JAZZ IS MY RELIGION

            I think I can honestly say that learning to play jazz piano saved my life.  In my deepest depressions, Jazz gave me something bigger than myself to hold onto. One of the positive things I think religion gives some people is a feeling of humble gratitude that helps them keep going when everything else in life turns to shit. This is how I feel about Jazz after many years of being more to less deeply involved in studying it and playing it. But I suppose the way in which jazz is most like a religion for me is in the certainty and sense of purpose it gives. I am certain that it is a good thing to learn another Ellington or Monk composition, as I imagine some Christians seem certain about praying or reading the Bible. When in doubt about what to do, I know that studying jazz and practicing to play it are things worth doing.

    While one could claim that deity-oriented religions are obviously doing a lot better than Jazz at surviving, it seems obvious to me that all music can make a greater contribution to human survival and well-being than the accumulative effect of most religions, which survive partly through psychic intimidation, such as the threat of eternal damnation. This brings me to a major difference between religion and devotion to Jazz. While religious dogma is often harmful to both believers and persecuted non-believers, Jazz dogma is only harmful to jazz musicians. The music can’t hurt you, but struggling to play it can. If you don’t know the blues when you start, you know them soon enough.

    While it has brought great joy into my life, Jazz also asks for sacrifice. Like being a monk or a missionary, being a jazz musician is not very lucrative, and even those musicians who make a living at it spent many years not making a living at it. Even very good jazz musicians become so frustrated that they “lose faith” get day jobs and at least temporarily become bitter about the struggle. But jazz has always drawn me back, much to the dismay of certain people who thought my career as a writer or scholar was sacrificed to almighty Jazz.

     Now for some testifying. In 1976 I was 19 and going through my “beat” period, writing poetry, reading William S. Burroughs and Kerouac novels, hanging out with jazz musicians and trying to learn to play piano.  Sensing that I needed a journey of some kind on which to contemplate my future, I took a Greyhound bus across the country. Looking back on it now I realize the idea and the energy to do such a thing coincided with a hypomanic episode I didn’t know I was having.  It was ostensibly a pilgrimage to Walden Pond but it included my first trip to New York City and Boston.            

    One of my most vivid memories from that journey took place somewhere in the Harvard/Cambridge area on a Sunday afternoon.  I must have come down hard from the hypomania and was falling into another un-comprehended depression. I was down and almost broke abut still social enough to feel lonely so I went to a place where a local jazz group was playing.  As soon as I heard them joyously launch into Ellington’s “In a Mellow Tone” I was lifted up, out of my loneliness, out of my anxiety and depression. They were not overtly technical musicians, but they meant what they played, and they were swinging mightily. The 50-something black man playing tenor saxophone winked at my 19 year old white suburban self as if he knew that I knew what he had been “talking about” in his solo. Musicians can always spot other musicians in the audience. They listen closer when you play the good stuff.

    Sitting there in historic Boston, in our bicentennial year, contemplating how the music I most loved had the stain of slavery on it, I had an epiphany. Jazz came from the very people America enslaved. The least I could do was learn how to play this music, this gift freely given by the most wronged Americans. This was not a conversion experience. I had already been converted to Jazz and was still in that sophomoric phase of jazz snobbery in which I actively made fun of pop music. But that Sunday at the jam session when I was far from home,  I was developing a kind of faith, a faith that learning to play Jazz was worth living for. It didn’t matter if I became famous or at the top of the field or successful financially at it, I just wanted to get good enough someday to sit in with those guys in that bar in Boston. I was in church that Sunday, not because a great jazz musician was playing, but precisely because it was just an afternoon jam session of local players. 

     In all the jazz writing I have read, both criticism and history, there is little mention of the fact that the majority of jazz activity that goes on is not professional. Though we can only put rough numbers to this local jazz scene, we can be sure that in bulk it vastly outweighs the big-time arena in any terms: number of players, number of gigs played, and even number of audience members if we count school programs and the total number of local fans attending across the country. Ultimately, jazz is alive because of this local scene and not only in the U.S. but worldwide. This is my church, and it is a much more diverse community than most congregations.

From the musicians I met early on in my own local jazz community I somehow got the idea that not only should a player strive for technique and knowledge, but to develop a voice, to play “like yourself,” which really means that improvising within this paradoxical “tradition of innovation” is a way of finding yourself. Playing like yourself means being musically honest, a transcendent Mecca that you face toward every time you play.  In this sense, it is like prayer. It becomes like meditation when you are free of intruding thoughts and are playing and listening to everyone else’s playing in present time. Those “being in the flow” moments don’t happen that often to most players. It is a kind of ecstatic state that you want to return to, and you can’t find it by playing the same thing you played when you experienced it before. Most musicians will tell you that after a good improvisation they don’t really remember what they played. It is not what they played that leads back to that transcendent state; the only way back is forward, trying to have ideas and be musical in present time with as little conscious deliberation as one has when carrying on a conversation with a close friend, or testifying in your own church.

I am not sure that my appreciation and devotion to jazz was anything more than a series of historical coincidences that led to me getting positive reinforcement, a release of good neurotransmitters and invaluable friendships. In giving me what it did, though, Jazz was always there for me when nothing else made sense, and I think the discipline of trying to play it helped me tremendously in navigating the extreme emotional landscape I had to travel as an undiagnosed Bipolar II person. As such, jazz saved my life. Broke and lonely at the end of a hypomanic trip across the country with almost no sleep for days, I might have fallen into an abyss of depression that I could not crawl out of. Instead, I had something larger than myself to live for, and while my faith in Jazz has wavered over the decades since, I have never forgotten where my church is and I have always returned.

And I got better than “good enough” to play with those guys in that bar in Boston on a Sunday afternoon in 1976. I even play like myself at times.

 

New Play: Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris!

Iphigenia in Tauris abounds in irony and deception and at the same time depicts characters seriously invested in the well‐being of their families. The play, in which Euripides dramatizes the intersection and resolution of the Orestes and Iphigenia myths, takes place in Tauris, where the goddess Artemis has transported Iphigenia, having rescued her from sacrifice on the altar at Aulis by substituting a deer in her place.

The currently fashionable questions about this play include: What elements in the myth are newly constructed by Euripides? What is the relationship between the cults mentioned in the play and cults practiced historically in both Attica and Tauris? Why is Athena the ex machina resolution rather than Artemis? 

The eminent classicist Greg Nagy  has called Euripides “the anthropologist of the tragedians” because of his apparently broad knowledge of mythological variants and his innovative use of origin myths for cults in his plays. Iphigenia in Tauris is not only about the establishment of Artemis’ cult in Brauron (just outside Athens) but the play provides an origin story for the cessation of human sacrifice. Who better to stop it than Iphigenia? She gets over her desire for revenge against the Greeks and during the play starts to think the locals rather than Artemis are bloodthirsty. At the end of her deliberations about sacrifice she says οὐδένα γὰρ οἶμαι δαιμόνων εἶναι κακόν. “I believe no god can be evil” (391.

 Aristotle's famous analysis of Iphigenia in Tauris underscores another issue: the importance of the theme of salvation. The salvation at the end of the play thus concerns the salvation of Apollo's words and Artemis’ cult; the salvation of the humans is a by‐product of these needs and does not necessarily match their own desires. Yet neither god appears in the play. When Artemis is expected, it is Athena. She appears ex machina in the last scene of the drama, just in time to save Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, her brother Orestes, and his friend Pylades from being captured as they try to escape from Tauris, a barbarian country located in modern Crimea.

Orestes had come to Tauris because he had been instructed by the oracle of Delphi to take a sacred statue of Artemis to the land of the Athenians. This statue was believed to have fallen from the sky into the temple of Artemis in Tauris, where years earlier, Iphigenia had been taken by Artemis at the start of the Trojan War. The goddess had rescued her just before her father Agamemnon was about to sacrifice her in order to ensure favorable winds so the Greeks could sail to Troy. In Tauris Iphigenia served as priestess at the temple, presiding over human sacrifices. Fortunately, she recognizes Orestes, and instead of sacrificing him, she decides to trick Thoas, the king of the Taurians, into letting her take the statue of the goddess out to sea in order to purify it along with the Greek captives (Orestes and Pylades) before she sacrifices them. She prays to Artemis, who rescued her at Aulis to help her in the present crisis, assuring the goddess that it is not right for her to live in Tauris when she could dwell in Athens, “a city favored by the gods” (1082–8, 1230–3).

For a while, the plot works perfectly; the Greek ship that had brought Orestes and Pylades to Tauris comes to get them, while they are in a boat taking the statue to be washed. But before they can leave the harbor, a wave drives their ship back towards land. Iphigenia prays to Artemis and the Greek sailors pray to Apollo. Nonetheless, the ship is driven close to the shore and the Taurians are able to surround it. But before Thoas can leave the palace and capture them, the gods intervene to calm the sea and see that Iphigenia and Orestes are able to escape.

Athena orders Thoas to stop his pursuit of Iphigenia and the cult statue. She explains that Apollo had ordered Orestes to come to Tauris, and to bring the statue back to her country. She tells Thoas that he could not capture Orestes even if he tried, since Poseidon will make the sea smooth for Orestes’ passage back to Greece. Athena also orders Thoas to send home the Greek women who accompanied Iphigenia to Tauris and promises Orestes that he will be acquitted in his trial on the Areopagus at Athens. Thoas agrees to obey the goddess’ commands. Athena commends him, commands the winds to send the ship on its way, and leaves to join them in accompanying Iphigenia and Orestes to Athens.

Athena does not say explicitly why it is she, rather than Artemis, who has intervened to rescue Iphigenia and Orestes. Perhaps, like Apollo in the Ion, Artemis did not wish to be reproached by the mortals for the suffering she had caused them. Earlier in the drama Iphigenia despairingly criticizes Artemis for her “faulty reasoning” (sophismata, 380) and the ignorance (amathia, 386) that led her to demand human sacrifices. Iphigenia had believed that her father was going to cut her throat with his sword as he held her over the altar, until the goddess suddenly rescued her; but then the goddess made her preside over the slaughter of other human victims.

            But the reason why Artemis does not appear probably has more to do with Athena than it does with Artemis. Athena needs to instruct the mortal characters about the future because she is the goddess of Athens, where both Iphigenia and Orestes are now heading. Athena presides over the religious affairs of her country and will oversee the trial of Orestes on the Areopagus. As soon as Athena has stopped Thoas from pursuing the fugitives, she addresses her remarks to Orestes and Iphigenia in their ship, heading for Athens: “you can hear a goddess’ voice although you are not here” (1447). Her directives to them, like her instructions to Theseus in the Suppliants, concern religious ritual. She tells Orestes to bring the statue of Artemis to Halae, a town on the east coast of Attica, and build a temple there to house it. Artemis will be worshiped there with the title Tauropolos in a ritual named for the country of Tauris and his experiences there. At the cult festival a sword will be held at a man’s throat and blood will be spilt, in recollection of the sacrifice Orestes might have undergone at Tauris, had he and Iphigenia not recognized each other and planned their escape. Iphigenia will serve as priestess at Artemis’ temple in Brauron. She will be buried there, and robes will be dedicated to her by women who have died in childbirth. In this drama, as in the Erechtheus, the goddess’ speech creates a mythic connection between cults that were originally unrelated. Athena tells Orestes to bring the cult statue of Artemis that he has taken from Tauris to Halae and “to build a temple and set up the statue in it, named for the Tauric land and your sufferings” (1453–4). She adds that “in the future people will celebrate Artemis in song as Artemis Tauropolos” (1456–7). The similarity in sound suggests that the two words had a common origin. But in reality, the epithet tauropolos had nothing to do with the country Tauris in the Crimea. The temple at Halae and other cults of Artemis in Greece required the sacrifice of bulls (tauroi).Euripides and other dramatists frequently make such associations between sound-alike names, because puns were thought to reveal the true meaning of words.

By connecting the cults at Tauris and in Attica, Euripides brings out an important contrast between Athenian culture and that of their counterparts in Scythian Crimea, where humans rather than bulls were sacrificed to the goddess. Athena states that it will be the custom at Halae to go through the motions of a human sacrifice, by placing a sword at a man’s throat and drawing blood. The ritual allows the goddess to receive blood in recompense for the blood she did not receive because Orestes was not sacrificed. The unusual ritual also demonstrates that the Athenians are ethically superior to barbarians like Thoas.

Euripides also emphasizes the humane values of Athenian culture by having Athena proclaim that Iphigenia will become the chief priestess (kleidouchos) of Artemis at Brauron, where she will no longer be required to preside at a ceremony involving the sacrifice of human beings. In addition, she will be honored by the Athenians after her death, and thus no longer be isolated, “without marriage, children, city, and family,” as she was when she was living in Tauris (IT 220). Athena’s speech ends with a further prediction that brings credit to the Athenian polis. In the future the Athenians will honor Iphigenia as if she were the representative of the goddess whom she served as a priestess. Iphigenia will be buried at Brauron, and robes will be offered to her that had belonged to women who died in childbirth.

            At Brauron and in cults elsewhere in Greece, including the Athenian Acropolis, inscriptions recorded that women dedicated robes to Artemis in gratitude for their recovery from childbirth and women’s diseases.

Perhaps Euripides thought it appropriate to create a connection between Iphigenia (who in some myths was sacrificed to Artemis) and women who died in childbirth, because women who died untimely deaths were sacred to Artemis. It would not have mattered to Euripides’ audience if the rituals Athena describes did not exist in their day, since they believed that cult practices could change over time and vary from polis to polis. Here, as in the Suppliants, the Erechtheus, and the Ion, it was the goddess’ declared intention that mattered, and the celebration of piety and ethical values of Athens.

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?