In the tenth book of the Iliad, often referred to as the ‘Doloneia’ or ‘Lay of Dolon’, a night-time adventure is described. Deprived of Achilles’ aid on the battlefield, the Greeks are hard-pressed and despondent, while the Trojans are encamped on the plain and confident of success the next day. A council is held among the Greeks, and they agree to send out Odysseus and Diomedes as scouts to gather information and do what else they can to improve the situation. Meanwhile among the Trojans Hector also decides to send out a spy, by name Dolon (a name which suggests secrecy and guile, in Greek dolos). As reward for his efforts Dolon requests the gift of the magnificent horses of Achilles once the Trojans have won. In the area between the armies Dolon is intercepted by the two Greeks, who threaten him and demand information. Losing his nerve completely, Dolon pours out every detail, including news of the arrival of Rhesus, an ally of the Trojans. Diomedes kills Dolon, and the two friends proceed to enter the Trojan camp, kill Rhesus and some of his followers, then hurry back to their own side, taking with them Rhesus’ horses. The goddess Athena, who regularly befriends Odysseus and Diomedes, oversees the expedition and helps them at crucial moments, though without appearing to them directly.
It is a curious coincidence that the tenth book of the Iliad is widely regarded as a later addition to the poem, just as the Rhesus is thought by many to be a spurious work wrongly ascribed to Euripides. Some of the arguments for the latter view will be mentioned below: first we should consider the drama on its own terms.
It is obvious that the basic framework of the story is similar: Trojan successes, spies on both sides, the two Greek intruders, the killing of Rhesus, the abduction of his horses. Some of the changes that the dramatist makes are clearly the consequence of transferring the story to the stage: thus the murder of Rhesus must now be reported in a messenger speech, and the bad dream which Rhesus was having just before his death is transferred to his charioteer, because Rhesus will not live to narrate it. There are however a number of other significant differences.
First, the play is set exclusively in the Trojan camp, and seen almost entirely from the Trojan perspective. From the Greek side we see only Odysseus and Diomedes, and they appear only in two successive scenes.
Second, the connection we find in the Doloneia between Dolon’s story and that of Rhesus is severed. In the Iliad Dolon told the Greek intruders about Rhesus and where to find him; in the play, Dolon departs on his mission before Rhesus’ arrival, and the Greeks appear to be looking for Hector: it requires Athena’s intervention in person to send them in pursuit of the Thracian king.
Third, whereas the part of Dolon has been minimized, the role of Rhesus has been greatly expanded. In the Iliad he is introduced only to be killed: he speaks no lines and is disposed of without difficulty, and he has no special status to warrant extended mourning. In the play he is not just another ally but a warrior of outstanding stature, welcomed by the chorus as a saviour figure, compared and even identified with Zeus and Ares (355ff., 385ff.). Athena predicts ruinous bloodshed among the Greek ranks if he lives to fight them the next day. His parentage is altered: in the drama he is the son of the River Strymon and of one of the Muses, and his mother appears at the end to mourn him. She also declares that she will be responsible for his burial, and that he will become an oracular hero, human yet also divine, uttering prophecies as a spokesman for Dionysus – no ordinary end.
It is clear that the dramatist was not simply adapting a single episode in the Iliad. He visibly draws on other parts of the Homeric poems (the Muse, for instance, resembles Thetis, the mother of Achilles, who regularly bemoans the imminent death of her son); similarly he has also developed other motifs from the epic and lyric tradition. A lost poem of Pindar described how Rhesus came to Troy and in a single day wrought havoc, slaughtering many Greek soldiers. In that poem Hera and Athena inspired Odysseus and Diomedes to make their night raid specifically in order to dispose of this formidable threat to the Greek cause. This version also gave Rhesus the same parents he has in the play. The résumé of Pindar’s poem makes no mention of Dolon, who is indeed irrelevant to the story as told in this form. It seems clear that the author of the Rhesus has blended elements from the Doloneia and from the version invented or inherited by Pindar. It may be only the accident of survival that makes us regard the Doloneia as his chief source.
None of this is to deny that the poet of the Rhesus made his own contribution. The characterization is probably mostly his invention. It is notable that none of the characters cuts a very impressive figure. There is dissension and distrust on the Trojan side: Hector is hostile to Rhesus and criticizes him at length to his face; the Charioteer supposes that Rhesus died because of Trojan treachery. Hector, Dolon and Rhesus all display exaggerated over-confidence. Alexandros (Paris) appears on stage only to be deceived without difficulty by Athena; similarly the chorus are easily duped by Odysseus. Hector is shown in conflict with Aeneas, Rhesus and the charioteer in succession. He also upbraids the chorus (with some justice) for neglecting their guard duties, and they defend themselves with obvious falsehoods. We might suspect the poet of Greek chauvinism, were it not that the presentation of Odysseus and Diomedes is scarcely favourable. When they first appear on stage they are hesitant and ready to withdraw at the first obstacle, until Athena gives them instructions. They have already killed Dolon (a disturbing scene even in the epic); they now proceed to slaughter Rhesus and his comrades while they sleep. It may be excessive to call this an anti-heroic picture, but neither side seems to come out of the episode with much credit. The combination of self-important braggadocio, divinely authorized assassination, misunderstanding, recriminations and ineptitude produces a remarkably negative interpretation of an episode which in Homer was essentially an exciting narrative of a bold expedition by two of our favourite heroes. Perhaps the most moving part of the drama is the lament by the dead Rhesus’ mother, who sees clearly who was behind the events and voices her bitter hostility to Athena: the double use of opposed divinities in this play is reminiscent of the opposition of Aphrodite and Artemis in Hippolytus.
We can no longer avoid the question of the authorship of this curious drama. It seems more or less certain that Euripides did write a Rhesus, but the ancient commentators who composed the ‘summaries’ prefaced to the play were aware of doubts as to whether this play was actually his. There was also a mystery regarding its prologue. In our texts there is none; the play begins with the chorus hurrying in and surrounding Hector’s tent. Two openings were known, however, and both are quoted by the summary: of one we have only a line, but the other, of which we have an extract running to eleven lines, evidently included a dialogue between Hera and Athena debating how to help the Greek forces.* Whether either of these was the work of Euripides is hard to decide: what all this does suggest is that the play was of uncertain status. One theory is that the editors who collected Euripides’ work in Alexandria in the third century BC may have acquired some plays by other authors, misguidedly accepting them as Euripidean in their eagerness to amass as many authentic plays as possible.
This external evidence does not add up to much. More important is the internal evidence of vocabulary, style, metre and dramatic technique. These and similar questions have been investigated with great thoroughness in a monograph by W. Ritchie. He has systematically compared the Rhesus with other tragedies, especially those of Euripides, and has reached the conclusion that there is very little which cannot be paralleled in the author’s certainly genuine works. In his view the Rhesus is probably an early work, perhaps the earliest play by Euripides that we have (earlier than Alcestis of 438). Not all, however, have been convinced. Ritchie has undoubtedly shown that many of the criticisms lodged against the play are unjustified, and that the poet uses a style which is (most of the time) very like that of Euripides. But in his determination to find parallels he is sometimes guilty of exaggerating similarities and minimizing peculiarities.
Different critics will of course find different points particularly convincing on one side or the other. If I were asked to say what features of the Rhesus seem to me to make Euripidean authorship unlikely, I would mention the following. The plot falls into two unequal parts: the Dolon-plot is dropped, almost forgotten, when the Rhesus-plot takes over. A more skilful dramatist might surely have done more to integrate the two. On the level of characterization, those of whom we see most are too similar and too monolithic. There is a marked absence of the rhetorical and philosophic generalizations that we associate with Euripides (especially in the confrontation between Hector and Rhesus, which is very unlike the typical Euripidean agon-scene). There are dramaturgical oddities: the handling of Athena’s epiphany is unique, and the messenger speech, delivered only to the chorus in the absence of Hector, is at least unconventional. There are also anomalous features at the end of the play (nowhere else in tragedy does a deus ex machina sing as well as speak). The structuring of the choral interventions is abnormal in several respects. Some of these phenomena can be at least partly paralleled elsewhere, others may be defended as bold innovations (after all, what is Euripides if not unconventional?). But the overall effect of the play feels, to my mind, very unlike the rest of the poet’s œuvre. Nevertheless, we must remember how much we have lost and bear in mind the versatility of these poets. I am content to echo the judicious words of Euripides’ best modern editor, James Diggle: ‘I have little confidence that Euripides did write the Rhesus; I would not dare say that he could not have done so.’
In any case, preoccupation with the question of authenticity risks neglecting the particular interest of the drama. If it is by another hand, and possibly from the fourth century BC, that significantly increases our knowledge of the genre – we have the work of four poets, not just three (or indeed five, assuming that the Prometheus Bound is not by Aeschylus). Whether the Rhesus is Euripidean or not, it gives us a rare opportunity to see a tragedian reshaping a particular Homeric episode, enhancing the elements of ironic deception and pathos; no less than the Orestes and Iphigenia at Aulis, it enables us to see how heroic values and traditional mythical characters were put under scrutiny in the developed tragic genre; and it sheds further light on the Greeks’ perception of war and the foreign antagonist. The great sequence of dramas that begins for us with Aeschylus’ Persians reaches a fitting conclusion with the Rhesus.