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TRADITION AND INNOVATION IN GREEK TRAGEDY'S MYTHOLOGICAL EXEMPLA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2015

Ariadne Konstantinou
Ariadne Konstantinou*
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
*
[email protected][email protected]
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Extract

Novelties introduced into traditional myths are an essential characteristic of Greek tragedy. Each and every play demonstrates, in different ways, how tragedians were versatile and innovative in handling mythic material. Modern prefaces to individual tragedies often discuss the possible innovations in the dramatization of a myth compared to previous or subsequent versions. Innovations advanced in a play sometimes became so familiar that they came to be regarded as ‘standard’. Such examples include the condemnation and death of the protagonist in Sophocles’ Antigone and, in all likelihood, Medea's filicide in Euripides’ Medea.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , December 2015 , pp. 476 - 488
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was conducted in 2012–13, while I held a Halbert Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto. I am grateful to Victoria Wohl, my host from the department of Classics, for offering invaluable feedback at different stages of this project and for welcoming me to a vibrant community of Classicists. The Munk School of Global Affairs provided a friendly and stimulating work environment. Thanks are also due to CQ's two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their help in improving the final version.

References

1 A. D'Angour, The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience (Cambridge, 2011), 210.

2 On myth and tragedy see, among others, P. Burian, ‘Myth into muthos: the shaping of tragic plot’, in P.E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1997), 178–208; M.J. Anderson, ‘Myth’, in J. Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Malden, MA, 2005), 121–35; A.H. Sommerstein, ‘Tragedy and myth’, in R. Bushnell (ed.), A Companion to Tragedy (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2005), 163–80; R. Buxton, ‘Tragedy and Greek myth’, in R.D. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (Cambridge, 2007), 166–89; and J. Alaux, ‘Acting myth: Athenian drama’, in K. Dowden and N. Livingstone (edd.), A Companion to Greek Mythology (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2011), 141–56.

3 On innovations to the myth in Sophocles' Antigone see M. Griffith, Sophocles Antigone (Cambridge, 1999), 4–12; on Euripides' Medea see D.J. Mastronarde, Euripides Medea (Cambridge, 2002), 44–57 and Sommerstein (n. 2), 168. On innovations in the Oresteia, see D. Raeburn and O. Thomas, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus: A Commentary for Students (Oxford, 2011), xxii–xxx, A.F. Garvie, Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986), ix–xxvi and A.H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus Eumenides (Cambridge, 1989), 1–6.

4 Willcock, M.M., ‘Mythological paradeigma in the Iliad ’, CQ 14 (1964), 141–54, at 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar defines mythological exempla in the Iliad ‘as a myth introduced for exhortation or consolation. “You must do this, because X, who was in more or less the same situation as you, and a more significant person, did it”’. I would add to this definition that in tragedy, and especially in Euripides, the exemplum acquires authority and exemplary status also by right of its antiquity, by belonging to a different stratum in relation to the dramatized mythic present, as in Eur. Hipp. 451–2 (γραφάς … τῶν παλαιτέρων). The transmission of mythological material in exempla is often reported to have been oral, as in Eur. HF 1315, Hyps. 752g.18–19 Kannicht, as well as Soph. Phil. 676–85 (at 676–7 and 681) and Ant. 823–38 (at 823 and 829). Cf. [Aesch.] PV 425–9 (at 427) and Eur. Bacch. 337–40 (at 337).

5 On mythological exempla in general, see the important classificatory work of R. Öhler, ‘Mythologische Exempla in der älteren griechischen Dichtung’ (Diss., Basel, 1925) and Canter, H.V., ‘The mythological paradigm in Greek and Latin poetry’, AJPh 54 (1933), 201–24Google Scholar. N. Zagagi, Tradition and Originality in Plautus: Studies in the Amatory Motifs in Plautine Comedy (Göttingen, 1980), 32–43 discusses some of Greek tragedy's mythological exempla, though her interest lies in detecting hyperbolical comparisons that can be adduced as precedents to hyperboles in Plautine comedy. Additional passages are discussed in M. Davies, ‘Sophocles' Antigone 823ff. as a specimen of “mythological hyperbole”’, Hermes 113 (1985), 247–9Google Scholar; T.C.W. Stinton, ‘The scope and limits of allusion in Greek tragedy’, in M. Cropp, E. Fantham and S.E. Scully (edd.), Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D.J. Conacher (Calgary, 1986), 67–97; and Davies, M., ‘The stasimon of Sophocles' Philoctetes and the limits of mythological allusion’, SIFC 19 (2001), 53–8Google Scholar. On consolatory aspects of tragedy's mythological exempla see Pattoni, M.P., ‘L'exemplum mitico consolatorio: variazioni di un topos nella tragedia greca’, SCO 38 (1988), 229–62Google Scholar, as well as Nicolai, R., ‘L'emozione che insegna: parola persuasiva e paradigmi mitici in tragedia’, Sandalion 26–8 (2003–5), 61–103 Google Scholar; also, R. Nicolai, ‘Mythical paradigms in Euripides: the crisis of myth’, in A. Markantonatos and B. Zimmermann (edd.), Crisis on Stage: Tragedy and Comedy in Late Fifth-Century Athens (Berlin and Boston, 2011), 103–20 and R. Nicolai, ‘La crisi del paradigma: funzioni degli exempla mitici nei cori di Sofocle’, in A. Rodighiero and P. Scattolin (edd.), ‘…un enorme individuo, dotato di polmoni soprannaturali’: Funzioni, interpretazioni e rinascite del coro drammatico greco (Verona, 2011), 1–36.

6 With a qualification regarding the Homeric corpus, on which see M. Finkelberg, ‘Homer as a foundation text’, in M. Finkelberg and G.G. Stroumsa (edd.), Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World (Leiden, 2003), 75–96.

7 In Willcock (n. 4) and Willcock, M.M., ‘Ad hoc invention in the Iliad ’, HSPh 81 (1977), 41–53 Google Scholar. On the exemplum of Niobe see Il. 24.602–17.

8 Willcock (n. 4), 147. Ingalls, W.B., ‘Linguistic and formular innovation in the mythological digressions in the Iliad ’, Phoenix 36 (1982), 201–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides linguistic support for Willcock's thesis, by showing that, when innovating in mythological content, the poet also uses relatively newer and less traditional language. Braswell, B.K., ‘Mythological innovation in the Iliad ’, CQ 21 (1971), 16–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues for mythological innovation in additional passages that are not exempla.

9 G. Nagy, ‘Mythological exemplum in Homer’, in R. Hexter and D. Selden (edd.), Innovations of Antiquity (New York and London, 1992), 311–31.

10 R. Scodel, Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience (Ann Arbor, 2002), at 1–41, especially 24–32.

11 In addition to Pindar, see Stesichorus, fr. 913 PMGF (for innovations in the myth of Helen in his palinode) and Bacchylides 5 (on Heracles and Meleager). On mythological exempla in Sappho, see L. Edmunds, ‘Tithonus in the “New Sappho” and the narrated mythical exemplum in Archaic Greek poetry’, in E. Greene and M.B. Skinner (edd.), The New Sappho on Old Age: Textual and Philosophical Issues (Washington, DC, 2009), 58–70. For mythological innovations in Corinna's poetry, see Collins, D., ‘Corinna and mythological innovation’, CQ 56 (2006), 19–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Köhnken, A., ‘Pindar as innovator: Poseidon Hippios and the relevance of the Pelops story in Olympian 1’, CQ 24 (1974), 199–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nagy, G., ‘Pindar's Olympian 1 and the aetiology of the Olympic Games’, TAPhA 116 (1986), 71–88 Google Scholar.

13 I. Rutherford, ‘Singing myth: Pindar’, in K. Dowden and N. Livingstone (edd.), A Companion to Greek Mythology (Malden, MA and Oxford, 2011), 109–23, quotations from 115.

14 Scullion, S., ‘Tradition and invention in Euripidean aitiology’, ICS 24/25 (1999/2000), 217–33Google Scholar.

15 Scullion (n. 14), 218.

16 R. Seaford, ‘Aitiologies of cult in Euripides: a response to Scott Scullion’, in J.R.C. Cousland and J.R. Hume (edd.), The Play of Texts and Fragments: Essays in Honour of Martin Cropp (Leiden, 2009), 221–34.

17 See Sommerstein (n. 2).

18 For a similar argument, see the mythological exemplum of Callisto and the daughter of Merops in Eur. Hel. 375–85, with discussion of the lioness imagery in this passage in Konstantinou, A., ‘The lioness imagery in Greek tragedy’, QUCC 101 (2012), 125–41Google Scholar.

19 Scullion (n. 14), 221 speaks of ‘not just innovation but invention’, by which I understand a climactic difference, on which he unfortunately does not expand.

20 Nagy (n. 9), 312.

21 On the notion of novelty and problems in its definition see D'Angour (n. 1), especially at 64–84 on νέος and καινός.

22 Scullion (n. 14), 230.

23 The term ‘embedded’ is borrowed from narratology, where it is employed to describe narrative levels constructed in the manner of the ‘Chinese box’ or ‘Russian dolls’, on which see W. Nelles, ‘Stories within stories: narrative levels and embedded narrative’, in B. Richardson (ed.), Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure and Frame (Columbus, 2002), 339–53. On whether narratology is a constructive lens for the analysis of Greek tragedy, see J. Gould, “‘… And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings”: Greek tragic drama as narrative’, in id., Myth, Ritual, Memory, and Exchange: Essays in Greek Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2001), 319–34 and F. Dunn, ‘Sophocles and the narratology of drama’, in J. Grethlein and A. Rengakos (edd.), Narratology and Interpretation: The Content of Narrative Form in Ancient Literature (Berlin and New York, 2009), 337–55.

24 See especially Nicolai (n. 5 [2011]), ‘La crisi del paradigma’.

25 On a comparison of mythological exempla in Sophocles and Euripides, see Nicolai (n. 5 [2011]), ‘Mythical paradigms’, 103–4, with a useful list of Euripidean exempla at 117 n. 30, as well as Nicolai (n. 5 [2011]), ‘La crisi del paradigma’, especially 33.

26 PV 345–50 and 425–9 (with cruces in the OCT edition of Page).

27 He is also mentioned at Bacch. 230, 1291 and 1227.

28 Ed. J. Diggle, OCT.

29 Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

30 On both points see R. Seaford, Euripides: Bacchae (Warminster, 1996), at 179.

31 Though it does reappear in Diod. Sic. 4.81.4–5.

32 See Stesich. fr. 236 Page (from Paus. 9.2.3); Hes. fr. 217A M-W; Acus. FGrHist 2 F33 (from Apollod. Bibl. 3.4.4); and the discussion in Schlam, C.C., ‘Diana and Actaeon: metamorphoses of a myth’, ClAnt 3 (1984), 82–110 Google Scholar, at 83–7.

33 Callim. Hymn 5.107–18. See also Ov. Met. 3.138–252, and a discussion of further textual and visual parallels in Schlam (n. 32), 95–105.

34 J. Roux, Euripides: Les Bacchantes (Paris, 1972), 361, ‘de tous les texts anciens, ce vers est le seul qui nous ait transmis cette version de la légende. Elle devait cependant être familière aux spectateurs, si l'on en juge par la brièveté de l'allusion’. She goes on to speculate that Aeschylus might have developed a similar narrative in the Toxotides. See also Schlam (n. 32), 86–7.

35 See especially Bacch. 1168–300, a passage rich in hunting vocabulary, and the discussion on the metaphor of the hunt in the play in C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae: Expanded Edition (Princeton, 1997), 31–6.

36 Bacch. 1233 (μέγιστον κομπάσαι πάρεστί σοι).

37 Ed. J. Diggle, OCT.

38 As in Hyg. Fab. 2 and 4. This is also what the scholiast on Med. 1284 tries to convey: οἱ μὲν οὖν ἱστοροῦσι … Εὐριπίδης δέ φησιν …, ‘Some narrate … but Euripides says …’. See also Newton, R.M., ‘Ino in Euripides' Medea ’, AJPh 106 (1985), 496–502 Google Scholar, at 500–1.

39 D.L. Page, Euripides: Medea (Oxford, 1938), at 172 on Eur. Med. 1284, emphasis added. Compare Mastronarde (n. 3), 371: ‘Euripides seems to allude here to a version in which Ino, in madness …, kills both her children, but then leaps into the sea (or kills them by taking them with her in her leap)’ (emphasis added).

40 Page (n. 39), 172 on Med. 1284.

41 Newton (n. 38); see also T. Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Baltimore and London, 1993), 177.

42 Newton (n. 38). While I agree with this point, Mastronarde (n. 3), 371 on 1284 rightly notes that the audience must have accepted that Ino's murder of both of her children was due to poetic licence and not, as Newton believes, because the Chorus cited an ‘event which never occurred’.

43 For variety regarding the number and names of Medea's children in other versions, see Mastronarde (n. 3), 49–50.

44 J. March, ‘Vases and tragic drama: Euripides' Medea and Sophocles' lost Tereus’, in N.K. Rutter and B.A. Sparkes (edd.), Word and Image in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 2000), 119–39. For scepticism regarding this dating, see A.H. Sommerstein, D. Fitzpatrick and T. Talboy (edd.), Sophocles: Selected Fragmentary Plays (Oxford, 2006), 1.159.

45 Mastronarde (n. 3), 370.

46 Newton (n. 38), 501. See also March (n. 44), 120.

47 Such line of argument is adopted in Eur. HF 1016–27, where the Chorus refers to the murders by the Danaids and by Procne but admits that these exempla fall short in providing a suitable analogy to Heracles' murder of his three sons. In Soph. Phil. 676–85, the Chorus compares the suffering of Philoctetes to that of Ixion, only to find the comparison inadequate.

48 See Aesch. Supp. 57–67, Ag. 1140–9; Soph. Aj. 624–34, Trach. 103–11, 962–3, El. 103–9, 145–52, 1074–81; Eur. IT 1089–105, Hel. 1107–21, Phoen. 1509–18.

49 N. Loraux, Mothers in Mourning (with the Essay “Of Amnesty and its Opposite”) (Ithaca, NY, 1998), 57–65.

50 For a reconstruction of the play see Fitzpatrick, D., ‘Sophocles’ Tereus ’, CQ 51 (2001), 90–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 On the metamorphosis theme in this myth see P.M.C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford, 1990), 99–107 and 248–9.

52 H. Friis Johansen and E.W. Whittle, Aeschylus: The Suppliants (Copenhagen, 1980) print Metis as the name for Tereus' wife, on which see the criticism of Verdenius, W.J., ‘Notes on the Parodos of Aeschylus' Suppliants ’, Mnemosyne 38 (1985), 281–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 294 and Griffith, M., ‘A new edition of Aeschylus' Suppliants ’, Phoenix 40 (1986), 323–40, at 331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 On the date of the Suppliants see A.F. Garvie, Aeschylus' Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge, 1969), 1–28, the earlier dating proposed in Scullion, S., ‘Tragic dates’, CQ 52 (2002), 81–101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the ‘Preface to the second edition’ of Garvie's book (Bristol, 2006).

54 Text and trans. A.H. Sommerstein, LCL.

55 Hyg. Fab. 45 and Friis Johansen and Whittle (n. 52), 53. For a more detailed list of late sources, see Whittle, E.W., ‘Two notes on Aeschylus’ Supplices ’, CQ 14 (1964), 24–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 27 n. 9, where the silence of interim sources regarding Tereus' metamorphosis into a hawk is cited as a parallel to the absence of interim sources that refer to Io as ‘flower-browsing’ in Aesch. Supp. 43, mentioned again only in much later sources (such as Etym. Magn. 389.2 s.v. Εὔβοια).

56 On the metamorphosis of Tereus in Sophocles and Aristophanes see N. Dunbar, Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), 139–41 (on Av. 15) and 164–5 (on Av. 101).

57 Il. 22.139–42 and cf. Il. 16.582–3, 17.755–7 and 21.493–6.

58 See other bird images in 30, 223–5, 510–11 and 751, with a discussion of avian imagery in the play in R.D. Murray, The Motif of Io in Aeschylus’ Suppliants (Princeton, 1958), 44–5; D.J. Conacher, Aeschylus: The Earlier Plays and Related Studies (Toronto, 1996), 83 and 132–40, especially at 134–5 and T. Papadopoulou, Aeschylus: Suppliants (London, 2011), 61. Also, Friis Johansen and Whittle (n. 52), 179 on Supp. 224, the ‘bird-imagery hinted by 30 ἐσμόν and developed in the motif of the hawk-chased nightingale (60ff.) has been refashioned’.

59 Supp. 223–5: ἐν ἁγνῶι δ’ ἑσμὸς ὣς πελειάδων | ἵζεσθε κίρκων τῶν ὁμοπτέρων φόβωι, | ἐχθρῶν ὁμαίμων καὶ μιαινόντων γένος, ‘sit in this holy place like a flock of doves in fearful flight from hawks, their fellow-birds, hostile kindred who defile their race’ (trans. A.H. Sommerstein, LCL).

60 Avian imagery is also used to describe the pursuit of the Danaids by their cousins in PV 853–9.

61 On the Danaids' manipulative tactics, see Griffith (n. 52), 325–6 and Papadopoulou (n. 58), 39–43.

62 Euripides takes up the parallelism in HF 1016–27, where the murders that Procne and the Danaids committed are compared in an exemplum to Heracles' murder of his sons in the play. See also Eur. Hec. 885–7, where Hecuba, in commenting on the capacity of women to be murderers, mentions the Danaids and the Lemnian women.

63 See, for example, Griffith, R.D., ‘The hoopoe's name (a note on Birds 48)’, QUCC 26 (1987), 59–63 Google Scholar; Dobrov, G., ‘The tragic and the comic Tereus’, AJPh 114 (1993), 189–234 Google Scholar, at 211–13 and 218–21; March (n. 44); Sommerstein et al. (n. 44), 1.142–9, especially at 145; and C. Hahnemann, ‘Sophoclean fragments’, in K. Ormand (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Malden, MA, 2012), 169–84, at 175.

64 Arist. Hist. an. 633a18–27. Pliny (HN 10.86) also assigns the information to Aeschylus. See TrGF 4.**581 Radt (note) for the assignment of this passage to Sophocles, first proposed by Welcker. The note discusses other possible ascriptions, including the defence of the Aeschylean ascription by Cazzaniga and Mette. See also the more recent discussion in Sommerstein et al. (n. 44), 1.189–91.

65 On the ode see, among others, R. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies (Oxford, 1980), 126–32; R.P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), 98–109; Sourvinou-Inwood, C., ‘The fourth stasimon of Sophocles’ Antigone ’, BICS 36 (1989), 11–65 Google Scholar; and M.R. Kitzinger, The Choruses of Sophocles' Antigone and Philoctetes: A Dance of Words (Leiden, 2008), 57–61. This series of mythological exempla is quite unprecedented in the remaining corpus of Sophocles, which contains only a few mythological exempla, on which see Nicolai (n. 5 [2011]) ‘La crisi del paradigma’.

66 Aeschylus' Phineus was the first play in the trilogy that also included the Persae. On the Sophoclean fragments of Phineus A and B and the Tympanistai see TrGF 4.704–17a Radt and TrGF 4.636–45 Radt with a discussion in A.C. Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles (Amsterdam, 1963), 311–22.

67 Griffith (n. 3), 291–2 and Kitzinger (n. 65), 59–60.

68 Sourvinou-Inwood (n. 65).

69 Scholion on Ant. 981. On Phineus' blinding of his children see also Apollod. Bibl. 3.15.3 (a named source in the Antigone scholion) and Hyg. Fab. 19. On the blinding of Phineus himself see Hes. fr. 254 M-W (= Scholion on Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.178), Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.21, scholion on Od. 12.69 and Hyg. Fab. 19, as well as a discussion of the myth in R. Buxton, Myths and Tragedies in their Ancient Greek Contexts (Oxford, 2013), 184–6.

70 See frr. 704 and 705.

71 Burton (n. 65), 128: ‘Whether this ode is a résumé of tragedies already produced or a forecast of future productions, there is no evidence to show’.

72 Contrary, that is, to the assertion of Winnington-Ingram (n. 65), 105 that ‘Sophocles expected his audience to recognize one version in particular, probably from a play, and very likely from a play of his own’.