Laodameia is the name of Protesilaus’ wife, according to the Euripidean tradition. Other traditions have him married to Polydora, a child of Meleager. IN the non-Homeric tradition, Protesilaus was permitted to leave the underworld to meet his wife for a single day. The action of the play seems to have centered around this event, following Laodameia’s grief and the reactions of her near and dear.
Chas Libretto brings us a new interpretation of this story, rooted in the fragments that have survived and imagining the pieces we have lost. In a way, this is as true to the theme of the tale as humanly possible, arranging the remains of the lives we lead around the absence of the people we’ve lost.
Special Guests
Erika Weiberg
Performers and Scenes
Music performed by Bettina Joy de Guzman
Actors
Jessie Cannizarro
Tamieka Chavis
Damian Jermaine Thompson
Rene Thornton Jr.
Laodamia – Female, 20s
Iolaus/Protesilaos/Podarces, her husband and his brother – Male, 20s
Acastus, her father – Male, 50s – 60s
Chorus – Male/Female, 30s – 60s
Odysseus – Male, 30s
Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 650
“Illogical hopes deceive mortals”
πόλλ᾿ ἐλπίδες ψεύδουσιν ἅλογοι βροτούς.
Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 654
“When two are speaking and one is enraged
the one who resists fighting with words is the wiser.”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Host and Faculty Consultant: Joel Christensen (Brandeis University) Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies) Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies) Poster Illustration Artist: John Koelle
Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 655
“I won’t betray someone I love even when they’re dead.”
οὐκ ἂν προδοίην καίπερ ἄψυχον φίλον.
Future episodes
All start times are 3pm ET unless otherwise noted. Live stream available at chs.harvard.edu and on YouTube.
December 15An Ancient Cabaret
Euripides, Protesilaus fr. 657
“Anyone who lumps all women together in slander
Is unsubtle and unwise
For among the many women you will find one wicked
And another with a spirit as noble as this one”
“I have known a man of a noble father who turns out To be nothing while powerful men can rise from the low. I have seen emptiness in a rich man’s thought And great judgement in a poor person’s frame.
How can anyone take these things on and judge them? Wealth? Whoever uses that uses wickedness as a guide. Or those who have nothing? Poverty has a sickness: it teaches a person to be cruel because of need.”
“What deceived you the most, what you misunderstood, Is that someone can be strong because of money. Money can only stay with us for a brief time. Character is strength, not money.
Character always stands at our sides and bears our troubles. Wealth shacks up with fools unjustly and then disappears Leaving their houses after it bloomed for a little while.”
“You are so far into ignorance, you pitiful woman, That you dare to sleep with the man who killed Your husband and to rear a child from a family that killed yours. This is completely the barbarian way— A father has sex with a daughter, a child with his mother, A daughter with her brother and the dearest of relatives Turn on each other in murder and no law restrains them! Don’t bring those laws here. It is also not noble For a man to have two women in his reins. Everyone who desires to live apart from evil Is happy to look to a single bed for sex.”
“You do huge things for minor reasons— Listen to me! Why are you hurting me? What’s the reason What city did I betray? Which child of yours did I kill? What home did I burn down? I was forced to bed With my master. You’ll kill me and not him When he is the cause of these things? You’ll ignore The cause and just keep pounding on the symptom?”
“Blessed child of Laertes, much-devising Odysseus, You really secured a wife with magnificent virtue! That’s how good the brains are for blameless Penelope, Ikarios’ daughter, how well she remembered Odysseus, Her wedded husband. The fame of her virtue will never perish, And the gods will craft a pleasing song Of mindful Penelope for mortals over the earth. This is not the way for Tyndareos’ daughter. She devised wicked deeds and since she killed Her wedded husband, a hateful song Will be hers among men, she will attract harsh rumor To the race of women, even for those who are good.”
“Then Eurynomê the bed-maid led them As they went to bed, holding a torch in her hands. She left again once she led them into the bed chamber; Then they happily entered the rite of the ancient bed.”
Comments from the Scholia:
ἀσπάσιοι λέκτροιο] “They happily and enthusiastically remembered the ancient practice of intercourse”
Aristophanes and Aristarchus believed that this was the end (peras) of the Odyssey
Aristophanes and Aristarchus claim this as the end (telos) of the Odyssey
In the last hour of our Odyssey ‘Round the World, we bring you a dramatic reading of the epic’s final book. Since the Hellenistic period there have been debates about the 24th book of the Odyssey, since it contains more than a few perplexing moments: a second trip to the underworld, a cruel testing of the elderly Laertes, and the split assembly of the suitors’ families as they contemplate the deaths of their loved ones. To top it all off, the epic ends when Athena declares an eklesis, a forgetting of troubles and the reinstatement of Odysseus as king.
If this sudden dea ex machina is not enough, we know from Teiresias’ prophecy that Odysseus’ story is far from over: he is destined to travel again after the end of this poem. Far from being a good reason to dismiss this book, however, these are challenges to the audience to reconsider the tale they have received and any preconceptions about what it was meant to teach them.
Eustathius, Commentary on the Odyssey, II.308
“We should note that according to the very old accounts, Aristarchus and Aristophanes, the best of the ancient commentators, made this line (23.296) the end of the Odyssey, because they were suspicious of what remained to the end of the book. But these scholars are cutting off many critical things, which they claim to oppose, for example the immediately following rhetorical recapitulation of that has happened and then, in a way, a summary of the whole Odyssey and then, in the next book, the recognition scene between Odysseus and Laertes, and the many marvelous things that happen there.”
“So she spoke, and his longing for mourning swelled within him— He wept holding the wife fit to his heart, a woman who knew careful thoughts.
As when the land appears welcome to men as the swim Whose well-made ship Poseidon has dashed apart on the sea, As it is driven by the wind and a striking wave. Then few men flee from the grey sea to the shore As they swim and the bodies are covered with brine on their skin, They happily climb on the shore, escaping evil.
So welcome a sight was her husband to her as she looked upon him And she would not pull her white arms away from his neck.”
Carlos Bellato Danai Epithymiadi Tabatha Gayle Bettina Joy de Guzman Evelyn Miller Rhys Rusbatch Nektarios Theodorou Sara Valentine Argyris Xafis
Special Guests: Leonard Muellner, Gregory Nagy, Sheila Murnaghan, Suzanne Lye
Homer, Odyssey 21.407-409
“Just as a man who knows both lyre and song easily stretches a string on a new peg as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies); help from Madeleine Cahn
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)
Odyssey 24.478–486
“Do whatever you want—but I will say what is fitting.
Since Odysseus has paid back the suitors,
let him be king again for good and take sacred others.
Let us force a forgetting of that slaughter of children and relatives.
Let all the people be friendly towards each other
as before. Let there be abundant wealth and peace.”
I will speak to you an obvious sign [sêma] and it will not escape you. Whenever some other traveler meets you and asks Why you have a winnowing fan on your fine shoulder, At that very point drive the well-shaped oar into the ground
“He was like someone speaking many lies similar to the truth.”
ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα·
Homer, Odyssey 15.398–401
“Let us take pleasure in calling to mind each other’s terrible pains while we drink and dine in my home. For someone may even find pleasure among pains when they have suffered many and gone through much.”
Now that we have finished all of the extant Greek tragedies, we are turning to a truly epic day: 24 hours of performances of the Odyssey around the world. We will start at 4 pm EST (9 PM UK) today (December 8th) with book 1 and each book will be performed by a different group around the world, culminating in a dramatic reading of book 24 at our usual time, 3 pm EST on Wednesday. December 9th. Check out the list of participants.
We know less about the performance of Homeric epic than we’d like to. The evidence of singers in the poems and references in works like Plato’s Ion imply that episodes of each epic were performed independently. Similar evidence supports the idea of competitive, monumental performances of the Iliad and the Odyssey at festivals like the Panathenaia. While good evidence supports a performance of the poems in a festival contest with rhapsodes working in sequence, many have also argued for a three-part performance of the Iliad, with breaks happening at thematically significant moments.
Whatever the context and length, the most salient thing of Homeric epic in performance was the presence of the audience, of people enjoying these narratives together. We can’t gather for a symposium or crowd into an amphitheater for a festival, but even remotely we can share the same words at the same time. So, for one day we invite you to escape your isolation into a worldwide community, taking the Odyssey on a global tour.
Homer, Odyssey 6.205-210
“We live at a great distance from others amid the much-sounding sea, Far away, and no other mortals visit us. But this man who has wandered here, who is so ill-starred, It is right to care for him now. For all are from Zeus, The strangers and the beggars, and our gift is small but dear to them. Come, handmaidens, give the stranger food and drink; Bathe him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind.”
“So she spoke, and his longing for mourning swelled within him— He wept holding the wife fit to his heart, a woman who knew careful thoughts.
As when the land appears welcome to men as the swim Whose well-made ship Poseidon has dashed apart on the sea, As it is driven by the wind and a striking wave. Then few men flee from the grey sea to the shore As they swim and the bodies are covered with brine on their skin, They happily climb on the shore, escaping evil.
So welcome a sight was her husband to her as she looked upon him And she would not pull her white arms away from his neck.”
“Just as a man who knows both lyre and song easily stretches a string on a new peg as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies); help from Madeleine Cahn
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)
Odyssey 5.488-493
“Just as when someone hides a firebrand in black ash On the farthest edge of the wilderness where there are no neighbors And saves the seed of fire when there is no other way to kindle it, Just so Odysseus covered himself in leaves. Then Athena Poured sleep over his eyes so he might immediately rest From his exhausting toil, once she closed his dear lashes.”
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)
I will speak to you an obvious sign [sêma] and it will not escape you. Whenever some other traveler meets you and asks Why you have a winnowing fan on your fine shoulder, At that very point drive the well-shaped oar into the ground
“I have known a man of a noble father who turns out To be nothing while powerful men can rise from the low. I have seen emptiness in a rich man’s thought And great judgement in a poor person’s frame.
How can anyone take these things on and judge them? Wealth? Whoever uses that uses wickedness as a guide. Or those who have nothing? Poverty has a sickness: it teaches a person to be cruel because of need.”
“What deceived you the most, what you misunderstood, Is that someone can be strong because of money. Money can only stay with us for a brief time. Character is strength, not money.
Character always stands at our sides and bears our troubles. Wealth shacks up with fools unjustly and then disappears Leaving their houses after it bloomed for a little while.”
“You are so far into ignorance, you pitiful woman, That you dare to sleep with the man who killed Your husband and to rear a child from a family that killed yours. This is completely the barbarian way— A father has sex with a daughter, a child with his mother, A daughter with her brother and the dearest of relatives Turn on each other in murder and no law restrains them! Don’t bring those laws here. It is also not noble For a man to have two women in his reins. Everyone who desires to live apart from evil Is happy to look to a single bed for sex.”
“You do huge things for minor reasons— Listen to me! Why are you hurting me? What’s the reason What city did I betray? Which child of yours did I kill? What home did I burn down? I was forced to bed With my master. You’ll kill me and not him When he is the cause of these things? You’ll ignore The cause and just keep pounding on the symptom?”
“Indeed, I did debate other people once, arguing This: Once someone said that humans have A greater share of worse things than better. I hold a belief in opposition to these, That mortals have more good than evil. If this were not the case, we would not live in the light. I praise whoever of the gods balanced our lives Away from the beasts and the wilds. First, he put understanding within us, and then Gave us a tongue as a marshal of words, to understand speeches.”
“The wise should love their children first, Then their parents, and then their country Which they should improve not ruin. A bold leader makes mistakes like a young sailor. Wise is the one at peace at the right time: bravery, for me, is forethought.”
“You do huge things for minor reasons—
Listen to me! Why are you hurting me? What’s the reason
What city did I betray? Which child of yours did I kill?
What home did I burn down? I was forced to bed
With my master. You’ll kill me and not him
When he is the cause of these things? You’ll ignore
The cause and just keep pounding on the symptom?”
“Child, I who bore you go to Hades now
So you may not die. If you outrun this fate,
Remember your mother, all I suffered and how I died.
Go to your father and through kisses
Tell him what I died while shedding tears
And throwing your arms around him.
Children are the soul of all humankind—
Whoever has no children mocks them and
While they may feel less pain, feel sadder happiness too”
“Before, even though I was buried in sorrows
Hope always led me to this child who, if saved
Might provide some kind of defense or aid.
But once my husband married that Spartan Hermione
He has spurned my slave’s bed and I
Have been battered down by her evil tortures.”
Each week we select scenes from a play, actors and experts from around the world, and put them all together for 90 minutes or so to see what will happen. This process is therapeutic for us; and it helps us think about how tragedy may have had similar functions in the ancient world as well.
Euripides, Andromache 954-6
“You’ve laid into your kindred with your tongue too much!
Such things are forgivable for you now, but still
Women must work to cover up women’s afflictions!”
This week we turn to Euripides’ Andromache, a play that returns us to the experiences of the enslaved women of Priam’s household, like his Hecuba and Trojan Women. In this play, we witness the dual sufferings of Andromache and Menelaos’ daughter Hermione. The former is the enslaved concubine of Achilles’ son, Neoptolemos and the latter is his wife. Hermione, however, is barren while Andromache has borne a son. This play returns us to themes of child killing revenge, legitimacy and the sufferings of women.
It may also have deep political resonance: This play’s date of performance is unknown, with scholars placing it as early as 428 at the end of the Periklean plague or as late as 417 BCE. Its treatment of women, children, and the offspring of slaves may reflect on the use of Athenian power during its empire and, perhaps, may comment on the Mytilenean revolt: when an Allied city tried to rebel from Athenian power and was voted to have all its men executed and women and children enslaved after its surrender. While this decision was reversed, it bared the nature of Athenian rule and foreshadows the demise of Melos 10 years later.
Euripides, Andromache 263-267
“Ah, you give me a bitter lottery and choice
For my life. Should I win, I am ruined
And if I lose I am unluckier still.”
“Oh, my fate!
Where is fire’s flame dear to me?
Where can I throw myself from rocks
Either into the see or a mountain’s forest,
So I can die and the dead can care for me?”
.jpg){kind=link}
_-_Andromache_Offering_Sacrifice_to_Hector%27s_Shade_-_T05872_-_Tate.jpg){kind=link}