*62 The metaphorical “turning” involved is that of the plow. “Thrice-turned” may be taken literally, alluding to the fate that has destroyed three generations (Laius, Oedipus, and now the last of the latter’s children), or it may be taken idiomatically, “thrice” meaning “over and over.”
*63 See note to line 593.
*64 Antigone again calls herself a metoikos (see note to line 850).
*65 Antigone alludes to the marriage of Polynices and Argeia; it was unfortunate in that it enabled Polynices to attack Thebes. See note to line 15.
*66 The sun, as at the beginning of her lament (lines 806–10).
*67 This line could also be rendered “or go on living entombed there.”
*68 The noun metoikia (“residence”) can mean a settlement in a foreign city; “up here” refers to the upper world, as opposed to Hades. Antigone’s indeterminate status is highlighted: she has no place in the company of the living. See notes to lines 850 and 866.
*69 The authenticity of Antigone’s self-defense in lines 904–20 has been doubted. See the appendix to this play.
*70 From here to the end of the scene (lines 929–43), the Chorus Leader, Creon, and Antigone speak their lines in marching anapests.
*71 Daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, who imprisoned her in a tower or a vault of bronze (called by Sophocles her “bridal chamber” because Zeus made love to her there), to keep her from becoming pregnant because it had been prophesied that if she had a son, that son would cause the king’s death. Zeus came to her in the form of a golden rain (line 950).
*72 Lycurgus, whose persecution of Dionysus and his followers is cited in the Iliad (6.130–43) as an example of a mortal contending against a god.
*73 A Thracian people.
*74 Madness is the punishment of those who resist Dionysus.
*75 The maenads, female attendants of Dionysus.
*76 Torches carried by the maenads.
*77 The musical instrument favored by Dionysus, as was the lyre by Apollo. The Muses, frequently depicted together with Dionysus, are imagined enjoying the ecstatic music that accompanied his worship.
*78 I follow the text as emended here in the Loeb edition of Lloyd-Jones. “Hard by” is vague. Salmydessus, the site of the atrocity about to be described, was sixty miles northwest of the Bosporus.
*79 The Hellespont and the Black Sea, on either side of the Bosporus.
*80 Phineus was son of Agenor and king of Salmydessus. It is not clear in this passage why his “savage wife” (possibly named Idaia) blinded his two sons, her stepsons.
*81 The loom’s shuttle, the instrument employed to blind the boys, “has an extremely sharp point, like a large knitting needle” (Griffith).
*82 The mother of the blinded boys was Cleopatra, daughter of Boreas (god of the north wind), Phineus’ first wife (not to be confused with the famous Egyptian queen of the same name).
*83 Descendants of Erechtheus, a mythical, semidivine king of Athens.
*84 A daughter of Boreas (see note to line 980).
*85 A natural alloy of gold and silver.
*86 A shocking claim, within the context of traditional Greek religion.
*87 Creon, as Antigone said earlier (line 48), has no business coming between her and the burial of her brother, a duty that falls to her as next of kin. Compared with her, he has no “share” in these matters. The gods above, the Olympian gods, have no “share” in them in a different sense: they concern the chthonian powers of gods beneath the earth. Creon’s interference has disturbed the natural order, the right balance between life and death, the gods above and the gods below.
*88 Presumably, the cities that joined Polynices in the expedition against Thebes (see note on line 15).
*89 The phrase enclosed in angle brackets is supplied following Lloyd-Jones and Wilson, who argue that a line in which the bodies of the dead were mentioned is missing at this point.
*90 The consecration referred to is that of due burial. The bodies of the dead are imagined receiving burial not, as they should, in the earth, but in the bellies of scavenging animals.
*91 I render line 1097 as transmitted in the manuscripts, not as emended by Lloyd-Jones and Wilson. On “delusion,” see note to line 583.
*92 A euphemism for the Furies.
*93 Dionysus. The ode, addressing Dionysus in second person throughout, is a hymn summoning the god to the aid of Thebes, his native city.
*94 Semele, one of the four daughters of Cadmus. She was mother of Dionysus by Zeus.
*95 The famous Mysteries of Demeter were held at Eleusis, not far from Athens and under Athenian supervision.
*96 Female worshippers of Bacchus.
*97 A river at Thebes, east of the city.
*98 An extremely poetic expression, equivalent to “near [the place where] the savage dragon’s [teeth] were sown.” See note on line 126.
*99 Lines 1126–30 abound in references to the Dionysiac cult at Delphi. The famous Castalian spring was there, and a cave called Corycian.
*100 A reference, perhaps, to Nysa on the northwest coast of the island of Euboea, an island famed for its wines. The ivy (line 1132) and the grape (1133) were the god’s favorite plants.
*101 Semele, pregnant with Dionysus, asked her lover Zeus to show himself to her in his full divinity. Zeus obliged, destroying her in a lightning flash but rescuing his son, the unborn god. Semele was later restored to life and joined the gods on Olympus.
*102 The god is leaving either Delphi or Euboea on his way to Thebes. Leaving Delphi, he would pass over Mount Parnassus; leaving Euboea, he would cross the Euripus, the turbulent strait between Euboea and the mainland.
*103 The nocturnal, ecstatic cries of the god’s worshippers, referred to at lines 1135–36.
*104 Another name for the maenads or ecstatic female worshippers of the god, derived from a verb meaning “rage, seethe.” A thyiad, like a maenad, is a madwoman.
*105 Dionysus was identified with the Eleusinian deity Iacchus, apparently a personification of the ritual cry uttered by the initiates at Eleusis in nighttime celebrations (see note 93). The blessing desiderated is evidently purification (1142).
*106 Son of Zeus and Antiope, husband of Niobe (see note on line 825). Together with his brother Zethus, he built the walls of Thebes.
*107 An untranslatable play on Haemon’s name: haima is the Greek word for “blood.”
*108 Alluding, perhaps, to the death of her son Megareus, mentioned later (line 1303).
*109 “The goddess of the crossroads” is Hecate, who had strong associations with death and the Underworld. “Pluto” is a euphemism for Hades (Death).
*110 From here to the end, Creon, Chorus, and Messenger—who comes back out of the palace with news of what has happened inside—join in an elaborately structured lamentation, the second kommos, begun and concluded by the Chorus speaking or chanting in anapestic measures. All three voices speak at times in iambic trimeters arranged, with one exception, in corresponding sets of 1, 6, and 5 lines each, within and between the lyrical stanzas, all of which are sung by Creon.
*111 The Messenger is a slave, and Creon here addresses him as such.
*112 Critics posit a gap in the text at this point, probably of a single line (only one is needed to match the six in the corresponding passage at lines 1278–83). I have rendered line 1301 as emended by Arendt.
*113 Son of Creon and Eurydice. When Thebes was in danger of being destroyed by Polynices, Tiresias prophesied that it would survive if one of Creon’s sons were sacrificed. The implication is that Creon endorsed the sacrifice. Lines 993–96 and 1058 may allude to these events.
*114 The references are vague. Perhaps “these” refers to the bodies of Haemon and Eurydice (the two onstage at the moment), “those” to the bodies of Antigone and Megareus (the two not onstage).
*115 Thought to be the seat of passion.
*116 These two lines of spoken verse, dividing strophe from antistrophe, are not answered by a co
rresponding pair.
Appendix
The authenticity of Antigone’s self-defense in lines 904–20 has been doubted by a number of distinguished Sophoclean critics and defended by a number of others, and Goethe famously expressed the wish that some talented scholar might prove the passage spurious. Discussion of the question will probably continue, though the balance of opinion in recent criticism inclines in favor of authenticity. Those who doubt the passage raise two principal objections to it.
The first objection is that in these lines Antigone seems to contradict what she had said earlier. The “unwritten laws” she cites at lines 450–70 would demand that she tend to the bodies of her own kin, no matter who they might be, but here she says she wouldn’t have done that for a husband or a child, but only for a brother, and only for a brother under certain circumstances.
However surprising this apparent correction might seem to us, there is strong external evidence that Sophocles himself put it into Antigone’s mouth: Aristotle cites and discusses it in his Rhetoric (3.16.1417a32–33), quoting lines 911–12 with no hint of doubt as to their authenticity. Almost as important is the point he makes about the passage, which he cites as an example of inconsistency in character portrayal—precisely the point that troubles modern critics; Aristotle, however, approves of it, arguing that Sophocles gets away with the inconsistency because he has given adequate reasons for it.
The second objection is based on the fact that the argument made in lines 909–12 is also made by the wife of Intaphernes in Herodotus (3.119). In the Herodotean passage, King Darius has condemned Intaphernes and all male members of his household to death for conspiracy. Moved by the persistent appeals of Intaphernes’ wife, Darius relents and grants her a choice: he will spare one of the condemned, the one she chooses. When she names her brother, the king is astonished and asks the reason for her choice. The one she gives is the one Antigone gives in lines 909–12: “O king, I may acquire another husband, if fate wills, and other children, if I should lose these. But with my father and mother no longer alive, in no way can I get another brother.”
The objection made by those who dispute the authenticity of the passage is that this argument, which makes sense in Herodotus, does not make sense here. The choice made by the wife of Intaphernes saves the life of the one chosen; Antigone’s choice does not save anyone’s life—on the contrary, it puts an end to her own. The difference between the two situations is something that Sophocles, the supreme dramatic artist, would not have overlooked, and so the Herodotean adaptation must be the work of a clumsy interpolator.
Defenders of the passage have dealt with this problem in various ways. I would only remark here that the wife of Intaphernes herself has nothing to lose in making her choice. Antigone has everything to lose in making hers, nor will she know, while alive, whether the gods, in whose name she had acted, even approve of what she has done (lines 921–28). Or is she trying (not entirely convincingly) to justify her own actions to herself? There is nothing like this complexity in the Herodotean original, which has logical simplicity in its favor, but not emotional depth. Perhaps it is a mistake to make logic our own criterion at this particular moment, even though it is the criterion applied by the heroine herself.
INTRODUCTION TO SOPHOCLES’ ELECTRA
This drama, like Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, depicts how Orestes returns to Argos and avenges his father Agamemnon’s murder. In the Oresteia, Aeschylus had portrayed Electra as reserved and hesitant. She asks the Chorus of old women what she should do with the offerings her mother, Clytemnestra, has asked her to leave at her father’s tomb; she follows their advice and prays for Orestes’ return. When she discovers that he has indeed returned, she follows her brother’s lead in praying to Agamemnon’s ghost, then leaves the stage and takes no part in the rest of the action. But Sophocles’ Electra steps forward assertively, even aggressively. It was she (and not a nurse) who looked after the child Orestes; it was she who took him away from his mother and sent him off to Phocis to Pylades’ family. When Orestes at last returns to reclaim his patrimony, it is Electra’s passion and intensity that propel him to murder Clytemnestra without the slightest hesitation.
Sophocles makes it clear that Electra has reason to be angry. As she explains to a sympathetic Chorus of women from Argos, she has not been allowed to marry, but rather is treated like a slave by her mother and Aegisthus, forced to serve them in the palace that belonged to her father and rightfully now belongs to Orestes. Sophocles contrasts her with one of her sisters, a dramatic technique he also employs in the Antigone. Like Ismene in that drama, the pliant and cooperative Chrysothemis—known as Electra’s sister from Homer’s brief mention in the Iliad, though Aeschylus had ignored her in the Oresteia—here argues that it is not sensible to fight against superior power. She warns Electra that if she does not stop her endless lamentation she will end up an exile, confined to a sunless dwelling in another country. But Electra replies that she would prefer that existence to her present life. Electra stops her lamentations when Chrysothemis reveals that Clytemnestra has had a frightening dream and has asked her to pour libations on Agamemnon’s tomb. The dream omen echoes Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, in which Clytemnestra dreamed of a snake suckling her breast; in this play, she sees Agamemnon’s wooden scepter (symbolically, his royal line) sprouting a living branch. Electra is hopeful, and Chrysothemis agrees to throw away Clytemnestra’s offerings and offer instead locks of her and her sister’s hair.
The Argive women of the Chorus respond to the news about the dream with an excited song. Agamemnon, they vow, will hear their prayers and an Erinys (or avenging Fury) will come “with many feet and hands,” a prediction that will come true in the form of Orestes and Pylades, who have already appeared onstage in the prologue. The Chorus explain that the troubles in Agamemnon’s family began when his grandfather Pelops won his bride by cheating in a chariot race, then threw the charioteer who knew about the plot into the sea. They understand the cause of all this trouble to be aeikeia, “uncivilized behavior” or savagery, which will manifest itself in the next generation as well, when Orestes and Pylades will ambush Clytemnestra, with Electra cheering them on, and then, without a pause for reflection or pity, lure Aegisthus to his death.
Clytemnestra now enters and confronts Electra, her harsh behavior making clear that everything Electra has said about her is true. Because of the frightening dream, Clytemnestra has come to offer sacrifice to Apollo, asking him to protect her household and the wealth that they enjoy. But the audience already knows that the god will not receive her prayer, because he has, through his oracle in Delphi, persuaded Orestes to return to Argos. Clytemnestra, however, believes that the god has answered her prayer when Orestes’ old tutor arrives, pretending to be a messenger from a friend in Phocis, to announce that Orestes was killed in a chariot race. In a thrilling messenger speech, he describes the racing accident vividly and in horrific detail. Unlike Aeschylus’ Clytemnestra, who was sad to learn of her son’s death, this Clytemnestra is more relieved than sorry. Electra, however, believes she has lost her best hope for revenge; in her despair she refuses to believe Chrysothemis when she returns from Agamemnon’s tomb and reports that she had seen there, among the offerings left by kin, a lock of Orestes’ hair. Now she asks the passive Chrysothemis to help her kill Aegisthus, but she of course refuses. During a pause in the action, the Chorus wonder why, when birds care for their children, no parent has come to help Electra in her pious search for justice.
Just at this point, two “strangers” arrive with an urn that supposedly contains Orestes’ ashes. Electra mourns her brother with the sorrow that Clytemnestra was unable to express for her own child. Once Orestes realizes that this grieving woman is his sister, and understands what she has suffered, he lets her know that he is alive and has returned. The excitement of the reunion of brother and sister (a high point also of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers and Euripides’ Electra) is in this play made more tense by Orestes’ need for secre
cy, especially after Orestes’ old slave comes out of the palace to remind the siblings of the danger they are in. As Orestes and Pylades enter the house, Electra prays to Apollo to help them execute their plan; she knows that without that god’s help, the plot can never succeed. Apollo has imperceptibly made that success possible: Aegisthus is away from home, while Clytemnestra is taken off guard by the story of Orestes’ death and does not hear Electra’s cries of joy when she recognizes Orestes.
The Chorus see that Orestes is the promised “avenger of the dead…coming with devious feet into the house” and that the prediction of an Erinys arriving “with many feet and many hands” has been fulfilled. As the gruesome killing of Clytemnestra takes place offstage, Electra urges the killers on: “If you can, hit her twice as hard!” Her ardor has heroic models, both positive and negative: like Sophocles’ Antigone, she never doubts that she is right to do as she does; but like the rage-blind Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, she expresses no remorse and has no pity for her enemies. Her years of servitude to her father’s murderers have, it seems, taken a toll on her humanity, but she nonetheless stands on the side of divine justice, as decreed by Apollo.
Orestes reenters from the palace, proclaiming “All’s well inside the house. Apollo’s prophecy was true!” and assuring his sister that her mother’s pride will never again dishonor her. But no sooner has he spoken than Aegisthus appears, just too late to rescue Clytemnestra (another case in which perfect timing suggests divine aid). Electra now takes a more active part in the plot, deceiving Aegisthus into thinking that his wife is inside mourning over Orestes’ ashes. Aegisthus is elated; at long last he will be able to rule Argos without fear of resentment or rebellion. Electra craftily concurs: “I’ve learned reason, and to serve the powerful.” The doors of the palace open to reveal a covered body; Aegisthus supposes it to be Orestes, until he lifts the covering. Once he understands that Orestes has returned, he asks to say a few words, but Electra will not allow it. Aegisthus asks: “So it’s inevitable; this house must see the woes of Pelops’ family, now and to come?” The question is never answered.
The Greek Plays Page 40
