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Eyeless in Argos; a reading of Agamemnon 416–19

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Deborah Steiner
Deborah Steiner
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Columbia University
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Extract

In the first stasimon of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the estranged Helen and Menelaus share the second strophe. Beginning with an account of Helen's departure from Argos and her arrival in Troy, the chorus shifts its focus, moving back to the city deserted by the Queen, and to Menelaus grieving in the palace. With Helen no longer there, and Menelaus prey to the pathos that her absence inspires, ‘a phasma shall seem to rule the house. And the charm of beautiful kolossoi is hateful to the husband, and in the absence of eyes, gone is all Aphrodite’ (415–19). The difficulties of the stanza are legion.

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The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 115 , November 1995 , pp. 175 - 182
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Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1995

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References

1 Benveniste, E., ‘Le sens du mot kolossos et les noms grecs de la statue’, RPh lviii (1932) 118–35Google Scholar and Picard, C., ‘Le cénotaphe de Midéa et les “colosses” de Ménélas’, RPh lix (1933) 343–54.Google Scholar Both authors treat many of the same sources (including two inscriptions from Cyrene, SEG ix 72 and ix 3, the kolossoi in Hdt. ii 130 and 143, and Aesch. Ag. 416); Picard also adds the evidence of the menhir-statues discovered at Midea (Dendra). In his commentary (Oxford 1950) Fraenkel ad loc. does not see any particular significance to the expression, and thinks that we should have in mind ordinary statues like those of the Attic korai. He expressly denies any analogy between the statues here and the use of the motif in the stories of Protesilaus and Laodamia (where the effigy does explicitly function as a substitute for the dead husband) and of Admetus in Euripides' Alcestis, where the husband proposes to replace his dead wife with a statue (348–52). Ducat, J., ‘Fonctions de la statue dans la Grèce archaïque: Kouros et Kolossos’, BCH c (1976) 249Google Scholar returns to Fraenkel's view, arguing that the statues should be imagined as korai. But according to his argument, korai could operate as ritual substitutes: the function of both kouroi and korai is to serve as a ‘stand in’, for a god or individual.

2 For a translation and commentary, see Parker, R., Miasma (Oxford 1983) 332–51Google Scholar and Faraone, C., Talismans and Trojan horses (New York, Oxford 1992) 81–4.Google Scholar

3 The expression ‘double du mort’ belongs to Benveniste (n. 1) 133, the ‘fantôme’ to Picard (n. 1) 351.

4 Eur. Alc. 348–52, Apollod. Bibl. iii 30. Note too Hdt. vii 69.2 where Darius has a statue made of his favourite wife (although the text does not specify whether she is alive or dead). In equating the images of Helen with those that figure in other myths of loss and bereavement, commentators have failed to notice an important distinction. Far from providing solace for Menelaus' longing, the kolossoi merely aggravate his sense of loss, their charis provoking hostility on the prince's part (417). By contrast, Laodamia's statue of Protesilaus seems to satisfy the Queen until her father's intervention (for the most complete accounts of the story see Apollod. Bibl. iii 30, Hyginus Fab. 103 and Ovid Her. 13). Admetus acknowledges the ‘cold comfort’ (Eur. Alc. 353) his wife's statue will bring him after Alcestis' death, but there is no suggestion of the hostility ) that Menelaus feels. Pausanias ix 40.3–4 relates a story about an image of Aphrodite on Delos which offers some suggestive parallels. According to the author, Ariadne got the statue from Daedalus and took it with her when she followed Theseus: ‘Bereft of Ariadne, say the Delians, Theseus dedicated the wooden image of the goddess to the Delian Apollo, lest by taking it home he should be dragged into remembering Ariadne, and so find the grief for his love ever renewed’. The image made by Daedalus to whose statues I will be returning later on exhibits precisely those love-renewing powers that seem absent from the kolossoi.

5 See Vernant, J.-P., Myth and thought among the Greeks (London 1983) 305–20Google Scholar and Figures, idoles, masques (Paris 1990) 25–7. His reading of the kolossoi and their place in the stasimon is that adopted by Bollack in his commentary (Lille 1981). As Vernant points out, the category of the double is one in which Helen has an obvious place: Aeschylus would have known the version of the myth that told of the Queen and her eidôlon that went to Troy in the place of the living woman. We should however observe Fraenkel's caution ad 415: ‘The question so often raised …. whether Aeschylus had Stesichorus’ eidôlon of Helen in his mind here, can hardly be answered’.

6 Faraone (n. 2) 83–4 with the relevant bibliography.

7 Roux, G., ‘Qu’est-ce qu'un κολοσσός?’ REA lxii (1960) 34.Google Scholar

8 However, this account fails to take into consideration three bronze kolossoi cited by Herodotus at iv 152; these are kneeling figures which support a large bronze vessel.

9 Divine effigies do appear elsewhere in the play (519–20, 1081), but there is no suggestion of any parallels between the kolossoi and these other statues. For another assessment of the relative merits of the two theories, see the judicious remarks by Ducat (n. 1) 246 ff. Despite a critique of Roux, he nonetheless concludes that the earlier ‘ritual substitute’ idea cannot be applied in many cases where the term kolossos is used. His own equitable solution is to acknowledge that the expression could include several meanings, and could carry a different weight in different situations. Note too Donohue, A.A., Xoana and the origins of Greek sculpture (Atlanta 1988) 27 n. 65.Google Scholar

10 The categories of the mobile and immobile, as well as those of sight and blindness, which I will also treat, play an important part in Vernant's discussion of kolossoi and other manifestations of the ‘double’ (see n. 5), and my treatment of these themes draws on his arguments. The account in Frontisi-Ducroux, F., Dédale: mythologie de l'artisan en Grèce ancienne (Paris 1975) 104–11Google Scholar also follows Vernant's general approach, while locating the issue of sight and mobility within the traditions surrounding the sculptor Daedalus. While referring to the kolossoi of the Agamemnon, neither author suggests the precise connections between Helen, Menelaus and the statues that I will propose.

11 Note Plato Crat. 427 B and Socrates' discussion of the letter ‘I’, expressive of ‘smoothness’ and ‘liquidity’. Euripides' Helen which, as Christian Wolff points out to me, can be read as a commentary on the ideas introduced in the second strophe and antistrophe of the first stasimon, supplies a very similar account of the Queen's departure, even echoing the term and focusing on Helen's ‘delicate foot’ (1526–29). On some other links between the two plays, see Wolff, C., ‘On Euripides' Helen’, HSCP lxxvii (1973) 78.Google Scholar

12 Vernant (Figures, n. 5) 26 notes the symmetry between the situations of Paris and Menelaus, the one seeking to catch the bird, the other trying to keep the dream vision in his hands.

13 See Paus. ix 38.5 for the problems in arresting the motion of a ghost.

14 Of course, in myth and cult representations, Helen ranks at least as a demi-goddess, and the suggestion of her daemonic and supernatural nature is one that Aeschylus will develop in the second stasimon (see Fraenkel ad 749).

15 The same ease of passage is expressed again in the second stasimon (691–92). Translations of line 419 regularly replace the name of the goddess with a periphrásis, rendering the term Aphrodite as the power or passion of love. But we can allow the goddess a more immediate role here; Aeschylus had no need to remind his audience of the intimate connection between Aphrodite and Helen, and of the goddess' role in prompting the flight to Troy (cf. Il. iii 399–401 and Eur. Hel. 238–39, 681, 882, 1099–110). In abandoning the house deserted by the bride, Aphrodite reenacts the departure of her protégée.

16 This anomalous marriage, in which the wife is the one who used to visit her husband's chamber, and now has left the home, echoes the distorted marital relations that persist throughout the drama. The term used to describe the role of the phasma in line 415, also calls to mind the position of Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, who has become the effective ruler of the house in the absence of Agamemnon.

17 The language of the verses suggests two additional parallels between the sufferings of Menelaus and the experience of the grieving wives. The cardinal feature of the dream visions is their lack of substance, their intangibility. A corresponding weightlessness and evanescence belongs to the ashes of the dead soldiers. In the next strophe the chorus will complete the analogy when it portrays the ash-carrying urns too easily stowed on board ship (444). The term supplies the second link; just as the images of Helen are fair in form, so too are the corpses of the Greeks who died at Troy (454). The second use of the adjective retroactively emphasizes the distance between the living Helen and the statues which, I will be arguing, symbolize an inanimate condition.

18 Cf. Il. xvii 434–39 where the supernatural swift horses of Achilles are compared to a grave stone as they stand suddenly immobile in their grief for the death of Patroclus.

19 For petrification as the response to mobility, see the material gathered in Forbes Irving, P.M.C., Metamorphosis in Greek myths (Oxford 1992) 145–46.Google Scholar

20 Benveniste (n. 1) 124. For additional discussion, see Vernant (Myth and thought, n. 5) 305.

21 Roux (n. 7).

22 Here I follow Roux (n. 7) 36 where he proposes replacing with

23 As noted by Vernant (Myth and thought, n. 5) 305. Witness the bretas of the goddess escorted in procession for its ritual washing in the sea in Eur. IT. 1199, the agalma of Hera that is mounted on a bullock wagon as part of the Daedala (Paus, ix 3.5–9), and the annual journey to a shrine on the road to Eleutheria performed by Dionysus Eleuthereus on the occasion of the City Dionysia. The cleaning and bathing of statues in cult, treated by Parker (n. 2) 27–8, would also involve such regular excursions. Frontisi-Ducroux (n. 10) 105 and Vernant (Myth and thought, n. 5) 315 n. 4 cite several other examples of xoana and a bretas which are held or carried or otherwise endowed with motion.

24 Xoana and agalmata are the terms repeatedly used in the sources for the ‘walking’ statues of Daedalus, and for images that are bound with chains so as to prevent them from running away (e.g., Eur. fr. 372 N2, Paus, iii 15.7, viii 41.6, ix 38.5). For a rich collection of such stories concerning xoana, see the testimonia gathered in Donohue (n. 9).

25 The term which 1 translate as ‘absence’, is itself a problematic one. It is glossed in the lexicographers with and and commentators cite Cho. 301 and Ar.fr.20 K where it can be translated as a ‘lack, want’. It should also be noted that the term can mean ‘sight’ as well as ‘eye’, and that both meanings are equally relevant in this context.

26 Those who understand Helen as the rightful owner of the organs argue that since a ray from the eyes of the beloved was thought to implant passion in the lover, then, in the absence of the departed Helen's gaze, all love is gone (for the association between love and the eyes, cf. Emped. 31 B 95 DK, Theoc. 13.37. For a collection of other pertinent passages, see Pearson, A.C., CR xxiii [1909] 256Google Scholar, Barrett ad Eur. Hipp. 525–26 and West's note ad Hes. Theog. 910 where love, charts and the eyes are closely intertwined). Fraenkel understanding as a subjective genitive governed by and translating the expression ‘when the eyes are starved’ proposes that Menelaus is the owner of the empty eyes, starved with longing for the sight of Helen. But, as Denniston and Page (Oxford 1957) point out ad loc, the structure and the syntax of the phrase most particularly the problem of reading as a subjective rather than objective genitive, and the plural that seems to refer to the plurality of the statues argue for understanding the statues as the subject of the chorus' comment. Thomson (Amsterdam 1966) in a useful note ad loc. also suggests that the eyes belong to the kolossoi, while Bollack adopts a modified version of Fraenkel's reading.

27 Menelaus' failure to see clearly is, according to the structures underlying Greek thought, tantamount to blindness. For this parallel, see the arguments of Buxton, R.G.A., ‘Blindness and limits: Sophokles and the logic of myth’, JHS c (1980) 33–4.Google Scholar

28 For examples of the common equivalence between seeing and living in Attic tragedy, see Aesch. Ag. 677 (with Fraenkel's note ad loc). Pers. 299, Soph. Trach. 828, Eur. Hel. 341. Among numerous examples of Hades’ blinding power, ll. v 659, xiii 580; cf. xvi 502. Note too Vernant (n. 5) 312–13 and Frontisi-Ducroux (n. 10) 110.

29 A second grieving husband, Admetus, will also reflect on what it means not to be able to look into the face of his wife again (Eur. Alc. 867–78). In the absence of the sight of Alcestis, his existence will similarly resemble a living death.

30 Cf. Pind. O. vii 52; by contrast, the dead suitors on their way down to Hades at Od. xxiv 7 are no. longer able to walk in the manner of living beings. Vernant (Myth and thought, n. 5) 313 contrasts the living, walking man with both the immobile kolossos and psuchê: ‘as for the psuchê, it moves about without ever touching the earth … Thus the colossos and the psuchê are opposed to the walk of a man, representing the two extreme positions in relation to an intermediary one’.

31 For ‘relevant unlikeness’ as a guiding principle in the creation of metaphors, see Silk, M., Interaction in poetic imagery (Cambridge 1974) 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Here the herald asks the gods ‘facing the sun’ to receive the returning king with The phrase not only suggests the morning sunshine lighting up the effigies, but also indicates the facial expression that they will assume at the sight of the victorious Agamemnon. Thus Fraenkel ad loc. glosses ‘let those eyes of yours look brightly shining on the king’.

33 The image in Euripides’ IT (1165) looks away in displeasure, while Strabo tells the legend of a statue of Athena standing in the port of Heracleotes which behaves in similar fashion: ‘writers produce as proof of its settlement by the Trojans the xoanon of the Trojan Athena which is set up there, the one that closed its eyes, the fable goes, when the suppliants were dragged away by the Ionians who captured the city’ (vi 1.14).

34 Cf. Paus iii 16.7–11 and vii 19.6–9; for further discussion, see Faraone (n. 2) 136–40.

35 Frontisi-Ducroux (n. 10) 110 cites several examples of eyeless kolossoi in the archaeological record, suggesting that these may reflect a fear of the powers invested in an image's eyes: the stone figures found at Selinunte possess both hair and ears, but have neither eyes nor a mouth; the faces of the early female kolossoi of Cyrene are featureless and later on acquire veils which cover up their heads; for other instances of ancient eyeless statues, see Deonna, W., ‘L'image incomplète ou mutilée’, REA xxxii (1930) 324.Google Scholar Here Deonna draws attention to another method of stripping representations of their malevolent powers found in many different societies; this is to mutilate the eyes. The link between the eyes of an artistic representation and its possession of an animate force extends well beyond the borders of Greece; images are generally regarded as incomplete until the eyes are added, and, according to Chinese tradition, a painter would avoid including eyes in his portrait of a dragon for fear of its coming to life. On this topos, see Freedberg, D., The power of images (Chicago 1989) 84, 202 and 415.Google ScholarDeonna, W. (‘Les yeux absents ou clos des statues de la Grèce primitive’, REG xlviii [1935] 222–46)Google Scholar 237–39 includes a discussion of rituals of consecration which involve ‘opening the eyes’ of a statue.

36 Aeschylus was no stranger to the notion of effigies of the gods imbued with a live force that could come and go at will. On two other occasions, he endows divine images with this animating spirit. In the Suppliants, the members of the despairing chorus address their pleas to statues of the gods and threaten to turn themselves into votive plaques hanging about their necks; Friis Johansen and Whittle ad loc. draw attention to the ‘notably concrete’ use of the word in line 465, and to the close identification between the gods and their effigies that it establishes, citing as parallels Eur. Hreld. 97–8, 112–13 and Il. vi 302–3, as well as Heraclitus' caution against confusing the gods with their images (B 5 DK). In Aeschylus' Septem, a second chorus of frenzied women proposes to fall down before the statues of the gods and to embrace them in supplication; once again the suggestion is that the statues act as embodiments of the deities. Eteocles warns the women that their faith in the efficacy of the images may be misplaced, and cites a logos that states that divinities leave a beleagured city, intimating that the women are addressing their pleas to vessels emptied of their force (217–18). This scenario undergoes a reversal in Byzantine times when the pagan statues became a home to demons that had to be driven out by mutilating or destroying the image (with discussion in Mango, C., ‘Antique statuary and the Byzantine beholder’, DOP xvii [1963] 53–75).Google Scholar

37 Note the discussion of the reading in Kassel, R., ‘Diologe mit Statuen’, ZPE li (1983) 5.Google Scholar Other references to Daedalus’ animated statues in Attic drama include Eur. Hec. 836–40 and Plato fr. 188 KA.

38 Cf. Pl. Meno 97 D with the comment of the scholiast. For discussion of this and other passages treating the animated statues of Daedalus, see Morris, S., Daidalos and the origins of Greek art (Princeton 1991) 215–37.Google Scholar

39 The canonical account belongs to Diodorus Siculus who comments that Daedalus ‘so far excelled all men that later generations preserved a story to the effect that the statues he created were exactly like living beings. Having been the first to render the eyes open, and the legs separated as they are in walking, and also to render the arms and hands as if stretched out, he was marvelled at quite naturally by other men. For the artists who preceded him used to make their statues with the eyes closed, and with arms hanging down and attached to the ribs’ (iv 76). Similarly a scholiast to Plato's Meno 97 D comments: ‘In ancient times craftsmen shaped zoia that had closed-up eyes and feet that were not separated’ Tzetzes echoes the description, calling these early images ‘handless, footless, eyeless’ (Chit. i 19.538); cf. Diod. Sic. iv 76, Lexeis Rhetorikai s.v. and Suda s.v. Aristotle De An. i.3 406 B 9 cites the view expressed by the comic poet Philippus that Daedalus’ statue of Aphrodite had quicksilver poured into it (with discussion in Donohue [n. 9] 179–88). Morris (n. 38) 242 demonstrates the inaccuracy of these interpretations, noting that ‘closed eyes’ never characterized a phase of Greek sculpture, and pointing out that all our accounts of early images without legs and eyes belong to the Hellenistic and later periods.

40 On Daedalus and the Greek fascination with these boundaries, see the important discussion by Gordon, R.L., ‘The real and the imaginary: production and religion in the Graeco-Roman world’. Art History ii (1979) 5–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 As ancient accounts of charts detail, it is an attribute that can beguile and deceive as well as charm (cf. Hes. Theog. 578–84, Erg. 65, Pind. Ol. i 30–32); on the association between charis, daidala and deceit, see Frontisi-Ducroux (n. 10) 72.

42 I would like to thank audiences at Smith College and Columbia University who listened to and commented on earlier versions of this paper. Particular thanks are also owed to Andrew Feldherr, Miranda Marvin and Christian Wolff, and to my readers at JHS whose judicious comments checked some of my more far-fetched notions.