Gesthimani Seferiadi
Note: I am indebted to both the members of the organizing committee of the compelling Myth and History Conference and the participants for their insightful comments, which greatly improved my research.
Abstract
In this chapter I discuss the way the end of the play interacts with the authority of ‘history’ with a view to exploring the question of whether the relationship between tragic mythos and ‘history’ is imperative and restrictive, namely whether this is a kind of authority that restricts the poet’s freedom to depart from the conventional rules of the genre.1 I will also take advantage of the opportunity this discussion offers to consider further interpretative issues that are related to the end of the play and have been appealing to traditional criticism, such as the ‘apotheosis dilemma’ and concerns about dramatic unity and characterization. This analysis will allow me to suggest that in the exodus of the play Hercules is being transformed into a kind of deus ex machina or a speaker of aetiology, namely a speaker whose privileged knowledge extends beyond the bounds of the drama. Through this transformation, the exodus successfully necessitates the settlement of a dramatic order and sets up the closure of the play but nonetheless continues to invest in a scheme of irregularity in terms of ritual and gender roles, designed and directed in order to negotiate the conditions under which authority can be imposed.
Introduction
The exodus of Trachiniae (971–1278) is agreed to be one of the most problematic parts of the play and many scholars are inclined to see it as the second part of a diptych tragedy and indeed a part that has a vague association with the events previously presented while it fails to give the impression of an irreversible ending.2 Hence, they tend to consider that this closure disrupts the criteria of connectedness and finality that a play’s closure is expected to meet.3 In brief, connectedness is interrupted because Deianeira, the main character of the play who dominated the scene for almost one thousand lines, is totally forgotten, while finality is disturbed as the play alludes to events that exceed beyond the temporal and causal boundaries of the tragic plot and which, in fact, are events suggesting a happy ending that contradicts the tragic finale. As a result, it is considered that the closure is enforced by the audience’s expectations as conditioned by their knowledge of ‘traditional narrative’ or ‘history’, thereby disproving the audience’s expectations as aroused by the events of the plot and disrupting dramatic unity. It has been noted, for instance, that after line 1114, Hercules “speaks with the authority of history,”4 or that the playwright “yields to the obligation of history.”5 However, as I will argue below, this is a subjection that is well fitted within the causal sequence of the play, and indeed a subjection that simultaneously raises an interesting aspect of authoritarian speech-act.
I will first start by offering, by way of an introduction to the issues of dramatic unity raised in the exodus, an outline of its structure:
1. Lamentation and the νόσος of Hercules are the focus of the introductory part of the exodus (971–1043). The hero, who has already entered the scene carried in a litter without giving an indication of life during the fourth stasimon (964), is gradually recovering his consciousness while the νόσος is repeatedly attacking him.
i.This part starts with an anapaestic exchange between Hyllos, the Old Man and Hercules that meets the arrival of the funeral procession (971–1003).
ii.The exchange is followed by a lamentation song (monody) in which Hercules laments his death (1004–1043). The lyric part is interrupted by two sets of dactylic hexameters, uttered by Hercules, the Old Man and Hyllus (1018–1022; 1031–1040).
2. Then, two lines uttered by the chorus (1044–1045), signal the transition to the final episode of the exodus (1044–1258).
i.These two lines together with another set of two lines also uttered by the chorus (1112–1113, possibly the last words spoken by the chorus), frame Hercules long speech (‘Hercules’ rhesis’: 1046–1111). This is an agonizing address to his son, which moves erratically between his major accomplishments, his shameful and painful downfall and his insatiable desire for revenge.
ii.The second set of two lines uttered by the chorus seals the end of Hercules’ rhesis and marks the transition to a dialogue between him and Hyllus, which I like to call ‘Deianeira’s trial’ (1114–1142). This is a scene of double anagnorisis revealing both Deianeira’s ‘innocence’ and Nessus’ interference. However, it is in fact only this last module of the revelation about Nessus that signals a notable overturn within the final episode as this is the only piece of information that is taken into account by Hercules.
iii.From now on, Hercules develops an insight that allows him, as has been observed, “to speak with the authority of history.” We can call this last part of the final episode ‘Hercules’ deathbed instructions’ (1143–1258).
3. The play closes with a typical anapaestic coda (1259–1278), which functions as a proclamation communicating the final instructions and setting the procession in motion.6
As noted, a significant overturn is indicated in the lines following the anagnorisis of Nessus’ involvement (1143–1145), an overturn which is signalled by the sense of finality that the definitive fulfilment of the oracles entails. After this revelation, Deianeira is completely forgotten and is never again referred to,7 while Hercules’ first words suggest that he now sees his death as a complete reality (1143–1145):
ἰοὺ ἰοὺ δύστηνος, οἴχομαι τάλας·
ὄλωλ’ ὄλωλα, φέγγος οὐκέτ’ ἔστι μοι.
οἴμοι, φρονῶ δὴ ξυμφορᾶς ἵν’ ἕσταμεν. 1145
Ah, ah, I am done for!
I am dead, I am dead, there is no longer light for me!
Ah me, I know now in what a calamity I stand!8 1145
The finality of this consummation is highlighted through a series of present perfect verbs that do not only demonstrate the way the past affects the present but also disclose the operation of Nessus as a variable connecting the past and the present and bringing Hercules and Deianeira together for a common purpose (οἴχομαι; ὄλωλ’ ὄλωλα).9 Indeed, it will turn out that the clue about Nessus’ involvement is also consistent with a second oracle predicting the origin of Hercules’ murderer. And once Hercules realizes this correlation, he understands that Zeus’ prophesy simply indicated the end of his life (1173), just like the chorus inferred earlier (828–830), and complies with his father’s plan since death appears to be the only option left.
Nevertheless, in the final part of the exodus that follows this anagnorisis and introduces Hercules’ future plan to Hyllus (1174–1258), this finality seems to be interrupted, as this part involves events that extend to a future that resides beyond the play’s present and alludes to a continuation of the story. By planning future arrangements that exceed the dramatic time, however, Hercules refers to two different facts of undeniable historical value for the Athenian audience. So, everybody should have understood the procession leading Hercules on the top of the mountain Oeta to be cremated as aetiology for the actual and archaeologically confirmed ritual, during which a bonfire was lighted and dedications were offered.10 It is also very likely that, as Lloyd-Jones has pointed out, the detail of Hercules giving permission for someone else to light the pyre and ensuring ritual purity for Hyllus (1210–1215) referred to the version according to which Poeas, or his son Philoctetes, was the person responsible for this task.11 In any case, this pyre would relate not only to a narrative but also to a practice that was perfectly familiar to the Athenians, belonged to real contemporary life and created a link between the world of the drama and the world of the audience.12 And secondly, the audience could surely infer that Hercules’ request to Hyllus to marry Iole referred to the well-known myth which considered that the intended spouses were the ancestors of the illustrious dynasty of the Heraclidae.13 This was certainly a strong tradition and Pherecydes stretches it that as far as to claim that it was for Hyllus that Hercules asked Iole’s hand.14
I will leave aside for the moment the implications of Hyllus’ enforced marriage to dwell a little longer on the possibility of Hercules’ pyre and his apotheosis, a possibility which has sparked heated debate among scholars and has raised issues concerning dramatic unity and consistency which I am discussing in this part. It has been noted by several scholars that Hyllus’ remark about the undefined future (1270) and the mention of the story of the pyre (200, 436–437, 633–635, 1191–1216) would not only refer to the actual ritual practice on the top of Mt. Oeta but could also direct the audience’s attention towards the possibility of Hercules’ post-mortal deification, despite the fact that nothing is explicitly said anywhere in the play. So, it now looks as if once again, by investing in the scheme of phenomenal and real knowledge, the play directs us (and a mythologically informed audience) to think that the knowledge gained by Hercules and the chorus after the revelation of Nessus’ liability are still partial and that their interpretation of the oracle is not necessarily correct. For in view of Hercules’ future deification,15 the oracle should not be interpreted disjunctively (as a choice between two mutually exclusive possibilities of death or happy life for the rest of time) but conjunctively (as one and the only possibility that accommodates both death and happiness).
However, the debate on whether or not the story of the pyre naturally carried with it thoughts of the apotheosis (and vice versa) is a puzzling deliberation, insofar as our sources on the matter are rather ambiguous.16 Literary and artistic testimonies provide strong evidence that the two narratives were explicitly connected, but unluckily, none of these sources is certainly dated before Trachiniae.17 Therefore, although the audience should have been familiar with both the pyre narrative and the widely known, from at least 600 BC, happy-ending story of Hercules’ apotheosis,18 we do not know if there was a causal association between the two branches at the time when the play was written. It could be equally possible that the two stories were circulating independently and had not yet merged or that they had long ago been moulded into a single narrative.
The answer suggested to this dilemma is both affected by and affects the interpretation of the play.19 On the one hand, one could plausibly note that, even if the link between the two stories had not yet been confirmed, it is a fact that both the narratives about the bonfire ritual and Hercules’ status as an immortal were already established by the time of Sophocles. Therefore, it would be difficult for someone who was familiar with a famous ritual celebrating, precisely, Hercules’ resurrection and immortality, not to recall this when watching the hero on stage preparing for the funeral pyre. On these grounds, it could be really possible that Sophocles ‘plays’ with his audience’s knowledge about Hercules’ future apotheosis and expects them to recollect the traditional happy ending and the future compensation of the hero. Within this line of thinking, one is directed to discern a heroic progress in the exodus of the play that leads towards Hercules’ recompense. And conversely, this possibility of a future apotheosis mitigates the inconceivable negligence of Zeus for his own son and restores justice for this great Pan-Hellenic benefactor.
On the other hand, it is also true that the prospect of a future recompense for Hercules necessitates a happy conclusion that abrogates the tragic finality of the play. Thus, a number of critics who believe that the play ends on a note of grim reality, which leaves no room for compensation, either suggest that the apotheosis allusion is only faint or deny any hint and propose that the poet deliberately suppressed this possibility in order to explicitly diverge from the tradition of a happy ending.20 Other critics, while agreeing that Hercules’ exaltation would be out of keeping with the tragic tone of the play, see that this ambiguity is intentionally exploited by the poet and that the play is purposely open-ended.21 Besides, the allusion to an unknown outcome underscores the tragic ignorance of the person involved and introduces a theme that was very familiar to Sophocles, the circumscribed human knowledge, which is tragic per se, regardless of whether his character is ignorant of future happiness or imminent misfortune.22
In spite of the solution to the apotheosis dilemma to which we are to give credence, it remains a fact that after the revelation about the Centaur’s involvement, the dynamics of tradition reveal a tendency to displace the dynamics of the plot. At this point, poetry subdues to the justification of the actual worship of Hercules on Mt. Oeta and the establishment of the mythological continuity of the Heraclidae while Deianeira’s and Hercules’ tragedy are left aside. The prime role is now given to the tragic chorus who is dancing in a festival of Dionysus in real-time. More importantly, after this point, Hercules’ words are given a new kind of aetiological and prophetic authority. The hero develops an insight that enhances the performance of his speech with the force of an institutional speech act; he is not only speaking but he is ‘doing things with words’, to use Austin’s phrase, while the perlocutionary effect of his speech extends beyond the time limits of this drama.23 The hero now acts in the knowledge that he is fulfilling some divine plan. Besides, Hercules’ liminal status as a moribund, and indeed a moribund who is not far from being deified, exalts the prolocutor of this speech to the level of a divine agent.
Thus, it is not coincidental that the processing of Hercules directives is formalized with the sacredness of the contractual language of Hyllus’ blind oath,24 or that his instructions are validated by the authority of a νόμος (1174–1178):
ταῦτ’ οὖν ἐπειδὴ λαμπρὰ συμβαίνει, τέκνον,
δεῖ σ’ αὖ γενέσθαι τῷδε τἀνδρὶ σύμμαχον, 1175
καὶ μὴ ’πιμεῖναι τοὐμὸν ὀξῦναι στόμα,
ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν εἰκαθόντα συμπράσσειν, νόμον
κάλλιστον ἐξευρόντα, πειθαρχεῖν πατρί.
So now that this is clearly being fulfilled, my son,
you must fight at my side, 1175
and not wait until my words grow sharp,
but comply and work with me,
finding that it is the noblest of laws that bids a man obey his father.
This νόμος that Hercules appeals to must refer to the long-lived and common unwritten law according to which one is expected to obey and show respect to one’s parents.25 But πατρί here is ambiguous. It certainly refers to the obedience of Hyllus to his father Hercules, which is of particular importance to Hyllus’ coming of age and is also essential for the traditional story to be confirmed.26 But let me dwell a little longer on the aspect of Hercules’ respect to his father Zeus which I believe is also implied here.
Zeus is prominent in Trachiniae.27 He is referred to more than thirty times, which, as estimated by Budelmann, is about twice as frequently as in any other play, while his superior plan and the paternal kinship with Hercules function as a kind of leitmotif.28 Of the various references to Zeus in Trachiniae, what is of great interest to our discussion is the aspect of Zeus as the planner that structures and shapes poetry, an aspect which evokes the poet’s persona, as in Διὸς βουλή of the Iliad. Quite early, in the parodos of the play, when rejecting the likelihood of Zeus lacking a general counsel for humans, the chorus speaks about Zeus as a general planner: “who has seen Zeus so lacking in counsel for his children?” (‘τίς ὧδε/τέκνοισι Ζῆν’ ἄβουλον εἶδεν;’ 139–140). This Zeus, however, could possibly have a poetic plan for Trachiniae as well. And this must be a plan that would include the extra-dramatic events that are meant by this κάλλιστος νόμος, the noblest of laws validated by the authority of the father, despite the fact that these events exceed the staging time and are not directly associated with the plot. Therefore, Hercules’ voice at the moment when he spells out the orders that are dictated by the authority of a paternal νόμος has been elevated to an extra-dramatic level, lying on a scale of events that derive directly from Zeus and exceed both human contemplation and dramatic delineation.
Among other qualities attributed to Zeus in Trachiniae, his designation as the ultimate paternal figure, as in the phrase πατρῴῳ Διὶ, 753, describing Zeus as Hercules’ father or as a father in a more general sense, is unmistakable. Zeus is not only the regulator of his son’s fate as the actual voice behind the oracles but also the ultimate source of divine authority and the general regulator of all human beings and actions: “[he] who ordains all things” (‘ὁ πάντα κραίνων βασιλεὺς’, 127).29 It is no accident, therefore, that the written oracle which Hercules left with Deianeira before he went away is said to have come from Dodona, a sanctuary of Zeus, rather than the more usual source of tragic oracles, Apollo’s Delphi. And certainly, neither the very last line of the play is an accident: “And nothing of this is not Zeus” (‘κοὐδὲν τούτων ὅ τι μὴ Ζεύς’, 1278). This picks up all these references to Zeus and seals the end with the idea of the inaccessible and the inevitable of the superior forces.30
The Dramatic Necessity of Hercules’ Nomos
So following up on this analysis, I would suggest that after 1143 Hercules is being transformed into a kind of deus ex machina who appears at the end of the play and spells out an aetiology that explicitly connects the enacted events of the plot with the world of the audience.31 This closing aetiology (aition) denotes the connection between past and present, between myth and history by showing that the events of traditional narrative elaborated by the poet survive in some specific way into the present world of the audience.32 The speaker of aetiology, as suggested by Dunn, is “a figure whose privileged knowledge extends beyond the bounds of the drama” and Hercules from that point onwards seems to qualify for this role.33 While maintaining his dramatic role, he is slightly disconnected from the action so that he can speak with two voices, foretelling for Hyllus events he does not understand and explaining an institution already familiar to the audience.
However, although at this point tradition seems to displace the play’s dramatic present, it is also true that this closure meets expectations as raised by the plot and that these extra-dramatic references are integral elements of a whole.34 Repeatedly in the course of the play, the expectation of the hero’s return was prepared and encouraged and this is exactly the exodus’ content. Of course, within the tragic arrangement, this nostos is reversed and instead of the triumphal entrance of the hero, we witness his funeral. Besides, the concept of an extended and failed nostos lies at the core of Hercules’ existence; he was born in exile, he was deprived of his patrimonial inheritance in ruling over Argolid, he always remained an extensive traveller and he never succeeded in his familial life. Moreover, given that the exodus starts with diseased Hercules being carried on a stretcher and ends with Hercules being transferred to his tomb, thus dramatizing the hero’s death and funeral, it seems plausible that the scene consists of the agonies he has been suffering, the realization of the imminent and inevitable death by the moribund himself and his deathbed instructions. Therefore, these requests are included within this funeral frame and smoothly incorporated into the dramatic setting of the hero’s last moments.
Then, the requests themselves have a specific dramatic function which advances our reading of the play. Hyllus’ marriage to Iole does not only verify the established genealogy of this legendary family and binds Hyllus to this role by swearing an oath but it is also essential for the continuation of Hercules’ generation and is, therefore, planned to salvage the remains of his family, especially since the play has presented the destruction of his oikos.35 Then, the hero’s immolation completes the sacrificial pattern which was repeatedly exploited in the play while it also follows the pattern of the Herculean labours, as it is presented as the ultimate, and possibly the hardest, task the hero needs to accomplish.36 And finally, the possibility of the apotheosis proposes a retrospective interpretation of the play. In particular, Hercules’ imminent self-immolation and the eternal bliss he was known to enjoy on Olympus, as possible aftermath to his cremation, is based on the idea of confusion between life and death, fundamental in Trachiniae. This is not merely an implication raised by the hero’s ambivalent status between a mortal and a god and embedded in the way the oracle is articulated but it is also an implication that is extensively elaborated in the exodus, where he is presented as a living corpse who organizes and attends his own funeral. Besides, the uncertainty about the future to which the allusion to the apotheosis gives rise is also embedded in the very deep structure of a play which repeatedly comments on the inaccessibility of superior knowledge. This possibility, finally, ends up the circular movement which started in the very first lines of the play, proposing a revised elucidation of Deianeira’s opening statement about Solon’s saying.
In addition, the very nature of this conclusion advises us to see it the type of closures that Smith calls “cultural markers of closure.” As Smith suggests, death, just like other types of closures, such as departure, reunion or reconciliation, solution or fulfilment and ritual, evokes one of “natural stopping places of our lives and experiences” and has themselves terminating force.37 Especially in tragedy, as Roberts notes, it is not surprising that death and mourning are the most common of concluding markers: of twenty-three existing tragedies that end with death, nineteen end with some form of, or reference to, burial or mourning ritual.38 It is interesting, however, as Roberts continues, that in tragedy these markers may be used in such a way as to interfere with closure.39 In several plays, for example, the ritual of burial is deprived of some of its effect by the exclusion of a would-be participant. In Euripides’ Medea, Medea and Jason will remain divided in the ritual expression of their grief for their children since Medea alone will carry out the burial. In Trachiniae, Hercules’ burial will be completed in the absence of his family (1147–1156), underlining his alienation from his oikos presented in the play, while lamentation will be refused (1199–1200, 1260–1263), emphasizing the extremity of strength and endurance of this superhuman hero whose suffering will be accentuated through ritual inertia.
Then, the ritual confusion of this burial with both rituals of marriage and sacrifice results into a ritual crisis that hinders its completion and underlines its propensity to fail.40 Hercules’ pyre is a holocaust, a fire ritual, usually associated with the worship of the dead, in which the destructive power of fire will be fully displayed as the sacrificial victim will be wholly burned.41 And, as Calame notes: “On Oeta, no libations, no slitting of the victim’s throat, no sharing of the meat, no parts which would have been reserved for the people, no companionship with or without the gods: the victim is entirely destroyed by fire.”42 What is more, the sacrificial ritual is not the only one that fails. The play also dramatized the complete failure of a marriage through the transformation of the nuptial ceremony into a funeral but on the grounds of Hercules’ apotheosis, even this concluding funeral is at stake.
In general, through the linguistic and metaphorical use of the symbolic gestures attached to ritual acts, our text indicates disarrangement of active and passive identities and gendered role models, elaborated in terms of ritual irregularity. In the course of the play, Hercules is constantly moving between the roles of the sacrificer and the sacrificial victim. As a follow up to his violent act of destroying a city, Hercules founds a sanctuary on Cape Cenaeum and performs a sacrifice, but Deianeira’s sacrificial robe will transform this foundation sacrificer (θυτήρ, 656) into the sacrificial victim. Then he moves to Trachis and acts again as a sacrificer, organizing a second holocaust on Mt. Oeta (1192) but once again he will be transformed into the victim of this second sacrifice, as the fire will consume his own diseased body. Moreover, although it is clear that Deianeira acts as the sacrificer of her spouse, the text simultaneously qualifies her, like Ajax, for the role of the victim of a sacrificial throat-slitting (ἀρτίως νεοσφαγής, 1130; cf. same phrase in Aj. 898). Hercules’ feminine and passive sacrifice would, thus, correspond to Deianeira’s heroic and active sacrifice and vice versa, Deianeira’s victimization will be contrasted with Hercules’ role as sacrificer. All these roles that Deianeira and Hercules undertake move irregularly between the poles of a subject (active doer) and an object (passive receiver) of action and are in constant interaction with the corresponding active and passive roles related to the rituals of sacrifice, marriage and death.
To sum up, in view of the preceding analysis, it has been suggested that through the way the audience knowledge of traditional narrative is exploited at the end of the play, we can discern a sophisticated interaction between tragic mythos and the authoritative principle of history. This is not a one-sided submission to the established tradition but rather a diplomatic relationship that simultaneously allows for the reaffirmation and exploitation of the dynamics of history. With Hercules being transformed into a kind of deus ex machina who will organize his own funeral and set up the future of his legendary family, the end of Trachiniae necessitates the settlement of a dramatic order, no matter how precarious this order may be, and sets up the closure of the play but nonetheless continues to invest in a scheme of irregularity in terms of ritual and gender roles, designed and directed in order to negotiate the conditions under which authority can be imposed.
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Notes
1
Reception studies have made us suspicious against any claim to objective discourse. Thus, I am inclined to see the discrepancy between the discourses of ‘myth’ and ‘history’, between fact and fiction, rather mitigated. Nevertheless, the Greeks did acknowledge some kind of difference between mythos and logos or between mythos and history and although it is not possible to fully comprehend the ancient Greeks’ perception of myth from a modern logocentric perspective, we need to get along with these distinctions. It is worth noticing that criticism of the falseness of ‘myth’ began early in Antiquity (e.g. with Xenophanes and Hekataios), led later to Plato’s well-known criticism of ‘myth’ as false logos and culminated with Epicurus’ doctrine of liberation which saw ‘myth’ as a counterforce to logos. For a review on the theoretical discourse on mythos as a counterforce to logos and history, see Karakantza (2004) 37–78, 207–214 (for relevant bibliography). In any case, in the context of this presentation (and, hopefully, not in an abusive way), ‘history’ is taken as a synonym for ‘traditional or legendary narrative’, namely the history of Hercules as a hero unfolding in a time lying between the time of origins and that of recent events.
2
As the result of a confirmed tendency to consider the endings of the tragedies spurious, the authenticity of the endings of several Greek tragedies has at some time been questioned, most notably the final scenes of Aesch. Sept. and Eur. IA and the closing lines of Soph. OT and Eur. Phoen. Also, concerns have been expressed for the final lines of all Sophoclean dramas (by Ritter [1861] 422–436), but only the end of OT (1524–1530) has been deleted by Dawe (1974–1978) 266–273 (also see Dawe [1982] ad loc.; cf. Kovacs [2009] 53–70 and Finglass [2009] 42–62 who question Dawe’s deletion). Dawe also gives some support to Ritter’s doubts about Aj. and El. (Dawe [1974–1978] 174–175, 203–204). This problematic, however much it is impelled by textual tradition, constitutes a difficulty precisely because of the readers’ expectations. As Roberts (2005) 147 suggests, “the claim of spuriousness itself partly derives from the reader’s expectations; it points to the way in which individual tragedies were read as part of a continuing myth and in relation to previous tragic versions of that myth, since each instance involves a supposed interpolation of material from another version or a continuation of the story, sometimes one familiar from a well-known tragedy.”
3
For the kinds of authority that condition the audience’s expectations as far as tragic closures are concerned, see Seferiadi (2019) 204–205.
4
Easterling (1982) 11.
5
See Linforth (1952) 262: “After composing the essential play with a conscientious regard for dramatic propriety the poet breaks off when he is one step from the end and writes an afterpiece in which he yields to the obligation of history. He does the same thing again in Philoctetes.”
6
The mss. are not in agreement about the identity of the speaker of the four final lines of Trach.; they either attribute them to Hyllus or the chorus.
7
This is a negligence that mirrors Deianeira’s refusal to defend herself and her silent exit at the end of the third episode (813–820). For the dynamics of this silence, see Seferiadi (2019) 33–34, 200–201.
8
The text used is Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (1992) (corrected revision of 1990 impression), the most widely used edition. The translation in English is always cited by Lloyd-Jones (1998) (corrected revision of 1994 impression).
9
See Easterling (1982) ad 1145; Panousis (2013) 161.
10
There was already a myth that Hercules met his death in Oeta and we also know of a cult celebrating Hercules’ resurrection, in which bonfires were lighted on the top of the mountain and offerings were made, that was established long before Sophocles’ time, from at least the sixth century. Excavations have yielded figurines and inscriptions which confirm the literary tradition. For the traditions regarding Hercules’ death and deification, see Stafford (2012) 172–174 and 184–185.
11
Lloyd-Jones 1971, 128. Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.7 mentions Poeas (see Frazer [1921] ad loc.) but others mention Philoctetes (see Gantz [1993] 59); cf. Soph. Phil. 801–803.
12
In general, divine and heroic cults of Hercules are extremely common throughout Attica, as he was worshipped, mostly as a god, by citizens of all categories and by non-citizens. On Hercules’ worship, see Woodford (1971); Kearns (1989) 166–167; Verbanck-Piérard (1989) 43–65; Shapiro (1983) 15; (1989) 157–163; Lévêque and Verbanck-Piérard (1992) 43–65; Stafford (2005) 391–406; Stafford (2012) 176–180.
13
See Hdt. 9.25–28; Thuc. 1.9. Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 84 mentions the arrival of Hercules’ children in Attica. Eur. in Heracl. treats the story of their protection from Eurystheus by King Demophon, son of Theseus, in Athens. Heraclidae of Aesch. possibly treated the same story but nothing is known of the plot. For a list of the cults of Hercules’ children in Attica, see Kearns (1989) 166–167.
14
FGrH 82a = Schol. Trach. 354.
15
For a review of mythological and historical examples of voluntary death by fire associated with immortality, see Currie (2005) 369–381 (cf. Currie [2012] 336–337, where the scholar parallels Hercules’ situation with Oedipus in Soph. OC). Also see Calame (2005) 181–195, who examines many examples of heroic funerary ritual and sacrificial practice and compares them with Hercules’ death in Trachiniae.
16
Of course, to a certain extent, the ambiguity concerning Hercules’ possible deification in Trachiniae can be considered as an outgrowth of a general difficulty in circumscribing the limits of allusion; namely, to indicate which part of the mythical knowledge is presupposed by the poet, which details he has suppressed or which he is asking his audience to add in order to bridge the gap between two texts that interact. These difficulties are noted, for instance, by Currie (2005) 364–365, but cf. Garner (1990).
17
Hahnemann (1999) 67–73 re-examined two fragments from Heraclidae of Aesch. (F73b and F75a Radt) and suggested that the apotheosis version was current already before 456 BC. But the sources that provide a definite link between the pyre and the deification (Eur. Heracl. 910–918 and Soph. Phil. 727–729) are possibly later than Trachiniae (only the latter is safely dated on 409 BC while the former is dated possibly around 430–427 BC). Archaic art focused on Hercules’ apotheosis but not his death, which is only alluded to on a few classical red-figure vases. Be that as it may, as Stafford notes, there is no means of telling whether this is purely accidental; see Stafford (2012) 173–174. For other possible representations of Hercules’ apotheosis in lost literature and art, see Holt (1992) 38–59.
18
The idea of Hercules’ entry to Olympus appears quite early in literary sources (Hom. Od. 11.602–604; Hes. Theog. 950–955; Pind. N. 1.69–72; N. 10.17–18; I. 4.73–78), while it was current in fifth-century Athens, as can be demonstrated by the appearance of the hero’s wedding to Hebe in many contemporary vase-paintings and on the comic stage and by his status as a god in Attic cult (see Stafford [2012] 176–180). However, Iliad’s citation of Hercules’ death omits this entry (18.117–119). Then, although Hercules’ promotion to Olympus was a well-known story, it was not one that did not cause any second thoughts. It is interesting that although Odyssey mentions his deification, it also presupposes his mortality since he is not totally excluded from death and his εἴδωλον still stands in the Underworld among other deceased heroes (11.602–627). This ambivalence held by his heroic and divine nature leads Aristophanes to criticize Hercules for being ‘a bastard god’. Ancient literary criticism, finally, seems to give consideration to this uncertainty about Hercules’ god status. Thus, the scholiast of Odyssey (11.602–604) mentions that the lines were believed to be an insertion by the sixth-century Orphic Onomacritus. Similarly, the scholium to Hesiod’s Theogony (950–955) mentions that the lines had been athetized (ἀθετοῦνται), while F 25 (Merkelbach and West) of the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women is marked in the margins with obeli in the section where Hercules in heaven is quoted (20–33).
19
The debate about the play’s ending is usefully summarized by Liapis (2006) 56–59, who gives comprehensive lists of critics who favour or oppose Hercules’ apotheosis.
20
Sophocles’ suppression of the apotheosis story has also been interpreted on political grounds. It has been argued that Hercules’ image in archaic and classical Athens was invoked in support of the tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons and was later displaced by the image of the more ‘democratic’ hero, Theseus. Boardman (1972) 57–72 (and [1975] 1–12 for more evidence) has suggested that the exceptional popularity of Hercules in Athenian art of the Peisistratan period was due, to some degree, of deliberate identification between tyrant and hero, both appearing as special protégés of the goddess Athena. The scholar links the chariot type scenes with Peisistratus’ return to power in Athens in 546 BC, in a chariot accompanied by a mock Athena (Hdt. 1.60) and suggests that this episode was mirrored by or inspired a change in the usual iconography of Hercules’ introduction to Olympus by Athena on foot to a version in which the hero is shown with the goddess in a chariot. On these grounds, Sophocles’ silence of Hercules’ introduction to Olympus may be understood as the poet’s intention to suppress the political hints of the episode. However, Boardman’s suggestion has been criticized; on this topic see Stafford (2012) 163–170 and 256, n. 30, where relevant bibliography is also cited. For a political reading of the play, also see Vickers (1995) 45–53 who argues for a link between the foundation of Heracleia Trachinia in Thessaly by the Spartans in 426 BC (Thuc. 3.92–93) and Sophocles’ Trachiniae.
21
Hoey (1977) 273 first suggested that the play leaves the question of apotheosis open “as though [it] had weighed both options and felt itself unable to decide”. Holt (1989) 69–80 took the view that the allusion to apotheosis is only faint in order not to spoil the overall sombre effect of the play. Stinton (1990) 493–507 argued that Sophocles meant his audience to be aware that he is diverging from the apotheosis tradition and discouraged them from taking apotheosis for granted, by exploiting the Iliadic version of Hercules’ end as a subtext (“even Hercules was not exempt from death,” Il. 18.117–119). Liapis (2006) 56–59 reads the ending as a deliberate allusion to Odyssey’s double version of Hercules’ fate and suggests that the play is equally and self-consciously indecisive and ambiguous.
22
In her analysis of the allusive Sophoclean endings, Roberts (1988) 184–185 pairs Trach. with OT, and notes that although in both plays the end appears to be final, in each play there is a mysterious suggestion that something is more to come. This future stands in ironic contrast with the end of the action while the characters are ignorant of the future that the play suggests: Hyllus does not know that he and Iole will be the ancestors of the Heraclidae and that his descendants will bear and perpetuate Hercules’ name, Hercules does not know that he will become a god and the fallen Oedipus knows nothing about the future Sophocles has created for him in his late Oedipus (and how could he?; for the reasons why OC should not be considered a ‘sequel’ to OT see Karakantza [2020] 114 [with n. 233] and 122–123). On Sophoclean endings as opposed to Euripidean, see Dunn (1996) 5–7, who suggests that the tragic end in Sophocles embraces the paradox of belated understanding in the manner of Croesus: “the final destruction of the protagonist brings to him and to those who witness his drama a new and authoritative understanding” (6). In Euripides, on the other hand, it seems that this tragic end “is ignored, discarded as irrelevant in a larger story that has no end” (7).
23
Several conventions exploited by drama, such as the divine utterances, the oaths, the prophesies, the aition, the deus ex machina, exemplify the type of language that speech act theory categorized as ‘illocutions’ or ‘speech acts’. The original distinction between the ‘descriptive or constative’ and the ‘performative’ utterance (what is later called ‘speech-act’) was made by Austin, in his well-known book, How to Do Things with Words (1975). Although the initial distinction has been challenged, starting from Austin himself who concludes that apparently descriptive language can also have performative force ([1975] 132–147), his and his disciple Searle’s idea that language generates actions (‘doing things with words’, Searle [1969]; [1979]) initiated speech act theory, a theory which accounts for the performative force of a variety of utterances.
24
For oaths in Greek drama, see Fletcher (2012) (esp. 81–89, for Hyllus’ oath).
25
See, e.g., Aesch. Cho. 707–709; Soph. Ant. 639–640; Eur. fr. 853 TrGF.
26
For Hyllus’ coming of age, see Seferiadi (2019) 220–231.
27
For Zeus in Trach., see Mikalson (1986) 89–98 (discusses Zeus in Soph. Trach. and Eur. HF; for Trach. 90–93) and Budelmann (2000) 154–168. As Mikalson (1986) 90–91 notes, “Sophocles, rather than developing a single and unified conception of Zeus, introduces a wide range of Zeuses and then binds them together through the paternity of Hercules. … The Zeus of Sophocles is a hybrid, an amalgam of various local cultic (Kenaios and Oitaios), functional (oaths, lightning, etc.), and mythological bits which were never found together in such a combination in practised religion. As such he is the type of deity commonly found in epic and lyric poetry, not in life. Euripides’ Zeus, however, has his roots more in the cult and religion of the Athenian audience.”
28
Budelmann (2000) 154.
29
This is commonplace in Greek thought; see, e.g., Pind. I 5.52–53; Aesch. Ag. 1485–1488.
30
However, if we accept that the end of the play alludes to Hercules’ apotheosis, this last reference to Zeus seems to pay attention to the inaccessibility rather than the inevitability of the divine will. In any case, Hyllus’ (or the chorus’) theological perspective in denouncing the god’s indifference is unparalleled in its extremity in Sophocles. See Budelmann (2000) 169–171; Goldhill (2012) 158–162 who discuss this statement.
31
In general, the deus ex machina may be read as redirecting the disoriented route of a play towards the established tradition and real ritual practice while confirming the end by inducing a stasis. For aspects of staging in the use of deus ex machina, see Mastronarde (1990) 247–294.
32
Tragic closures often suggest a retrospective interpretation of the play’s action as the foundation story for a contemporary cultural institution (aetiology or aition), a practice that continues a long tradition of poetic mythmaking that grounded religious practices in the distant past. Through this association the action of the drama is enhanced and legitimized with the promise of perpetual, established and institutionalized ritual commemoration. At the same time, as Roberts notes, the aition “displaces the movement of historical narrative with the stasis of contemporaneous presence or repeated practice” (Roberts [2005] 145). For the aition (most notably in Eur.), see Dunn (1996) 45–63.
33
Dunn (1996) 49.
34
Following Yiatromanolakis and Roilos (2004) model on ‘ritual poetics’, in her recent study on narrative and ritual in Sophoclean drama, Brook has rightly suggested that in Sophocles rituals do not only have ritual but also have dramatic and poetic implications: “[R]itual functions as a poetic device, directing the audience’s experience of the plot and perception of the characters of the plays. These poetic effects depend on the close analogy between ritual and narrative” (Brook [2018] 3). Her analysis on Trach. (21–49, esp. 33–36 and 175–178), however, only focuses on sacrificial ritual and does not take the opportunity to discuss the implications of marriage ritual, which is particularly significant in the play and an eloquent example of a ritual mistake (in terms of all parameters of conflation, repetition and status) that is embedded in the plot. For marriage in Trach., see Seferiadi (2019) 83–158.
35
It was also crucial for Hyllus’ coming of age. For Hyllus’ coming of age, see Seferiadi (2019) 220–231.
36
See Panousis (2013) 163: “Ψάχνει απεγνωσμένα να μετουσιώσει το θάνατό του σε ύστατο άθλο, ο οποίος να κλείνει τελετουργικά τον κύκλο ενός ηρωικού βίου. Και η μόνη λύση που βρίσκει αυτή την κρίσιμη ώρα είναι ο θάνατος πάνω στην πυρά της Οίτης.”
37
Smith (1968) 101–102, 172–182.
38
Roberts (2005) 143; (1993) 573–589.
39
Of course, this observation applies to the way ritual in general operates in tragedy, not only closures. As has been noted by several scholars (see e.g. Zeitlin [1970] 359; Seaford [1994] xv; Henrichs [2004]; 194; Rehm [2012] 427; Brook [2018] 29), in Greek tragedy and especially in Sophocles, the rituals performed and described onstage seldom proceed without problems and often fail to achieve their intended ends. The general idea of this conclusion, elaborated by Seaford, is that Greek tragedy follows a pattern, inherited from the Dionysian cult, whereby “the self-destruction of the ruling family, expressed in the perversion of ritual, ends in benefit, and in particular in the foundation of cult, for the whole polis” (Seaford [1994] xix, 274, 276; cf. Segal [1997] 349–373).
40
For the conflation of death and sacrifice ritual, see Calame (2005) 181–195 and Brook (2018) 33–36. For the conflation of marriage and sacrifice ritual see, most notably, Segal (1975) 30–53; (1981) 65–72, 98–108. It is interesting that marriage also interacts with Hercules’ immortalization in the tradition that mentions that his deification was consecrated through his marriage to the eternally young Hebe.
41
On fire rituals and the holocaust ritual, see Burkert (1985) 60–64.
42
Calame (2005) 194.