Late Sophocles

Front matter

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Preface

Oh children, follow me. I am your new leader, as once you were for me.

(Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1542-43”

Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus ends with his most famous character walking serenely through the central doors of the stage building (skéné) in the Theater of Dionysus and into the grove of the Eumenides. For a blind old man, enfeebled by age, to make this journey is miraculous enough; that he is the play’s hero is stranger still—no sign here of the familiar willful figure, defining himor herself through defiance of higher forces in the universe. Rather, Oedipus reaches in this final exit the goal he announces at the beginning of the play: to achieve a “glorious consummation” at the end of his long and tumultuous life by obeying the will of the gods. His last walk, a riveting moment in Western theater, marks the end of Sophocles’s long and fruitful career as a playwright. In the old Oedipus, he completes a reimagining of the tragic hero that stretches across his last three extant plays, beginning with Electra, continuing with Philoctetes, and ending on the last day of Oedipus’s life. That evolution will be the focus of this book.

All three characters are, as we will see, strikingly original. But their enduring fascination, for scholars, for directors, for playgoers and readers of the plays, is not mysterious. In their words and actions, we encounter large questions about human life. How do we balance the demands of our often imperiviii PREFACE ous individual will with the need for community? Can the egregious powers of one person be harnessed consistently for the greater good? What is the place of human life within the larger cosmos? And most insistently, what does it mean to be human, to be a creature who knows that s/he must die? As vehicles for exploring such questions, Electra, Philoctetes, and the aged Oedipus take their place beside many other examples of the tragic hero, not confined to or originating in Greek drama or even Greek epic. Such figures can be found at least as far back as The Epic of Gilgamesh. But the rise of tragic drama alongside Athenian democracy and the centrality of the art form in Athenian public and intellectual life give the traditional heroic stories a unique and powerful resonance when they appear in the Theater of Dionysus. One of the goals of this book will be to show how the hero in Sophocles’s last three plays evolves to reflect contemporary issues in late fifth-century BCE Athens.

Though there are marked differences between the last three heroes, we can see certain common patterns in their relations with other characters and their roles in the articulation of the plot of each play. Each occupies a liminal position in relationship to the central myth that drives the plot; none is typically empowered to impose his or her will on others. Ragged and disreputable, deceived and manipulated by others who would use them for their own purposes, they seem unlikely candidates for the role of Sophoclean tragic hero. In the last decade of his life, the playwright appears to have set himself the challenge of writing plays that feature the eventual triumph of a disempowered protagonist rather than the ruin of someone who is viewed with envy by others. The nature of that triumph in each case is the key to understanding Sophocles’s purposes in his last decade as an artist. As we watch these unlikely heroes stubbornly resisting what the received stories require of them, our perception of traditional assumptions about behavior and motive carried in the structure of the myths is continually challenged: Can the Electra we see onstage really be healed by the deaths of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus? If Philoctetes is the chosen instrument for divine will in the fall of Troy, why is he discarded for ten years on a deserted island? And why is he chosen in any event? How can such a thoroughly reviled figure as Oedipus become the conduit for the working out of divine will?

When I began teaching Greek tragedy forty years ago, I had no direct experience with the problems faced by directors and actors who were seeking to bring the ancient dramas to life onstage. I presented the texts in the same way I did Homeric epic, as stories founded on ancient myths. Trying to explain the intellectual richness and complexity of the plays in this way was certainly challenging enough for a rookie teacher. And I was not out of step with my fellow Classicists.

PREFACE ix

Sustained attention to issues of performance has come relatively late to Classical scholarship, beginning with the pioneering work of Oliver Taplin in the 1970s. Since then, a steady stream of important work on staging and performance has opened up new avenues of thought in the study of Greek drama.* The opportunity to work on several productions by the Great Lakes Theater Company in the 1990s added immensely to my own appreciation of these issues.

I also had much to learn about the chorus in Greek drama. The complexity of metrical structures in choral songs was (and is) daunting. Again, I have benefited from the excellent scholarship of others.* Likewise, creative analysis by Classicists of the choruses as “music” has enriched my own understanding of the full impact of the dramas onstage.° Sophocles extended the dramatic expressiveness of his choruses in his last three plays, making their songs an even more integral part of the characterization of his heroes. In place of traditional stanzaic forms, sung exclusively by the chorus, we begin to see actors sharing their entrance song with the chorus, weaving their thoughts and emotions into the complex metrical structures. The characterization of Electra, for example, is articulated in part by her lyrical exchanges with the chorus (El. 121-212); when Antigone leaves the stage to perform purification rites on behalf of her aged father in Oedipus at Colonus, past practice by Sophocles might lead us to expect a self-contained choral song, a reflective pause while action occurs offstage; we get instead an intense lyrical exchange between Oedipus and the chorus of citizens, raising, not lowering, the temperature onstage (OC 510-50).

It will be evident to readers that my discussion of the last three plays owes much to these new approaches. But the primary focus of what follows is Sophocles’s vision of the tragic hero. There has been no shortage, of course, of excellent scholarship on this topic. Reinhardt, Whitman, Knox, Segal, and many others have all written brilliantly on the nature of Sophocles’s heroes.” My debt to them will be obvious, and I have tried to acknowledge their ideas in the discussion that follows.

I hope my ideas are of interest to Classical scholars, but I also want to make my arguments accessible to nonspecialists. With these aims in mind, I have on the one hand retold more of the stories than experts require and I have translated all the Greek texts into English. At the same time, readers will notice that I often insert transliterated Greek words or phrases parenthetically in my translations and analysis. My purpose in this practice is to allow those who know ancient Greek to follow my thinking more closely. I regret that Seth Schein’s commentary on Philoctetes reached me too late to be included in this book.

Acknowledgments

I began thinking about some of the ideas in this book twenty years ago, when I was asked by the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland to participate in an educational outreach program for their 1995 production of Euripides’s Bacchae. That project put me in touch with Bill Rudman, then the educational coordinator for GLTE, and Gerald Freedman, the director of the production. I owe them both a great debt of gratitude, for allowing me to see how a professional theater company approaches the task of bringing a work of Classical drama to the stage. The time I spent talking to each man about this process sparked an interest in issues of performance that has informed my teaching and writing about Greek drama ever since.

Virtually all of my published work on Classical literature has had its origins in the classes I have taught at Oberlin College over the past forty years. I wish I could list all of the names of the wonderful students who have shared this journey with me. If you happen to read these words, you know who you are and how much I owe you. Working at Oberlin has brought me into the company of great teachers and scholars, on whose time and wisdom I have presumed in many hours of conversation. I owe special thanks to my colleagues in Classics, Nathan Greenberg, James Helm, Kirk Ormand, Benjamin Lee, Andrew Wilburn, and Christopher Trinacty. Everyone should be so lucky to work with people like these. Lewis Nielson and David Young, colleagues and treasured friends, have read and discussed drafts of this book and given me valuable feedback.

Working with the editorial staff at the University of Michigan has once again been a pleasure. Ellen Bauerle’s editorial expertise and good judgment have been immensely helpful and I am very grateful to her. The three anonyxii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS mous referees for the Press made helpful suggestions that have improved the book in many ways. I thank them for their careful attention.

Finally, I want thank two people whose wisdom and generosity have influenced me enormously, as a teacher and as a human being. My wife, Mary Kirtz Van Nortwick, has been an inspiration to me in countless ways. Her intelligence and loving companionship over the past thirty years have been a gift beyond measure. Nathan Greenberg has been my colleague, mentor, and friend for forty years. Most of what I know about teaching and much of what I know about being a man have come from watching and listening to him. This book is dedicated to him with my profound gratitude and affection.

Contents

Introduction: The Artist in Old Age Electra: Glory Bathed in Tears Philoctetes: The Creature in the Cave Oedipus at Colonus: Spiritual Geography

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

The Artist in Old Age

CHAPTER 2 Electra Glory Bathed in Tears

My child, my child, you have chosen a glorious life bathed in tears.

(Sophocles’s Electra 1085-86)

The prologue of Electra is all about men and their imperatives. Orestes, Pylades (a silent character), and the Paedagogus (Orestes’s childhood tutor) enter and stand in front of the central doors of the skéné, here the entrance to the royal palace at Mycenae. It is, the old man proclaims, the place Orestes has longed to see:

Oh child of Agamemnon who once led the army at Troy, here, now, you can look upon what you've always wanted to see.

This is ancient Argos, the place for which you've yearned, the grove of Inachus’ daughter, stung by the gadfly. (1-5)

The description continues for another nine lines, but we know where we are. The mythical revenge story is underway. As we enter this heroic milieu, compound epithets add an epic flavor: oistroplégos, “gadfly-stung” (5), lukoktonou, “wolf-killing” (6), poluchrusous, “rich in gold” (9), poluphthoron, “destructionfilled” (10).' The revenge story carries its own imperatives: Orestes must avenge his father’s murder; decisive action is needed; no time for hesitation.

In his reply, Orestes takes up the mantle of the noble aristocratic son. His “dearest of retainers” is like a well-bred horse, old but still full of heart, pricking up his ears. Orestes, should he go astray, can count on the old boy for support and advice. Next, a brisk narrative of his trip to Apollo’s shrine at Delphi, the oracles instructions, and Orestes’s plans for carrying them out. The Paedagogus, disguised as a Phocian, is to be the advance man, planting a false story about Orestes’s death in a chariot race, spying out the situation in the palace. He ends with a prayer to the gods for success: may he win riches and put his ancestral house in order. He urges the old man on to his appointed tasks. Prompt action is needed (50-76).

An anguished cry from offstage breaks the momentum. The Paedagogus thinks it might be a slave from the palace. Orestes wonders if could be the unfortunate Electra—should they stay and listen? To this, an emphatic “no” from the old slave: lingering to listen to a woman's distress would take up precious time and distract the avengers from their heroic deeds. Nothing must come before their mission, which starts with a libation at the grave of Agamemnon. That way lie victory and power. They exit quickly and leave an empty stage (77-85).”

The epic coloring of the language in these lines, the simile of horse-breeding, and the hypercompetitive chariot race all blend well with the mythical story, driven along by the need for fame, kleos, and the status it conveys in the masculine heroic world. The revenge plot demands not only prompt action but precise timing. The Greek word kairos, the base meaning of which is “due measure” or “right proportion, appears three times in the prologue. When applied to the concept of time, the word overlaps with akmé, both meaning the right time for action, the critical moment.’* The Paedagogus insists that there is no time for hesitation (oknein kairos); the moment for action (ergon akme) is at hand (22). Orestes trusts the old man to keep him from missing the kairos (31) of the occasion; the two of them must move now: “So we both will be off. This is the right moment (kairos), /the chief determinant of every deed for men” (75-76).

While efficiently launching the revenge plot, Orestes lets slip a few potentially disquieting details. Apollo’s oracle instructs him to get his revenge through “trickery” (doloisi, 37), not the direct, manly method favored by most masculine heroes. Though the Homeric Odysseus offers a powerful precedent for using deceit in a heroic cause, by the late fifth century that figure had come to have a much more problematic ethical profile in Athenian drama.* Trickery was of course part of the traditional story, but Sophocles’s Orestes seems to be intent here on attributing the deceit to Apollo, as if to head off criticism of his methods. In any event, we will see that this aspect of Orestes’s behavior will have a significant afterlife in Sophocles’s last two plays. Yet more troubling are Orestes’s reflections on his false death:

For what harm can come to me, when I die in word (logdi)

but am saved in fact (ergoisi) and can win glory?

I think that no word (péma) that brings you gain (kerdei) is bad. For I know that many times wise men

have died in fiction. Then, when they return home

again, they receive honor all the more.

Just so, I glory in knowing that from this story

I shall, alive, shine on my enemies like a star.

(59-66)

The polarity of logos/ergon, “word/deed; was a potent site for debate in fifth century Athenian intellectual life.” To explore the relationship between the two terms is to confront, implicitly or explicitly, the connections between perception and reality, a topic that had drawn the attention of both philosophers and literary artists from Homer onward. On the level of politics, the debate touched on vital issues in the emerging democracy of Athens. The wider distribution of political power in the new democratic government had already challenged aristocratic ideas about the sources of human excellence. If family membership—and thus blood relationships—were not to be the primary basis for holding and exercising power in the polis, how was fitness for such duties to be measured and acquired? This question and others like it animated the thinking of intellectuals, and particularly the Sophists—traveling teachers who spoke in Athens in the mid- to late fifth century. New ideas about the role of education in the formation of human character—that one could learn to be excellent, as opposed to the claim that excellence was something innate, transmitted by blood—lay at the center of the intellectual agenda of these teachers and were viewed with suspicion by more traditional thinkers.° Like Achilles in his response to Odysseus in Book 9 of the Iliad, the latter group would “hate like the gates of Hades the man who hides one thing in his mind and says another” (Iliad 9. 312-13).

As one who presented plays in the open, democratic venue of a civic religious festival, Sophocles would presumably need at least to acknowledge popular views, which would view with suspicion the claim of logos always to represent truth.’ Orestes has already introduced the issues earlier when saying that they can tell the royal couple the “pleasant story” of his death and cremation, thus deceiving them with words (logōi, 56). Though Apollo has instructed him to use deceit, Orestes seems to be warming to the assignment in ways that cast some doubt on his heroic credentials. As the play progresses, we will see the logos/ergon polarity surface several times, in ways that make it an important part of the fabric of Sophocles’s dramatic vision.

Enter Electra

Once the men have cleared the stage, Electra enters through the central doors, delivering a solo lament of some thirty-four lines. Her impassioned tone changes the atmosphere onstage immediately.’ Conversational iambic trimeters give way to anapests, a meter associated with a chorus’ entrance song; in place of the men’s brisk plotting, driven by urgencies in the mythical story, we enter an impressionistic world where time passes slowly, punctuated by the cyclical rhythms of nature:?

Oh holy light

and air with equal share of earth, how many songs of grief, how many blows against my breast have you heard, whenever murky night has been left behind?

(86-91)

Electra alone continues to mourn her father’s treacherous murder at the hands of her mother and Aegisthus, and will not cease so long as she lives. She compares herself to Procne: she has become a nightingale who mourns a lost loved one.” She concludes with a prayer to chthonic gods of the underworld—Hades, Persephone, Hermes, guide of souls to the underworld—and finally Ara, “curse,” and the Erinyes, goddesses of vengeance who punish crimes against blood relatives. These last creatures play a prominent role in the Oresteia, hounding Orestes after the matricide. Here they are invoked to avenge a crime against the marriage bed, an unusual role for them.” As the play goes on, Electra herself will sometimes be identified with the Erinyes, as she pursues vengeance against her own mother. !?

The chorus, made up of adult Argive women, has entered the orchestra for the first time while Electra is speaking and begins to sing at line 121. We expect a choral song, divided into pairs of metrically corresponding stanzas, strophes followed by antistrophes, called the “parodos; or “entrance song,” the usual way a chorus comes onstage for the first time in an Athenian tragedy. Instead, Electra sings in response to the chorus, sharing each of the three strophes and three antistrophes, the meter of her lines replicating the chorus’ exactly (a formal device called “metrical corresponsion”), then ending the parodos with a solo in the epode (235-50).!° This kind of lyrical dialogue appears here first in extant Sophoclean tragedy as a replacement for the usual choral parodos." One effect of this new form is to emphasize the sympathetic connection between Electra and these women. As the play progresses, they will come to be the lonely princess’s only support.!>

Though the women sympathize with Electra’s grief, they try gently to convince her to let go of grieving for her father. Clytemnestra’s hand in the murder was evil, and she deserves to perish, but some moderation in grief is best. Electra will not, in any event, raise Agamemnon up again from his grave by weeping or prayers. Her sorrow is great, but she is not alone: her siblings—Chrysothemis, Iphiannasa, and Orestes—all share the pain of losing their father. Orestes is sure to return, with Zeus’s help, and will avenge the murder. Meanwhile, she should turn her grief over to Zeus, who rules all things. Time is a gentle god, and her patience will be rewarded. She must speak no more of her sorrows. By doing so, she falls into evils of her own making, breeding wars in her soul. She must endure and should not struggle against those in power (121-220).

Electra’s response to the women is respectful but firm. She calls them “the offspring of nobles” (genethla gennaion, 129), who have come to comfort her. She knows and understands what they are saying, yet she is unwilling to give up grieving for her father. She begs them to let her “wander” (aluein, 135). Those who forget the pitiful death of parents are fools. She keeps before us as models both Procne and Niobe, mothers who lost their children (145-52). She herself is childless and alone, with no bridegroom to protect her. Orestes, meanwhile, does nothing, answering none of her messages (164-72; 185-92). The day of Agamemnonr’s murder was the most hateful of all to her, and that night, “the terrible pain of an unspeakable feast.” May the murderers suffer in return (202-12).

This first exchange between Electra and the chorus is critical for our understanding of the princess and her position in the drama. Unlike the male elders in the chorus of Antigone, who side with Creon until the end of the play, or the young girls in The Women of Trachis, who are too naive and inexperienced to offer much help to Deianira, the support of these women adds some legitimacy to Electra’s claims. They are apparently mature, from worthy families, have lived life and endured pain themselves, and can speak with authority on such things. Comparing themselves to a caring mother (233-35), they begin from a position of sympathy with Electra’s anger and grief, sharing her outrage at the murders, but also see the wisdom of accepting limits on the expression of emotion in a world controlled by the royal family. Most importantly, despite their sympathy, they see Electra’s pain as finally self-inflicted. Instead of children, she “breeds” (tiktous’) wars in herself (218).

Electra seems to grant this last point, saying that she understands and respects their position, but must persist anyway. In this stance she echoes all of Sophocles’s earlier heroes, who are defined by their self-destructive refusal to budge in defiance of powers ultimately beyond their control. In other words, Sophocles points here to Electra as the hero of the play.'° While this gesture may seem unremarkable to us now in hindsight, it would certainly have been a striking innovation when the play was first produced. The contemporary Athenian audience would expect Orestes, not Electra, to be the hero of this revenge story. He certainly fills this role in earlier versions of the story, Homer’s Odyssey and in Aeschylus’s version of the myth, The Libation Bearers.” Although Orestes has launched—amid all the masculine trappings—the traditional revenge plot in the prologue, he is an unlikely candidate for a Sophoclean tragic hero. He acts out his role in the myth with straightforward efficiency, but his character is relatively uncomplicated, a can-do male in whom the tortured inner struggles typical of Sophocles’s heroes simply do not appear.!* Rather, once the spotlight shifts to Electra and her suffering, Orestes and his plot (and indeed all the male characters) disappear from the stage for over five hundred lines. The revenge plot seems to go underground, a stream running along silently while the emotional fireworks go off onstage. °

By separating his hero from direct involvement in the revenge plot, Sophocles opens up a space between the myth and the story his play tells. This tactic in turn fosters in us as audience a certain detachment from the mythical story and its imperatives. We will see that Sophocles proceeds from this point to develop a new trajectory for his dramas, one which he will continue to pursue and enrich through his last two plays.

The Woman Who Waits

What then, we may ask, is the heroic task toward which Electra directs her energies? To wait, to endure, to refuse to be silenced.” The chorus and others will urge her to let go of her anger and move on, but she will not do so. She waits for Orestes to release her from what she sees as the bondage imposed on her by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. As a woman who waits for men to return, Electra recalls several female characters in Greek literature. In a patriarchal culture permeated by war, the woman left behind by soldiers would be a potent figure in the imagination of artists and the source of some anxiety. Will a wife remain faithful or give in to the advances of other men? Does her abandonment in the service of masculine imperatives foster anger and resentment in her? What welcome awaits the warrior returning from battle? Homeric epic provides the first vivid examples. Andromache in the Iliad models the perfect wife, loving and patient, crushed by the loss of her husband, with Helen as the dark counterexample. Penelope also remains faithful, though her portrait is perhaps more ambiguous,” while Clytemnestra is irredeemably bad. This latter character makes a riveting return in Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the two other extant Electra plays. Sophocles’s Deianira offers a softer alternative, patient and forgiving, even in the face of Herakles’s womanizing. Finally, Euripides explores the dynamic from a characteristically oblique angle in his Helen and Iphigenia in Tauris.

Comparing Sophocles’s Electra to other realizations of the type is revealing. Only she and her sister Iphigenia are virgins, waiting for a brother rather than a husband. Whereas Iphigenia and Deianira are both at least outwardly loyal to the males who have betrayed them and maintain a seemly patience in the face of their abandonment, Electra’s resentment and pain are evident and definitive for her character. Locating her on the continuum of “good” and “bad” women is challenging. As one who suffers in the absence of a male, she is close to Penelope and Deianira. Yet her demeanor, expressing anger and pain loudly and often, puts off both her oppressors and her supporters. The latter fear for her safety if she persists in defying the rulers; according to both groups, she is noisier than she ought to be. These supposed defects will be dramatized at length in her exchanges with Chrysothemis and Clytemnestra.

More important than any of these similarities and differences is the fact that Sophocles’s Electra, unlike any other example of this type of character, is positioned as the hero of her play.” Admirable as are both Penelope and Deianira, both finally give place to males playing the heroic role (however problematically, in the case of Herakles). Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra is a powerful figure, to be sure. Indeed, part of the energy of his Agamemnon is generated by her usurping of the male role in the royal palace. But Agamemnon is the hero of the first play of the Oresteia and Orestes steps into that role in the last two. By presenting Electra as the hero of his play, Sophocles sets himself a challenge. Though the character has in one sense many antecedents, as we have seen, for her to be the focal point of the drama while not being an active agent in the revenge plot creates a curious disjunction.” Instead of watching Orestes pursuing retribution, we are invited to consider the impact of events on Electra, to look at the myth from her perspective, at an oblique angle. By structuring his play in this way, the playwright invites reflection on the efficacy of both the old story and the art form of tragic drama as vehicles for examining urgent issues arising from the events of the story.

Heroic Resistance

Electra and the chorus revert to iambic trimeters at line 250 and continue their exchange for another seventy-five or so lines. Though they have urged restraint, the older women affirm their support:

I have come, daughter, urging my interests and also yours. If I speak wrongly, press on, for I will follow you.

(251-53)

In response to their support, Electra expresses shame at grieving too much. But a strong necessity forces her to act in this way. She cannot look on the suffering in her father’s house, growing like an evil plant rather than diminishing, and do nothing; her relations with Clytemnestra are “most hateful” (262), and she is forced to share a house with her father’s murderers, a prisoner whose movements they control; they may imagine how the days pass for her, seeing Aegisthus sitting on her father’s throne, dressed in his robes, pouring libations on the hearth where he killed Agamemnon; and worst of all, their “final outrage” (271), sex in her father’s bed. Clytemnestra taunts her; Orestes never comes, leaving her to die in her misery. In the midst of all this, what is the point of good sense or piety? Surrounded by evil, one must practice evil (254-309).

Electra builds her case for a kind of passive resistance here, though her last claim, that in the presence of evil she must pursue it herself, leaves open the possibility of a more active stance in the future. Further refining of her position in the household and in the play now follows, as her sister Chrysothemis enters. The exchange that follows is clearly modeled to some degree on the conflict between Antigone and Ismene, a conventional and timid young woman serving as foil to her more assertive sister.” Chrysothemis, like the chorus, is worried that Electra’s open expression of anger and pain will bring punishment from the royal couple. This threat has been enough to keep the younger sister quiet. While she feels pain over the present troubles, she has no power over the rulers, and if she wants to remain free, she must obey them. She hopes that Electra will do the same (328-40).