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Death in Greek Tragedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

R. Sri Pathmanathan
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Extract

Of the many reasons, religious, aesthetic, and technical, generally adduced to explain the apparent reluctance of Greek tragedians to represent the moment of death on the stage, none seems to me to give sufficient weight to certain dramatic exigencies internal to the context of the plays themselves in which such deaths occur. The issue has too often been obscured by tenuous assumptions about the scarcity of professional actors (as if the total pool of professionals which the dramatist could draw upon was restricted to three), religious taboos associated with the celebration of the Great Dionysia and other festivals, the squeamishness of Greek theatre audiences, or the practical difficulties of stage management. It is not my intention to discuss these assumptions in detail. Some of them have already been effectively refuted, others may in fact have influenced consciously or unconsciously the presentation of particular death scenes. For no one denies that there are many problems connected with the presentation of death on the stage, and even the modern playwright, in spite of all the illusionist resources of the modern theatre, may well boggle at the attempt. Further, the passage from life to death must seem at a certain level a trivial activity in comparison with the tremendous impact it has on the dead person's immediate circle of friends and relations. Violent death and its gory accompaniments may well appeal to sensational melodrama but the Greek dramatist could justly have considered its representation per se as μιαρόν and ἀτεχνότατον τῆς ποιητικῆς. However, the real point at issue is whether the Greek tragedian went out of his way to get round the presentation of the moment of death for reasons external to the dramatic context. I shall try to show in this paper that whenever a character is apparently hustled out of sight for the purpose of being killed, some internal dramatic consideration was in fact uppermost in the playwright's mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , April 1965 , pp. 2 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1965

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References

page 2 note 1 See, for example, Arnott, Peter, Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century B.c. (Oxford, 1962), 136.Google Scholar

page 2 note 2 e.g. Flickinger, R. C. in The Greek Theater and its Drama (4th ed., Chicago, 1936), 127–32.Google Scholar

page 2 note 3 See Peter Arnott, op. cit., Appendix III.

page 3 note 1 Poetics 1452b12–13.Google Scholar

page 3 note 2 Else, G. F., Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument (Harvard, 1957), 357CrossRefGoogle Scholar, rejects this meaning, influenced no doubt by the rarity of deaths on stage in Greek tragedy. He translates instead ‘in the visible realm’, i.e. in the physical realm as opposed to the moral and mental realm of peripety and recognition. But if Aristotle intended this highly abstract distinction he would surely have made his meaning clearer, if only by the addition of a balancing phrase such as ἐν τῷ ἀφανεῑ for the other realm.

page 3 note 3 i.e. in the Ajax and in Euripides' Supplices. In the Alcestis and Hippolytus only the moment of death is shown on stage.

page 3 note 4 In the opening scene of Aeschylus' P. V.

page 3 note 5 e.g. Philoctetes, Oedipus, Hippolytus, the Cyclops, and Heracles (in Sophocles' Trachiniae).

page 3 note 6 For the stage altar as distinct from the altar of Dionysus, see Arnott, Peter, op. cit. 45.Google Scholar

page 3 note 7 Andromache 425 ff.Google Scholar

page 4 note 1 Ion 1306–19.Google Scholar

page 4 note 2 For the sanctuary afforded by tombs, see Euripides, Helena, 1086.Google Scholar

page 4 note 3 Rhesus 687 ff.Google Scholar Cf. also the Telephus where it seems that Telephus, as the Greeks advanced to kill him, snatched up the infant Orestes.

page 4 note 4 See also Plutarch, de esu carn. ii. 5, p. 998Google Scholar E, where we are told that in the Cresphontes of Euripides the audience was terrified lest Merope could not be prevented in time from slaying her son whom she threatens with an axe.

page 4 note 5 Euripides, H.F. 704–6 and 720.Google Scholar In fact, of course, the killing is forestalled by the arrival of Heracles.

page 5 note 1 Changes of scene are found only in the Ajax and Eumenides, accompanied by the μετάστασις of the Chorus.

page 6 note 1 Both Jocasta and Deianeira chose for the scene of their death their bridal chamber, associated in their minds with so much in their past lives and their death there is rendered all the more tragic.

page 7 note 1 Ars Poet. 188.Google Scholar

page 7 note 2 See, e.g., the description of the casualties inflicted by the storm that over-took the Greek fleet on its return from Troy in Agamemnon 636 ff.Google Scholar

page 7 note 3 For the intervention of the supernatural, leading to death, see also Hippolytus 1173 ff.Google Scholar

page 8 note 1 Cyclops 345–6.Google Scholar

page 8 note 2 Poetics 1452a27–30 and 1454a5–7.

page 9 note 1 See especially the oath of secrecy which Phaedra extracts from the Chorus (Hippolytus 710 ff.).Google Scholar Cf. also Orestes 1103–4Google Scholar and Choephori 565.Google Scholar For positive action taken by the Chorus, see Choephori 770–2Google Scholar, Antigone 1100–1Google Scholar, O.C. 229 ff.Google Scholar

page 9 note 2 Agamemnon 1650.

page 10 note 1 Ajax 813 and 866.Google Scholar

page 10 note 2 For the inaccessibility of Evadne see also 987 and 1045 ff.

page 10 note 3 Orestes 1126–7.Google Scholar

page 10 note 4 H.F. 598–606.Google Scholar

page 10 note 5 Hecuba 1157–9Google Scholar; Euripides, Electra 623–5; 656–8Google Scholar; Agamemnon 1128–9 and 1539–40.Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 Choephori 770–2.Google Scholar

page 11 note 2 Cf. (1243–4) Op. ὅρα γε μὲν δὴ κἀν γυναιξὶν ὡς Άρης

ἔνεστιν εὖ δ' ἔξοισθα πειραθεῑσά που.

page 12 note 1 For the mechanism of the ekkyklema and the most recent discussion of its use, see Arnott, Peter, op. cit. 80 ff.Google Scholar

page 12 note 2 For the image of the net, see Agamemnon 358, 1115, 1375, 1580Google Scholar; Choephori 997 ff.Google Scholar; Eumenides 147.Google Scholar

page 12 note 3 e.g. Ajax 1028 ff.Google Scholar and the apposite comment of Kamerbeek, J. C., The Plays of Sophocles, Commentaries, Part I, The Ajax (Leiden, 1953)Google Scholar: ‘The poet is like a musician who cannot disengage himself from a motif, delighted as he is with the happy find.’

page 13 note 1 Arnott, Peter, op. cit. 137.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 e.g. Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India (London, 1954), 187 f.Google Scholar

page 13 note 3 Eusebius, , Praep. Evang. xi. 3Google Scholar, preserves a tradition which he attributes to a contemporary, the well-known writer on harmonics Aristoxenus, that certain Indian philosophers actually visited Athens and conversed with Socrates.

page 13 note 4 This is Peter Arnott's view, op. cit., Appendix II. He assumes that there was a door back-stage, but does not tell us how the door found its way there.

page 13 note 5 Cf. Jebb, , The Ajax (Cambridge, 1896), n. on 815.Google Scholar But the sword is an important piece of stage property at 815, 828, 907, 1024 ff. and it seems incredible that it should not have been well in evidence.

page 14 note 1 e.g. in Euripides' Electra the body of Aegisthus is brought in by attendants at line 880 and Orestes gives instructions for its removal at 960.

page 14 note 2 The precise meaning of πάραυλος is in doubt. Literally it would seem to mean ‘having an αὐλή (i.e. a location or source) near at hand’. To take it to mean ‘screened from view in the neighbouring covert’ (Jebb) or ‘at the side of the main scene’ (Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens [Oxford, 1946], 49)Google Scholar is to pre-judge the issue. From the view-point of the Chorus as they re-enter the orchestra, any point at some distance from them could be described as πάραυλος. Kamerbeek, , op. cit. 181Google Scholar admits ‘near, close at hand’ as a possible meaning but prefers ‘ill-sounding’, an attractive suggestion.