“Have you ever seen a pomegranate seed in drifts of snow?”
ἤδη τεθέασαι κόκκον ἐν χιόνι ῥόας;
Pindar, Pythian 1. 20
“Snowy Aetna, perennial nurse of bitter snow”
νιφόεσσ᾿ Αἴτνα, πάνετες χιόνος ὀξείας τιθήνα
Plutarch, Moralia 340e
“Nations covered in depths of snow”
καὶ βάθεσι χιόνων κατακεχωσμένα ἔθνη
Herodotus, Histories 4.31
“Above this land, snow always falls…
τὰ κατύπερθε ταύτης τῆς χώρης αἰεὶ νίφεται
Diodorus Siculus, 14.28
“Because of the mass of snow that was constantly falling, all their weapons were covered and their bodies froze in the chill in the air. Thanks to the extremity of their troubles, they were sleepless through the whole night”
Aelian, fr. 47 on the Locrian Women (cf. Apd. E. 6.20-22 below)
De virginibus Locrensibus ob stupratam Cassandram Troiam missis.
“Apollo told the Locrians that the horror would not stop for them unless they sent two maidens to Troy every year as recompense to Athena for Kasandra, “until you have fully propitiated the goddess.”
And the maidens who were sent would grow old in Troy unless replacements came.
[Meanwhile] the women were giving birth to cripples and monsters. Those who had suffered forgetfulness of the outrages done sent [representatives] to Delphi. Then the oracle did not receive them, because the god was angry with them. When they managed to learn the cause of the anger, the oracle prophesied. And it told them what was required concerning the virgins.
And they, since they could not deny the command, submitted the issue for judgment to Antigonus, concerning which Locrian city should send the payment. And the king decreed that the very thing which was entrusted to him for judgment would be decided by vote.”
“And, truly, it has not been so long since the Lokrians stopped sending their virgins to Troy, “the girls who like the lowest slaves, with naked feet / sweep Athena’s temple around the altar / and come to great old age without a veil”—for the crime of Ajax!”
“After Ajax of Lokros was shipwrecked near Guraia and buried in Tremont, in the land of Delos, the Locrians who were saved, barely, returned home. A plague and famine gripped Lokris for tree years because of Ajax’s lawless act against Kasandra. The god prophesied that they needed to propitiate the goddess Athena in Troy each year by sending two virgins by lot and vote. The Trojans who went out to meet the women who were sent, if they caught them, they would kill them, and they would burn their bones with wild, unfruited wood from the Traronian mountain near Troy and then through the ash into the sea. And the Lokrians would have to send other women. If any of them fled, once they returned secretly into Athena’s temple, they would sweep and clean it and they would not approach the goddess or exit the shrine unless if was night. They were shaven, wearing a single tunic, and barefoot.
The first of the Lokrian maidens were Periboia and Kleopatra. First they sent virgins, then the Locrians sent year-old infants with their nurses. When one thousand years had past, after the Phocian War, they stopped that type of sacrifice. This is according to the Sicilian, Timaios. The Cyrenian Kallimakhos also mentions this story.”
“The Lokrians barely made it back to their own land; three years later, a plague struck Lokris and they obtained an oracle to propitiate Athena in Troy by sending two maidens there for one thousand years. Periboia and Kleopatra were the first selected by lot.
But when they went to Troy, they were pursued by the local inhabitants until they entered the shrine. They did not approach the goddess, but they swept and sprinkled water on the temple. They did not exit the temple; their hair was cut, they wore single-tunics and no shoes.
When they died, the Lokrians sent others and they entered the city at night so that they would not be murdered if seen outside the precinct. Later, the Lokrians started sending infants with nurses. When one thousand years had passed, they stopped sening suppliants after the Phocian War.”
5.38 “When a woman is pregnant and carrying twins, should either breast become thin, she loses one child. If the right breast thins, she loses the male child; if the left one does, the female.”
6.18 “A serious wound striking either the bladder, the head, the heard, the brain, some part of the smaller intestine, the stomach or the liver, is mortal.”
“Phanodikos says that Daidalos—on account of the aforementioned reasons—went on a ship as he was fleeing and when those who were pursuing him drew near, he spread wide a piece of cloth for gaining the help of the winds and escaped them in this way. When they got back, those who were following him said he had escaped them with wings.”
Phanodicos Deliacon Daedalum propter supradictas causas fugientem navem conscendisse et, cum imminerent qui eum sequebantur, intendisse pallium ad adiuvandum ventos et sic evasisse: illos vero qui insequebantur reversos nuntiasse pinnis illum evasisse.
Palaephatus, On Unbelievable Things 12
“People claim that Minos imprisoned Daidalos and Ikaros, his son, for a certain reason, but that Daidalos, after he fashioned wings as prosthetics for both of them, flew off with Ikaros. It is impossible to think that a person flies, even one who has prosthetic wings. What it really means, then, is the following kind of thing.
Daidalos, when he was in prison, escaped through a small window and hauled down his son too; once he got on a boat, he left. When Minos found out, he sent ships to pursue him. Then they understood that they were being pursued and there was a furious and driving wind, they seemed to be flying. And while they were sailing with the Kretan wind, they flipped over into the sea. While Daidalos survived onto land, Ikaros died. This is why the sea there is named Ikarion for him. His father buried him after he was tossed up by the waves.”
In one of my favorite modern pieces, the poet Jack Gilbert explores the theme of flying and falling in “Failing And Flying” (from 2005’s wonderful Refusing Heaven) where he begins and ends with a meditation on Icarus. The sentiments seem apt (the text comes from poetryfoundation.org):
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
“I stood on a high mountain and I saw one tall person and another short one. And I heard something like a thunder’s sound and I went closer to hear it. He addressed me and said: “I am you and you are me and wherever you are I am there; and I am implanted in all things. So you can gather me from wherever you want. And when you harvest me, you harvest yourself.”
Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks III
“Seriously, then, let us add this too: your gods are inhuman and people-hating demons who do not only delight in the madness of humanity but even revel in the slaughter of humans. They gather their incitements for pleasure first in the armed conflicts in stadia and then in the countless arguments in war so that they might be especially able to sate their thirst for human gore. Already they have demanded human sacrifices in cities and nations, falling upon them like plagues. This is why Aristomenes the Messenian killed three hundred men for Zeus of Ithôme, because he believed that these types and numbers of hekatombs bring good outcomes.”
“Certainly, whenever there is some mass or malignancy of humors or a blockage or some wasting force invades the body, there is a danger previously absent that a person will get sick and there are times when this risk is severe. These types of causes are hard to diagnose because the person doesn’t feel any pain yet.
This is like the infection from a rabid dog: there’s no particular sign in the body before the person afflicted comes near madness. These kinds of causes make it necessary, therefore, that the doctor inquire from patients about everything that happened to them.”
“He also levied a tax of three on every thousand so that people, distressed by these charges, would note also that families of equal wealth whose lives were modest and simple paid less to the public treasury and repent from their behavior.
Both those who paid the taxes because of luxury and those who gave up their luxury because of the taxes were angry to him. For most people believe that hindering the display of their wealth deprives them of it and also that the display comes from their luxuries not their necessities.
This is what they say really surprised Ariston the philosopher, that those who possess superficial excess are thought to be luckier than those who are well-supplied with what is needed and useful.”
After over 35 episodes, we return this week to Thebes with Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Although this play was written near the end of Sophocles’ life, it takes place between the events of his earlier Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannos. Often people casually assume that these three plays are part of the same trilogy, when in fact they were written in very different periods: Antigone appeared 10 years before the Peloponnesian War (441 BCE) as Pericles became the pre-eminent Athenian politician while Tyrannos was performed after the onset of the war and, likely, at the beginning of the famous plague. Colonus comes nearly a generation later. While scholars debate its exact performance and composition dates, it seems likely that it was one of the final plays Sophocles wrote before his death in 406/5 and that his son produced the play after the fall of Athens (perhaps as late as 401 BCE).
There is a belatedness to this play, an air of revision and reconsideration as we find Oedipus reflecting on his actions and the limits of his agency. It part, like many Athenian plays, this tragedy is about the reception of the mythical past. Its themes, moreover, also respond to contemporary (and modern) concerns from the crisis of immigration and exile to the very notion of what constitutes a community in times of struggle and civil strife. Within this, however, there remains the essential Oedipal question about identity and knowledge. How do we know who we are and understand our place in the world? What is our responsibility to our community? How do we define our community? And, perhaps most important for Oedipus, Athens, and our world today: how do we stay who we are when everything falls apart?
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 258-259
“What use is a good reputation? What good is Fame flowing off to no end?”
“….for you do not fear My name or my actions, since you know That I suffered the actions instead of doing them, If you must speak of what my mother and father did— These are the reasons you fear me. I know this well. How could I be evil in nature When I acted after being hurt so that even if I understood what I was doing, I could not have been bad? I got to where I did understanding nothing, But I was ruined by those who understood what was happening.”
“Would you say that the city agreed properly then To give me the one gift I wanted? No, not at all, when on the day itself when My rage was burning, and it was my sweetest wish To die by stoning—well, No one was trying to help me with that desire.”
Chorus – Petra McGregor, Jesse McLaughlin, Vincent Agnello
Special Guests: Laura Slatkin
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 562-568
“I know that I was raised as an exile, Like you, and as man in exile I toiled In the face of the greatest risks to my life– That’s why I would never turn away an exile like you are now, since I know I am only a man And I have no greater share of tomorrow than you.”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Associate Director: Liz Fisher Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies) Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Poster Artist: John Koelle Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies)
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 1211-1223
“Whoever longs for a greater portion Of living beyond what is enough Will seem clearly to me To be guarding foolishness. Since the long days set out Many things closer to pain And you can’t see where pleasure is, Whenever someone stumbles into more Than is needed. But as an ally equal to all, Hades is a revelation Without a song, a dance, or a wedding, That fate of death at the end.
Tuesday, December 8 – Wednesday, December 9Odyssey ‘round the world – a special 24-hour event featuring performances of every rhapsody of the Odyssey recorded by students, faculty, and actors around the world. View the schedule.
December 9 Performing Epic: The Odyssey with Suzanne Lye (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Leonard Muellner (Brandeis University), Sheila Murnaghan (University of Pennsylvania), and Greg Nagy (Harvard University); translation by Stanley Lombardo, courtesy of Hackett Publishing Company
December 16 Cyclops, Euripides with Carl Shaw (New College of Florida)
December23 Series Finale: Frogs, Aristophanes
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus 607-615
“Most dear son of Aegeus, only the gods don’t age Or ever die, but that wrestler time Eventually wears everything else out. The earth’s strength wanes, the body’s strength fades, Trust dies and distrust waxes stronger, Breath never lands the same among friends Nor between cities who were once allied. Some things that are pleasing now turn bitter In later time, but then friendship comes again in turn.”
The following poems are taken from the Greek Anthology.
Philippos, 11.321
“Grammarians, children of hateful Blame, thorn-worms
Book-monsters, whelps of Zenodotus,
Soldiers of Kallimakhos, a man you project like a shield
But do not spare from your tongue,
Hunters of grievous conjunctions who take pleasure
In min or sphin* and in asking if the Cyclops kept dogs,
May you wear out your lives, wretches, muttering over the abuse
Of others. Come sink your arrow in me!”
“Useless race of grammarians, digging at the roots of
Someone else’s poetry, luckless worms who walk on thorns,
Perverters of great art, boasting over your Erinna*,
Bitter, parched watchdogs of Kallimakhos,
Rebukes to poets, death’s shade to children learning,
Go to hell, you fleas that secretly bite eloquent men.”
“Goodbye, men whose eyes have wandered over the universe,
And you thorn-counting worms of Aristarchus.
What’s it to me to examine which paths the Sun takes
Or whose son Proteus was or who was Pygmalion?
I would know as many works whose texts are clean. But let
The dark inquiry rot away the Mega-Kallimakheis!”
