The Greek Plays

by The Greek Plays- Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles

  has brought terrible pain

  on your house.

  DIONYSUS: Yes, since I suffered such terrible pain at your hands:

  the Thebans were giving no honor to me and my name.

  AGAVE: Goodbye, Father.

  CAD.: Goodbye to you also, poor daughter.

  1380

  But there is nothing good about your future.

  AGAVE: Take me away, help me and guide me,

  to my poor sisters, companions in exile.

  May I come to a place

  where polluted Cithaeron will never see me

  and my eyes will never see that dreadful mountain,

  and where no thyrsus will bring back the memory.

  Those things are for other maenads, not for me.

  (Agave and Cadmus leave the stage, in different directions. Dionysus exits above, carried upward by the mēchanē)

  CHORUS: Spirits divine take many shapes, and many

  are the unexpected actions of the gods.

  1390

  Our predictions do not come to pass;

  the god finds a way for what we don’t expect.

  This is what has happened here today.

  * * *

  *1 After Zeus impregnated Semele, princess of Thebes, daughter of Cadmus, she was persuaded by Hera, Zeus’ jealous wife, to ask to see him in his true form, as a god, armed with his thunderbolts. The sight killed her, but Zeus took the unborn child, Dionysus, and sewed him up in his thigh until it was time for him to be born.

  *2 Stream and river in center of Thebes. Dirce, wife of Lycus, was killed by her great-nephews by being tied to the horns of a bull and dragged apart, as punishment for having been unkind to their mother, Antiope. Dirce had been a devoted worshipper of Dionysus, and he rewarded her loyalty by making a spring well up in the location of her death.

  *3 The place names mark a journey from the more distant East, through Asia Minor, to the Greek-speaking cities of Ionia (in modern Turkey), and finally to Greece itself. Phrygia was in modern Turkey; Bactria overlapped with modern Afghanistan.

  *4 Dionysus, more than other gods, has to demonstrate his divinity, since his mother was mortal.

  *5 The traditional dress of maenads, worshippers of Dionysus, often mentioned in this play. The “thyrsus” is a stick of giant fennel, usually wound round with ivy, carried by worshippers of the god.

  *6 “Semele” has three syllables, with a long “e” at the end.

  *7 There is an implication here that Dionysus’ rites are like a mystery religion; the city has refused to be initiated into the cult.

  *8 Pentheus is the son of Cadmus’ daughter, Agave. No explanation is given for Cadmus’ abdication, beyond that he is old and feeble.

  *9 Rhea is identified in Roman mythology with Cybele, the Great Mother (Magna Mater), a mother goddess associated with an ecstatic cult, originating in the east, that involved wine, dancing, and drumming.

  *10 Cithaeron is the mountain above Thebes.

  *11 The meter of this passage in the original is ionics a minore, a rhythm associated with Dionysiac cult hymns.

  *12 In Lydia.

  *13 I use this phrase to translate Bromios, a cult title of Dionysus that connotes a loud, manic noise used of drums, thunder, whinnying horses, crackling fires, or earthquakes. The title was associated with the thunder at the god’s birth.

  *14 Another reference to Cybele, the Great Mother, whose cult was similar to that of Dionysus and often associated with it.

  *15 Cult associated Dionysus closely with the bull and the snake.

  *16 Again, the wand is the thyrsus, made from a fennel stalk, used by worshippers of Dionysus.

  *17 The Spirit Boys (Kouretes) were deities appointed by Rhea, mother of Zeus, to watch over the baby. Their name comes from the word kouros (or koros), meaning “boy.”

  *18 Rhea gave birth to Zeus in a secret cave of the nymphs, on the island of Crete, to avoid having his father, Cronos, find him and eat him. The priests of Rhea used rhythmic drumming, in rituals closely associated with those of Cybele (with whom Rhea is sometimes identified).

  *19 The passage refers to a number of instruments closely associated with Bacchic cult, including the kettle drum and the flute. The “triple-turban” is obscure: it may refer to some kind of exotic hat.

  *20 The Goat Men are satyrs, part man, part goat, with huge phalluses.

  *21 In classical Athens, Dionysus was worshipped every year, but in other cities the rituals may have been biennial.

  *22 Maenads supposedly hunted animals with their bare hands and ate them raw.

  *23 The god’s fertility makes the earth flow with all liquids, not only wine but also milk and honey.

  *24 Apparently the maenads are using golden shakers or castanets to accompany their drumbeat. The gold comes from the river Pactolus, in Lydia (in modern Turkey), which lay beneath the gold mines of Mount Tmolus and carried electrum (an amalgam of gold and silver) in its waters (the source of the famous Lydian wealth).

  *25 The numbering in Dodds’s text leaves only one line between 160 and 165, and two between 165 and 170. I have spaced the lines out to avoid confusion.

  *26 Cadmus originated from the Phoenician city of Sidon (in modern Lebanon). After his sister Europa was abducted, he was sent by his father to look for her. In the course of his wanderings, an oracle at Delphi told him to abandon the quest and instead to follow a special cow and build a city where she first lay down. The cow led Cadmus to Boeotia (“cow country”), where he founded the city of Thebes.

  *27 It is important for all the followers of Dionysus to be equal before him: hence, the royal family should not claim the special privilege of riding in a chariot, as Cadmus lazily hopes they can do.

  *28 The verb for “nanny” in the original implies an old male slave employed to take care of a young boy.

  *29 Echion was one of the Spartoi, the sons of the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus in founding Thebes. When Cadmus, as an exile from Phoenicia, first arrived at the site of Thebes, he killed a dragon and was instructed by Athena to sow its teeth in the ground. They sprang up as armed men, who began killing each other. The five who survived became the first lords of the new city; one of them, Echion, married Cadmus’ daughter Agave and was the father of Pentheus. It is not clear how he died.

  *30 The original is krateres, a vessel used to mix up a large quantity of wine and water.

  *31 Aphrodite is the goddess associated with sex.

  *32 Actaeon, a hunter, inadvertently saw Artemis bathing naked in the woods, and she took revenge by making his own dogs tear him apart and eat him. Ino and Autonoë are the sisters of Agave, mother of Pentheus. These lines may be an addition by a later commentator, noting the names of the women. Note that the name Agave has three syllables, and Autonoë has four; also note that the name Autonoë suggests self-will.

  *33 The Chorus are of course non-Greeks, from Asia Minor; Greeks are strangers to them.

  *34 Demeter is the goddess associated with the harvest.

  *35 There may be a line missing after 293.

  *36 There is a series of puns on the original (slightly echoed here by the “pawn…spawn” and “pledge…leg” wordplay), on the Greek words for “part,” “thigh,” and “hostage”/“pledge.” The implication is that the myth is based on an etymological mistake, as well as a mistake about the relative power of male and female divinities.

  *37 God of war.

  *38 Location of the most famous Greek oracle, sacred to Apollo, and supposedly the center of the world.

  *39 Apollo, to whom Tiresias, as a prophet, owes his primary allegiance.

  *40 Augurs divined the future by observing the flight of birds.

  *41 There is a pun in the original on Pentheus and penthos, “sorrow.”

  *42 The meter is again ionics, the rhythm associated with Dionysiac song.

  *43 Both Cyprus and Paphos are sacred to Aphrodite, goddess of sex. The part about “make fruitful without rain” is puzzling: it may sugges
t an idea that the Nile current is strong enough to fertilize Paphos at a distance, by pushing its rich mud onto the island’s shores; or else that the river’s waters pass under the sea, to well up in the island’s springs (a belief attested in twentieth-century Cypriot natives: see Dodds, p. 125).

  *44 Pieria is where the spring of poetic inspiration was located.

  *45 Athenian elite women spent most of their time indoors and did not get suntanned; white skin is therefore closely associated with being ladylike.

  *46 I have tried to reproduce the original syntax here, since there is an important ambiguity. The stranger can be heard as saying that he himself will not boast about his ancestry, and presumably Pentheus takes it that way. But on another level, Dionysus is giving an insidious reproach to Pentheus for boasting about his successful hunt.

  *47 Many ritual practices in Greek religion were to be kept secret from all but the initiate, most famously the Eleusinian Mysteries.

  *48 The “Easterners” or “foreigners” are literally the “non-Greeks,” the barbaroi.

  *49 The language of this exchange closely recalls contemporary debates about the new forms of “wisdom” taught by the new “wisdom-teachers,” or sophists, who were hired by Athenian fathers, at a price, to educate their adolescent sons.

  *50 Another pun on the name Pentheus, connoting penthos, “pain.”

  *51 I.e. as slaves; or else they will be kept in Pentheus’ own household, also as domestic slaves.

  *52 Again (as at lines 64ff. and 370ff.) ionics a minore, the Dionysiac rhythm.

  *53 On Dirce, see note to line 5.

  *54 The word “dithyramb” was the name for a type of poetic choral performance associated with Dionysus. Ancient etymologists explained the title as coming from dis, “twice,” and thyra, “gate”: Dionysus came twice from the gates of life, since he was first in the womb of Semele, and then in the thigh of Zeus.

  *55 See note to line 526.

  *56 Nysa was the mythical mountain where the young Dionysus was nursed by the nymphs. The Corycian Cave, on Mount Parnassus, was haunted by other nymphs; the Athenian worship of Dionysus was held on this mountain in the wintertime.

  *57 Orpheus, son of Apollo by one of the Muses, played the lyre so beautifully that even the animals and plants and stones were enchanted. Mount Olympus was the home of the Twelve Gods, who include Dionysus.

  *58 Pieria is in central Macedonia; in mythology it is associated with Orpheus and the Muses (and hence, with the music and song that also play an essential part in Dionysiac worship).

  *59 These rivers (Axius and Lydias) are in Macedonia. There may be an implied compliment to Euripides’ hosts, since the poet spent his last years at the royal court of Macedonia.

  *60 During this earthquake scene (lines 576–603), the Chorus and the god are both singing in lyric meters, not speaking.

  *61 The lines are divided between different individual members of the Chorus.

  *62 The lyric section ends here. The meter used in lines 604–41 is trochaic trimeter, suggesting the excited tone of the section; it may have been accompanied by dancing or marching by the Chorus.

  *63 The word for “water” is here Achelous, literally the name of a river—a poetic usage.

  *64 Or “light”: the manuscripts read “light” (phos), while the word for “phantom” is an emendation.

  *65 The meter shifts back to iambic trimester here.

  *66 There seems to be a line missing here, in which Pentheus says something derogatory about wine; I have supplied this sentence, which is not in the text, to suggest the kind of thing he would have said.

  *67 The costume is echoed by contemporary vase painting of maenads, which usually shows them with hair let down loose. Respectable women would keep their hair braided up.

  *68 This is a village in the foothills of Cithaeron. In the original, another village, Hysiae, is also mentioned.

  *69 There is again a pun in the original on the name Pentheus with penthos, “pain.”

  *70 Nets were commonly used in hunting, to trap the animal before going in for the kill.

  *71 The original phrase is proverbial, suggesting, more literally, “A thing of beauty is dear forever.”

  *72 The word for “competition,” agōn, implies struggle; it was also used for the competitions between the tragic playwrights at the City Dionysia.

  *73 Line 1028 is skipped because it is an interpolated line, borrowed from the Medea (54) and inserted here by a later commentator. It runs, “The masters’ fortunes [affect] good slaves.”

  *74 The meter of the Chorus becomes lyrical, a mark of their excitement. The Messenger continues to speak in iambics, the normal dialogue meter.

  *75 The bracketed phrase represents an incomplete line; after 1036, a line seems to be missing.

  *76 A brief song in an excitable lyric meter, dochmiacs.

  *77 Lyrics end here, and the Chorus speak in iambics.

  *78 The dialogue in the first part of this scene, until line 1200, is in lyric meter and was presumably accompanied by dancing—a mark of its intense emotional pitch.

  *79 The text in these lines is doubtful.

  *80 The meter now reverts to iambics, the normal dialogue meter.

  *81 The people of Thessaly commonly used javelins for hunting.

  *82 He uses the word penthos for “pain,” suggestive of Pentheus’ name.

  *83 She wishes he would fight animals, in the natural way of the hunter, rather than only “fighting” gods.

  *84 Another reference to the men born from the dragon’s teeth after the founding of Thebes (see note to line 213).

  *85 There is an extensive missing section here, at least fifty lines, because a whole page was lost from an early copy of the text. The missing part apparently included Agave desperately begging to bury the body. Cadmus consented; Agave accused herself (as the ancient commentator tells us) and embraced each limb in turn, lamenting over it. Then the god Dionysus appeared from above the palace (on the pulley, the mēchanē) in his true form, no longer as the Stranger. The mask and costume of the actor may have changed. Dionysus announced the establishment of his cult at Thebes, which had been his purpose in coming to the city, as he announces in the Prologue. He then blamed the Thebans in general for rejecting him. He then turned to predict the fate of each individual affected by his cult. Agave and her sisters, he said, would have to leave Thebes. When our preserved text resumes, he is delivering a strange prophecy to Cadmus.

  *86 The prophecy was, as Dodds notes, as puzzling to ancient mythologers as to modern readers. The problem is twofold: first, that it does not seem to fit other mythological accounts of the life of Cadmus; and second, that it seems deeply unfair that Cadmus—who has, one might think, done everything right by Dionysus—should be punished in this way. The story seems to be based on Theban legends and ritual practices current at the time of Euripides; in Thebes, Harmonia was once a central household goddess, who seems to have taken snake form.

  *87 There was an ancient tradition, mentioned in Herodotus (9.42–43), that there was an oracle about an army that would come to Greece, sack Delphi, and then be destroyed.

  *88 Harmonia, Cadmus’ wife, is the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite; hence Ares’ special favor toward the couple.

  *89 River of pain in the Underworld.

  *90 The meter shifts to anapests, a marching meter often used when characters enter or—as here—prepare to leave the stage.

  *91 The women in a Greek house lived in separate quarters from the men.

  *92 There seems to be a line missing here; “go” is supplied speculatively. Aristaeus is the husband of Autonoë, Agave’s sister; perhaps Agave is told to go and join him in some foreign land.

  APPENDICES

  APPENDIX A

  “SAVING THE CITY”: TRAGEDY IN ITS CIVIC CONTEXT

  Daniel Mendelsohn

  At the climax of Aristophanes’ comedy Frogs, a tartly affectionate sendup of Greek tragedy that premiered in 405 B.C., Dionysu
s, the god of wine and theater, is forced to judge a literary contest between two dead playwrights. Earlier in the play, the god had descended to the Underworld in order to retrieve his favorite tragedian, Euripides, who’d died the previous year; without him, Dionysus grumpily asserts, the theatrical scene has grown rather dreary. But once he arrives in the land of the dead, he finds himself thrust into a violent literary quarrel: at the table of Pluto, god of the dead, the newcomer Euripides has claimed the seat of Best Tragic Poet—a place long held by the revered Aeschylus, author of the Oresteia, who’s been dead for fifty years. A series of competitions ensues, during which excerpts of the two poets’ works are rather fancifully compared and evaluated—scenes replete with the kind of in-jokes still beloved of theater lovers. (At one point, lines from various plays by the occasionally bombastic Aeschylus are “weighed” against verses by the occasionally glib Euripides: Aeschylus wins, because his diction is “heavier.”) None of these contests is decisive, however, and so Dionysus establishes a final criterion for the title of Best Tragic Poet. The winner, he asserts, must be the one who offers to the city the most useful advice—the one whose work can “save the city.”

  Today, the idea that a work written for the theater could “save” a nation—for this was what Aristophanes’ word polis, “city,” really meant: Athens, for the Athenians, was their country—seems odd, even as a joke. For us, theater and politics are two distinct realms. We think of theater as a form of entertainment, and of theatergoing as a leisure-time activity, something cordoned off from our workaday lives and even more from public life and political action. In the contemporary theatrical landscape, overtly political dramas that seize the public’s imagination and garner critical acclaim (Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, say, with its thinly veiled parable about McCarthyism, or Tony Kushner’s AIDS epic Angels in America) are the exception rather than the rule; we rarely expect even the most trenchant of such works to have any effect on national policy or politics (let alone to “save the city”). The segregation of theater from civic concerns is, of course, only more pronounced in the case of plays that eschew overtly political subjects for psychological or familial or social themes—which is to say, most of the “serious” drama that we see. The lessons that A Streetcar Named Desire has to teach about beauty and vulnerability and madness are lessons we learn as private people, not as voters.