No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2015
This article studies a Euripidean innovation: the introduction into tragic language and the subsequent (selective) usage of the expression oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην by Euripides. This negative potential optative appears sixteen times within the surviving Euripidean corpus, as a stereotypical syntactic structure that is intertwined with dramatic content and meaning. But, surprisingly, this expression is absent from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and all other tragedians. Through close reading of the sixteen Euripidean cases, the article traces and defines the conspicuous context of this expression: oὐκ ἂν δυναίμην is uttered by high-status individuals (for example, members of a royal family), when they envisage the impossible/unattainable in present and future within an intensely emotional atmosphere (ranging from hatred and loathing to agonising grief and despair), during pivotal moments of the play. Metrical convenience is also served, as the expression covers the first five elements of the iambic trimeter.
1 See e.g. de Romilly, J., L’évolution du pathétique d’Eschyle à Euripide (Paris 1961) 135-141Google Scholar; La modernité d’Euripide (Paris 1986) passim.
2 See e.g. Medea’s vacillation between reason and emotion in Med. 1019-80; cf. de Romilly (n. 1, 1961) 18; and Agave’s gradual advancement towards consciousness in Ba. 1263-301; cf. Devereux, G., ‘The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides’ Bacchae’, JHS 90 (1970) 35-48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Cf. Medea’s soliloquy about the helplessness of women (Med. 214-51) or Phaedra’s generalisations about what makes people abandon their sense of duty (Hipp. 373-90).
4 See Wilkins, J., ‘The State and the Individual: Euripides’ Plays of Voluntary Self-Sacrifice’, in A. Powell (ed.), Euripides, Women, and Sexuality (London and New York 1990) 177-194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 In R. Rutherford’s recent work, Greek Tragic Style: Form, Language, and Interpretation (Cambridge and New York 2012), Euripides’ contribution and innovation (in relation to both Sophocles and Aeschylus) regarding various aspects of the tragic style (e.g. spoken verse, lyric) are highlighted and meticulously analysed; see passim, but esp. chaps 5, 6, and 7. For example, regarding the technique of stichomythia, Rutherford speaks of Euripides’ ‘bold experiments’ that have extended stichomythia to ‘its most extreme lengths’ (p. 175).
6 If we are not misled by the accidental survival of tragic material, this is not the only Euripidean first, and Rutherford (n. 5) is right in noting that ‘many words appear in Euripides which were not used by the other two’ (p. 407, with further bibliography). Also, S.D. Sullivan (Euripides’ Use of Psychological Terminology, Montreal and Ithaca, 2000) has collected some forty-four new adjectives that Euripides introduces and uses for the term phrēn (pp. 36-8, Appendix 3).
7 Comedy’s usage of this expression is discussed at the end of this article.
8 Women’s speech in tragedy has recently received much scholarly attention. Although gender is rather peripheral to the present study’s argument, basic bibliography includes: Foley, H.P., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York 1981) esp. 127-167Google Scholar; Easterling, P.E., ‘Women in Tragic Space’, BICS 34 (1988) 15-26Google Scholar; Segal, C., Euripides and the Poetics of Sorrow (Durham 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClure, L.K., ‘Female Speech and Characterization in Euripides’, in F. de Martino and A.H. Sommerstein (eds), Lo Spettacolo delle Voci (Naples 1995) II.35-60Google Scholar (despite communicating pathos, οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην would not qualify as what McClure considers ‘Pathetic Expressions’, pp. 45ff.); Spoken Like a Woman: Speech and Gender in Athenian Drama (Princeton 1999); Mastronarde, D.J., The Art of Euripides. Dramatic Technique and Social Context (Cambridge 2010) 207-245CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mossman, J.M., ‘Women’s Speech in Greek Tragedy: The Case of Electra and Clytemnestra in Euripides’ Electra’, CQ 51 (2001) 374-384CrossRefGoogle Scholar (arguing that women may speak differently when men are present; yet, in cases of οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην, the sex of other characters, if any, present on stage does not affect the usage or the meaning of this expression); Griffith, M., ‘Antigone and Her Sister(s): Embodying Women in Greek Tragedy’, in A. Lardinois and L.K. McClure (eds), Making Silence Speak. Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society (Princeton and Oxford 2001) 117-136Google Scholar; Mossman, J.M., ‘Women’s Voices’, in J. Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Malden MA and Oxford 2005) 352-365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 See H.W. Smyth (rev. G.M. Messing), Greek Grammar (Cambridge MA 1956) §1824b.
10 See Smyth (n. 9) §1826a.
11 The multi-dimensional interaction of tragedy with rhetoric in general has been extensively explored: see e.g. Kennedy, G., The Art of Persuasion in Greece (London 1963) esp. 3-51Google Scholar; Collard, C., ‘Formal Debates in Euripides’ Drama’, G&R 22.1 (1975) 58-71Google Scholar; Conacher, D.J., ‘Rhetoric and Relevance in Euripidean Drama’, AJP 102 (1981) 3-25Google Scholar; Wilson, P.J., ‘Demosthenes 21 (Against Meidias): Democratic Abuse’, PCPS 37 (1991) 164-195Google Scholar; Lloyd, M., The Agōn in Euripides (Oxford 1992)Google Scholar; Bers, V., ‘Tragedy and Rhetoric’, in I. Worthington (ed.), Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London and New York 1994) 176-195Google Scholar; Wilson, P.J., ‘Tragic Rhetoric: The Use of Tragedy and the Tragic in the Fourth Century’, in M.S. Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic. Greek Theatre and Beyond (Oxford 1996) 310-331Google Scholar; and, most recently, Rutherford (n. 5) 52-5, 190-200.
12 With perhaps only one exception (n. 21), the commentaries corresponding to Euripidean plays mentioned in this article do not comment on οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην.
13 For an overview of Euripidean chronology, see Collard, C., Euripides (Oxford 1981) 2Google Scholar.
14 Parker, L.P.E., Euripides: Alcestis (Oxford 2007) 258Google Scholar, comm. on 1045-56, highlights the asyndeton and the short sentences, which reveal Admetus’ agitation, while Conacher, D.J., Euripides: Alcestis (Warminster 1988) 195Google Scholar, comm. on 1042-69, speaks of a ‘highly dramatic passage’.
15 Note that Jason’s cold and cynical dismissal of Medea’s motives, esp. 526-31 (i.e. that she was only motivated by lust) occur only after Medea has delivered her long speech (465-519), where she openly declares her hatred of Jason. Mastronarde (n. 8, 2010, 226-7) describes this speech as ‘a small masterpiece of rhetorical invective’. And, even after this, Jason concludes his second speech in this episode by repeating his willingness to help (620).
16 Page, D.L., Euripides: Medea (Oxford 1938) 106Google Scholar, comm. on 465ff., notes another singularity of this passage: ‘Medea . . . is the only exception to Euripides’ rule that in these scenes of quarrel the “sympathetic” character speaks second: cf. Iolaos in Hkld., Hippol. in Hipp. . . . normally the sympathetic character is also the defendant, so naturally speaks second; here, however, the sympathetic character is prosecutor.’
17 Mastronarde, D.J., Euripides: Medea (Cambridge 2002) 337Google Scholar, comm. on 1044, notes that the following verses reveal Medea’s faint-heartedness; she now believes that killing her children is absurd and unthinkable, thus echoing the chorus’ hopeful anticipation in 862-5: οὐ δυνάσῃ . . . τέγξαι χέρα φοινίαν/τλάμονι θυμῷ (‘you will not be hardhearted enough to drench your hand in their blood’).
18 On the performance date see Zuntz, G., The Political Plays of Euripides (Manchester 1955) 81-88Google Scholar, and Allan, W., Euripides: The Children of Heracles (Warminster 2001) 54-56Google Scholar.
19 See Collard, C., Euripides: Hecuba (Warminster 1991) 28ffGoogle Scholar.; Kastely, J.L., ‘Violence and Rhetoric in Euripides’ Hecuba’, PMLA 108.5 (1993) 1036-1049CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mossman, J.M., Wild Justice. A Study of Euripides’ Hecuba (Oxford 1995) esp. 94-141Google Scholar; Mastronarde (n. 8, 2010) 227-34. Regarding the relation between the tragic and the rhetoric genres in general, see n. 11.
20 Collard (n. 19, 1991) 162, comm. on 585-6, detects an intertextuality with Hamlet IV.7.135-6: ‘One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.’
21 Collard’s (n. 19, 1991) 163, comm. on 613-4, provides the only – yet tangential – comment that I found regarding οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην: ‘Hec.’s near collapse from sudden emotion is shown both by the sudden staccato phrasing and its colloquial register.’ The present occurrence of οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην forms part of this arresting ‘staccato phrasing’.
22 See Stevens, P.T., ‘Colloquial Expressions in Euripides’, Hermes Suppl. 38 (1976) 38, 57-58Google Scholar.
23 Both Collard (n. 19, 1991) and Matthiessen, K., Euripides ‘Hekabe’: Edition und Kommentar (Berlin and New York 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar draw attention to the plural (τέκνοισι), pointing out that Hecuba means to avenge not only Polydorus but also all of her dead children (Polyxena, Hector, Paris, Deiphobus).
24 Matthiessen (n. 23) 379 detects an implicit ‘Regieanweisung’ in 968-75, i.e. the fact that Hecuba avoids eye-contact with Polymestor.
25 This is the well-known custom of lowering one’s eyes because of shame; see Collard (n. 19, 1991) 182, comm. on 968-75. For a full list of such passages from tragedy, see Gould, J., ‘Hiketeia’, JHS 93 (1973) 88CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 74.
26 So Kovacs, D., The Heroic Muse (Baltimore 1987) 106Google Scholar.
27 On the play’s date, see Morwood, J., Euripides: Suppliant Women (Oxford 2007) 26-30Google Scholar.
28 Collard, C., Euripides: Supplices (Groningen 1975) 321Google Scholar, comm. on 846-56 (with further bibliography), thinks otherwise, while more recently Morwood (n. 27) does not even acknowledge that interpretation. Cf. Burian, P., ‘Logos and Pathos: The Politics of the Suppliant Women’, in P. Burian (ed.), Directions in Euripidean Criticism (Durham 1985) 129-155Google Scholar, esp. 147-8.
29 See further Collard (n. 28, 1975) 308-10.
30 Since stone is proverbial of insensitivity: see Bond, G.W., Euripides: Heracles (Oxford 1981) 409Google Scholar, comm. on 1397.
31 Dover, K.J., Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974) 182Google Scholar.
32 See Dover (n. 31) 180-4; Blundell, M.W., Helping Friends and Harming Enemies: A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics (Cambridge and New York 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholarpassim.
33 Willink, C.W., Euripides: Orestes (Oxford 1986) 99Google Scholar, comm. on 105, detects the parallelism with only one other Euripidean case (‘the phrasing is like Ba. 836 οὐκ ἂν δυναίμην θῆλυν ἐνδῦναι στολήν’), but he does not make any further comment.
34 The scene resembles an agon: see Collard (n. 11, 1975) 68; Lloyd (n. 11, 1992) 10.
35 Seaford, R., Euripides: Bacchae (Warminster 1996) 174Google Scholar, comm. on 266-327.
36 See Seaford (n. 35) 215, comm. on 835.
37 Comedy’s reception of and engagement with tragedy – mostly in the form of paratragedy – is a hugely popular thematic area and, accordingly, the relevant bibliography is fast growing, especially after Rau, P., Paratragodia: Untersuchung einer komischen Form des Aristophanes (Münich 1967)Google Scholar. Standard reference works on the subject include: Dover, K.J., Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley 1972) 183-189Google Scholar; Goldhill, S., The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge and New York 1991) 167-222Google Scholar; Silk, M.S., ‘Aristophanic Paratragedy’, in A.H. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell, J. Henderson, and B. Zimmermann (eds), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari 1993) 477-504Google Scholar; Taplin, O., Comic Angels: And Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase-Paintings (Oxford 1993) 79-88Google Scholar; Bowie, A.M., ‘Myth and Ritual in the Rivals of Aristophanes’, in D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (London 2000) 317-339Google Scholar; Silk, M.S., Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy (London 2000)Google Scholar, and ‘Aristophanes versus the Rest: Comic Poetry in Old Comedy’, in Harvey and Wilkins (eds) 299-315 (esp. 302-3); Platter, C., Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore 2007) 42-83Google Scholar, 143-75; Bakola, E., Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (Oxford 2010) 118-179Google Scholar, esp. 177-9.
38 Cf. Bakola (n. 37) 24-9, 176-7.
39 See Lada-Richards, I., Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theatre in Aristophanes’ Frogs (Oxford 1999) 234-235Google Scholar.
40 The fragment probably echoes contemporary historical events relating to an Egyptian embassy sent to Athens seeking alliance some time during the second quarter of the fourth century BC. See B.W. Millis, ‘A Commentary on the Fragments of Anaxandrides’ (Diss. University of Illinois 2001) 162-3.
41 A phlyacographer of the late fourth-early third century BC. See K-A I.275-87.
42 Of course, this just one way of interpreting this fragmentary material, which is cut off from its original context, and – certainly – I do not expect everyone to agree with this interpretation. Besides, one may argue that this is comedy and it is, generally speaking, what comedy usually does.