Among the attitudes dramatized through the mythological figures of tragedy are refinements of traditional religion and theology in line with the speculations of earlier and contemporary thinkers. Euripides stands out in this regard because his characters are more analytical and articulate and inclined toward a thorough rationalism, that is to say, more reflective of the intellectual ferment of his age. This characteristic, however, is at least in part an extension of a traditional prerogative of high-style poetry: the poet’s display of sophia lies not only in his technical expertise with words and meter or in his representation of moral values and social wisdom, but also in his appropriation of specialized knowledge, whether it be geographical (as in Agamemnon or Prometheus), medical (as in Eumenides), anthropological (as in the ‘‘Ode to Man’’ in Antigone), or sophistic (as in the rhetoric of the common contest of speeches or agon logon). But this appropriation and representation is not an endorsement of any particular speculation. Rather, Euripides’ works dramatize crises of interpretation, faith, and intelligibility. The idealistic imposition of a human sense of decency and morality upon the gods is one reaction to such crises, as exemplified in Ion’s admonition to Apollo (Ion 436-51), Iphigenia’s criticism and then absolution of Artemis (Iphigenia among the Taurians 380-91), and Heracles’ denial of the traditional theology that actually operates in the fictive world in which he is embedded (Heracles 1341-46).
Modern societies are familiar with the gap that may arise between conventional or officially regulated religious piety and instances of blasphemy, religious parody, and expressions of disbelief and doubt voiced in private contexts. What has been surprising to some scholars of Attic drama is that criticism of gods and disbelief or doubt are also depicted in a public art form of high prestige sponsored by the state and performed within a religious festival honoring a god. Some of the instances are clearly, of course, intended as negative examples: the disbelievers and blasphemers come to a bad end as the gods assert their power to punish (cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 369-72; Euripides, Heracles 757-59; even the remarkable speech of Sisyphus, in a fragment ascribed to Critias [fr. 19] or Euripides, claiming that morality-sanctioning gods are a human invention may have been spoken within a plot in which Sisyphus was punished by the gods). Complaints and criticisms may in fact underscore the misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the mortal speaking them: just as in Herodotus (1.91), where Croesus’ complaint to Apollo about his downfall is rebutted by pointing out that Croesus himself misinterpreted the oracle, some complaints of abandonment or mistreatment by the gods in tragedy are revealed to be misinterpretations (as in Ion or Iphigenia among the Taurians). Yet there is more to the phenomenon than this. When Philoctetes says ‘‘How should I understand this, how approve it, when observing the ways of the gods I discover the gods are bad?’’ does an audience think he is a fool, and does the final outcome of the play cancel out such despair?5 If Amphitryon’s challenge to Zeus’ morality in Euripides’ Heracles (339-47, 498501) is temporarily refuted by the opportune return of Heracles, that refutation is completely undermined by what happens a little later, with the arrival of Iris and Lyssa. Tragedy is an exploratory and interrogatory genre, and displays a full range of attitudes about justice, order, and virtue, and both the poets themselves and (usually) the society they lived in had the strength to confront uncertainty and the possibility of the inscrutability of the universe and the contingency of human values.
World History
