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The Background To Polyneices' Disinterment and Reburial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

J. E. G. Whitehorne
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Extract

Why should Antigone in Sophocles' play want to return to Polyneices' body, after apparently successfully burying it, if we may judge from the guard's report to Creon at lines 245ff.? Ever since it was first raised by Jebb in his note on Antigone 429, this question has given scholars almost as much trouble as the original burial gave Antigone herself. Basically, there are two opposed views on the problem. Firstly, that both burials were performed by Antigone and their duplication is to be explained primarily in terms of the play's dramatic organization. Secondly, that not only is it impossible within the framework of the play's chronology for Antigone to have performed the first burial but that, had she done so, there would have been no need for her to return to the body after sprinkling the symbolic dust. Therefore it was not Antigone, but the gods, who first buried Polyneices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , October 1983 , pp. 129 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1983

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References

Notes

1 I have benefited most, even in disagreement, from the discussions of Bradshaw, A. T. von S., CQ n. s. 12 (1962), 200–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Margon, J. S., CJ 64 (1968/1969), 289–95 and 68 (1972/1973), 39–49Google Scholar, Hester, D. A., Mnemosyne 24 (1971), 11–59 (esp. 19–29)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Gellie, G. H., Sophocles: A Reading (Melbourne, 1972), pp. 38–9Google Scholar, and McCall, M., YCS 22 (1972), 103–17Google Scholar. Margon, Hester, and McCall all give very full reff. to earlier discussions of the double burial.

2 Gellie (supra n. 1), 38–9.

3 McCall (supra n. 1); Ferguson, J., A Companion to Greek Tragedy (London & Austin, 1972), p. 198Google Scholar.

4 Pohlenz, M., Die griechische Tragödie.2 Erlaüterungen (Göttingen, 1954), p. 82Google Scholar.

5 Rohde, E., Psyche8 (tr. Hillis, W. B.) (New York, 1966), i. 163 and 187, n. 29Google Scholar; cf. Aelian, , V.H. 5.14Google Scholar.

6 Rohde (supra n. 5), 162–6; Kurtz, D. C. and Boardman, J., Greek Burial Customs (London, 1971), pp. 142–61Google Scholar.

7 Rohde (supra n. 5), 166–82; Lacey, W. K., The Family in Classical Greece (London, 1968), pp. 148–9Google Scholar; Humphreys, S. C., JHS 100 (1980), 96–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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9 Jebb, , on Ant. 43Google Scholar; contra, Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, T. von, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (Berlin, 1917), pp. 17–18, n. 1Google Scholar.

10 As Wilamowitz (supra n. 9), p. 31, McCall (supra n. 1), 104–5.

11 See Dale's, A. M. note on Eur. Alc. 1146Google Scholar.

12 Night: Bradshaw (supra n. 1), 203, Margon (supra n. 1), 295. Morning: Jebb, note on lines 253ff., McCall (supra n. 1), 108–9.

13 Pace Bradshaw (supra n. 1), 203, n. 1 (‘…the detail has no dramatic significance’).

14 Margon (supra n. 1), 300.

15 A point well made by Hulton, A. O., Mnemosyne 16 (1963), 283–5Google Scholar.

16 The word is also used in Ajax 315 and 377 of Ajax's ‘massacre’ of the Greek leaders; by Clytemnestra of her acknowledged crime in killing Agamemnon (Ag. 1379); by Darius, at Pers. 759Google Scholar of what he now recognizes as Xerxes' criminal folly. The theory of McCall (supra n. 1), 115–16, that the guard is unconsciously editing his report of events to give the impression that Antigone was responsible for the first burial whereas it was in fact performed by the gods, seems to me oversubtle.

17 See especially, on this aspect of the Ant., Reinhardt, K., Sophocles (tr. , H. and Harvey, D.. Oxford, 1979), pp. 72–7Google Scholar = 82–6 in German ed.

18 As originally proposed by Adams, S. M., CR 45 (1931), 110–11Google Scholar, Phoenix 9 (1955), 47–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sophocles the Playwright (Toronto, 1957), ch. 3Google Scholar, followed most recently by McCall (supra n. 1) and Ferguson (supra n. 3).

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20 This excursus is prompted by the view that, because there is evidence that denial of burial was common in heroic times (reff. in Hester (supra n. 1), 55), it was also common in Homer, and by such comments as those of Margon (supra n. 1), 48 (‘We do not have sufficient knowledge, extrinsic to the play, of the fifth-century attitude toward burial to specify its nature in the Antigone’), or Connor, W. R., The New Politicians of Fifth-Century Athens (Princeton, 1971), p. 51Google Scholar (‘It would be perfectly all right to leave an enemy unburied but kin, Polyneices, must not be treated in this horrible way’).

21 See Segal, C. P., The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Mn. Suppl. 17. Leiden, 1971)Google Scholar, Griffin, J., CQ n. s. 26 (1976), 161–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), ch. 4Google Scholar.

22 A point noted by Willcock, M. M., Companion to the Iliad (Chicago, 1976), p. 4Google Scholar, n. on Iliad 1.4–5.

23 Lysias 12.36, Thuc. 7.75, and see Lacey (supra n. 7), p. 270, n. 188.

24 Gomme, A. W., Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar, notes on Thuc. 4.98, 1 and 5.

25 See Gomme (supra n. 24) on Thuc. 4.99, and 101, 2.

26 The play is dated to c. 423? on metrical grounds: Collard, C. ed., Euripides. Supplices (Groningen, 1975), i. 8–14Google Scholar.

27 Lacey (supra n. 7), p. 148, Kurtz and Boardman (supra n. 6), p. 143.

28 See Hardcastle, M. A., Prudentia 12 (1980), 13Google Scholar; Humphreys (supra n. 7), 98–101.

29 Fullest reff. in Glotz, G., La solidarité de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grèce (Paris, 1904), pp. 460–61 and nnGoogle Scholar. Surprisingly Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford, 1944), p. 70Google Scholar, only cites its recommendation by Plato, , Laws 9.873C, 10.909C, 12.906BGoogle Scholar.

30 When Euryptolemus proposed that the generals of Arginusae be tried individually under the law relating to sacrilege and treason: Xen, . Hell. 1.7.22Google Scholar, and see Harrison, A. R. W., Law of Athens (Oxford, 1971), ii. 59 and 82Google Scholar. I am not convinced by the arguments of Cerri, G., in Vernant, J-P. et al. edd., Les morts dans les societes anciennes (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 121–31Google Scholar, that the decree of Cannonus, the alternative suggestion of Euryptolemus for dealing with the generals in accordance with the law (Hell. 1.7.20, preserving the MSS reading), also involved a denial of burial. I hope to deal with this problem elsewhere.

31 Thuc. 1.126.11–22, and Gomme's note ad loc.

32 Thuc. 1.138.6, and Gomme's note ad loc.

33 On the aspect of Polyneices' ‘honour’ as Antigone's motivation see Knox, B. M. W., The Heroic Temper (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966), pp. 91–3Google Scholar. Cf. Aegisthus'abuse, of Agamemnon's tomb in Eur. El. 326–31Google Scholar.

34 As suggested by Hester (supra n. 1), 28, and Bradshaw (supra n. 1), 207.

35 Sophocles, El. 760, 1098ff.Google Scholar On the Athenian practice of bringing home for burial the ashes of those killed in battle abroad see Jacoby, F., JHS 64 (1944), 37–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the date of its introduction see Gomme (supra n. 24) on Thuc. 2.34–6.

36 Greek Tragedy (London, 1920), p. 140Google Scholar.