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Lichas' Lying Tale: Sophocles, Trachiniae 260 ff.*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. Davies
M. Davies
Affiliation:
St John's College, Oxford
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Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , December 1984 , pp. 480 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1984

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References

1 Not a total fabrication: see e.g. Winnington-Ingram, , Sophocles: an interpretation (Cambridge, 1980), p. 332CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “The basic lie of Lichas is about motives, not about facts. Heracles was thrown out when drunk…; he did kill Iphitus and was in servitude to Omphale – both traditional features'. There is room for doubt as to the first of these three details, as we shall see. On the second and third see below p. 482 n. 20.

2 Nothing about it, for instance, in Parlavantza-Friedrich's, U. book Täuschungsszenen in den Tragödien des Sophokles (Berlin, 1969)Google Scholar, which deals with the relevant scene from the Trachiniae on pp. 25 ff. (see also the Index s.v. ‘Trachinierinnen’).

3 Typical of the failure to take this point are the remarks of Gellie, G. H., Sophocles: a Reading (Melbourne, 1972), p. 59Google Scholar: ‘It would be very hard to find evidence of Lichas' dissembling in his long narrative speech. He has recited a set of mythical events which belong to Heracles' saga, and they have an authentic ring’. Likewise Parlavantza–Friedrich, sup. cit. [n. 2] pp. 27 f. (cf. pp. 97 f.) is reduced to excogitating a ‘Psychologie des Lügens’ from the complicated syntax of 262–73 and from such imponderables as the messenger's ‘Kostüm und Gestik’ (p. 29: against this latter suggestion see MrsEasterling, , CR 22 [1972], 21)Google Scholar.

4 For a general survey of these and other scenes of deception in Sophocles see the book by Parlavantza-Friedrich, sup. cit. [n. 2]. If Huxley, G., GRBS 8 (1967), 33 f.Google Scholar is right, Phil. 445 (Neoptolemus claims to have heard that Thersites still lives) is another dramatically significant lie.

5 Cf., for instance, Robert, C., Bild und Lied (Philol. Unters. 5 [1881]), p. 179 n. 28Google Scholar; Zielinski, T., Tragodumenon Libri Tres (Cracow, 1925), p. 73Google Scholar; Dawe, R. D., PCPS 9 (1963), 55Google Scholar = Aischylos 1 (Wege der Forschung 87 [1974]), 237 fGoogle Scholar. For Euripidean examples of such exploitation of earlier versions of a myth (often to achieve a dramatically effective suggestio falsi) see Dodds's note on Eur. Bacch. 52, with p. xxxv of his Introduction.

6 Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles (Philol. Unters. 22 [1917]), pp. 108 ff., esp. p. 112Google Scholar.

7 CQ 22 (1972), 222 = Blood for the Ghosts, p. 229CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Panyassis of Halicarnassus: text and commentary (Mnemos. Suppl. 33, 1974), pp. 76 ff.Google Scholar, quoted without due warning by Easterling, , Sophocles, Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1982), p. 15 n. 25Google Scholar.

9 See, for instance, West, M. L., CP 71 (1976), 173Google Scholar.

10 To quote Lloyd-Jones, , Gnomon 48 (1976), 504Google Scholar.

11 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, II (Oxford, 1951), p. 471 n. 3Google Scholar, citing Wilamowitz, , Eur. Her. I267Google Scholar and Hell. Dicht. 1. 100. Fraenkel's remarks are also overlooked by Winnington-Ingram, sup. cit. [n. 1], though they reinforce his statement that ‘one cannot assume that [Panyassis' epic] was widely known in Athens’.

12 New York 12. 231. 2: ARV2 319. 6 (c. 500). For a full description see Richter, G., AJA 20 (1916), 128 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Robert, C., Die gr. Heldensage 2. 2 (1921), p. 583Google Scholar, followed by Burkert, , Mus. Helv. 29 (1972), 81 n. 33Google Scholar.

14 See for instance Galinsky, G. K., The Heracles Theme (1972), pp. 81 ffGoogle Scholar. How Heracles was forcibly expelled after failing to win Iole's hand in the pre-Sophoclean version(s) (see below p. 482 n. 20) we cannot tell, but the proverb πρ⋯с δ⋯ οὐδ' Ἠρακλ⋯с reminds us that inebriation is not the only possible method.

15 For examples of the motif see e.g. West, , CQ 29 (1979), 3 n. 5Google Scholar.

16 10916: ABV 508 = Brommer, , Vasenlisten 355Google Scholar. Al. The exact interpretation of this work of art is not free from problems (cf. Richter cited above [n. 12], p. 130), but that it does presuppose Iole and the archery-contest seems clear.

17 Compare the story of Oenomaus and Hippodameia and see in general Thompson, Stith, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature 2 H 310, 326 1. 2, 335Google Scholar, Nilsson, , Geschichte der gr. Religion I3. 19 f. etcGoogle Scholar.

18 E.g. Tycho Wilamowitz, sup. cit. [n. 6], pp. 100 ff., 142 ff.; Friedländer, P., Herakles (Philol. Unters. 19 [1907]), p. 65 n. 2, p. 66 n. 2Google Scholar.

19 Tycho, sup. cit. [n. 6], pp. 109 f. assumes that the ἔγκλημα μικρ⋯ν (361) which the messenger says Heracles trumped up to justify his attack on Oechalia is to be identified with Lichas' story of Eurytus and his insults and injury to the hero. That is by no means a necessary assumption. I cannot fathom what the same scholar intends when he asserts (p. 112) that the inescapable contradiction between Lichas' account and the true one would be incomprehensible if Sophocles had invented the former.

Nor can I agree with Winnington-Ingram's too dogmatic claim (sup. cit. [n. 1], p. 332) that ‘Lichas would never have invented so discreditable a story’ as Heracles' drunkenness. Deianeira would find it less discreditable than the truth.

20 As for the rest of Lichas' story – Heracles' revenge upon Iphitus and the consequent year's servitude to Omphale–, the former is mentioned at Od. 21. 27 ff. and Pherecydes, FgrHist 3 F 82Google Scholar, and the latter at vv. 69 ff. (cf. 248 ff.) of the Trachiniae itself. The two details cannot, therefore, be intended to be perceived as invention on Lichas' part, and we are absolved from considering in the present place the theory of Tycho Wilamowitz ([sup. cit. n. 6], pp. 101 ff. and 108 ff.) followed by Burkert ([sup. cit. n. 13], p. 81 n. 31) that Sophocles was the first to link the two details to the story of Oechalia's sack. For reasons independent of the issue considered in this article I find this theòry unlikely: certainly the audience would have grasped more clearly the boundaries of Lichas' deceit if they recognised the other two details' connection with Oechalia's sack from an earlier account.

21 But Heracles' liaison with Omphale has already been hinted at (69 f.), and this might have led the audience to expect a like mention of his passion for Iole.

22 Burkert [sup. cit. n. 13], p. 84. According to Σ Od. 21. 22 (cf. Eustath. 1899. 38) Homer was unaware of Heracles' passion for Iole, an Aristarchean dogma which we are not obliged to accept (cf. Severyns, , Le Cycle Épique dans l'école d'Aristarque [1928], p. 192)Google Scholar.

23 Fr. 1 of this poem is usually interpreted as an address by Heracles to Iole, and Callimachus epigr. 6 Pf. is a more explicit testimony to her importance in that epic.

24 A forthcoming study of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women by M. L. West confirms that the final stages of this work are the product of an Attic poet.