Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Tragedy and Archaic Greek Thought. Edited by Douglas Cairns. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales. 2013. Pp. liv, 262. This volume collects selected papers originating in a conference organized by Douglas Cairns and Michael Lurge in Edinburgh, 2008. In his introductory remarks (ix–liv), Cairns argues that, for the last three decades, studies of the “contemporary civic, political , ritual and performative contexts” (ix) of tragedy and anthropological and cultural approaches to tragedy (x) have been the predominant concerns of tragic scholarship, having displaced traditional scholarship both in technique—close textual analysis—and subject matter. However, these are ultimately “subdisciplines” that presuppose the main business, that of “seeking to understand the traditional intellectual fabric of the plays themselves” (xli). The papers in this collection each examine aspects of tragedy’s “origins in and responses to its traditional background in archaic Greek thought” (x), deliberately revisiting questions on which classical scholarship focused in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Three papers address Aeschylus, five Sophocles, and one Euripides. All papers depend on close textual analysis. As an example of the kind of work to expect in the volume, Cairns’s introduction gives an analysis of Äth in Antigone, establishing that Äth in the play is part of a network or “archaic chain” of related concepts in other archaic texts. Alan H. Sommerstein (“Atê in Aeschylus,” 1–17) analyses Äth in prose and poetic texts and argues that the usual translation, “folly or delusion sent by the gods,” is not an early but a poetic meaning popularized by Homer and later poets, especially Aeschylus. In Sophocles and Euripides Äth routinely signifies simply “loss, ruin, destruction,” but this does not show secularization of the term over time, as this is its normal meaning in even early prose texts. Richard Seaford (“Aeschylus, Heraclitus, and Pythagoreanism,” 17–38) examines Aeschylus’ Oresteia in the context of contemporary Pythagorean and Heraclitean philosophical thought. He argues that the cyclical world-view of Heraclitus is reflected in the cycle of vengeance of the Agamemnon and Choephoroi, to which Pythagorean limits are imposed via the intervention of the Pythagorean mŽson in the Eumenides. These similarities probably reflect the production of the Oresteia from the same cultural milieu that produced the philosophers, rather than direct influence of either school. A highlight of the collection is Fritz-Gregor Hermann’s article on the Seven against Thebes (“Eteocles’ Decision in the Seven against Thebes,” 39–80). This chapter combines close reading of the text, performance analysis, and audience reception to make sense of Eteocles’ decision to fight Polynices. Hermann demonstrates that arguments that Eteocles meant all along to fight his brother, or that he changed his mind for no obvious reason, are not supported by the text. Instead, Hermann suggests, Eteocles gathers information during the play which, added to his knowledge of the curse on Laius and curse of Oedipus, make clear to him that his death is necessary to save Thebes. The source of the new information, Hermann argues on the basis of Athenian political and military practices familiar to the audience, will have been the choice by lot, on stage, possibly from names drawn out of a helmet, of the seven defenders. This staging of the PHOENIX, VOL. 68 (2014) 1–2. 157 158 PHOENIX selection by lot in front of the audience will have been dramatically effective, in that it preserves suspense about Eteocles’ final disposition until nearly the end, and it explains both Eteocles’ initial hope of survival and his final despair and resignation to his fate. Vayos Liapis in “Creon the Labdacid: Political Confrontation and the Doomed oikos in Sophocles’ Antigone” (81–118) combines close philological analysis of the text with an examination of its context in Athenian legal and religious practice. He argues that, while modern criticism tends to vindicate Antigone and cast Creon as a ruthless tyrant from his first entrance, we have the benefit of hindsight denied the play’s original audience. The Athenian audience will not have known how to interpret the action before the Tiresias scene. Creon initially sounds like a sensible ruler, and Antigone’s insistence on burying her brother may have initially seemed, to the democratic audience, like...