Although Aristotle records that both the characters and the plot of Agathon’s Antheus were wholly invented (Poetics 1451b21-23), such independence from established myth was uncommon among the tragedians. In referring to his dramas as ‘‘slices from the banquet of Homer’’ (Athenaeus 347e), Aeschylus reverently acknowledged the debt the tragedians owed to heroic epic, and a brief survey of the surviving plays reveals repeated borrowing from canonical traditions. Eight plays, approximately one fourth of the corpus, are based on familiar myths of the Trojan War, and the fragments record a similarly high percentage of Trojan plays overall. The popularity of this material among the dramatists stems partly from the monumental status of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the Greek poetic tradition and partly from the sheer number and variety of well-known myths surrounding the war against Troy. The surviving plays include three stories of discord within the Greek army (Ajax, Philoctetes, Iphigenia at Aulis), one account of a night raid on the Trojan camp (Rhesus), three accounts of the suffering of the Trojan captives (Hecuba, Trojan Women, Andromache), and one account of the reunion of Helen and Menelaus in Egypt after the war (Helen). Another seven of the surviving tragedies draw upon well-known traditions of the family of Agamemnon (eight if Iphigenia at Aulis is included here instead of with the Trojan material). While the Trojan War figures in the background of these myths, their appeal to the tragedians lies primarily in the violent family conflicts they record. An interest in kinship strife also repeatedly attracted the dramatists to Theban legend. Six plays treat Oedipus and his fratricidal sons, and Bacchae reaches its conclusion with the dismemberment of Pentheus at the hands of his mother and her sisters.
Tragic innovations upon the banquet of heroic tradition assumed many forms. In a handful of works the dramatists adhered to tradition with little noticeable alteration of plot or character, and exercised artistic license instead by emphasizing particular characters or dramatic perspectives over others. The Euripidean Rhesus, for example, preserves the basic elements of the myth found in Iliad 10. In both works Hector sends Dolon to spy on the Achaeans, but Odysseus and Diomedes intercept him and subsequently slaughter the newly arrived Rhesus. As in the epic, so too in the tragedy Dolon is promised the horses of Achilles as his reward, but Odysseus and Diomedes thwart Dolon’s expectations and make off with Rhesus’ horses instead. The circumstances surrounding the raid are also the same in both epic and drama: Achilles has withdrawn from the fighting and in his absence Hector anticipates Trojan victory. Apart from brief appearances of Athena and Paris, in fact, the play introduces little substantive alteration of the inherited myth. The tragic dramatization does, however, differ from the epic in its greater development of characters in the Trojan camp. Whereas in the Iliad we glimpse Rhesus only when sleeping or dead, the drama casts him in an active role, boasting that he will rid Troy of its enemies in a single day (443-50). And the dramatist offers a more intimate perspective on the catastrophe by introducing both Rhesus’ charioteer, who delivers a grim report of the hero’s death and accuses Hector of the murder (756-855), and Rhesus’ mother, who arrives at the play’s close to lament and retrieve the corpse.
Trojan Women, despite its unconventional tripartite structure, is constructed around several traditional plot elements attested in the fragments of the epics Little Iliad and the Sack of Troy: Helen’s reunion with Menelaus, the sacrifice of Polyxena at Achilles’ tomb, the allotment of Cassandra to Agamemnon and of Andromache to Neoptolemus, and the murder of Astyanax. The drama’s originality lies not in any significant departure from this tradition, but in the dramatic configuration of these elements into a series of encounters with the Trojan queen Hecuba - her painful farewells to Cassandra and Andromache followed by her bitter parting quarrel with Helen. This final encounter, staged as a debate over whether or not Menelaus should execute his adulterous wife, replays in agonistic form the epic tradition that Menelaus initially intended to kill Helen upon discovering her at Troy but dropped his sword at the sight of her beauty (Little Iliad fr. 28, West 2003).
Tragedians occasionally altered mythic traditions more substantially by introducing a new principal character into an established plot, as is the case with Neoptolemus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes. In contrast to earlier versions of the myth, in which Diomedes (as in the epic Cypria), Odysseus (in Aeschylus’ Philoctetes), or both men in combination (in Euripides’ Philoctetes) retrieve Philoctetes and his bow from Lemnos, Sophocles’ play introduces Neoptolemus as a potential protege of the duplicitous Odysseus. Epic attests at least two other occasions on which Neoptolemus and Odysseus cooperate. The Little Iliad credits Odysseus with bringing Neoptolemus to Troy and giving him the arms of his father Achilles (see Proclus’ summary in West 2003). And the Odyssey., recalling Neoptolemus’ inclusion among the warriors under Odysseus’ command in the wooden horse, contrasts his youthful eagerness with the patience of the more experienced leader (11.523-32). But in Sophocles’ newly fashioned expedition Neoptolemus’ distaste for deception and his sympathy for the ailing Philoctetes soon dissolve his partnership with Odysseus, and his resolution to return to Greece threatens a radical departure from traditions that record his participation in Troy’s capture. The divine intervention of Heracles at the play’s close, with prophetic instructions for Philoctetes and Neoptolemus to rejoin the campaign, reconciles the action of this play with established myth, but the obvious artificiality of this intervention underscores the disparity between Sophocles’ portrayal of an idealistic Neoptolemus and the murderous youth we find depicted elsewhere.
The participation of Electra in the murders of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, also unattested in literary sources before the fifth century, may be another tragic interpolation. The surviving plays chart her development from a subsidiary to a central figure and simultaneously attest to the variety of treatments possible for a single character in a single myth. In Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers Electra remains secondary to Orestes in importance, adamantly opposed to Clytemnestra but lacking the initiative or power to oppose her alone. She joins Orestes in a moving lament for their father, and her hatred for Clytemnestra stimulates her brother’s anger; but Aeschylus clearly distances her from the murders, assigning her no role in preparing Orestes’ trap, and she remains silent throughout the second half of the play. Sophocles and Euripides, in contrast, diminish the role of Orestes and organize their dramas instead around Electra, who but for a few brief absences remains onstage for the duration of both plays. In Sophocles’ play she aggressively opposes Aegisthus and Clytemnestra by confronting her mother directly, plotting to murder Aegisthus herself (954-57 and 1019-20), and chiding her timid sister (probably another Sophoclean invention) for failing to assist. In Euripides’ play a humiliating marriage to a peasant exacerbates her bitterness, and she rivals Orestes’ involvement in the murders by actively luring her mother into the house where she will meet death - a deed reminiscent of Clytemnestra’s sinister past (compare the carpet scene in Agamemnon). It is most unlikely that she played a similarly aggressive role in earlier works of which no record survives.
Another common form of substantial innovation is the insertion of new episodes into established narrative frameworks. According to early epic fragments, after his madness and suicide Ajax’s body was buried in a coffin as a mark of dishonor, a divergence from the normal epic practice of cremation (Little Iliad fr. 3, West 2003). Sophocles’ Ajax expands this detail into a potentially deadly conflict between advocates and opponents of proper burial and ultimately contradicts the epic record of dishonor. The three other dramas that include lengthy verbal disputes over burial - Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus, and Euripides’ Suppliants - are similarly suggestive of tragic extrapolation. Such verbal conflict may also be viewed more broadly as a tragic analogue to the epic motifs of battling over, mutilating, and ransoming corpses.
Remarkable in the case of both Andromache and Iphigenia among the Taurians is the extent to which Euripides duplicates motifs traditionally associated with these characters elsewhere to construct new plots. In Phthia Andromache essentially relives her past suffering at Troy. The fickle Hermione now fills the role played formerly by her mother Helen, while the hostile Menelaus replaces the menacing Greek army. The death of Neoptolemus parallels the death of Hector, and the threats to Andromache’s son recall the murder of Astyanax. Euripides invokes these Trojan paradigms, however, only to overturn them by saving Andromache’s Phthian son from the fate of his Trojan counterpart. While the death of Astyanax definitively marked the extinction of Priam’s family, Thetis promises Peleus that his descendants will flourish for generations. In Iphigenia among the Taurians the dramatist again generates suspense by threatening his protagonists with a repetition of their grim past. In nearly sacrificing her brother to Artemis, Iphigenia mimics her own sacrifice at the hands of Agamemnon, which she herself has recounted in the prologue. But instead of continuing the cycle of kinship murders, the siblings discover one another’s identity in an elaborate and joyful scene of recognition, reminiscent of the reunion Orestes previously shared with Electra. Dramatic reenactments thus neatly link the newly extrapolated episode to preceding chapters of the legend. Moreover, by uniting the legends of Orestes and Iphigenia, Euripides fashions this new episode into a comprehensive cathartic resolution to the entire cycle of family conflict, rivaling and superseding the resolution previously offered by Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Whereas the Oresteia apparently accepts the tradition that Iphigenia simply died as a sacrifice to Artemis, Euripides’ play instead reports that Artemis rescued her from the altar and paradoxically established her as a priestess among the barbarian Taurians, where she must participate in the ritual sacrifice of foreigners (1-41; compare Proclus’ summary of the epic Cypria in West 2003). And whereas according to Aeschylus’ Eumenides Apollo simply administered purification rites to Orestes at Delphi (40-45 and 578), in Euripides’ play Orestes can escape the lingering stain of matricide and the accompanying madness only by delivering the cult statue of Artemis from the Taurians (939-82). The ruse by which the siblings launch their escape, the claim that the matricide and the statue must be purified in the sea (1028-51 and 1153-1233), ironically epitomizes the polluted condition of both hero and goddess and underscores the hitherto incomplete state of both the Orestes and the Iphigenia traditions. Euripides finally perfects their legends by enshrining in Athenian cult Orestes’ escape from the Furies and Artemis’ former association with human sacrifice (1446-67).
The preceding examples of old paradigms recycled into new plots exemplify the general tragic practice of enhancing dramatizations of individual episodes with allusions to related events in the broader mythic cycle. Homeric epic had previously employed the device extensively and for varying effect: the Iliad ominously anticipates the death of Achilles and the capture of Troy beyond the poem’s narrative boundary, and characters in the Odyssey share numerous stories of the war and their journeys home. Such allusions were particularly suitable to works that conventionally dramatized portions of a larger whole, ‘‘slices from the banquet of Homer.’’ In several dramas a synopsis of preceding events in the prologue or the closing prophecies of a deus ex machina neatly locate the present action and its principal thematic concerns within the wider mythic context. The exchange between Poseidon and Athena in the prologue of Euripides’ Trojan Women simultaneously recalls the sacrilegious atrocities that accompanied Troy’s recent capture and predicts the consequent destruction that awaits the Greek fleet after the drama’s close. The prologue thereby invokes the traditional association of Troy’s fall with divine retribution, although it offers cold comfort to the powerless captives featured in the subsequent scenes. Allusions to the past pervade Oedipus the King, where the hero’s discovery of his true identity entails a comprehensive reassessment of his entire life, from the oracle predicting that his birth would result in Laius’ death to his present incestuous union with Jocasta. In Oedipus at Colonus the incest and patricide committed long ago remain fundamental components of the aging hero’s character. In addition to including abundant verbal debate over these transgressions, Sophocles invokes them visually at the play’s opening when Oedipus trespasses into the grove of the Eumenides, thereby symbolically retracing his blind and accidental kinship transgressions. The capture of Troy, the abduction of Helen, and the murder of Thyestes’ children all cast shadows over Agamemnon, but none so pervasive as the sacrifice of Iphigenia. The chorus laments the horrific events at Aulis in their first song, Agamemnon unwittingly replicates the sacrifice in symbolic form when he tramples the costly tapestries (905-65), Clytemnestra invokes Iphigenia’s sacrifice as justification for murder (1432 and 1523-29), and she repeats the sacrilege by staging Agamemnon’s death as a sacrifice (1384-87 and 1432-33).
Finally, a unique form of mythic innovation in tragedy is the blending of multiple traditions in Prometheus Bound, which fuses the previously independent myths of Prometheus and Io. It is not unusual for a play to contain allusions to myths outside the narrative cycle to which it belongs, particularly in choral odes (the parallels for imprisonment cited at Antigone 944-87 and the account of Demeter’s grief at Helen 1301-52, for example), but the mixing of distinct traditions in a dramatic plot is uncommonly bold. The logic of the novel pairing of Titan and mortal in the Prometheus Bound lies in their common status as victims of Zeus’ tyranny. Prometheus’ punishment and Io’s wandering place them both at the extremities of the world, far removed from civilization, and Io’s intense suffering confirms Prometheus’ dim view of Zeus’ rule. In addition, the dramatist discovers a weak narrative link between the two figures: Prometheus’ prediction that Io’s distant descendant Heracles will prove instrumental in securing his release (771-74, 871-73, and compare
Hesiod Theogony 526-34) anticipates the tidy resolution of Prometheus’ conflict with Zeus in the companion play, Prometheus Unbound. Not content with combining just two traditions, however, the dramatist incorporates one more innovation, Prometheus’ prophecy that some unspecified child of Zeus will overthrow him (75570 and 946-47), presumably an allusion to the offspring of Thetis. According to a myth first clearly attested in Pindar but already indirectly acknowledged in the Iliad, Zeus and Poseidon pursued the goddess Thetis, but upon learning that she was destined to bear a child greater than its father, the gods forced her to marry a mortal in order to prevent cosmic unrest (Isthmian 8.27-46; compare Metis in Hesiod’s Theogony, 886-900). Though not previously associated with Prometheus, this third myth again accords neatly with the dramatic context. The threat of deposition is plausible at this early stage of Zeus’ rule, not long after he himself has overthrown his father Cronus. Furthermore, Zeus’ fear of begetting a successor may restrain his sexual aggression and could even hinder his pursuit of lo. Prometheus’ knowledge of the prophecy thus provides him with considerable leverage in his present struggle. Finally, like the Prometheus tradition, the myths of Thetis explore a complex linkage between the mortal world and the divine. Forced to marry a mortal husband and give birth to a mortal child for the sake of the divine hierarchy, the goddess experiences directly and personally the anguish of mortality. Gods join mortals in celebrating her wedding, but for the bride the ultimate consequences of this celebration are the Trojan War and the death of her beloved son Achilles. Thetis’ divided experience thus complements the transgressive roles of both Prometheus, the divine patron who suffers to alleviate the suffering of mankind, and lo’s descendant Heracles, the suffering hero who comes closer than any other to crossing the boundary between mortality and divinity.
World History
