Looking at Medea Read online

  And though I’ve been ill-used, I shall keep quiet.

  Those who are stronger than I am have beaten me.

  314–15

  Her precarious position further emerges from two supplication scenes. Medea assumes the role of suppliant first towards Creon (324–51) – a ‘suppliant-enemy’ confrontation, in which Medea pleads with Creon to delay her exile – and then towards Aegeus (709–13) – a ‘suppliant-rescuer’ scene, in which she extracts Aegeus’ oath of protection.

  According to Edith Hall, the concept of ethnic ‘otherness’ tends to be embodied in the monstrous or the supernatural.4 Thus Medea’s supernatural qualities and her status as a sorceress further demonstrate her wildness and ethnic otherness. This emerges from Jason’s final utterance:

  There was no woman ever in the whole of Greece

  who could have done such things, and yet I did not marry any Greek.

  I married you. I married hatred, spite, destruction,

  not a woman but a lioness unleashed

  and more inhuman than the sea-snakes circling Scylla.

  1339–43

  Her supernatural qualities, which are downplayed in the first part of the play, are highlighted at the end by means of her overpowering presence (especially in 1317–22). Medea turns herself from victim to agent, punishes Jason for breaking his sacred oath to her through an appalling retribution of tragic justice and disappears upward and out of sight.5

  The themes of exile and otherness similarly pervade the fragmentarily-preserved Philoctetes. The play aroused literary interest towards the end of the first century ad, when a treatise on the Philoctetes tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides was written by the critic Dio of Prusa (Oration 52). Dio also provides a paraphrase of the prologue-speech and the ensuing scene of Euripides’ Philoctetes (Oration 59.2–11).

  As in Sophocles’ extant Philoctetes, the dramatic setting is in Lemnos and the façade of the stage-building represents Philoctetes’ cave-dwelling. Odysseus delivers the expository prologue revealing that he has come transformed by goddess Athena to recover Philoctetes, following the prophecy that Heracles’ invincible bow (now owned by Philoctetes) will bring down Troy (frr. 787–89, 789a Kannicht; henceforth abbreviated as K.). He then encounters the crippled and ragged Philoctetes and gains his sympathy by pretending that, like Philoctetes himself, he is an outcast from the Greeks (frr. 789d, 790, 790a K.). In the parodos the Chorus of Lemnian men apologizes for neglecting Philoctetes over a long period of time (fr. 789c K.), while (presumably in the first episode) Euripides introduces a shepherd, Actor, the sole Lemnian to support the tormented hero – an innovation in the treatment of the legend (Dio of Prusa Oration 52.8, Hyginus Fabula 102.2).

  Probably in the second episode a Trojan embassy arrives, attempting to recruit Philoctetes and his bow through bribery. Their representative becomes involved in a formal debate with Odysseus, who appeals to Philoctetes’ patriotism by urging him to resist the barbarians (frr. 794–97 K.). After the departure of the Trojans the hero is likely to have suffered a seizure of pain from his wound (for which, see fr. 792 K.), which arouses the Chorus’ pity (fr. 792a K.). The evidence for subsequent events is meagre. Dio refers to the entry of Diomedes (Oration 52.14), presumably to assist Odysseus in carrying out his mission, and the fragmentary evidence is suggestive of Odysseus’ effort to persuade Philoctetes to come to Troy (frr. 798, 799, 799a K). According to the papyrus-hypothesis of the play (Papyri Oxyrhynchi 2455, fr. 17.21), Philoctetes was finally compelled to accompany Odysseus and Diomedes on board ship, which suggests that he was reluctant to follow them.6

  As with Medea, Philoctetes’ otherness is extensively defined through his exile. The hypothesis (P. Oxy. 2455, fr. 17.3–8) attests that he was bitten by a viper and in his extremity of pain was abandoned by the Greeks on Lemnos, where he lived in misery for ten years, arousing pity in those who encountered him. No Lemnian ever approached or showed any concern for him, and no one ever received him in his house or tended his wound, because it was intolerable (Dio of Prusa Oration 52.8). Unlike the Chorus of Medea, which is initially sympathetic towards the tragic heroine, the indifference of the Lemnian Chorus towards Philoctetes’ plight is a further indicator of the hero’s physical isolation in the island of his exile.

  Like Medea, Philoctetes underlines the injustice and humiliation he has suffered from his companions (fr. 789d.18–19 K.), which underscores his exclusion from and incompatibility with his social context. Accordingly, he points out that ‘when a man does badly, friends keep out of his way’ (fr. 799a K.). At the same time, he is sympathetic towards the contrived story told by the disguised Odysseus – believing him to be deprived of friends and resources, Philoctetes regards Odysseus as one of his own kind (fr. 789d.48–55 K.). Philoctetes’ status as a humiliated and oppressed outcast is reinforced by the ending, where he is reported to have been compelled by the Greeks to follow them to Troy.

  Philoctetes’ otherness is indicated visually through his disability and dreadful appearance, which is vividly described by Odysseus (fr. 789d.1–5 K.). His plight is obvious, as he walks with difficulty and in pain. He is physically deformed, and his appearance is appalling due to his affliction. His attire is unnatural, as he is wearing hides of wild beasts, which are further suggestive of his wildness and remoteness. His wretchedness and poverty (see fr. 790a K.: ‘There is no pale silver in the cave, stranger’) were so effectively staged as to be parodied by Aristophanes in Acharnians (423–24).

  The manner in which Philoctetes first addresses Odysseus is abrupt and arises from his plight and alienation from the community (fr. 789d.6–12 K.). Philoctetes lives in grim conditions, and his cave provides a miserable sight full of bandages and tokens of his affliction (frr. 789d.48–55, 790 K.). The agony of his wound is portrayed in strong language in a line commended by Aristotle (Poetics XXII 1458b.19–24) as ingenious: ‘An ulcer, which feasts on my foot’s flesh’ (fr. 792 K.). Accordingly, in a powerful lyric fragment, the members of the Chorus pray not to face the misfortune which Philoctetes endures, thus stressing the hero’s misery and isolation even further:

  Life, enough! Make an end

  before any mishap

  comes to my property and my own self here.

  fr. 792a K.

  In Dictys Euripides reiterates the theme of exile through the presentation of Danaë’s predicament. Danaë, daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, was impregnated by Zeus and gave birth to Perseus. Upon finding out about the child, Acrisius enclosed her and baby Perseus in a chest, which he cast adrift. The chest reached the coast of Seriphos, where it was fished up by a fisherman named Dictys, who took Danaë and Perseus under his protection, treating them as his own family. When Perseus grew to manhood, Polydectes, king of Seriphos, enamoured of Danaë, asked Perseus to bring him the Gorgon’s head, so that, in his absence, he might win Danaë. Helped by Hermes and Athena, Perseus manages to decapitate the Gorgon and returns to Seriphos to find his mother and Dictys as suppliants, trying to escape from Polydectes’ violence. Perseus asks Polydectes to gather his friends in a feast to see the Gorgon’s head and, consequently, turns them to stone.

  A rough account of the supplication of Danaë and Dictys and their rescue by Perseus is provided in the Bibliotheca of Ps.Apollodorus (2.4.3) and in Theon’s scholium on the Twelfth Pythian of Pindar (P. Oxy. 2536.1–12). The scene is also shown on an Apulian vase-painting dated to 370–360 BC.7 In the centre of the representation is the altar of Poseidon (complete with cult-statue), where Danaë and the white-haired Dictys have sought refuge. On the left, Polydectes, holding a sceptre in his right hand and a sword in his left, is looking at them. All three characters are dressed in stage-costumes. On the right, Perseus, arriving at Seriphos and carrying the pouch with the Gorgon’s head, is depicted in heroic nudity. Danaë and Dictys are looking at the hero with surprise, hope and relief, and Dictys is making a ‘speaking’ gesture towards him. This vase-painting is likely to have been inspired by a revival of Dictys i
n South Italy and presumably aimed to offer its viewers a recollection of the main themes of the play, such as the dramatic tension of the supplication scene, Polydectes’ violence and the crucial moment of Perseus’ return.

  According to the aforementioned testimonies and the most substantial fragments, the plot structure of Dictys seems to have been constructed upon the patterns of ‘supplication-return-rescue-revenge’, which were later similarly represented in the first part of Euripides’ Heracles (1–814). The island of Seriphos is clearly defined as a dramatic locale – probably in the first line of the expository prologue (fr. 330b K.).

  Like Medea and Philoctetes, Danaë and her son Perseus are in exile and thus in a precarious position. Perseus has been sent by Polydectes to accomplish the supposedly impossible task of decapitating the Gorgon, while Danaë resists the king’s amorous passion. Danaë’s suffering emerges from the consolation addressed by Dictys to the lamenting mother, who, in view of his long absence, regards Perseus as dead:

  Do you think that Hades is concerned at all for your laments,

  and will send your son back up if you will go on grieving?

  Stop! You’d feel easier if you looked at the troubles of those near at hand,

  if you’d be willing to consider

  how many of mankind have been exhausted by struggling with bonds,

  how many grow old bereft of children,

  and those who are nothing after ruling in the greatest prosperity:

  these are the things you should contemplate.

  fr. 332 K.

  This fragment reproduces typical themes of consolatory speeches, such as the futility of lament and examples of other people’s suffering, urging the addressee to consider the adversities of human life and the necessity to bear them. These lines might have been part of a wider discourse between the two suppliants on how to act under these circumstances and bear their misfortune, which could be paralleled in the exchange between Amphitryon and Megara in Heracles 60–106, 275–347. Accordingly, Danaë’s reluctance to raise herself up is suggestive of her psychological weariness and frustration (fr. 342 K.: ‘Why make me stand up, old man, when I have forgotten my miseries?’)

  Danaë is a victim of Polydectes’ oppression. She is doubly marginal, since her otherness and, in turn, her vulnerability arise not only from her exile, but (as with Medea) from her gender as well. She is a victim of male violence, being constrained by Polydectes to succumb to his intentions, according to the accounts of both Theon (P. Oxy. 2536.5–6: ‘being pressed hard by Polydectes’) and Ps.Apollodorus (2.4.3: ‘because of Polydectes’ violence’). To evade his pressure, she resorts to supplication along with her protector Dictys.

  As in Medea, the fragments of Dictys are suggestive of a ‘suppliant-enemy’ confrontation. Unlike Creon in Medea, Polydectes does not yield to the suppliants’ cause. This ‘suppliant-enemy’ encounter seems to have taken the form of an agon between Dictys and Polydectes, intensifying the power- gap and dramatic tension, which is a practice followed by Euripides in the debates within the supplication scenes of Heraclidae (134–287), Andromache (147–273) and Heracles (140–251). This scene is clearly signposted as a formal debate (fr. 334.3 K.: ‘contest of words’) and it is probably Polydectes who declares that, though it is beneath his dignity to argue with a person of lower status, he cannot tolerate being offended by a social inferior, i.e. the fisherman Dictys (fr. 334 K.). Polydectes’ loquacity is criticized (fr. 335 K.), while the Chorus-leader dissuades Dictys from arguing with the king (fr. 337 K.). Despite the suppliants’ disadvantaged status, it is possibly Dictys who declares his faith in the power of justice (fr. 343 K.), which he regards as a prerequisite of nobility (fr. 336 K.). Dictys is a fisherman, thus an ‘ordinary’ man, who, like Actor, his equivalent in Philoctetes, supports the character representing the ‘other’. He also belongs to a group of elderly, morally assertive Euripidean characters including Peleus (in Andromache 547–765) and Amphitryon (in Heracles 170–326).

  The satyr-play Theristae (‘Reapers’) may have been lost as early as the fourth century BC, to judge from the complete absence of quotations and evidence for its theme. Its title suggests that it comprised a Chorus of harvesters. The most famous myth about reapers is that of Lityerses (attested in the scholium on Theocritus 10.41–42 Wendel), who killed passers-by after forcing them to compete with him in a reaping contest, and who was finally overpowered by Heracles. At the same time, it has been assumed that Theristae may have been an alternative title of the satyr-play Syleus, in which the name-character forced people to dig up his vines before killing them. It should be noted, however, that theristae in Greek refers to harvesters of wheat, corn or grain, not of the vine, which makes Lityerses’ story a likelier theme for this play than the legend of Syleus. Satyr-plays tend to be only loosely associated with the tragedies of the same production, even in connected Aeschylean tetralogies. Considering the lack of evidence, this satyr-play may be only generally linked with the three preceding tragedies through the shared theme of otherness, which is also a distinctive feature of satyrs. In view of their very nature as part man and part beast, as well as of their boorish and unrestrained behaviour, satyrs were regarded as antiparagons in relation to humankind and thus as manifestations of the ‘other’.8

  The dominant notions of exile and otherness permeating this tetralogy should be explored within the Athenian sociopolitical framework of mid-fifth century BC. As mentioned at the outset, the definition of ‘self’ and ‘other’ relies on the distinction between the Athenian male citizen and socially marginalized groups, such as women, slaves, foreigners and disabled people. The characters representing the ‘other’ in all three of our tragedies belong to this disempowered group and are all facing male political power. They are excluded, oppressed and vulnerable.

  The tension between the Athenian ‘self’ and the ‘other’ was enhanced after the victory in the Persian Wars, which produced the idea of a collective Panhellenic identity and the notion of non-Greeks as the ‘other’, thus engendering the polarization of Greek and barbarian. This polarizing ideology underpinned Athenian supremacy within the context of the Delian League, which was subsequently transformed into the Athenian Empire. Moreover, Pericles’ citizenship law of 451/450 BC restricted Athenian citizenship to men whose parents were both Athenians (see [Aristotle] Constitution of Athens 26.4, Plutarch Pericles 37.3), thus creating a limited privileged citizen-body, which corresponded to the self-image of the Athenians as rulers of an empire.

  The Athenians drew a tight line around their civic membership, closing their descent-group to outsiders and posing a clear boundary between citizens and non-citizens, which is suggestive of an increasing development of Athenian identity. Hence, this construction of Athenian ideology against a series of ‘others’ assumed a clearly political complexion. It may also provide an insight into the making of civic identity and the development of Athenian self-consciousness.9 Considering that the mythical material of these tragedies belongs to the Heroic Age, the political allusions introduced by Euripides seem to involve oblique anachronistic references to the ideology and values of Classical Athens.

  The politically nuanced notion of otherness corresponds to the similarly political resonances carried by these plays, which were performed on the cusp of the Peloponnesian War. In the third stasimon of Medea (esp. 824–45) Athens is praised as the traditional protector of suppliants and as a sanctuary for victims of oppression. The Athenian self-image is represented through harmonious music, moderation and sophia (wisdom), as opposed to the Corinthian disorder displayed before the Aegeus-episode.

  Likewise, Philoctetes is described as a ‘political’ play par excellence by Dio of Prusa (Oration 52.11, 52.14). In more specific terms, the figure of Odysseus seems to represent the popular Athenian politician of that era, who is concerned for common welfare, as well as for his own success and reputation (frr. 787–89 K., Dio of Prusa Oration 59.1–2). He is a man of affairs, resourceful and eloquent, reproduc
ing the politically charged, polarized stereotype of Greeks and barbarians in his rhetorical contest with the Trojan representative (fr. 796 K.).

  Odysseus’ quest for political action within the context of a highly competitive public life (frr. 787–88 K.) stands in sharp contrast to Philoctetes’ resigned life in Lemnos. The latter behaves like a hermit, driving the intruders away (fr. 789d.6–12 K.), and shows no interest at all in leaving his exile, to judge from his final reluctance to follow the Greeks. Accordingly, it is evidently Odysseus who seems to be making a call for action as against quietism addressed to Philoctetes, by arguing that a citizen’s prosperity is dependent on the city’s welfare (fr. 798 K.). This idea was embedded in contemporary political thought and is consistent with Pericles’ emphasis on the interrelation between state and individual (Thucydides 2.60.2–3), as well as with his disparagement of political apathy during the second year of the Peloponnesian War (2.40.2, 2.63.2). It should be noted in passing that the polarity between active and quiet life intensified throughout the course of the War and its consequent sociopolitical crisis and was later represented in Ion (595–606, 625–32) and Antiope (frr. 183–202, 219–20 K.).

  Similarly, Dictys contains a fragment in which an unsympathetic character (perhaps Polydectes) is disparaged for showing contempt for his own native land (fr. 347 K.). Such a reproach would have strongly appealed to the civic sensitivity of the Athenian audience, especially in the period of stress at the outbreak of the War.10 All these political allusions are thus further suggestive of the shaping of a civic conduct and of the construction of a robust civic identity demonstrating the self-image of Athens as an imperial power. In turn, these references may shed light on the process leading to the demarcation of the Athenian ‘self’ from the ‘other’ as a means of determining Athenian self-consciousness.

  The political and cultural debate on otherness was given a sophistic spin in the second half of the fifth century BC, as the inferiority of the ‘other’ was put into question on the basis of the opposition between nature (physis) and convention (nomos). In a famous papyrus fragment Antiphon the sophist argues in favour of the unity of mankind, asserting that the human race is fundamentally akin and expressing his belief in universal, ‘natural’ laws of human behaviour (DK 87B44). By undervaluing the significance of cultural differences between Greeks and foreigners and leaving no room for assertions of cultural superiority, he demonstrates the natural similarity of all human beings. Likewise, Hippias of Elis distinguished nature from convention, arguing in favour of the natural kinship of individuals wrongly divided by convention and pointing out that ‘nomos, tyrant of mankind, violates nature in many ways’ (Plato Protagoras 337c–d). Further passages deriving especially from orators some decades later reveal that discriminations against the ‘other’ were often counteracted by the position that it was shameful and insensitive to exercise one’s power in order to triumph over the weak.11 Euripidean drama evidently reflected its contemporary intellectual milieu by challenging the inferiority of socially marginalized groups on the basis of the principle that they are inferior only by convention, but equal by nature, as for instance in Andromache 636–38, Ion 854–56 and Helen 728–31.