinoo¨polis) in Egypt of the fifth century c.e., one line of which (fragment ii b verso; 4 in Diggle’s Oxford Text) seems to confirm that Christus Patiens 1471–72 does indeed echo our play: ‘‘I cover your bloodspattered limbs, torn in furrows, with my fresh robes’’ (see p. 93 of the translation, above, after 1461 / 1300). From the number of lines per page in the codex, Dodds calculated that if there was a major lacuna after 1461 / 1300 (and not just the omission of two or three lines), then the missing portion of the text would have to be ‘‘at least fifty lines long’’ (p. 244); and so he preferred to place the Compositio Membrorum after 1512 / 1329, on the grounds that a fifty-plus line speech by Agaue¨ after 1461 would be too long. But a fifty-line speech by Agaue¨ after 1461 / 1300 is by no means impossible.1 Hecuba’s lament over the shattered body of Astyanax occupies some sixty lines at the end of the Trojan Women (1156–1215); and for the Bakkhai passage one has to allow also for some preliminary description by Kadmos, dialogue between Kadmos and Agaue¨, and possible remarks by the chorus. The fragmentary condition of the papyrus codex leaves many uncertainties, and it is by no means sure that all of the papyrus fragments pertain to the Bakkhai.2 In assigning verses of the Christus Patiens to the two lacunae, I have followed Diggle’s Oxford Text (pp. 354–55). The words in parentheses are editorial changes from or extrapolations to the Christus Patiens to reflect what might have been the Euripidean original. FRAGMENTS OF LOST PORTIONS OF THE BAKKHAI

A.

Lines of the Christus Patiens possibly drawn from the Bakkhai

I. Assigned to Agaue¨’s lament, after Bakkhai 1461 / 1300. (Agaue¨ is the speaker.) 1011 Alas for me, in my wretched misery, I who once was blest with happiness. 1. D. H. Roberts, the editor of the Antinoe¨ fragment, cited by Dodds, drew just the opposite conclusion from the papyrus and preferred to place the Compositio Membrorum after 1461 / 1300. 2. See Diggle’s note ad loc. in his Oxford text (p. 352).

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BACCHAE [BAKKHAI]

1120 These men here do not give heed to how to put you in your tomb. How then shall I (do so)? In what sort of tomb can I place your body? With what sort of robes can I cover your corpse? 1256 How can I (lift) these limbs, kissing that (torn) flesh to which I myself gave birth? 1312 How can I, in my misery, in my caring for you, lift you to my breast? What manner of dirge can I sing? 1449 [Yes, let us bury this body], but it is a small consolation to the dead. 1466 Come then, old man, let us fit the head of this poor child into its proper place, and let us fit together the whole body harmoniously as best we can. O dearest face, o youthful cheek! Look, with this veil I am covering your head, and I am sheltering with my fresh robes your blood-spattered limbs, all rent in furrows. [Note: The last line seems to coincide with a fragment of the Antinoe¨ papyrus: see above. C. W. Willink, ‘‘Some Problems of Text and Interpretation in the Bacchae I,’’ Classical Quarterly 16 (1966), p. 45, with note 5, suggests that the first sentence, 1466–68, was addressed by Kadmos to Agaue¨, with ‘‘old man’’ displacing an original ‘‘poor woman.’’ Line 1449 above would then have followed, also spoken by Kadmos. Lines 1466–68, if derived from the Bakkhai, would seem to imply the piecing together of the body on stage.] II. Assigned to the lacuna after Kadmos’ lament (after Bakkhai 1512 / 1329) (dionysos appears, perhaps in a crane above the orchestra, or perhaps on the roof of the stage building, and addresses agaue¨ and kadmos.) 1756 Dionysos addresses Agaue¨: And you, so eager for murder, must leave the city. [Note: Another possible translation of this line is ‘‘You must leave the city that is so eager for murder.’’ Dionysos’ command of Agaue¨’s exile, because she is polluted with the blood of her son, must have come in the missing part of his speech, perhaps before his prophecy of Kadmos’ sufferings, as he is still addressing Kadmos where our text resumes at 1543. The First Hypothesis notes that ‘‘Dionysos, when he appeared, announced some things to all, and then made clear to each (of the protagonists) what will happen.’’ Agaue¨’s exclamations to Kadmos at the end also presuppose that she has received this sentence of exile— (1567 / 1350): ‘‘Aiee. It is decided, Father. Exile, misery’’; (1583 / 1363): ‘‘O Father, I am exiled deprived of you!’’ Dionysos’ prophecy of Agaue¨’s

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exile may have come, in part, in reply to her possible accusation of the god after 1512 / 1329, ‘‘Father! You see how my life is overturned,’’ especially if these words are the prelude to her bitter complaint against Dionysos. The continuing anger of his reply might have contained Christus Patiens 1756, which seems to indicate his unpitying harshness as he describes Agaue¨ (or possibly ‘‘the city’’) as ‘‘eager for murder,’’ ‘‘thirsting for slaughter’’ (phonoˆsan). Sophocles uses this verb in the Antigone (117) of the spears of the attackers thirsting for the blood of the citizens. If this verse of the Christus Patiens does indeed come from the Bakkhai, Dionysos is evoking the pollution that necessitates Agaue¨’s exile from Thebes; and he cruelly reminds her, in her present sorrow, of the horror of her past madness. We may compare Artemis’ punitive speech to Theseus at the end of Hippolytos (1283–1324).] 300 That you may find out and come to know your deserved punishment. 1690 I shall declare the sufferings that this man here (Kadmos) is going to fulfill. 1360 For (you) brought forth against me unseemly words, falsely claiming that (Se´meleˆ) bore me from some mortal man. Nor was this enough for (you) in (your) outrageous insults to me. 1663 Thus was he (Pentheus) killed by those from whom he should least have died, (for) he came to (use) chains (against me) and jeering words. [Note: Christus Patiens seems to have recast Euripides to refer to the victim here (Jesus Christ), but the ‘‘chains’’ of 1663 seem to derive from Pentheus’ attempt to imprison the Stranger and the maenads in the first half of the play.] 1665 Such things did your people, whom he loved, in (the frenzy of) anger . . . , do to their benefactor. And so he suffered these things not (undeservedly). But the evils that your people must suffer I shall not conceal. You shall leave the city, yielding to barbarians, a slave, an exile from home; for it is prophesied that (you) must traverse every barbarian land, prisoners taken by the spear, enduring many woes [cf. Bakkhai 1573–78 / 1355– 60] . . . For you must leave this city, paying the penalty for your unholy pollution to the one whom (you) killed . . . , and you shall look upon your native land no longer. For it is not holy for the murderers to remain among the tombs of those they have slain. And you shall come to many cities, ill-starred that you are, bearing the yoke of slavery [cf. Bakkhai 1548–50 / 1333–36].

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[Note: The first part of Dionysos’ prophecy seems to allude to the exile of Kadmos and his people, driven out of Thebes and forced to join a barbarian tribe known as the Encheleis, usually located on the Illyrian coast though sometimes farther north, with whom they will sack Delphi. The legend is referred to in Herodotus, Histories 5.61; see Dodds, pp. 235–36; also above on 1547–52 / 1333–38]. 1639 (Kadmos, replying to Dionysos) By what (you) have wrought I consider (you) clearly a god. B. UNPLACED FRAGMENTS (FROM VARIOUS OTHER SOURCES) 1. Cited by scholion to Aristophanes, Plutus 907 (¼ Euripides, fragment 847, in Augustus Nauck, ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 2nd. ed. [Leipzig 1889], possibly from Agaue¨’s lament: For if I had not taken this defilement into my hands . . . [Alternatively: Would that I had not taken this defilement into my hands.] 2. Cited by Lucian, Piscator 2, but not specifically attributed to the Bakkhai; possibly from Agaue¨’s lament: To find his doom mangled among the rocks. [Note: These words, which do not form a complete sentence, could have been spoken by Kadmos, early in the lacuna after 1300, explaining to Agaue¨ how Pentheus died.] Antinoe¨ Papyrus 24, fifth century c.e. Fragments of eight lines, among which the following words are intelligible: . . . your blood-spattered limbs, all rent in furrows . . . Know that . . . Let him learn . . . Zeus is the one who . . . And someone (?) . . . [Note: Sufficient letters of the first line remain to make it likely that this is the same verse as Christus Patiens 1471, cited above. But it is not certain how much of the rest of the passage comes from the Bakkhai.]

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GLOSSARY

acheron: River in Epirus in northwestern Greece, supposed to lead to the underworld, where, as an underground river, it must be crossed by the dead on their way to Hades. Popular etymology connected it with the Greek word akhos (woe) as the ‘‘river of sorrow.’’ adrastos: King of Argos and father-in-law of Polyneikes. agaue¨:

Daughter of Kadmos and mother of Pentheus by the Planted Man, Ekhı´on (q.v.); leader of the Theban women whom Dionysos has punished by madness and driven to Mount Kitha´iron.

agenor: King of Sidon (or Tyre) in Phoenicia, father of Europa and Kadmos and Europa. aitolia:

Region of Greece north of the Gulf of Korinth, between Phokis to the east and Acarnania to the west.

akhelou¨s: The largest river of Greece, located in the northwest and forming the border between Aetolia and Acarnania. It is often regarded as the father of the fresh-water springs of Greece, as here of the Theban spring Dirke´. akta´ion: Son of Autonoe¨ and cousin of Pentheus; his death is closely parallel to that of Pentheus—he offends the goddess Artemis and is punished in the wild by being torn apart by his hounds. In some versions of the myth Artemis turns him into a stag.

347

GLOSSARY

alkmene: Wife of Amphitryon, bore Herakles to Zeus; granddaughter of Perseus. amazons: Legendary warrior women who live near the Black Sea; Herakles and other Greek heroes waged war against them. amphiaraos: Priest and seer; Argive commander in the war against Thebes. amphion: Theban hero, whose lyre playing caused the city walls to rise. Said by Euripides to be a son of Zeus and divine, along with his brother Zethos. amphitryon: amymone: anauros:

Husband of Alkmene and foster father of Herakles.

Daughter of Danaos, loved by Poseidon. River near Mount Pelion in Thessaly.

antigone: Daughter of Oedipus and Jokasta, sister of Eteokles and Polyneikes. aphrodite: Goddess of love, worshiped in a famous sanctuary on Cyprus. apollo: Son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis; god of prophecy, music, healing, and archery. His oracular shrine at Delphi (q.v.) was the source of the prophecies concerning the house of Laios. ares:

argos:

348

God of war, son of Zeus and Hera; father of Harmonı´a, the wife of Kadmos. (1) A being of human form, covered with eyes over his whole body, who guarded Io after she had been changed into a heifer; (2) city in the Peloponnese, whose patron goddess is Hera. Polyneikes lived in exile and married in Argos, and led an Argive army against Thebes.

GLOSSARY

aristaios: Father of Akta´ion (q.v.) and husband of Autonoe¨, Agaue¨’s sister. Elsewhere, a minor divinity of hunting, herding, and beekeeping. artemis: Daughter of Zeus and Leto, twin sister of Apollo; goddess of wild animals and the hunt, often represented as dancing or hunting in the company of forest nymphs in the wild. Also associated with childbirth and identified with Hekate (q. v.) and the Moon (see selenaia). asopos: River that flows through the central plain of Boeotia, near Thebes; personified as a river god, father of various nymphs of the region. atalanta: A huntress of Arcadia, who bore Parthenopaios to Meleager. athena: Daughter of Zeus, patron goddess of Athens. atlas:

God of the generation of Titans who carries the heavens on his shoulders. The region of Greece surrounding Athens.

attica:

autonoe¨: Daughter of Kadmos and sister of Agaue¨. axios:

River of Macedonia.

bakkhai:

Women worshipers in the cult of Dionysos; more commonly known in English as Bacchae, Bacchantes, or Bacchants (and also called maenads, q.v.). The name derives from one of the god’s cult names of the god, Bakkhos.

bakkhos: Another name for Dionysos, especially in connection with his ecstatic rites. baktria:

A mountainous area of central Asia, in the region of modern Afghanistan.

bromios: Cult name of Dionysos, ‘‘the Rumbler’’ or ‘‘Roarer,’’ derived perhaps from his associations with the bull, the lion, and

349

GLOSSARY

earthquakes, or because of his birth from lightning, or because of the noise that accompanies his rites. centaurs: Part-horse, part-human creatures associated with wild regions and at times with wild and violent behavior. cerberus: charon:

Monstrous dog who guards the entrance to Hades. Boatman who ferries the dead to the shores of Hades.

corinth: City on the eastern end of the northern Peloponnese, site of the Isthmian games. crete:

Large island south of mainland Greece; in myth the birthplace of Zeus, sheltered from Kronos by his mother Rhea in a cave on Mount Dikte, in the eastern part of the island.

cyclops (Cyclopes in plural): Gigantic, one-eyed (or circle-eyed) beings renowned as smiths and builders of monumental walls. cyprus:

Island in the southeastern Mediterranean closely associated with Aphrodite, who is often called Kypris, ‘‘the Cyprian one.’’

danaans: A name used of the Argives because of their descent from Danaos. danaos:

Descendant of Io (q.v.); father of fifty daughters, the Danaids, betrothed to their cousins, the sons of Aigptos. Forced to marry them, of whom all but one murdered their bridegrooms.

delos: Island in the Aegean, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. delphi:

Town on the southern slope of Mount Parnassos in northcentral Greece; site of a celebrated sanctuary of Apollo, the most important oracle of the Greeks and seat of the Pythian games, held every four years. It was thought that Dionysos sojourned there in the winter months, during Apollo’s absence.

demeter: Goddess of the fruitful earth, the harvest, and fertility, and mother of Persephone. She is also associated with the young

350

GLOSSARY

god Iakkhos, identified with Dionysos, in her mystery cult at Eleusis, near Athens. desire:

A handsome youth, the personification of sexual longing (Pothos in Greek), who often appears in the imagery of Dionysiac celebration and is associated with the sensual aspect of the god.

diomedes: King in Thrace, in northeastern Greece, son of Ares. dionysos: God of wine and intoxication, of theater, and generally of transformation and the liminal, with all their attendant joys and dangers. Son of Zeus and the mortal Theban princess, Se´meleˆ (q.v.), sister of Agaue¨, he is thus the cousin of Pentheus. Born at Thebes after Se´meleˆ’s death from Zeus’ lightning, he is kept safe in Zeus’ thigh until his second birth from his divine father. His progress through Greece is met by hostility and resistance, which he overcomes by the violent punishment of his opponents. His worship has special (though not exclusive) appeal to women and takes the form, in part, of ecstatic rites of song, dance, and excited routs into the wild that include the hunting down and tearing apart of wild animals (the sparagmos or ritual rending). He appears to his worshipers in epiphanies marked by bright light and thunderous noise and in the form of a bull, lion, or snake. Dionysos is also known by the cult names Bakkhos, Bromios, Dithyrambos, Euios, and Iakkhos. dirke´:

(1) A famous spring (or stream) at Thebes where Kadmos killed a huge serpent guarding the water, thereby founding the city; (2) the wife of the older Lykos (q.v.).

dithyrambos: A cult title of Dionysos; as a common noun, the word refers to an excited choral song in honor of Dionysos. dodona: Site of an ancient and famous oracle of Zeus in the mountains of western Greece. ekhidna:

A monstrous female earth daimon.

ekhı´on: Father of Pentheus; one of the Planted Men, sprung from the teeth of the serpent slain by Kadmos to found Thebes.

351

GLOSSARY

elektran gate:

One of the seven gates of Thebes.

elektryon: Father of Alkmene, brother of Amphitryon’s father Alkaios; Amphitryon kills him, perhaps accidentally, in a quarrel. epaphos: Divine son of Zeus and Io, ancestor of both Thebans and Phoenicians through Agenor, king of Sidon (or Tyre). erinyes, or Furies: Ancient goddesses who embody the curse within a bloodline. erotes: The ‘‘Loves,’’ male deities or daimons of love and desire, often depicted as small children; the word is the plural of the name of the god of sexual desire, Eros. erythrai:

Town on the slopes of Mount Kitha´iron.

eteokles: Son of Oedipus in power at Thebes after the fall of Oedipus; brother of Polyneikes, Antigone, and Ismene. etna:

Volcanic mountain in Sicily.

euboea:

Island extending from the southeast mainland, across from Athens, up to central Greece.

euios: Cult name of Dionysos, meaning ‘‘he whom one celebrates with the cry of Euhoi’’ and derived from that ecstatic cry of participants in the Dionysiac rites, expressing intense excitement and abandon. eumolpos: King of the Eleusinians, slain in battle by Erectheus, legendary king of Athens. eurystheus: Son of Sthenelos, cousin of Herakles, king of Argos and Mycenae; Herakles’ labors are undertaken on his account. furies, or Erinyes: Ancient goddesses who embody the curse within a bloodline.

352

GLOSSARY

fury (in Greek, Lyssa): Personified divinity of madness, often represented as resembling one of the dread Furies (Erinyes) of the underworld. geryon:

Monstrous three-bodied guardian of cattle in the far southwest of Spain, the outer western limits of the world as the Greeks knew it; stealing his cattle was one of Herakles’ labors.

giants:

A mythical earthborn race of beings who challenge the gods and are defeated by them in battle.

gorgons: Three monstrous sisters, of whom the best known is the snaky-haired Medusa. They are descended from primordial sea divinities and dwell in the remote West, far from civilized humanity. graces: Beautiful young goddesses, usually three in number. They personify physical and artistic beauty. Associated with Aphrodite as well as Dionysos, they are bringers of the charm and delight of song, dance, and poetry. hades: (1) Divine lord of the underworld and the dead; this was his share of the world divided with his brothers, Zeus, god of the sky, and Poseidon, lord of the sea; (2) the underworld, imagined as a grim and shadowy place for the lifeless shades after death. haimon: Son of Kreon, engaged to Antigone. harmonı´a: hebros: hekate:

Daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, wife of Kadmos.

River in Thrace in northeastern Greece. A chthonian goddess often closely associated or identified with Artemis.

helikon: Mountain, and mountain range, northwest of Thebes; home of the Muses who had a famous shrine there.

353

GLOSSARY

hera:

Daughter of Kronos and Rhea, sister and wife of Zeus, queen of the Olympian gods and goddess of marriage. Noted for her jealousy of Zeus’ amours and her hostility to the offspring of these unions, particularly Herakles, it was Hera in the mythical background to Bacchae, who tricked Se´meleˆ into a fiery death from Zeus’ lightning.

herakles: Son of Zeus and Alkmene, foster son of Amphitryon; Greece’s best-known and greatest hero, widely worshiped in cult. His physical capacities were enormous and his achievements numerous, hard fought and extraordinary including the twelve labors set for him by Eurystheus. In the mythical tradition, he is one of the relatively few mortal heroes rewarded with immortality. In the literary tradition he is drawn into the human realm as a warrior with a family and as a figure subject to mental and moral as well as physical trials. hermione: Town near Argos where Demeter was worshiped as a chthonian or under-earth goddess. hippomedon: Argive commander. homole:

Mountain in Thessaly.

hydra: Poisonous, multiheaded water snake in the swamps of Lerna; Herakles destroyed it, cutting off the heads and burning the necks before the regenerating heads could grow back. hysiai: Town on the slopes of Mount Kitha´iron. iakkhos: A youthful divinity, closely associated with Demeter as the divine child; he has an important place in her mystery cult at Eleusis. Though originally distinct from Dionysos, he gradually became identified with him. His name may originally have meant ‘‘Lord of the shouting,’’ derived from the ‘‘shouting’’ (in Greek iakkhein) that attended the processions and rites at Eleusis. ino:

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Sister of Agaue¨, the mother of Pentheus and daughter of Kadmos. Elsewhere in myth she is driven mad by Hera and leaps into the

GLOSSARY

sea with her infant son, Melikertes, whereupon both are changed into minor sea divinities. io:

An Argive princess loved by Zeus, who turned her into a heifer and pursued her to Egypt, where she bore Epaphos and became ancestor, after many generations, to Thebans and Phoenicians alike.

iris: Messenger of the gods whose name means ‘‘rainbow.’’ ismene: Daughter of Oedipus and Jokasta. ismenos:

A river that flows through the city of Thebes.

ixion:

The first mortal to kill his own kin. Zeus purified him of the killing but Ixion then attempted to rape Hera, for which, bound on a whirling wheel, he forever receives punishment in Hades.

jokasta:

Queen of Thebes, sister of Kreon, widow of Laios, mother and wife of Oedipus.

kadmos: Son of Agenor, king of Sidon (or Tyre) in Phoenicia; father of Agaue¨ and Se´meleˆ; aged patriarch of the ruling house of Thebes, which he founded by slaying the serpent at its spring, Dirke´. Having no sons, he gave his rule to his grandson, Pentheus. kapaneus:

Argive commander.

kastalia: Spring in Mount Parnassos at Delphi. kitha´iron: Mountain near Thebes; the site of the Dionysiac rites of the Theban women who are driven mad by the god and so made maenads (q.v.). kolonos: A small settlement just north of Athens where Oedipus found refuge and was buried. korybantes: A band of young men who worship the Phrygian mothergoddess Kybele (q.v.) in ecstatic and noisy rites; hence their association with Dionysos.

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GLOSSARY

korykian mountain peaks: A sacred area high on Mount Parnassus noted especially for the cave of the Korykian Nymphs, whose worship is associated with that of Dionysos. kouretes: A band of young men closely associated with the goddess Rhea, mother of Zeus. They helped protect the infant Zeus from his murderous father, Kronos, by drowning out his cries with their noisy music. They are sometimes identified with the Korybantes (q.v.) and are associated with male rites of passage to adolescence. kreon: (1) Brother of Jokasta, father of Haimon and Menoikeus; (2) ruler of Thebes who is overthrown and killed by Lykos, and father of Megara. kronos:

Ruler of the gods in the generation before the Olympians, husband of Rhea and father of Zeus and Hera, among others. Fearful of a son who would overthrow him, he swallowed all his offspring at birth, except Zeus, who was hidden and saved by his mother. Having grown to manhood, Zeus overthrew Kronos, released his siblings, and established the pantheon of Greek gods.

kybele:

Phrygian mother goddess, sometimes called ‘‘mountain mother of the gods’’ and also identified with Rhea, mother of Zeus and Hera. Her worship on mountains and in processions of ecstatic followers was accompanied by the wild music of flutes, drums, and cymbals and so was felt to be akin to the riotous aspects of Dionysiac cult.

kyknos:

Son of Ares, savage warrior who preys on travelers; killed by Herakles.

kypris: Cult name of Aphrodite, goddess of love, from her famous shrine on Cyprus. labdakos: Father of Laios; his descendants are often referred to as Labakids. laios:

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Son of Labdakos; father of Oedipus, who killed him.

GLOSSARY

lerna:

A marshy area south of Argos in the Peloponnese, famous in myth as the place where Herakles slew the monstrous, manyheaded Hydra.

leto: Goddess of the Titan generation; mother of Apollo and Artemis. loxias:

Cult name of Apollo.

lydia: Country in western Asia Minor famous for its wealth, luxury, and sensuality; regarded as the place where the cult of Dionysos began. lydias:

River of Macedonia.

lykos:

(1) Former ruler of Thebes; (2) his son of the same name is the usurper who threatens to destroy Herakles’ family in Herakles.

lyssa:

Daughter of Night and Ouranos (Heaven), personified divinity of madness.

maenads: Female devotees of Dionysos in their excited, ecstatic state. The word in Greek means ‘‘mad women,’’ women who are raving or frantic, and so it has pejorative connotations. The more neutral term for such women is ‘‘Bakkhai’’ (q.v.), though this, too, can have associations of violent emotion. mainalos: medes:

Mountain in Arcadia, home of Atalanta.

Ancient inhabitants of what is now Iran.

megara: Daughter of Kreon, wife of Herakles. menoikeus:

Father of Kreon; son of Kreon.

minotaur: Half man, half bull for whom Minos, king of Crete, exacted a tribute of Athenian youths and maidens; killed by Theseus. minyans: Inhabitants of Orchomenos, a city that is neighbor and rival of Thebes.

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GLOSSARY

muses:

Young female goddesses of music, song, and dance; born on Pieria on the northern slopes of Olympus; traditionally regarded as the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory).

mycenae: City dominating the northeast corner of the Argive plain, notable at the time of the Trojan War, close to Argos with which it is often identified in tragedy. nemea: Area north of Argos that includes a well-known sanctuary of Zeus. nemesis: Goddess of retribution. niobe:

Wife of Amphion, boasted of her many children (six or seven daughters in most accounts and an equal number of sons), saying that Leto had only two. Apollo and Artemis, angered by the insult to their mother, killed all of Niobe’s children.

nisos:

King of the city of Megara, west of Athens on the northern side of the Isthmus of Corinth.

nysa:

A mountain sacred to Dionysos located by various authorities in different areas, particularly Egypt, Italy, Asia Minor, or Thrace.

oechalia:

City on Euboea (see note on lines Herakles 608–21 / 462–73).

oedipus: Son of Laios and Jokasta; killed Laios, married Jokasta. Father of Eteokles, Polyneikes, Antigone, Ismene. olympos: Greece’s highest mountain, in the northeast of the central mainland, whose peak is the home of the Greek gods often called the Olympians; the area is also associated with Dionysos and his worship. orpheus: A mythical singer of northeastern Greece, sometimes regarded as the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. The power of his singing was so compelling that even the beasts and the forests followed him as he sang. He is closely associated with Dionysos and is regarded as the mythical founder of the Dionysiac mysteries.

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GLOSSARY

pan: God of forests and mountains, particularly Arcadia in the mountainous area of the south-central Peloponnese. Son of Hermes and a forest nymph, he is closely associated with shepherds and herding. He is usually represented as grotesquely half-human and half-goat, playing the flute and joining the forest nymphs in dances in wild and deserted places. paphos:

A city on Cyprus, site of a famous sanctuary of Aphrodite.

parnassos: Mountain to the west of Thebes, the site of Delphi, an important oracular shrine of Apollo, and also closely associated with Dionysos, who comes during the winter months, when Apollo is absent. It is one of the places of ritual processions by the Bakkhai. parthenopaios: An Arcadian, son of Atalanta, and a commander of the Argive army brought by Polyneikes against Thebes. pelion: peneios:

Mountain in Thessaly. River in Thessaly.

pentheus: Son of Agaue¨ and Ekhı´on, one of the Planted Men (q.v.), grandson of Kadmos, who has handed on to him the rule of Thebes. periklymenos:

Defender of Thebes who slays Parthenopaios in battle.

persephone: Daughter of Demeter and Zeus, carried to the underworld by Hades and kept there as his queen for part of each year. perseus: Son of Zeus and Danae, from Argos; grandfather of Alkmene; he cuts off and keeps the head of the Gorgon Medusa. phlegra: Site of the battle of Giants and the Olympian gods, said to be in northeast Greece. phoibos:

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Cult name of Apollo.

GLOSSARY

phokis: Region of Greece that included Delphi and Mount Parnassos. pholoe: A high plain in Arcadia, in the central Peloponnese, where the centaur Pholos entertained Herakles. phrygia:

An area in northwestern Anatolia, home of the goddess Kybele (q.v.).

pieria: A mountainous area in northeastern Greece, along the slopes of Olympus, traditionally the birthplace of the Muses and so associated with song and poetry. planted men: Warriors who sprang from the teeth of the serpent that Kadmos killed at the Theban spring of Dirke´; they then become the future population of Thebes. Hence the Thebans are often called Spartoi (Sown Men or Planted Men). Another name for Hades.

pluto: polybos:

King of Corinth, foster father of Oedipus.

polydoros: Son of Kadmos and Harmonı´a, father of Labdakos. polyneikes:

Son of Oedipus, exiled by his brother Eteokles.

poseidon: Olympian god associated with the sea and other waters, and with horses. potniai:

A village just south of Thebes where there was a well said to madden horses that drank at it.

prokne:

Daughter of the Athenian king Pandion, wife of Tereus, mother of Itys (see note on Herakles 1333 / 1022–28).

prometheus: God of the Titan generation who brought fire to mankind. rhea: sardis:

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Ancient goddess of Earth, wife of Kronos and mother of Zeus. Major city of Lydia, famous for its wealth and luxury.

GLOSSARY

satyrs:

Nature-daimon followers of Dionysos, with human bodies but horses’ ears, tails, and hooves; represented in myth and in vase painting as drunken and lecherous.

selanaia: The moon, identified with the goddess Artemis. se´meleˆ:

Kadmos’ daughter and sister of Agaue¨, Ino, and Autonoe. Beloved by Zeus, she was tricked by Hera into asking her divine lover to appear to her in his full celestial splendor. Blasted by Zeus’ lightning, she gives fiery birth to Dionysos, whom Zeus then preserves in his thigh until he is ready for his final birth. She is honored at Thebes by a shrine from which smoke from Zeus’ lightning still rises.

sidon:

City in Phoenicia, ruled over by Agenor, father of Kadmos, and the original home of Kadmos.

sisyphus: One of the exemplary transgressors in Hades, punished by having eternally to roll a boulder up a hill and have it always roll down again. sparta: City in the southern Peloponnese. sphinx:

A monster with the head of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the hindquarters of a lion. She killed those who attempted to answer her riddle, until Oedipus succeeded and destroyed her.

tainaron: Cape at the southernmost point of the Peloponnese, where a cave was taken to be the entranceway to Hades. taphians: A people in northwest Greece against whom Amphitryon led a successful expedition to avenge their killing of Alkmene’s brothers. tartaros: The lowest reaches of the underworld, where the great transgressors were punished. teiresias:

Blind prophet of Thebes.

teumessos: Hill outside Thebes from which the Argives attack the city gates.

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GLOSSARY

thebes: Ancient city of Boeotia in mainland Greece; settled by Kadmos after his victory over a serpent that guarded its spring, Dirke´. Kadmos populated the city with the Planted Men, sprung from the teeth of the serpent that he sowed or ‘‘planted’’ in the earth. In Bakkhai, ruled over by Pentheus, grandson of Kadmos; birthplace of Dionysos; famous for its walls and seven gates. theseus: Athenian hero, son of the god Poseidon (his human father is Aigeus). In Herakles he appears to be young and in the earlier phase of his heroic career. thesprotia: A part of the mountainous region of Epiros in western Greece, here mentioned as the home of Zeus’ shrine at Dodona. thessaly: Large region of central and northern mainland Greece, renowned for its horses. thiasos (plural thiasoi): A holy band of men or women, joined together by their worship of a divinity. Here it refers to the band of women, whether from Lydia or in Thebes, who follow Dionysos and are inspired by his ecstatic rites. thyrsos (plural thyrsoi): Long fennel-stalk (in itself called narthex), tipped with ivy leaves, carried by Bakkhai in their excited dances. tmolos: Mountain in Lydia, celebrated for its gold. tydeus:

Son of Oineus, exiled for bloodshed from his native Kalydon; marries a daughter of Adrastos and joins Polyneikes’ expedition against Thebes.

zephyros: God of the West Wind. zethos:

Brother of Amphion. According to Euripides, the brothers are sons of Zeus and received divine honors in Thebes.

zeus: Ruler of the Olympian gods; son of Kronos, husband of Hera, and father of a number of gods (including Dionysos) and of human heroes, including Herakles. Originally a sky god, associated particularly with lightning and other celestial phenomena.

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FOR FURTHER READING

euripides Helene P. Foley. Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985. Important study of the uses of ritual in Euripidean tragedy, with chapters on all three of the dramas in this volume. Ann N. Michelini. Euripides and the Tragic Tradition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. A broadly based study of Euripides and the history of Euripidean criticism, with a long chapter on Herakles. James Morwood. The Plays of Euripides. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2002. Brief, personal discussions of all the surviving plays. Judith Mossman, ed. Euripides. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. A collection of influential critical essays, including important papers on Herakles and Bacchae. bacchae (bakkhai) Sophie Mills. Euripides: Bacchae. London: Duckworth, 2006. A lucid introduction with helpful bibliography. Charles Segal. Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ ‘‘Bacchae.’’ Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. 2nd edition with a new afterword of a full and generous exposition of Segal’s views first published in 1982; a fundamental study. R. P. Winnington-Ingram. Euripides and Dionysus. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1997. 2nd edition with a foreword by P. E. Easterling of a study first published in 1948; still worth reading for its insights and its unfashionable hostility to Dionysus. 363

FOR FURTHER READING

herakles Emma Griffiths. Euripides: Heracles. London: Duckworth, 2006. An excellent introduction with rich bibliography. Thalia Papdopoulou. Heracles and Euripidean Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. A full-scale scholarly study, thorough and thoughtful. M. S. Silk. ‘‘Heracles and Greek Tragedy,’’ Greece & Rome 32 (1985): 1–22. Reprinted in Ian McAuslan and Peter Walcot, eds., Greek Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 138–52. An examination of Herakles as an ‘‘interstitial’’ and disturbing tragic hero. phoenician women Peter Burian. ‘‘City, Farewell! Genos, Polis and Gender in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Euripides’ Phoenician Women.’’ In Denise McCoskey and Emily Zakin, eds., Greek Tragedy, Sexual Difference, and the Formation of the Polis. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. Comparative study of Phoenician Women with the Aeschylean tragedy based on the same legendary material. Barbara E. Goff. ‘‘The Shields of Phoenissae,’’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 29 (1988): 135–52. Fruitful treatment of a single, disputed passage in the drama. Thalia

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Papdopoulou. Euripides: Phoenician Women. London: Duckworth, 2008. A comprehensive introduction with full bibliography.