The Persians
The Suppliant Maidens
Seven Against Thebes
Prometheus Bound
Agamemnon
Libation Bearers
The Eumenides
Ajax
Antigone
Oedipus the Tyrant
The Women of Trachis
Electra
Philoctetes
Oedipus at Colonus
Rhesus
Alcestis
Medea
Hippolytus
Heracleidae
Andromache
Hecuba
The Cyclops
Heracles
The Suppliant Women
The Trojan Women
Electra
Helen
Iphigenia in Tauris
Ion
The Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigenia in Aulis
The Bacchae
The Acharnians
The Knights
The Clouds
The Wasps
Peace
The Birds
Lysistrata
The Thesmophoriazusae
The Frogs
The Ecclesiazusae
Plutus
Aristotle wrote that Greek tragedy developed
out of the choric
dithyramb.
Thespis was the first actor known to step away from
the
chorus and make a dramatic scene, not just tell a story but
actually act it out in present time.
Now the protagonist could
answer the chorus in a dialog.
More than one point of view could
be expressed at the
same time allowing the portrayal of conflict
in which the Greeks excelled.
In 534 BC Peisistratus, who had
enacted more than one
real-life drama of his own to win tyranny
over Athens,
sponsored the first festival with a dramatic performance
by Thespis and his troupe.
Solon, who had reason to question the
antics of Peisistratus,
once asked Thespis if he were not ashamed
to be telling
so many lies in public; but the actor explained
there
was no harm in doing so in a play.
In fact I believe we
shall find that many of society's conflicts
and ethical issues
can be portrayed on the stage to
enhance
people's understanding
without the negative consequences.
Aeschylus was born about 525 BC.
At the beginning of the fifth
century BC Athens' Dionysian
festival became more organized, and
Aeschylus began
presenting tragedies in 499 BC along with Thespis,
Pratinas,
Choerilus, and Phrynichus, who was
fined for reminding
Athenians of their grief
for the defeat by the Persians in The
Capture of Miletus.
Aeschylus, who is credited with introducing
a second actor
and making the dialog more important than the chorus,
did not win first prize until 484 BC.
The earliest of his seven
extant plays, The Persians, was
produced by Pericles in
472 BC and did win, as it reminded
the Athenians of their glorious
triumph over
the Persians at
Salamis in 480 BC.
Aeschylus was so proud of having fought the Persians at
Marathon that his
epitaph mentioned this but nothing about
his writing more than
seventy plays
and winning first prize thirteen times.
The Dionysian
prize was given for a cycle of three tragedies
and a satyr play;
so he won much of the time.
Aeschylus was accused of revealing
the Eleusinian Mysteries,
but he
was acquitted.
Like the poets Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides,
Aeschylus
often visited Sicily as a guest of the tyrant Hieron
at Gela,
where he died in 456 BC.
The Persians is a most unusual Greek
tragedy,
because it is the only one extant that portrays a recent
historical event; also as the title suggests,
none of the characters
are Greek.
The scene is the palace at the Persian
capital in Susa,
where a chorus of elders waits for news from
the Persians'
second major invasion of Greece led by their king
Xerxes.
Although the Persians
are presented sympathetically,
the Greek viewpoint of the author
and audience is still clear,
since the Persian
leaders are described as
"slaves of the greatest of kings."1
They regret that the flower of her men is gone.
The royal army
that destroys cities has crossed from Asia
to Europe over a bridge
of ships that yoked the neck of the sea.
The brave Persians
under their leader, whom they consider
equal to god, are accustomed
to waging and winning wars.
Yet the Aeschylean chorus asks how
mortals may avoid the
deception of god who leads astray.
They
note how the Persian women weep
in their soft beds.
The Queen, consort of the late Darius and mother of Xerxes,
fears that wealth may court contempt while
indigence quenches
ambition's flame.
Her son has gone to pillage Greece, but the
chorus
reminds her the Greeks are slaves to none and
were able
to defeat the army of Darius.
A herald arrives with news that
at a single stroke prosperity
is corrupted, and the flower of Persia has fallen;
they were
defeated in the naval charge
at Salamis, though Xerxes lives.
With the help of the gods the Greeks with 310 ships
had overcome
the Persians 1207 ships.
Xerxes
had thought he had the Greeks trapped and
threatened that heads
would roll if they escaped.
All night the Persian
captains stayed awake,
but in the morning the Greeks advanced
to free their fathers' land for their sons and wives.
Never had
so many died in one day,
noble Persians
dying in infamy, dishonor, and ugliness.
The Queen laments bitterly
the failed attempt
to gain vengeance against Athens.
The herald
goes on to tell how the Persians
were also
defeated on land in Boeotia, and many more died
of hunger
and thirst as they retreated through Thrace.
Then the ghost of Darius makes the difficult ascent to learn
that Xerxes "drained the plain manless."2
Darius notes
the folly of trying to conquer the gods, and the
Queen complains
that counselors had reprimanded Xerxes
for not having acquired
wealth by the spear like his father
until he plotted against Greece.
Darius sees Zeus as the chastener of boastful minds;
it is better
to be wise, for wealth cannot benefit the dead.
Finally the wretched
Xerxes appears alone, the remnants of
power without the hunters
of the pack, lamenting his bitter fate.
This tragedy reveals the
dangers of imperialistic attempts
at conquest, showing the consequences
to those who would perpetrate such folly.
The Suppliant Maidens is the first part
of a trilogy that
enacts the story of the fifty daughters of Danaus
who,
rather than be compelled to marry the sons of Egyptus,
brother
of Danaus, have fled from Egypt
to Argos,
where their ancestor Io had been a priestess and princess.
Accompanied by their father Danaus, the maidens,
who make up the
chorus, pray in a sacred grove to Zeus,
who hates injustice and
casts destructive men
down from their towered hopes.
King Pelasgus
appears and notices
they look more like Libyans than Greeks.
The
suppliants plead that he deny the demand of Egyptus' sons,
but
the king replies that waging a new war is hard.
They remind him
that justice will protect her allies.
The king tells them that
he will share their request with the
people of the city, and they
may work a cure.
Pelasgus, caught in between, asks them why the
laws
of their home do not have authority over them.
The women
respond that they will never be subject to men
in a heartless
marriage; they believe the gods
and justice are on their side.
In their desperation they suggest that
they might hang themselves.
The king laments his dilemma as he thinks of the
bitter waste that would result from a bloody battle
with the Egyptians for
the women's sake.
Again the women pray to Zeus to remove the pride of men,
and
Danaus brings news that the Argives have decreed
they can settle
there without being seized by foreigners.
Danaus believes that
the day will come when all
who have dishonored the gods will pay.
Finally a herald comes from the Egyptian ships ordering
the women
to hurry aboard whether they are willing
or unwilling, threatening
to drag them by the hair.
However, King Pelasgus arrives to stop
this insult.
Considering them their property, the Egyptian intends
to lead them away, but the king warns him not to touch them.
The
herald says he is not being kind to a stranger,
but Pelasgus declares
that he is not a friend to thieves.
To lead them away he must
persuade with pious speech,
because the Argives voted unanimously
not to surrender them to force;
this the tongue of freedom's voice
has announced.
Saying there will be a war, the herald departs.
The king offers the maidens hospitality and protection
in the
city, and the women continue to pray
that they may ward off the
marriages.
In the second play and third plays which are lost, the maidens
are forced to marry their Egyptian cousins, but they swear
to
kill their husbands on the wedding night.
However, Hypermnestra
out of love saves her husband
and is tried for violating her oath.
Aphrodite defends her successfully proclaiming the sacredness
and universality of love and marriage.
These plays by Aeschylus
portray the strength of Greek women
struggling for their rights
with the final apotheosis of love.
In 467 BC Aeschylus won first prize.
The
Seven Against Thebes is about the two sons of Oedipus
he cursed
for mistreating him after he had blinded himself.
Because Eteocles
had refused to give Polyneices his rightful
turn as king of Thebes,
the latter raised a force from Argos
and attacked the seven gates
of Thebes.
In the play Eteocles after belligerently refusing to
debate with
the chorus of Theban women, discusses with the messenger
the seven opponents and the Theban defenders at each gate.
Eteocles
will be fighting his brother Polyneices,
whom he criticizes for
attacking their city.
In the battle the city is saved,
but the
two brothers kill each other.
Their dead bodies are brought in
as their sisters
Antigone and Ismene lament the destructive war.
At the end a herald proclaims that the corpse of Eteocles
will
be buried but that of Polyneices is to be cast out.
Antigone declares
that she will bury her brother's body
even though the herald forbids
it, a conflict later
portrayed in Sophocles' Antigone.
The Seven Against Thebes is a dark play about
violent conflict,
and at the end even the chorus is divided.
Another pessimistic play of Aeschylus is the
archetypal
Prometheus Bound in which the Titan god is chained
to the
rocks on a desolate mountain by order of Zeus,
the new
king of the gods, for having given fire to humanity.
As Power
and Force look on, the technical god Hephaestus,
noting that new
rulers are harsh, reluctantly fastens the chains
against the will
of Prometheus, a dreadful reward for having
helped humans and
angered the gods.
Power, believing that only Zeus is free, accuses
Prometheus
of insolence and wonders why his forethought, which
is what
the name of Prometheus means, did not avoid this fate.
Prometheus admits that he did know before
what would happen, but
he also believes
one cannot fight against destiny.
He felt he
had to give people the fire
that would reveal each craft.
The chorus of the daughters of Oceanus, resembling a
flock
of birds, listens to the story of Prometheus in anguish.
Just
as Kronos overthrew his father Uranus
and was defeated by his
son Zeus,
Prometheus foresees that Zeus may be challenged too
unless he is allowed to join him in friendship.
Prometheus left
his Titan family to support Zeus,
but tyrants do not trust their
friends.
Because Zeus was going to destroy humanity,
Prometheus
had to help them.
First he gave them blind hope, then fire and
crafts
that made them masters of their minds and led to
numbering
for calculating and language for remembering,
use of animals for
work, medicine for healing,
prophecy, and the use of metals.
Io arrives, and Prometheus tells her future as well as her
past;
she too has suffered from Zeus and his jealous wife Hera.
Finally Hermes appears to ask about the marriage
Prometheus hinted
would drive Zeus from power,
but Prometheus refuses to tell until
he is released from the cruel shackles.
However, Hermes says that
until some god takes on his
tortures and goes down to Hades,
Prometheus
cannot expect an end to this pain.
Prometheus once again laments
his unjust suffering,
as thunder and lightning unleash fury upon
him.
This play powerfully challenged the status quo religion,
criticizing its tyranny and lamenting how foresight and
human
advances often bring suffering to their innovators.
The only complete trilogy of tragedies that
is extant is the
Oresteia of Aeschylus that won first prize
in 458 BC.
Agamemnon, the first play, is set in Argos,
where the news
of the fall of Troy is received from a chain of
bonfires,
and Clytemnestra is soon told that her husband Agamemnon,
the great chief of the Achaean war effort, has arrived.
The chorus
of Argive elders hail him although their hearts
are grieved from
all the blood sacrifice and dead men
which have resulted from
the war
to regain his brother's wife Helen from Troy.
Agamemnon
thanks the gods for helping him achieve
vengeance against the
Trojans.
Clytemnestra recounts her long forlorn years of waiting;
often she was prevented from hanging herself.
She mentions that
their son Orestes is staying with a friend
in Phocis because of
the danger of revolution.
Clytemnestra has her maidens place precious
tapestries of
crimson for her heroic husband to walk upon,
but
the Greek general refuses such an Asiatic display.
A clash of
wills ensues as Clytemnestra insists,
and though he is afraid
the people will murmur, eventually
Agamemnon gives in to her and
walks on them into the house.
Returning with Agamemnon is his concubine, the Trojan
princess
Cassandra, known for her prophecies.
Clytemnestra invites her
into the house too;
but when she does not respond,
Clytemnestra
goes into the house.
Then Cassandra cries out to Apollo of the
shame on earth,
and she laments that she is undone again.
She
senses the butchery of the house where Atreus,
the father of Agamemnon,
fed the children of his brother
Thyestes to him, because the latter
had seduced his wife.
Cassandra now perceives that this woman
is entangling her
husband in some net of death; she prophesies
his murder in
the bath and her own death too
that will result
in more vengeful spirits.
She explains that this lioness has gone
to bed with a wolf
while her lion was far away.
Knowing she will
be killed too,
Cassandra goes slowly into the house.
Next we hear
the cries of Agamemnon as he is struck.
The Argive elders run
around in distraction,
not knowing what to do.
One calls for all
the citizens to rally; another says they must
act right away,
because they will attempt to be tyrants;
but in spite of their
words, they can do nothing before
Clytemnestra opens the door
to reveal
the two murdered victims.
Clytemnestra proclaims what she has done because of the evil
she has had to drink—the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia
to charm the winds of Thrace.
She boldly threatens the Argives
to keep their place,
as they can do no more than accuse her of
pride.
She turns to her friend Aegisthus, who appears with the
bodyguard of a tyrant and explains how this murder thus gains
his revenge on the house of Atreus also
as he is the only surviving
child of Thyestes.
He threatens to dominate over the old men of
Argos,
while they accuse him of being like a woman,
who shamed
the master's bed with lust.
Aegisthus expects to control them
with money and force.
The Argives place their hope in Orestes,
as Clytemnestra
talks them into going to their homes with no more
violence.
They wait upon Orestes, and Aegisthus admits
he knows
how an exile feeds on empty dreams of hope.
In the Libation Bearers Orestes and
his sister Electra
pray at their father's tomb.
Electra is accompanied
by servant women and complains that
she has been made a slave
too.
She finds the lock of hair that Orestes has placed on the
tomb,
and they eventually recognize each other.
Orestes wants
to revenge his father's murder
and regain his lost estates.
He
goes to the palace and tells Clytemnestra that
he is from Phocis
with news of Orestes' death,
saying ironically his father should
be told.
Orestes goes into the house, while his old nurse comes
out
and speaks to the women how Clytemnestra and Aegisthus
are
secretly glad at hearing that Orestes is dead.
The women ask the
nurse not to tell Aegisthus
to bring his bodyguards, and she agrees.
Aegisthus goes into the house and is soon killed by Orestes.
Clytemnestra comes out asking for help to kill the murderer;
but
Orestes, supported by his friend Pylades and the oracle
of Apollo,
declares that he will kill his mother too.
She pleads with him,
but he has the same answers
she gave for killing her husband.
Clytemnestra sees Orestes as the fulfillment of her dream
in which
a snake sucked at her breast.
Orestes says simply that because
it was wrong for her to kill,
now she must suffer wrong.
They
go in, and soon the door opens to reveal a similar scene;
this
time Orestes stands over the murdered bodies of Aegisthus
and
his mother, while the same net she had used
to kill her husband
is displayed.
Orestes proclaims his tyrannicide boldly, but the
Argives
sense there is more trouble to come.
Orestes says he is
justified by the Pythian oracle,
but suddenly he begins to see
gorgons in robes of black
hounding him with his mother's hate.
Although others cannot see them,
he is driven by them from that
place.
In The Eumenides Orestes has taken refuge
at the
Delphic temple, where Apollo is defending him and has
made the Furies sleep; but the ghost of Clytemnestra
appears to awaken
them.
Apollo has taken responsibility for
telling Orestes to kill
his mother; the Furies say he is guilty,
and they will never let
Orestes go free.
Apollo responds that they will only be making
more
trouble for themselves, because he will continue to aid him.
Orestes goes to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens
for his trial, as the stain of the matricide seems to be fading.
Athena asks the Furies where the flight of the killer will end;
the Furies agree to turn the case over to her for judgment,
and
Orestes also accepts this.
Yet because of the importance of the
case
Athena chooses Athenian judges, and they take their places.
Apollo comes to testify that he cleansed Orestes of the blood
and bears responsibility for his mother's murder.
The Furies ask
Orestes if he killed his mother,
and he admits he did cut her
throat with his sword;
but he justifies it because she murdered
her husband, his father.
Athena establishes her tribunal
and tells
the jurors to cast their votes.
The Furies debate with Apollo,
and he says
they must void their poison to no enemy's hurt.
Athena
declares that the votes are even,
and she acquits Orestes.
Orestes
acknowledges his gratitude to Athens
and leaves for Argos.
Athena asks the Furies to end their bitterness and live
with
her as goddesses in a positive way.
She will bear their angers,
and she asks them not to
twist the inward hearts of the young
with the spirit of war
that turns the battle upon themselves.
She tells them, "Do good, receive good,
and be honored as
the good are honored.
Share our country, the beloved of god."3
Athena suggests that persuasion be given her
sacred place free
of grief and pain.
As the Furies feel their hatred going,
they
become the Eumenides,
the gracious ones who will win the hearts
of others.
Thus Athena establishes their power to judge the crimes.
Finally the Eumenides pray there be no civil war ruining
people with revenge for bloodshed, but grace for grace
and common love,
healing the wrongs in the world.
Thus there shall be peace among
these people.
Aeschylus has shown how the violence of vengeance can be
transmuted
through understanding and a democratic,
judicial procedure to
be purified by
a nonviolent process of resolution.
Since the warlike
times of the heroic age, Athens had
developed into a democracy
that allows people to settle
disputes through discussion and persuasion
in accordance
with laws and principles of justice rather than
by the power
and violence of tyrants and warriors.
Aeschylus portrayed
for the Athenian people
this great blessing of theirs.
Sophocles was born in an aristocratic family
at Colonus about
496 BC,
and he died the same year as Euripides in 406 BC.
When he
was about 16, he led the boys' chorus at a
celebration after the
victory over the Persians at Salamis.
He wrote and produced more
than 120 plays.
He first defeated Aeschylus in 468 BC with his Triptolemus.
He competed in the Dionysian festival 31 times
and won
at least 18 first prizes and never came third.
In 442
BC he was a president of the imperial treasury and
responsible
for collecting the annual tribute of 300 cities.
Two years later
he was elected general and served
with Pericles in the Samian
War.
He was a diplomat and according to Aristotle was
one of ten elders elected to manage Athenian affairs
after the Sicilian defeat
in 413 BC.
Aristotle also credited Sophocles with introducing
a third actor and scene painting.
Only seven of his plays have
survived, and probably
none of these was written before he was
fifty.
Ajax takes place at Troy near the end
of the war.
The play opens with Odysseus tracking Ajax,
because
some animals have been slaughtered.
The voice of Athena tells
Odysseus that Ajax was so
disappointed because the Achaean leaders
had awarded
Achilles' armor to Odysseus that he went insane
and
tried to kill Odysseus, Agamemnon, and Menelaus.
However, Athena
confused his mind so that
Ajax only butchered some animals.
Odysseus
is afraid to meet the bold Ajax if he is mad,
but Athena makes
it so that Ajax does not see him
when he is telling the goddess
how he is
going to torture his rival Odysseus.
Odysseus pities
him, and Athena declares that the gods
love humans who are steady
but hate the proud.
Ajax's followers from Salamis ask the "spear-won"
Trojan
concubine Tecmessa, whom Ajax honors, what happened.
She
tells them he went mad, and now
that his mind is clear, he is miserable.
"It is a painful thing," she says, "to look at
your own trouble
and know that you yourself and no one else had
made it."4
Afraid he will do something dreadful,
she asks
his friends to help him.
Ajax tells them he wants to die, and
Tecmessa believes that
it would mean her death too.
Ajax thinks
that the gods and the Greeks now hate him.
He asks Tecmessa to
bring their child Eurysaces to him,
requesting that his brother
Teucer
and his parents take care of him.
Ajax plants his sword
in the ground and says he will obey
heaven and the Atreid brothers,
giving his friends some hope.
A messenger arrives from Teucer
warning them to keep Ajax
safe in his tent that day because of
a prophecy from Calchas.
However, before they can find him,
Ajax
falls on his sword and dies.
Menelaus tells Teucer that because Ajax was plotting to
murder the leaders of the army, his body is not to be buried.
People
are not allowed to do what they want
without paying for it; actions
rebound.
Teucer resents the imperious authority of Menelaus and
points out that Ajax joined the expedition as his own master.
Teucer says he will reverently lay his brother's body in a tomb
regardless, and Tecmessa and Eurysaces
join him in the ceremony.
Then Agamemnon appears, but Teucer defiantly states that
he must
throw the three of them out as well as Ajax.
However, Odysseus
wisely and diplomatically intervenes
so that the body won't be
cast out unburied, as he persuades
Agamemnon to forbear from doing
this wrong
out of vindictiveness.
Agamemnon does not want to back
down
and look like a coward, but Odysseus says it is a victory
to yield to friends and that the
Greeks will consider him generous.
Agamemnon reluctantly agrees and calls it Odysseus' doing.
To
me this play reveals some of the madness of a foreign war
and
the foolish ambitions of warriors for honor and glory,
though
there is a feeling of redemption
in the forgiveness of Odysseus.
Antigone was produced by Sophocles
in 441 BC
and takes place in Thebes just after Eteocles and Polyneices,
the sons of Oedipus, have killed each other
in a war over the
throne.
Antigone begins by reminding her sister Ismene of their
suffering,
because their father Oedipus had killed his father
and married his mother, who is also their mother.
Antigone tells
Ismene that Creon, who is now king of Thebes,
has ordered that
Eteocles be buried with honor
but has forbidden anyone to bury
Polyneices,
because he had led the attack against the city.
Antigone
asks Ismene if she will help her bury their brother.
Remembering
her family's woes, Ismene says they must
remember they are women
and do not fight with men;
she will not join Antigone's wild and
futile action.
Antigone declares she will do her crime of piety
alone.
She now hates Ismene and believes the dead will too,
while
Ismene affirms her love for Antigone
even though she believes
her sister's intent is senseless.
Creon comes out of the palace proclaiming his royal power
and
philosophizing that the soul and mind cannot be known
until they
are seen in the practice of government and law.
He explains that
Polyneices must not be buried,
because the wicked must not be
honored.
A guard reluctantly brings the news that someone has
thrown
some dirt symbolically on the corpse.
Creon moralizes that
it does not pay to get profit wrongfully.
Soon the guard returns
with Antigone, telling how
they scraped off the dirt, sat upwind,
and saw her
ritually bury the corpse once more.
Antigone does
not deny doing it nor knowing
that it was forbidden, because she
does not believe that
a mortal's orders can overrun the gods'
laws.
Creon resents her insolence and charges Ismene too.
Prepared
for arrest and death, Antigone argues with Creon.
She did not
honor a criminal but a brother who died;
she wants an equal law
for all the dead,
but Creon wants to honor only the good.
Antigone
wonders if there is not all holiness in the next world
and prefers
to share in love rather than in hatred.
If she loves the dead,
Creon replies, then she may go there;
for no woman will rule him
while he is alive.
Ismene arrives and claims blame also as an accessory,
while
Antigone argues against her sister's love,
which is only words.
Antigone does not want her sister to die with her;
her own death
is enough.
Ismene asks Creon if he will kill the promised bride
of his own son Haemon, who is engaged to Antigone.
Yes, Creon
and death will break off the marriage.
Haemon comes in and says
at first that he will follow
his father's judgment, and Creon
exalts obedience to those
in government and believes there is
no greater wrong than disobedience.
However, Haemon is ashamed
of his father's order and argues
that Antigone should be given
a prize instead,
implying that the people of Thebes agree with
him.
He asks his father to have a flexible mind and not be ashamed
to change after learning more.
The elders think both have spoken
well, but Creon resents
instruction from his son and cannot respect
disorder.
Haemon responds by saying that no city belongs to one
man,
and his father is disrespecting the gods.
Creon declares
he shall not marry her alive,
and Haemon says her death may bring
another.
Haemon, believing his father is mad, leaves.
Creon agrees with the elders that
Ismene should not be punished,
but he orders Antigone to be
confined to a cave with minimal food
to clear the city
from guilt for her death.
She is exiled from
life and can choose death or a buried life.
Antigone is led away,
saying that she is suffering
for respecting what is right.
The
blind seer Teiresias appears, having found sickness
in the state
because of Creon's decision.
He asks Creon to correct his error
and not try to kill the dead
a second time, but the new king only
sees
the profit motive of these prophets.
Finally Teiresias states
that Creon's own child will be added
to the new corpses caused
by the king's confusing the worlds
by leaving the dead unburied
while burying the living.
However, after the seer leaves, the
elders convince Creon
to correct his error, and he hurries off.
As Eurydice the queen appears, a messenger describes
how by the
time the body of Polyneices was burned properly,
Antigone hanged
herself with her clothes.
While Haemon was mourning her death,
Creon came in,
evaded Haemon's sword thrust, and fled.
Then Haemon
stabbed himself.
The grieved Creon blames himself for these tragic
deaths
and learns from his sorrow.
To add to his misery and guilt,
Eurydice has taken her own life too.
The elders conclude that
happiness depends on wisdom,
and the gods must have their due
because pride can bring blows upon one.
Perhaps the oldest example of civil disobedience,
this play
shows the conflict between state power and
tyrannical authority
versus individual conscience
doing what is right anyway.
Antigone
also represents an early example of a woman
challenging the patriarchal
arrogance of Creon.
During the early years of the Peloponnesian
War
when Pericles brought the Athenians within their walls
while the Spartans raided Attica, a terrible plague
struck the
crowded city killing many.
In these circumstances about 430 BC
Sophocles wrote and
produced Oedipus the Tyrant, which
begins with a priest
asking Oedipus for relief from a pestilence
in Thebes.
Oedipus had solved the riddle of the oppressive sphinx
by knowing that the animal who walks on four legs
in the morning,
two during the day, and three at night is human.
Concerned Oedipus
has sent his brother-in-law Creon
to Delphi to consult the oracle,
and he returns to say that
the city is polluted by the murderer
of their late king Laius,
is living among them, and must be banished
or pay with blood.
Oedipus promises to search out the murderer
and promises a milder penalty if the killer will confess.
Oedipus consults the blind seer Teiresias, who calls Oedipus
blind and refuses to reveal his secrets.
This makes Oedipus angry,
and Teiresias tells the irate king to know himself.
When Oedipus
accuses the seer of plotting the crime,
he feels forced to declare
that
Oedipus is the polluter of the land.
In plain language Teiresias
says that Oedipus murdered Laius
and that he lives in shame with
the woman he loves,
blind to his own calamity.
Now Oedipus suspects
that Creon is behind this effort to get
his place as tyrant, and
he cannot understand what the prophet
means when he says that
Oedipus, whose eyes now see,
will be blind, that he is both father
and brother to his children,
both son and husband to his consort,
and both heir and killer of his father.
Creon, having heard the accusation made against him,
confronts
Oedipus, who again accuses him
of trying to steal his throne.
Yet Creon is happy being brother of the queen with all the
trappings
of power and does not desire to be tyrant,
but Oedipus does not
believe him.
Jocasta comes out and pleads for her brother to her
husband
Oedipus; but Oedipus explains that if he believes Creon,
then he himself must be banished.
Creon leaves, resenting that
Oedipus as a tyrant
has been acting as both judge and jury.
Jocasta
consoles Oedipus not to believe in prophecies,
because the one
about Laius having a son who would kill him
never came true, since
the child died.
When she mentions that Laius was killed at a place
where three roads meet, Oedipus questions her on the details
and
tells how he killed an eminent man accompanied
by five servants
at such a place after he fled from his parents
in Corinth because
of an oracle
that said he would kill his father.
They send for
the servant who witnessed the incident and
became a shepherd afterward,
and they cling to the detail
that robbers were said to have killed
Laius.
The chorus of Theban elders reflects on how a tyrant feeds
on arrogance and pride, trying to climb the heights
in blind conceit
only to fall.
Ambition should serve the state, and those who lack
respect for law and justice scorn the gods.
A messenger arrives
from Corinth to announce that Polybus
has died of old age and
sickness,
causing Oedipus and Jocasta great relief until the man
explains
that Polybus is not the father of Oedipus,
but he had
received him as a child on Mount Cithaeron
with his ankles pierced,
which is why he is called Oedipus
meaning "swollen-footed."
Jocasta now tries to stop the investigation; realizing that
Oedipus
will not listen to her, she retreats into the palace.
The shepherd,
when he recognizes the other man he knew
at Cithaeron, does not
want to speak; but threatened with
torture he admits he gave the
man the child he got
from the house of Laius; Jocasta had told
him to kill the child.
Suddenly Oedipus sees his sin and rushes
into the palace also.
Soon a messenger comes out to describe how
Jocasta hanged herself
and how Oedipus took her gold
brooches and gouged out his eyes.
Oedipus comes out of the palace with blood streaming down
his
face in agony from the pain of his body's wounds
and his memory's
horrors.
He asks to be taken away, saying how he could not look
on
his mother or children or Thebes anymore.
Creon arrives, and
Oedipus admits he wronged him.
Oedipus asks to be cast out to
Cithaeron,
but Creon must first consult the gods, telling Oedipus
not to presume he still has tyrannical power.
This earliest of murder mysteries is profound in many ways.
Sophocles commented on the blind ambition of tyrants,
who in killing
and marrying for power
are like incestuous patricides.
Always
insecure in the power they refuse to share,
they often blame and
punish others;
but in this archetypal story Oedipus discovers
that his enemy
and the criminal who has polluted the city
and
that he seeks to punish is himself.
In The Women of Trachis Deianeira tells
how she had
been courted by the river god Achelous whom she feared,
but Heracles killed him and married her.
They had children, whom
the busy Heracles rarely sees;
Deianeira has not seen her famous
husband
for more than a year.
Their son Hyllus tells her that
Heracles has been
serving a Lydian queen Omphale and may be
in
Euboea campaigning against Eurytus.
A messenger arrives to tell
her that Heracles lives and brings
the fruits of his victory,
a group of
captive women led in by Lichas.
Heracles, resenting
his poor hospitality by Eurytus,
had killed one of his sons by
guile, throwing him off a hill
and causing Eurytus to sell him
into slavery.
To revenge himself for his year of servitude
Heracles
had attacked the city of Eurytus.
Deianeira feels pity for the
captured women,
who now must live fatherless as slaves;
she is
particularly struck by Iole, who seems royal,
and she welcomes
them into her house.
The messenger heard that the real reason
why
Heracles attacked the town was because Iole's father
Eurytus
would not give her to him.
Deianeira becomes jealous and
questions
Lichas about her rival.
Deianeira knows she cannot compete with
the
power of Love, and Heracles has had other women before;
but
she will not resist the gods.
Although she claims she is not angry,
Deianeira is clearly
jealous of the younger woman.
She tells how Heracles saved her
once from the bestial Nessus,
who was carrying her across a river
and got fresh with her;
so Heracles shot him with an arrow.
As
he was dying, Nessus told her to use his clotted blood
to charm
the heart of Heracles.
She puts the potion on a robe and has Lichas
give it
to Heracles for his ceremonies.
Later when she notices
the effect of the blood on some cotton,
she has a foreboding that
the result
will not be good but harmful;
she realizes the beast
may have used her
to get revenge on Heracles.
Hyllus comes and
tells his mother that she has killed
her husband, his father,
with the deadly robe.
As the poison worked on him, Heracles killed
Lichas;
then he asks his son to take him out of that land.
Hyllus
tells his mother that justice will punish her for this,
and going
in the house Deianeira kills herself with a sword.
The nurse calls
Hyllus, who has just learned that
Deianeira had unknowingly done
the will of the beast.
The doors are opened revealing the dead Deianeira with Hyllus.
Heracles arrives on a litter in dying agony,
asking to be killed
quickly.
Ironically the brave Heracles has been killed by a woman's
guile.
Hyllus tells his father that his wife killed herself;
he
explains what her good intention was and
how the centaur Nessus
tricked her.
Heracles instructs his son to set him on fire,
and
Hyllus reluctantly agrees to make the preparations.
Heracles wants
Hyllus to marry Iole.
Heracles relieves his son's guilt by
commanding
him to build the pyre.
After a life of heroic works this death
of Heracles is pitiful,
Sophocles making the point that no one
knows their final end.
This dark and pessimistic play
seems influenced
by Euripides' Medea.
Heracles is not seen as heroic nor noble but as the pitiful
victim
of revenge from one he has killed
and a wife he has made jealous.
Deianeira is also a tragic victim of this jealousy and the net
of revenge, while Hyllus feels guilty
for having accused his mother.
In Sophocles' Electra, probably produced
sometime around
the Sicilian expedition, Orestes and his old tutor
return to the
palace in Mycenae, whence they had fled after the
murder of
Orestes' father Agamemnon.
The oracle of Apollo has
urged Orestes to kill with justice
and stealth, and so his tutor
is to say that
Orestes has died in a chariot accident.
They withdraw
as Electra comes out of the house
to lament and mourn her father.
She complains that as the subject of his murderers
her life is
miserable without husband and children.
Her mother Clytemnestra
abuses her
for having stolen Orestes away.
With evil all around
she feels compelled to practice evil.
Aegisthus has gone away;
so Electra can ask her sister
Chrysothemis if she will join her
in vengeance for their father;
but Chrysothemis has been obeying
the usurpers and so has
a more abundant and honored life.
She
warns Electra that if she will not stop her mourning,
they are
going to send her away into a cave.
Chrysothemis yields to authority,
but Electra considers that flattery.
Chrysothemis brings offerings
their mother sent for
Agamemnon's grave, but Electra does not
believe
that is pious at all.
However, Chrysothemis does agree
to help Electra.
Queen Clytemnestra comes out berating Electra
and justifying the murder of her husband,
because he sacrificed their daughter;
but Electra explains Agamemnon's sacrifice as due to his
having
offended Artemis by killing a deer in her sanctuary.
If killing
requires killing, her mother should be the first to die.
Electra
further complains about her bad treatment
from her mother and
Aegisthus, and Clytemnestra threatens
her upon her husband's return.
Electra replies, "You see. You let me say what I please,
and then you are enraged.
You do not know how to listen."5
The tutor steps forward to announce that Orestes is dead,
describing
the accident in the chariot race.
With this hope gone Electra
is ready to die
and will not live there anymore.
Chrysothemis
comes back saying that Orestes is there,
because she found a lock
of his hair,
only to learn the news of his death.
Electra asks
her sister's help in killing Aegisthus
for their father's sake
and so that they can be free
to marry nobly; but Chrysothemis
believes it is more
sensible to give in to those who have strength.
So, like Antigone, Electra intends to act on her own.
Then Orestes comes forward with the urn of ashes
he says are
the remains of Orestes.
Once again Electra complains that she
is oppressed by
violence and hardship, and she takes the urn.
When she won't give it up,
Orestes tells her of the fiction and
that he is alive.
Quickly they plan their revenge, and Orestes
warns her
not to appear radiant to her mother when they go inside.
The tutor comes out to warn them to be quiet,
and Electra recognizes
him.
Since Clytemnestra is alone, Orestes goes in,
and her dying
screams are heard.
Orestes comes out saying their proud mother
will not dishonor his sister anymore.
Aegisthus soon arrives,
as Orestes hides.
Orestes comes forward and talks Aegisthus into
going into the house, where he is going to kill him in what
he
calls direct justice for those who act above the law.
So the play
ends with the triumph of this bloody revenge.
Unlike the version
of Aeschylus more
than forty years before
in which the chain of killing is finally
resolved
by a judicial process, Sophocles seems to exult in the
violent revenge during this time of war
with no indication of
Furies or guilt.
Philoctetes was Sophocles' second-to-last
play
and won first prize in 409 BC.
It takes place on the island
of Lemnos
just before the end of the Trojan War.
Odysseus and
Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles,
have landed on a mission to
retrieve the ailing Philoctetes,
the Achaean that leaders abandoned
nine years before.
Odysseus tells Neoptolemus to have his men
watch
so that he can be protected from Philoctetes,
who hates
Odysseus.
The wily Odysseus instructs Neoptolemus on how to
make
the abandoned warrior think that Neoptolemus
is going home from
the Trojan War,
because his father's armor was given to Odysseus.
Neoptolemus reluctantly agrees to the subterfuge
in order to help
win the war.
Odysseus explains deception is necessary,
because
persuasion and force will fail.
Odysseus goes back to the ship as Neoptolemus
tells the story
to Philoctetes, who gives his account of his
troubles from his
snake-bitten foot
and abandonment by the Greek army.
Neoptolemus
tells Philoctetes who has died at Troy,
and they agree that war
takes the good always
but the bad by chance.
Philoctetes pleads
with Neoptolemus to take him with him,
and even the sailors agree
to put up with him.
One of Odysseus' men arrives disguised as
a trader,
saying that Odysseus is in pursuit of Philoctetes
because
of the
prophecy that his Heraclean bow is needed to take Troy.
Philoctetes refuses to help Odysseus; but trusting Neoptolemus,
he gives him the bow he got for
lighting the fire that killed
Heracles.
Philoctetes, who seems to be suffering unjustly,
undergoes
great pain and asks Neoptolemus to kill him;
he tells the young
warrior not to give up the bow
willingly or unwillingly to anyone.
Finally Philoctetes passes out in pain
and eventually wakes up
feeling better.
Now Philoctetes is ready to go, but Neoptolemus tells him
the
truth that they are sailing for Troy to treat his ailment
and
win the war, because he must obey those in authority.
Realizing
he is betrayed, Philoctetes asks for his bow back,
or he will
die there hunted by those he had hunted.
Just as Neoptolemus asks
his men
what they should do, Odysseus returns.
Philoctetes is
irate to see his enemy and refuses to go,
and Odysseus prevents
him from committing suicide.
Philoctetes says that Odysseus will
suffer for his wrongs,
and Odysseus is going to leave without
him
since they have the bow.
However, Neoptolemus decides to go
back for Philoctetes
to undo the treacherous wrong he did to him;
when Philoctetes won't come, he gives him back his bow.
Odysseus
appears to forbid it but runs away as
Neoptolemus holds back Philoctetes
from shooting his enemy.
Once more Neoptolemus tries to persuade
him,
but Philoctetes fears the wrongs to come as well
and asks
to go home, letting the bad men die
in their own bad fashion.
Neoptolemus is about to take Philoctetes home
when Heracles
appears risen from the dead to convince
Philoctetes of the divine
will to go to Troy,
where he will be cured and kill Paris.
Heracles
says that holiness does not die when men die,
because it cannot
perish.
Philoctetes finally obeys this all-conquering Spirit.
In his old age after so many years of war Sophocles
lamented the
unjust suffering of the heroic Philoctetes,
who only by supernatural
means can be made to participate
in the war after his ill treatment.
Perhaps he was criticizing the Athenian leaders for not
utilizing
their elderly resources in the war effort.
Oedipus at Colonus, the last play of
Sophocles,
was produced after his death.
It takes place a mile
from Athens, where Sophocles was born.
The aged and blind Oedipus
has been wandering with his
daughter Antigone, and they have stumbled
onto the holy ground,
where the Furies of revenge have been
renamed
the Kind Spirits (Eumenides).
Athenians tell them they
cannot stay there,
but Oedipus knows from prophecies
that this
is where he is to die.
However, the Athenians promise he can stay
until they find out who he is.
Oedipus is counting on the piety
of Athens,
which offers refuge to strangers.
He believes he suffered
from the horrible crimes he did,
because he did them unknowingly,
and he offers a benefit in exchange for sanctuary.
His other daughter Ismene arrives with news that
her brother
Polyneices has gone to Argos,
because the younger brother has
taken his share
of the kingship and banished him.
Because prophecy
has indicated the benefits to the land
where Oedipus will be buried,
Creon is coming to take him
back to live outside the border.
Oedipus
recounts how after his excessive rage had subsided,
he was driven
out of Thebes as his sons did nothing.
Oedipus sends Ismene to
perform a ceremony
to expiate the spirits of the place.
Oedipus
explains to the Athenians that he killed Laius
out of self-defense
and did not know he was his father;
likewise he did not know he
was marrying his mother.
Thus he believes he did not sin, but
was a victim of prophecy.
King Theseus of Athens arrives, and Oedipus offers him
the
gift of his presence as a lasting grace
and asks for his protection.
Theseus proclaims Oedipus a citizen
and says no one will take
him away.
Theseus goes off, and Creon arrives with armed guards
to get Oedipus, who calls him a scoundrel for denying him exile
when he wanted to leave and for throwing him out
after he wanted
to stay in Thebes.
Creon has seized one of his daughters and orders
his men
to take the other too; the Athenians begin to struggle
with the Theban guards, as Antigone is grabbed.
The Athenians
are threatening to take Creon when Theseus
arrives with his armed
men, whom he sends
to rescue the daughters, as he accuses Creon
of violating their laws as if they were slaves.
Creon says he
did not think they would want
an unholy patricide, but he must
yield to their power.
Oedipus once again justifies his past actions,
and Theseus makes Creon release the daughters.
Polyneices has come from Argos, where he has organized
a rebellion
against his brother in Thebes,
but Antigone must persuade her
father
even to talk with the traitor.
Polyneices argues that he
was unjustly banished;
he has married the daughter of Adrastus
and formed
an expedition of seven noble warriors against his brother.
Oedipus complains he was driven out of Thebes
when Polyneices
was king, and he predicts that
both brothers will be killed by
each other
because of his curse on them.
Antigone tries to talk
her brother out of attacking his homeland,
but Polyneices is ashamed
to back down now and leaves.
Finally as thunder is heard, Oedipus
asks for Theseus
to be the only witness of where he will die.
A messenger describes how Oedipus died
without lamentation, illness,
or suffering.
Antigone intends to go back to Thebes to try to
stop the
impending war, and the Athenians conclude
that things
are in the hands of God.
Sophocles has pointed out the understanding
that comes
from experience and faith in a blessed death even after
a horrendous life in contrast to the impulsiveness and
violence of the sons who fight for power.
The greater lawfulness of Athenian
ways
is contrasted to the violence of Thebes.
It was said that Euripides was born in 485 or 480 BC and that
he first entered tragedies in the Dionysian festival of 455 BC.
He wrote about 90 plays but only won first prize four times
in
his life, though he won one of the three prizes
more than twenty
times; thus his tetralogies were quite popular.
According to Plutarch,
Athenian soldiers captured in the
Syracusan disaster could save
their lives or even gain their
freedom by reciting verses of Euripides.
Nineteen of his plays survive, including one satyr play,
The Cyclops,
and the early Rhesus,
which some scholars doubt is by Euripides.
He married and had three sons, had a large library,
and lived
like a hermit in a cave by the sea at Salamis,
where he was born.
In 408 BC Euripides retired to the court of Macedonia,
where he
was honored by King Archelaus and died shortly
before Sophocles
in 406 BC.
Though he is accused of hating women, in his extant
plays
the choruses and main characters are
more often women than
men, which is quite extraordinary.
More than half of Euripides' extant plays
relate to the
Trojan War, but Rhesus, which was produced
about 440 BC,
is the only one based on Homer's Iliad.
The entire play occurs at night and begins with the officer of
the
Trojan guard waking up Hector to tell him
of Achaean fires
and activity.
Hector, who had not wanted to stop his victorious
battle
the previous day at sundown, wants to push his advantage;
but Aeneas persuades him to send out someone
to investigate first
to avoid a trap.
Dolon volunteers to scout the Argive ships in
a wolf-skin
disguise for the reward of Achilles' horses if he
is successful.
A shepherd, after being treated contemptuously
by Hector,
tells him that the Thracian king Rhesus has arrived
as an ally.
Hector is irritated that this ally had not come sooner
and tells
the Thracian so, but Rhesus explains
that he was delayed
by a Scythian war.
They plan to attack the Achaeans together in
the morning.
Diomedes and Odysseus sneak behind the Trojan lines,
learning
from Dolon that the watchword is "Phoebus."
Athena appears
to tell them who they can and cannot kill
according to destiny
and guides them to the Thracians,
while distracting Paris by disguising
herself as Aphrodite.
Odysseus and Diomedes return and escape
the Trojan guard by using the watchword.
The wounded charioteer
of Rhesus accuses the Trojans
of killing his king, while Hector
suspects it was Odysseus.
A Muse, the mother of Rhesus, appears
carrying her dead son,
who was killed by Odysseus although she
blames it on Athena.
As the play ends, Hector readies the Trojans
for the day's battle.
This war play of daring and intrigue by
a youthful writer
may be commenting on the Athenian empire's
oppression
of their Thracian allies.
Alcestis by Euripides was presented
as the fourth play
in the tetralogy in 438 BC and was awarded
second prize behind Sophocles.
Although the fourth play is supposed
to be a satyr play,
Alcestis combines tragedy, comedy,
and a romantic ending.
Apollo comes out of the house of Admetus
in Thessaly
to explain that he had to serve there a year for having
killed
the Cyclops, the smiths of Zeus.
He was treated so well
by Admetus that Apollo offers him
a chance to escape his impending
death
by getting someone else to die for him.
The aged parents
of Admetus have refused,
but his wife Alcestis volunteered to
die on this day.
Death appears and argues with Apollo,
who tries
to talk him out of his victim.
Apollo places his hope in Heracles,
who is coming as a guest.
The maid describes and admires the
nobility
of the dying Alcestis.
She and the citizens of Pherae realize
that Admetus can only
have a painful life after his wife's sacrifice
for him.
Admetus vainly implores the gods to save Alcestis,
but
Alcestis is still ready to die for her husband
and asks him to
take care of their children.
Admetus promises that he will not
marry again.
In a pitiable scene she dies,
and her boy tries to
talk to her and grieves her loss.
Heracles arrives grimy from the road and is welcomed
by Admetus,
who in hospitality says the mourning
is not important, persuading
Heracles to stay with him.
Pheres, the father of Admetus, comes
to console him
for his wife's loss, but Admetus shuns him
for
having refused to die.
Pheres argues that he is not obliged to
die for his son
after raising him, resenting being called a coward
by one who let his wife die for him.
Pheres says he does not care
what people think of him
and even calls his son a murderer.
Admetus
goes off with his wife's body to mourn,
and Heracles enters in
drunken revelry, saying that fortune
cannot be pinned down by
science;
no one knows when they will die.
Learning of the true
situation,
Heracles asks about the funeral and goes out.
Admetus wonders what he has gained by living
when his reputation,
life, and action are all now bad.
Heracles returns with a veiled
woman whom he offers
to Admetus to replace his wife,
but Admetus
does not want anyone else.
However, Heracles finally persuades
him to accept her
from him, and in a poignant scene he eventually
realizes
that she is Alcestis, whom Heracles
has reclaimed from
the dead.
This touching story of a heroic wife I believe
affirms
the value of a noble woman,
exposes the selfish pettiness of some
parents,
and indicates the problems of trying to get
someone else
to take over one's destiny.
Medea placed third in 431 BC, the year
the
Peloponnesian War began,
and is set in Corinth.
The nurse explains how Medea's passion
for Jason helped
him win the golden fleece from her father and
how they had
to move to Corinth, because she persuaded
the daughters
of Pelias to kill their father.
Now Jason is deserting Medea and
their children
to marry a Corinthian princess.
Medea has turned
from her children
and become violently jealous.
Their tutor informs
the nurse that Creon, who rules Corinth,
has banished Medea and
her children.
Medea is heard despairing and telling her children
she hates them, regretting she killed her brother
for Jason's
sake.
She tells the Corinthian women who have come to
console
her that she wants to die.
She laments how a woman needs wealth
to win a husband,
whom she cannot refuse and must leave her family
to serve because the alternative is worse.
She would rather fight
in war than bear a child.
Now she is deserted and alone in a foreign
land.
Creon arrives to tell Medea she must go into exile
because
of the threats she has made against his daughter.
Medea's pleas
are to no avail, but he does grant her one day.
Medea plans to
get revenge on her husband by using poison.
The Corinthians note
that good faith is gone and that
Greece has no sense of shame
now.
Jason comes to tell Medea she must leave and offers
to make
some provision for her, but she reproaches him
as a shameless
coward; though she saved his life,
he has broken his word to her.
Jason claims he has improved her life by bringing her
from a barbarian
land to civilized Greece;
he thinks his new marriage will improve
their social status.
However, the Corinthian women believe he
has acted badly
and betrayed her, and Medea says
he could have
discussed it with her first.
She must go into exile, but Jason
says she chose it
by her wicked curses on the king's family;
he
offers her money, but she refuses it.
Aegeus, king of Athens, has been to Delphi to inquire
how he
may get children and promises to receive Medea
in his country,
because she offers to help him
beget children with her magic.
She sends her children with a poisoned dress
and golden diadem
as wedding presents for the bride,
pretending she has forgiven
Jason and ended the quarrel
with Creon; but the tears in her eyes
for her children
are really because she is planning to kill them
too.
She asks Jason to beg the king not to banish their children.
At the same moment she learns that the princess has
accepted the
poisoned dress,
and her children will be allowed to stay.
Medea
debates with her own heart the fate of her children.
A messenger
tells of the agonizing death of the bride
followed by her father's
death
as her poisoned dress clung to him also.
Now her fate is
fixed, and in her fury she kills
her two sons with a sword in
order to make Jason suffer.
Jason comes to save their lives too
late,
as he learns that the woman who killed her own brother
for
his love has now killed their children as well.
Though he would
capture her,
Medea escapes in a chariot drawn by dragons.
I believe
this play subtly reflects the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War
caused by Athens' imperialistic control
of the grain route from
the Black Sea, the home of Medea,
and brought on by violent conflicts
in Corinth.
Hippolytus was produced in 428 BC although
an earlier version by Euripides was rejected.
In this conflict
between two goddesses
noble humans are caught and suffer.
Aphrodite
resents that Hippolytus is impervious to love
and marriage and
foretells how she will punish him
by using Phaedra's illicit love.
Hippolytus appears with his friends
singing the praises of chaste
Artemis.
In the palace Phaedra has not eaten anything for two
days,
preferring to die rather than tell of her
forbidden love
for her step-son.
Trying to help her, the nurse is able to discover
that Phaedra is in love with Hippolytus.
Phaedra has tried to
conceal her love or overcome it,
and as a last resort now intends
to die rather than
be a traitor to her husband and children,
for
she believes the proverb that
a just and quiet conscience is best.
The nurse persuades her that submitting to love
is better than
death; she needs the man,
and the nurse will try to arrange it.
Phaedra listens by the door, as the nurse tells
Hippolytus what
horrifies him.
Hippolytus considers himself far too pure
for this
sin and leaves until his father returns.
Phaedra fears his story
will dishonor her,
and she asks the women there to be silent.
Now she plans her death and sorrow for the
arrogantly chaste Hippolytus.
Soon the nurse reports that Phaedra has hanged herself.
Theseus returns to find the women mourning for his dead wife.
Fastened to Phaedra's hand he finds a tablet with writing
saying
that Hippolytus raped her.
Immediately he calls on Poseidon to
grant
one of his three wishes and kill Hippolytus.
Asked to call
back his curse, he only adds banishment.
Hippolytus comes in to
find his mother dead
and his father accusing him.
He tries to
reason with his father that he, still a virgin,
could never do
such a thing and even swears to Zeus,
but Theseus will not change
his decree of exile and leaves.
Later a servant of Hippolytus
comes in and describes
how the young man was killed driving his
chariot
along the coast when a monster from the sea frightened
the horses; he does not believe Hippolytus is guilty.
Theseus asks to see his dying son, who wronged his wife,
and
Artemis appears and tells Theseus the truth;
his curses have killed
his innocent son.
The dying Hippolytus is brought in
and senses
Artemis' presence there.
Hippolytus feels bad for his father and
ends the quarrel
at the request of Artemis and forgives Theseus,
who recognizes the nobility of his son.
Yet the vengeance is not
over,
as Artemis plans revenge on Aphrodite.
In this tragedy Phaedra
had tried to resist the incestuous love
but gave in to revengeful
resentment when spurned.
Theseus in a jealous rage misused his
divine gifts,
while Hippolytus seemed to be too pure
and arrogant
for this world.
Euripides seems to be saying that only by moderation
can one
avoid suffering from the conflicts of powerful divine
beings.
The Heracleidae or Children of Heracles
was produced
during the early years of the Peloponnesian
War and is clearly
intended to support the war effort by
raising
the fighting spirits of the Athenians.
The play is set on the
plain of Marathon, the scene of the
Athenians' greatest victory
against the Persians.
This play may also have been the fourth
in a tetralogy,
because it has much comedy and even satyr-like
bravura.
The elderly Iolaus has led the children of the late Heracles
to
Athenian territory for refuge from their pursuing enemy
Eurystheus of Argos, who has been
bullying cities not to accept
them.
The Argive envoy Copreus threatens Iolaus with force
if
the children do not accompany him;
but Iolaus, the former "right-hand
man of Heracles,"
takes sanctuary in the temple of Zeus
and
appeals to the Athenians for protection.
The men of Marathon criticize
Copreus for not going to their
king Damophon in a lawful manner.
Damophon arrives, and Copreus predicts total war.
Iolaus declares
that the children of the great Heracles
would rather die than
be disgraced, and Damophon agrees
to defend them as friends and
guests for their father's sake.
In the heated argument the Marathon
men warn Damophon
not to injure the diplomat.
Near the end of
430 BC the Athenians had put to death
five Peloponnesian envoys
bound for Persia.
Macaria, a daughter of Heracles, though she agrees with
Pericles'
statement that women should be discreet and remain
quietly in
the home, volunteers as a human sacrifice
supposedly needed to
win the war, symbolizing the sacrifices
the allies are expected
to make in war.
Iolaus collapses but along with Heracles' mother
Alcmena
intends to fight in a comic scene in which the attending
slave
makes fun of the contrast between the old man's strong words
and his physical capabilities.
The battle is described in which
Iolaus is miraculously made
young for one day as the Athenians
defeat the Argives and capture Eurystheus.
The slave returns to
describe the battle and wins his freedom
from Alcmena, who then
insists on putting to death
the captured Eurystheus, who even
argues that his grave
will help protect Athens against their enemies
if they give him a good burial.
In a macabre ending Alcmena orders
him to be killed
and thrown to the dogs, and the men of Marathon
agree
as long as their kings are not held responsible for the
atrocity.
Although this play certainly had the effect of rousing
aggressive patriotism for Athens as the defenders of the
helpless, criticism of some of their methods is still apparent.
Andromache also appealed to the
Athenian
war spirit and hatred of Sparta.
The Trojan princess Andromache,
wife of the late Hector,
was claimed by the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus,
and is now
taking refuge at the shrine of Achilles' mother Thetis
in Thessaly,
where Neoptolemus still lets his grandfather Peleus
rule.
Andromache has hidden her child by Neoptolemus out of fear
of her lord's wife Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen,
while
Neoptolemus is at Delphi.
Andromache, a slave now herself, sends
her former slave
with a plea for help to Peleus.
Hermione arrives
with her rich wedding presents and accuses
Andromache of using
drugs to make her barren and
unattractive to her husband and of
being an unlawful Asiatic.
In a venomous exchange Andromache replies
that Hermione
is not fit to live with, while she herself welcomed
and
raised children Hector had by other women.
Hermione asks her
rival to leave the sanctuary,
but Andromache refuses without a
guarantee of safety.
Hermione goes away, but soon her father Menelaus arrives
with
Andromache's child, telling her to leave the shrine
or he will
kill her son.
Andromache claims she is innocent and asks for a
trial.
After recounting how she was taken by force from Troy,
Andromache decides to leave the shrine,
but Menelaus betrays his
promise and keeps her child
for Hermione's life-or-death decision.
This causes Andromache to launch into a tirade against
the citizens
of Sparta who specialize in evil.
It appears that both Andromache
and her son are to die;
but Peleus arrives, has the two untied,
and forces Menelaus to back down and depart.
Peleus also denigrates
Helen and the Spartan women
for appearing in public in scanty
outfits, which is soon
demonstrated as the suicidal Hermione
tears
her clothes, exposing her breasts.
However, Orestes arrives and,
seeing his chance to win
the bride he had been promised before,
tells how is planning
to ambush Neoptolemus at Delphi;
then he
goes off with Hermione.
Peleus returns to learn of the attack
at Delphi
that killed his son, but in typical Euripides fashion
the semi-divine Thetis appears to reconcile all and
prophesy how
Andromache will marry a Molossian,
and her son will sire a line
of Molossian kings,
justifying the current king there,
who was
educated at Athens and rules in Epirus,
where this play was probably
first performed.
Hecuba shows the effects of war on
the queen of Troy.
The play is set in the Thracian Chersonese
and begins
with the ghost of Polydorus, son of King Priam and
Hecuba,
explaining how he was sent with gold for safekeeping
to
Thrace, where after Troy lost the war
Polymestor killed him for
the gold.
The Achaean army is stuck there waiting for wind
to
sail home, and the ghost of Achilles has demanded the
beautiful
Trojan princess Polyxena be sacrificed.
Hecuba has just had a
dream that
she would lose both these children.
The chorus of enslaved
Trojan women tells how Odysseus
used demagoguery to persuade the
Greeks to sacrifice
Polyxena for the dead Achilles.
The noble
Polyxena pities her mother's plight
but wants to die herself rather
than be a slave.
Odysseus arrives to tell Hecuba how the
Greeks
voted to kill her daughter.
Hecuba reminds Odysseus how she spared
his life
the night he raided the Trojan camp;
but when she asks
for her daughter's life,
he says he could only grant Hecuba's
life and had promised
only that the princess would go to the best
soldier as a prize.
Hecuba argues that they should kill Helen
if anyone
for causing the war and also because
they seem to want
someone beautiful.
Hecuba even offers herself in place of her
daughter
or that she may die with her, but to no avail;
Hecuba's
fate has gone from being
a wealthy queen to a grieving slave.
Talthybius describes how Polyxena died with courage and
dignity
and not as a slave, tearing her own robes
to expose her naked
body to the sword.
Hecuba's grief is doubled when the corpse of
her
son Polydorus is washed up on shore.
Agamemnon comes to find
out why her daughter
has not been buried, and Hecuba asks him
to help her
get revenge against Polymestor for his betrayal.
Though
she has become a slave, she still believes
in the gods and the
moral order of the universe, saying:
But the gods are strong, and over them
there stands some absolute, some moral order
or principle of law more final still.
Upon this moral law the world depends;
through it the gods exist;
by it we live, defining good and evil.6
Hecuba asks Agamemnon to help her punish Polymestor
for the
sake of justice and in gratitude for his now having her
daughter
Cassandra; but the Achaean general is afraid of
what the army
would say if he did.
Hecuba notes that no one is free then, and
all are slaves
of money or necessity; public opinion or fear of
prosecution
force people to conform against their consciences.
Nonetheless to Agamemnon's surprise she expects women
to overcome
this man, and she is granted
safe conduct through the army.
Polymestor arrives with his two sons, and luring them into
a tent with the promise of jewelry, Hecuba and the furious
women
blind Polymestor and kill his children.
Then the blinded Polymestor
and Hecuba debate before
Agamemnon, who decides that the former
was guilty of murder,
the killing of a guest being greatly offensive
to the Greeks.
Polymestor then prophesies how Hecuba, Cassandra,
and Agamemnon all will die violently.
The horror is so great that
Agamemnon has his mouth gagged,
and the Trojan women can only
look forward to a life of slavery.
The negative consequences of
war and violence are apparent
even while the cosmic principle
of justice is affirmed.
The Cyclops, the only satyr play to
survive, was adapted
by Euripides from The
Odyssey.
The play contains burlesque humor,
and the satyrs'
costumes portray their phalluses.
Odysseus has been driven by
storms to the island of Etna,
where at the cave of the Cyclops
he shares his wine
with the satyr Silenus and the one-eyed giant,
Polyphemus.
Silenus tries to trade supplies for the wine, but
the barbaric
Polyphemus just takes what he wants,
including two
Greek sailors for his dinner.
Yet he criticizes Odysseus for going
to war for a woman,
but Odysseus paternalistically argues that
the war was
for Greece that includes even this land in Sicily.
The hedonistic Cyclops worships money
and sacrifices only to his
own belly.
Calling on Athena and Zeus, Odysseus is able to blind
Polyphemus after he gets him so drunk that
he takes Silenus into
the cave for his pleasure and falls asleep.
Odysseus rejoices
in his crude revenge, but the Cyclops
predicts that he will have
to wander the seas for many years.
Such entertainment was designed
to relieve the tension
after the presentation of three tragedies.
Heracles takes place before his palace
in Thebes,
but his father Amphitryon explains that Heracles
has
left his home, wife, and children to try to recover
the plain
of Argos and had to perform numerous labors for Eurystheus.
Before
his last labor to the underworld of death (Hades),
he appointed
his father as guardian of his children; but Lycus,
who has usurped
power in Thebes, intends to kill them.
Amphitryon offers himself
in their place, and their mother
Megara asks that she may adorn
them
with funeral clothes in the house.
Amphitryon calls Zeus
a callous or unjust god.
Heracles arrives, and Megara tells him
how her father
and brothers have been killed by Lycus,
who dispossessed
her.
Heracles brought back Theseus from Hades to Athens.
Heracles
takes his children into the house, where he kills
the tyrant when
Lycus goes in, while the old men of Thebes
rejoice that the tyrant's
life is turned back to Hades,
that the gods do raise the good
and scourge the bad.
Then suddenly the figure of Madness appears over the house,
and Heracles goes berserk and kills his children and wife
before
Athena stops him from killing his father
by knocking him out with
a rock.
When Heracles awakes, he discovers what he has done
and
wants to die; but Theseus persuades him to suffer
but not yield
to grief by following him to Athens,
where he will be purified
of blood.
Heracles realizes that this is more courageous,
and
disbelieving in gods that could cause
what Hera made him do, he
goes with his friend.
Euripides expressed the madness of arbitrary
cruelty and
violence and questioned the gods, but he still held
out hope
that Athens could somehow resolve these problems.
After Athens made an alliance with Argos in 420
BC,
Euripides presented The Suppliant Women, which is set
before the temple of Demeter at Eleusis.
Aethra, the mother of
Athens' king Theseus, explains that the
mothers of the seven Argive
warriors, who were killed
attacking Thebes, have come to Athens
for help because
Thebes' ruler Creon has refused to allow
their
son's bodies burial or removal.
Theseus discusses it with Aethra
and Adrastus
the king of Argos criticizing the Argive ruler
fo
ignoring divine guidance in launching the attack.
Promoters
of unjust wars lead the people astray,
pushed by those who want
position, power, or profit,
while harming the majority.
Of the
three classes Theseus criticizes the rich who lust
for more and
the poor who are fooled by demagogues,
while commending the middle
class
that guards the order of the community.
Aethra speaks of
the laws that keep cities together
and pleads for the women.
The
heroic Theseus cannot refuse such a request,
though he consults
his people first to gain their votes and favor.
A herald from Thebes seeks the master of Athens
but Theseus
corrects him, pointing out that the
people rule there, not yielding
power to the rich
while giving an equal share to the poor.
When
the Theban replies that his city is ruled
by one man not a mob,
Theseus declares there is nothing
worse than an absolute ruler,
who takes the people's
work and their maidens at his pleasure.
Written laws protect the weak and the little people
against the
great in the call of freedom.
The herald disagreeing states that
the dead must not be buried,
and any attempt to do so will mean
war,
though he considers peace better than war,
saying the wise
know when not to act.
Theseus does not want a war, but after the
Theban victory
they ought to allow the dead to be buried.
Believing
he is respecting the gods, Theseus goes off to battle,
while the
women debate whether
they believe the gods are just or not.
Athens wins the fight, but Theseus restrains his forces
from
going inside the walls of Thebes.
Adrastus praises the seven who
had died earlier and asks
why wretched mortals slaughter each
other with spears,
hoping that people will stop those
struggles
and live in gentleness.
After Evadne jumps on her husband's funeral
pyre,
and the boys of the seven plan their revenge,
Adrastus acknowledges
the gratitude Argos owes to Athens
and Athena tells Theseus the
Argives must swear to this alliance.
This political play celebrates
Athenian power and democracy
and its new alliance with Argos.
By the time The Trojan Women was performed
in 415 BC
the attitude of Euripides toward the war
seems to have
changed drastically.
The Athenians had recently killed the men
of Melos
and enslaved their women and children merely for refusing
to join the Athenian alliance against their
traditional Dorian
ally Sparta.
As the Sicilian expedition had been voted and was
in preparation, it is not surprising that this anti-war play
came
in second to an obscure writer named Xenocles.
In the lost plays
of the trilogy Euripides dealt with the
origin of the Trojan War
in Alexander,
another name for Paris, who started the troubles
judging a beauty contest between goddesses.
The second play Palamedes
tells how Odysseus contrived
the condemnation and death of this
wiser Achaean at Troy.
The Trojan Women begins with Poseidon
blaming the
destruction of Troy on Athena, who now asks the god
of the sea to help the Trojans get revenge against the
Achaeans
in their homecoming; her changed attitude
calling to make their
voyages unhappy must have seemed
ominous to the Athenians preparing
to sail to Sicily.
Once again Hecuba is portrayed facing her grief.
Talthybius
informs her of the fates the
Achaeans intend for her daughters.
Cassandra, a priestess of Apollo, is to be given to Agamemnon
for his bed; Polyxena will join Achilles in his tomb;
and Andromache
is given to the son of Achilles.
Hecuba herself is to be the slave
of Odysseus.
Cassandra laments the Achaeans' having thrown thousands
of lives away hunting down Helen, and she prophesies that
the
house of Atreus will be wrecked after destroying her house.
Hecuba
remembers how she saw her husband Priam's
throat being cut by
the Achaeans.
Andromache tells her mother that Polyxena has been
sacrificed in a similar manner for Achilles' corpse.
Andromache
would rather die than be a slave too,
but Hecuba encourages her
to love Agamemnon
for the sake of her son Astyanax.
This hope
is soon destroyed by news from Talthybius that
Odysseus has persuaded
the Greeks to put the boy to death,
because he is the son of the
hero Hector.
Andromache sees only barbarity in the Greeks' cleverness.
Menelaus comes in saying that his wife
Helen is also to be
killed;
but after a trial in which Helen defends herself against
the prosecution of Hecuba, Menelaus decides
to put off her death
until after the voyage.
Hecuba argued that Aphrodite is just an
excuse for lust
and that Helen really wanted the gold and luxuries
of the
Trojan court, and she had refused to be persuaded by the
Trojan queen to go back to her husband to stop the war.
Finally
the broken body of Astyanax is brought in
on a shield after he
was thrown off the Trojan battlements.
Hecuba prepares the body
for burial,
and Talthybius announces that Troy is about to be
burned
as the Greeks depart.
This play reflects a strong condemnation
of useless war,
particularly the vindictive victories that
kill
all the men and enslave the women.
Electra by Euripides was probably performed
in 413 BC,
as Castor speaking for the twin gods at the end says,
"We two must rush to Sicilian seas,
rescue the salt-smashed
prows of the fleet."7
At this time the Athenians were preparing
to
send reinforcements
after the defeat at Syracuse.
In Euripides'
version of the story
also told by Aeschylus
and Sophocles,
Electra has been married to a poor farmer, who in respect
for
her nobility has not consummated the marriage.
Aegisthus and Clytemnestra
have done this to
prevent revenge, and a price has been put
on
the head of Orestes, who had escaped.
Orestes returns to join
Electra in plotting and
carrying out the murders of Aegisthus
and their mother.
Castor tells Electra to marry Pylades,
and Orestes
is to go to Athens.
Euripides follows the Aeschylean interpretation
with
guilt for matricide plaguing Orestes until he faces a trial,
acquittal by an even vote, and the final release of the
guilt by this judicial process, a justice
better than the ugly one of
blood vengeance.
Helen presented in 412 BC is more
of
a romance than a tragedy.
In this creative alternative to the
legend of Helen, Hera,
angry that she was not given the prize
for beauty by Paris
who was bribed by Aphrodite with the promise
of Helen,
spirits Helen away to Egypt and replaces her with an
artificial image which Paris takes to Troy.
Thus the point is
made that the Trojan War was not only
fought over a woman, but
even the false image of a woman.
The play is set seventeen years
later in Egypt, where Helen
has taken sanctuary at the tomb of
Proteus so that
she won't have to marry Theoclymenus, the son
of Proteus.
Menelaus arrives in rags after being shipwrecked there,
but as a Greek he is in danger of being killed.
He has brought
the false Helen with him but soon finds that
she has been swept
back into heaven,
as he meets the real Helen, who has been in
Egypt.
The couple embrace each other, as the servant derides
the
art of prophecy, preferring common sense.
Helen and Menelaus plan
their escape
and vow to die together if they fail.
Helen appeals to Theonoe, the sister of Theoclymenus,
not to
tell her brother that Menelaus is there,
declaring that God hates
violence.
Helen pleads that she consider right and wrong more
than
the past and future, and Menelaus tells her that
no one else
will marry Helen because they would rather die.
Theonoe for the
sake of justice agrees to help them
even though she must lie to
her brother.
Helen speaks against the mindless strength of spears
in war
that stupidly tries to halt the grief of the world.
A bloody
debate will never remove hate from cities;
rather they could have
resolved the
Trojan quarrel by reason and words.
Helen tells Theoclymenus
that Menelaus is dead and gets him
to give her a ship for a funeral
at sea to fulfill Greek custom,
saying she forgives him and is
ready to marry him now.
Later a servant brings the Egyptian king
the
news that Helen and Menelaus have escaped on the ship
with
the Greek sailors who fought off the Egyptian crew.
Theoclymenus
wants to kill his sister for betraying him,
but he is persuaded
not to by the divine Castor,
who appears as the "god from
the machine" Euripides
often provided to tie up loose ends.
This play reflects criticism of war after the Sicilian defeat,
and in showing the Spartans
Menelaus and Helen in a good light,
it attempts to relieve the Spartan-Athenian conflict.
Iphigenia in Tauris is a similar romance
set in Scythia,
where Iphigenia was spirited away by Artemis just
as
her father Agamemnon was sacrificing her at Aulis.
Odysseus
had been sent to tell her she was to marry Achilles,
but now Iphigenia
serves Artemis in Tauris,
where foreigners are sacrificed.
She
dreamed that her brother Orestes is dead,
but actually he has
been sent there by Artemis to release him
from the guilt of the
Furies after he killed his mother.
Orestes and his friend Pylades
are caught and given to
Iphigenia to be sacrificed.
Orestes tells
her news of the wicked and wasteful war
and prefers to die so
that his friend Pylades may live.
Eventually when Iphigenia presents
them with a letter
for her brother Orestes, they recognize each
other.
They plan their escape,
Iphigenia rejecting Orestes' idea
to kill the king.
She tells King Thoas that the statue of Artemis
and the
two
Greeks need to be purified in the sea
from the pollution
of matricide.
Athena appears to calm the sea and persuades Thoas
not to punish the temple women,
who lied to the soldier in aiding
their escape.
This romance once again affirms Athena breaking
the tie
to acquit Orestes in his trial at Athens and imagines
miracles
by which cruel sacrifices may be avoided
while affirming
friendship and love between brother and sister.
Ion is another romance involving recognition
of long-lost relatives, this time mother and son.
Hermes introduces
the play which is set at the temple of Delphi,
where he brought
the abandoned baby of Apollo and Creusa,
who now serves as a steward.
Creusa has married Xuthus,
but childless they come to ask for
help.
Before Xuthus arrives, Creusa asks the young man about a
"friend" who had a child by Apollo.
The steward intends
to confront Apollo with his wrongs.
Xuthus is told that the first
man he sees is to be his son,
and he greets the steward with the
name of Ion.
After initial hostility Ion accepts him as a father.
Xuthus plans a banquet in celebration, and Ion hopes that
his
mother is Athenian so that he will have the right to speak.
An old slave offers to kill the son of Xuthus for Creusa
at
the banquet; but a slave sensing an evil omen,
the poison is spilled.
When doves are killed by the poison, and the old man
confesses
that Creusa was behind it,
Ion goes after Creusa and is about
to kill her
when she takes sanctuary at an altar.
Then the high
priestess reveals the cradle that proves to
Creusa and Ion that
they are mother and son.
They are overjoyed, but Ion has difficulty
reconciling the
actions and oracles of Apollo until Athena backs
up
Creusa's explanation that Xuthus has accepted him
as a gift so that he can have an established place
in a noble house in Athens.
This story presents the divine and noble origins of
Athenian kings
and the Ionian peoples while also
questioning the infallibility
of Apollo and his Delphic oracle.
Euripides took up the Oedipus saga in
The
Phoenician Women, although so much is packed into
one play
that scholars believe some
was added later by other authors.
Jocasta
begins by telling how her son Oedipus came to
kill his father
and marry her, then blinded himself when
he discovered what he
had done.
He also cursed his two sons; since Eteocles would not
give up the throne as agreed,
Polyneices has brought an Argive
army against Thebes.
Calling a truce, Jocasta tries to mediate
the conflict between her sons.
The neutral Phoenician women commend
Polyneices
for offering to disband his army if he is given his
rightful place
as agreed, while they condemn Eteocles
for holding
on to his power wrongfully.
Jocasta also speaks against ambition
and for equality
and tries to prevent the slaughter that is about
to occur,
but neither son will yield.
This scene probably reflects
Euripides' frustration
with the continuing war.
Before the battle Eteocles asks Creon
not to bury Polyneices
if he should die.
The blind seer Teiresias tells Creon that the
two brothers
will be killed, because they were cursed by their
father
Oedipus for not allowing him to leave or have his rights.
Then Teiresias tells Creon and his son Menoeceus
that the latter
must be sacrificed, and Menoeceus
kills himself after Creon refuses
to have him killed.
The first message is that Thebes has won the
battle;
but in a single combat Eteocles and Polyneices
slay each
other,
and in grief their mother Jocasta cuts her throat.
In scenes
probably adapted later from Sophocles,
Antigone and Creon argue over the burial of Polyneices,
but then
Antigone plans to go into exile
with her father Oedipus.
Euripides
has used the battle between two brothers
for tyranny over Thebes
to criticize further the folly
of the continuing war and the danger
of tyrants.
Orestes was presented in 408 BC and
takes place
six days
after the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus
in Argos.
Electra reviews the violent history of the house of
Atreus
and blames the murders she and Pylades supported
on Apollo
more than Orestes, who performed them.
For six days Orestes has
not eaten or bathed
as he has been driven mad by the Furies of
guilt.
The people of Argos have voted to shun the matricide
as
outlaws, but Helen and Menelaus
have just arrived offering some
hope.
Helen is afraid to go to her sister's grave and asks Electra
to go in her place; but she refuses to go to her mother's grave
and suggests that Helen send her daughter Hermione instead.
Orestes
awakes and has one of his fits of madness,
during which he accuses
the god Apollo of the murders.
Menelaus comes in, and Orestes asks for his help with the
Argives
and admits he suffers from the remorse of conscience.
The city
is to vote their sentence that day,
which is likely to be stoning
unless Menelaus intercedes.
Tyndareus, the father of Helen, comes
to greet Menelaus
and argues with him why Orestes is guilty of
murder and
morally wrong for not bringing his grievance to the
law courts.
Then the old man turns his wrath on Orestes,
who defends
himself by saying that he did a patriotic service
or else other
women would kill their husbands too;
he claims Apollo commanded
him to kill his mother.
The vindictive Tyndareus leaves, determined
to hound the
Argives until they stone Orestes and his sister.
Orestes pleads and begs for help from Menelaus,
who says he does
not have sufficient forces there,
but he will try to use diplomacy.
Pylades arrives, and after they hear the sentence of death
for Orestes and Electra, the three of them plot to murder
Helen
and take her daughter Hermione hostage
in order
to escape; if
they fail, they plan to burn the house down.
However, a god magically
removes Helen from their grasp.
When they are on the roof ready
to kill Hermione and
set the fire with Orestes declaring he intends
to reign,
Menelaus calls the people to arms.
However, Apollo appears
from above them with Helen
to stop the action and resolve
everything
according to the myths.
Helen is to be deified as a star, and
Menelaus will remarry.
Orestes must spend a year in exile and
then go to Athens,
where the gods will acquit him; then he will
marry Hermione,
whose throat he is threatening with a sword.
Electra
will marry Pylades.
Orestes is to rule in Argos and Menelaus in
Sparta.
Orestes obeys the god and releases Hermione,
gaining the
blessing of her father Menelaus.
All are to honor Peace.
The contrast of these three violent criminals suddenly
being
given royal positions by the god Apollo depicts
the
absurdity
and disparities of violent Greek culture and its religion.
In
this play even the modern law courts and democratic votes
for
capital punishment still are not able
to prevent the criminal
chain of events.
Only the miraculous intervention of the divine
can bring peace,
which seems so unrealistic as to be absurd,
especially
since the god who intervenes
is the same one who promoted the
vengeful murder.
Iphigenia in Aulis and The Bacchae
were produced
in 405 BC by his son a few months after the death
of Euripides,
and they won first prize,
only the fifth time his
plays were so honored.
Scholars speculate on which parts of the
play may have been
finished by his son or others.
While the army
is waiting for wind to sail from Aulis to Troy,
Agamemnon explains
how Tyndareus, the father of Helen,
got the suitors to vow to
defend whomever should marry
Helen in order to avoid the problem
that was magnified by this oath.
The army has become so restless
that the prophet Calchas
has told the Atreid leader that he must
sacrifice his daughter
Iphigenia, and then they would be able
to sail and take Troy.
However, Agamemnon ordered Talthybius to
proclaim
the army disbanded instead.
Menelaus persuaded him to
the horror,
and Agamemnon wrote a letter to his wife Clytemnestra
telling her to bring their daughter to be wed to Achilles.
Regretting
this, he has written another letter telling them
not to come;
this he gives to an old man.
Menelaus captures and reads the letter.
Agamemnon tells his brother he will not kill his own children,
because oaths made under compulsion are evil,
and Greece has gone
mad.
Clytemnestra and Iphigenia arrive at Aulis, and Menelaus
decides
to support Agamemnon's refusal and suggests
they kill Calchas;
but Agamemnon now realizes that the army,
manipulated by the demagoguery
of Odysseus,
is compelling the slaughter of the girl.
Clytemnestra
and Iphigenia enter
excited about the marriage to Achilles.
Agamemnon
tries to get his wife to leave, but she refuses.
When Clytemnestra
mentions the wedding to Achilles,
he doesn't know anything about
it;
Clytemnestra realizes that she has been tricked.
The old man
tells her that her child is to be killed,
but Achilles promises
to defend her.
Clytemnestra has only one question for her husband:
does he intend to kill their child?
In agony Agamemnon cannot
deny it.
Clytemnestra asks with what heart will she then return
to Argos.
How will his other children take this?
Why couldn't
Menelaus kill his daughter to get his wife back?
Then Iphigenia
also pleads and begs for her life,
but Agamemnon feels compelled
by the army and the prophecy.
Even the heroic Achilles' efforts
are to no avail,
as his own men turn against him.
Finally Iphigenia nobly accepts her fate and decides
she wants
to die for this cause of all Greece so that they can
prevent barbarians
from taking their women and so rule
the barbarians; she gives
her life to the divine will of Artemis.
She gains the envy of
Achilles and tells her mother
not to hate her husband.
After she
willingly goes to her death, a messenger reports
that the goddess
swept Iphigenia away to heaven,
and a mountain hind was sacrificed
instead.
This play depicts the barbarity of the war spirit
while
portraying the courageous nobility of the young woman.
The Bacchae describes an early phase
of the Dionysian
worship that has developed into the very theatre
where these plays were presented.
Dionysus, after spreading his
cult in Asia,
has come back to Thebes, where he was born,
now
disguised as a Lydian.
He has come to punish his mother's sisters
for denying he is the son of Zeus.
So he has driven all the women
of Thebes mad;
but Pentheus, who is ruling after his grandfather
Cadmus abdicated, is in revolt against this new god.
The elderly
Cadmus and the blind Teiresias appear dressed
in Dionysian costumes
to participate in the rituals,
which Teiresias says the other
Theban men are too blind to understand.
Believing they are caught
up more in the lust of Aphrodite
than by Dionysus, Pentheus has
had the women arrested.
Teiresias and Cadmus warn Pentheus not
to deny this god,
but Pentheus orders their leader arrested too.
By a miracle the women escape their chains and the dungeon,
but
Pentheus cuts the hair of the Lydian stranger
and puts him under
guard.
Dionysus says, "You do not know what you do.
You do
not know who you are."8
Pentheus intends to make the women
slaves,
but an earthquake destroys his palace;
then Pentheus ties
up a bull thinking it is Dionysus.
A messenger describes how Agave, the mother of Pentheus,
leads
a company of women performing miracles.
Pentheus calls out the
army, while Dionysus
warns him not to attack a god.
Dionysus intends
to lead the women back to Thebes
without bloodshed and offers
to let Pentheus
see their revels on the mountain first.
Pentheus
agrees but refuses to put on women's clothes;
Dionysus deludes
him into it by making
Pentheus hallucinate again.
The women chant
about justice, the principle of order
and spirit of custom, and
then the messenger brings a report
that Pentheus is dead, torn
apart by his own mother
and her sisters believing they were
killing
a lion with their bare hands.
Later when they come out of their
trances,
they realize what they have done for Dionysus
because
Pentheus blasphemed the god.
Dionysus declares what will happen
to them in the future.
When Cadmus says that gods should be exempt
from human passions, Dionysus replies that
this was all ordained
by Zeus long before.
Pentheus has been punished for his pride
and impiety
by a powerful new god,
who is hardly a model of Greek
rationality.
Euripides seems to be essentially religious
while
being critical of the religion at the same time.
In 427 BC when the first comedy of Aristophanes
was produced, he was below the legal age of 18;
so he was probably born in or
soon after 445 BC.
He wrote about forty plays in as many years,
but only eleven still exist.
He was an Athenian citizen
whose
family owned land on Aegina.
His second play The Babylonians
satirized the demagogue
Cleon and portrayed the allies of Athens
as slaves of
Athenian imperialism, causing Cleon
to bring charges
against him.
He must have been acquitted,
because he continued
to satirize Cleon the next year.
In The Acharnians, produced
in 425 BC, Aristophanes
complained the politician had lied, slandered,
and abused him nearly to death.
Despite its strong criticism of Athens' current
war
with Sparta, The Acharnians won first prize.
Dicaeopolis,
whose name means just city, is waiting for the
assembly to begin;
but the Prytanes as usual are late,
and he says they do not care
one jot for peace.
He intends to interrupt the speakers who do
not speak
of peace and complains when a man
who only wants peace
is dragged away.
Dicaeopolis gives eight drachmas to an
ambassador
to make peace for him and his family with the Lacedaemonians.
Amphitheus is attacked for carrying treaties in the countryside,
where the vineyards have been cut down,
but he brings a five-year
treaty, a ten-year one,
and one for thirty years for Dicaeopolis
to taste.
The first smells of tar and naval preparations and the
second of embassies as though allies are hanging back;
but the
third of nectar and ambrosia he takes with pleasure
to release
himself from the war.
Happily he tells his wife that the six weary
years of absence
are over, because he has a private treaty.
The Acharnians, however, pelt him with stones for making
the
treaty and call him a traitor, hating him worse than Cleon.
Dicaeopolis
argues that their enemies are not entirely wrong,
as the Spartans
have suffered wrongs from the Athenians.
He offers to debate the
issue
with his head on the chopping block.
He notes how the Athenians
love to hear themselves praised
by some intriguer, while they
are bought and sold.
Dicaeopolis goes to Euripides to get some
rags to wear.
The Acharnians become divided between him and Lamachus,
who represents the military.
Dicaeopolis wants to vomit in the
crested helmet,
but they debate.
Lamachus goes off to fight the
Peloponnesians,
while Dicaeopolis trades with the Megarians and
Boeotians,
which is against the war boycott for which he may be
turned
in by an informer; but he tries to sell an informer
as
Athens' latest product.
The chorus praises reconciliation and
love, which unites all
in endless harmony; the truce of Dicaeopolis
becomes a valued commodity.
In the final feast the harshness of
military life and equipment
is contrasted to tasty food, wine,
and pleasant female company.
Lamachus goes off to be wounded by
a lance,
while Dicaeopolis goes away with two girls to make love.
This comedy is a powerful protest against the war
and a call for
a peace treaty.
The Knights was presented the next
year a few months
after Demosthenes initiated and Cleon exploited
the
successful Athenian attack on Peloponnesian Sphacteria.
Cleon
had become so popular and powerful that no one would
make a mask
of Cleon, and Aristophanes had to play the part
himself using
only makeup.
The Paphlagonian tanner represents Cleon, while the
masks
of the other two slaves of Demos, whose name means "people,"
depict the Athenian generals Demosthenes and Nicias.
Demosthenes
tells how Paphlagon has won over the master
not only by making
his boots but by licking them as well.
Demosthenes says that when
he cooked up the Spartan dish
at Pylos (Sphacteria), the tanner
took it to the master
as his own; he also accuses Paphlagon
of
collecting protection money.
Demosthenes gets Nicias to steal
Paphlagon's oracles,
and they discover that a sausage peddler
will supplant him.
So they persuade the sausageman to go into
politics so that
he can step on the senate, fire the generals,
and screw around
in the Prytaneum; his eyes can take in from Caria
to Carthage,
and he can buy and sell everything.
The sausageman wonders if he should learn how to govern
the
people first, but Demosthenes assures him he already has
the requisite
abilities from sausage making.
The knights will support him,
and
they begin to attack Paphlagon for bribery.
The sausageman can
outyell Cleon, and they rail at each other,
the former routing
him in the duel of abuse.
The sausageman has beaten the senate
by telling them
where they can get cheap anchovies, which distracts
them
from caring about peace even more than Cleon.
The sausage
seller accuses Cleon of using the war
to conceal his corruption.
Demos is won over and asks for his ring
as steward back from Cleon.
Demos seems to be aware his servants are robbing him,
but then
he says he forces them with a judgment
to vomit it back up.
Finally
the sausage-maker reveals himself as Agoracritus
and gives the
truce of thirty years in the form of a
beautiful woman to Demos
to take into the country.
Once again Aristophanes has called for
the replacement
of the war-mongering and corrupt demagogue
with
an enduring peace.
After having won first prize two years in
a row,
the next year in 423 BC The Clouds placed third,
disappointing Aristophanes, who considered it his best play.
At
the first performance Socrates
stood up in the audience
so that all could see how much he resembled
the mask of the character satirizing him.
Strepsiades has so many
debts from his son's horse-racing
expenses that he wants to send
him to Socrates' Think-shop
to learn the unjust logic so that
he can escape his creditors;
but his son Pheidippides refuses.
So Strepsiades enrolls himself in the school up in the clouds.
Socrates informs him that there is no Zeus
and that thunder is
caused by a vortex.
The trinity of gods are chaos, clouds, and
the tongue,
but Socrates finds this student stupid.
During the
interlude the poet recalls how he whacked Cleon
but let him off
when he was down.
In a city where folly is endemic he once again
urges them
to convict Cleon of bribery and theft.
The clouds suggest that Strepsiades send his son to the school,
and he tells him that Zeus no longer exists,
because Vortex booted
him out.
These sages are so frugal, he says,
that they don't use
oil or even wash.
If his son can't learn both the just and unjust
logics,
Strepsiades prefers he learn the latter.
To demonstrate,
these two logics argue with each other;
the unjust logic proves
that justice does not exist,
because Zeus got away with tying
up his father.
Just logic's plea for the ancient discipline that
produced the
heroes of Marathon loses to Unjust's view
that laws
and traditions can be refuted.
Why not follow the example of Zeus?
Socrates tells Strepsiades that he can evade any suit he likes,
and the happy father looks forward to his son crushing his foes
so that he won't be hurt any more by his debts and interest.
Pheidippides
already has the look of a rogue,
who appears injured when he is
injuring.
Strepsiades refuses to pay off two of his debtors
and
doesn't care that he swore by Zeus.
Yet the clouds predict that his son will teach him a lesson
he will not forget, as he is caught in his own net.
Pheidippides
has beat up his father and justified it
the same way his father
justified the beatings
he had given his son growing up.
Not only
that, he's going to beat his mother too.
Angry at these results,
Strepsiades burns down
the Think-shop in revenge.
In this play
Aristophanes satirizes the sophists, who speculate
in the physical
sciences, question religion, and teach people
how to argue cases
in court in exchange for money.
However, Socrates did little of
this except questioning religion,
but as a prominent figure he
was used to satirize all sophists.
The next year Aristophanes won first prize
with The Wasps
in which Philocleon has been locked in his
house
by his son Bdelycleon so that
he won't be able to go to
sit on juries.
Father and son disagree about Cleon and the three-obol
payment Philocleon gets every day for going to court.
The chorus
of wasps comes to collect Philocleon
on the way
to court, and
they fight with Bdelycleon and his slaves.
Bdelycleon argues that
Athenians are overtaxed to pay
so much to judges, seeing his father
as a tool
of those who would profit.
Athens' revenues from subject
states, fees, imports, mining,
interest, rents, and harbor dues
amount to 2,000 talents,
and the 6,000 judges get 150 talents,
while the politicians
extort 50 talents at a clip.
To serve such
greedy masters is slavery.
The son wins the argument and asks
his father
to stay home and judge his household.
They put their
dog on trial for stealing a Sicilian cheese;
but he is acquitted,
though Philocleon says it is against his
character to vote for
acquittal.
Then Bdelycleon teaches his father how to act in polite
society,
though if he had the chance, he would call Cleon
an unprincipled
thief and rascal.
In celebrating Philocleon causes some damage
in carousing,
and finding himself being sued, he learns to be
more careful.
While Athens and Sparta were negotiating the peace of
Nicias in 421 BC, Aristophanes' Peace won second
prize.
Trygaeus is a farmer, who has his servants feeding a giant
dung-beetle so that he can fly up to heaven
to see Zeus about
the war and peace.
He intends to "pursue him at law as a
traitor
who sells Greece to the Medes."9
First he meets Hermes,
who tells him the gods have moved
higher to get away from the
fighting
of the Greeks and their prayers.
There have been opportunities
for peace; but when the
Laconians have the advantage,
they want
the Athenians to suffer more.
When it went the other way, the
Spartans came with peace
proposals; then Athens would not listen
as long as they held Pylos.
The goddess Peace has been thrown
into a deep pit,
while War is preparing to grind up
the Greek
cities in a large mortar.
Trygaeus asks him not to throw in the
Attic honey;
but he has no pestle, because Cleon and the Spartan
general
Brasidas have both recently died.
Although Zeus has decreed
death for anyone caught
digging up Peace, Trygaeus and the chorus
of farmers
bribe Hermes with gold cups and with great effort
manage
to excavate Peace.
Hermes notices that those who make crested helmets, pikes,
and swords are quite unhappy, while Trygaeus tells the
farmers to return to their fields and till the earth;
the sickle maker
is overjoyed.
Hermes explains that Peace began to be lost
when
Pheidias was exiled, and his friend Pericles became
afraid and
sparked conflict with the Megarian decree
that grew into a hurricane
of war.
After Athens took Pylos, three times Peace came to them
with truces they repulsed.
Now with Peace revived, Trygaeus asks
the
beautiful Theoria to take off her clothes,
and nude she is
given to the senate.
The play concludes joyfully in celebration
and feasting,
because now in peace they can make love
at their
ease on their farms.
The armorer and lancemaker are unhappy, but
Trygaeus
buys spears at a discount to use as vine-props.
This
marvelous play affirms the joys of peace.
The Birds won second prize at the
Dionysian
festival in 414 BC.
Two men, Euelphides and Pithetaerus, have
left Athens
and its continual judgments from the law-courts
to
find a better place to live.
The bird Epops suggests they try
living with the birds
who have no purses, and Pithetaerus decides
to found
a new city where they can share such a life.
Pithetaerus
wants all the birds to gather together in one city;
when it is
completed, they should
demand back the empire from Zeus.
To show
birds are God the owls, kestrels, and thrushes
will devour the
locusts, gnats, and gall-bugs.
Birds can prophesy and find secret
treasures.
They will not require temples to be built for them,
because they can dwell in the oaks and olive trees.
Epops gives
the two men a root to eat so that
they can grow wings on their
shoulders.
In the interlude the chorus of birds explains how as
the
offspring of Eros they are older than the Olympian gods.
They
invite everyone to join them and promise to make
everything forbidden
by law on earth honorable,
even beating one's father.
They review
how helpful wings can be.
The new country is called Cloud-cuckoo-land,
and Pithetaerus
summons a priest to begin the sacrifices.
Soon there arrives a
poet expecting a gift for his verses,
another selling the oracles
of Bacis, a surveyor, an inspector,
and a dealer in decrees;
but
Pithetaerus drives each of the pests away.
After the walls have
been built by the birds, a messenger tells
them that a god sent
by Zeus has penetrated their airy realms.
A war is breaking out
between the gods and the birds,
and Pithetaerus tells Iris that
people now adore the birds
and no longer sacrifice to Zeus.
Ten
thousand people want to join their community
of wisdom, love,
and peace.
Pithetaerus tells a patricide to respect his father
and go to Thrace to fight, and he also encourages
an informer
to find a less degrading trade.
Prometheus comes in a disguise
to foretell the peace embassy
of Poseidon, Heracles, and Triballi,
advising Pithetaerus
to ask for the lovely Basileia (sovereignty)
in marriage.
Heracles wants to strangle those who walled them
out,
but at the prospect of a feast
he is eager to make an agreement.
In arguing for the birds' sovereignty Pithetaerus indicates
what
helpful allies the birds could be.
Peace is agreed on, and the
play ends celebrating
the wedding of Pithetaerus and Basileia.
In the midst of the Syracusan disaster
Aristophanes is once again
challenging
the religion and asking for peace.
After Athens was badly defeated
in the foolish
Sicilian disaster,
Aristophanes produced perhaps the greatest
of the
peace protest plays in 411 BC with Lysistrata.
In
this bawdy comedy Lysistrata has organized the women
of Athens
and other cities to insist their men make peace.
Representatives
arrive from Anagyra, Sparta, and Corinth.
They are frustrated
because one husband has been in Thrace
for five months, and the
Spartan is always
taking his shield back to the wars.
Lysistrata
proposes that they must refrain
from sex with men until peace
is made.
By dressing in transparent gowns they will get their
mates' tools up and then refuse them.
Even if forced, they will
not cooperate
so as to remove the real pleasure.
Already the older
women are
seizing the citadel of the Acropolis.
The women take
an oath to have nothing to do with their
lovers or husbands voluntarily,
and they seal it by drinking wine.
Lampito goes off to organize
the Spartan women.
The elderly men of Athens come to the Acropolis with torches,
but instead of fighting fire with fire, the women use water
to
douse the men and their firebrands.
When the men try to break
into the Acropolis,
Lysistrata comes out and says what is needed
is not bolts and bars but common sense.
Each Scythian who tries
to arrest her is met by another woman,
and they fall back in terror
dirtying themselves.
Lysistrata says they have seized the treasury
to stop the war;
the women intend to administer it
just as they
do their household expenses.
Their first principle is no war,
and they will save the men
whether they like it or not.
So far
the women have been ignored
when they asked for peace,
as the
men went from one war madness to another
while telling the women
to stick to their weaving.
Now the women have decided to save
Greece
by disentangling the various cities.
They have suffered
the loss of their sons, and the best
young men and their husbands
are not available for the pleasures of love.
However, Lysistrata
soon finds that the women want to lay too,
and some are trying
to escape the protest action;
but she persuades them that the
men want them just as much.
The husband of Myrrhiné arrives looking for her.
His
erection goes unsatisfied as she continues to tease him
and delay
undressing until he agrees
to make a sound treaty to end the war.
The magistrate and the Lacedaemonian herald have similar
protrusions
under their clothes,
as Lampito has instigated the women of Sparta.
The beautiful goddess of Peace appears in the nude,
as Lysistrata
complains how the men cut each other's throats
and sack Hellenic
cities.
She reminds the Laconians how Cimon marched to help
them
against Messenia, and the Athenians how the Laconians
helped fight
off the Thessalians and the tyranny of Hippias.
The lusty men,
seeing beautiful Peace, agree to the treaty,
and the women invite
them to a feast.
The magistrate notes how sober envoys are
always
picking quarrels with each other.
In his comedy at least Aristophanes
has got the
ancient Greeks to make love not war.
Two months later was produced The Thesmophoriazusae
about the women celebrating the Thesmophoria
festival
of Demeter and her daughter.
Euripides has
heard that they are going to bring charges
against him for defaming
women in his tragedies.
He goes to the tragedian Agathon to ask
him to sneak in
and plead for him, as Agathon is quite capable
of
impersonating a woman;
but he does not want to trespass on
their rites.
So Euripides shaves and dresses up his father-in-law
Mnesilochus as a woman
while promising to save him if he is caught.
After their prayers a woman accuses Euripides of
portraying women
as adulterous, lecherous, bibulous,
treacherous, and garrulous.
Another says her myrtle chaplets business has declined
because
his tragedies destroy people's belief in the gods.
Then Mnesilochus
gets up to say that Euripides showed
only a few of the thousand
faults of women,
bringing on him the threat of punishment.
When
asked why Euripides does not portray Penelope,
he replies it is
because there is not a single Penelope
among women of the day.
Also dressed as a woman, the pederast Clisthenes
discovers the
ruse, and after a search
Mnesilochus is exposed as a man.
He grabs
a woman's baby as a hostage,
but it turns out to be a wineskin.
Captured Mnesilochus uses a device from Palamedes
to
get a message for help to the tragedian.
After the chorus sings
the praises of women, Mnesilochus
tries the role of Helen, and
Euripides arrives as Menelaus;
but a Scythian policeman arrives
to arrest and expose
to ridicule Mnesilochus by order of the senate.
However, he recites lines from Andromeda,
and Euripides
as Perseus rescues him.
Finally Euripides promises the women he
will not say ill things
about them in the future if they will
free his father-in-law;
but if they don't, he will reveal their
pranks to their husbands
when they get home from the war.
The
women agree, but Euripides must impersonate a bawd
and bring in
two charming girls to distract the Scythian
policeman while the
two men escape.
The play portrays the power of the women and their
rituals
in Athens while satirizing Euripides and Agathon.
The Frogs by Aristophanes won first
prize
at the Lenaean festival in 405 BC and was performed
again
a few days later by popular demand.
The god Dionysus is ridiculously
dressed in a lion-skin
over his saffron robe in imitation of Heracles.
He and his slave Xanthias knock on the door of Heracles
to get
advice from him about how to travel to and in Hades.
Dionysus
already is missing Euripides, who had just died
the year before,
and he wants to bring him back.
Heracles asks why not get Sophocles;
but Dionysus figures
that Sophocles, who was so content with Athens,
is probably content in Hades too,
and Euripides has more tricks.
To find a porter they ask the corpse at a funeral;
but he wants
two drachmas, which they think is too much.
Dionysus gets a ride
on the boat of Charon,
but the slave Xanthias has to walk around
the lake.
They meet a chorus of frogs and one of initiates.
Aristophanes
complains about the fines imposed on poets
in the temporary mood
of censorship near the end of the war.
Aeacus, Judge of the Dead, abuses Dionysus
because he thinks
he is Heracles.
So Dionysus exchanges costumes with his slave,
who then is invited to join a banquet with dancing girls,
causing
the god to ask for his clothes back.
But they are soon arrested,
and Xanthias tells them to
question Dionysus as though he were
the slave.
In Athens the word of a slave
was only valid if given
under torture.
Not knowing which is the god and which the slave,
Aeacus begins to torture both to find out who is impervious
to
pain as a god, each man trying to show no pain.
During the interlude
the poet calls for equality among
Athenians and an end to penal
laws.
He complains against Athenians being made outcasts
and that
slaves are made masters
for having been in one sea battle.
The contest in Hades is between Euripides
and Aeschylus
for
the throne of honor in tragedy; upon arriving,
Sophocles merely
congratulated Aeschylus,
but Euripides has been entertaining the
rabble.
Euripides argues he taught people to speak freely—
to
see, think, and understand things for themselves;
he asks if Aeschylus
has helped the nation
and made people better.
The older tragedian
wonders
if Euripides has not made them worse.
Aeschylus then brags
that The Seven Against
Thebes made
people hunger for havoc and gore, but Dionysus
points out
it made the Thebans more warlike.
After much bantering,
Dionysus cannot decide between
the two and so asks them what they
would do about
Alcibiades and how they would save their country.
Euripides suggests suspecting the trusted
and trusting those now
spurned,
while Aeschylus recommends counting the
enemy's land
safety, and their own the enemy's.
So Dionysus chooses to take
back Aeschylus,
who turns his throne over to Sophocles.
The play
reflects a conservative attitude about slavery,
the basis for
much of the Athenian economy.
The next play by Aristophanes we have was
not
presented until 392 BC and is about the women
of the assembly, The Ecclesiazusae.
Praxagoras is up early and waiting for
the women
to join her on the way to the assembly.
They have all
stopped shaving, dressed in their
husbands' clothes, and put on
beards.
Praxagoras wants the women to save the ship of state
which
has been floundering for some time.
The women practice their speeches,
and Praxagoras
has to remind them not to swear
by the two goddesses
or Aphrodite.
Praxagoras believes that only one in ten
of the
male politicians are honest, and the rest are bad;
others would
be even worse.
They vote themselves salaries and only care about their
personal interests; it's time to give the women a chance.
The citizens have become mercenaries
for their daily three-obol
payment.
After they have gone, Blepyrus, the husband of Praxagoras,
comes out in her clothes since he couldn't find his.
Chremes tells
him that a handsome speaker proposed
putting matters into the
hands of the women, who keep
the secrets of Demeter better than
the men in the Senate.
Women are always borrowing clothes from
each other,
need no witness, and always return them,
while men
often deny their borrowing.
Women are not informers and do not
hatch conspiracies.
This innovation is the only one Athens has
not tried yet,
and they voted to give women the power.
The women return from the assembly,
changing their clothes
and removing their beards.
Praxagoras declares that now there
will be no more thieves,
envy, rags, misery, abuse, prosecutions,
and law-suits,
though she is afraid the public may not accept
her reforms
because of traditions.
She intends for all land, money,
and private property to be
in common so that all shall have the
same conditions,
though she seems to exclude the slaves,
whom
she wants to distribute more equally and have till the soil.
Even
women shall belong to all men in common,
and the ugliest must
be loved before the younger.
She abolishes the whores, whom she
expects
to sleep with the slaves now.
She believes that parents
will be more respected,
because everyone will stop a beating of
any older person.
In this communist system there will be no debts
and no stealing;
the law-courts will become dining-halls.
Praxagoras
goes off to implement her plan.
Chremes is bringing his goods to contribute to the common
good
when a citizen questions whether it is a good idea.
The citizen
intends to hold back his
but still wants to attend the feast;
decrees,
he says, are not always obeyed,
as happened with the
ones on salt and copper money.
Then an older woman insists that
a young man make love
to her before he goes into the girl,
and
she quotes the decree that declares he must.
The girl rescues
him; but a second older woman appears
to make her claim and then
a third even uglier,
and these two take him away.
At the end Blepyrus
comes to the feast.
This experiment in utopia which predates Plato's Republic
indicates the prevalence of such notions in Athens,
while at the same time satirizing them for their impracticality.
Plutus, the only example of Middle
Comedy extant,
was produced in 388 BC.
Chremylus explains to his
slave Cario that he went to the
Pythian oracle to ask why the
sacrilegious, demagogues,
informers, and other rascals gain wealth,
but he does not.
The god ordered him to follow the first man he
saw,
who was a blind man.
They discover it is the god of wealth,
Plutus,
who was blinded by Zeus so that
he would not go only to
the good and just.
Chremylus offers to get his sight restored,
but Plutus fears Zeus.
Chremylus and Cario argue that Plutus is
more powerful
than Zeus, and Plutus asks how he can use his power.
Chremylus sends Cario for his friends.
Plutus complains that the
avaricious either hoard him
or the fools over-spend; but Chremylus
says that
he knows the moderation of how to spend when it is needed.
Cario brings other farmers, and Blepsidemus wonders
how Chremylus
has become rich so fast.
A tall woman comes in to put a stop to all this;
she is Poverty
and is being injured.
She proposes to prove that she is a
greater
cause of blessings than wealth.
Chremylus argues that it will
be better when Plutus can see
and go to the just while shunning
the perverse and ungodly;
thus all people will become honest,
rich, and pious.
Poverty argues that then no one will work or
ply their trade,
and so there will be no goods.
Chremylus expects
the slaves to work; but she replies that
no one will sell them,
and someone must do the slave-dealing.
It is Poverty that motivates
everyone to work.
Chremylus complains how bad it is without things;
but she says that is beggary not poverty, for the poor are thrifty
and work for what they need.
Orators are honest until they are
fattened by public funds.
Poverty leaves, expecting to be recalled
some day.
Cario tells how Plutus' vision was restored in the temple
of
Asclepius, and now he is sharing his blessings with them.
A just
man exchanges his old clothes for newer garments,
but an informer
must suffer.
A generous old woman complains that her young lover
has left her, but in the end she is promised he will come back.
Hermes explains that the gods are no longer receiving their gifts,
and he offers to do various services.
A priest is likewise suffering
hunger and is allowed to share
in the feast that concludes the
play.
This fantasy probably relieved psychologically the economic
hard times the Athenians suffered after losing the
Peloponnesian
War, while the benefits of both
wealth and poverty were humorously
portrayed.
It also reveals how much the
Athenians depended upon
slave labor.
1. Aeschylus, The Persians tr. Seth G. Benardete, 23-24.
2. Ibid., 718.
3. Aeschylus, The Eumenides tr. Richmond Lattimore, 868-869.
4. Sophocles, Ajax tr. John Moore, 259-261.
5. Sophocles, Electra tr. David Grene, 628-629.
6. Euripides, Hecuba tr. William Arrowsmith, 799-804.
7. Euripides, Electra tr. Emily Townsend Vermeule, 1347-1348.
8. Euripides, The Bacchae tr. William Arrowsmith, 506.
9. Aristophanes, Peace, 108.
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