The End of Euripides' Andromache: Thetis Ex Machina

ENTER THETIS, EX MACHINA

Peleus’ marriage to Thetis is marked from the prologue on as something extraordinary, for the goddess while dwelling with her mortal consort avoided the crowd and lived apart from the people of Phthia (17–19). The place where she used to live bears her name and Andromache is supplicating her at her altar. In a partial distortion of the truth that aims at enlisting Peleus’ sympathy, Andromache claims that Menelaus has violently detached her from Thetis’ altar (565–567). This is one of the factors that ensure Peleus’ defense of her. In his utter despair Peleus invokes his former wife (1224–1225), who subsequently appears as the dea ex machina and restores him by renewing their marriage. As in Menelaus’ case, this marriage will be restored after a long period of time. Whereas Neoptolemus’ marriage to Hermione has destroyed him and has separated him permanently from his son, Peleus marriage to Thetis saves him by granting him immortality and reunites him with his dead son Achilles.

Recent treatments of the Andromache have advanced a ‘pious’ reading of the action which is part of a general trend against the excesses of the inherited paradigm that states Euripides was an atheist. Like some other “everyone knows” misconceptions about Euripides ( his alleged misogyny, over-use of sibilance and stichomythia, dressing his characters in shabby costumes, etc.) this can be traced to the poet’s lampooning by Aristophanes. Caricatures of Euripides as hostile to the gods thus have a long history. Like Aristophanes, modern critics generally disregard dramatic context  when citing passages that attack the gods or seem to espouse atheism.  When characters comment on the gods (regardless of author) we must consider both speaker and context. Their attitudes are elements in a dramatic situation, not factors in a theological diatribe, Tragedy, especially that of Euripides, remains essentially interrogatory, asking questions rather than supplying dramatic answers.

    How  justified is the critical urge to extort from the texts “religious beliefs” whether in audience or author?  We might state that the gods, without necessarily being the gods that the audience believes in,  are to be taken seriously as agents in the play,  acting with both power and personality. The relationship between poetic representation and everyday religious attitudes is complex. Scholars rightly insist that Greek religion was free of the dogmatism that comes with a holy text or creed, yet there was clearly a metaphysical world-constructing element to Greek religion, and it is this background which tragedy explores and challenges.

    The gods of myth, shaped by the epic tradition, had a powerful influence on Greek religious awareness. In epic the gods are portrayed as subject to rage, spite, and lust. The potential for human suffering in such a context and the conflict it generates between human and divine conceptions of justice are central to Euripides exploration of divinity. As in epic, the gods are represented as acting for reasons which men can both appraise and criticize. The perplexing and problematic actions of the gods complicates the texture of the tragic world and illuminate new aspects of human situation and character. By dramatizing a world of divine reasoning and action which is precarious and dangerous, Euripides can arouse natural feelings of fear and uncertainty. He can also show us that the human response to the unpredictable, the uncanny and sometimes horrendous actions of the gods can possess nobility.

    Humans are also free to violate religious customs but must face unforeseen divine consequences. Menelaus unambiguously violates the rights of the suppliant, stooping so low as to use her child as bait: either she leaves the sanctuary of Thetis’ altar or the child dies. When Andromache relents, Menelaus even reneges on his promise to save the child’s life, passing off responsibility to his distraught daughter for the child’s fate.

    After the reveal of the corpse of ignobly slain Neoptolemus, Peleus and the chorus engage in collective lament. This is of course the moment of deus ex machina. The divinity who appears to close the tragedy is always one appropriate to the action.  The choice of Thetis functions visually and thematically.  Her statue, significantly visible throughout the action,( cf. 115, 246)  is now joined by the goddess herself. She is both goddess and wife of the mortal Peleus. Her altar has been the focus of Andromache’s supplication, and her  personal involvement underlines  the themes of marriage and continuity of descent ( cf. 20, 1231, 1253). A deus ex machina in Euripides is never an arbitrary or “official” resolution of the conflicts in the play. The dramatic technique of having the gods sort things out at the end draws attention to what they have been up to in the rest of the play!

    The Andromache is different in that Thetis’ consolation rewards the sympathetic figures of the drama but does not make it any easier to explain the actions of Apollo in a way that is humanly satisfying.  For all the saving power of Thetis’ intervention, the play remains interrogatory: a benign deity set against a malign one does not remove our questions.The polarity of Greek and barbarian is undermined; two deities are provocatively opposed, one destructive and one benign but with less power; we see reason to question revenge as a justifiable motive for action; the roles of women are explored: as wives, mothers, and most incisively as victims of war, be they Greek or Trojan, victorious or defeated. Euripides offered his audience stimulation and interest rather than theories and ultimate views. 

Euripides' Andromache: And What About Hermione?

 And What About Hermione?

After a choral ode in praise of noble Peleus, Hermione's nurse enters to report excitedly that the young wife is trying to kill herself, both because her father has abandoned her cause and because she dreads the wrath of Neoptolemus when he hears ultimately of her earlier plot against Andromache. Hermione herself then rushes in. We discover first that Menelaus did not follow Peleus' instructions to the letter, for, although he himself is gone, he neglected to take his daughter with him. This failure to do so underlies Hermione's hysterical change of attitude: she is now bereft of protection against Neoptolemus. Why Menelaus left her in such a predicament one can only surmise. He may have been in too great a rush, or he may have felt that she was not worth the trouble (even though he did make the trip, as Andromache told us in the prologue, for the sole purpose of helping his daughter's cause). To be sure, Hermione was not his to take, but this is an ethical point which Menelaus would be more apt to cite as explanation of his actions rather than one on which he would operate. We cannot, however, forget that he has already had a rather wearying experience as a consequence of the removal of another man's wife.

 At any rate, from Hermione's viewpoint her father has thrown up her cause, and she now feels (with good reason) very much alone in the world. The nurse reports that she can scarcely be kept from hanging or stabbing herself, "so greatly does she suffer as she contemplates the evil she has done." In other words, the departure of Hermione's father has led her to reflect on her own deeds and to suffer a change of heart. Such is the nurse's interpretation. The chorus, always (it seems) ready to give Hermione benefit of doubt, supposes the same as it announces her approach: "It looks as if the poor thing is going to show us how much she laments her sins. For here she is, fled from the house and her servants' hands, and anxious for death!"!

Like the chorus, the Nurse insists on seeing people as they ought to be, not as evidence has shown that they in fact are. "Your father," she says complacently, "will not abandon you as you fear, my child, nor let you be driven from your home." It makes no difference to nurse that the father is well out of town.

As the motherly nurse is attempting to soothe Hermione, a stranger enters who turns out to be her cousin Orestes. He glibly tells the chorus that he was on his way to Dodona and thought that he would stop by to see how Cousin Hermione was enjoying married life. Orestes makes his entrance and we learn that he has been lurking around the palace spying. . Upon their questioning he reveals his name, his parentage, and tells them that he is on his way to the oracle of Zeus at Dodona. It occurred to him to stop off at Phthia and inquire after his cousin Hermione the Spartan. Is she alive and happy?

Hermione's relief pours forth at the sight of Orestes, and she falls to her knees in supplication. Orestes can scarcely recognize her (overdoing his act as we are soon to discover), but after proper identification he asks the cause of her distress. "Partly my own," Hermione replies, "partly due to the man who owns me, and partly to some god. In all respects I am ruined!" If a woman has no children, muses Orestes, her problems can center around only one person, her husband. "How perceptive you are!" the girl remarks. Orestes asks if Neoptolemus loves another instead of her, and when Hermione replies sadly that he does, the son of Agamemnon soberly repeats the now familiar remark: "That's not right, one man to have two women." Orestes gives us the dark side of championing monogamy.

He then draws out of Hermione her actions in the matter, asking if she plotted against her rival "as a woman would." Hermione affirms her part of the plot, adding that old Peleus, "honoring the cause of the riffraff," thwarted the plan. If there was any doubt about the nature of Hermione's self-recrimination, these lines dispel it. She resents Andromache's alleged complicity no less now than she did in the first episode. Her own "vice" was not the attempted murder of Andromache but rather the exposure of herself to danger. As she tells Orestes (line 920), it is Neoptolemus whom she fears; she makes no mention of other retributive forces. She acted foolishly, and she knows that she will rue her rashness when her husband returns. In her next lines, as she explains away her folly, she dwells incessantly on this female lack of judiciousness.

Andromache's and Peleus' diatribes derived in both instances from well-provoked outrage resulting from the plot development. Hermione, on the other hand, who-both preceding and following these lines-is only a step away from hysteria, suddenly gains sufficient control over her nerves to deliver a coherent and rather prissy lecture to husbands on the proper way to closet a wife. She was led to her mistake, she explains, by "evil women" who stirred her jealousy with "words of Sirens." She even classifies such women by their motives: some corrupt for personal gain, some for companionship in sinfulness, some simply because they are malicious. "So, guard your house doors well with bars and locks. For women who wander in do nothing that is healthy for the house, and much that is evil." It would be pointless to ask who these wicked women are in the dramatic context, or to note by way of objection that Neoptolemus' home is situated apart from the town and that Hermione would have had few unheralded callers of either sex. Nor can one suppose that the handmaids are reviled here (as they are at Hippolytus 645ff.) since the nurse has already shown her disapproval of Hermione's schemes, and one presumably does not lock the doors against the house's own servants. This approach is futile, for the wicked women are extra-dramatic. Hermione's mention of them, however, is not. Ever the personification of feminine behavior at its worst, she acts against the ultimate return of Neoptolemus by rehearsing her excuses. She will plead the traditional weaknesses of women.

The chorus who knows the tradition perhaps better than Hermione give us the clue. She has loosed her tongue too much, they tell her, against this "nature" of woman. This time she will be forgiven, but she must bear in mind that females rightly disguise ("embellish," "adorn") the shortcomings of their sex. Hermione's earlier hysteria was at least partly contrived, done for the benefit of Neoptolemus who would be sure to hear of it on his return. Her fears are real enough, but her nature-flighty as it may be-is prone to seek means of rescue. Thus, she ties two strings to her bow. On the one hand she works on Orestes, her immediate chance for escape; on the other she plans for an eventual meeting with Neoptolemus. The speech does not "spoil the situation" after all but effectively illustrates the intuitive talent for survival which women like Hermione possess, a spontaneous ability to extricate themselves, even if they endanger others, with tongues "more savage than serpent or fire." Orestes now begins to shed his pretenses. "His was good advice," he says, "who taught mortals to eavesdrop on their enemies. For, knowing of the confusion in this house and of the quarrel between you and Hector's widow, I stood guard and waited to see whether you would remain here or, in your fear of the slave woman, should want to get away."

So, it develops that Orestes did not happen by after all, but rather that he has been lurking about the palace, waiting for an opportunity to make an effective appearance. "I am here," he continues, "not because you bade me come, but with the intention of taking you from this house if you gave me pretext, which you do." The pretext in fact has just been indicated: Hermione has chosen to flee. But Orestes now reveals that her choice was a mere convenience: "You see, you once were promised to me and you have been living with Neoptolemus because your father is a coward. Before he ever left to attack the Trojan borders, he gave you to me as a wife, but later he promised you to him who owns you now if he would sack the city of Troy." This then is the real reason for Orestes' presence: Hermione is his! Her own plans are neither here nor there. Her eagerness to flee makes the abduction an easier matter, but it does not alter the nature of Orestes' mission in Phthia. The nephew of Menelaus continues with his story: "When Neoptolemus returned home I asked him to relinquish his right to you since you had formerly been promised to me. I brought up the misfortunes of my family and myself and explained that I might wed a woman of a related family but not very easily one from some other family, fleeing as I flee in flight from home. But he with wanton insults taunted me with the murder of my mother and the bloody Erinyes who pursue me. And I, humbled by my misfortunes, suffered-oh did I suffer!-but endured it in my misery, and reluctantly went off without you as my wife. So now that you find your fortunes reversed, and are lost in your present predicament, I shall take you home and put you into your father's hands." Hermione has no time for such matters as family promises. She sees in Orestes only a means of removal from Neoptolemus' house, and she urges him to hurry lest her husband or Peleus anticipate their departure. But Orestes has not finished. His most chilling speech is yet to come. He comforts the girl and tells her to fear neither Peleus nor Neoptolemus.

Neoptolemus is about to fall into a trap of death for his insult to Orestes. "I, the matricide Orestes, if my spear-friends at Delphi abide by their oaths, will show that no one marries a woman who is rightfully mine!" Then, shifting abruptly, Orestes states that it is because of Apollo's anger that Neoptolemus will die: "With bitter success will he demand satisfaction of Phoebus Apollo for his father's death! Not even a change of heart shall help him, if now he is. offering the god propitiation." Once more Orestes reverts to his own hatred and schemes: "Rather, in consequence of Apollo and of charges spread by me, he shall evilly die and know my enmity!" Finally, he returns again to Apollo: "For the god topples the fortunes of his mortal enemies nor tolerates their presumptions!" The fate of Neoptolemus is to be a combined result of the mortal revenge of Orestes and the divine wrath of Apollo. What, as the chorus soon asks (line 1036), are we to believe? Orestes has obviously concocted a plan by which Neoptolemus will be (or has been) murdered at Delphi. The plan is on a large scale, involving slander and the help of Orestes' "friends of the spear." This is a case of sheer murder which could take place anywhere. Need we ask then why Orestes implicates the god? He is not trying to pass the blame for the slaying, for with every second breath he credits himself with all the machinery of the plot. He believes, quite obviously, that he is fulfilling the god's wish by killing the son of Achilles. He is acting as an agent of Apollo, a self-styled agent who looks upon Neoptolemus' death as a simultaneous double-slaying by god and man.

Those who dismiss the characters of the Andromache as either two-dimensional purveyors of Spartan wickedness or their over innocent victims fail to explain by such treatment this appearance of Orestes. His part is small, true, but his behavior is startling: he leaves the chorus in a state of shocked confusion from which they will not again recover. The motivation behind his words and actions is nothing short of puzzling, both to the chorus and to us. Tearfully Hermione explains matters to him and begs him to escort her safely back to her father's home before Neoptolemus returns. Orestes reveals that he has come just for that purpose, to take her away, for she was originally promised to him; further, that Neoptolemus will never leave Delphi alive, thanks to a combination of Orestes' plotting and Apollo's wrath. They go off, and, after the next choral stasimon, Peleus returns to verify the news of Hermione's departure.

The entrance of Hermione’s Nurse changed the pace and perspective of the play yet again. Like the Nurses in Medea and Hippolytus, Euripides has this nurse report the emotional turmoil of her mistress, but in this case, not uncritically as the older servant woman does not understand the violent change of mind Hermione is about to display. “Well, my friends, I’m exhausted from keeping my mistress away from the noose.” The Nurse ’s request that the chorus should enter the house, (817-19)  an atypical act,  centers our attention on the skene door from which Hermione now enters (825). Hermione’s panic and hysteria are communicated visually and aurally, she tosses her veil from her head,  tears at her hair,  face and clothes, and sings in dochmaics (the Nurse did not report that) the most impassioned and agitated of lyric meters, while the Nurse replies in reasonable iambic trimeters. With direct reference to her previous scene, Hermione now tears at the elaborate costume she had put on to shame her rival; she is no longer dressed to kill.

Hermione’s extravagant gestures of grief  disrupt the pathos of the scene.  Yet the imagery of her lament  creates significant connections and contrasts between the different parts of the play. Her sudden change of heart is in response to sudden changes in her status when she is abandoned by her father Menelaus. Further exploration of Hermione’s weaknesses also sets up the entrance of the manipulative Orestes. The shallowness of Hermione’s regret complicates our sympathy. Her departure with Orestes, who confesses that he is plotting her husband’s murder, further complicates our response to her despair and terror.

Euripides' Andromache: ENTER PELEUS

Peleus enters from Pharsalus. His arrival has been prepared (79-91) but long enough ago and in doubtful enough terms to be a surprise now. He has arrived in the nick of time, since Menelaus is on the point of killing Andromache (547). It is repeatedly stressed that he is extremely old, but he orders “Lead me faster!”  It would be an effective  dramatic connection if the attendant who leads him were the same slave-woman whom Andromache sent to alert him. There follows an agon between Peleus and Menelaus, in which the Spartan is bested and defeated.  Peleus begins with a series of indignant questions, including “what’s this? (Ti tauta) a colloquialism, one of several that contribute to the portrayal of Peleus as abrupt and excitable.

Then, at 577-80 Peleus forbids the execution and commands the servants to release her.   Orders given to mutes on stage seem normally to have been carried out immediately, but these attendants here are given diametrically opposed orders and accordingly do nothing! Peleus eventually dismisses them (715) and frees Andromache himself.  

Andromache is suppliant, reaching out her fettered arms as far as she can, a stroke of pathos very characteristic of Euripides.  (573 χειραι ) She remains kneeling until  717.  The dramatic moment of Andromache’s release from her bonds,  which marks the defeat of Menelaus’ plans, is made more vivid by the  dense sequence of symbolic stage action, in which Peleus drives off Menelaus’ retinue,  unties Andromache, summons the child to help, and berates Menelaus for his cowardice.

Menelaus, scion of a Greek first family, he cannot believe that Peleus, member of a similar line, would ever side against him with a barbarian slave whom in the name of decency he ought long ago to have chased far from the land and beyond the Nile. Accordingly, he remonstrates with Peleus, mildly and with a patronizing tone (645-690). "Let's be reasonable. This woman's children might grow up to become rulers-of Greeks!" The thought should horrify Peleus as it does Menelaus. When he sees that it does not, he sighs: "Ah, you are old, you are old," and proceeds to set the old man straight on the matter of Helen and the debacle at Troy. "It was the gods," he explains, "who involved my wife in her 'difficulties,' but it did turn out well for the Greeks. They discovered war and companionship in battle, from which, you know, 'men learn all things: Furthermore, it was self-control which kept me from slaying my wife when I found her, which is more than I can say of you when you killed your brother Phocus:' He ends by pointing out the good nature with which he has replied to Peleus and counsels the older man to follow his lead. But Peleus has not been chastened. Menelaus' remarks on war ring unpleasantly in his ears.

                In his next speech (693-726) Peleus gives his own opinions on this great "teacher," opinions which for the third time suggest the intrusion of the playwright. What is war to the Greeks? The rank and file do the work, the generals get the glory. Menelaus and Agamemnon, swollen with pride after Troy, derived their fame from the toil and misery of thousands of others cleverer than they. The democrat's view of an army is quite in tune with this drama wherein vicious leaders vie with talented slaves. As we look back over the characters, we note how virtue increases as status wanes. Peleus, in fact, is the first "free" person to display any commendable qualities at all, and he is here, as earlier at 639- 641, a benevolent spokesman for the common folk. He disdains further conversation with Menelaus.

After ordering him once again to depart and to take his "barren heifer" of a daughter with him, the old king turns his complete attention to Andromache. Fumbling, and with clucks of disgust, he finally unties the poor woman's ropes, while the chorus notes his irascible pertinacity. Menelaus has stood by in silent defeat, perhaps thinking out a plan by which he can make a graceful exit. He has no choice but to leave, yet he cannot admit that he has been bettered. He must state explicitly some reason for going if he is to keep face, a reason, that is, other than the true one, Peleus' palpable victory. "It was to oppose violence that I came to Phthia," he begins, speaking to no one, and adding with marvelous pomposity: "and I shall neither commit nor endure any nonsense!" As he speaks, a good excuse comes to mind: he was planning to leave all along. He is a busy general, after all. Why, right at the present time there is-a city, yes, that's it! a city, near Sparta, once friendly but now hostile. It's imperative that he go reduce it at once! When matters are once again under control at home, however, he will return and confront Neoptolemus himself on this matter. He takes a final stab at Peleus: "You are but an opposing shadow with a voice, powerless to do anything but chatter." This is not only petty and obviously untrue, but not even original, for it echoes Peleus' own succinct estimate of Menelaus at line 641: "As for you, you are nothing!"

Menelaus left only because of Peleus' unquestioned superior position as commander of the local armed forces. But is this the impression which the scene is supposed to leave? Is Peleus really drawn as a pathetic and effete old man who achieves his end not, as he thinks, because he is brave but only because he happens to have the army on his side? Is this not perhaps a pitfall for those who recall the characterizations of Amphitryon in the Heracles and of lolaus in the Heraclidae? There is nothing unduly "touching" about Peleus. He stands in such extreme contrast with those who have preceded him on the stage, and his arrival is so welcome, his attitudes so refreshing, that we may tend to "love" him more than he deserves. His virtues are those of courage, determination, and a resolute feeling for justice. They should win our serious respect before our affection, as they won the respect of the chorus. The episode opened on a woman and her child about to be murdered by an evil, interfering general. It closed with the general in hasty retreat, the woman and child freed from their predicament. One old man accomplished this turn of events with nothing more than bold words, the conviction of wisdom and justice, and a brandished stick. He accomplished it only because he was courageous and the general was a coward.

Thus, virtue momentarily has triumphed. The conflict developed in the first scenes of the play has to some degree been resolved. What will happen next? wonders the audience. Menelaus may go through with his threat to return and see the plan of murder to its fulfillment. Where is Hermione? She may have left with her father as Peleus angrily demanded, or she may still be in the palace hatching new plots in her jealous mind. Neoptolemus too has yet to make an appearance. So much is left undeveloped or untold: the play has by no means ended.

NEXT- And what about Hermione?

 

MURDER AMONG PHILIA (Friends, loved ones, relations) in Euripides' Andromache.

 MURDER AMONG PHILIA (Friends, loved ones, relations)

At first look, the Andromache to appears to be less centrally concerned with harm to friends and kin than in most other plays.  But in this play, Euripides has concocted a mixture of characters and motivations in which the relationships between any two characters becomes ambiguous and multivalent.

There is no consensus among scholars of Ancient Greek about the exact meaning of the word philos or other related expressions such as philein and philia. It seems apparent, however, that the use of these terms went through significant changes from the time of Homer to the fifth century. In classical Athens, the term could take on different meanings depending on the situation it was used in, sometimes denoting emotional relationships based on personal feelings and attitudes, sometimes referring to socially regulated, politically influenced ones. In the Andromache the terms signifying family relationships and friendships are especially prone to change depending on the speaker's current situation and aims. The main conflict of the play revolves around the status of Andromache and most of the cases in which the term philos is used are connected to Andromache, therefore it seems justified to concentrate on the question of who is or might be regarded as her philos. The characters manipulate and distort the meaning of the word to serve their own purposes. Euripides uses conflicting concepts of philia which belong to different codes of behavior and sets of values and by doing so reveals the inherent tensions in some of the terms and concepts which were prevalent in fifth-century Athens.

Menelaus and Hermione threaten Andromache and her small son Molossos, who are not blood kin to them, and Orestes is implicated in the murder of Neoptolemus, who is not his kin. Although threats to a suppliant occur in the first part of the play, suppliance is not the main concern of the play as a whole. Xenia does not figure in Andromache, nor does spouse murder spouse, as happens in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Sophocles' Women of Trachis. Nevertheless, this play, focusing as it does on conflict between the wife and concubine of Neoptolemus, is centrally concerned with violations of philia within the marriage relationship. In the Greek view, the acts it represents are just as dreadful as kin murder and incest.

Left behind by her father, Hermione attempts suicide and expresses great fear of Neoptolemus’s anger. She is saved from her plight by the arrival of Orestes, to whom she had previously been betrothed. He offers her protection and marriage and reveals that he has contrived a plot against Neoptolemus. After they leave together, a messenger reports the death of Neoptolemus at Delphi. The young man's body is then brought in and Peleus mourns the death of his grandson and heir. The play ends with the appearance of Thetis ex Machina, revealing that Peleus is to live with her as an immortal, that they are to be reunited with their son Achilles, who now lives in the Blessed Isles, that Andromache is to marry the ruler of the Molossians, and that Molossos will be the father of Molossian kings. In this tangled plot, Neoptolemus’s philoi injure or attempt to injure one another in a series of actions that leads to the destruction of his house. Relationships in this play are so twisted and perverted that not only do philoi treat one another as enemies, but enemies also treat one another as close philoi. Andromache, the wife of Hector, is the natural enemy of the family of Achilles, who killed Hector. Yet, she is treated as a close phile, who lives in Neoptolemus’s house and has a child by him. In treating this enemy as a friend, Neoptolemus also thereby treats his philoi as enemies. In Andromache, inappropriate relationships with enemies play the same role that kin murder does in other tragedies.

Neoptolemus’s union with Andromache has created a situation in which they themselves and the other dramatic figures are both philoi and enemies to one another. When they are forced to act in these circumstances, their actions are ambiguous, since they help or harm someone who is both philos and enemy. 'All of those connected by blood or marriage with the house of Peleus — Neoptolemus, Andromache, Molossos, Peleus, Hermione, Menelaus, Orestes, and Thetis—are involved in ambiguous situations. Although Neoptolemus is absent throughout the play, appearing only as a corpse, he is at the center of the web of relationships from which the dramatic action springs. He is related to every other major figure in the play either by birth (Thetis, Peleus, and Molossos) or by marriage (Andromache, Hermione, Menelaus, and Orestes). Moreover, because we see him only through the eyes of others, Neoptolemus is defined by his relationships with them, by his roles as husband, master, father, grandson, and son-in-law. To each of these dramatic figures Neoptolemus is both friend and enemy, the sum of the perverted relationships he has created. Neoptolemus is Andromache’s enemy, as a Greek and the son of her husband's murderer. Yet in taking her into his household, he treats her as a phile, becoming her "husband" and the father of her son, Molossos.

Neoptolemus, however, has not acted as a philos to Andromache and her son. He thrust her aside after marrying Hermione (30, 37), and he left Phthia without providing for her protection or clarifying her position in his household. Andromache comments on his absence in time of need and complains that he does not act as a father to Molossos (49-50, 75-76). By failing to protect Andromache, Neoptolemus violates the obligations of philia he has incurred toward her and Molossos. On the other hand, in keeping Andromache and her son in his household, Neoptolemus injures Hermione, his legitimate wife.18 Greek custom held that while a man might keep a concubine in a separate establishment, he should never bring her into contact with his legitimate wife, much less allow the two to live in the same house. It was also held to be shameful for a concubine to usurp the wife's place by bearing and rearing children; only legitimate children should be reared in a man's house.

Neoptolemus also acts wrongly in other ways with regard to Hermione. He marries her against Peleus's will and advice (619-21); he marries a woman who had been promised to Orestes, her relative; and, moreover, he insults his rival (966-81). Neoptolemus also acts wrongly in leaving Hermione in his house during his absence, just as Menelaus did when he left Hermione's mother Helen alone (592-95). Neoptolemus wrongs other philoi as well. He acts offensively toward his father-in-law, Menelaus, in keeping, in the same house as his daughter, a concubine who is, moreover, the widow of Hector, the brother of Paris (655-56), who committed adultery with Menelaus’s wife. Although the play does not explicitly mention Neoptolemus’s injuries to Peleus and Thetis, we may infer that he also wrongs his grandparents when he brings into his household the wife of their son's enemy. In addition, Neoptolemus fails to protect their only great-grandson and deserts his aged grandfather, leaving him without protection in the midst of disorder. Neoptolemus not only acts badly toward Thetis and all of the major mortal dramatic figures, but he also insults Apollo, treating a god who should be honored as the enemy who killed his father (53, 1106—8, 1194-96).

And yet, Euripides has been accused of “rehabilitating “ and “whitewashing” Neoptolemus. This seems only to be justified by the fact that nowhere does the play mention the atrocities Neoptolemus was famous for: murdering Priam at the Altar of Zeus, and hurling Astyanax (Hector and Andromache’s son) to his death from the walls of Troy.

 

 

MOTHER AND CHILD LAMENT in Euripides' Andromache

 MOTHER AND CHILD LAMENT

After Menelaus tricks Andromache into leaving the sanctuary of Thetis’ temple, his guards seize her and take both her and the child off to be prepared for execution. Euripides does this so he can depopulate the stage just enough and more importantly, so Andromache and her son can make a pitiful entrance.

The Lament sung by Andromache and her child requires a boy actor in addition to the regular three. Boys’ choruses competed at the City Dionysia, so competent soloists would have been available. Children appear in nine of Euripides’ extant plays and he is the only tragedian to give them speaking or singing parts.

From the reviews I have read of 2020’s Children in Greek Tragedy: Pathos and Potential by Emma Griffiths, her basic conclusion is that the importance of children in Greek tragedy has two social functions  (i) showing the family capable of repairing itself and establishing values sufficient for it to recover from the worst events, and (ii) suggesting that this can be done without the involvement, interference, or influence of the gods. How this helps with the exegesis of tragedy is unclear in the reviews.

Andromache:

Had’ ego kheras haimateras brokhoisi

keklemena pempomai kata gaias  

Child:

Mater, mater, ego de sa pterugi sungkatabaino

 

Andromache
sung
Here am I, hands bloodied with the tight bonds about them, being sent down to death.

Boy
sung
Mother, o mother, under [505] your wing I go down as well.

Andromache
sung
This is a cruel sacrifice, o rulers of Phthia!

Boy
sung
Father, come and help those you love.

Andromache
sung
[510] Dear child, you will lie below dead with your dead mother, next to her breast.

Boy
sung
Oh me! What will become of me? Unhappy are we, you and I, mother.

Menelaus threatens to kill his son-in-law's "Slave Baby Mama." Euripides' Andromache notes continued.

 Second Episode (309-463).

The sudden arrival of Menelaus, leading in the supposedly hidden child of Andromache and Neoptolemus, steps up the pace of the action.

Andromache, having got the better of Hermione in their agon (debate), now faces Menelaus. With Menεlaus, however, it is quite different. The disparity is not in their age, but in their sex, and right behavior between man and woman is a different thing from appropriate behavior between mistress and slave. After Andromache questions Menelaus’ ability to reason, the chorus reproaches her for going too far as a woman speaking to a man (363). Menelaus also holds real power over Andromache because he has her son. She cannot dismiss his threats the way she ignores Hermione’s. He threatens to kill her son if she refuses to leave the altar; if she does leave the altar, she herself will be killed. Andromache responds with a defiant speech in which she tries to deter Menelaus from his threat (319-63).  When he repeats the threat (380-3) she makes a second speech in which she chooses to die instead of her son (384-420). Menelaus then reveals he intends to kill them both. The act concludes with a denunciation of the Spartans by Andromache (334-51).

Andromache outlines the undesirable consequences for Menelaus of killing either her or her son, subdividing the various possibilities with rhetorical precision. If she is killed, Hermione will incur pollution and Menelaus will be guilty as an accomplice (334-7); if the child is killed, Neoptolemus will divorce Hermione (338-44); no one else would then marry her (344-51).

It seems that in her confrontations with Hermione and her father, Andromache reveals certain aspects of the situation that the two Spartans cannot or do not want to perceive: in the first case she indicates the real fault in Hermione’s relationship to Neoptolemus (205– 212), while in the second she underlines the consequences for Hermione’s marital life of her or her son’s murder (342–351). Moreover, Menelaus’ suggestion that his daughter will decide whether the boy will live or die strengthens the view that it is Andromache, not her son, who is considered a threat to Hermione. In facing the dilemma of whether she or her son will die, Andromache tries to convince herself that her life is not worth living (394–405). Finally, when the plot is revealed, she addresses to Menelaus a tirade against the Spartans (445–452) that has created the impression with some scholars that it is the cause for which the whole play was written!           

Having with these words eliminated the faintest chance of appealing to the man's good nature, Andromache next presents Menelaus with a list of excellent reasons why she should not die. She can come no closer to a plea. Hermione and Menelaus both will carry the pollution of blood guilt. If the boy is slain, Neoptolemus will avenge his death. Hermione will be flung from the land: she will return home, unwanted, and grow gray with age in her father's house. If Andromache is a witch, she should stand trial as one. "That is my opinion about this matter," she concludes, then adds one more comment that she cannot keep back although she knows it will enrage Menelaus even more:

"But there is one part of your thinking that I fear:

it was also because of strife over a woman that you destroyed poor Troy.”

            As the chorus tells her, she spoke the truth but has said too much. But Andromache does draw an interesting parallel: Menelaus here as at Troy is puffing about imperiously over a matter which should go unnoticed by an important military dignitary. (Again, the shadow of the war.) For all his faults of cruelty, Menelaus' greatest weakness may be a systematic susceptibility to the women of his family. His reply to Andromache (366-383) makes no effort to disguise his mission, but only, in the midst of inept platitudes, to justify it. True, he says, the business of his son-in-law’s “slave baby mama” is a small matter. But it has his attention at the moment, and that makes it more important even than capturing Troy (ignoring Andromache's grouping of the two as "female strifes"). Although Andromache has pointed out that Hermione will lose Neoptolemus should anything happen to her or the child, Menelaus implies the opposite: Andromache must die to secure the marriage: "A wife may suffer other, lesser calamities, but if she fails with her husband she fails with her life." Further, even though Andromache is not his own slave, he thinks he still has an ethical right to kill her, "for with friends, if they are truly friends, nothing is privately retained. Rather, all possessions are jointly shared." At any rate (the mother is told) either she or her son must die.

            The contrast of Menelaus’ speech and its pointless generalities with the economically logical rhesis of Andromache is almost too obvious. With his opening lines Menelaus assures us that he is as evil a character as the stage can tolerate. Now we are led to suspect that he will turn out to be, as well as evil, stupid. Menelaus boasts of his cleverness, but it amounts to blackmail and murder disguised as concern for his philoi (loved ones.)  The ethics of retaliation, the claim to be doing both Greece and Neoptolemus a favor, are shown to be merely a front for petty revenge and self-aggrandizement. The perversion of language by Menelaus  reveals the corrupted individualism of a society disfigured by war.

            Menelaus tricks Andromache into leaving the sanctuary of the altar to Thetis by threatening to kill her son. When mother and child are reunited, she learns that not only will she surely die, but that Hermione will decide the fate of her son. In the next installment, I will discuss the duet of mother and son and some notes about singing children in Euripides.

Euripides’ Choruses and Notes on the Choral Ode at Andromache 274-308.

 

Euripides’ Choruses and Notes on the Choral Ode at Andromache 274-308.

Forget the invincible textbooks of theatre history that repeat the irresponsible misconception that  Euripides “de-emphasized” the role of the Chorus. What is true is that  Euripides differently emphasized the chorus, and some of the most beautiful and powerful moments in Greek poetry are in his choral odes.

We are continually reminded in tragedy that, despite their use of mythical tradition in their songs to point parallels or retrace the causative history of the story, the chorus, like other characters, are ignorant of the future, unlike deities or their prophets. They are, in a sense, spectators, an internal audience whose response the theatre audience can use as a correlative for its own.  It is a subjective correlative and tied to the chorus’s identity, their particular limitations and preconceptions. 

Euripides’ choice of choral identity is always tuned to the larger framework of the play. Of the seventeen tragic choruses we have of his, fourteen are female. Frequently their marginal status and limited agency is emphasized by their also being slaves and/or foreigners. Might this have something to do with why male theatre scholars considered the choruses of Euripides to be “minimized” in some way? (Anyone need a dissertation topic intersecting reception, feminist and postcolonial theory and hegemony?)

In the Andromache as in the Medea,  the chorus are local women, whose very rootedness underlines the displacement and isolation of the foreign woman protagonist.  In both plays the bond of womanhood partially bridges the racial divide.

In the first strophic pair, the chorus describes the Judgement of Paris, often evoked in Euripides' plays on the Trojan War. The second strophic pair goes back in time to Paris’ birth,  and deals with the suffering that would have been avoided.

The ode is related to the action, but also contrasts with it. The chorus’ account of the Judgement of Paris takes its cue from the quarrel of human females in the preceding scene. The end of the ode connects the survival of baby Paris to the subsequent sufferings of Greeks and Trojans and of Andromache in particular. On the other hand, the ode makes a sharp break with the preceding action.  It begins, like many odes in tragedy, at a point remote in space and time. 

  In contrast to the realistic tone of the argument (agon) that preceded it, the first part of the ode is decorative and lyrical. The ode takes a dark turn and stays there at the line “Hecuba should have thrown him ( the infant Paris)  backwards over her head like a polluted object and walked away without looking back.”

    The review of the folly that started the Trojan War sets up Andromache’s insulting remark to Menelaus in the next scene “ One should not bring about great evils for small reasons."

    The Euripidean chorus offers not merely reflections of events, or reactions to them, but with the capacity and intent of modifying  our interpretation of the surrounding action. They do not stand outside the play, delivering a commentary from some more objective, authoritative position.

 

Hermione versus Andromache in Euripides

 First Episode (147-273). The Agon of Hermione and Andromache

    The first episode of the play is the only onstage encounter between the Spartan princess, Helen's daughter Hermione and Andromache, and each speaks a single position speech. These are followed by a short stichomythia of brilliant invective.Dramatic agones ( competitive debates) seldom in fact resolve the disputed issues.  It is often difficult to judge who is in the right, or whether both parties have a claim. But the dilemma sharpens our conception of the wider issues raised by the play.  Occasionally we can judge  with confidence that one figure has the better case, yet their arguments are in vain. The failure of persuasion shows provocatively how power and self-interest may override considerations of justice.

    Hermione’s speech begins, as often in oratory,  by establishing the ethos (character) of the speaker, in order to elicit sympathy and support from the audience. Hermione trumpets her Spartan origins and wealth and denigrates her opponent as a slave and a foreigner . (153, 159). But her excess is repellent and we know that Andromache was a princess and is spoudaia (good) as a character.  Hermione’s sneers are to be seen against what we have so far seen of Andromache, not just as intrinsically nasty. Although we sense that she is plagued with jealousy and alienation such insecurity does not justify her present deadly intentions. Her message has all the subtlety of a snake's bite. Its venom is of the variety that one might expect from a Medea; the inconsistencies of thought alone reduce the speaker to an angry and mentally unimpressive adolescent. The chorus throughout does its best to temper the tone of the episode.  Hermione’s elaborate introductory proem ( 147-53) peaks rhetorically with the final word, eleutherostomein (‘to speak freely’, 153). She revealingly defines her right to speech by reference to the prestige of her wealthy dowry and Spartan origin, while denying Andromache this same right of speech.  The connection of independent wealth to free speech is characteristic of the aristocratic world of heroic myth.

    Hermione’s attack on barbarian ( meaning non-Greek) sexual and social mores is the most flamboyant  passage of anti-barbarian rhetoric in extant tragedy. The charges are rebutted by the action of the play itself.  Andromache clearly has no choice but to sleep with Neoptolemus ( whose father killed her husband), while it is Hermione who of her own will leaves with Orestes and, according to established tradition, goes on to bear children not just to the son of the man who killed her husband, but to the murderer himself.  Nobody fits the charge (close relatives kill each other 175-6) better than Orestes, whose sordid and brutal backstory are recalled later at his first entry. Hermione’s ethnic slurs are undermined both by her actions and by the response of Andromache. The Spartans’ rigid categories pf Greek self-definition are exposed as rhetorical constructs in the course of the play. The play’s contemporary background illuminates this process. Unlike the conflict with the Persians, which solidified, if it did not invent, the polarity of Greek and barbarian, the Peloponnesian War was an especially rigorous test of the security of self/other, especially Greek/barbarian distinctions.  The Andromache shows these oppositions in crisis, then in breakdown, and finally reconstitutes "philial" relations along radically new lines.

    Hermione is torn between two radically opposed  visions of women’s role ( independence versus strict control).  Hermione’s confusion, reflected in her contradictory arguments,  contrasts with the stability of Andromache, and leads us to understand her later reversal. As if she had forgotten (or did not mean) her threat of death, she begins to lecture Andromache on proper behavior. Henceforth Andromache must not continue to act like a queen, must learn to conduct herself in a manner befitting a base slave. "Let some man or god be willing to rescue you! Still you must cower in humility for that earlier grandiose pride of yours; you must prostrate yourself at my knee, must sweep my house!”Royalty reduced to sweeping is a commonplace in Euripides ( cf. Cyc 23-32; Hec. 363; Hyps. Fragment 7512). That sweeping is the topper is pretty damn funny.

    Andromache’s reply is sophisticated, at ironic odds with her position as a slave and barbarian. Euripidean speakers often sense that their words will offend and seek to defuse the effect, but Andromache’s response is forthright and courageous under the circumstances. Although she knows a victory in the debate to be counterproductive. Andromache decides on principle to make the best and truest defense possible, since  would be cowardly to let condemnation follow by default.(191).In contrast to Hermione's speech, Andromache's is a carefully worded and well-balanced rebuttal, worthy of any debating bench.  First an introduction (183-191) wherein she acquiesces to one of drama's most frustrating necessities, the speech made in futility. The combination of her own slavery and Hermione's youth and power predetermine her defeat, for should she merit a victory she would only incur more trouble: "For the high and mighty find it bitter to lose an argument to their inferiors." Second, she presents her refutation of Hermione's charges in the form of ironic and even sarcastic rhetorical questions (192-204). Why and how would she usurp Hermione's position? Is she richer? Is she free? Is she young or beautiful? Would she want to give birth to a brood of slaves? The idea is so absurd that she leaves the queries unanswered. Third, having eliminated herself as the cause of Hermione's problems, she points to the real source: Hermione's own disposition (205-221). Beautiful the younger woman may be, but she lacks the talents of a wife. She remains the Spartan daughter of Menelaus whereas she ought now to consider herself the Phthian spouse of Neoptolemus. She is so sexually insatiable, so jealous of her husband's affections, that she cannot tolerate the thought of his ever having had intercourse with another woman, whereas she ought to be content.

    Finally, Andromache draws a brief comparison between the two of them (222-231). She herself was always a loving wife, faithful even in her Hector's moments of infidelity when Aphrodite "tripped" him. This is what he loved in her. Hermione, on the other hand, is so apprehensive that she would not allow even one drop of rain to spatter on her husband's face. "Don't seek to surpass your mother's amorousness," warns Andromache. "Sensible daughters avoid the ways of evil mothers."

     As Andromache predicted, her words were but tinder for Hermione's rage, and, despite the chorus' plea, the two join in a spirited and vicious interchange of remarks (234-273) .16 Hermione at length goes out, but only after promising Andromache that she has the bait with which to fetch the latter out of Thetis' shrine, and that the deed will be accomplished before Neoptolemus returns from Delphi. Andromache remains seated in the shrine, briefly regretting the evils which women inflict upon humankind. What are we to make of these misogynistic saws in the voice of the heroine? That will be a topic for another blog notes.

Euripides' Andromache: Myth, Reception and Legacy.

 

The Andromache combines two myths from the aftermath of the Trojan war: one concerning Hector’s widow Andromache, her life as the concubine of Achilles’ son Neoptolemus (Latin ‘Pyrrhus’), and her eventual marriage to her former brother-in-law Helenus and settlement in Epirus; and the other about Neoptolemus’ marriage to Hermione (the daughter of Menelaus and Helen) and his murder by Orestes, to whom Hermione had originally been betrothed. The two stories are intertwined in Euripides’ play with the added plot of Hermione and Menelaus attempting to kill Andromache and her illegitimate son by Neoptolemus (though unnamed in the play, this son is often referred to by scholars as “Molossus”). The title role actually disappears mid-way through the play, rescued from death by Neoptolemus’ grandfather Peleus.

The reception of Andromache is as broad and varied as that of any of Euripides’ plays, and French drama and Italian baroque opera in particular retold and refashioned the myths of the Andromache-Neoptolemus-Hermione-Orestes tetrad in a surprising number of variations. There are some key plot features that stand out in Euripides’ version, which are significant in assessing its reception:

• Neoptolemus is married to Hermione, but Andromache is his concubine;

• A salacious verbal duel occurs between the female rivals, Andromache and Hermione, in front of a chorus of women;

• Various characters reiterate the belief that a man should not have sexual relations with two women at the same time. The chorus women’s thoughts on the subject express this concisely: “I will never praise double marriages among mortals, nor sons by different mothers; it causes strife and hostile pains for a house” (Andromache 465–8).

• When Andromache is threatened by Menelaus, it is her love for her son (whose life is also threatened) that convinces her to yield to his demands;

• Hermione has a famous breast-baring panic scene, in dialogue with her Nurse;

• Neoptolemus is absent from the entire play (like Creon’s daughter in Medea, and Aegisthus in Euripides’ Electra), and his corpse is carried in only at the end for lamentation by his grandfather Peleus;

• Neoptolemus is murdered off-stage (and in Delphi) by henchmen of Orestes, who plotted his murder out of jealousy for Hermione, with whom Orestes elopes. It is noteworthy that Hermione asks Orestes to help her, but at the same time Orestes had already laid a plot to eliminate her husband even before meeting her;

 • Peleus and Thetis (Neoptolemus’ grandparents) and Menelaus all make brief appearances;

• The play ends with a prediction of Andromache’s marriage to Helenus, their relocation to Molossia (in Epirus, at the modern border between Albania and Greece), and of her son by Neoptolemus as a future king. In Literature Scholars have noted that Euripides’ Andromache is itself an example of the reception of Sophocles, whose Hermione (now fragmentary) preceded Euripides’ Andromache by an unknown number of years. 

      Most agree that the Sophoclean drama focused on Orestes’ murder of Neoptolemus so that Orestes could marry Hermione; the play apparently included a chorus of Phthian women, and a scene in which Peleus lamented over his grandson’s body. It has been argued that Euripides, in composing the Andromache, engaged in a “metapoetic” rivalry with Sophocles by repeating these basic elements and then adding the additional plot of Hermione trying to kill her husband’s concubine and their bastard son. In this way, Euripides created the dramatic incentive for the argument between rival women in the same household, which remains one of the most memorable scenes of the play. The first surviving instance of the reception of Euripides’ Andromache in literature occurs four centuries after it was first performed.

In Book 3 of Vergil’s Aeneid, Aeneas narrates how he and his Trojan refugees were travelling by the coast of Epirus and heard a rumor that Priam’s son Helenus was still alive, had married Andromache, and had succeeded to the throne of Achilles’ son Pyrrhus (Greek Neoptolemus). They land at Buthrotum and investigate, only to find Andromache herself making offerings at altars in Hector’s name. Andromache is astonished to see Aeneas alive. In the course of conversation Aeneas asks whether she is still Pyrrhus’ concubine (Aeneid 3. 319), giving her the opportunity to relate the details of her life since the fall of Troy.

Andromache’s Elegiac Lament: Euripides marathon continues!

Andromache’s Elegiac Lament 103-116 to Parados 117-146

After the servant leaves on her dangerous mission, Andromache is alone and sings her lament to end the prologue and signal the Parados, the entrance of the chorus of local women. Andromache is not content to mourn the fall of Troy and the slaughter of her family, but goes further back to the causes of the war, to Paris and Helen, thereby illustrating a tendency on the part of Euripides' characters and choruses to sound at times like rhapsodists ( performers of epic poetry like the Cycle and Homer).  

In this play there is a consistent preoccupation with causes. Andromache here suggests that the war was prompted by the rape of Helen: three other theories will be presented before the end of the play, two by the chorus and the third by Peleus. One cannot assume that Euripides intended these as purely ornamental digressions. Their primary purpose remains for the present unrevealed, but the immediate effect of Andromache's reflections on the war is to push the beginning of the tragedy further back in time. In review of the prologue, one should note that it ends as it begins, that is, with a statement of Andromache's misfortunes and plight. Yet enough intrusions have separated these two monologues to discourage one from interpreting the entire scene as simply an extended threnos. A second (minor servant) character is introduced, and the plot is actually furthered, if slightly, before Andromache turns to her lamentations.

Andromache’s monodic lament in Andromache recalls her laments in the Iliad, and creates a point of continuity between the Homeric Andromache and the Euripidean Andromache. Andromache herself says in the proem that she is always lamenting (ἡμεῖς δ’ οἷσπερ ἐγκείμεσθ’ ἀεὶ/θρήνοισι καὶ γόοισι καὶ δακρύμασιν/πρὸς αἰθέρ’ ἐκτενοῦμεν· 91-93), a state of affairs which fittingly expands upon Hector’s prediction of her future from Iliad Book 6.39 The lament itself recalls the cause of the Trojan War, the death of Hector, and Andromache’s captivity. The death of Hector and Andromache’s captivity were recounted in the prologue by Andromache herself (8-15). In this song, she explicitly names the culprit: the marriage of Paris: Ἰλίωι αἰπεινᾶι Πάρις οὐ γάμον ἀλλά τιν’ ἄταν/ἀγάγετ’ εὐναίαν ἐς θαλάμους Ἑλέναν (103-104). This is the first of several references to Paris and Helen and the cause of the Trojan War in Andromache. It is fitting that Andromache be the first character to recall the ruin that disastrous union caused: as the sympathetic character of the play, it is her suffering, and the causes of her suffering, which captivate audience and reader.

Andromache also makes use of several typical features of tragic laments. She makes explicit reference to the tears she shed upon being led away as a slave (πολλὰ δὲ δάκρυά μοι, 111) and uses a simile to describe in detail the depth of her sorrow while she clutches the statue of the goddess as suppliant (τάκομαι ὡς πετρίνα πιδακόεσσα λιβάς, 116). She also apostrophizes herself as “wretched me!” (ὤμοι ἐγὼ μελέα, 113), a feature used often by women in laments.The tone of the lament extends the sense of passivity Andromache cultivated in her prologue. She is careful to say that none of the events were of her making; she suffers through the insensitivity and cruelty of others.

“That no man is to be accounted happy until after his last day on earth” is a commonplace of tragedy and Andromache's lament end with it. This bit of truth might at first seem out of place here. It is usually spoken in reproachful warning to one who thinks himself blest by fortune (e.g. Solon to Croesus in Herodotus' account), or by a speaker with unwitting tragic irony (e.g. by the pompous Agamemnon in the Aeschylus play). So is the present use of it partially ironical, but the speaker is both the wit and the victim.  Andromache, who can by no means be called happy in advance of her death and whose last day may well be the most wretched of many, includes the proverb among her preliminary observations as a grim bit of understatement. But the subtlety transcends mere irony, for Andromache stands now in full realization of the truth of this axiom which throughout her life, up to the attack on Troy, had no practical meaning. She once was happy but now is not. Who can say whether she ever will be again?

The Andromache includes the only passage of elegiac couplets in extant Greek tragedy. Elegiac meter was originally associated with mournful songs accompanied by the aulos (double reed wind instrument); its use was later extended to epigrams and love poems. An elegiac couplet consists of a line of dactylic hexameter ( the meter of all Epic)  followed by a shorter line traditionally called a “pentameter.” The dactylic hexameter contains six feet; each foot is either a dactyl (LONG-short-short ) or a spondee (LONG-LONG). The sixth foot is always a spondee, and the fifth is usually a dactyl, so most lines end with the rhythm LONG-short-short LONG-LONG: “Shave and a Haircut.”(No “two bits!”)

The alternating pentameter line is not really five dactylic feet; rather it is  2.5 + 2.5 feet. The pattern: LONG-short-short-LONG-short-short-LONG: “Lions and Tigers and Bears!”( No “Oh my!”) Two dactyls plus a long syllable is called a “hemiepes” (half-foot). Two hemiepes with a word boundary between them, make up the so-called pentameter line. In the first hemipies, a long syllable can be substituted for two shorts.

The elegy of Andromache in the Andromache of Euripides actually shows the evolutionary relationship between lament and elegy. We see it in the simple fact that this elegy is complete as an elegy, but it is incomplete as a lament. The elegiac singing of Andromache is not a complete performance of lamentation. It is only part of a performance, as we see from what happens after Andromache finishes her song of lament. This lament, which is a monody sung by the tragic actor representing Andromache, leads into an antiphonal lament, sung and danced by the chorus of tragedy. At line 117, the hexameter of what was expected to be the next elegiac couplet is picked up as the first line of a choral song—a song that is meant to be sung and danced by the chorus. This choral song is decidedly not elegiac in form. From line 117 onward, there are no more elegiac couplets to be heard since the hexameter at this line will not be followed by a pentameter.

So, the elegy of Andromache, as a monody, is only a part of the lament here, since the choral song of the women of Phthia continues where Andromache left off. From the plot of the tragedy, we can see how the continuation comes about. An ensemble of local women from Phthia has just arrived at the scene of action, finding there a foreign woman from Troy, Andromache. She is in a state of abject isolation, lamenting her misfortunes as she sings her monody of sorrow.

The local women react to the sorrow by singing and dancing an antiphonal lament in response to the monodic lament sung by Andromache. This sharing of sorrow between the two sides, by way of the monody sung by Andromache on one side and the choral song sung and danced by the local women on the other side, leads to a communalization of emotions, in all their diversities. By way of this communalization, the local women from Phthia have in effect accepted the foreign woman from Troy as their lead singer. For the male chorus who represents this ensemble of women, the actor and virtuoso singer who represents Andromache in singing her lament is in fact the lead singer, since the monody he sings leads into the singing and dancing of the chorus. By contrast with epic, which shows a distinction between thrēnos and góos as genres, we see no such distinction in the monody of Andromache as represented in the Andromache of Euripides. Both words thrēnos and góos refer in this monody to laments performed by women In short, the references to female lament in tragedy are in reality references to female lament only as represented by male lament. Such a representation of female lament by tragedy can be considered an act of male appropriation, which Nagy calls a masculinization of women’s lament.” With its power of direct representation, which is called mimēsis in Greek, tragedy is not only more realistic than epic in the ways it shows lament in action. It is also more deceptive since this realism makes it all the more difficult to distinguish between genres of male and female lament embedded within tragedy as a genre of all-male performance. The masculinization of women’s lament in tragedy is so realistic that it becomes barely noticeable. That is what makes tragedy in Athenian State Theater seem so threatening in Plato’s Republic (III 395d–e).The perceived threat is that men who represent the laments of women in tragedy will start to talk and think and even feel like women, not like the men they really are. In the masculinization of women’s lament, from Plato’s point of view, the danger is that men’s lament can in turn be feminized.

In brief, then, the elegy of Andromache composed by Euripides for his Andromache is exceptional in ancient Greek literature because its form represents three different but related genres: (1) lament as performed by women, (2) elegy as performed by men, and (3) threnodic elegy as performed by men who are professional singers. The representation of all three of these genres must have seemed most realistic to the audiences of Euripides, since he is ridiculed in the Frogs of Aristophanes (1301–1303) for heavy-handedly inserting what is called the thrēnos into his tragedies.

    The differences we see in these three genres stem from a basic tendency in the evolution of poetic forms in the prehistory of Greek literature. That tendency can be described as an ongoing differentiation of specialized forms of solo performance evolving out of unspecialized forms of group performance. What results is the emergence of specialized forms that exist only in solo performance, cut off from the corresponding unspecialized forms that continue to exist in group performance. To put it in terms of attested forms of performance in the fifth century BCE, a period of time that coincides with the classical phase of ancient Greek literature, solo performance becomes monodic while group performance remains choral (Nagy 1990a:85, 340–341). Almost all of the poetry we find surviving from the literature of this period has been composed exclusively either for monodic or for choral performance. An exception is tragedy, along with other dramatic forms as attested primarily in the context of Athenian State Theater in the fifth century. Within the framework of tragedy and other drama, the monodic and the choral dimensions of performance are still connected, as in the elegy of the Andromache of Euripides.

 

 

 

PROLOGUE Euripides’ Andromache 1-56

 

PROLOGUE Euripides’ Andromache 1-56

The whole prologue shows that "Brechtian" could just as easily be "Euripidean."

Her opening monologue was outside the play proper. It was the actor, more than his part, who spoke, saying in effect: "I play the role of Andromache, and here is the situation in which I find myself." The composed tone of lines I-56 might have led one to presume that Hector's widow is superbly dispassionate, but she quickly dispels that suspicion with emotional (though not inordinately lyrical) elegiacs. Elegiacs are songs of mourning.

 As soon as her opening speech ends, she gets some terrible news from her handmaid and sings her sorrow to the sky.

Lines 103·ll6. This elegiac threnos is unique in extant tragedy. The hexameters are almost pure dactyls. Next, I will discuss this passage, alone in tragedy for Elegiac Couplets, and the imitation of laments sung by women that Nagy has identified in this work of Euripides the anthropologist.

Summary of Euripides' Andromache

 At the time of the fall of Troy Andromache, Hector's widow, was given by the conquering Greeks to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. As his concubine he took her to his royal home in Thessalian Phthia, where she bore him a son. Since then Neoptolemus has married Menelaus' daughter Hermione, but he still keeps Andromache and her child in his house. Hermione, seemingly incapable of pregnancy, has developed a raging jealousy of Andromache and accuses the Trojan slave of effecting her barrenness by witchcraft. In fear for her own and her son's life, Andromache has hidden the boy and sought sanctuary for herself in the shrine of Thetis near the palace. Neoptolemus is in Delphi where he hopes to beg successful pardon of Apollo, whom he earlier offended by rash demands of satisfaction for Achilles' murder at Troy. At this point the play begins.

Andromache sends a fellow slave to find and ask the help of Peleus, Achilles' father and Neoptolemus' grandfather, against the treachery of Hermione and her father Menelaus. The latter has just arrived to help resolve his daughter's marital problems.1 Hermione enters, a young woman of irrational disposition and bad temper. She tries to force Andromache out of the sanctuary; upon failing she retires with vicious threats. Menelaus then appears with Andromache's son whom he has sought out and captured. He tricks Andromache from the shrine by telling her that either she or the boy must die. As soon as she has surrendered, however, he announces that, while he plans to kill her, he wiIl leave her son's fate up to his daughter. Andromache is shocked by this deception into a bitter diatribe against Menelaus and Spartans in general.

The captives, with their captor, retire during the stasimon, returning thereafter on their way to death at the ruthless hands of Menelaus. Just in time Peleus rushes in and rescues them. He and Menelaus battle with words, nearly with fists, and Peleus also finds occasion for a number of pungent remarks about Spartan immorality. Defeated, Menelaus withdraws awkardly from the scene, while Peleus leads Andromache and the boy to safety. After a choral ode in praise of noble Peleus, Hermione's nurse enters to report excitedly that the young wife is trying to kill herself, both because her father has abandoned her cause and because she dreads the wrath of Neoptolemus when he hears ultimately of her earlier plot against Andromache. Hermione herself then rushes in.

As the motherly nurse is attempting to soothe her, a stranger enters who turns out to be her cousin Orestes. He glibly tells the chorus that he was on his way to Dodona and thought that he would stop by to see how Cousin Hermione was enjoying married life. Tearfully the girl explains matters to him and begs him to escort her safely back to her father's home before Neoptolemus returns. Orestes reveals that he has come just for that purpose, to take her away, for she was originally promised to him; further, that Neoptolemus will never leave Delphi alive, thanks to a combination of Orestes' plotting and Apollo's wrath. They go off, and, after the next choral stasimon,

Peleus returns to verify the news of Hermione's departure. A messenger arrives to tell in detail the heroic and pathetic death of Neoptolemus at the hands of the Delphians. The corpse is brought in and Peleus, broken by this development, begins a lamentation. He is stopped, however, by the appearance of Thetis, his former wife. She promises him immortality and for Andromache security as the wife of Molossian Helenus. The body of Neoptolemus is to be returned to Delphi and interred there. Peleus thanks Thetis and dries his tears.

Revenge in Euripides' Hecuba

The mode of Hecuba’s revenge is gruesome, to be sure. Rather than merely kill Polymestor, her son’s murderer, Hecuba slays his two infant sons and puts out his eyes. The play’s audience would have seen Polymestor scrabbling on all fours, hunting and howling like a wild animal, an image likely as shocking to them as it is to more modern critics. Yet these critics never regard Polymestor as inhuman, despite his visually degraded position and his violation of the laws of xenia (“guest-friendship”) in murdering Hecuba’s son. Hecuba’s revenge marks her alone as having abandoned the nomoi (“laws,” “conventions”) of communal human life. Having willingly acted in an inhuman way, Hecuba herself becomes inhuman when according to Polymestor’s prophecy, she becomes a supernatural hound. But to read Hecuba so schematically is to make a number of assumptions: the critical assumption that Hecuba is meant to be understood in isolation from other Greek dramas on the same theme; the moral assumption that revenge is inherently evil and was as incomprehensible to the ancient Greeks as it may be to readers today; and the anthropocentric assumption that it is worse to be a dog, under any circumstances, than to be a human.

Insofar as critics understand Hecuba’s revenge as rendering her inhuman, they also tend not to see it as having anything to do with justice, because justice is a human invention, concerned with human laws and human relations, and Hecuba, since she is not human, can have no part in these. While Hecuba’s revenge is brutal, to linger in moral disgust as most critics do—and to use such disgust as evidence of Hecuba’s inhumanity—is to forget, deliberately or not, that her claim to revenge is valid.Taken on its own terms, Hecuba’s revenge is both ethically coherent and deeply human. With Hecuba, Euripides points us toward a more expansive, if still imperfect, vision of justice. Hecuba’s revenge is also a kind of justice, one that reckons with the particularity of what is lost in human life in a way that the law cannot. Hecuba’s transformation does not mark her loss of humanity but rather her insistence on the value of the very human goods critics accuse her of abandoning: the nomoi of kinship and philia.

Hecuba is at least in part Euripides’ response to the tradition of tragedies dealing with the themes of justice and kinship, perhaps to Aeschylus’s Oresteia in particular. There is sufficient evidence in the text to suggest that even if Euripides wasn’t concerned with responding to the Oresteia in detail, it was certainly on his mind: Hecuba is a revenge play featuring a murderous mother in which the action begins with a virgin daughter’s sacrifice because the winds won’t blow. It also features a courtroom scene and a meditation on peitho (“persuasion”): the mutable kinship rhetoric that allows each murderer in the house of Atreus to reason their way out of their crime by reasoning their way out of the family, and which leads, in the final courtroom scene in Eumenides, to the erasure of the family as a measure of identity at the founding of democratic law.

The Oresteia is widely considered to stage the transition from aristocratic vendetta justice to the democratic justice of the court of law. The trilogy culminates in the first murder trial brought before a jury on the Areopagus during which Orestes’ fate as a mother-killer is decided. What is most provocative about this trilogy is that Orestes’ final acquittal—the symbolic moment of transition from revenge to legal justice—rests on an argument of justification (rather than innocence) that prizes the very kinship tie that the court has been instructed not to take into account but that is nonetheless invoked by Athena herself, reflecting on her own motherlessness in her deciding vote. Orestes is acquitted of homicide (rather than matricide), on the grounds that this homicide was justified by the kinship relation between Orestes and his father Agamemnon, whom Clytemnestra killed.

Euripides unsettles the seemingly clean division between legal justice and violence and, with Hecuba, exposes how the violence at the birth of democratic legal justice persists into his and our present. The commensurability of crimes and punishments and the interchangeability of citizens that yields equality before the law also engage in an erasure of particularity that shifts the register of violence from the physical to the epistemological (with possible physical consequences). Hecuba rejects this interchangeability and, through her revenge, not only insists on the particularity of her own son, but also points to the inadequacy of legal justice to recognize what she has lost in him, and in her daughter as well.

Loss uncovers the ties to others that constitute us, and so when we lose someone we care about, we experience the loss (and mourn the loss) of more than one thing: the loss of the other, the loss of ourselves in the other, and the loss of the relation between the other and ourselves that is constitutive of who we are. To lose that tie is to become undone in the sense that we become inscrutable to ourselves, “We do not know who we are or what to do” (2003.12). Moreover, to experience loss is to submit to a transformation that we do not choose and whose result we cannot know in advance. Who “am” I, without you? What is left of me? These are impossible to know before a loss, or even at the moment of loss, and so the work of mourning is a work of transformation, feeling out not just what is left but what has changed.

Hecuba has lost people to whom she was attached, in whose lives she saw value. They were part of what was good about being in the world. That Polydorus and Polyxena were her children means that Hecuba has also lost the part of herself that was a mother and that moved through the world in such a way as to secure the flourishing of her children. And of course, in Polydorus’s death, Hecuba has lost something else, too: she has lost her trust in Polymestor, the bond of holy xenia she shared with him, because he shattered it when he murdered her son. So, with respect to Polydorus, mourning requires something more than private reckoning with grief. It requires revenge.

It is important to establish here that revenge was not an inherent evil to the ancient Greeks and that they recognized several occasions in which it was necessary—most notably in response to the murder of kin. This is not to say that the Greeks were unaware of the dangers of revenge: as I noted, it is widely accepted that Aeschylus’s Oresteia grapples with precisely that democratic moment of the transition from the settling of personal scores with private retribution to the reckoning of those grievances in a court of law. Even this reading of the Oresteia, however, ignores something about revenge: revenge is a duty to the wrongly dead because it recognizes the value of those lives in their particularity.

Revenge (τιμωρία) is linked etymologically to τιμή, “honor,” and is thus “more than the satisfaction of the avenger’s vindictive feelings; it is a necessary restoration of honor to the victim” (1995.171). Thus, Hecuba’s desire for revenge for the murder of her son should not come as a surprise, either to modern readers or ancient audiences. Indeed, Mossman argues that Hecuba’s revenge would have been anticipated by Greek audiences with some excitement, as they wondered how the old queen, now a captive slave, could possibly take revenge upon a king (1995.180). However, Hecuba plots to carry out her revenge only after her appeal to the impartial arbiter of legal justice, Agamemnon, is denied. This very appeal is contested among critics of the play, who either overlook it altogether in an attempt to impose “unity” onto her character or dismiss it as itself evidence of Hecuba’s moral degeneracy.

At this point, we must also consider Hecuba’s gender as it relates to her status before the law. In Euripidean as in Aeschylean Athens, women were excluded from citizenship and could not represent themselves in court, and even in an aristocratic revenge culture, the duty to avenge kin fell to the nearest male relative, not to females. As Nicole Loraux and other feminist theorists argue, women in tragedy both act more freely than they would have in contemporary Athens and tend to embody the contradictions and excesses of civic life: tragic women are extravagant mourners when such mourning was outlawed, they seek revenge when it has already been replaced with the justice of the courts, and they complicate the relationship between family and polis by prizing or disregarding the kinship tie to the point of violence. The murderous mother would have been a familiar trope to Euripides’ audience, and thus Hecuba’s recourse to revenge rather than human law would, again, not have been unexpected, especially given the tragic plot’s removal to a distant mythological past. But unlike other murderous mothers—most notably Clytemnestra in the Oresteia—Hecuba’s revenge is not condemned within the play, nor is it clear that her twofold transformation constitutes punishment for it.

It becomes especially difficult to consider Hecuba’s revenge damnable when we recall that she does not exact it on her own. She enlists the help of other Trojan women, who aid in the murder of Polymestor’s children and in putting out his eyes. We might consider the communal execution of Hecuba’s revenge to reflect two things: first, a consensus among the chorus regarding the particularity of Polydorus and the rightness of revenge as a way to recognize that particularity in death, and, second, the gendered nature of revenge in this tragedy and others. Since action within the law is not available to Hecuba or her fellow women, and since Hecuba is exemplary of all Trojan loss (intimated by the positioning of the choral ode at 905–54, just after Agamemnon’s refusal and just before the entrance of Polymestor, in which the women recount the fall of Troy), a community of women arises around her that both amplifies Hecuba’s grief and claim to justice, and enacts the recognition of a particular loss that may also serve symbolically as a recognition of all they have lost.

Hecuba lures Polymestor and his two young sons into her tent on the pretext of giving him information about a secret cache of Trojan gold. The slave women compliment Polymestor on his Thracian dress, coo over his babies, and suddenly Polymestor is weaponless and his children are out of reach. The women draw daggers that they had concealed in their robes, stab Polymestor’s sons to death, and proceed to use their brooch pins to put out his eyes. Unlike Clytemnestra’s revenge, Hecuba’s does not posit any formal equivalence, either between Polydorus’s death and Polymestor’s, or between Polydorus’s death and the death of Polymestor’s sons. Instead, the more exacting form of Hecuba’s revenge attempts to transmit to Polymestor the fullness of what she has lost in her son: the particularity of self, other, and relationality that is “lost within the recesses of loss” and knowable only through the process of mourning itself. Hecuba replicates the form of her loss not because her loss and Polymestor’s are equivalent, but because the only way to know what one has lost in another is to lose him. In this sense, revenge acts as the underside of the law, recognizing the particularity of Hecuba’s loss in a way that the law cannot.