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The Title of Prometheus Desmotes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

O. Taplin
O. Taplin
Affiliation:
Magdalen College, Oxford
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Extract

All I hope to do in this note is to reinforce Lesky's protest against ‘the attitude of mind shown by many modern scholars, who refuse to admit that there is a Prometheus problem at all, and pass over in silence so many arguments which deserve the most careful attention’. One reason why the majority of scholars are so sanguine about the peculiarities of Prometheus Desmotes is that they take it for granted that the surviving play was the first of a trilogy, and that the remainder of the trilogy would somehow or other have resolved some or most or all of the problems of the surviving part. It is assumed that the second play was, as the titles apparently proclaim, Prometheus Luomenos: the chief exception to this view is W. Schmid, the much reviled but scarcely refuted champion of the bastardy of Prom. Desm., who argued that the surviving play was written in the third quarter of the fifth century by an imitator of Aeschylus. Next it is usually supposed that Prometheus Purphoros (a title in the catalogue in M, twice cited elsewhere) was the third play—though there have been more respectable exceptions to that step. The fourth Prometheus title (twice cited by Pollux), Prometheus Purkaeus, is very plausibly taken to be the satyr play of 472 B.C., called simply Προυηθεύς in the hypothesis to Pers. Despite this, no-one seems to have questioned the easy assumption that the other three Prometheus titles are evidence for the connected trilogy. I shall offer here a neglected reason for thinking that, on the contrary, the titles are evidence that the Prometheus plays were not produced together. The argument is pedantic, even irritating, but it is nonetheless coherent and hard to contradict.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 95 , November 1975 , pp. 184 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1975

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References

1 History of Greek Literature English tr. (London 1966) 255; German 3rd edn. (Bern 1971 ) 294.

2 Untersuchungen zum Gefesselten Prometheus (Tübingen Beitr. 9, Stuttgart 1929).

3 Notably Focke, Hermes lxv (1930) 263 ff.Google Scholar, who argued that Prom. Desm. and Luom. made up a ‘dilogy’. Focke made the noteworthy point that the aetiology of the garland attributed to Prom. Luom. by Athenaeus (fr. 334M) looks like a concluding element ill-suited to the middle play of a trilogy. A recently published Apulian vasepainting suggests that the play may also have included an aetiology of the flower προμήθєον: see Trendall, J Berl Mus xii (1970) 168 ff. esp. 173Google Scholar. Recently Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley 1971) 97 ffGoogle Scholar. has suggested that the third play had nothing directly to do with Prometheus, and was in fact Aitnaiai. As he himself admits (97, 102) this is ‘nothing but a speculation’.

4 See Haigh, A. E.The Tragic Drama of the Creeks (Oxford 1896) 395 ffGoogle Scholar. This is still the best discussion of the neglected topic of the titles of Greek tragedies; cf. also Pearson, The Fragments of Sophocles (Cambridge 1917) I xviii ff.Google Scholar, Zilliacus, Eranos xxxvi (1938) 1 ff.Google Scholar, esp. 10, and Nachmanson, Acta Univ. Gotoborgensis xlvii (1941) esp. 6 f.Google Scholar (repr. Darmstadt, 1967). The titles of about 500 tragedies are preserved out of a total of something between 2000 and 6000 (?).

5 It may be that the titles of Eur. Hik. and Phoen. acknowledge debts to earlier plays of the same name. All the play titles found in Aristophanes seem to be those transmitted to us: I have noted some 14 (Clouds 553 f., Thesm. 153, 848–50, Frogs 833–4, 1121–2, frr. 78, 678).

6 Epigraphic evidence seems to point the same way. In IG ii2 2320 ( = TrGF DID A 2a), cut in about 278 B.C., an Iphigeneia of Euripides is recorded without further distinction; and in a third century inscription from the Agora (Hesperia vii [1938] 116 = TrGF DID A 4b) there is an Oidipous of Sophocles.

7 Confirmed, against doubters, by POxy 2455 fr. 14 col. xvi and fr. 17 col. xix.

8 It is common titles which concern Pollux 9. 156. He, or his source, imagines that they go back to the dramatist.

9 These have some precedent in titles taken from the chorus like Χοηφόροι, Ὑδροφόροι, Ξοανηφόροι.

10 Namely Polyphrasmon's Λνκούργεια (TrGF DID C 4), Philocles' Πανδιονίс (TrGF 24T6C.) and Meletos' Οἰδιπόδεια (TrGF DID C 24); cf. Σοποκλῆс ἐδίδαсκε Τηλέφειαν in IG ii2 3091 (fourth century Aexone = TrGF DID B 5).

11 Cf. Schmid (above n. 2) 102 f.

12 These are discussed more fully than ever in Unterberger, R.Der Gefesselte Prometheus des Aischylos (Tübingen Beitr. 45, Stuttgart 1968)Google Scholar.

13 Those who are reassured by the latest defence in Herington, C. J.The Author of the Prometheus Bound (Austin, Texas 1970)Google Scholar are easily pleased. ‘Quonam anno acta sit fabula omnino ignoramus; etiam de auctore Aeschylo dubitatur’—Page's new Oxford text (1972) p. 288.