About half of Euripides’ surviving works deal with the Trojan war or its aftermath (in Iphigenia in Aulis the prelude). By contrast the mythology of the Theban wars and the house of Oedipus is thinly represented. The Bacchae is indeed set at Thebes, but deals with earlier events; the Suppliant Women treats the issue of the burial of the seven warriors who attack Thebes, but largely from an Athenian perspective: Theseus intervenes to ensure that justice is done. Though the fragmentary evidence shows that the legends of Thebes formed the subject of several other plays (Euripides, like Sophocles, wrote an Oedipus and an Antigone), only in the Phoenician Women do we find a full-blown Theban drama.
Just as the Orestes inevitably looks back to the Oresteian trilogy of Aeschylus, so the Phoenician Women is significantly indebted to the Aeschylean trilogy which culminated in the Seven against Thebes. The first two plays of that trilogy were the Laius and the Oedipus: the names make clear enough that the older dramatist followed the disastrous progress of three successive generations of the Theban royal house. The surviving play focuses on the figure of Eteocles, defending his city against invaders supporting his brother Polyneices; the play reaches its climax when Eteocles resolves to confront his brother in battle, and the two men slay one another. Aeschylus’ treatment was majestic and slow-moving: hundreds of lines of the Seven are devoted to the herald’s report of the names and appearance of the attacking warriors, and Eteocles’ responses (cf. Phoenician Women 748–52 and note 37). The action of the Aeschylean play is concentrated, the cast-list small; Oedipus and Jocasta appear to be dead, and in the authentic sections there is no reference to any female offspring. All of this is changed in the Euripidean version: although a single self-contained play, it embraces a variety of related but independently effective scenes, and (through the choral odes) extends the audience’s perspective through much of the mythic history of Thebes.
The myths were flexible. There is a natural tendency for the modern reader to give priority to the surviving versions, but even these are various, and the dramatists were largely free to choose among the diverse traditions, often adding or elaborating. According to the Iliad Oedipus died and was buried at Thebes, whereas tragedy (especially Sophocles) normally assumes that he will be sent into exile when the truth is discovered: Euripides provides a composite version, in which Oedipus lives on at Thebes, resentful and blind, but is finally sent into exile by Creon in an effort to purify the state. In the Odyssey Oedipus’ wife (there called Epicaste, not Jocasta) is said to have killed herself, but in the lyric poetry of Stesichorus she survives and appears to have remonstrated with her sons in a scene which presumably formed the model for the three-way debate in Euripides’ play. As for Antigone and Ismene, the two daughters of Oedipus, they may not have featured prominently in the legend before Sophocles’ famous play (Ismene is indeed never very prominent). Even after Sophocles, their fates could vary: in Euripides’ lost Antigone, the heroine was married to Haemon, the son of Creon, bore his child, and cooperated with him to bury her brother, rather than acting in splendid isolation: it is even possible that divine intervention saved her from martyrdom. Characterization can also be modified: in Aeschylus’ play Eteocles was a sympathetic figure, defender of Thebes in a time of crisis, noble though doomed to die: there is no suggestion that he has wronged his brother or cheated him of his inheritance. By contrast in Euripides’ play he cares for nothing but keeping the throne, and is eager to come face to face with his brother in combat: although Polyneices’ determination to attack his native city is condemned by Jocasta, it is clear that his cause is regarded as just even by those who will suffer if he conquers (154–5, 258–60, 467, 508).
The scope of the play is large, and has been extended further by later additions (see below). There is no ‘hero’ – Eteocles appears only in two scenes, Polyneices only in one. The family group, especially the triad of the two sons and their mother, form a central part of the dramatic structure: Jocasta tries to reconcile the brothers by insisting on a truce and time for debate, but fails: the agon, as usual, only intensifies conflict. Later she again tries to intervene, this time through action rather than words, by hurrying to the battlefield and seeking to prevent the final fratricide: again her efforts end in failure, and her own suicide swiftly follows. In contrast with the accursed royal house is the family of Creon, Jocasta’s brother. The subplot of Creon, Teiresias and Menoeceus, which culminates in Menoeceus’ self-sacrificial suicide to save Thebes from destruction, is probably Euripides’ own invention (it is a story-pattern he particularly favours; see note 49). The heroic nobility of Menoeceus is powerfully opposed to the self-destructive ambition of the warring brothers. Yet although Menoeceus’ sacrifice saves the city, it shatters Creon. Finally there is Antigone. Although some have supposed her entire part a later addition, there is no good reason to doubt that she played a part in Euripides’ design, and it also seems likely that Oedipus’ cameo appearance is authentic: the duet of lamentation near the close of the play is certainly a powerful moment, and may well have formed the finale of Euripides’ original version.
It is clear, however, that the text has been supplemented or interfered with, probably in the fourth century BC. Problems were already detected by ancient scholars, whose comments survive in the scholia or annotations which accompany the play in some manuscripts. The issue was fully examined in the nineteenth century, but as was the fashion in that period, suspicion went too far. A more cautious approach is now prevalent. In the past critics often excised passages which they regarded as unnecessary (the scene involving Antigone and the old servant on the roof early in the play is a good example); but the fact that a scene is not strictly indispensable does not make it spurious. Another notable argument concerns the characterization of Polyneices: efforts have sometimes been made to remove lines which show him to be more self-interested, less patriotic and virtuous, than the critic would prefer (for an example see note 21). But if we find both Polyneices and Eteocles lacking in tragic greatness, that is exactly what we might expect of this playwright, especially in his later œuvre. Elsewhere it has been supposed that certain scenes have been ‘padded out’ to increase a particular actor’s role, or to provide supplementary information (as with the catalogue of the Seven at 1104–40). But the most substantial and by far the most important doubts concern the conclusion of the play. It is almost universally agreed that the ending has been modified in order to connect the play with the well-known stories of Antigone burying her brother and Oedipus dying in Athens, as dramatized by Sophocles. But the adaptation has been crudely done: as the scholia comment, how can Antigone bury Polyneices (1657) if she is to accompany her father into exile (1679) (scholia, note on 1692)? There are other doubtful features, and it seems probable that the genuine text ends at line 1581. Bolder critics would excise extensive earlier portions too (e.g. 1308–34, 1338–53, to eliminate the reappearance of Creon). In this translation the ending has been included, but some further cautionary remarks will be found in the Notes.
These problems should not interfere with the reader’s appreciation of the bulk of the play. Euripides’ conception and structure are still clearly discernible, even if the ending has been extended or altered. Like other Greek tragedies, the Phoenician Women has a particular character of its own: the poet is concerned not only to present a sequence of events but to create a certain atmosphere. The play is rich in allusion to Theban place-names and traditions: in the so-called Teichoskopia (‘Viewing from the Walls’) scene alone, we find references to Dirce’s spring, the tomb of Zethus, Amphion’s walls, the tomb of Niobe’s children. More important is the account of the mythic history of Thebes in the successive choral odes, which evoke a world of monstrous crime, chthonic forces, perversion, doom and hatred. Teiresias’ warnings also contribute to our sense of the race as plagued by misfortune arising from the wrath of the gods. Some have seen this as an expression of anti-Theban sentiment; more subtly, it has been suggested that the representation of Thebes, in this and other dramas, is a kind of crystallization of all that Athens is not, a dark contrast to Athenian light. This works better with the Suppliant Women, where Athens is prominent; here she is not. It is better to see the dark world of the play as the product of Euripides’ powerful poetic imagination at work on the fertile mythical traditions.
The poet’s vision continues to find expression in the traditional dramatic forms, but as in the Orestes, they are expanded and developed in novel ways. The agon involves an exchange of three speeches rather than two (Jocasta makes a vain attempt to persuade both the antagonists), and proceeds to a racy dialogue in trochaic tetrameters, full of interruptions and interjections: the effect is more naturalistic than normal stichomythic dialogues. There is a massive increase of the narrative element: while almost all tragedies have one messenger speech, the Phoenician Women includes four, amounting to almost 300 lines. As always, the drama includes a chorus, but an unexpected one. Whereas the chorus of the Seven against Thebes consisted of women of Thebes itself, the Euripidean chorus are slave-women from Tyre, en route to Delphi: Euripides seems to go out of his way to emphasize their marginality. Although distantly related to the people of Thebes, and embroiled in the conflict which threatens the city, they stand apart from the action, commentators rather than confidantes. The choral odes, though often rather loosely linked to the action of adjacent scenes, are connected with one another thematically: together they provide a ‘history’ of Thebes and its myths, though highly allusive and unchronological. This historical or mythographic tendency extends beyond the choral contribution: the play as a whole includes a host of cross-references to other strands of legend and indeed other plays (thus Teiresias alludes to the episode Euripides had dramatized some years earlier in the Erechtheus: see 852ff. and note 47). By this stage in the century mythology was becoming more systematic, a familiar though still fluid structure of genealogy and relationships: handbooks summarizing and codifying the legends had begun to appear. Euripides is aware of this tendency and makes use of it, though for poetic ends. To this extent the interpolator responsible for the present conclusion was continuing, though less skilfully, the authentic practice of his model.
The Phoenician Women is not a modern favourite. Extended lamentation and narration of battles is not much to modern taste; the legendary background of the Theban conflct is less familiar to the average reader than the war of Troy; the characters are unsympathetic or passive or both. But anyone who wants to understand ancient reception of tragedy needs to come to terms with the fact that this play, together with Hecabe and Orestes, was one of Euripides’ most popular dramas; while anyone considering the impact of Greek drama on Latin literature cannot do better than begin from the influence of this play on Seneca’s tragedies (not only his Phoenician Women but his Oedipus), and still more on Statius’ magnificently macabre Thebaid. When the imitators are figures of such importance, the model deserves closer attention, and the reader who comes to the Euripidean original with an open mind will not find it lacking in dramatic power.