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RECONSIDERING EURIPIDES' BELLEROPHON*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Dustin W. Dixon
Dustin W. Dixon*
Affiliation:
Boston University
*
[email protected]
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Extract

No consensus has been reached about the reconstruction of Euripides' fragmentary tragedy Bellerophon, but two suggestions have not received the serious attention they deserve. The first is that Stheneboea is a character in the play, and the second that Euripides does not depict Bellerophon as an atheist or an impious hero. In this paper, I shall reconsider both of these suggestions. In fact, the addition of Stheneboea to the dramatis personae allows us to correct the second problem, as I shall propose that Stheneboea, not Bellerophon, speaks the infamous atheistic fragment.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 493 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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Footnotes

*

A portion of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association in January 2011. I am indebted to the audience for thoughtful questions and helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Henderson, Stephanie Nelson, Stephen Scully, James Uden, and the anonymous reader for helping to improve the paper.

References

1 See G. Sellner, ‘De Euripidis Stheneboea: questiones selectae’ (Diss., Princeton University, 1910), 65–79. Olson, S.D., Aristophanes: Peace (Oxford, 1998), xxxii–xxxivCrossRefGoogle Scholar, accepts this possibility in his discussion of the Bellerophon. The text and the numbering of the Euripidean fragments follow TrGF. Translations are my own.

2 Suggested in passing by Scodel, R., review of Collard, C., Cropp, M.J., and Lee, K.H., Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays 1, Phoenix 51 (1997), 226–7Google Scholar, at 226.

3 See also Gantz, T., Early Greek Myth (Baltimore, MD, 1993), 1.313–16Google Scholar.

4 According to Apollod. Bibl. 2.3, Bellerophon had murdered his brother Deliades, but in the hypothesis to the Stheneboea the victim is not identified.

5 Hyg. Poet. astr. 2.18 says that Bellerophon becomes frightened when he looks down from Pegasus and falls.

6 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., ‘De Euripidis Stheneboea’, CPh 3 (1908), 225–32Google Scholar, at 229–30. Some scholars had previously argued that the Bellerophon depicted a revenge plot for the death of Stheneboea, although some suggested that her death was depicted differently in the Bellerophon. On this idea in earlier scholarship, see bibliographical references in Di Gregorio, L., ‘Il Bellerophonte di Euripide: I. dati per una reconstruzione’, CCC 4 (1983a), 159–213Google Scholar; id., ‘Il Bellerophonte di Euripide: II. tentativo di reconstruzione’, CCC 4 (1983b), 365–82Google Scholar; and Buslepp, , ‘Stheneboia’, in Roscher, W. (ed.), Ausführliches Lexicon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (Leipzig, 1909–15), 1506–21Google Scholar.

7 Wilamowitz (n. 6), at 230, claims that Euripides was the first to substitute the name Stheneboea for Antea, but it is also found in the Hes. Cat. (F 129.18, 20 M.–W.).

8 In Antiquity, different possibilities were offered, including despair at the death of his children (Schol. T. on Il. 6.202a) and melancholy ([Arist.] Pr. 953a). Asclepiades (FGrH 12 F 13) says that Bellerophon's wandering began after the fall from his flight to the heavens. Asclepiades, like Pind. Isthm. 7.43–4, attributes the flight to arrogance.

9 Eur. Sthen. is perhaps alluded to in Eup. Prospaltioi, which would push the date back, perhaps to 429 b.c.e. See Storey, I., Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy (Oxford, 2003), 230–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Cropp, M. and Fick, G., Resolutions and Chronology in Euripides: The Fragmentary Tragedies (London, 1985), 77Google Scholar and 90–1.

11 The tragedians often produced plays out of mythological order (e.g. Sophocles' ‘Theban Trilogy’), and plays based on the same myth did not have to agree mythologically. Euripides' corpus provides several examples. His two Melanippe plays probably describe differently the circumstances of the birth of her twins (see Collard, C., Cropp, M.J., and Lee, K.H., Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays 1 [Warminster, 1995], 240–7Google Scholar). More germane are his Iphigenia plays and their ancient reception. IA is mythologically anterior but produced after IT. Euripides died with IA unfinished, and the final messenger speech (1532–612) was added much later ‘by someone who had no ear for the quantities of vowels and no understanding of the rules of the tragic trimeter’ (Kovacs, D., ‘Toward a reconstruction of Iphigenia Aulidensis’, JHS 123 [2003], 77–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 78). The speech was probably added to reconcile the two Iphigenia plays (see Kovacs, D., Euripides 6 [Cambridge, MA, 2002]Google Scholar, ad loc.). We should be cautious of this same temptation of reconciliation with the Bellerophon. Aélion, R., Quelques grands mythes héroïques dans l'œuvre d'Euripide (Paris, 1986), 185–96Google Scholar, tries to harmonize the major treatments of the Bellerophon myth and even places the events of Sophocles' Iobates, about which we know almost nothing, between Euripides' Stheneboea and his Bellerophon. Aélion emphasizes Euripides' unique treatment of the Bellerophon character but not the myth.

12 Webster, T.B.L., The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), 109–11Google Scholar.

13 Di Gregorio (n. 6 [1983b]).

14 Collard et al. (n. 11), 99. See more recently Curnis, M., Il Bellerofonte di Euripide (Alessandria, 2003)Google Scholar, who follows Di Gregorio in using the epigram to reconstruct the tragedy.

15 Collard et al. (n. 11), 99–100, notes the possibility that Stheneboea appears in the Bellerophon but ultimately rejects it ‘unless she has avoided death and returned to her father’.

16 Sommerstein, A.H., ‘Sherlockismus and the study of fragmentary tragedies’, in Sommerstein, A.H. (ed.), The Tangled Ways of Zeus and Other Studies in and around Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 2010), 61–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 65. Sommerstein suggests using this method both for assigning unattributed fragments to a play and for determining the specific mythic variant used in a poorly attested play (67). For both, one gathers all the possibilities and eliminates them until, hopefully, just one remains.

17 Ael. NA 5.34 quotes and identifies the context of these two lines.

18 Xenia must have been an important theme in the Stheneboea (see esp. F 661, 667), and by the end of the play all of the major characters – Proetus, Stheneboea, Iobates, and Bellerophon himself – have harmed their xenoi.

19 We can contrast these two tragedies with the Oresteia. In Aeschylus' trilogy, the plot of one play continues the action of the proceeding one, even though some time has elapsed between the end of one and the beginning of the next, and the events of the previous tragedy are not contradicted. When Bellerophon says that he always respected his xenoi, it would be as if Orestes, after killing Clytemnestra in the Choephoroe, claimed in the Eumenides that he had always respected his mother. But, while the Bellerophon does not continue the plot of the Stheneboea, the two do treat some of the same themes, and Euripides seems to rehabilitate his hero's character in his homonymous play: in F 310, Bellerophon almost knows that he must refute the negative reputation he has from other depictions. On this phenomenon in other Euripidean tragedies, see Wright, M., Euripides' Escape-Tragedies: A Study of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians (Oxford, 2005), 133–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Orestes: a Euripidean sequel’, CQ 56 (2006), 33–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wright calls it metamythography: ‘a type of discourse which arises when mythical characters are made to talk about themselves and their own myths, or where myths are otherwise presented, in a deliberately self-conscious manner’ ([2006], 38). Sellner (n. 1), 66–9, thinks that the Bellerophon is an attempt to save Stheneboea's character from her scandalous depiction in the Stheneboea, just as he attempted to save Phaedra's character in Hippolytus after her shocking portrayal in Hipp. I. See also Barrett, W.S., Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford, 2001 2), 10–45Google Scholar and esp. 30–1, on the different Hippolytus plays.

20 Dobrov, G.W., Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Oxford, 2001), 93Google Scholar.

21 Pindar's treatment of the myth at Isthm. 7.43–8 may imply that the hero had impious motivations for flying to the heavens, although he simply says that Bellerophon's actions were unjust (πὰρ δίκαν, 47), not impious.

22 Collard et al. (n. 11), ad loc. See also Riedweg, C., ‘The “atheistic” fragment from Euripides' Bellerophontes (286N2)’, ICS 15 (1990), 39–53Google Scholar, at 53, whom Collard follows here, and Di Gregorio (n. 6 [1983a]), 183–5.

23 On the lacuna, see Riedweg (n. 22), 40–6.

24 Curnis (n. 14), ad loc., suggests that there is no contradiction between F 286 and F 310 and argues that they present Bellerophon's alternative view of piety. Curnis' proposal would not resolve Bellerophon's problematic claim that he always helped his xenoi, which we addressed above. This article's anonymous reviewer suggested that Bellerophon could be deceiving himself and referred to Hippolytus' somewhat deceptive claim about his own piety (Hipp. 1364). Without more evidence, however, it is impossible to confirm or deny this hypothesis.

25 Scodel (n. 2), 226. Another possible solution would be to locate F 286 after Bellerophon's fall, but the speaker expresses general disillusionment rather than, as would be the case, disgust at an unjust injury caused by the gods. Also, the parody in Ar. Peace lends support to placing the fragment before the fall (Riedweg [n. 22], 49–50).

26 Luppe, W., ‘Die “Bellerophontes”-Hypothesis P. Oxy. 3651’, ΕΙΚΑΣΜΟΣ 1 (1990), 171–7Google Scholar, attempts to reconstruct parts of this hypothesis using only the hypothesis itself. Based on the remains, he suggests that the plot contains an attack against a sister-in-law, with Bellerophon as avenger.

27 Collard imagines a reconciliation (Collard et al. [n. 11], 99), but other explanations are possible. Di Gregorio (n. 6 [1983b]) offers one: if the setting is before Bellerophon's hovel in Lycia, rather than Iobates' palace, and if Iobates takes part in the revenge plot against him, no reconciliation would be necessary.

28 Collard et al. (n. 11), ad loc. Collard places the fragment with those from Stheneboea, and this arrangement is kept in the Loeb (Collard, C. and Cropp, M.J., Euripides 7–8 [Cambridge, MA, 2008]Google Scholar).

29 Di Gregorio (n. 6 [1983b]), 371.

30 Taplin, O., Pots and Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century b.c. (Los Angeles, CA, 2007), 228Google Scholar.

31 Trendall, A.D. and Webster, T.B.L., Illustrations of Greek Drama (London, 1971)Google Scholar, 3.3, 43.

32 Taplin (n. 30), 228. He cautiously suggests instead that the scene depicts Jason's confrontation with his uncle Pelias in Iolcus. For a reconstruction of the scene, see Simon, E., The Ancient Theatre (London, 1982 2), 23–4Google Scholar, who also believes that it depicts Jason and Pelias.

33 Csapo, E. and Slater, W.J., The Context of Ancient Drama (Ann Arbor, MI, 1995), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 The other two figures on the pediment remain unaccounted for, but they are likely to depict the action from another episode.

35 No evidence suggests that Eur. Beller. follows the variant in which Iobates allows Bellerophon to marry his other daughter (Hom. Il. 6.191–3; Apollod. Bibl. 2.3; Hyg. Fab. 57), but nothing explicitly rules out that possibility.

36 The young man's clothing appears similar to the clothing of old men as portrayed on vases. For old men's clothing, we can compare other depictions of the myth which show Bellerophon delivering the letter from Proetus to Iobates. In these scenes, Bellerophon is shown in heroic nude, and Iobates is bearded, bare-chested with a garment wrapped around his waist (see an Apulian stamnos in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1900.349). Another clue that the figure's clothing on the Würzburg Skenographie is meant to depict rags is the walking stick with which he supports himself; clearly he is not an old man, and so the walking stick is another indication of the figure's unique position. A striking parallel is a scene on an vase at Ruvo (Mus. Jatta, J 1499), which shows Bellerophon delivering the letter to Iobates. Here, Bellerophon is once again in heroic nude, and Iobates wears a drapery and carries a walking stick. (Cf. also the similar iconography on an amphora in the Naples National Archaeological Museum, 82263 [H 2418].)

37 Sommerstein, A.H., Aristophanes: Frogs (Warminster, 1996)Google Scholar, ad loc.

38 See also his commentary on Lycophron (ad 17), where Tzetzes combines the various mythical traditions surrounding Bellerophon and Stheneboea. He does not, however, mention Stheneboea's death. Interestingly, Tzetzes is perhaps unique in saying that Bellerophon was blinded after his fall from Pegasus.

39 Sommerstein (n. 37), ad loc.

40 Ibid.

41 Drinking hemlock would be a unique way for a tragic heroine to commit suicide. Hanging was the most common way for women to kill themselves in tragedy and ‘was more disgraceful and associated more than any other with irremediable dishonor’ and ‘is a woman's way of death’ (Loraux, N., Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman [Cambridge, MA, 1987 2], 9Google Scholar). Also noteworthy here is Menander's comedy entitled Kōneiazomenai (Women Drinking Hemlock). Unfortunately, none of the very few surviving fragments sheds light on this passage.

42 In two articles, he argues that there is little evidence that Hyginus translates directly from the hypotheseis (Huys, M., ‘Euripides and the “Tales from Euripides”: sources of the Fabulae of Ps.-Hyginus?’, APF 42 [1996], 168–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Euripides and the “Tales from Euripides”: sources of the Fabulae of Ps.-Hyginus? [part II]’, APF 43 [1997], 11–30Google Scholar) and contends that there is no direct relationship between the ‘Tales from Euripides’ and the Fabulae. Furthermore, he says, ‘we should forcefully reject the tendency still found in modern general studies on Greek literature or tragedy, and even in specialized studies on Euripides’ fragmentary plays, to derive uncritically the contents of lost Euripidean tragedies from the “Fabulae” of Hyginus' ([1997], 30). I agree that caution should always be used when dealing with later mythographic sources, and my arguments and the reconstruction offered here do not rely on Hyginus' version of the myth alone. Although Huys disagrees that the death of Stheneboea is depicted as a suicide in the Bellerophon, we can build from his observation on Hyginus' treatment of the Bellerophon–Stheneboea myth that ‘once again Hyginus seems to have created his own variant of the legend by fusing elements from different sources’ (ibid., 16). What sources does Hyginus fuse? He could have found the suicide version in an older source, and I believe that the source was, in fact, Euripides' Bellerophon.

43 Hom. Il. 6.179–86 and Pind. Ol. 13.87–90 say that Bellerophon faced the Chimaera, the Solymi, and the Amazons.

44 In fact, Hyginus seems to recount the myth of Bellerophon as favourably to the hero as he can. The mythographer has Bellerophon sustain an injury in his battle with Pegasus, not on his foolhardy flight to Olympus, and he does not kill Stheneboea.

45 Collard et al. (n. 11), ad loc., agrees that this is unlikely.

46 It is debated whether one could be charged with impiety because of one's beliefs or only through perversion of ritual. Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, CA, 1951), 189Google Scholar, and MacDowell, D.M., The Law in Classical Athens (Ithaca, NY, 1986 2), 200–2Google Scholar, both argue that, in the late fifth century, intellectuals, including Euripides, were prosecuted for their beliefs. Cohen, D., Law, Sexuality, and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1991), 210–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that these trials were not a late fifth-century aberration and that ‘unorthodox opinions about religious matters could fall well within the scope of asebeia’ (211). He bases his argument primarily on the trial of Socrates. Unfortunately, we do not know what the standard penalty for impiety was, if one existed. It may be only an extremely great coincidence – but what a coincidence it is – that Socrates was forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock for his conviction of impiety.

47 Stheneboea, then, would have the first of the three fortunes identified in F 285, since her wealth does not guarantee her personal happiness, and Iobates would probably also be this first type. Bellerophon would be the second type: the poor man of noble birth who also cannot find happiness. Perhaps the Chorus, possibly made up of Lycian farmers (cf. Riedweg [n. 22], 43), represents the third type: the one most fortunate because he has never known prosperity.

48 In some versions, Bellerophon flees to Argos seeking purification from King Proetus, but perhaps this is another ‘correction’ to the Stheneboea: Bellerophon did commit a murder in Argos, but it was not Stheneboea's. Regardless, the dramatists had no problem changing a myth's setting to suit their needs (cf., e.g., Aesch. Ag., where Argos replaces the traditional setting of Mycenae), and Eupolis (F 259.126 K–A) refers to Proetus, usually king of Tiryns, as king of Corinth.

49 F 286b is a fascinating passage in which the speaker says that doctors must treat patients on a case-by-case basis, since some diseases are self-chosen (αὐθαίρετοι) and others caused by gods. In the last extant line, the speaker says, εἰ θεοί τι δρῶσι ϕαῦλον, οὔκ εἰσιν θεοί (‘if the gods do anything base, they are not gods’.) The last three words are echoed and repeated in the atheistic fragment. Thus, I believe F 286b comes before and prompts the denial of the gods:

Chorus?   If the gods do anything base, they are not gods.

Stheneboea?  Who says there are gods in heaven? There are not, there are not (οὐκ εἰσὶν, οὐκ εἰσ’).

See also Riedweg (n. 22), 41 n. 10.

50 An extant fragment from Rhinton's phlyax play Iobates perhaps suggests that the king had a reputation for greed: χρήιζω γὰρ ὀλίον μισθὸν αὐτὸς λαμβάνειν (‘I need to make a little money myself’, F 4 K.–A.). Sophocles wrote a Iobates, but since we know very little about it, about the context of this fragment, or about phlyax plays themselves, it is impossible to draw any conclusions. Rhinton's line does, however, show some similarity to F 297.2 (ὅστις δὲ πλεῖστον μισθὸν εἰς χεῖρας λαβών): μισθὸν occupies the same position in the trimeter and λαμβάνειν/λαβών is the last word of each. If Rhinton's Iobates speaks this line, and if the inspiration for his characterization came from Euripides, it would lend support to my reading of Iobates as a negative character. Several of Rhinton's known plays share titles with Euripidean tragedies.

51 On Bellerophon's motivation, we should be cautious about inferring too much from Trygaeus' motives in Peace. The verbal allusions to Euripides' tragedy all relate only to the flight and to Pegasus (Peace 76, 154–5, 722; cf. F 306, 307, 312, respectively). Yet even Trygaeus believes that the gods do exist and dwell on Olympus. On the parody, see Rau, P., Paratragodia: Untersuchung einer komischen Form des Aristophanes (Munich, 1967), 89–97Google Scholar, and Dobrov (n. 20), 89–104.

52 Bellerophon, like Stheneboea in her homonymous play, may fall into the sea and is then recovered alive, unlike Stheneboea, by ship. There are two (foreshadowing?) uses of the sea as a metaphor for life (F 301, 304) and a strange reference to a ship in the hypothesis (iiia.21). Furthermore, F 309a, which probably describes the fall, mentions heaven's ‘watery greetings’ and in Peace Trygaeus' daughter worries that he might crash into the sea (140).

53 Webster (n. 12), 110, compares Bellerophon's situation to Ion's, who is not allowed to consult Apollo (Ion 1546–59).

54 Olson (n. 1), xxxiii.

55 My reading supports the argument of Lefkowitz, M., ‘“Impiety” and “atheism” in Euripides' dramas’, CQ 39 (1989), 70–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that ‘any character in Euripides who expresses “philosophical” notions about the gods does so out of desperation, and that ultimately, the gods in that play will prove – not always to the characters’ satisfaction – that the gods still retain their traditional powers' (ibid., 72). Lefkowitz does not discuss the Bellerophon, but see Riedweg (n. 22), who also reaches the same conclusion as Lefkowitz but follows the traditional approach in assigning the atheistic fragment to Bellerophon. Given the fate of the hero at the end of the play, however, it would be impossible for the Bellerophon not to support Lefkowitz's thesis.