Last week, we turned to the most tragic of epics (according to Aristotle, at least), Homer’s Iliad.
This week we remain in Trojan War material but return to tragedy with the Rhesus, traditionally attributed to Euripides. This play covers the same basic events of Iliad 10 where Diomedes and Odysseus go out to spy on the Trojans at night and end up slaughtering the Thracian king Rhesus and his men to steal his horses. Euripides’ play give us a little more from both sides: we see a somewhat more monstrous Hektor, get to hear from Rhesus himself and are invited to see the slaughter as a calamity worthy of attention on its own.
In performing the play. we are less interested in whether or not it is genuinely Euripides–and its authenticity has been doubted for some time because of its contents and its style–than we are in how and why this play may have appealed to ancient audiences and what it has to tell us about the reception of Trojan War figures on the Athenian stage. We see Odysseus in many different plays, but having Hektor and his allies in a performance is a rare thing indeed. This play also invites us to think about the fixity of scenes from the Iliad we possess and the complex relationship between performative genres and audience expectations.
Euripides’ Rhesus 182
“It is right to cast your life in the dice game of fate For things that are worthy.”
“…I love to speak the truth All the time and I am never a duplicitous man. Long, long ago it would have been right for you to come And share our pain…”
“Ajax doesn’t seem to me to be any lesser than him Nor does Tydeus’ son. But that Odysseus, He is the most twisted crook, a man bold enough to be arrogant, One who has outraged this land most of all.”
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)
Euripides, Rhesus 756-57
“In addition to our suffering, this has been handled With the greatest shame. This doubles the pain.”
Saturday, October 17 Assemblywomen, Aristophanes with Francisco Barrenechea (University of Maryland, College Park)
October 21 Agamemnon, Aeschylus with Fiona Macintosh (University of Oxford); translation by O. Taplin
October 28 Libation Bearers, Aeschylus; translation by O. Taplin
November 4 Eumenides, Aeschylus with Ellen McLaughlin (Barnard College) and Andrew Simpson (Catholic Univeristy of America); translation by O. Taplin
Euripides, Rhesus 938-942
“Athena, you deserve the blame for this. Odysseus and the son of Tydeus didn’t do it Don’t imagine you sneaked by me. Still, my sister Muses and I honor your city Most of all….”
This week, we turn to the most tragic of epics (according to Aristotle, at least), Homer’s Iliad
As everyone knows, the Iliad begins with the rage of Achilles. As many of us forget, it ends not with the Trojan Horse or the death of Achilles, but instead with the burial of horse-taming Hektor. I think it is probably dangerous to ask a Homerist to tell you about the Iliad, because so often we don’t know where to start, whether it should be in thinking about its relationship with the Odyssey or about what it means to say the word “Homer”. True Story: many years ago, while patronizing a drinking establishment in Queens, my wife asked me to tell her what the Iliad was about. After about 45 minutes, she asked how much more there was to it. I had not even finished book 1 yet…
Ancient performers of the epics didn’t have these challenges because audiences grew up hearing stories about most of the events and characters they would be singing about and because the performance contexts didn’t expect them to tell the whole story. We don’t know a lot about the actual performance contexts and practices of Homeric poetry in the ancient world (see the work of José Gonzalez on rhapsodes, Casey Dué’s work on multiformity, Egbert Bakker’s From Formula to Poetics or any of Gregory Nagy’s Poetry as Performanceor Plato’s Rhapsogy and Homer’s Music), but it seems likely that the stories were performed in episodes at various occasions and at times in monumental performances at festivals. How these performances were prepared is another issue: some think they were memorized from a script, others think they were composed in performance. I tend towards the latter belief with the acknowledgement that even when something is composed in performance, there are various degress of fixity from one performance to another and one singer to another…
And, here again, I have started to trail off. Often people talk about performance of song within Homer to start us thinking about epic performance (the songs of Demodokos and Phemios in the Odyssey; Achilles singing to his lyre in the Iliad) but there’s some evidence outside the poems too. One passage comes from Plato’s Ion:
Plato, Ion 535d-e
Ion: Now this proof is super clear to me, Socrates! I’ll tell you without hiding anything: whenever I say something pitiable, my eyes fill with tears. Whenever I say something frightening, my hair stands straight up in fear and my heart leaps!
Socrates: What is this then, Ion? Should we say that a person is in their right mind when they are all dressed up in decorated finery and gold crowns at the sacrifices or the banquests and then, even though they haven’t lost anything, they are afraid still even though they stand among twenty thousand friendly people and there is no one attacking him or doing him wrong?
Ion: Well, by Zeus, not at all, Socrates, TBH.
Socrates: So you understand that you rhapsodes produce the same effects on most of your audiences?
Ion: Oh, yes I do! For I look down on them from the stage at each moment to see them crying and making terrible expressions, awestruck by what is said. I need to pay special attention to them since if I make them cry, then I get to laugh when I receive their money. But if I make them laugh, then I’ll cry over the money I’ve lost!”
Note in this passage that Plato’s Socrates assumes that Ion is faithfull performing a ‘text’ ascribed to Homer and that they both identify as salient features of the performance the context (“sacrifices” and “festivals”) the emotional affect (crying and carrying on, channeling the emotive content of the scenes) and the impact on the audience (making them cry too) all while emphasizing the material benefit accruing to a rhapsode who pleases his audiences.
When I think about Homeric performance, I think a lot about how little we know about the audiences and their responses and how crucial this was to the shape of the poems we have. I too often forget that the performers were an important part of this process in shaping the reception through their use of intonation, voice, gesture, and tune. So, in our readings from the Iliad today, I will be thinking about the parts, and not the whole, and how performance creates a new text of its own.
We’ve selected some passages today for performance from different parts of the epic to give an idea of the power of the whole and to provide a range of characters for our actors. We will get some of the debate in book 1, some family scenes in Troy, and a whole range of lament and regret. What more could one ask for a Wednesday?
“But, you great shamepot, we follow you so that you feel joy, As we collect honor for Menelaos and you, dog-face, From the Trojans—you don’t shudder at this, you don’t care.”
Selected Passages (Using the Stanley Lombardo translation with permission from Hackett)
Iliad 1 Agamemnon and Achilles’ argument
Iliad 6 Hector and Andromache
Iliad 19 Agamemnon and Achilles reconcile – may be cut for time
Iliad 22 Andromache’s first lament for Hector
Iliad 24 Achilles and Priam
Iliad 24 Priam, Hecuba, Andromache and Helen laments for Hector
Iliad 1.224–228 [Achilles Addressing Agamemnon]
“Wine-sod! Dog-eyes! You have the heart of a deer! You never suffer to arm yourself to enter battle with the army Nor to set an ambush with the best of the Achaeans. That seems like death itself to you!”
“After a while, Diomedes good-at-the warcry, addressed them: “I will fight with you first because you are being foolish, son of Atreus, Which is right, Lord, in the assembly. So don’t get angry at all.”
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)
Iliad 21.461-465
“Then lord Apollo the far-shooter answered, “Earthshaker, you would not think that I would be prudent If indeed I fought with you over mortals, Wretched men who are like the leaves now flourish Until they grow full, eat the fruit of fields, And then they diminish until they die…”
October 14 Rhesus, Euripides with Mary Ebbott (College of the Holy Cross)
Saturday, October 17 Assemblywomen, Aristophanes with Francisco Barrenechea (University of Maryland, College Park)
October 21 Agamemnon, Aeschylus with Fiona Macintosh (University of Oxford)
Iliad 24.503-6
“Achilles, respect the gods and take pity, Once you think of your own father. I am even more pitiable, Since I endure what no other mortal person ever has, To reach my hands to the lips of the man who slaughtered my child.”
“You, child, will also either follow me Where you will toil completing the wretched works Of a cruel master or some Achaean will grab you And throw you from the wall to your evil destruction Because he still feels anger at Hektor killing his brother Or father or son, since many a man of the Achaeans dined On the endless earth under Hektor’s hands.”
“After heaping up the mound [sêma] they returned. Then Once they were well gathered they shared a fine feast In the halls of the god-nourished king, Priam. Thus they were completing the burial of horse-taming Hektor.”
