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I. Approaches to Aeschylus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

The reader of Aeschylus, surveying the ever-increasing volume of material written over the past twenty or thirty years, might well note with a mixture of surprise and dismay that the results of so much labour have led not to any hoped-for unanimity of scholarly opinion or even the establishment of a general consensus of interpretative approach, but instead to an increasingly diverse range of possible viewpoints and methods of investigation. Indeed, faced with the inherently plausible but wholly divergent arguments and conclusions of different commentators, he might find himself very much in sympathy with Cicero’s own complaint: ‘while I am reading, I am in full agreement; once I have put down the book,.... all that agreement evaporates’. If anything, however, the expansion in methods of approach is but the symptom of a growing awareness that the very nature of the plays, with all their ambiguities, deliberately leaves room for and in fact invites a wide range of emotional and intellectual response. At the same time study of the text itself has seen a shift away from the adventurous - some would say arrogant - emendation of earlier decades, to a more conservative attitude towards the received tradition, and this in turn has not been without its effect upon recent editions. To complement the shift of emphasis as regards text has come the application of similar rigour to interpretation of stage events: the insistence that these be founded upon what the Greek actually says rather than what the commentator imagines should happen. Much of the pioneering work on this has been carried out by Oliver Taplin, whose generally sound sense now provides sure footing where previously there was almost unrelieved quicksand.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 18: Aeschylus , 1986 , pp. 1 - 3
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

Notes

1. Wartelle, A., Bibliographie historique et critique d’Eschyle et de la tragédie grecque 1518-1974 (Paris, 1978)Google Scholar, which reflects the format of L’Année philologique, provides an extremely useful starting point in any study of the literature.

2. Tuse. Disp. I. 11. 24.

3. Lebeck, A., The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Washington, 1971), p. 3 Google Scholar. An extreme manifestation of the ambiguity approach is the contention of Dawe, R. D., ‘Inconsistency of Plot and Character in Aeschylus’, PCPhS 189 (1963), 21–62 Google Scholar, that the requirements of the moment rather than overall consistency are the determining factor.

4. Any study of the manuscript tradition itself must begin with Turyn, A., The Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Aeschylus (NewYork, 1943)Google Scholar, and Dawe, R. D., The Collation and Investigation of the Manuscripts of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar. Much of Dawe’s work bore fruit in D. L. Page’s OCT of 1972, and has continued to exert its influence. See too Wartelle, A., Histoire du texte d’Eschyle dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar; Rosenmeyer, T. G., The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 11-28Google Scholar. Would-be emenders of Aeschylus are well advised to bear in mind Dawe’s estimate of likely success (0.1%): Repertory of Conjectures on Aeschylus (Leiden, 1965), p.3.

5. Among the more notable are those of Persae by Broadhead, H.D. (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar; Supplices by Johansen, H.Friis and Whittle, E.W. (Copenhagen, 1980)Google Scholar; Prometheus by Griffith, M. (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar. Still indispensable are the editions of Agamemnon by Fraenkel, E. (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, and by J. D. Denniston and D. L. Page (Oxford, 1957). Very usable translations exist in The Complete Greek Tragedies series, ed. Grene, D. and Lattimore, R. (Chicago, 1953-56)Google Scholar; Fagles, R., The Oresteia (Harmondsworth, 1977)Google Scholar; Lloyd-Jones, H., Oresteia (London, 1979, in one volume since 1982 = Prentice-Hall Greek Drama Series, Englewood Cliffs, 1970)Google Scholar; Dawson, C.M., The Seven Against Thebes (Englewood Cliffs, 1970)Google Scholar; Podlecki, A. J., The Persians (Englewood Cliffs, 1970)Google Scholar. For the fragments of Aeschylus’ plays see Mette, H. J., Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos (Berlin, 1959)Google Scholar; id., ‘Nachtrag zu H. J. Mette’, Lustrum 13 (1968), 513-34; id., ‘Aischylos (Bruchstücke) 1971-1977’, Lustrum 18 (1975), 339-44. The larger fragments are also included in vol. II of the Loeb Aeschylus ed. Smyth, H.W. and Lloyd-Jones, H. (London, 1957)Google Scholar, and Page, D. L., Greek Literary Papyri (London, 1942)Google Scholar. For the scholia see Herington, C. J., The Older Scholia on the Prometheus Bound (Mnemosyne Suppl. 19, Leiden, 1972)Google Scholar; Smith, O. L., Scholia Graeca in Aeschylum Quae Extant Omnia, Pars I {Ag., Cho., Eum., Supp.) (Leipzig, 1976)Google Scholar, Pars 11.2 (Sept.) (Leipzig, 1982)Google Scholar; id., Studies in the Scholia on Aeschylus, I: The Recensions of Demetrius Triclinius {Mnemosyne Suppl. 37, Leiden, 1975). Finally, for any study of the vocabulary of Aeschylus Italie, G., Index Aeschyleus2 (Leiden, 1964)Google Scholar is essential.

6. The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977).

7. For the purposes of this survey I include the Prometheus as part of the Aeschylean corpus.

8. The audience’s linear experience of the plays is stressed by Taplin (1977), p. 18; Ewans, M., ‘Agamemnon at Aulis: A Study in the Oresteia’, Ramus 4 (1975), 17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fontenrose, J. in contrast, ‘Gods and Men in the Oresteia‘, TAPhA 102 (1971), 71–109 Google Scholar, illustrates well the dangers of shifting from one play to another.

9. von Fritz, Cf.K., Antike und moderne Tragödie (Berlin, 1962), p. 200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See for instance Dawe, R. D., ‘The Place of the Hymn to Zeus in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon’, Eranos 64 (1966), 1–21 Google Scholar; Taplin (1977), pp. 96-8.

11. Page, Cf.D.L., Actors’ Interpolations in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar; Taplin (1977), index: ‘text, interpolation of lines’.

12. Thus for instance Devereux, G., Dreams in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar; Caldwell, R. S., ‘The Misogyny of Eteocles’, Arethusa 6 (1973), 197–231 Google Scholar; id., ‘The Psychology of Aeschylus’ Supplices’, Arethusa 7 (1974), 45-70. The application of clinical methods to unreal characters, while offering new and illuminating avenues of insight, has generally been regarded with suspicion by the majority of classical scholars, especially those who emphasize the primacy of plot. See for instance Dawe (1963), 26; Taplin (1977), p. 312; Lefkowitzȁs, M.R. review of Devereux, AJPh 98 (1977), 305–7 Google Scholar.

13. So for instance Beck’s, R.H. promised demonstration in Aeschylus: Playwright Educator (The Hague, 1975), p. 132 Google Scholar, that Septem is the second play of its trilogy. Fortunately it is a promise that is never kept.