Cropp, 'Euripides: Phoenissae', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9508
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9508-cropp-euripides
@@@@95.8.3, Mastronarde, Euripides: Phoenissae
Donald J. Mastronarde, Euripides: Phoenissae. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (Classical Texts and Commentaries, 29), 1994. Pp. viii,
673. $90.00. ISBN 0-521-41071-1.
Reviewed by Martin Cropp -- University of Calgary
Two decades of work on Phoenissae by Donald Mastronarde
culminate in this volume, which was preceded by Studies in Euripides'
Phoinissai (diss. Toronto, 1974), The Textual Tradition of
Euripides' Phoinissai (Berkeley, 1982, with J.M. Bremer), and a
highly informative Teubner edition (1988). The scale of this work is not
unmatched by the play's difficulties of text and interpretation. As one
of the Byzantine Triad Phoen. is represented in some 115 medieval
manuscripts, and M. lists 34 papyri with ancient text-fragments or
testimonia, more than for any other Greek tragedy except Orestes.
Some think (though M. does not) that the structure of the play Euripides
wrote has been marred by substantial interpolations. Commentaries have
been rare: nothing in English between A.C. Pearson and J.U. Powell (1909,
1911) and Elizabeth Craik (1988), all useful in their own terms but not
approaching the scale of M.'s. The obstacles have tended to discourage
study of the play as drama, poetry or cultural product. This book will do
a great deal to assist it, and the consistently high quality of M.'s
scholarship will make it an indispensable basis for all future work.
M.'s Introduction runs to 52 pages with sections on the play's structure
and tragic character, its date and companion plays, features of the
original production, the Thebaid myth, the relevance to Phoen. of
the story of Chrysippus, the problem of interpolation, and the text. Text
and Apparatus follow, not here accompanied by the hypotheses, running
commentary on stage action, or separate citations of testimonia which M.
provided in the Teubner edition. The 500-page Commentary is on a scale
which accommodates extensive dramatic and thematic analyses (especially
in synoptic comments on each section of the play and on several
subsections, speeches, etc.) as well as full discussion of textual,
metrical, lexical, syntactic and stylistic matters and of the problems of
interpolation. The volume closes with a brief Appendix on the poetic
topography of Thebes (including a sketch-map), a ten-page Bibliography,
and Indexes of Passages, Subjects and Greek words.
The Introduction includes an account of M.'s general view of the play and
some parameters for historical and literary interpretation. Like other
recent critics he is concerned to understand Phoen. in its own
terms, seeing its 'open' form as purposefully diverging from the fierce
concentration on individuals which characterises 'classic' Tragedy.
Euripides dramatises the working out of the destinies of the city of
Thebes and of the Labdacid family as a dense historical texture within
which are woven the morally and rationally imperfect actions of
individuals, hampered by lack of insight and driven by conflicting
obligations towards self, kin and homeland. The structure of the play
separates the city, which survives, from its doomed royal family whose
members are dead or outcast by the end. (It might be noted that the
legend of the Epigoni and the ultimate destruction of Thebes are
unadvertised in this play--by contrast with, e.g., Eur.
Supplices--just as there is no focus on the consequences for the
Argive side and no Ismene to dilute the finality of the play's ending.)
In discussing the mythical background (Introd. IV-V), M. usefully
stresses the limits of our knowledge of the oral and epic traditions
about Thebes while showing how recognition of the choices or innovations
made by Euripides can illuminate the play. Most notably, Euripides has
made the fraternal quarrel thoroughly ambivalent by allowing Polynices
the justification of having been double-crossed over the (perhaps
invented) agreement to share the kingship, by giving Polynices a
sympathetic scene with his mother in a (probably invented) secret visit
to Thebes, by stressing Jocasta's love for both her sons but also her
recognition of their shared foolishness, by detaching the final duel from
the city's repulse of the Argive onslaught, and by attributing the
salvation of the city not to Eteocles but to the self-sacrificing figure
of Menoeceus (also an invented motif in this mythical context, as M.
persuasively argues against those who recognise it in the death of
Creon's son Megareus, Soph. Ant. 1303). M. remains sceptical of
attempts to identify the other plays of Pho.'s trilogy, including
the collocation of Oenomaus, Chrysippus and Phoen.
in a thematically coherent trilogy.
M. has retained almost completely the text of the Teubner edition,
listing only a handful of corrections and minor changes on p. 51. The
Apparatus has, besides needed corrections, a reduced volume of
information and a simplified way of citing the manuscripts. Most of the
Teubner's sigla for families and sub-families are omitted, leaving
only the group-designations for all of the up to 34 mss. cited (W) or
almost all (W), all veteres (W) or almost all (W`), all
recentiores (R) or some (r), three 'Moschopoulean' mss. (X) or two
of these (x), six Thoman-Triclinian mss. (Z) or some of these (z). (M.
has abandoned the assocation of AMt with X, which gave group C in the
Teubner edition, while still sensing some common background: p. 50 n.1).
Papyrus readings are not specifically cited where they agree with the
mss. in a reading accepted by M. (p. 52). The result is pleasingly neat
and comprehensible, and can be supplemented as needed from the Teubner
and from JamesDiggle's new Oxford text (1993).
Inevitably M.'s text will be compared with Diggle's (the two editors have
corresponded regularly: p. viii), which was preceded by textual notes in
SIFC 7 (1989) 196-206 and a review of the Teubner text in
CR 40 (1990) 6-11, and influenced by C. Willink's argument
(discussed below) for identifying a series of interpolations concerning
Antigone, Haemon and Polynices' burial, PCPS 216 (1990) 182-201.
Useful comments on the text also appeared in M.L. West's review of the
Teubner edition, CP 85 (1990), 311-7. While retaining the Teubner
text in all essentials M. airs doubts and conflicts of opinion in the
Commentary. This sometimes results in an impression of inconclusiveness
or virtual change of mind, but this openness is wholly understandable
given the difficult and controversial nature of the text; there is much
that has to be recognised as unsettled. M. consciously leans towards
non-interventionism as an editor, whereas Diggle handles the text more
aggressively. The two editions together present a striking contrast, but
they also set very instructively the limits within which the criticism of
this text should now be carried on. My inexhaustive comparison found
differences at about 175 points ranging from punctuation to passages
excised; M. deletes 64 lines including the last 30, Diggle 446 lines
including the last 185 and all of M.'s deletions; M. obelises 16 times,
all at points where D. obelises, emends or deletes, and D. exceeds this
even on top of his other interventions; M. prints the/a transmitted text
at over 40 places where D. prints an emendation, and follows the majority
of mss. at least 15 times where D. prefers a variant. These numbers do
however exaggerate the reality insofar as both editors constantly
recognise difficulties while M.'s threshold for intervention is the
higher and his willingness to give the benefit of the doubt the greater.
D. athetises all of the conclusion of the play (1582-1766) while allowing
that it may include some Euripidean verses, whereas M. leaves all but
four verses of 1582-1736 unathetised while identifying (pp. 593, 628)
other problems suggestive of interpolation. Although I am often finally
persuaded by D.'s choices against M.'s (when I feel ready to make up my
mind at all), decision is always assisted by M.'s alertness to the
problems and scrupulous reviewing of arguments on both sides.
The problems of interpolation in this play and the history of their
study are helpfully discussed by M. in his Introduction, pp. 39-49. They
are such that it might well be useful to employ a three-level notation
(authentic / suspect / inauthentic: green / yellow / red?) like Diggle's
four-level notation for IA which Euripides left incomplete. (Craik
indeed does so in her edition of Pho., but not to the same effect
since unlike M. she believes that Euripides' own text of this play is in
principle irrecoverable.) Small-scale and isolated problems are too
numerous to be reviewed here, though some are mentioned in my notes
below. Against suspicions of large-scale interpolation M. defends the
text systematically, seeking in general to show that the suspected
passages are not in conflict with the dramatic design of the play but are
on the contrary characteristic of it, and that difficulties of language,
style and coherence have been exaggerated by critics seeking to discredit
whole passages although they may sometimes justify minor surgery. The
least endangered of the seven such passages (or groups of passages) under
suspicion, and the only one retained by Diggle, is the Teichoskopia
(88-201) in which Antigone views the invading army from the palace-roof
in a lyric conversation with an old retainer. This is convincingly
defended and explained in terms of dramatic purpose by M. (pp. 168-173),
and I have nothing to add here, nor on the Messenger's description of the
attacking champions (1104-40) which will remain suspect though M.
continues to give it the benefit of the doubt (cf. Phoenix 32
[1978] 105-128: he is now "more willing than before to concede that the
style is less interesting and impressive than Eur.'s best work", p. 456).
M.'s arguments against the deletion (largely Fraenkel's) of Tiresias's
explanation to Creon of Oedipus's history and the effect of his curse on
his sons (868-880, 886-890) are persuasive at least in the point that the
length of the speech serves the purpose of suspense and that something of
the kind is needed where 868-880 stands since a direct transition from
867 to 881 is too abrupt. M.'s similar defence of 886-890 I find less
cogent, and it remains possible that the admitted difficulties within
868-880 indicate some reworking or other corruption there.
M.'s very careful discussion of Creon's arrival before the
Messenger-scene and his presence during it (1308ff.: pp. 512-5)
convincingly refutes several of the reasons which have been used to
justify eliminating him here, and shows conclusively that in the text as
it stands Creon is not to be supposed to have brought Menoeceus's body
with him. But I am still left with an irreducible residue of doubt over
the Messenger's not addressing Creon, Creon's not responding to the
Messenger's report, and his silence for more than 200 lines between 1356
and 1583. As usual, M. gives full recognition to these difficulties, but
he concludes that Creon "is important enough to be brought in to reveal
his grief [over Menoeceus], to mouth pieties about the treatment of the
dead [which M. regards as ironic preparation for Creon's later refusal of
burial to Polynices], and to greet the [Messenger's] news as a further
burden of woe, but not important enough to be addressed within the rhesis
or to be allowed to react to it prior to the entrance of Antigone or to
join in or interrupt Antigone's lyric lament" (p. 514). This rather
delicate balancing act may be tenable, but two considerations not
discussed by M. may make it still more insecure: (1)The identity of the
Chorus in this play, as virtual outsiders, makes the exclusion of Creon
from the body of the Messenger-scene, if he is present, all the more
surprising. Supplices and Andromache, which M. compares by
way of justification, are different in this respect. (2) When the Chorus
ask for the Messenger's detailed report they ask only about the deaths of
the brothers, which may suggest that Euripides himself planned the
revelation of Jocasta's death as a later shock (1455ff.); the attention
to Jocasta at the beginning of the scene (1318-9, 1347-53) would then be
inappropriate, and Creon's presence less needed. (Compare the complete
absence of preparation for the narration of Megara's death in HF
(996ff.), where throughout the preceding scenes including the initial
announcement of the 'messenger' only Heracles' killing of his sons is
mentioned.)
The closing scenes of the play, 1582-1766, in which Creon banishes
Oedipus and bans the burial of Polynices, and Antigone protests
unsuccessfully against the ban, then renounces her expected marriage with
Haemon and resolves to accompany Oedipus into exile, are the most
extensive of these problems, and the hardest. M. deletes 1737-66 as
inconsistent with what precedes, plus a few isolated lines earlier, and
thinks that 1595-1614 (Oedipus relating his life's experience) have been
reworked. He makes a persuasive case for seeing the banishment of Oedipus
as an integral part of Euripides' dramatic design (but the general
mediocrity of 1584-1624 may mean that we may have even less of Euripides'
text here than M. thinks, while on the other hand 1683-1702 and 1708-36
could well be substantially sound. I cannot share M.'s benevolence
towards the Oedipus-at-Colonus motif in 1703-7!). As for the motif of
Polynices' burial, M.'s main arguments are that it is not in
contradiction with the exile motif since Antigone abandons the burial in
order to share the exile (true), that the burial has been made an issue
by 1447-50 even if 774-7 are deleted (true to some extent), and that the
problem of burial is the natural culmination of Antigone's role in the
play. One might ask, however, why Euripides dramatised this conflict (in
anything more than the allusive fashion of 1447-50) only to have it end
in Antigone's failing to bury the corpse, Creon's decree apparently
prevailing, and Haemon ostentatiously left with no wife and an
indeterminate future; and whether Antigone's role might not be thought to
culminate sufficiently in her taking over Jocasta's place as Oedipus's
guardian. In addition, the abrupt switches between the two motifs remain
puzzling. 1639 might easily follow 1626 but is separated from it by
Creon's announcement of the burial-ban. In 1643-4 Antigone demands
justification of the banishment of Oedipus, but she gets virtually no
answer on this point as the debate over the burial of Polynices ensues.
Oedipus at 1685 tells Antigone to "stay and be happy" when she has just
said that she will kill Haemon if she is forced to marry him. And at
1697-1701 he bids farewell to his sons' corpses without noticing that
Polynices' corpse is to be dishonored. The malaise of the Exodos does
seem to me to be more deep-seated than M. allows, and possibly due to the
intrusion (with some contextual adjustment) of those parts which
dramatise the banning of burial for Polynices. Euripides may have
included the ban, and Antigone's renunciation of her betrothal to Haemon,
but he may have handled them much more deftly, without making them a
substantial issue in the action of the Exodos, and without
necessarily needing an appearance by Creon.
If this were so, it would put in a slightly different light the
references earlier in the play to the betrothal and the burial,
especially in the speech where Eteocles announces to Creon his
'testamentary dispositions' concerning Antigone and Polynices. Willink
has deleted 754-765 and 774-8 and argued that they are the work of the
same interpolator who (on this view) introduced these topics into the
Exodos for the sake of mythological orthodoxy. He also suggests that
690-6 are an interpolation containing preparation for the 'testamentary
dispositions', and that 944-6 are an interpolation consequent on the
false introduction of Haemon into the play. These last two points are not
so essential (see below on 944-6). As for Eteocles' speech, Willink's
argument that the topics of betrothal and burial stand or fall here and
in the Exodos together holds true if we must choose for or against
their presence in the text as they stand--i.e., with dramatic
prominence, and linked by references back from the Exodos (1587-8, 1646)
to the earlier speech. But one can easily see how they might stand in the
Exodos in the less prominent way I have suggested (which might satisfy
M.'s insistence on their thematic appropriateness) while falling from
Eteocles' speech as I am inclined to think they must (although M.'s
reservations about this deserve very careful consideration).
I have concentrated on the major problems of interpolation because it is
these above all that hamper interpretation of the play. I hope this will
not obscure the fact that M.'s Commentary as a whole is extremely
rich--and impossible to appreciate fully except through continued use.
What follows is merely an assortment of comments and suggestions on
points where I have so far found something to add. [1-2] The
deletion is not in my opinion refuted by P. Carrara, ZPE 102
(1994) 43-51. [11] A further argument against this line is
that it interrupts an almost formulaic sequence giving the speaker's
parentage and name: e.g., Hec. 3-4, HF 3-4, IT 4-5,
Mel. Soph. Prologue 13-14 (Hel. 16-21 is a special
exception). 26-27 M. vigorously defends these widely
suspected lines against all linguistic objections, but I wonder if the
mythographic fact in 27 suits Jocasta's otherwise very personal
narrative. Is it fair to note also that the inclusion of 27 draws
attention to the oddity of Merope's convincing Polybus four lines later
that the baby with its grievously wounded ankles is her own? 43
Word-order encourages taking TW=N KAKW=N as object of E)KTO/S rather
than as a partitive genitive with M.; and "those of the evils which are
irrelevant" sounds self-contradictory to me. 44-45 That
Oedipus presents Laius's chariot to Polybus as tropheia is not
mere 'realism' but a tragic irony: the fulfilment of this duty to his
adoptive father stems from the murder of his real father. 88
PRESBU/THS is also the old retainer's title in IA.
148-9 M. feels some contradiction in the phrase U(STE/RWI PODI\
... A)MFE/PEI, but one may think for example of how Protagoras's auditors
while accompanying him KALW=S HU)LABOU=NTO MHDE/POTE E)N TW=I PRO/SQEN
EI)=NAI PRWTAGO/ROU (Pl. Prot. 315b4). 155 DE/DOIKA
MH\ SKOPW=SW=| O)RQW=W QEOI/ seems to have been generally accepted by
editors. M. paraphrases, "I fear that the gods may look rightly ". But even if the sense-supplement is possible (and
Rhes. 339 which M. compares is much easier: "properly do you
examine "), it can hardly imply what we need, which is "I
fear that the gods may think that they (the invaders) have right on their
side". Something seems to be amiss, though I hesitate to suggest deletion
of the line even when it is noted that its first half is identical with
263. 201 M.'s note on 472 suggests that MHDE\N U(GIE/S here
means "nothing truthful", but it should mean "nothing wholesome" (cf.
e.g. Mel. Desm. F 493.5; Stevens on Andr. 448-9), implying
that the women will impute sexual misconduct to Antigone.
202-260 (Parodos) In discussing the identity of the Chorus M.
might have added explicitly that the Phoenician girls can provide a
neutral focus on the quarrel between the brothers. 211-3 M.
finds difficulty in the aorist participle in 212, but the participles in
209 and 212 can both have past-tense implication if E)/BAN (202) is taken
as "I have come/arrived" (= H(/KW, as often, e.g. 106, 295).
269 'Nervous reaction to real or imagined sound': add El.
747-8. 438-442 To M.'s effective defence of these
often-deleted lines add that to reduce Polynices' appeal to his mother
(A)LLV=| E)S SE\ TEI/NEI, etc.) to two or three lines makes it
excessively abrupt. 455-6 Add El. 856 to illustrate
the effect of "the Gorgon's head". 520 In favour of
Kirchhoff's deletion compare Erechtheus F 360.42, a similar
one-liner introduced either to prolong the rhetorical climax or from a
marginal parallel. 563-7 M. rejects deletion of 566-7 or 567
alone, and notices Willink's additional deletion of 563-5 only in an
afterthought. But 563-5 and 567 seem to blur the real point of 559-562
which (pace M. on 567) is that Eteocles is refuted in his own
terms: he can choose tyranny over saving the city only at the risk of
destroying the city whose tyranny he craves -- an expensive kind of
'wealth' indeed (566). I suppose that the near-loss of DAPANHRO/S from
the tradition in 566 stems like the interpolation from a misunderstanding
or reworking of Eur.'s rhetoric. 636-7 Accusatory etymology:
cf. also Pha. 225. 639-640 M. defends TETRASKELH\S
... A)DA/MATON, "the four-legged cow threw a spontaneous falling-downI."
Bergk's TETRASKELE\S ... A)DA/MATOS (printed by Diggle) still allows the
implication "spontaneous" in A)DA/MATOS (taken predicatively) and
replaces the dull "four-legged cow"with the lively "four-legged
falling-down" (focusing on the folding of the cow's legs as it lies
down). 847 M. is right, I think, to retain PASW=| A)PH/NH,
but the explanation he adopts, that this refers to people who need a
helping hand when stepping down from a cart, is unconvincing. It is
simpler and more interesting to understand that both carts and old men
routinely get stuck (through fatigue in the case of old men; because of
ruts, rocks or mud in the case of carts) and must then wait (A)NAME/NEIN)
for someone to take some of the weight (KOUFI/SMATA) and ease them
forward. 854-5 The 'specific intertextual standard'
established by associating Tiresias with the Athenian defeat of Eumolpus
applies not only to Creon and Menoeceus but to the contrast between
Athens, where a human sacrifice has defeated a foreign invasion and
secured a great future for the city, and Thebes where it is necessitated
by an internecine strife destined to destroy the city. 858
Instantaneous aorist in welcoming a good omen: add El. 622.
916 Punctuation as a single sentence gives better effect to
A(/PER and answers Creon's question directly: "The very things which have
been revealed, these you must actually perform!" 930 M.
defends this line, explaining that "Creon's question challenges Tiresias
to supply an explanation in defence of his prophecy". But Creon is not
questioning the prophecy or the need for sacrifice; he simply
wants to know why the sacrifice is demanded, and 931-5 provide the
answer. 944-6 In rejecting Willink's deletion of all three
lines M. rightly notes that Haemon cannot be entirely eliminated from the
play since Menoeceus mentions his brother in 1003. But they still look to
me like an intruded piece of mythological pedantry, and the mention of
Haemon's status serves no purpose except to advertise an inconsistency
which could otherwise be readily overlooked. (I think this is true
regardless of the wider issue of Haemon's relevance to the play,
discussed above.) Without 944-6 the essential point is made (as Willink
notes): Creon is the only true descendant of the Spartoi, so it is he who
must give up a son from his family. And there is a natural sequence from
SU\ DE\I (942-3) to OU(=TOS DE\ PW=LOS (947-8). 973-4
Willink's deletion of both lines (974 was already widely deleted) is
adopted by Diggle but was not apparently known to M. PRI\N MAQEI=N PA=SAN
PO/LIN (970) says quite enough about why Menoeceus must escape quickly,
and the particular worry raised in 973-4, that Tiresias will alert
(specifically) the army-commanders at the seven gates is slightly in
conflict with this (and slightly inappropriate for the exhausted Tiresias
[843-4, 953-4]!) 1101 M. obelises DRO/MWI CUNH=YAN since
CUNH=YAN does not quite make sense here, but Kirchhoff's deletion is
better. As Diggle indicates in his apparatus, the sense-completion
provided by 1101 is not needed. Add that the word CUNH=YAN occurs three
more times in the messenger-scene (1192, 1241, 1381) and may well have
been 'borrowed' for the interpolation here. 1168 To M.'s
defence of FUHA/DAS add that FUGA/S is very often used predicatively (76,
319, Andr. 1055, Bacch. 1370, El. 32, etc.).
1208 Desideratives in -SEI/W in Tragedy: add FEUCEI/W, HF
628. 1344 Topos of the animate house: add El. 1150-1.
The book is finely produced, and I have noticed only very minor errors:
p. 51 O)DONTOFUAA) (read -A=); p. 605 TALAI/PORO/N (read -PWR-). In
Erechtheus F 360.18 (50.18 Austin, cited in 998 n.) it is better
to read U(/PER DOU=NAI. The Bibliography oddly omits the article on
Phoen. by Elizabeth Rawson (GRBS 11 [1990], 109-127) lauded
by M. on p. 4 n. 4.