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The Silence of the Virgins: Comparing Euripides' Hippolytus and Theonoe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

J.H. Kim On Chong-Gossard
J.H. Kim On Chong-Gossard*
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne
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Extract

One of the most pleasurable features of the plays of Euripides is his exploration of a wide range of character types, each of whom has the potential to be more exciting than the previous one. The fictional Aeschylus in the underworld of Aristophanes' Frogs (1043) remembers in particular the wicked women (Stheneboea, Phaedra), but Euripides also had his share of pious and self-sacrificing virgins (Macaria, Polyxena, Iphigenia), faithful wives (Helen in her name play, Andromache, Alcestis, Evadne), shrewd matriarchs (Hecuba, Jocasta, Aethra, Alcmene), and priestesses (Cassandra, Iphigenia in I. T., Theonoe, the Pythia).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 38 , 2004 , pp. 10 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2004

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References

1 Foley, H. P., Female Acts in Greek Tragedy (Princeton 2001) 109-44.Google Scholar

2 Fletcher has examined tragic women's ability to extract oaths from men and female choruses for their own benefit, capitalizing on an anxiety regarding female solidarity and agency: Fletcher, J., ‘Women and Oaths in Euripides’, Theatre Journal 55 (2003) 29–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 That an ancient audience could be made to laugh at Euripides' use of stock figures is apparent from Aristophanes' Acharnians 410-434, which mentions no less than six different Euripidean kings (Oeneus, Phoenix, Philoctetes, Bellerophon, Telephus, Thyestes) who appeared in rags, and that in plays produced before 425 BCE alone. After Euripides' death, Aristophanes cracked the same joke at Frogs 1063.

4 In Hippolytus, the secret is Phaedra's love (inspired by Aphrodite) for her stepson Hippolytus, and the fact that Phaedra accused Hippolytus of rape falsely; the chorus consists of female neighbours. In Helen, the secret is Menelaus' true identity as the husband of the captive Helen, and their plans to escape from Egypt; the chorus comprises fellow Greek female slaves.

5 Throughout this article, the Greek text used is that of J. Diggle's OCT editions. When Teiresias reveals that Ares demands a human sacrifice from the race of the Sown Men, he explains that Creon and his sons Menoeceus and Haemon are the last descendants of that race (Phoenissae 940-4). Haemon is betrothed to Antigone, which means he is typologically no longer (‘an unmarried youth’, 945), whereas the younger, unattached Menoeceus is equivalent to a ‘virgin’. Menoeceus is even described as a (‘colt’, 947), a word often used in its feminine form to describe young girls. Menoeceus' virginity may be of use to the state (explicitly by its extinction), but nowhere does Menoeceus devote himself to a virgin goddess or claim he wants to remain a virgin forever.

6 Zeitlin, F.I., ‘The Power of Aphrodite: Eros and the Boundaries of the Self in the Hippolytus’, Directions in Euripides Criticism, ed. Burian, P.H. (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press 1985)66.Google Scholar

7 Zeitlin 56: ‘This is the moment for the young man to complete the initiatory scenario that would make him pass from the yoking of horses to the yoking of maidens, from the hunting of game to the hunting of a wife.’ Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986), 120-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘The hunt… should mark a part of Hippolytus’ role as male entering a position and status in society. But his desire to remain apart from society in his refusal of sexual relations and continual worship of Artemis through the chase perverts this functioning of the hunt: it marks his desire to remain outside society, on the edge, away from his role in the oikos. Hippolytus' rejection of Aphrodite, then, is not just a desire for chastity or purity, but also a subverting of his passage to manhood.’ Cf. also Burnett, A.P., ‘Hunt and Hearth in Hippolytus’, in Greek Tragedy and its Legacy: Essays Presented to D. J. Conacher, ed. Cropp, M.J., Fantham, E., and Scully, S.E. (Calgary 1986) 177 Google Scholar; Luschnig, C.A.E., Time Holds the Mirror: A Study of Knowledge in Euripides' Hippolytus, Mnemosyne Supplementum 102 (Leiden 1988)55.Google Scholar

8 Vernant, J.-P., Mythe et société en Gréce ancienne (Paris: Librairie François Maspero 1974/1981) 38 Google Scholar. Vernant's discussion of how perpetual female virgins show characteristics of the male warrior (e.g. Amazons and Athene are virgin warriors) is interesting with respect to Hippolytus. Hippolytus' virginity reflects on his Amazon mother, yet at the same time prevents him from achieving the mature status of warrior. He is an accomplished hunter, but not a hoplite.

9 Sissa, Giulia, Greek Virginity, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 1990) 170 Google Scholar. Sissa's argument is based on her assertion that the ancients did not equate the loss of virginity with the breaking of the hymen.

10 ORION: The death of Orion by Artemis' painless arrows is mentioned at Od. 5. 123-4Google Scholar, although in that version Orion is beloved by Eos (5.121); Odysseus sees Orion's ghost in the underworld at Od. 11. 572-5Google Scholar. The story of Artemis killing Orion by accident (Istros) is detailed below. ADONIS: The death of Adonis by Artemis' arrows is alluded to at Eur, . Hipp. 1416-22Google Scholar, even though in most legends Adonis is killed by a boar; Apollodorus 3.14.4.1 states that the boar is caused by Artemis to kill him ( IASION: Demeter's love for Iasion and his death by Zeus' thunderbolt is recounted at Od. 5. 125-8Google Scholar. HYACINTHUS: Apollo accidentally killed Hyacinthus with a discus; in some versions, the rejected rival god Zephyrus causes the wind to divert the discus towards Hyacinthus' head.

11 Istrus autem dicit Oriona a Diana esse dilectum et paene factum ut ei nupsisse existimaretur; quod cum Apollo aegre ferret et saepe earn obiurgans nihil egisset, natantis Orionis longe caput solum videri conspicatus, contendit cum Diana earn non posse sagittam mittere ad id quod nigrum in mari videretur. Quae se cum vellet in eo studio maxime artificcm dici, sagitta missa, caput Orionis traiecit. [‘Istrus, moreover, says that Orion was loved by Diana, and that it almost happened that she was thought to have married him; since Apollo was bearing this ill, yet had done nothing (though he abused her often), after he perceived that when Orion was swimming in the distance, only his head was seen, he argued with Diana that she was not able to send an arrow towards that thing which appeared black in the sea. She—since she wished herself to be said to be very skilled in that art—shot an arrow and pierced through Orion's head.’] Hyginus, , De Astronomia 2, 34 = Istros 334.64J.Google Scholar

For a full account of the variant myths of Orion, see Fontenrose, Joseph, Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress, University of California Publications in Classics Studies 23 (University of California Press 1981).Google Scholar

12 Bremer, J.M., ‘The Meadow of Love and Two Passages in Euripides’ Hippolytus', Mnemosyne 28 (1975) 268-80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pigeaud, J., ‘Euripide et la connaissance de soi’, Les Etudes Classiques 44 (1976) 3-24.Google Scholar

13 Cairns, Douglas L., Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford 1993) 316.Google Scholar

14 This lack of contact between gods and mortals is somewhat over-determined in the plot of Hippolytus. In the words of Burkert, ‘One may wonder, on the other hand, about the curiously complicated method Aphrodite uses to take her revenge: she has Phaedra cause Theseus to pronounce a curse, which moves Poseidon to send a bull from the sea, who in turn causes Hippolytus' horses to go wild, which finally kills the hero. If I were Aphrodite, I would not trust this assassination machine to work properly. At any rate, Aphrodite could have driven the horses wild herself… Thus one begins to wonder what really is Aphrodite's business in the affair. It does not usually take two gods to kill one man; and Hippolytus is more directly the victim of Poseidon.’ Burkert, W., Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual, Sather Classical Lectures 47 (Berkeley: University of California Press 1979) 112.Google Scholar

15 The fullest discussion of the interrelated themes of silence, secrets, and gender in the Hippolytus is Goff, Barbara E., The Noose of Words: Readings of Desire, Violence and Language in Euripides' Hippolytos (Cambridge 1990) 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 For a reading of this passage as it relates to a tragic male desire to curb tragic women's threat to social structures by controlling women's circulation, see Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, Anxiety Veiled: Euripides and the Traffic in Women (Cornell University Press 1993) 156-9.Google Scholar The section is titled ‘Hippolytos's Diatribe’.

17 Goff(n. 15) 12.

18 Goff 25.

19 For a discussion of this convention, see de Jong, I.J.F., ‘Three Off-Stage Characters in Euripides’, Mnemosyne 43 (1990) 1-21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Dale writes, ‘[Theonoe] is essentially an invention of Euripides, though re-created from Eidothea, daughter of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, in Odyssey 4. Eidothea was an immortal like her father, but now that Proteus has faded from a god to a mortal king (though married to a Nereid) his daughter had to be mortal too, though gifted with divine knowledge inherited from Nereus.’ Dale, A.M., Helen, 2nd ed. (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press 1981) xiii.Google Scholar

21 This, at least, is how I make sense of I.T. At line 1071, Iphigenia begs the Greek captive women of the chorus for silent complicity in the name of the children they left at home; but this line was deleted by Dindorf. I agree that the women of the chorus should be read as virgins, given that they sing of returning to the house where they used to participate in choral dances at marriage feasts (1140-52), which is a rite only young unmarried girls performed. Lattimore, however, does not find this convincing enough; see his translation Euripides: Iphigenia in Tauris, ed. Arrowsmith, William and Golder, Herbert (Oxford; Oxford University Press 1973)79, ad 1049.Google Scholar

22 The Hippocratic medical writers articulate the changes that marriage (i.e., a woman's first penetration during intercourse) and childbirth bring about in the body of the young girl. She is transformed from into . The medical writers also describe diseases likely to be suffered by a virgin as she approaches puberty, in the case that she does not marry. See Generation and Nature of the Child, Diseases of Women I.1, and Diseases of Young Girls.

23 Dale 131 ad 993.

24 Montiglio, S., Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton 2000) 198-9.Google Scholar

25 Hippolytus 804-5, and 816; I.T. 1293-1310. An interesting counter example is the chorus of lon, who are told by a man (Xuthus) to keep silent, but instead blab what they have overheard to their mistress Creusa and thus help set a murder plot in motion.

26 The manuscripts assign this role to the chorus. Some editors suppose the entrance of a second servant, given that the speaker is addressed as (1630) with a masculine singular participle. Other editors argue that this is a rare instance of the masculine participle used as a collective singular for a group of women.

27 Foley(n. 1) 123-5.