Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (47 page)

UNKNOWN PLAY
(III)

FRAGMENT 283

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 20, no. 2253, with Plate III.

This looks very
like the beginning of a prologue of a play; it recalls
Eum.
1 ff.
Clearly it comes from a play “about the matter of Troy.” The word
sunallagê
(l. 7) can mean “relations”, “dealings”, “visitation” or it can mean “reconciliation”;
in this context, it is likeliest to have the latter meaning. At what stage of
the Trojan war can a Greek have prayed for “friendly reconciliation”? If
reconciliation with the Trojans is meant, we think of the early stages, of the
time before and just after the arrival of the Greeks at Troy: Stark ahs
suggested that the play may be the
Iphigeneia
, but without adducing any
substantial evidence.
P. Oxy.
2254 seems to come from a play that dealt
with the fight at Tenedos which preceded the siege, and it is possible that
both come from the
Iphigeneia
or from some play unknown to us which
described an early stage in the history of the war: e.g., Aeschylus may have
written a
Cycnus
, and the Cycnus in question may have been the king of
Tenedos killed by Achilles.

But the “reconciliation”
may easily have been a reconciliation between the Greek chiefs themselves. A
famous Aeschylean trilogy (
Myrmidones
,
Nereides
,
Phryges
or
Hektoros Lytra
) is known to have dealt with the most notorious of
their quarrels. The speaker seems to be praying for a friendly reconciliation “for
the chieftains of Greece”. This might mean “a reconciliation with the Trojans”;
but it more probably means “a reconciliation with each other.” It is therefore
likelier than not to come from the Achillean trilogy; and the likelihood is
strengthened by the fact that very minute scraps, proved by a coincidence with
a quotation (fr. 59) to come from the
Myrmidones
and probably by the
same copyist as the Aeschylean fragments in vol. 20, have already been
published (vol. xviii, 2163; Snell, l.c., has shown that another small fragment
in vol. 20 – 2256, fr. 55 – probably coincides with a quotation, fr. 65 in this book). Further, the
formal stateliness and the impression which it gives of introducing the
audience to a new situation makes somewhat in favour of it belonging to the
first play of the trilogy; though here the similarity with the opening of
Eum.
should put us on our guard. And who is the speaker likely to be? Maas has
thought of Calchas; but Agamemnon has at least as good a claim. The range of
possibilities is very wide; and the supplements are more than usually
uncertain.

To Zeus’ majesty I
first do reverence, and with supplication I beseech him that this day’s light
may see us exchange our labours for prosperous fortune; and for the chieftains
of the land of Greece, who with Menelaus demand vengeance of Paris, son of
Priam, for the violent rape of Helen, I pray for a friendly reconciliation of
their grievous quarrel.

UKNOWN PLAY
(IV)

FRAGMENT 284

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 20, no. 2256, fr. 71, with Plate VIII.

“The subject of
this fragment of a chorus is evidently the death of Ajax consequent on the
award of the arms of Achilles”: Lobel. This was the subject of Aeschylus’
Ajax-trilogy; and Lobel suggests that this may come from the
Hoplôn Krisis
,
Mette preferring the
Salaminiai
. But the lines contain a summary account
of the end of Ajax, not at all what we should expect to find in a play of which
this formed the main subject, but very much what might be given if the story of
Ajax is being cited as a parallel to a similar episode that ahs occurred or
seems likely to occur in some different play. This impression is strengthened
by the occurrence of
hôster kai
at the beginning of l. 16. As Snell
(l.c., 440) has noticed, this can hardly introduce a theme for comparison; for
a mention of Ajax follows, and Ajax has been the subject of the preceding
stanza. The obvious inference is that after briefly narrating the death of Ajax
the Chorus said: “Just as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand . .
. so will (someone else) perish.”

In what lost play
of Aeschylus might this have happened? Several of them may have contained
characters who threatened suicide (the
Oedipus
, for example, comes to
mind); but there are slight indications in favour of the
Philoctetes
.
Philoctetes threatens suicide in Sophocles’ play; his suicide and that of Ajax
would have had this in common, that in both cases Odysseus was responsible; and
among the Aeschylean fragments in
P. Oxy.
, vol. 20, is a fragmentary
hypothesis to the
Philoctetes
(no. 2256, fr. 5). But these indications
do not amount to anything like proof.

I will dissolve in tears (?) . . . who
. . . these . . . sufferings . . . receive. . . . He, the city-guarding
chieftain of the seagirt land, was brought to ruin by the shepherds of the
people, the chieftains and commanders of the host, after he had set his heart
upon the arms. And in the judgment the generals connived with Odysseus, with no
impartial mind . . guide . . . his mind cloaked in darkness . . contrivance of
the fatal sword.
Even as the noble son of Telamon perished by his own hand.

HÊRAKLEIDA
I

FRAGMENT 285

Ed. pr. Lefebvre, B
ulletin
de la société royale d’archéologie d’Alexandrie
, no. 14, 191, 192, with
Plate IX, 3.

Körte assigned this
fragment to Aeschylus on the score of his supplement
amphimêt
[
ores
in l. 4. This adjective occurs in extant literature only at Eur.,
Andr.
466; but Hesychius says that Aeschylus used it in his
Heracleidae
(fr.
76 Nauck). Page (l.c.) has pointed out that this supplement is far from
certain, since in l. 4
amphi mêt
[
era
is an obvious possibility.
And even if it were certain, it would not prove that this fragment came from
Aeschylus’
Heracleidae
; since we have no reason to assume that the word
occurred only in that play. We know that it occurred also in the
Andromache
;
and it may easily have occurred elsewhere also. We must therefore recognise at
the outset that it is very doubtful whether this fragment is from the
Heracleidae
or is by Aeschylus at all.

But several
scholars have maintained that the action which the fragment describes can be
shown to be one likely to have been described in the
Heracleidae
. If
this is true, the possibility that this fragment belongs to that play becomes
greater; and this claim must therefore be investigated.

Körte, Fritsch and
Mette all assume that the
Heracleidae
of Aeschylus, like the play of the
same name by Euripides, dealt with the persecution of the Heraclids, after
their father’s death, by Eurystheus. They take
amphimêtores
to mean “children
by different mothers”, as it does in the
Andromache
and as Hesychius
says it meant in Aeschylus; this description, they say, is true of the children
of Heracles. They think this passage came from part of the play in which
Eurystheus or one of his adherents (perhaps the herald Copreus) is threatening
the Heraclids with burning, and supplement accordingly.

Lycus threatens to
burn the children of Heracles by Megara in the
Heracles
of Euripides;
but we are nowhere told that Eurystheus did the same. Heracles certainly had
children by many different mothers (though it is doubtful whether the
description
amphimêtores
applies to the children who survived to be
persecuted by Eurystheus; according to the usual legend, all these were his
children by Deianeira). In l. 3, Körte and his followers read
th
[
lam
]
ouchoi
[
s
domois
, but [
lam
] is too long for the gap; and in l. 6 they
presumably take
pharmakou
to refer to fire, which it can scarcely do.

This attempt to
show that the fragment fits the plot of the
Heracleidae
scarcely stands
up to examination. Stebrny has made another on quite different lines. He calls
attention to the bold attempt of Zielinsky (
Eos
25, 57; cf.
Tragodumenon
libri tres
, 3, 90) to show that Aeschylus’ Heracleidae dealt with the same
subject as Sophocles’
Trachiniae
, the death of Heracles. Zielinski’s
arguments fall a long way short of proving his case; but they certainly show that
it is just as likely that the play was about this as that it was about the same
subject as Euripides’ play of the same name. Accepting his thesis, Srebrny
offers a restoration of this fragment based upon it. In itself, this
restoration is less open to objection that are those of Körte and his
followers. In l. 3 the word
tha
[
mn
]
ouchoi
[
s
(for
which cf. the sense of
druocha
at Eur.,
Electra
1163), though it
occurs nowhere else, seems to be the only conceivable word that will fit the
space; and in l. 6
pharmakou
can refer to the poison in the blood of
Nessus. Leaving aside any considerations based on the conjecture
amphimêt
[
ores
,
Srebrny’s hypothesis seems to explain the fragment more satisfactorily than any
other assumption I have been able to think of, and after considerable
hesitation I have decided to print the text with supplements along the lines he
indicates. But the considerations I have set out above oblige us to recognise
that any such hypothesis is anything but certain.

Suppose Srebrny is
right, the fragment seems to describe the circumstances of Heracles’ death in
too summary a manner for it to be the principal account given in the play of an
important episode in the action; contrast the elaborate instructions which
Heracles gives to Hyllus in the
Trachiniae
. The tense of ên in l.2 is
surprising. Can the whole narration have been in the past tense? If so, the
fragment teaches us nothing about the plot of Aeschylus’
Heracleidae
,
even if we suppose Srebrny’s whole argument to be correct; for even a play that
dealt with the same subject as Euripides’
Heracleidae
, or with a
different subject altogether, might have included a description of the death of
Heracles in the past tense.

The possibility
that this is so is somewhat strengthened if one considers the problem of the
letter missing in l. 4 between oide and the A of
amphimêtores
or
amphi
.
Only a vertical stroke is preserved;
G
,
M
,
N
are possible.
No supplement seems suitable except
ge
or a pronoun; and
ge
neither suits the sense nor fits the psace. What would fit the space would be
this writer’s broad
M
.

For in those parts
was visible a place designed by Nature for a pyre, in the lofty, bush-covered
country of Oeta. To this did [?my] children by different mothers raise [?me]
aloft, encompassed with trees for fuel, flesh swollen and skin peeling beneath
the strong poison.

MYRMIDONE
S

FRAGMENT 286

Ed. pr.
Vitelli-Norsa, Mélanges Bidez,
Annuaire de l’institut de philogogie et d’histoire
orientales
, ii, 1934, 968, with Plate.

Page rightly points
out that earlier writers were over-confident in their assignation of this
fragment to Aeschylus’
Myrmidones
. The only expression in the fragment
which they were able to claim was peculiarly Aeschylean was
diai
in l.
8; and even this piece of evidence has no value, as these forms of the
disyllabic preopositions occur in Sophocles and in para-tragedic passages of
comedy (see Page, l.c.). Further, the style of the fragment is simpler and
plainer than that of Aeschylus commonly is; though I do not think this argument
can be pressed. Page also contends that the Achilles of this piece is “psychologically
more advanced, more sophisticated and argumentative, more interested in himself
and his own motives and actions, than we expect in Aeschylus”. I cannot share
this opinion; to me this Achilles seems very like Homer’s and therefore very
like the Achilles we might expect from Aeschylus.

It is true that the
content of the scene is what we might expect to have occurred somewhere in
Aeschylus’ Achilles trilogy, and that there is nothing in it that we can
positively state to be unaeschylean: it is also true that we do not know
Sophocles or Euripides to have written on this theme. But, as Page points out,
Achilles was the hero of plays by Astydamas, Carcinus and others; and there is not
sufficient evidence to conclude that this must be Aeschylean. The writing of
the exiguous fragments printed in
P. Oxy.
2163, and shown by coincidence
with a quotation (fr. 59) to be from the Myrmidones is like that of
P.S.I.
1208-10 (Lobel,
P. Oxy.
, vol. 19, p. 23), but not like that of this
piece. Neither does the writing of
P. Oxy.
2256, fr. 55 (plausibly
assigned to the
Myrmidones
by Snell, Gnomon 25, 1953, 437) nor that of
fr. 283 resemble the writing of this fragment.

The situation in
which the speech is delivered must be quite clear to anyone who knows the
Iliad
;
the Greeks are suffering grievous losses through Achilles’ refusal to fight,
and Achilles is being unsuccessfully implored to return to the battle.

ACHILLES
. . . they will stone me! The torturing of Peleus’ son with stones will prove
no blessing – never think it! – to the Greeks in the land of Troy. No, then the
Trojans could sit at their ease and win the victory without a fight; and you
would more easily meet . . the healer of mortal sorrows. Shall fear of the
Achaeans force me to lay my hand upon my spear, a hand now quivering with anger
through the doing of a cowardly leader? Why, if I alone by my absence from the
battle caused this great rout, as my comrades say, am I not all in all to the
Achaean host? Respect forbids me not to utter such words; for who could say
such chieftains, such commanders of the army, were nobler than I? . . . one man
has stricken you . . . shaken and scattered you . . . armour on youthful
shoulders . . .
(Fragments of nineteen more lines.)