NOTES

HERACLES

1. suppliants at an altar: The ritual act of supplication of a god or gods for aid is often dramatized in Greek tragedy. To throw oneself on the god’s mercy, the suppliant naturally takes a position at the god’s temple or in some other sacred space. To violate this sanctuary is to risk the god’s anger. This procedure is probably treated with more respect in the world of tragedy than in contemporary life. See further J. Gould’s detailed treatment in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 93 (1973), pp. 74–103.

2. shared his wife’s bed with Zeus: The language is designedly startling. When a god seduces or rapes an unmarried mortal woman, the resulting child is unambiguously the son or daughter of a god, as Ion is son of Apollo in Ion. But when the mortal woman is married already the poets often treat the child as having double parentage: thus Helen is referred to as daughter of Zeus and also of the mortal husband of Leda, Tyndareus. So here Amphitryon calls himself ‘father of Heracles’ although well aware that his wife Alcmena bore the hero to Zeus (to make the situation more complicated still, some versions told of Zeus visiting Alcmena in disguise, taking the form of Amphitryon). The issue of fatherhood is important in this play, in which characters often ask how Zeus can neglect his paternal duty to Heracles.

3. Sown Men: According to the myth, Cadmus, founder of Thebes, was told to sow the teeth of the dragon he had slain in the ground, and there sprang forth a crop of fully armed warriors who immediately began fighting with each other; the survivors became the first citizens of Thebes. The story symbolizes the warlike nature of the Thebans.

4. Creon, son of Menoeceus: Creon also figures in other tragedies, notably Sophocles’ Antigone. Earlier poetry such as Pindar’s odes had already told of his acceptance of Amphitryon and betrothal of Megara to Heracles.

5. Argos: The reference is to an ancient city of Mycenae, in ruins in the Argolid since the 460s. The vast stone walls were thought of as the work of giants or (as here) Cyclopes, builders of superhuman strength. Mycenae is close to the still-inhabited city of Argos, and Greek poets often conflated the two.

6. after killing Electryon: There is no fuller version recorded of Amphitryon’s killing of Electryon, his father-in-law. Here it is merely a narrative convenience to explain why Amphitryon is in exile and why Heracles is in service to Eurystheus.

7. no one knows: Euripides is in fact very likely to be restructuring the myth here. In some versions, attested later than Euripides, the labours follow the madness and the child-killing, and may even have been thought of as atonement for the killings. Euripides’ plot achieves a different kind of effect, with the killing as a horrifying catastrophe when it seems all Heracles’ troubles are over.

8. the triple-bodied hound: Cerberus, the monstrous dog which guarded the entrance to the underworld.

9. came to hold sway in Thebes: The story referred to here was dramatized in Euripides’ own Antiope, which survives only in fragments. Lycus seized power, treated Antiope, the rightful queen, cruelly, and was deposed and slain by her children, Amphion and Zethus. The younger Lycus, the villain of this play, is probably a Euripidean invention.

10. sick with party conflict: The description of Thebes as riven by factional division recurs at 542. This anxiety about civil conflict echoes concerns in many cities during the Peloponnesian war, in which civil war or stasis was a major political factor, often leading to extreme violence. The phenomenon is analysed by Thucydides in one of his most famous passages (iii.82–3, which follows a detailed account of civil strife in Corcyra).

11. the city of the Taphians: This exploit of Amphitryon as leader of the Theban armies on a campaign to avenge his wife’s brothers is also referred to at 1078ff., where it marks the peak of his past achievements. The Taphians are a people in northwestern Greece.

12. I am old: The age of the chorus, like that of Amphitryon himself, is frequently emphasized, sometimes in explicit contrast with the youthful strength of Heracles. But his strength in the end proves destructive to those he loves most.

13. your empty boasts: Lycus accuses Amphitryon of lying about Zeus’ fathering Heracles, just as in the Bacchae the sisters of Semele refused to believe that Semele’s child Dionysus was the son of Zeus. But Lycus’ scepticism is perverse, as it assumes that Amphitryon is lying about being a cuckold.

14. what is this splendid feat of your husband: This introduces a denunciation of Heracles as no true hero but a coward. The paradox of arguing that Heracles was not brave makes this a typical example of rhetorical ingenuity in putting forward arguments for a highly implausible position – ‘making the worse cause appear the better’, as contemporaries put it. This kind of counter-intuitive argument was associated with the sophists such as Gorgias. Other examples in Euripides are numerous: see esp. Trojan Women 365ff. (Cassandra argues that the defeated Trojans are luckier than the victorious Greeks). Here the questioning of Heracles’ status of a hero is effectively rebutted by Amphitryon; but the later events of the play will pose a more difficult challenge to Heracles’ traditional heroism.

15. Archery is no test of a man’s courage: Lycus voices the traditional language of military solidarity, which sees hand-to-hand combat (as in the hoplite warfare of fifth-century Greece) as the true test of courage and strength. Amphitryon’s response is less traditional. Bowmanship might be admired but was an ambiguous skill for the reasons Lycus implies. In the epic tradition the bow was the weapon of Paris, who used it to kill the heroic Achilles, for whom he would have been no match in combat; and Pandarus in Book 4 of the Iliad wounds Menelaus with a treacherous shot which violates a truce. The bow is also the weapon of the cunning Odysseus. Lycus’ argument is weak, however, as there were many occasions when Heracles overcame formidable foes by his own strength, not with the bow.

16. war against the earth-born Giants: The war of the Gods against the barbarous Giants is a common theme in art, though less frequent in literature. The notion here seems to be that Heracles shares Zeus’ chariot; he fires his arrows while Zeus hurls thunderbolts.

17. I am your king and you my slaves: This kind of talk would have immediately roused the antagonism of an Athenian audience, hostile to monarchy and above all to autocratic tyranny. Citizens would not tolerate the description of them as ‘slaves’ to a ruler: the elders are suitably outraged.

18. lift up the staffs: The efforts of the old men to match their strength against that of the tyrant swiftly subside into regret and acknowledgement of their own powerlessness. This kind of role for a chorus is common in tragedy (e.g. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon). Often the chorus form a marginal group or are helpless spectators of a sequence of action in which they cannot assist, however strongly they may desire to do so. See further J. Gould, ‘Tragedy and Collective Experience’, in M. Silk (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic (Oxford 1996), pp. 217–43.

19. Gentlemen, I thank you: The formal opening, and the cerebral quality of the whole speech, are surprising to our naturalistic taste, but not uncharacteristic of Greek tragedy in general and Euripides in particular. Were this a scene in ‘real life’, we would expect an angry riposte from Lycus to the chorus’s aggressive remarks. Instead Euripides leaves Lycus silent for some time while Megara has her say. She restates heroic values in a woman’s terms, but her resolution is for death rather than defiance. The emphasis is on the dignity of the sufferers rather than emotional realism.

20. partner in fatherhood: See note 2 above. In this speech Amphitryon goes so far as to rebuke Zeus for his conduct. For passages of this kind see M. Heath, The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (London 1987), p. 51. In Greek religion, for a mortal to question, criticize or even accuse a god is not automatically wrong or blasphemous, though it does risk incurring the god’s anger. In some passages of tragedy reproaches of this type are unjustified, and the speaker comes in the end to realize that the gods were in the right all along. Heracles handles the motif differently: in the short term Zeus will seem to have ensured the wellbeing of Heracles’ family, but by the end of the play there will be even stronger reasons for all concerned to reproach Zeus and the other gods.

21. crowning him with a garland of song … : This long and elaborate ode in praise of Heracles’ achievements is the most ornate lyric passage in the play and one of the longest odes in all of tragedy. It is a kind of mourning song, as the opening words suggest: the chorus have now concluded that Heracles is dead. The language of the song recalls Pindar’s odes: celebratory, allusive, full of poetic adjectives. The tone is more religious than usual in Euripidean choruses: the ode is close in manner to a hymn that recounts the exploits of a god.The subject of the ode is the twelve labours of Heracles. This is the earliest passage in surviving Greek poetry which lists them in full (the later versions vary considerably both in the order and in what they include). The temple of Zeus at Olympia (c. 460 BC) had representations of a rather different series of twelve on its metopes. In the fifth century it seems there was no fixed canon of labours.Euripides refers to the following sequence of labours. (1) The killing of the Nemean lion (this seems regularly to have been represented as the first labour). (2) The killing of the Centaurs. (3) The killing of the hind of Artemis. (4) The taming of the man-eating mares of King Diomedes. (5) The killing of Cycnus, a marauder who persecuted those visiting Delphi. (6) The gathering of the apples of the Hesperides (the Singing Maidens) in the Far West; these apples were guarded by a huge serpent. This labour is closely associated with (7) the clearing of the sea of monsters and (8) the bearing of the sky for a brief time in place of Atlas, who normally supported it. (9) The taking of the girdle of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, after doing battle with the Amazon hordes at the head of an expedition of Greek warriors. (10) The killing of the many-headed hydra of Lerna; with the poison from its blood he anointed his arrows and (11) killed Geryon, a triple-bodied monstrous herdsman: in this case the actual labour was to bring back Geryon’s cattle, which meant killing him first. (12) The descent to Hades to bring back Cerberus.For other names of places and people see the Glossary; for sample illustrations of many of the labours, see T. H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London 1991), ch. 6.

22. who will serve as priest… : In these words and what follows Megara treats their death as a perverse kind of sacrifice. The threat of human sacrifice is quite frequent in Greek myth (as in Iphigenia among the Taurians), and sacrificial imagery is often applied to other forms of death where there is a slayer and a victim (as in the destruction of Pentheus in the Bacchae). In a landmark paper, ‘Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual’ (Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7 (1966), pp. 87–121), W. Burkert offers a bold and controversial theory connecting these points to the ancient religious origins of tragedy. See also P. E. Easterling, ‘Tragedy and ritual’, in R. Scodel (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor 1993), pp. 7–23.

23. fiends… as your brides: The word for ‘fiends’, keres, denotes sinister spirits of death, not unlike the Furies.

24. if any mortal utterance reaches the ears of Hades’ citizens: In different contexts characters in tragedy and other genres will express belief and disbelief in the afterlife, and opposing views about whether the dead care about the living or can be reached by them. Uncertainty about these questions is natural and realistic, especially in a culture in which the answers were not laid down by dogma. See further K.J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (Oxford 1974), pp. 261–8.

25. can it be my dearest love I see?: Because of the size of the theatre and the length of the entrance passages (parodoi), new arrivals would take some time to reach the central acting area, and would be visible to all or most of the spectators before they could join in normal exchange with the actors on stage. Hence the need on occasion for these ‘filler‘ lines, which also mark the importance of the entrance and create tension.

26. Then fling away… : The speech of Heracles prepares us for the violence to come. Some have supposed that his enraged words here are the first signs of the madness which is coming, and that the insanity is thus partly rooted in his own passionate nature. This cannot be right: Lycus has shown himself a figure unworthy of any sympathy, and we must be meant to endorse and approve of Heracles’ wish to protect his family. The speech does however illustrate the hero’s assumption that violent action will solve all his problems: the latter part of the play will show him wrong.

27. many impoverished men… : The social analysis here develops earlier references to civil strife in Thebes (34, 542f). Similarly Plato and Aristotle theorize about the causes of revolution in cities: in an oligarchy, according to Plato, men of good birth acquire many debts and remain in the state discontented and eager for revolution as a means of bettering themselves (Republic 555d). There may be no specific contemporary state in Euripides’ mind, but the line of thought would be familiar to his audience.

28. this gave me good fortune: Those who had been initiated in the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis were believed to enjoy a blissful state after death, as proclaimed at the end of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. There was a tradition that Heracles had undergone initiation before his descent to fetch Cerberus. It seems to be referred to in a fragment of Pindar, and may go back to the sixth century BC.

29. Theseus: This reference paves the way for Theseus’ later appearance to give aid to Heracles in return for his release from captivity in Hades. Euripides does not mention the discreditable reason for Theseus’ own descent – to help his friend Pirithous carry off Persephone as his bride! The hero of Athenian myth is generally cut free from these more dubious past exploits.

30. the stamp of virtue: This paradoxical notion, expressed in a puzzling way which implies the difficulty of comparison between human and divine standards, resembles some of the utopian wishes uttered by Euripidean characters (e.g. Medea 516ff., Hippolytus 616 ff.). But this wish is especially bizarre, and it is hard to see how it would work in practice. The distinction of good and bad men is problematical, as the play shows: Lycus is bad, but will we in the end think Heracles good? The events will disrupt the chorus’s expectations. The relevance to Heracles’ own case seems clear, since we have just heard that he has himself in a sense returned from death.

31. wear my proper crown: Biographical criticism insists on reading this as a cri de coeur from the poet himself, at this date in his sixties, but this is quite unnecessary and is at most a secondary allusion. We have already heard much from the chorus about the burden of age, and the momentary euphoria of Heracles’ return makes them sing with joy and feel renewed vitality. The triumphal celebration will be short-lived.

32. You’re none too soon… : The scene which ensues, in which Amphitryon lulls Lycus into a sense of false security, is a typical ‘entrapment’ sequence, for which parallels can be found in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon or the Electra plays by Sophocles and Euripides. As is common in scenes of this type, there are several lines (esp. 719) which have a double meaning for Amphitryon and the audience but which Lycus does not fully understand.

33. from inside the palace: The cry of the victim from within is another ‘typical’ feature of deception plots: the archetype in extant tragedy is the scene in which the chorus hear Agamemnon’s death-cries (Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1343ff.). There, however, the chorus are themselves unsure what is happening; here, they know and rejoice.

34. claiming that they had no power: Lycus has denied that the gods care about human crimes: Heracles’ retribution seems to prove him wrong. Many passages in Greek tragedy refer to or appeal to the gods as upholders of human justice; often as in this play, the wrongdoer is punished but the virtuous do not escape misfortune.

35. Ismenus… start up the dance … : The address to the river Ismenus and the city of Thebes itself, to the stream of Dirce and to the rocks of Delphi, inviting them to join in dance and celebration, seems bizarre to our ears. But the figure of personification of places and geographic features is common in Greek lyric poetry, and the extravagance of this passage suits the excited enthusiasm of the chorus.

36. IRIS and MADNESS appear above the palace: This is the boldest theatrical stroke in the play. The normal pattern in Euripides, if gods appear at all, is for them to do so only in prologue or at the very close of the action. Here the deus ex machina (‘god appearing on the crane’ – the phrase refers to the mechanical device sometimes used to hoist the divinity in as though flying) appears in mid-play, and brings not resolution but chaos. There may be some precedent in earlier drama (a similar scene seems to have figured in Sophocles’ lost Niobe), but this moment is as dramatically extraordinary as it is theologically disturbing. Iris, messenger of the gods, is a familiar mythical figure, here given a crueller personality than in other sources. Madness is a personified abstraction, but is given a more sympathetic character, pleading to be spared the unsavoury task she has been assigned. Euripides seems to play on the paradox of Madness herself arguing for greater restraint (esp. 857>).

37. tired old legs: The recurrence of reference to the chorus’s old age is ominous, after their joyful dancing.

38. Healer King: The invocation is of Apollo.

39. Hera feels for him: Earlier tradition from Homer onwards emphasizes Hera’s persecution of Heracles, mainly on account of his being Zeus’ bastard child. The following lines possibly hint at a further notion, that Heracles has achieved too much and earned the jealous anger of the gods through his great success. This point is disputed, however: for a discussion see G. W. Bond’s commentary (Oxford 1981), pp. xxiv–vi.

40. I make the Sun my witness… : The speech of Madness, with its vivid imagery and promises of violence, does much to help us visualize the scenes which the poet cannot present on stage. The vivid narrative of the messenger later in the play complements this. In the closing part of this scene (from Iris’s line beginning ‘It isn’t your place…’ [855]) the metre shifts from the normal iambic trimeters to trochaic tetrameters, a longer line which seems regularly to be used in passages of vigorous action or agitation.

41. daughter of Zeus: The cry of Amphitryon is puzzling to the chorus and audience. It will be explained by the messenger’s account later (1001–8). We are to imagine a divine epiphany within the palace: Heracles’ protector, Pallas Athena, appears and hurls a rock at Heracles, knocking him unconscious. His falling body strikes and shatters a supporting pillar, leading to the collapse of the building.

42. Part of the palace collapses: It is very unlikely that this would be represented on the Greek stage, although some form of thunderous musical accompaniment may have been used. Some references are made to the surrounding ruins later in the play, but the stage-building was presumably a fixture and could not be dismantled in mid-play. Similarly, when Dionysus in the Bacchae releases himself from captivity with an earthquake, the audience is meant to participate imaginatively.

43. keeping a reverent silence: The preceding lines allude to the rituals of sacrifice in order to purify from the pollution of bloodshed. A basket containing barley and a knife to be used in the killing of the victim is circulated; then a flaming torch is quenched in water, and the moisture on it is sprinkled over the participants. After these preliminaries there is a call for pious silence, which normally precedes the sacrifice. But Heracles’ onset of madness disrupts the expected sequence.

44. eyes were like a Gorgon’s: Compare the preceding choral song in which Madness herself is said to goad on her team ‘like a Gorgon-child of Night’. Her qualities are transferred to her victim.

45. slaughter of Danaus’ sons… : The chorus cite two horrific tales from earlier mythology, both of which pale in comparison to the terrible acts of Heracles. The first reference is to the disastrous union of the daughters of Danaus with their cousins, the sons of Aegyptus. All but one of the reluctant brides killed their husbands on their wedding night. The second refers to the grim tale of Philomela, Tereus and Procne. Tereus was married to Procne and had a child by her. Lusting after Philomela, his wife’s sister, he raped her; his wife learned the truth and in revenge killed their son and served him up to her husband at a meal; only after he had unwittingly eaten did he discover the truth. The point of ‘sacrifice of blood for the Muses’ is obscure; possibly it refers to the preservation of the boy’s story through song. Parallels and examples of this kind are commonly quoted by choruses, and often the point is to stress the uniqueness of the present disaster (as here and e.g. Aeschylus, Libation-Bearers 586ff., Euripides, Hippolytus 545ff.).

46. The doors of the palace open… : The conventions of Greek tragedy did not permit indoor scenes, but the compromise device of the ekkuklema (‘rolling-out platform’) provided a solution in scenes like this. The platform, on wheels, seems to have emerged from the stage-building through the central door, and conveyed the stationary figures of those within. Often those revealed were dead, asleep or unconscious. The device was already used in Aeschylus and frequently thereafter. See O. Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (1977), pp. 442–3 (his scepticism about Aeschylus’ employment of the device is generally thought unjustified).

47. Be quiet… be quiet!: Other tragedies also use this technique to create tension, with one character anxiously warning others not to wake a sleeping figure. There are parallels in Sophocles’ Women at Trachis and Philoctetes, as well as Euripides’ own Orestes.

48. surrounded by the sea: For Amphitryon’s campaign against the Taphians see note II above. The notion that a man would be happier in dying at the peak of his good fortune is common in classical literature (cf. Herodotus 1.3 off., and the Latin expression ‘felix opportunitate mortis’ [lucky in the timeliness of one’s death]).

49. Well, I’m alive, anyway: Euripides is fond of these scenes in which calm follows storm, and a character who has been deranged fights his way back to rationality or calmness. Compare Orestes’ recovery from his fit of madness in Orestes 277ff., and the ‘psychotherapy’ scene between Cadmus and Agave in the Bacchae 1217–96.

50. that is broken in half: Heracles’ questioning reminds the audience what they are meant to be visualizing, a man slumped amid the ruins of the royal palace.

51. arrows and the bow: It is clear in this speech and what follows that the bow has a symbolic significance as the emblem of his own heroic past: note especially Heracles’ hesitation as to whether to take his weapons with him into exile. The earlier debate between Lycus and Amphitryon over the merits of archery is to some degree retrospectively justified.

52. Zeus, do you see this…: It is common for those who feel that the gods are neglecting their interests to call out to them in prayer or appeal, asking whether they are looking on and allowing injustice to happen: see, for example, the passages gathered by J. Griffin, ‘The Divine Audience and the Religion of the Iliad’, Classical Quarterly 28 (1978), pp. 1–4. The phrase ‘on Hera’s throne’ gives a sharper edge to the criticism, as if Zeus were merely the consort of Hera.

53. why do I spare my own life?: Heracles now contemplates suicide as an escape from his guilt. In making Heracles contemplate death, Euripides reworks the themes of the earlier half of the play, in which Amphitryon and Megara resolved to accept the inevitable.

54. But here comes Theseus… : In tragedy Theseus, the favourite hero of Athenian mythology, is normally an attractive and sympathetic figure. Here he offers his own personal friendship and also, on behalf of his city, the refuge and home which Heracles needs. The echoes of the Athenians’ idealized self-image (as also in The Children of Heracles and the Suppliant Women) are clear. See further S. Mills, Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire (1998), esp. ch. 4, on Heracles, and, more broadly, C. Pelling’s ‘Conclusion’ in Pelling (ed.) Greek Tragedy and the Historian (1997), pp. 213–35.

55. exposing them to my blood-guilt: Physical and even social contact with a killer, or one who has committed other acts of violence, can bring ‘pollution’ even upon the innocent. On the complex range of religious ideas involved here, see R. Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (1983), esp. ch. 4 ‘The Shedding of Blood’ and ch. 11 ‘Some Scenes from Tragedy’: he discusses this episode of the play on pp. 316–18. For the avoidance of pollution by raising a physical barrier, such as Heracles’ cloak here, compare Hippolytus 946–7.

56. sings, while Theseus speaks: Song in tragedy signifies more intense emotion than spoken verse. Theseus is not directly involved in the catastrophe, and his role in the scene is that of the voice of reason, seeking to calm and console the sufferers.

57. Are you afraid I may be polluted… : For Theseus, the bond of friendship overrides fears of pollution. See Parker, Miasma, pp. 309–10.

58. safely… from the world of death: See note 29 above.

59. Therefore I am determined to die: As indicated in the translation, it seems likely that a pair of lines have been lost after this one. The run of thought would be something like: THESEUS: And what will you gain by dying? HERACLES: At least it will show up the cruelty of the gods.

60. match your words of advice with arguments of my own: The phrasing makes clear that the characters are embarking on an agon or formal exchange of opposing speeches, which are often marked off from the rest of the Euripidean play in this explicit way. The point in dispute is ‘should Heracles kill himself or not?’. The formality of the arguments seems forced on the printed page, but the intensity of an actor’s powerful delivery would do much to mitigate this. In any case, argumentation, though not always valid argument, is of the essence of an agon.

61. When a family’s foundations are not soundly laid, misfortune must befall its sons: We have been given no hint earlier in the play that Heracles’ misfortunes are the result of any crimes in earlier generations of his family, nor is the suggestion taken up. It seems to be a vain effort to find an explanation which will help make sense of the disaster. On these ideas see Parker, Miasma, pp. 198–202.

62. whoever Zeus is: This is a daring variation on a formula of prayer. In Greek hymns and prayers speakers often express uncertainty as to which of the god’s names and titles to use (e.g. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 160). But here the tone is bitter and dismissive, a fitting preliminary to Heracles’ rejection of Zeus as his father.

63. Ixion: He was one of the great sinners, perpetually punished in Hades by being bound to a wheel which never ceased revolving. His crime was the attempted rape of Hera, which may give an additional aptness in view of the source of Heracles’ sufferings.

64. {If you were going to… kill yourself}: The bracketed phrases represent a possible reconstruction of a line or two which have been lost during the transmission of the text.

65. if poets’ tales are true: The myths which Theseus mentions in general terms are familiar from Homer and Hesiod. Among the adulterous divinities would be Ares and Aphrodite, whose amour is discovered by Hephaestus, her husband (the tale is told in Book 8 of the Odyssey by the bard Demodocus). Cronos deposed and castrated his father Uranus, and then was overthrown in his turn by his son Zeus, who chained up the Titans in Tartarus (as narrated in Hesiod’s Theogony). But the idea of poets’ tales being unreliable or deceptive is also as old as Homer: see L. H. Pratt, Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Ann Arbor 1991). The argument of Theseus also depends on treating human and divine experience as analogous, a parallel questioned elsewhere and crucially at issue in this play.

66. the fourteen youths: Athens was obliged to send tribute of seven young men and seven maidens to Minos of Crete, who gave them to the Minotaur to devour. Theseus journeyed to Crete as one of the victims and slew the Minotaur. The following lines offer an aetiology or story about the origin of the plots of land in Attica named as belonging to or sacred to Heracles. Whether this story was Euripides’ own creation or more widely current is unclear; given the likely innovations in the plot of this play in general, the former is probable.

67. wicked tales of poets : Theseus had mentioned the possibility that poetic tales might be false, and Heracles more decisively asserts it. His words seem to hint at a more idealized vision of divinity, remote from the world of this drama. Psychological criticism will see this as a symptom of his inability to face the truth of his situation; biographical criticism will see Euripides as thrusting his own philosophic concerns on the audience. Neither explanation satisfies, and this passage remains controversial. See General Introduction, p. xxxI .

68. taking my life might seem an act of cowardice: Theseus has already expressed disapproval at 1248. As is natural, Athenian and Greek attitudes to suicide were various (Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle, pp. 168–9), but it is not surprising that in a society which set a high value on the citizen’s military service to his community the decision to abandon life could be seen as ignoble. It is telling that when Plato’s Socrates criticizes suicide in the Phaedo, he speaks in terms of a mortal deserting the post which has been assigned to him by God – again a military conception.

69. work against me if I lack company: He means that if left alone he may revert to despair and kill himself.

70. I cannot refuse: Again the magnanimity of Theseus is emphasized by his willingness to share in Heracles’ sufferings, even to the extent of contact with the blood and potential pollution.

71. compared with my present woes: The contrast between his former labours, conquering the Hydra and the like, and his present suffering is a powerful one – physical versus mental, active versus passive. The Greek verb etlēn, translated here as ‘I faced’, can cover both resolute action and endurance.

72. Bury the children as I said: See 1389–92. Heracles as the killer cannot participate in the funeral rites; see further, Parker, Miasma, pp. 121–3.

73. like a boat towed by a ship: The image recalls the scene halfway through the play in which Heracles led his family indoors (line 631, where Heracles was also the speaker). The contrast between his role there as an apparently all-powerful protector and his present misery is brought out by the verbal reminiscence.

74. our greatest friend: The stress on friendship at the end of the play is both positive and negative. Theseus’ support and sympathy for Heracles have been crucial in persuading him to go on with life, but the final note is of separation, as the hero leaves behind his father and the old men of the chorus.

IPHIGENIA AMONG THE TAURIANS

1. Iphigenia among the Taurians: This, not Iphigenia in Tauris, is the correct form of the title in English. This is the meaning of the Greek title, and also of the Latin form in Tauris (among the Tauri). The Latinate title has become current in English by false analogy with the title of the Iphigenia at Aulis.

2. Pelops… : The prologue, as so often in Euripides, begins with a fairly detailed account of past action by an individual alone on stage; often, as for example in Hippolytus, the Bacchae and others, the speaker is a god. This résumé may form the whole of the prologue, as in the Bacchae, or a second part, more lively and varied, may intervene before the entrance of the chorus (as here and e.g. in Electra or Ion). It became a Euripidean convention to have this first speaker trace his or her ancestry (and often to outline the remote origins of the present crisis): the tendency is mocked in Aristophanes’ Frogs. Sophocles, who normally opens his plays with dialogue, seems to have been more alert to the dangers of monotony.

3. for Helen’s sake: The post-Homeric Greek tradition is generally harsh on Helen, treating her as a selfish adulteress. In Euripides’ own Trojan Women and Orestes the portrayal is unsympathetic; his different approach in Helen represents a deliberate choice of a variant legend. In the account of the war’s origins in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Helen the ‘much-married’ is contrasted with the virginal Iphigenia.

4. the fairest creature… bring forth: The goddess who brings light is Artemis, who presides over the moon, while her brother Apollo is associated with the sun. Agamemnon’s rash vow here is one among a number of versions which describe how the king was compelled to sacrifice his daughter. In another, used by Sophocles, he foolishly boasted that he was a better hunter than Artemis, and was punished for this offence.

5. marriage to Achilles: The story is dramatized in Euripides’ later Iphigenia at Aulis. She is lured to her death on the assumption that she is coming to be married to the greatest hero of the Greeks. In Euripides’ other play, Clytemnestra unexpectedly accompanies her daughter, to the dismay of Agamemnon.

6. Thoas… nimble heels: The sentence refers to the etymology of his name, from the Greek word thoos, ‘swift’ His speed plays no part in the drama. For more telling uses of etymology see Helen 13–14> (Theonoe, ‘divine in knowledge’; Bacchae 367, 508 (Pentheus, ‘sorrow’), Phoenician Women 636 (Polyneices, ‘much strife’).

7. A weird vision… : As in many cultures, the belief that dreams were supernatural in origin was common in Greek society, and is naturally reflected in literature. See further E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), ch. 4, and ‘Supernormal phenomena in classical antiquity’, in Dodds, The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays (Oxford 1973), ch. 10, esp. pp. 168–85. In Iphigenia the dream is misunderstood: although it predicts that Orestes is in danger, it does not foretell his death; and Iphigenia takes the sacrificial act as merely a general indication that death has come to Orestes, not as a premonition that he will come into her power.

8. O Phoebus: By making Orestes address the god, the playwright provides the audience with essential background information. The Greek dramatists tend to use devices of this kind rather than the full-fledged soliloquy familiar to us from later writers like Shakespeare.

9. when has this been our way?: Pylades strengthens Orestes’ resolve at a crucial moment, just as in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers he reminded him of his duty and of the god’s command when he faltered at the point of killing his mother. Here too he reminds him of the oracle of Apollo. Pylades himself came from Phocis, near to Delphi.

10. the twin clashing rocks: The Clashing Rocks or Symplegades were a mythological obstacle associated with the passage into the Black Sea. Jason was traditionally supposed to have been the first to pass through them successfully, on his journey to Colchis. After that the moving rocks were said to have remained stationary, but they still presented a threatening natural feature for those venturing into the sea which the Greeks called ‘the Euxine’ (‘kind to strangers’ – a euphemism, intended to placate or pacify the threat the sea posed), or more bluntly ‘the inhospitable sea’, as here.

11. Ah, my serving-women…: Iphigenia sings here in response to the lyrics of the chorus; as is normal, song is used for more emotional utterances such as lamentation. In this passage she recapitulates much of the material covered in her speech in the prologue; the language is more allusive, the style more passionate.

12.sprinkle these libations: Libation, or pouring of liquid offerings, is one of the commonest ritual acts in homage to a supernatural power: see W. Burkert, Greek Religion (1985), pp. 70–73. As this passage shows, the appropriate offering may vary according to the power being invoked: honey, wine and milk are offered to the dead and to gods who dwell in the earth.

13. Woe upon woe has fallen upon it…: The text here is seriously corrupt and some phrases are far from certain, but the chorus are referring to the grim history of the house of Atreus, Agamemnon’s father. A golden lamb, a divine artefact, gave its possessor the right to the throne of Argos. The two brothers Atreus and Thyestes both desired the kingship. Thyestes seduced Aerope, his brother’s wife, and thus gained possession of the lamb; in the most common version, this was followed by the horrific revenge of Atreus, who killed Thyestes’ sons and served them up, disguised under other meat, to their father at dinner. This hideous crime was marked by a momentous omen: Zeus caused the sun to reverse its course (see also Electra 737–42). Tantalus, father of Pelops and grandfather of Atreus and Thyestes, was the founder of this doom-laden house. There were further crimes in those earlier generations, but ‘the offspring of Tantalus’ in this passage probably refers only to the children of Thyestes. On the notion of inherited guilt which afflicts successive generations, see Parker, Miasma, ch. 6, and M. L. West, ‘Ancestral Curses’, in J. Griffin (ed.), Sophocles Revisited (Oxford 1999), pp. 31–45.

14. to the nostrils of the gods: Mankind offers sacrifice to the gods, who are thought to take pleasure and sustenance from the meaty odours that rise to their home on Olympus. In his comedy Birds, Aristophanes develops the absurd notion that the gods can be starved into submission by preventing the sacrificial smells from reaching them, thus cutting off their food supplies.

15. to honour Argive Hera… : Hera is the protective deity of Argos, and is naturally mentioned by Iphigenia. The rest of the sentence is better suited to the Athenian audience: the women of Athens wove a robe representing Athena engaged in warfare with the Titans, as part of the worship of Athena at her major festival, the Great Panathenaea (cf. Hecabe 466–74).

16. That’s what I want to hear about: The enquiry introduces the first messenger-speech of the play: the second, at 1327–1419, describes the escape of Iphigenia, Orestes and Pylades. Most Euripidean plays have at least one messenger-speech, several have two, and the Phoenician Women has four! A technique which no doubt originates as a means of narrating events that cannot be represented on stage has evidently developed into a form of vivid and exciting narrative performed and enjoyed for its own sake. For a study of the form as used by Euripides, see I. J. F. de Jong, Narrative in Drama: The Art of the Euripidean Messenger-speech (Leiden 1991).

17. purple-fishers: This refers to the fishermen who gather molluscs in order to extract dyes for fabric; the purple-crimson dye was made in Tyre, hence ‘Tynan purple’.

18. Gods are sitting over there!: The naïve countrymen take the foreign strangers to be gods, and invoke them accordingly. This is quite a common occurrence in mythical or semi-mythical stories: Alcinous wonders if Odysseus may be a god in the Odyssey, and the hero’s son Telemachus has the same suspicion. When Paul and Barnabas visit the Roman colony of Lystra and heal a cripple, the crowd acclaim them as gods who have come down to earth in the likeness of men (Acts 14:8ff.).The first invocation alludes to a strange myth of sea deities. The king of Thessaly, Athamas, killed his son in a fit of madness, whereupon his wife Ino fled into the sea with their surviving child Melicertes. Poseidon took pity on them and turned both Ino and Melicertes into sea-gods, who were subsequently worshipped as Leucothea and Palaemon. The ‘Sons of Zeus’ means Castor and Pollux, the Heavenly Twins. Nereus is a sea-god subordinate to Poseidon; one of his Nereid daughters was Thetis, mother of Achilles.

19. my mother, that mass of rock… hurl her at me: The transformation of Clytemnestra into stone is not a part of any regular version of the story, and must be seen as the product of Orestes’ crazed imagination.

20. in sacrifice at Aulis: The cowherd, with rustic (or barbarian) naivety, encourages Iphigenia to perform her bloody duty as a form of retribution for what Greeks did to her. Since her blood was in fact not shed, there is a paradox. In the prologue Iphigenia has already hinted that she did not favour the custom of human sacrifice, and in her next speech she is more explicit.

21. I cannot rid my mind of that day’s horror: Iphigenia’s recollections are made more vivid by the introduction of direct speech, recalling the words of her original appeal. The effect here is comparable to that of a ‘flashback’ in modern cinema. The detail also suggests the psychological trauma that still affects her.

22. Hades… was to be my wedded lord: The macabre idea of ‘marriage’ to Hades is quite frequent in tragedy, especially in the context of virgin sacrifice or execution. See further R. Seaford>, ‘The Tragic Wedding’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 107 (1987), pp. 106–30.

23. Leto won the heart of Zeus: The point is that Leto was the mother of Artemis.

24. I cannot suppose any god capable of evil: The line makes a powerful conclusion to a striking passage. Euripidean characters frequently question received opinion about the gods and their motives (cf. General Introduction, pp. xxviii–xxxiii>). In the same way Pindar expressed disbelief in tales which reflect discredit on the god: among the stories he rejects is the one which Iphigenia alludes to here, according to which Tantalus entertained the gods but served them human flesh; Demeter, distracted by her anxiety about her lost daughter, ate it unawares. See Pindar, Olympian 1.37–52. Sometimes human scepticism stands in conflict with the actions of the gods in the play, but here Iphigenia’s distress is eventually shown to be shared by the goddess: Orestes will carry away Artemis’ image and in future she will be honoured in a more wholesome fashion (1450–61).

25…. crossing the Inhospitable Gulf: As in earlier passages, this refers to the Pontus Euxeinos, the Black Sea. The ‘dark meeting place of the seas’ refers to the Thracian Bosporus which joins the Propontis and the Euxine. The name Bosporus (‘cow’s crossing’) was thought to refer to the mythical Io, who was beloved of Zeus and then turned into a cow by the jealous Hera, who persecuted her further by sending a gadfly to torment her. Fleeing from the gadfly Io journeyed across the world, travelling through Asia and finally reaching Egypt. The myth is of marginal relevance here: the point is simply that the foreign visitors to the Taurians have followed the same route as Io and the gadfly.

26. Phineus’ coast that never slumbers: Phineus is a figure in the Argonautic legends, a king persecuted by the Harpies. The meaning is apparently that the stormy weather never ceases on the coastline of Salmydessus, his kingdom on the shores of Thrace.

27. the white isle… glorious racecourse: ‘Leuke‘ (White) was the name of a small island in the Black Sea, near the mouth of the Danube; traditionally the ghost of Achilles dwelt there (cf. also Andromache 1260–62), and in some versions other heroes lived with him after their deaths. Racing is a suitable pursuit for swift-footed Achilles even after death.

28. the custom of the land prescribes: The chorus, like Iphigenia herself, express misgivings about the sacrificial rites; but as one would expect, they do so less emphatically than the heroine of the play. Choral comment is characteristically cautious and moderate.

29. Ah! Who is she, the mother… : If Orestes answered this question at once, brother and sister would immediately know each other. Instead, Euripides embarks on a remarkable scene in which recognition constantly seems about to take place but is continually delayed: not until line 777 does Orestes realize the truth, and Iphigenia’s subsequent doubts prolong the tension still further. Scenes of this type are common in tragedy, especially in dramas of intrigue involving deception and plans for escape or revenge: thus Orestes returns in disguise to Argos in each of the plays dramatizing his revenge, and Helen and Menelaus in Helen do not at first recognize or believe in each other’s identity. The Greeks obviously enjoyed delayed recognition-scenes of this kind: the tradition has its roots in Homer’s Odyssey.

30. what I wish to learn first: This enquiry by Iphigenia occupies two verses; thereafter each question and answer is a single line in the Greek until Orestes speaks at greater length at 570. This device is known as ‘stichomythia’ (line-byline speech), and is often used by the tragedians in contexts like these, where information is being sought or exchanged. The fast-moving dialogue encourages a sense of urgency and excitement: the audience awaits a crucial line of revelation on one side or the other, but it does not come. On stichomythia in general, see C. Collard, ‘On Stychomythia’, Liverpool Classical Monthly 5 (1980), pp. 77–85.

31. a man called Calchas…: On Calchas’ role, see Iphigenia’s narrative in the prologue, lines 15–24; on that of Odysseus (‘Laertes’ son’) see lines 24–5. Iphigenia asks after the fates of each of the crucial agents in her death, coming to her father last. This type of scene, in which mythical detail familiar to the audience is ‘filled in’ for a character on stage, is paralleled in Helen’s meeting with Teucer in Helen, and e.g. in Sophocles’ Philoctetes 410–52.

32. has been overturned: Probably this refers only to Odysseus’ hapless wanderings, but the audience may be meant also to think of the crowd of suitors besieging his wife Penelope and consuming Odysseus’ property, as described in the Odyssey.

33. Nereid Thetis’ son… his marriage at Aulis: The son of Thetis is Achilles, to whom Iphigenia supposed she would be married at Aulis, when in fact this was a trick to bring her there to be sacrificed. See her account of these events in the prologue.

34.O dream that lied to me… : Iphigenia reacts to the word lives’, rather than to the ‘life of misery.’ She realizes she misinterpreted the dream narrated in the prologue (lines 42–55). This is in part an aside, and obviously Orestes cannot know her full meaning, but he does take up the matter of dreams.

35. when a man comes to grief… those who know him know how: Orestes refers to his own misfortune, since he is suffering the consequences of obeying the command of the prophetic god Apollo to kill his own mother.

36.gain your sister’s inheritance as her husband: As we see in Euripides’ Electra and elewhere, it was a traditional element of the story that Pylades married Electra, the reward for his loyalty to Orestes. Here the mythical fact is given an ingenious negative twist. In the next speech by Orestes, ‘my sister’ again refers to Electra.

37. I have been deceived by Phoebus: Doubts about the wisdom or truth of Apollo’s prophecies are frequently expressed in tragedy: cf. Electra 971, 1246; Sophocles, Oedipus the King 946–7. See further, J. Mikalson, Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy (1991), pp. 136–9. In most instances the mortal doubts are shown to be unfounded, and this is the case in this play. Pylades’ pious confidence that all will finally work out well proves justified.

38. the letter with its folded tablets: The reference is to a kind of wooden note-pad in which a message would be written, often on wax, which would be protected by the wooden exterior. The idea of such implements being used in the heroic age is anachronistic, but this anticipation of later customs is common in tragedy.

39.I bring you a letter, Orestes: The stage business involved in the handling of the letter can readily be reconstructed from the text. It is typical of Greek tragedy that there are relatively few props and physical objects on stage, but those which are used carry considerable symbolic or emotional weight. A still more significant case is the bow in Sophocles’ Philoctetes.

40. evidence for this: As in Ion, proof is necessary before the seemingly impossible can be believed. On tokens of childhood, etc., see Ion, note 68>.

41. between Atreus and Thyestes: For the story of the dispute over the golden lamb, and of how the sun changed its course, see note 13 above.

42. What way can I discover…: The question, like Pylades’ next speech, marks the transition from recognition-scene to a scene in which the reunited characters plan their escape; the same sequence is found in Helen, and the plotting scene in Electra is also closely comparable. The evidence suggests that this is a conventional pattern in Euripidean drama, and the parody of this kind of plot in Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmorphoria supports this.

43. He was not living when my father tried to kill me: A slightly awkward detail, which makes Pylades somewhat younger than Orestes. Chronologically it remains possible, if we accept that the Trojan war lasted ten years, and that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus ruled in Argos for a further period of seven or eight years before the two men arrived to overthrow them.

44. not fitting for you to hear: The implication is that Clytemnestra’s motive was merely lust for her lover. In other plays, including Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, anger at the killing of Iphigenia plays a prominent role (cf. Pindar, Pythian 11.22–8), but in view of the fact that her daughter has in fact survived, this would complicate the moral issues too much: Euripides prefers simply to make Clytemnestra a ‘bad woman’.

45. Next Loxias directed my steps to Athens… : Loxias is another name for Apollo (see Glossary of Names). In the speech which follows, Orestes describes how he stood trial for matricide in Athens before the court of the Areopagus, the court which in historical times dealt with homicide cases. It had special prestige, and was said to have been formed to judge Ares after he had slain a son of Poseidon (cf. Euripides’ Electra 1258ff.). This part of his speech is close to the plot of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, which dramatizes the trial of Orestes in Athens, and in which Apollo appears as defender, the Furies as prosecutors and Athena oversees the court. When the human jurors are evenly divided, Athena declares that the verdict must be one of acquittal (the precise nature of Athena’s intervention is disrupted, but it is clear in Euripides that she has the casting vote for mercy). In Aeschylus, Orestes returns to rule his father’s kingdom in Argos, while Athena placates the Furies and offers them an honoured place in Athens. See also Athena’s speech at 1469–72.Euripides modifies the legend in two main respects. First, not all the Furies accept the verdict at Athens: this is patently a device to explain why Orestes is still a wanderer and still subject to fits of insanity. Second, Orestes is not tried at once in Athens, but first has to suffer a period of exclusion and of grim, reluctant hospitality in the households of some of the citizens. As Orestes’ words at 958–60 make clear, this is an aetiology, a story told to explain the origin of a religious rite: in this case, the practice of separating those who participated in the festival of the Choes, on the second day of the Anthesteria: each of those present had a separate table and a separate pot of wine. On the nature of this festival, see H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London 1977), pp. 107–20, Burkert, Greek Religion, pp. 237–42. The connection of Orestes with this practice is mentioned in a number of sources, and is unlikely to be Euripides’ own invention.

46. unless Phoebus, my destroyer, saved me: There is a play on the resemblance between the name Apollo and the verb apolesen, from apollumi, ‘destroy’ (as also in Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1081 and elsewhere). Orestes’ threat to die on sacred ground would expose the god and his shrine to pollution from his corpse. Compare Iphigenia’s reference in lines 380–84 to Artemis’ inconsistency in barring those who have touched the dead from her altar, while also demanding human sacrifice. See further, Parker, Miasma, ch. 2, esp. pp. 32–40.

47. tripod: Apollo’s prophecies were delivered through a medium who sat on a tripod in a sacred vault of the god’s temple.

48. a woman’s counts for little: This view is still more emphatically stated by Iphigenia herself in Euripides’ later play, Iphigenia at Aulis 1394. Offensive to modern taste, it would probably have been met with assent by many Athenian males in the audience, but there is no justification for ascribing this opinion to the dramatist.

49. thinking up schemes: In Greek literature women are often seen as more cunning and devious than men, who rely more readily on brute force: compare, for example, Hippolytus 480–81, Andromache 85. The whole plot of Medea relies on Medea’s capacity to outwit men.

50. since your hands touched it: The image is unclean because of Orestes’ pollution from his crime. See Parker, Miasma, pp. 52–3.

51.must join us in keeping this a secret: In realistic terms, Orestes’ sudden anxiety about the chorus’s discretion is long overdue. But for the chorus to swear itself to secrecy out of loyalty to the main characters is a convention of the genre (necessary because of their continuous presence) and, although Iphigenia makes an unusually full appeal, the audience will have already taken their consent for granted.

52. a city favoured by the gods: This is an incidental note of patriotic praise for Athens. More important, Iphigenia’s prayer here reverses and supersedes her earlier indignant reproach of Artemis. The goddess is not after all content with the barbarous cult she receives; she, with her priestess, will soon be removed to a civilized land. The hope for fulfilment of Apollo’s oracles also paves the way for a happy resolution, in contrast with Orestes’ former pessimism.

53.Halcyon: The halcyon was a mythical bird identified with the kingfisher, who had been transformed from a woman’s form and still lamented the loss of her young husband Keyx. Similarly, the chorus long for the prosperity they have lost and for their homes far away. The highly emotional and poetically ornate ode is typical of Euripides’ late period: we find the same style exaggerated and parodied in Aristophanes’ Frogs (1309ff, a passage which begins by invoking the halcyons).

54. turned backwards on its plinth: Iphigenia describes a prodigy, an unnatural and ominous event; Thoas’ reply hints at a possible rational explanation for such a phenomenon.

55. the heart for such a deed: This is obviously a mischievous touch by the playwright. A real-life Thoas would be unlikely to refer to himself or his people as barbarians. Whereas up to this point the picture of the Taurians in the play has been of a savage people, we are now shown how Orestes’ deed might look in the eyes of a naively virtuous figure, almost a ‘noble savage’. That Greeks too are capable of ‘barbarous’ deeds is a recurring theme in Euripides.

56. entirely proper: After this line the metre changes to trochaic tetrameters for the remainder of the scene. Euripides regularly uses this metre for scenes of excitement and rapid activity.

57. for the fiery sun: Again the meaning is that the gods (and the sun is conceived as a divine power) must not be polluted by contact with a sinner. Humans must also take care, see 1218 below. Cf. Heracles 1214ff. See Parker, Miasma, pp. 310, 316ff, 371>.

58. refer to me: Metrical analysis shows that a short reply from Iphigenia has been lost after these words. It probably amounted to no more than ‘Exactly’.

59. A lovely child was Leto’s baby boy… : The ode recounts the birth of Apollo, son of Leto, on Delos and his coming to Delphi, where he slew the monstrous Pytho, the snake which guarded the sanctuary (hence his title of Pythian Apollo). The achievement is made still more miraculous by the claim that he did so while still a child (Wunderkind). Dionysus is mentioned because of the Bacchic festival and revelry in the region of Delphi, and because of the special relationship between Apollo and Dionysus: see Ion, note 30.Already in 1249 there is a reference to the personified Earth itself, a hazy figure of early mythic times, as the first owner of the oracle at Delphi; her successor was Themis, one of the wives of Zeus, whose name means ‘Order’. The serpent Pytho was also a child of Earth, and guarded the shrine for his mother and sister. The story told in the antistrophe describes a divine contest for the first place among oracular guides to mankind, which Apollo wins. The colourful yet sometimes humorous narrative is reminiscent of the early poetry known as the Homeric Hymns. See further, C. Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Myth as history: the previous owners of the Delphic Oracle’, in J. Bremmer (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London and Sydney 1987), pp. 215–41.

60. he has left the temple in some haste: It is unusual but not unparalleled for the chorus to lie to particular actors (they take steps to deceive Aegisthus in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers); here it arises from their previous promise to help Iphigenia.

61. sing the paean: A paean is a song of praise, prayer or thanks to Apollo.

62. Unless the sea calms down… : It is a bold and unusual stroke for the messenger to bring a report of an incomplete action, where intervention may yet make a difference. In most cases they describe an event or series of events that have already reached a conclusion or at least come to a halt. In realistic terms, if there is such urgency it makes no sense for him to have gone on at such length; but the dramatic convention of the long messenger-speech overrides such considerations.

63. The goddess ATHENA suddenly appears above the stage: This is the device of the deus ex machina. Divine epiphanies of this kind figure at the end of many Euripidean tragedies: in this volume, in both Ion and Helen. It is usually a god who has some direct concern with the action: we might have expected Apollo or Artemis, but the Athenian aspects of the play and the speech make it appropriate for it to be delivered by the protecting goddess of Athens.

64. the anger of the Furies: See Orestes’ speech at 939–86 and note 45 above.

65. When you come to Athens… : The next section of the speech, like Orestes’ earlier narrative, is closely linked with the religious cults of Athens. As is normal in the speeches of a god at the end of a play, aetiological links are made explicit, tracing the customs of the Athenian present to their origins in the mythical past. Halae is in the east of Attica, facing the hill here called the Carystian rock, in southern Euboea. Athena predicts a cult of Tauric Artemis which still existed in classical times. The ritual will involve a shedding of blood which replaces but symbolically mimics the bloody human sacrifices among the Tauri. Similar rites seem to have been performed at Brauron, a few miles south of Halae. Euripides traces both to the same origin, sending the image of Artemis to Halae and Iphigenia as priestess to Brauron. In some contexts Artemis and Iphigenia seem to be identified; at the very least they are closely associated, with Iphigenia receiving heroic cult after death. Much is obscure about the nature of the rites at Brauron, but they seem to have been connected with preparing young girls for marriage and child-bearing.

66. he shall be acquitted: See note 45 on Orestes’ earlier narrative of his trial in the court of Areopagus (‘the hill of Ares’). The practice reflects Athenian legal convention: see Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 69.1.

ION

1. Atlas … : For the Euripidean practice of having the prologue spoken by a character alone on stage, who traces the action back to its origins, see note 2 to Iphigenia. Here Hermes is a detached observer of the action, whereas Iphigenia was deeply involved with the misfortunes of her family and the consequences of the past.

2. a child of Erechtheus: Erechtheus was one of the mythical early kings of Athens, and the Athenian people could be described as the ‘sons of Erechtheus’ (Erechtheidae). Euripides wrote another play, now surviving only in fragments, which dramatized the dilemma Erechtheus faced when it proved necessary to sacrifice his daughter or daughters if the city was to be saved: this terrible decision is referred to at 277–80, where Creusa is said to have been spared, being still only an infant. See note 16 below. The relation between Erechtheus and Erichthonius, another figure prominent in the mythical royal house, is uncertain. According to 267ff, Erichthonius was Creusa’s great-grandfather, Erechtheus her father; but the distinction of the two figures is probably a late development; these may originally be two names for the same mythical character. See further, R. Parker, ‘Myths of early Athens’, in Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. J. Bremmer (London and Sydney 1987), pp. 193ff. and 200ff. [henceforth cited as Parker, ‘Myths’]; for more detail, see E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica (BICS Supplement 57, 1989), pp. 110–15, 160–61.

3. violent passion: Greek gods often had their way with mortal women; Zeus himself recites a catalogue of his conquests, like Don Giovanni, in the Iliad. (Goddesses were sometimes as forward in satisfying their desire for mortal men, e.g. Aphrodite with Anchises). It seems to be the rule that even a single encounter with a god leads to pregnancy: Poseidon in the Odyssey (11.249–50) declares that ‘the beds of the immortals are not without fruit’. In earlier literature, divine love-making is taken more or less for granted, but the emphasis on the violence of Apollo in this play (rape rather than seduction), and on Creusa’s consequent suffering, makes the god’s action much more problematic.

4. exposed him to die, so she thought: Exposure of unwanted children was common in ancient Greece, as in many poor societies: see, for example, R. Sallares, The Ecology of the Ancient Greek World (London 1991), pp. 151–7. In real life the parents may have hoped the child might be looked after by others, but in myth the normal pattern is that death is assumed to have occurred, while in fact the child has been saved by others and is brought up without knowing its true identity, which is eventually revealed. The story is a recurring one, found also in the myths of Paris, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, and Moses, among others. To an audience accustomed to such tales, Ion’s survival is no surprise.

5. pair of serpents: Snakes, dwelling partly above and partly below the earth, are ambiguous in other ways, capable of helping and harming. Their earth-born quality connects them with the claim of the Athenians to be ‘autochthonous’ (i.e. always to have lived on the same territory, and so to be native to Attica in a more intimate way than other peoples to their lands): see also 265–7 below, where Erichthonius is said to have been born of the earth itself, a symbol of this Athenian claim. See Parker, ‘Myths’, p. 195. Snakes play a prominent part in Erichthonius’ tale too, as the next lines indicate.

6. the custom in Athens… beaten gold: This is an aetiology. Greek literature is rich in aetiological tales, and Euripides often brings them in at the end of his plays, especially in the speech of a god. Ion, like Iphigenia among the Taurians, has a number of explanations scattered through the play, mainly because it is concerned more than most of the dramas with Athenian myth.

7. Apollo’s oracle… desire for children: In general, on the place of the Delphic oracle in Greek life, see H. W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London 1967), esp. chs. 6–8, and S. Price, ‘Delphi and divination’, in Greek Religion and Society, ed. P. E. Easterling and J. V. Muir (Cambridge 1985), pp. 128–54. In myth we tend to hear about abnormal or major consultations by rulers or exceptional people, but many consultations by private individuals must have been more humdrum. Even in tragedy, desire for children also prompts the visit of Aegeus to Delphi in Medea (667ff.). The question is of course of special importance when a ruler lacks an heir.

8. become known to Creusa… : This sentence and the next reveal Apollo’s idea of how the action should unfold; the plot of the play will be very different. The god, it seems, is not omniscient. Misdirection of this kind is found also in the prologues of Hippolytus and the Bacchae. It would of course be duller for the audience if the action were entirely predicted at the start of the play.

9. Ion… found cities in the land of Asia: The Athenians claimed special status as the leaders of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, who were united after the Persian wars in the so-called Delian League, a confederacy which began as a continued defensive alliance against Persia but developed into an Athenian empire. By making the Athenian Ion the founder of the Ionian cities, Euripides makes clear the subordination of these cities to their ‘mother-city’ Athens. See further the Preface to this play.For Ion’s name see 661ff. (and note 38 below), where Xuthus gives him the name. It seems he is to be thought of as nameless before. This is one way in which the play enacts his progress into full adulthood.

10. Come, servant broom: The monody of Ion began with the dignity of a hymn, and is throughout concerned with honouring Apollo, but the references to the birds’ droppings, and still more the invocation of the broom and the indignant cries to the birds later in the song, strike a rather comic note. Euripides charmingly portrays Ion’s naïvety, making him use high-flown style and language to describe very down-to-earth chores. This is the kind of passage which Aristophanes satirizes in the parodies of Euripidean lyrics in Frogs (esp. 1308-63): see also General Introduction, p. xxvi.

11. Phoebus is my sire and father: The Greek is equally explicit, and the irony is typical of the play.

12. So not only in sacred Athens… shining in fair-eyed beauty: There are several places in Euripides in which works of art are described and admired, usually by the chorus: for example, Achilles’ shield, described at Electra 452–86. In this play, there is the account, by the messenger, of the embroideries on the magnificent tent erected for the banquet (i14iff.). There is a discussion of these passages by F. Zeitlin, ‘The artful eye: vision, ecphrasis and spectacle in Euripidean theatre’, in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture ed. S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (Cambridge 1994), pp. 138–96. The opening of the choral entrance-song reminds the audience of the great buildings of Athens’ Acropolis, such as the Parthenon (most of them built in the lifetime of Euripides). The patriotic note is evident: Delphi too can match the wonders of our own city!The myths described in the next few lines are well known: Heracles’ slaying of the monstrous hydra with the aid of his nephew lolaus; Bellerophon on his winged horse Pegasus, killing the terrible Chimaera (‘three-bodied’ in that it was part lion, part goat, part snake); the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods, in which Athena and Zeus naturally play prominent parts. (The Gorgon’s head was a decoration on Athena’s shield; Enceladus and Mimas are both giants.) Bromius the revelling god is of course Bacchus, wielding his ivy-wand or thyrsus as a weapon. It cannot be shown that all these scenes were visible at Delphi, but the war of Giants and gods certainly was. For more detailed discussion see Lee’s commentary (1997), pp. 177–9.

13. under one roof with the dwelling of Pallas: She means the Erechtheion, which is under the same roof as the shrine of Athene Polias. The fifth-century Erechtheion, remains of which survive today, was built on the site of an older temple. But the old and the contemporary would no doubt merge in the Athenian audience’s minds: anachronism of this kind is common in tragedy.

14. Oh, what hardships women must endure!: These words and the rest of Creusa’s speech constitute an aside; in the Greek theatre, as in Shakespeare, comments of this kind are used to give some insight into the character’s mind. The others on stage either do not hear her words or do not understand them. The convention is unrealistic but dramatically effective: Creusa is made to seem a more intriguing and sympathetic figure because she cannot reveal the cause of her grief except through these crypic outbursts. See further D. Bain, Actors and Audiences (Oxford 1977), ch. 2, who discusses this passage on pp. 36–7.

15. born from the earth: On the importance of autochthony in Athenian myth see note 5 above. The story of Erichthonius (sometimes told of Erechtheus: see Parker, ‘Myths’, pp. 193–7) is a strange one. Hephaestus tried to rape Athena, but the virgin goddess escaped; his seed fell on the ground, and from that spot emerged their ‘son’ Erichthonius. The early king of Athens was thus under the protection of both deities, but the central fact about Athena, her virginity, was unaltered. Athena then hid the child in a chest with snakes to guard him, and entrusted it to the daughters of Cecrops to guard, warning them on no account to open it. Despite the warnings they did so, and went mad at the sight of what was inside, throwing themselves off the Acropolis to their deaths. Even in historic times, a sacred snake was kept on the Acropolis, in the precinct of Erichthonius.

16. did he kill your sisters in sacrifice: For the story see note 2 above, and Parker, ‘Myths’, pp. 202–4. The motif of human sacrifice is common in tragedy, and the plot involving sacrifice to save the State is found in several Euripidean plays, especially The Children of Heracles and the Phoenician Women; a variant is the sacrifice of Iphigenia to make possible a patriotic expedition against Troy (Iphigenia at Aulis). The Erechtheus of Euripides, which told of that king’s difficult decision, was probably close to Ion in date, perhaps somewhat earlier, and may well have been produced during the building programme of the Erechtheum, begun in the last quarter of the fifth century BC.

17. swallowed up in the yawning earth: Erechtheus won a war against the Eleusinian king Eumolpus, but Poseidon caused an earthquake and Erechtheus disappeared in a chasm which opened up in the earth; this too was described in the lost play Erechtheus.

18. Trophonius’ sacred cavern: Trophonius was a Boeotian seer with associations with Delphi; he had an oracular shrine of his own, on the slopes of Mount Helicon, about 15 miles from Delphi. There was an elaborate procedure of consultation; hence the delay.

19.Phoebus knows the truth about my childlessness: We have heard Creusa make her obscure asides; a similar purpose is served by ambiguous replies like these. The double meaning is clear to the audience but missed by Ion.

20. dedication… sell you: A state might offer a slave or a number of slaves as a gift to the shrine; or he might be sold into the service of the temple by an individual.

21. a pleasure shared: This way of viewing the situation highlights the moral issue, and is not adequately met by the resolution of the play, which does not restore the years of happy motherhood which Creusa has lost. That point is not emphasized at the end of the play, however.

22. the nobility of Delphi, chosen by lot: The priestess, inspired by the god, utters the prophecy, usually in verse; but the priests convey the words to the questioner and if necessary help to interpret the god’s obscurities. On the procedures of Delphic enquiry, see Parke, Greek Oracles, ch. 7.

23.And yet I should ask Phoebus to account for this behaviour of his: The opening of Ion’s speech expresses his sense of easy familiarity with the god, with whose shrine and worship he is familiar. His criticism of the god is again naïve yet his anxieties are likely to be shared by at least some of the audience. Greek mythology presented the gods as anthropomorphic, like men in their emotions and impulses, though far greater than men in strength and knowledge. But well before Euripides’ time, Xenophanes and others had questioned whether this was an adequate conception of god. Ion insists that the gods lay down moral rules for men and ought themselves to obey those rules. But the point could be turned the other way: if gods are above humanity and make the laws, can they be judged by the same moral criteria? Ion’s criticisms do not strike very deep, but they hint at larger philosophic issues.

24. Poseidon and Zeus: Both gods were said to have treated mortal women as Apollo has Creusa, Poseidon with Melanippe and Tyro, Zeus with (among others) Semele and Europa. The idea of the gods paying compensation in fines reflects Athenian law (and perhaps therefore strikes a comical note). The wealth of the temples comes from dedications of gifts and treasure by worshippers, individuals and states; the wealth of Delphi in particular was proverbial.

25. from the crown of Zeus’ head: See Hesiod, Theogony 886ff., Pindar, Olympian 7.3 5ff. Zeus was said to have swallowed his first wife, Metis (whose name means intelligence), when she was pregnant with a child. When the time came for the birth he was stricken with agonizing headaches; Prometheus discerned the remedy, splitting Zeus’ head with an axe and releasing, fully grown and armed, the goddess Athena, who is thus not only a virgin herself but born without the normal indignities. The surreal quality of the tale, like that of the birth of Erichthonius, is characteristic of the myths of very early times, before the Olympians were fully established as a more orderly ‘royal family’. See also Parker, ‘Myths’ pp. 190–92.

26. child of Leto’s womb: Artemis was the full sister of Apollo. Both she and Athena are virgins, but Artemis is regularly the protectress of women in childbirth; here both goddesses are ascribed power in this sphere.

27. a wretched maid: The chorus, we must remember, still think of this as the experience of a ‘friend’ of Creusa. Their distress will be still greater when they hear the truth.

28. You serving women: From this point on, through the dialogue between Ion and Xuthus and up to the next intervention by the chorus at 566, the metre is not the iambic trimeter normally used in spoken verse, but the longer trochaic tetrameter, often including, as here, a series of lines divided between two speakers who keep interrupting one another. It recurs for a brief passage at 1250–60 when Creusa rushes on and seeks refuge at the altar, and (for reasons which are harder to determine) at the very end of the play. The mood of the scene which follows is hard to determine. The misunderstanding and muddle seem to have a comic aspect, and this is brought out, perhaps to excess, in the translation and interpretation by B. M. W. Knox, ‘Euripidean Comedy’, in Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater (1979), pp. 260–2. Knox argues that Xuthus’ overtures are misread as the eager advances of a would-be lover, and that this explains Ion’s adverse reaction. Even if Knox’s case is overstated, the scene certainly shows Xuthus as over-hasty and somewhat blundering. It is Ion who swiftly begins to reflect on the significance of this new discovery, and who finds reason to doubt that all is rosy. Further, Xuthus’ relative indifference to Creusa and willingness to deceive her must offend an audience to whom she has been presented so clearly as a sympathetic victim.

29. Children are not born of the soil: These are the words of a Euboean who has married into the Athenian royal house; a true Athenian, proud of his mythic ancestry, would know better. See note 5 above on autochthony.

30. Bacchus’ torchlight mysteries: Delphi is Apollo’s domain, but according to Greek belief he absented himself in the winter months and Dionysus took his place. Thebes, birthplace of Dionysus, is not far from Delphi, and there was a festival of Dionysus at Delphi every second year. Dionysus is also associated with inspiration and divine possession: in myth the Maenads, women inspired by the god, run wild over the hills, and even in historical times this behaviour, more rigorously controlled through ritual, was part of the celebrations at Dionysiac festivals. Illicit liaisons between men and women were easier to manage (or to fall into) at festival times, when women had more freedom of action.

31. a son of Zeus: This is loosely expressed, as Ion would be son of a grandson of Zeus, Xuthus being son of Aeolus.

32. Have you nothing to say?: Ion’s silence indicates that he is having misgivings, which he goes on to express. The play is much concerned with the inexperienced boy’s growth to manhood; part of this is not just finding his parents but also learning to confront the world outside the safety of Delphi. His status as an ‘innocent’ allows him to comment critically on what he has heard about Athenian society. Although much of the play celebrates the myths and character of Athens, this scene offers a more oblique and negative perspective.

33. foreign birth of my father… my own bastard status: Ion views the prospect of being an outsider in Athens with unease. See the Preface to this play for discussion of the relevance of Pericles’ ‘citizenship law’. See also D. Ogden, Greek Bastardy (Oxford 1996), chs. 5–6, esp. pp. 166–73, 197–8. In this respect and in much of this speech the picture given of Athens is much more ‘modern’, more like the society of Euripides’ own time, than an attempt at authentic reconstruction of an early phase of Athenian history. Anachronistic treatment of Athenian politics is found in most of the tragedies in which Athens figures, from Aeschylus’ Eumenides to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.

34. do not join the rush into public life: The politically inactive were exceptional in Athens, and treated with disdain by those who were at the heart of the political life (see esp. Pericles in Thucydides ii.40.2). See further, J. B. Carter, The Quiet Athenian (Oxford 1985), and for a full study of Athenian democracy and ideological clashes within it, see R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Classical Athens (Cambridge 1988). On the political involvement of tragedy itself, see P. Cartledge in P. E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (1997), pp. 3–35.

35. As for kingship… : The word in Greek is turannis, from which our ‘tyranny’ derives. Here the modern portrayal of Athenian politics gives way to a mythical perspective, in which it is natural for a city to be ruled by a king. Again Ion provides an ‘innocent’ commentary, but here one more attuned to Athenian anti-monarchical sentiment. Speeches recounting the unattractive aspects of kingship are common enough in tragedy for us to suspect that the arguments were commonplaces of rhetoric (cf. Creon in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King 584ff and Hippolytus in Euripides’ Hippolytus 1013ff.).

36. jostling me off the road…: Ion’s tone here has more of an aristocratic disdain. The comment recalls the remarks of an anonymous anti-democratic pamphleteer, usually referred to as the Old Oligarch (‘pseudo-Xenophon’, Constitution of the Athenians 1.10), a work probably contemporary with Euripides. See also Plato, Republic 563c, where Socrates says sardonically that the spirit of freedom in a democracy is such that it infects even the animals, and they refuse to get out of people’s way in the streets.

37. public feast: Xuthus’ proposal seems to combine several ideas. Athenians would celebrate the birth of a child with presents, a meal and a sacrifice, normally on the fifth or seventh day after the birth. Ion’s birth has not been honoured in this way, so the lack should be remedied. A feast to celebrate a new guest-friend (‘as if I’m bringing a friend to my home’) is a completely different occasion. Thirdly, the reference to the name of Ion later in the speech suggests the dekate or ten-days-old banquet at which a child was named.

38. I give you the name ‘Ion’: Cf. note 9 above. The point here is that ‘Ion’ can be taken to mean ‘going’ or ‘coming’, the present participle of a common Greek verb of motion. Xuthus met the boy as he was ‘coming’ from the shrine, and chooses this name to commemorate that moment of meeting. At this date of mythic time neither character can know what Hermes has already foretold, that Ion will be the founder of the Ionian cities. Significant names are common in mythology, for example Pentheus (connected twice in the Bacchae with penthos, ‘sorrow’).

39. and you shall die for it: It is a common motif in tragedy for the chorus to be sworn to secrecy; it happens in more than half of Euripides’ plays. This arises from the fact that they are normally on stage throughout the main action and hence often overhear secrets. Normally their assent is immediate, but here they make no reply, significantly; for their loyalty is to Creusa and not to Xuthus. Their dismay at the turn events have taken is revealed immediately in the ode which follows.

40. I pray that… on my mother’s side: This speech even more explicitly takes for granted the relevance of Pericles’ law restricting citizenship: see Preface.

41.A cunning web of trickery does he weave: The chorus misread the situation, for the trickery is that of Xuthus, unprompted by Ion. This demonizing of Ion as the villain of the plot will go further in the dialogue between Creusa and her old servant.

42. in plain terms: The daggers after these words indicate a gap in the translation where the Greek text is incurably corrupt. Two lines are omitted: the broad sense may have been something like: ‘Until now, she and her husband shared their sorrow’.

43. by repelling… kept Athens safe : Athenian hostility to foreigners is exaggerated to a xenophobic extent here. The lines must allude to Erechtheus’ war against the Eleusinians under Eumolpus, a Thracian leader: hence the reference to the ‘babbling throng’, an allusion to the foreign quality of their speech. (This phrase, however, represents a conjecture by Diggle, and the exact wording remains uncertain.)

44. Oh to fly away… : Euripidean characters often express agonized wishes to escape from their present location and so win some freedom from the calamity that affects them. Cf. Medea 440, Hippolytus 742 and Heracles 1157ff.

45. your palace and your inheritance: The old man’s concerns reinforce Creusa’s natural distress. She grieves because of her own childless state and her husband’s deception; he is furious about the intrusion of a foreigner’s bastard into the royal house of Athens. Since Ion will be the heir to the throne, though apparently Athenian on neither side, the genuine royal line will, it seems, be at an end.

46. learning you were childless… : Given Ion’s age, it seems hard to credit that even the old man can really believe that Xuthus has been planning this scheme since before the boy’s birth. In his loyalty to his mistress and to Athens, the old man’s imagination runs riot. Yet his fantasy is plausible enough to convince Creusa. The chorus, who should be intervening to reduce the tension, instead join in the blackening of both Ion and Xuthus.

47. you must now perform a deed worthy of your sex: The closing words are somewhat out of keeping with the positive portrait of Creusa so far; but Euripides frequently exploits the stereotype of women as cunning schemers, and the old man’s encouragement paves the way for the plotting sequence to come, in which Creusa shows a different side of her personality. Before we embark on the plot, however, the aria of Creusa dramatically introduces the theme of her child by Apollo, previously unknown to all on stage.

48. breaking into passionate song: Creusa here breaks silence after a considerable interval – her last words were at 799 (though some of the intervening passage is omitted here as spurious). On significant silences in tragedy, see O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (1978), ch. 7. Her outburst is all the more powerful because it is sung, not spoken: as usual, the aria form expresses intense emotion. Even when she begins to speak, her first words are of doubt as to whether she should reveal the truth. On the qualities of this song, see Lee’s commentary, pp. 256–8, and other works cited there.

49. sing songsto the music of your lyre: Creusa describes the characteristic activity of the god, a timeless picture of his life of ease. Here and in the preceding passage his life is contrasted with her suffering, first through the rape itself and then from her abandonment of the child.

50…. in the bower of Zeus: Here ‘bower’ is metaphorical. The birth of Apollo was on Delos, where his mother Leto found refuge: the episode is narrated in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. She gave birth to Apollo and his sister Artemis while leaning her body against a palm-tree which was subsequently held sacred. The divine experience of childbirth is contrasted with the human.

51. Set fire to Loxias’ holy oracle!: The suggestion is blasphemous, and by this point in the scene the audience may be starting to feel less sure that they are altogether on Creusa’s side, especially as she and the old man are working from false premises. But although the atmosphere is grim, there is some humour in the swift dismissal of the old man’s wild suggestions; Creusa is the one who produces a plan that can work. See Helen note 44, a parallel case of a Euripidean ‘clever woman’ out-thinking a male. There too Menelaus makes two useless suggestions and then Helen offers a better one.

52. the Gorgon, a fearful monster: The Gorgon is here a child of Earth (in Hesiod she is daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, sea-deities); perhaps this suits the autochthonous Athenians and Erechtheus’ family in particular. The more familiar legend tells how the Gorgon Medusa was killed by Perseus with Athena’s aid, and in some versions it is her visage that adorns Athena’s shield; but Perseus would be an irrelevancy here. What counts is the goddess of Athens slaying a threatening being and supplying the means for the queen of Athens to destroy her enemy. There were in any case several Gorgons, and Euripides avoids using the name Medusa.

53. Erichthonius: See note 15 above.

54. two drops from the Gorgon’s blood: We may safely judge this particular gift to the child a Euripidean invention.

55. the stepmother has no love for the children: In ancient as in modern times stepmothers had a bad reputation. The evidence is assembled in a monograph by L. Watson, Ancient Stepmothers (Leiden 1994).

56. Lady of the Cross-ways, daughter of Demeter: The invocation is of Hecate, a goddess of night and with many sinister associations; here she is identified with Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, with whom she was often associated. Her image sometimes stood at crossroads.

57. by means of a sharpened sword or… a noose around her neck: Tragic characters often contemplate various means by which to kill themselves (here, ways in which another may do so). On the implications of different types of suicide, see N. Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman (Eng. tr., Cambridge, Mass. 1987).

58. the god praised in many a hymn… : Iacchus (a god often assimilated to Dionysus/Bacchus) is meant, as the reference to the torchlit festival of the ‘Twentieth’ below confirms. Iacchus was the son of Zeus by Persephone, and the twentieth day of the Attic month Boedromion was sacred to him: on that day his statue was conveyed in a procession from Athens to Eleusis. These lines refer more widely to the Eleusinia, celebrated for several days of that month. Callichorus is one of the sacred springs of Eleusis: Demeter was said to have rested there during her search for Persephone. Persephone is ‘the Maid’ referred to later in the strophe; Demeter is ‘her holy mother’.

59. All you poets… the lawless race of men: Poets in antiquity were mostly men, and so the chorus, like the women in Medea 41off., declare that poetry misrepresents female virtue and glosses over the crimes of men. Passages such as these make it hard to accept the distorted notion of Euripides as a misogynist. But the poet will not be simply endorsing the chorus’s words: after all, Creusa herself has devised murderous plans on false premises.

60. twin crags: This refers to the double peak of Mount Parnassus.

61. went on his way: Xuthus’ departure from the play is dramatically necessary in order that he may not witness the recognition between mother and son and the revelation of Creusa’s having given birth. On a more mundane level, his absence is essential because tragedy is restricted to three actors: all three will be needed in the scenes which follow (playing Ion, Creusa and first the prophetess, then Athena).

62. First he spread …: This passage is an ‘ecphrasis’, an extended description of a work of art. Euripides enjoyed composing passages of this kind: see note 12 above. For detailed and perhaps over-ingenious readings of this passage, seeking thematic links with the rest of the play, see B. Goff, ‘Euripides’ Ion 1132–1165: the Tent’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 34 (1988), pp. 42–54, and F. Zeitlin, ‘Mysteries of identity and the design of the self in Euripides’ Ion’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 35 (1989), pp. 144-97; the latter is reprinted in F. Zeitlin, Playing the Other (Chicago 1996), pp. 285–338.

63. an old man moved forward: This is of course Creusa’s servant; the description and scene setting are over, the plot resumes. His comical bustling makes him appear a harmless figure to the onlookers.

64. another fresh bowl to be filled: Normal practice is to pour a small portion of the wine as a libation, an offering to the appropriate god, and then drink. But in a ritual, any false move or inauspicious words invalidate the procedure, and Ion punctiliously begins again. His upbringing in pious ways saves his life. On another level, Apollo himself is at work: the doves that dwell in the temple precincts intervene to reveal the plot. It is a pleasant irony that these birds, which Ion tried to drive away in the opening scene of the play, now prove his salvation.

65. should I fly away on wings…: For conventional wishes of this kind, see note 44 above.

66. Sit down now at the altar!… : Taking refuge at an altar is a common motif in tragedy; see Heracles note 1. On ‘blood-guilt’ as a result of violating this kind of religious prohibition, see Parker, Miasma, p. 146. For a parallel situation see Heracles 240ff., 284ff.

67. What a state of affairs!: Again we see Ion giving vent to sententious moralizing. It is a Euripidean motif for characters to complain that the world is not well-organized: cf. Hippolytus 616–24, 925–31, and other examples in F. Solmsen, Intellectual Experiments of the Greek Enlightenment (Princeton 1975), ch. 3. But Ion’s complaint here is misconceived: the rules he finds fault with are stopping him from committing matricide.

68. Do you see this basket…?: The evidence by which Ion will be recognized as Creusa’s son is brought on stage. The identification of unrecognized strangers through some physical sign or object is a recurrent motif in Greek literature: thus in the Odyssey the hero is identified by the scar on his leg, and in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers Electra knows that her brother has come home because of the tokens she finds by Agamemnon’s tomb. There are other cases in both tragedy and comedy, and Aristotle’s Poetics (ch. 16) makes clear that the device was widespread in lost plays as well.

69. making any discovery I may regret: As often, the plot of the drama seems to be going off course; if Ion dedicates the cradle unopened, recognition cannot occur. His change of mind dispels the tension.

70. as is the aegis: The aegis is a magical object borne by Zeus and Athena, usually represented as a goatskin-covered shield, fringed with snakes and with a Gorgon’s head in the centre; cf. 989ff.

71. imitating Erichthonius our ancestor: As Hermes already explained in the prologue, lines 2off.

72. Athena’s rock first brought forth: Athena’s rock is the Acropolis of Athens. The olive was Athena’s gift to the Athenians when she and Poseidon contended for the privilege of becoming the city’s presiding deity (Parker, ‘Myths’, pp. 198-200). The olive tree on the Acropolis was thought to have almost miraculous properties: it was said to have survived the sack of the city by the Persians (see Herodotus 8.55). See also Trojan Women 801ff.

73. my father is here as well… : A second phase of the revelation begins. Ion now knows that Creusa is his mother, but still supposes Xuthus to be his father. Once again Creusa must confess her secret.

74. hoping to avoid the shame I would bring you: This suggestion is close to the situation described in the prologue of Euripides’ Bacchae: Semele’s child was by Zeus, but her sisters would not believe this, and supposed her to be lying and concealing the identity of a human lover.

75. for purposes of inheritance: The idea is that a male heir may be adopted from another’s family, to prevent the dispersal of property. The provision is that of Athenian law: see, for example, W. K. Lacey, The Family in Classical Greece (London 1968), pp. 145ff.

76. The goddess ATHENA appears: On the deus ex machina as a recurring feature of Greek tragedy see Iphigenia note 63. Sometimes, as here, the epiphany enables the gods, and the poet, to steer the action back on course, not necessarily removing all doubts and unease.

77.aired in public: Apollo’s concern to avoid public discussion of his behaviour is a particularly unsettling feature of the ending. It is unlikely that we are meant to think that Apollo is ashamed or embarrassed; rather, perhaps, he does not see the action as a mortal does, and having reunited Ion and Creusa, sees no point in prolonging distress over what is now in the past. But the whole presentation of Apollo is hard to interpret – harder still as he does not appear in the play. See also the Preface.

78. before making the facts known in Athens: This is not wholly consistent with Hermes’ account of Apollo’s intentions in the prologue, lines 72–3. But the audience will not recall that speech in so much detail, and a plan which does not now apply does not require further attention.

79. great shall be his fame throughout Greece: On the genealogical and political importance of Ion see note 9 above and the Preface; he is the ancestor of the Ionians, one of the key ethnic divisions in Greece and the one to which the Athenians belonged. See also Kearns, The Heroes of Attica, pp. 108–10, 174–5. Besides the national legacy, there is also the more specifically Athenian aspect of Ion. In early Athens the citizens were divided into four tribes, and Euripides makes a son of Ion the founder of each.

80. Geleon shall be the first: Here there is a gap in the text indicated by daggers. Presumably all four sons were named, then each of the tribes. The names Hopletes, Argades and Aegicores seem to mean ‘warriors’, ‘workers’ and ‘goatherds’.

81. sons shall be born: The sons of Creusa and Xuthus are naturally inferior to the son of Creusa and Apollo, so that the Dorian and Achaean races are inferior to the Ionians. The political implications are striking: in particular, Sparta, currently at war with Athens, was a Dorian state. Yet glory is allowed to attach to these races too.

82. Xuthus may find comfort in his illusion: Since the original plan of Apollo seems to have involved making Ion’s parentage known, it is not altogether clear why this should not be done now. But we are probably not meant to feel too much anxiety about Xuthus being deceived: this is tit for tat, as he intended to trick his own wife in the same way. For a different emphasis, see Knox, ‘Euripidean Comedy’, in Word and Action, pp. 267–8: Knox sees Xuthus as the cuckold or dupe, who will become a stock character in later comic drama.

83. Even before this I could have believed it: Some editors find this remark surprising, but in what precedes Athena’s appearance, Ion has veered from belief to doubt, so there is nothing unreasonable in his now emphasizing the former.

84. Apollo… happiness: As usual, the chorus have the last word. Their moralizing is commonplace, but readily applicable to the action: the first sentence to the house of the Erechtheids, which now beyond all hope has a true heir; the second to the eventual (‘at the end’) reuniting of mother and son. The reference to ‘the wicked’ is not relevant, but moral thinking often works by balance and polarity: the allusion to ‘the good’ gives rise to a comment on their opposites.

HELEN

1. Here flow… the water that heaven’s rain withholds: The lines allude to Greek controversy over the sources of the Nile and the cause of its flooding; these disputes are tackled by Herodotus in his long account of Egypt in Book 2 of his great History (chs. 19–28). As is clear from Herodotus and other texts, the Greeks were fascinated by Egypt, especially because of its antiquity and the strangeness of its landscape and climate. Its customs too were found exotic: Herodotus goes so far as to describe it as a topsy-turvy society, where they do everything the other way round from Greece (2.35).

2. Proteus… Nereus: Helen’s explanation of the background involves much embroidery and rationalizing of the story told in Book 4 of the Odyssey, in which Menelaus, returning from Troy, is driven off course to Egypt and has to consult Proteus, the old man of the sea. Here Proteus is a human being, though with a sea-nymph as bride. Theoclymenus and Theonoe seem to have been invented by Euripides. The latter’s name means ‘Divine in knowledge’. In mythology Nereus was another sea-god, similar to Proteus; here they are father and son.

3. Tyndareus: Helen is the daughter of Leda, who was married to Tyndareus, but she is normally said to be the child of Zeus, who seduced or raped Leda in the form of a swan. As in the case of Heracles, who can be described as the son of Zeus or of Amphitryon, she has two fathers. But in this passage she adopts a sceptical attitude to the myth of her own birth. In the late fifth century BC, rationalizing or demystifying mythology was a common practice among intellectuals (cf., e.g., Trojan Women 988–90 and Plato, Phaedrus 229c-3oa).

4. judged first in the contest: This passage refers to the ‘Judgement of Paris’. Paris, while minding herds on Mount Ida near Troy, was visited by the three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite (‘the Cyprian’; born in Cyprus) and Athena (the maiden daughter of Zeus), escorted by the messenger-god Hermes. Paris was asked to decide which of them was the most beautiful; each goddess promised different rewards. He chose Aphrodite as the winner, and his reward was the beautiful Helen. The hatred of Athena and Hera for Troy originated with this episode. Euripides often refers to the occasion as the fateful origin of the Trojan war. For a full study, see T. C. W. Stinton, Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy (1990), pp. 17–75.

5.Paris… quit his cattle-shed: The myth described Paris as living on the hillside tending herds. At some stage it was evidently felt that this was an unworthy occupation for a Trojan prince, and an elaborate story was devised in which Paris was exposed at birth, grew up as a shepherd, and only in adulthood came to be recognized as a son of Priam. The story was dramatized by Euripides in the Alexandros (see the Preface to Trojan Women in Electra and Other Plays, p. 177).

6. fashioned from the air of heaven: This notion of an illusory image of a human being can be found in Homer, in whose Iliad the gods sometimes create illusions to mislead men on the battlefield. But the main plot of Helen derives from Stesichorus: see the Preface. It is given a thin top-dressing of pseudo-science by the use of some contemporary ‘buzz-words’ such as ‘aether’ (a region of the sky) and by repeated references to the difference between illusion and reality. For more detailed discussions of this theme, see F. Solmsen, ‘Onoma and Pragma in Euripides’ Helen’, Classical Review 48 (1934), pp. 119–21 and J. G. Griffith, ‘Some Thoughts on the Helena of Euripides’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 73 (1953), pp. 36–41.

7. the plans of Zeus… sorrows: This motivation for the Trojan war was already found in the early epic poem known as the Cypria. It seems here to reinforce the impression we receive elsewhere in the play of divinities that care little for human suffering as a consequence of their decisions.

8. as a suppliant: The family of Heracles is in the same position at the start of Heracles (and indeed The Children of Heracles). On supplication, see Heracles note 1. In this play, however, the motif is handled with a light touch: no one is keeping watch on Helen, her captor feels free to leave her alone, and she is herself content to leave her refuge and go into the palace later in this prologue.

9. to compare with Plutus’ own: Plutus, a god who is closer to being a personification than most, represents wealth and prosperity. He is not to be confused with Plouton (Latinized as Pluto), another name for Hades.

10. dispute… over his armour: The story is briefly alluded to in Book II of the Odyssey, and would have been narrated at greater length in other early epics. Ajax believed himself to be the worthy heir of the divinely forged armour after Achilles’ death, but the verdict of the Greek judges gave it to Odysseus. In Sophocles’ version Ajax goes mad with rage and eventually, after an abortive attempt to slaughter his successful opponent and others, kills himself in humiliation.

11. a storm drove them all in different directions: This is another traditional element; cf. Homer, Odyssey 3.173–85 and Aeschylus, Agamemnon 646–80.

12. two accounts exist: The sons of Tyndareus and Leda were Castor and Pollux, but again, as with Helen, the tradition was that one of them (Pollux) was son of Zeus. When that brother died, he was offered immortality, but chose to remain with his human brother. Zeus decreed a compromise, that they should live half the time on Olympus and half in Hades. The story is memorably told in Pindar, Nemean Odes 10. Here Teucer gives a gloomier version.

13. island of my birth: Teucer was banished from his home in Attic Salamis and founded a new city by the same name in Cyprus.

14. He executes any Greek stranger: The ferocity of Theoclymenus is analogous with the antagonism of the Taurians to foreigners in the parallel plot of Iphigenia. Since Theoclymenus is generally portrayed as virtuous, the characterization is somewhat inconsistent. The threat to visitors must be ascribed to his determination to keep Helen.

15. lyric exchange: The normal pattern of a choral entry-song is replaced (as, e.g., in Electra) by lyric dialogue between an actor who remains on stage and the arriving chorus. The technique helps to emphasize the closeness between Helen and the Greek women.

16. Sirens: In the Odyssey the Sirens are menacing figures with beautiful voices which they use to lure passing sailors to their doom. Here the singing and not the danger is relevant. On the portrayal of Sirens in poetry and art, see E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley 1979), ch. 6.

17. it happened I was spreading… : The domestic details recall the entry-song of the chorus in Hippolytus and contribute to the intimate atmosphere of the scene. Helen’s personal grief is central rather than the public aspect of Teucer’s news.

18. has come, has come: Euripides, especially in his later dramas, is fond of this kind of emotional repetition in lyrics, though they often seem unnatural in a prose version. The tendency was noted and mercilessly parodied by Aristophanes in the lyrics ascribed to Euripides in the Frogs (esp. lines 1137, 1352–5).

19. the Lady of the Bronze Temple: Athena was worshipped at Sparta under this cult title.

20. who on earth was he…?: The Iliad (5.61) supplies the answer: the shipbuilder’s name there is Phereklos. As in the opening lines of Medea, Euripides takes us back to the first beginnings of misfortune.

21.swift-footed son of Maia: This is Hermes.

22. a slave apart from one man: This ringing self-contained line would win applause in anti-monarchical Athens. Contrast line 395, where Menelaus declares that he was ‘no despot leading an army by force’.

23. my daughter… grows grey in virginity: Teucer has in fact said nothing of Helen’s daughter Hermione, but Helen’s concern is a natural one and the deduction of her further misfortunes admissible.

24. enter her house with you: These words prepare for the departure of the chorus into the palace with Helen, so as to clear the stage for the entry of Menelaus. For the chorus once it has entered to leave the stage is unusual but not unique in tragedy: another case is in Sophocles’ Ajax, where their absence is necessary if Ajax is to commit suicide, and their departure adds to his complete isolation. See further, Taplin, Stagecraft of Aeschylus, pp. 375–6.

25. I will take my own life… : The contemplation of the proper means to commit suicide is a recurring motif in scenes of tragic despair. See E. Fraenkel, Kleine Beiträge (Rome 1964), vol. 1, pp. 465–7, and Loraux, Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman.

26. Throughout the land of Hellas… bloody from raking nails: In ancient and in modern Greece, the rituals of grief and lamentation are more demonstrative than in the inhibited north. See M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge 1974).

27. two limbs became four… : As elsewhere (see Heracles note 45) the tragic event is set in relief by use of comparison with other mythological catastrophes which are normally judged inferior to the present misfortune. Here Helen carries her rhetoric to extremes by calling Callisto ‘blessed’. Callisto was changed to a bear, either by Zeus to allow her to evade Hera’s jealousy, or by Hera as a punishment. In the end her son slew her while out hunting. ‘Merops’ child’ is a story which seems to be unattested elsewhere, but Helen’s words explain enough: she was one of the companions of Artemis until that goddess grew jealous of her beauty and turned her into a deer. The metamorphoses seem grotesque to modern taste, but Euripides cannot have intended humour. It is notable, however, that the allusions are kept brief.

28. O Pelops… : Menelaus’ entrance initiates something like a second prologue. As Helen began the play proper by recalling her background and experiences, so her husband does the same here. In his opening lines he refers to his ancestor Pelops, who won his bride Hippodameia by competing in a chariot-race against her father Oenomaus (in most versions Pelops cheated and brought about her father’s death).

29. in no boastful vein: In general Menelaus is a self-important character, very sure of his own achievements and concerned for his reputation. This is effectively ironic since he is so radically mistaken about the prize he has won in the Trojan war; he is also ill-suited to the unfamiliar land of Egypt, and is swiftly at a loss there.

30. costly robes, the ocean has plundered: The loss of the robes he used to wear is symbolic of his change of fortune and imminent loss of both dignity and illusions. Euripides, following Homer’s Odyssey, likes to portray royal figures in rags, whether in disguise or in adversity: cf. the downtrodden Electra in the play of that name, and more generally Aristophanes, Acharnians 410–79 and Frogs 842, 846, 1063.

31. Hey! Doorkeeper!: Menelaus knocks at the door and enters a hostile world with which he is ill-equipped to deal. There is an amusing clash between the proud hero of serious drama and the bad-tempered old woman who seems to have emerged from the coarser and more realistic world of comedy. Impatient old crones are common in Aristophanes and his successors.

32. once he has heard my name: The following lines, down to ‘my present troubles require’, are bracketed as spurious by Diggle in the Oxford text, but this is one of the cases where we are hesitant about accepting his decision. Menelaus’ self-important ponderings in this passage suit his demeanour in the scene as a whole, and the lines seem to raise no very difficult linguistic problems.

33. Hecate… : She is a goddess of the night, often associated with the moon, and attendant on Persephone, queen of the underworld; she is also the Lady of the Cross-ways (next line). Night brings ghosts, dreams and visions: several superstitious fears are mentioned at once. Torches were regularly part of her representation in art and played a part in her cult.

34. the latter mainly sings: As usual, song indicates a more intense and passionate emotional level than spoken verse. The distinction is related to gender contrasts in tragedy: men sing more rarely and more moderately than women. This does not necessarily mean that Helen cares for Menelaus more than he does for her, but it does imply that he can control his joy more readily. On Greek attitudes to the difference between the sexes, see Dover, Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle, pp. 95–102; for a more detailed discussion of song and speech in tragedy, see E. Hall, ‘Actor’s song in tragedy’, in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds.), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge 1999), pp. 96–122.

35. how intricate… how hard to fathom…: The servant here is an interesting minor character. His naïve reflections in a way cut through the issues more searchingly than his social superiors (cf. the handling of the Fool and similar types in Shakespeare). But his observations fall short of the full examination of the logical and theological implications of the situation; they may, however, prompt further reflection on these in the audience.There is some disagreement about how far these reflections are the authentic work of Euripides, and if authentic whether they belong to this play. Diggle in his text excises 713–19 (from ‘directing things now this way, now that’ to ‘won the greatest of good fortune’) and also 728–33 (from ‘I may have been born a servant’ to the end of the speech). He also deletes two sections of the servant’s next speech, 746–8 (‘There is, it seems, no’ down to ‘benefited by birds!’) and 752–6 (‘You may say’ down to the end of that speech). These cuts have the effect of reducing the generalizing tendency of the speeches and making them more relevant to the action. But the moralizing slave is a common figure in tragedy, and although we are not convinced of the genuineness of these portions, we think them defensible and sufficiently interesting to retain in the text.

36. having a mind… that is free: Euripides often characterizes slaves as independent or intelligent human beings; compare the nurse in Hippolytus or Creusa’s old servant in Ion. Contemporary sophistic thought went so far as to question the basis of distinctions between freedom and slavery (e.g. Alcidamas’ saying ‘God has left all men free; Nature has made none a slave’), and Euripidean characters sometimes echo these controversial views. See further W. K. C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3 (Cambridge 1969), pp. 155–60, and K. Synodinou, On the Concept of Slavery in Euripides (Ioannina 1977).

37. when Nauplius lit his fires on Euboea’s coast: The Greek intellectual Palamedes, one of the wisest of those involved in the Trojan war, aroused the jealousy of Odysseus, who in some versions incriminated him and brought about his execution, but in others actually murdered him. All three of the tragedians dramatized his story. Nauplius was Palamedes’ father; enraged by the news he received of his son’s treatment, he lit deceptive beacons on the rocky coast of his kingdom Euboea, and lured many of the returning Greek fleet on to the rocks. See lines 1126ff. and Trojan Women 90–91 for other references.

38. the look-out where Perseus kept watch: This is placed by Herodotus (2.15) at the westernmost point of the Nile Delta. There Andromeda was chained to a rock in order to appease a sea-monster sent by Poseidon; the hero Perseus arrived in time to save her, and ‘kept watch’ for the monster, whom he slew. Euripides’ version of the story, Andromeda, was produced at the same festival as Helen, this reference can therefore be seen as either a ‘trailer’ or a reminder (we do not know the order of the plays on this occasion). It has no direct link with Menelaus’ own story; the assumption is simply that he passed by this landmark.

39. oracular: This alludes to the etymology of the name (see note 2 above).

40. the man who robbed Thetis of Achilles…: These lines allude to various casualties of the Trojan war, for which Menelaus bears responsibility. Achilles son of Thetis was fated to die young, and perished in the last year of the war: Thetis’ grief in anticipation of this event is a prominent motif in the Iliad. The death by suicide of Ajax, son of Telamon, is explained above in note 10. Nestor was the elderly counsellor of the Greeks, greatly respected by all; his favourite son Antilochus died in battle against the Ethiopian prince Memnon, ally of the Trojans. Although not literally childless, Nestor still grieves for Antilochus’ death ten years on in the Odyssey (3.111–12).

41. THEONOE… and a torch: The sacred status of the priestess Theonoe, and her importance to the plot, are emphasized not only by the flurry of anxiety prior to her entrance, but also by its ceremonial quality. This is scarcely a normal Greek religious procedure; the scene is meant to seem unfamiliar and vaguely foreign. Theonoe’s own role in the play is most unusual: the position she outlines in her first speech, whereby rival divinities are at loggerheads and the final decision rests with a mortal, is virtually unparalleled in Greek literature. Ironically, the closest analogy may well be the episode which began the Trojan war: the goddesses’ inability to settle the dispute as to which of them was most beautiful, with the result that they appealed to Paris for a verdict (see note 4).The subsequent agon or rhetorical contest is of a curious type: Theonoe requires her suppliants to speak, but they plead the same case rather than opposing each other, and in her own response it becomes clear that she is on their side anyway. The distortion of the usual antagonistic form of debate suits the bizarre plot and setting of Helen as a whole.

42. There is in my heart a great shrine of Justice: This is a striking way of saying ‘I am much concerned with justice’, associating the moral imperative with religious devotion, but internalizing this devotion. The idea of Justice as a goddess is found in Aeschylus, but the stress here on Theonoe’s inner integrity suits a play in which the gods are for the most part regarded as frivolous and immoral.

43. possesses everlasting consciousness: A ‘piece of high-toned but vague mysticism appropriate to Theonoe’, comments A. M. Dale (see Bibliography). The ideas bear some similarity to views held by some of the Presocratic philosophers and developed later by Plato.

44. if a woman… can make a clever suggestion: Helen’s wording is tactful, reflecting the common Greek view of women as inferior to men. But in this play, and in Euripides’ work generally, women often surpass the male sex in intelligence and virtue. Here, Menelaus has just made two unhelpful suggestions, and it is Helen’s proposal that will offer hope of escape.

45. Your plan is hardly very original: There seems to be a sly joke on Euripides’ part here. The audience is meant to take the point that this is a standard motif in tragedy, which can be paralleled, for example, in Sophocles’ Electra (not certainly datable, but probably earlier), and Euripides’ own Iphigenia among the Taurians (almost certainly earlier).

46. Lady of Cyprus, Dione’s child: The invocation is to Aphrodite, balancing the previous prayer to her enemy Hera. Aphrodite was often said to have been born from the sea off Cyprus (as in Botticelli’s painting), but there was also a version which gave her an immortal mother, Dione (the name is a feminine form of Zeus). Although much less conspicuous in literature than Zeus’ main consort Hera, Dione appears in the Iliad.

47…. more joy to mortal hearts: In Greek thought the gods often have this ambivalent quality: they can do great harm as well as great good, kill as well as cure. Compare Euripides’ treatment of Dionysus in the Bacchae, esp. line 861, where the god describes himself as ‘most terrible, yet most gentle towards mortals’. Greek religion laid more emphasis on the power of the gods than on their goodness.

48. many a Greek… by the light of his false star: This elaborate sentence refers to the vengeance of Nauplius, king of Euboea, the father of Palamedes; for this story, see note 37 above.

49. what mortal having searched can say?: The Greeks often comment on the impenetrability of divine purpose (e.g. Aeschylus, Suppliants 87–90), and in the late fifth century BC some thinkers went further and questioned the very possibility of saying anything about divinity (e.g. Protagoras, fragment B4). Euripides is perhaps influenced by the earlier thinker Xenophanes, who questioned the anthropomorphic assumptions of Greek mythology in a famous passage (fragment B34, cf. B10–16, 23–6).

50. never will strife end among the cities of men: It is hard not to feel that audiences in Euripides’ Athens would have seen in these lines some relevance to their own wartime misfortunes. But it seems wrong to exaggerate the significance of the lines: though powerful in themselves, they do not constitute the moral or meaning of the whole play.

51. and may he go off where I want him to: Here and at numerous points in the following dialogue, Euripides uses the familiar techniques of double meaning and dramatic irony. Helen and Menelaus share full knowledge with the audience of what is really happening, and the spectators consequently enjoy a feeling of superiority to the duped Theoclymenus.

52. at this calamity: There seems little doubt that something has dropped out of the text at this point, since Helen’s response must be to some momentary suspicion on Theoclymenus’ part. A. M. Dale in her commentary suggests that the missing section ran along the lines: HELEN: With such feelings as I shall never forget. THEOCLYMENUS: How am I to know this man’s tale is true?

53. has expertise in such matters: There is no clear explanation of this line. Possibly it alludes to a myth of which we lack evidence. R. Kannicht in his commentary (1969) appears to connect it with the major losses suffered at sea by the Greek forces under the Pelopids, Agamemnon and Menelaus: but can Theoclymenus know of these losses, and would he in these circumstances make so tactless a remark?

54. In time gone by, the Mountain Mother…: Normally this title refers to the mother of the gods, Rhea or Cybele, but here she is assimilated to the goddess Demeter, who ranged across the earth in quest of her daughter Persephone, whom Hades had carried off to the underworld to be his bride. In anger and grief she withheld the fruits of the earth and made gods and men suffer. The story is told in full in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. In this version she is more easily appeased, through music and celebration. The cymbals, drums stretched with hide, and so forth are instruments used in the rites of the Great Mother, especially as practised in Asia Minor. Like Dionysus, whose rites have some of the same wild and ecstatic quality, Rhea was associated with the East. The ode is unquestionably fine poetry, but its relation to the play around it is hard to determine. It introduces a more awesome and numinous conception of divinity, remote from the squabbling goddesses involved in the Judgement of Paris. But what have Demeter and Persephone to do with Helen? The last stanza of the ode offers an unexpected clue: that Helen has done something to offend Demeter, neglecting her ceremonies and exulting only in her beauty. This notion is not referred to either before or after this ode, and does not suit the plot of the play as a whole. The ode seems to present a different perspective on the action, an alternative reading which gives more dignity and magnificence to the gods, more guilt to Helen. There are puzzles here which critics have not yet solved.

55. There lies great power…: The fawnskin cloak and other objects mentioned are associated with the cult of Dionysus, here closely associated with that of the Mother. The ‘bull-roarer’ is a kind of whirling instrument, a rattle or tambourine. See M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford 1992, p. 122.

56. we may one day help you to do so too: The chorus are not even given the opportunity to reply. Their willingness to keep the secret, a recurring motif in tragedy, is taken for granted. In general the treatment of the chorus in this play is somewhat perfunctory: it is never explained how Helen had this entourage of Greek women (they could hardly all have been brought here by Hermes), and despite these lines, nothing is said to ensure their homecoming (contrast the divine command issued by Athena at the end of Iphigenia, lines 1467ff., and Thoas’ reply, 1482ff.). Euripides’ priorities lie elsewhere.

57. the city that Perseus raised: Perseus was the original founder of Mycenae. The couple are returning to Sparta, but the close association between Agamemnon and Menelaus, kings of Mycenae and Sparta, make the reference natural enough. The sense is little more than ‘back to Greece’.

58. What will she find there?…: The antistrophe alludes to various festivals and cults of Sparta. Leucippus’ daughters were the wives of Castor and Pollux, Helen’s deified brothers: in historic times they too were worshipped as goddesses at Sparta. ‘Pallas’ temple’ refers to the temple of Athena of the Bronze House (see note 19). Hyacinthus was a beautiful Spartan youth beloved by Apollo, who accidentally slew him with a thrown discus. He was commemorated in the Hyacinthia, one of the chief festivals of Sparta. The chorus anticipate that Helen will be reintegrated into her community through participation in its central rituals. The new optimistic note is continued in the more positive hopes for Hermione; earlier in the play Helen had lamented that she would never find a husband (282–3), but here it is implied (‘not yet’) that this remains a possibility.

59. If only we might find ourselves flying… : It is common for Euripidean choruses to wish themselves miraculously transported from present circumstances to some safer or more delightful realm. Compare Hippolytus 732–51, Bacchae 402 – 16. The situation here is less extreme than in the parallels, as the main characters are already on their way to salvation.

60. sons of Tyndareus: Castor and Pollux, Helen’s brothers. Here it is taken for granted that they are now among the gods, with a special concern for the fortunes of seafarers: the uncertainty about their fate voiced by Teucer is forgotten (137–41). The stanza paves the way for their appearance at the end of the play.

61. But not the bull: The animal’s discontent is ominous. In Greek sacrificial ritual the beast should go willingly to the place of execution.

62. Come on, you men who sacked the town of Ilium…: We can compare the cries of encouragement that Helen gives once the battle on board the ship begins; she too refers to the successes at Troy as a source of pride. Whereas in Egypt Menelaus’ repeated references to his victory seemed hollow, with the beginning of the journey home old values are reasserted. The anti-barbarian feeling is another indication that ‘normality’ is being restored.

63. The son of Atreus stood fast… : The warrior Menelaus is in his element once more. The influence of the Odyssey, strong in this play generally, is prominent in this climax, with revelation of identity followed by slaughter. Helen’s exhortation can be compared with the encouragement of Odysseus by Athena in Odyssey 22.224–35.

64. To sum up… : Messengers often end their accounts with a moralizing conclusion based on the events described. This example is a naïve truism, in keeping with the lighter tone of the play. Contrast, for example, Bacchae 1150–52, much more integral with the themes of that drama.

65. by you or us: This is a self-defensive deception by the chorus, who have of course been well aware of Menelaus’ identity. But their dishonesty is not developed: contrast the corresponding scene in Iphigenia among the Taurians 1431–3, where Thoas declares that the chorus’s treachery will be punished. Here Theoclymenus’ wrath is concentrated on his sister.

66. Oh, to have been caught out… : This speech, and the argument between king and servant which follows, are in a different metre, trochaic tetrameters, used frequently by Euripides in scenes which involve excitement and agitated conflict of views. Most of the lines prior to the appearance of Castor and Pollux are divided between Theoclymenus and the servant: in each case the king speaks first and the servant answers or interrupts him. The divine epiphany marks the point at which the play reverts to the normal trimeters.

67. There is no more glorious end… than dying for his master: The virtuous slave is a recurrent figure in Euripides, see note 36 above.

68. above the palace: Many of Euripides’ plays end with a divine epiphany, and Electra also involves the appearance of Castor and Pollux. In both cases this arises from their brotherly concern with the action: they are brothers to Helen and Clytemnestra. Euripedes introduces more dignified representatives of the divine than the goddesses who have caused so much strife and bloodshed. Their declaration that they are subservient to fate and the gods’ collective will preserve the mystery of the gods’ purposes and also serve to evade responsibility for the action. The manuscripts do not make clear whether it is Castor or Pollux who speaks on their behalf, but Castor is explicitly the spokesman in Electra, and consistency seems a simple principle on which to decide. The staging is hard to be sure of. The two brothers may have appeared at the highest point of the stage-building, on the so-called ‘divine platform’, or they may have entered more dramatically on the mechane or crane-machine which represented divine beings in flight. See Heracles note 36. For a detailed discussion of these issues see D. Mastronarde, ‘Actors on High: the Skene Roof, the Crane, and the Gods in Attic Drama’, Classical Antiquity 9 (1990), pp. 247–94.

69.you will be called a goddess: Cult-worship of Helen in Sparta is attested in both literary and archaeological evidence. It is also predicted in the closing scene of Orestes. Helen’s future divinity may even be presupposed by the Odyssey, in which Menelaus is told that he will enjoy special status after death because he is husband of Helen (4.563–9, referring to the ‘Elysian plain’). On the whole the poets prefer to treat the living Helen as a human being, tragic, wicked or guilt-ridden, but the speeches of gods at the end of plays often extend the perspective, bringing in references to religious traditions of the poet’s own time.

70. Acte’s coast: Acte is an old form of Attica, and the island meant is Makronnisi, off Cape Sounium. This would be an odd route for Hermes to take from Sparta to Egypt, and it is clear that Euripides mentions it in order to bring in a further aetiological explanation, this time for the name or nickname of the island. There is a wordplay on ‘Helen’, which can be linked with the verb-root hel-, meaning ‘take or steal away’.

71. Isle of the Blessed: This promise echoes that made to Menelaus in the Odyssey (see note 69 above). Post-Homeric poets took up that passage and brought a number of other heroes, including Achilles, to dwell after death in this fortunate land.

72. And so it has turned out here today: These closing choral lines also appear in identical or closely similar form at the end of Alcestis, Medea, Andromache and Bacchae. It has often been suggested that they are editorial insertions in some places, but a choral comment is normal at the end of a Greek tragedy, and the sentiments, though conventional, are appropriate enough in each case. For discussion, see D. H. Roberts, ‘Parting words: final lines in Sophocles and Euripides’, Classical Quarterly 37 (1987), pp. 51–64.

CYCLOPS

1. in the battle with the Sons of Earth…: Mythology told of several occasions on which the Olympian gods had to defend their sovereignty against older and monstrous powers. The battle between Gods and Giants was one such conflict. Dionysus’ involvement was traditional, but Silenus and the satyrs would have had little to offer in this cosmic combat. These lines probably allude to a more light-hearted version in earlier satyr-drama. Vase-paintings also show the satyrs armed for combat. Enceladus is one of the giants, sometimes their leader; he is usually said to have been defeated by either Athena or Zeus.

2. when Hera roused the Tuscan pirates: Hera’s enmity (cf. already the opening lines above) is due to her antagonism to Zeus’ bastard offspring (as with Heracles in Euripides’ play and elsewhere). The story of Dionysus’ abduction by pirates is told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus: in that poem the god’s captors are transformed into dolphins. Again the variant involving the satyrs is probably derived from an earlier satyr drama.

3. Etna: The wanderings of Odysseus in Homer take place in a fantasy land with no clear geographical location, but by the fifth century BC the Mediterranean was much better explored and his adventures were placed on the map by tidy-minded scholars, whom the poets sometimes follow. Thucydides refers to the location of the Cyclopes in Sicily (6.2).

4. revelling at Bacchus’ side to Althaea’s palace: Dionysus once visited the court of Oeneus, king of Calydon, and fell in love with his wife Althaea. Oeneus prudently withdrew from the palace for a time, leaving the god a free hand, and the queen eventually bore Dionysus a child, Deianeira. The king was rewarded with the gift of the vine. This positive, celebratory sequence is contrasted with the miserable imprisonment of the present.

5. ‘Iacchus, Iacchus’… : A cult cry, an invocation of the god. Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, is closely associated with Dionysus, as the lustful nature of the satyrs demonstrates.

6.Sisyphus’ son: In the Odyssey and most other sources, Odysseus is the son of Laertes, but there was an alternative tradition that Laertes’ wife Anticleia was already pregnant by the crafty Corinthian Sisyphus when he married her. In tragedy this accusation often goes with a negative portrayal of Odysseus as a villain; here the effect is milder, but Odysseus is naturally embarrassed.

7. the people who govern: The interest in constitutional forms is typical of democratic Athens. Silenus’ reply continues the traditional presentation of the Cyclopes as uncivilized beings without a real community (Odyssey 9. 112– 15).

8. Maron, the god’s son: In the Odyssey too, Odysseus brings this gift of strong wine which he has received from the Thracian Maron; but the idea of Maron being the son of Dionysus is novel and suits the atmosphere of a satyr-play.

9. one mouthful out of that: The next two lines are supplied by editors and translators; the manuscripts go straight on to Odysseus’ line, ‘Yes; twice as much…’ Since the transition is impossibly abrupt, it is clear that something has been lost from the text.

10. neat to start with: The Greeks normally avoided drinking undiluted wine, and associated that practice with barbarians. Cleomenes, king of Sparta, was said to have learned this practice from visiting Scythians, and it was one of the reasons given for his going mad (Herodotus 6.84) ! But it may have been acceptable to sample the wine neat before mixing it with water. Both Silenus and the Cyclops are soon the worse for their over-eager tippling.

11. Once you had caught the woman… : Condemnation of the adulteress Helen is common in tragedy too, but the outrageous coarseness of the satyrs’ comment here is typical of their earthy, sensual attitude to the world; such obscenity would have no place in tragedy. Odysseus in this play has to struggle to retain his heroic dignity amid such company and in these unfamiliar surroundings. The jibe at the fancy-coloured trousers (Greeks did not wear such garments, and associated them with the East) and the gold necklace on a man suggests that Paris, Helen’s abductor, is an effeminate barbarian, no proper man. This image of Paris has some background in Homer, but fifth-century authors tend to emphasize it more, no doubt partly influenced by their perception of the East after the Persian wars.

12. a countless host of Trojans: Odysseus’ grandiose self-assertion may be compared with the bragging of Menelaus in Helen. In both plays the warrior has to learn to adapt to new kinds of problem, in which heroic braggadocio is not sufficient.

13. bald head swollen from blows: The old man is Silenus, but his flushed and swollen face is due to an excess of wine, not the result of a beating. Silenus seizes the opportunity to blame others and escape the Cyclops’ anger himself.

14. And then they said… : The catalogue of varied threats is humorously extended, though some at least of these are things which might be done to a slave in ancient Greece. The notion of Polyphemus’ eye witnessing his own disembowelment is particularly bizarre. But there is also irony, as Silenus does not mention the one thing that does in fact happen to the Cyclops, the blinding of his precious eye.

15. may my sons here be damned utterly: Silenus’ cowardly self-protection becomes ever more outrageous. He wishes ill on the chorus of satyrs if he is lying; normally, in swearing such an oath one would wish ill on oneself. The satyrs indignantly reciprocate in their response: their version is the truth, but the Cyclops is foolish enough to trust Silenus more.

16. who kept your father safe: This takes up the reference above to Poseidon as Polyphemus’ father (‘noble son of the ocean’s god’). But although Odysseus does his best, he cannot show any service they have rendered Polyphemus himself that should prompt his gratitude. The type of argument used here is often employed in an appeal to a god (‘I have done you this service/paid you these honours, therefore you should help me’), but it is highly artificial for Odysseus to claim that the conquest of Troy kept Poseidon’s cult-sites in Greece free from Phrygian (Trojan) marauding. In any case, the Cyclops shows himself indifferent to his father’s temples (318–19).

17. Zeus’ thunderbolt… : The Cyclops utters similar sentiments, blasphemously declaring indifference to Zeus’ authority, in Homer’s treatment of the story (Odyssey 9.273–8).

18. O Pallas: Already in Homer, Pallas Athena is Odysseus’ special protector and patroness.

19. If you have no regard for these things…: Appeals of this kind for a god to prove his concern for human misfortune or misdeeds are common in tragedy and especially characteristic of Euripides, in which such passages often, as here, involve a reproachful address or challenge to the god in question (cf. A. M. Dale, Collected Papers (Cambridge 1969), p. 182).

20. with teeth defiled: There is a short passage lost from the text at the conclusion of this ode.

21. with a scythe: The next line, omitted in the translation, is hard to interpret and is generally supposed corrupt; there may also be something lost in the text here.

22. poor old siphon: Obviously he means his penis. Actors in comedy often wore grotesquely exaggerated phalli as part of their costume, and the evidence of vase-paintings confirms that this was also the case with satyrs, whose phalli are frequently shown erect.

23. carpenter… spin his drill round and round: These lines are among the clearest reminiscences of the Homeric model. Homer uses this simile in narrating the act of blinding, Odyssey 9.383–6.

24. Come, who will be first: The metre shifts at this point from the customary iambics of regular dialogue to anapaestic rhythms, associated with marching and perhaps with military activity. But the ‘revelling songs’ which follow strike a different note, their style and metre being suited to drinking and celebrations, in particular wedding-songs. This paves the way for the rich comedy of the Cyclops treating Silenus as his beloved (this homosexual element was completely lacking in Homer).

25. with this Bacchus: By a common figure of speech Dionysus and wine are identified; similarly, classical poets speak of ‘Hephaestus’ when they refer to fire, and ‘Ceres’ meaning bread. But here the conflation is treated with comic literal-mindedness.

26. What should we do, Silenus?: Previously the Cyclops has been merely tolerant of the old man; here a note of flirtation enters, as the poet represents the two as behaving like lovers relaxing in a country spot. This parody of homosexual courtship reaches grotesque heights later when the Cyclops starts to carry Silenus inside to treat him as his Ganymede (see following note).

27. Ganymede here …: The beautiful Trojan youth Ganymede was abducted by Zeus and conveyed to Olympus, where he was to serve the king of the gods with nectar by day and join him in bed by night. The absurdity of the present parodic situation is obvious. Silenus is an old man and ugly, completely unlike Ganymede, but the Cyclops is too intoxicated to see the difference. The prospect of being ravished by Polyphemus sobers Silenus up at once!

28. stop your chanting: In Greek drama the choral songs are normally set somewhat apart from the action, and it is unusual for the actors to comment on or take up what has just been sung by the chorus. But a number of the exceptions involve a character urging the chorus to keep quiet lest a sleeping figure awaken (there are examples in Euripides’ Heracles and Orestes, and Sophocles’ Trachiniae).

29. I want you to come inside …: Here and elsewhere in the play Odysseus’ surviving companions, who assist him in the Homeric version, are ignored (though a few lines further on he will resolve to make use of them instead). Here the aim is clearly to give an opportunity for the satyrs to show their cowardice, a traditional feature. This reluctance to aid Odysseus is also dramatically desirable: the chorus need to remain outside or the stage will be deserted.

30. a really good spell of Orpheus: Orpheus, son of Apollo, was a mythical singer and musician whose skill was so great that wild animals would listen tamely to his playing, and even inanimate objects might move in dance or in response to his summons. Naturally, the satyrs have no such spell, and Odysseus recognizes this at once.

31. Noman was my destroyer: The trick of the pseudonym used by Odysseus is handled differently and more functionally in the Odyssey (9.399–414). There, the agonized screams of the blinded Polyphemus attract the attention of his fellow-Cyclopes, who come asking him what is wrong. When he declares that ‘Noman is killing me by trickery and force’ they assume that he has nothing to complain about and depart. Here, of course, the chorus know perfectly well that Odysseus is Noman, but choose to conceal their knowledge in order to mock the Cyclops.

32. On your right: Again Euripides diverges from the Odyssey, this time out of dramatic convenience. In Homer, Odysseus and his men have to wait until the Cyclops moves the great rock that blocks the cave’s entrance, then escape concealed beneath the ram and the flock of sheep which he allows to go forth to their grazing. The scene is effective in narrative (and was clearly admired and imitated: see Aristophanes, Wasps 177–96), but would be hard to stage convincingly. Euripides resorts to the simpler method of making the Cyclops leave the cave entrance unguarded.

33. An ancient oracle is being fulfilled!: In the Odyssey (9.506–21), Polyphemus describes what the prophecy predicted in more detail. This kind of ironic fulfilment of a prophecy, the true meaning of which is discovered too late, is very common in Greek mythology and especially in tragedy (e.g. Sophocles, Oedipus the King).

34. drift… for many a year: In Homer, Odysseus’ wanderings last ten years before he finally reaches Ithaca; the adventure with the Cyclops is one of the earliest in the sequence of adventures.

35. crush you to bits, you and your shipmates: This is a forlorn hope when the monster is blind. Nevertheless, the threat is treated with surprising indifference, and the play ends without its being put into effect. Probably the audience is meant to supply what is lacking from their knowledge of the Odyssey, in which the Cyclops hurls great boulders but fails to strike Odysseus’ ship.