Achille d'Homère à Eschyle. Transposition d'un héros épique sur la scène tragique

Abstract

Achilles from Homer to Aeschylus: transposition of an homeric hero on the tragic stage Even if Sophocles, in Antiquity, was known as the most Homeric of the Tragics, Aeschylus was not outdone "who said that his tragedies were slices of Homers great feasts". Indeed, he wrote a whole trilogy -the Myrmidons, the Nereids, and the Phrygians or Hector's Ransom- about the greatest hero of the Trojan war -Achilles- taking on the very plot of the Iliad. This article inquires into the similarities and the differences between the trilogy and the Homeric intertext, by scanning the character of Achilles, especially considering his relationship with the army. It also analyses how and why the epic hero can be adapted to the tragic stage. The first part deals with Achilles inactivity and silence. It compares this double position with that of the Homeric hero in the embassy scene, with the Homeric silences and the other Aeschylean silences, in order to demonstrate that Aeschylus emphasizes Achilles'1 wrath to deconstruct the Homeric hero and to question the heroism of the epic. Indeed, he establishes Achilles as the opposite of both the warrior and the orator. Given this context, a reborn Achilles can only arise as wholly tragic. The second part shows how the criticism of the hero by the army is even more resentful than the scattered reproaches made in the Iliad. In the tragedy, the blame is collective and increases until it becomes a stoning threat, which is no longer a mere Homeric image but a very justice-making ritual. So much that, from the Iliad to the Myrmidons, the emphasis shifts from τιμή to δίκη. The epic hero has to be degraded and threatened this way to regenerate in tragic drama; the epic heroism has to be kept at a distance so that it can eventually be renewed on the tragic stage through a dramatization, intensified feelings and increased tension.