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Heracles and Greek Tragedy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

M. S. Silk
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Extract

Heracles was the greatest and the strangest of all the Greek heroes. A long list of superhuman acts of strength and courage stood to his name, and above all else the famous twelve labours, which began with the killing of the Nemean lion and.ended in the capture of the monstrous watchdog Cerberus in Hades. He was a great slayer of monsters, also a great civilizer, founding cities, warm springs, and (as Pindar was fond of reminding his audiences) the Olympic festival. He suffered prodigiously, and he maintained prodigious appetites, for food, drink, and women. He may have had friends, but none close (as, say, Patroclus and Achilles were close), but he did have one implacable and jealous enemy, the goddess Hera. He had two marriages: the first set of wife and children he killed in a fit of madness; the second brought about his own death. He was the son of a mortal woman, Alcmena, and the god Zeus, with Amphitryon as a second, mortal, father; and after his death (by most accounts) he became a god himself and lived on Olympus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 1985 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1985

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References

NOTES

2. Ol. 2.3, 3.11ff., 6.68ff., 10.43ff.; Nem. 10.32f., 11.27.

3. On the incongruities in Heracles' persona, see the concise discussion by Kirk, G. S., The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 176ffGoogle Scholar.

4. See the cautious summary of the evidence by Bond, G. W., Euripides, Heracles (Oxford, 1981), pp. xxviii–xxxGoogle Scholar.

5. νόστος plays: see Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), pp. 124fGoogle Scholar.

6. See Knox, B. M. W., The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964)Google Scholar.

7. The recent discussion by Easterling, P. E., Sophocles, Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 8–11, 16–18Google Scholar, argues, in effect, that the original audience might have read the apotheosis in. The point is rather that Sophocles (without negating the apotheosis) gives them no encouragement to do so: see further above, pp. 10–12.

8. And, it may be, the burning of Heracles alive was a ritual act belonging to that ascension: see Reinhardt, Karl, Sophocles (Eng. tr., Oxford, 1979), pp. 62f.Google Scholar, and Easterling (above n. 7), pp. 17f.

9. On Zielinski's guess that Aeschylus' Heracleidae covered the ground of Trachiniae, see Lloyd-Jones, H., appendix to the Loeb Aeschylus (London and Cambridge, 1957), II. pp. 588fGoogle Scholar. There are no visual remains that suggest tragic representations earlier than an illustration of Trachiniae, for which see Trendall, A. D. and Webster, T. B. L., Illustrations of Greek Drama (London, 1971)Google Scholar, III.2.11. Heracles is presumed to have been a main figure in Ion's Eurytidae (TGF I.99f. Snell), whose contents (as well as date) are a matter for conjecture, but there is no reason to suppose that this Heracles was a suffering Heracles. It has been suggested, however, that Ion's Alcmene, Eurytidae, and satyric Omphale formed three parts of a connected Heraclean tetralogy, of which the unattested play was a genuine suffering-Heracles tragedy, conceivably on the lines of Trachiniae. But these speculations (for which see Schmid-Stählin, , Gesch. Gr. Lit. (Munich, 1934), 1.2. pp. 88 and 517Google Scholar, von Blumenthal, A., Ion von Chios (Stuttgart, 1939), p. 33Google Scholar) are not evidence.

10. See the convenient summary in Galinsky, G. K., The Herakles Theme (Oxford, 1972), pp. 81–100Google Scholar. Attested satyr-plays include Aeschylus' Kerykes, Sophocles' Heracles at Taenarus, and Euripides' Syleus.

11. By ignoring this distinction, Schmid-Stählin (1.2. p. 88) and others give a wholly misleading picture of Heracles as a tragic character.

12. See Dale, A. M., Euripides' Alcestis (Oxford, 1954), pp. xviiiffGoogle Scholar.

13. Alcestis, TGF I. 73 Snell: the play is generally presumed to have been a tragedy, but could have been a satyr-play: cf. Dale (above n. 12), p. xiii. Prometheus Unbound:Griffith, M., Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 285ffGoogle Scholar.; Athamas Pearson, A. C., The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge, 1917), I. pp. 1ffGoogle Scholar.; Auge: Webster, T. B. L., The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), pp. 238ffGoogle Scholar.; Pirithous: Lesky, A., Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen 3 (Göttingen, 1972), p. 525Google Scholar.

14. Such as Astydamas' Antigone: see Xanthakis-Karamanos, G., Studies in Fourth-Century Tragedy (Athens, 1980), pp. 49fGoogle Scholar.

15. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Euripides, Herakles II2 (Berlin, 1895), pp. 69ffGoogle Scholar.

16. As his presence in Homeric and Hesiodic heroic mythology obviously shows (see the survey in Galinsky (above n. 10), pp. 9–22) and as the cult evidence confirms (on which see Farnell, L. R., Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921), pp. 103ffGoogle Scholar.). See also Bond (above n. 4) on H.F. 1254.

17. Jebb, R. C., Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments, Part V (The Trachiniae) (Cambridge, 1892), pp. xxiGoogle Scholarff.

18. So Conradie, P. J., Herakles in die Griekse Tragedie (Utrecht, 1958), p. 134Google Scholar; Galinsky (above n. 10), p. 41; Kirk (above n. 3), p. 203

19. Aspects of the Ancient World (‘Tragic Heracles’) (Oxford, 1946), p. 146Google Scholar.

20. Which raises fascinating questions about the origin of tragedy. If we believe, as most scholars do, that tragedy developed from the worship of Dionysus and originally dealt with the sufferings of Dionysus, we must take Ehrenberg's pronouncement as an argument that early tragedy was not ‘essentially’ tragic. Aristotle, at least, would have agreed, albeit on different grounds (Po. 1449a 19–24).

21. In reaching this conclusion, I have profited from the discussion by Ehrenberg (above n. 19), pp. 144ff., and from various remarks by Burnett, A. P. in Catastrophe Survived (Oxford, 1971), pp. 157ffGoogle Scholar. (‘The Madness of Heracles’), much as I would have to disagree with both interpretations in other respects.

22. And quite distinct even from those other heroes with two fathers, one human and one divine, like the Dioscuri and Theseus.

23. Nem. 3.22.

24. Summarized by Kirk (above n. 3), pp. 176f; see further Farnell (above n. 16), pp. 95ff., 155ff.

25. Hdt. 2.44.

26. Pi., Ol. 6.68ff., 10.43ffGoogle Scholar.

27. Pi., Nem. 1.35ffGoogle Scholar.; Il. 5.395ff and 8.367f.

28. First recorded in Od. 11.601ff. (on which see above, p. 7).

29. Kirk, G. S., Myth: Its Meanings and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge, 1970), p. 177Google Scholar. Heracles' gross features are summarized by Galinsky (above n. 10), pp. 16f., 81ff.

30. Kirk (above n. 3), p. 85 (cf. ibid. pp. 206ff.).

31. Purity and Danger2 (London, 1969), pp. 96, 95, 104Google Scholar. See, further, Douglas, , Implicit Meanings (London, 1975)Google Scholar, ch. 17 (‘Self-evidence’); on the concept of ‘interstitial status’ and its application to classical antiquity, Beard, W. M., JRS 70 (1980), 19ffGoogle Scholar.; and for a partial parallel to Heracles' own situation in ancient religious practice, rather than myth, F. Price, S. R., JRS 70 (1980), 28ffGoogle Scholar.

32. Like Faust, up to a point; and it may or may not be relevant that the Faust who breaks the bounds of ordinary mortality is also a grotesque folk-hero.

33. See Galinsky (above n. 10), pp. 56, lOlff.

34. Il. 5.403. The Homeric Heracles is surveyed by Galinsky (above n. 10), pp. 9ff.

35. Od. 11.620f.

36. Od. 11.601ff.

37. Hes. fr. 25.25ff. Both passages were suspected by the Alexandrians (see the OCT apparatus ad. locc), but must be fairly early: cf. Easterling (above n. 7), p. 17 n. 29.

38. See Galinsky (above n. 10), p. 29ff.

39. Isthm. 3/4.71bff., Nem. 3.22; fr. 169.1ff. Fr. 169 is notoriously difficult to interpret: see the summary in Kirkwood, G., Selections from Pindar (Chico, 1982). pp. 347fGoogle Scholar.

40. Nem. 3.20ff.; cf. Ol. 3.43ff. and Isthm. 3/4.29f.

41. See Silk, M. S., Interaction in Poetic Imagery (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar (with n. 5) and 137; in the light of the present discussion, the remark on p. 35 that Pindar's association between Heracles and έσχατ– is ‘wholly personal’ is somewhat misleading.

42. See Easterling (above n. 7), pp. 19ff., and Bond (above n. 4), pp. xxxff.

43. See especially Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization: an Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 4, an interpretation dependent on the ‘beast-man-god’ series assumed by French structuralists to underlie much Greek mythologizing: see e.g. Detienne, M., ‘Between Beasts and Gods’ in Myth, Religion and Society, ed. Gordon, R. L. (Cambridge and Paris, 1981), pp. 215ffGoogle Scholar.

44. Pol. 1253a 27ff., a passage rightly adduced by Bowra, C. M., Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford, 1944), p. 136Google Scholar.

45. He has also been in servitude to a woman, Omphale (70), and been conquered by desire for another, Iole (489), thanks to the power of the goddess Aphrodite (497): cf. Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Sophocles: an Interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 85fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Similarly in 1175 and 1201 (also spoken by Heracles) and 1018 and 1113 (spoken by the Old Man and the choregus).

47. See the passages cited above, p. 13 with n. 53.

48. This and the following set of Deianeira ‘translations’ (my own) represent a condensed version, whose verse idiom is aimed at conveying her moods and whole being with more immediacy and accuracy (cf. n. 49 below) than translationese can hope to. The lines originally formed part of a composite English-Greek verse drama called Heracles based on portions of Trachiniae, H.F., Alcestis, and Frogs, which was devised for the King's College London Greek Play Tour of North America in 1983.

49. Hence the propriety of ‘natural’ modern English here.

50. Cf. Segal (above n. 43), p. 94.

51. Burnett (above n. 21), p. 165.

52. See Il. 1.8ff.; Pi., Pyth. 3.25–37Google Scholar.

53. Aesch., Eum. 230f.Google Scholar; Hes., Op. 57Google Scholar, Theog. 170f. Similarly (έУώ + future), Il. 21. 334f. (Hera), 24.462 (Hermes); Aesch., Eum. 232Google Scholar (Apollo), 735 (Athene); Eur., Hipp. 1420–2Google Scholar (Artemis), H.F. 871 (Lyssa).

54. Tro. 88ff.

55. Proposed by Wilamowitz (above n. 15), pp. 128f., but subsequently abandoned, Deutsche Literatur-Zeitung (1926), 853.

56. Disappear: apart from a single despairing question by the choregus (1087f., ώ Zεû, τí παῖδ' ήχθηρας ὦδ' νπερκότως | τ⋯ν σόν…;). Contradicted: 1263–5, 1289 (on which see above, p. 15).

57. See Bond (above n. 4), on 1341–6.

58. We first meet her as goddess – and dramatis persona – in Aeschylus' lost Ξάνтрιαι (fr. 368 Mette).

59. For Heracles' killing of Linus, see Gow on Theocrit., Id. 24.105Google Scholar.

60. Arist., Eth. Nic. 1166a 31f.Google Scholar: έστι ϒàρ ό φίλος ἃλλος аύтός (likewise 1170b 6f.).

61. See Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951Google Scholar), ch. 1, and cf. H.F. 1135 with Bond's note.

62. Cf. Simon, Bennett, Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, 1978), p. 136Google Scholar.

63. Compare and contrast Ehrenberg (above n. 19), p. 159.

64. Cf. e.g. the daemonic language spoken by the mad Ajax (Soph. Aj. 243f.), the inspired direction possessed by Oedipus in a state of λύσσα (Soph., O. T. 1258)Google Scholar, the popular beliefs attacked by the Hippocratic Περ⋯ ‘Iεα⋯ς Nоúσυ It is noteworthy that the language of Heracles' revengespeech (above, p. 13) is echoed by Lyssa: ~kαί kαтαρρήξω μέλαθρα κα⋯ δόμпυς ⋯Πεμβαλѽ (Lyssa, 864).

65. See Bond (above n. 4), pp. xxivff.

66. Cf. Burnett (above n. 21), p. 179. Bond (on 841f.) misses much of the point by considering, and duly rejecting, the Aunt Sallyish proposition that ‘Heracles has become too great and has committed űβαις, for which he will now be punished’. It is not anything that Heracles has ‘become’ that matters, and űβαις (which is committed only by men) is not relevant.

67. ‘The Structural Study of Myth’ in Structural Anthropology (tr. Jacobson, C. and Schoepf, B. G., London, 1968), p. 206Google Scholar.

68. At a tangent to this conclusion, I note with pleasure the following formulation: ‘The [Lėvi-Straussian] assumption that the opposition is prior, the mediation [ = the ‘model capable of overcoming a contradiction’] the necessary response, is… questionable [In most cases, if not all,] the so-called mediating term should be seen as logically prior to the opposition constructed around it I would suggest that Greek myth could be approached not as a system intended to mediate opposition… but rather as a series of attempts to separate out oppositions from the features of problematic terms in order to “place” them’ (from an unpublished paper by Helen King, read to the Warburg Institute, London, 1983: ‘The Dynamics of Category: an approach to the generation of Greek thought-patterns’).