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.